New Life and Stress

I realise that all the stress and anxiety I had when I first moved to France is coming back to haunt me. Although I don't cry like I did back then (yes I admit I had my moments!) I feel constantly stressed. My life is currently so unstable and I'm gonna have to fork out a lot of money upfront for various things... money that I don't have. I had to borrow money to pay for my months' rent here in my apartment. But the problem is I have not been able to withdraw it from an ATM here. I have no idea what the bloody problem is and it's seriously frustrating me because I NEVER had any problems with this (Australian) card/account in France or Italy.

Then, yesterday, I tried to open a bank account only to be refused because I have ties with the USA so today I have to go and try another bank.

So for the moment... I'm totally broke AND Swiss banks hate me!!! OK so I'm not totally broke since I have the pay from the school for me to live on for the moment.. but still. In the land of money, it's not much. In the land where ATMs give out 200 franc notes as if it were nothing and you can pay for things in the supermarket with a 100 or 200 franc note without anyone batting an eyelid. (In Italy I had people checking to see if my 50 Euro notes were real every time i went to pay with one!)

But I'm so stressed not having a permanent address since all these billions of forms that I have to fill in require an address, and I realise that in the near future I'll have to go back and tell them all that I need to change my address.

Finding a nice and affordable apartment in Geneva is harder than finding a needle in a haystack, it seems. There is a serious shortage of them and people just hang on to them forever. Not only that, if I did happen to find something OK it seems like people only want to rent it to you for short-term only. I'm going out of my mind with this apartment search which I actually started as soon as I found out I got the job, over a month ago.

The good news is that soon I will have my Swiss residency card meaning I won't have to carry around my passport anymore.. yay! I am so sick of having to bring it everywhere I go considering it's so precious and important.

Another unexpected thing I have to deal with is... I have to cook again! I'd forgotten how to do that. Seriously. I mean I now have to buy groceries (which aren't cheap) regularly and prepare and cook once I get home from work! Ha! And I have to do all that washing up too afterwards. D'oh! I was too spoilt at the school with the cantine and its plentiful and cheap meals. Painfully, I am surrounded by almost every kind of restaurant you can imagine - Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Italian, Lebanese, Turkish, French, Spanish, Indian, etc, within a 2 minute walk and yet I can't afford to eat at any of them :(

Perhaps not the expected update but I realise that everything is hard at the beginning and once I'm settled, life will become much much better and easier. At the moment the weather is beyond amazing and gorgeous. Low 20s, sunny, with a slight breeze. Unfortunately for me by the time I get home it's 8-8:30pm so I don't get to make the most of it but I'm really looking forward to all the upcoming festivals and events here :)