This morning my head hurts, as it has every morning since I've been here. I am sipping lemon ginger tea while watching the snow, dark mountains, bare trees, and sky change from rose colored to a full range of yellows. I am pleased with myself because I managed to cut off my dreams of past lives at 7 a.m., that is three and a half more hours later than yesterday. If I continue at this rate, I will wake up at 10:30 tomorrow, which will be 18:30 at my home in Berlin.

home?

Cornstarch squeaks and crunches under my feet. I feel like I am in a movie set for "Fargo". Surreal. No cars, no trains, no subway, no cobblestones or pavement, no cell phones, no street signs or public trash cans, no buildings, houses or shops. Well, there is one house, and that is where my mother lives. I am struggling to reconcile the knowledge that I grew up in a place similar to this, and the overwhelming feeling that I am an alien on a foreign planet.