Beauty and the bleak

I went home for the New Year. I had two weeks at home, two great weeks, although with the stress of travelling either side. I often wonder why I chose to work somewhere two flights away from home! It was great to be back home, to see family, dear friends, green grass, and to eat decent cheese. I was prepared for the fact that I'd get 'post holiday blues' when I came back to Siberia, but I wasn't prepared for the way they'd hit me like a freight train.

When I came back I was tired, jet lagged and with the start of a flu virus (although I didn't know it at the time). I had a few hours sleep before I had to go into the school and I started teaching the next day. I went from staying in a nice, clean house with a garden in the UK to having to come into a soulless concrete block, sharing a stairwell with alcoholic smokers (who use the landings for drinking and smoking), avoiding the streams of urine on the concrete stairs every time I came in. My flat is actually very comfortable, and whilst inside I can sometimes forget where I am, as soon as I looked out of the window or open the door and see grey, white, and concrete it hit me.

I couldn't feel anything for the place when I first got back. It was bleak. Everything seemed bleak. The lack of decent fresh vegetables in the shops, missing family and friends, everything looking the same, the concrete stairwell, the weather, the four months of winter still to come... all just bleak. I felt no connection with the city at all. I couldn't even enjoy the job.

I spent a few days in bed with flu. Fortunately I didn't have it too badly but it was bad enough for me to go 3 days without seeing another person. I started to get more and more miserable - "Why was I here?", "Why had I said I'd come back for a second year?" I just wanted to be at home. Even being jobless and homeless would be better than this place. Then, when I first ventured outside again to take the rubbish out I noticed the trees. Amongst the concrete blocks, snow mounds which used to be cars, the piles of slabs of broken up ice topped with discarded Christmas trees, and the abandoned children's playground, stood the trees. They were heavily covered in white frost. Dripping with frost. The sun had come out and I saw real beauty there amongst the bleakness around it. My eyes opened again and I started to see hope. Things started to turn around from that point.

I have said I want to come back for a second year. There are many reasons for that but I think that if I hadn't seen the trees that day I may not have made the decision. Even when everything looks bleak there is always some hope or beauty there, it just takes a moment to look for it. The Siberian winter is very harsh but the days are getting lighter and the hope that I can get through it is back.