This morning my host dad drove me to the doctor's to get my flu shot. It was easy and quick and also not too expensive, thankfully. What else? Oh, right, today I can start listening to Christmas music! Yay. :)

( meme part 2 )

And there's a very cute gray/rust orange bird sitting outside my window right now. I wonder what kind of bird it is?

Happy Thanksgiving! Last year I was in China for Thanksgiving, and everyone was so homesick that our teacher was sweet enough to find a restaurant having an American style Thanksgiving meal and invite us all out (including our Chinese teachers and roommates). This year I went out for lunch with a couple of friends to a, you guessed it, Chinese restaurant. Oh, the irony. :)

( because everyone else is doing this meme )

Today I went on a 2 hour walk around Berlin Schöneberg. Haven't done nearly enough exploring and I have only 2 1/2 weeks left here! AAAAAA!!! So today I had quite a successful day of exploration. Here is what I found:

1. A WWII Bunker. For real.
2. An elementary school that looked like something out of a futuristic movie
3. St. Something's Church #1
4. St. Something's Church #2 (St. Paul's, possibly?)
5. A green monster sticker on a stoplight
6. A wooden pink bunny monster with pointy teeth on someone's balcony
7. The court where they had the show trials for the would-be assassins of June 20, 1944
8. Several streets I would love to live on
9. Beautiful old apartment buildings
10. The graves of the Grimm Brothers

A very worthwhile afternoon of wandering, I'd say. And now I am exhausted so I am going to read my homework and loaf around, I suppose. Early bedtime tonight. Yay!

Wolfen today! Yay!

Yesterday was Schloss Charlottenburg with the gang (as in my gang, not the Furman gang, thank goodness). We walked around the grounds, which are beautiful, and took lots of silly photos. Then Nikki and I talked and got coffee and it was so nice to have a deep, analytical conversation with someone. That's what I missed most in China, and here I have friends I can talk to like that. She's incredibly similar to me, so we can talk about pretty much whatever and get where the other is coming from.

I also signed up for classes yesterday, so we'll see how that goes... hopefully I will get into Malici's section of PS 14, I'm guaranteed a spot in Bressler's senior seminar (thank goodness!), and after that I need two German classes. There's no doubt I'll get into those, though. Almost no one takes German at my school, and a lot of the upper level kids graduated last year. Plus if I don't get in, the professors in the department know me, so I can wriggle my way in, most likely. We'll see what happens. I figured I'd be guaranteed the classes I wanted last term, too, and didn't get them, so who knows how this'll work out.

And now I need to go eat breakfast with my host family (they're eating at 9 instead of 9:30 specifically for me, so I better show up on time!) before Volker comes and picks me up. Eep, I can't wait :D

Poland today! I'm excited. My grandpa came from Poland, so I've always wanted to go... nevermind that this will be for only 6 hours, it still counts as Poland. Add another country to the checklist! :D

And this weekend I get to go visit Tine's family. I'm exciiiiited. I just need to remember to wrap up the birthday gift and get flowers.... better write myself a post-it note about that now.

I feel better today. Some days I think you just need to completely fall apart so that the next day can be better. I don't think I'm going to collapse today (although I could if someone says just the right thing-- don't you hate that feeling?), but occasionally crying is just the best thing for you. It's interesting to analyze all this. I will be my own psych experiment. :P

I've been trying to work out my class schedule for spring term, and I could still triple major... I'm debating it. I really could do it... although things need to work out PERFECTLY. I need Cox to respond to my email so I can decide what classes to take, although I kind of doubt he'll write me back. Most likely he will and I'm just being too impatient.

And now it's time for breakfast. Yum.

La la la I feel like I should be doing homework, and I'm sure I should, but I'm not right now. So there.

Tomorrow is the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall, and I will actually be in Berlin for it! Exciting, no? I'm just hoping I get to see some of the cool stuff that is going on... even if I don't, though, I can console myself with the fact that I was in the same city at the same time as Angela Merkel (well, duh), Hillary Clinton (even though she scares me :P), Dmitry Medvedev, and Mikhail Gorbachev. I have to say, I'm most excited about that last one. I hope I can get close enough to the Brandenburger Tor to hear his speech, whatever he happens to say.

On Friday I went to Leipzig, and it wasn't until halfway through the day that I realized I'd been to Leipzig before. To give my memory a bit of an excuse, we'd been in a completely new (for me) part of the city up until then, but still, I feel like I should've remembered... oh well. Not a big deal. Once I remembered that I'd been to Leipzig, I was able to find both the McDonald's and the Hugendubel that Tine, Dani, André and I spent most of our day in. I have fond memories of that trip... reading David Sedaris in the Hugendubel, learning that McDonald's is often called McDoof, silly discussions, etc. Yeah. Leipzig was fun on Friday, too, though-- Dr. Rasch brought her godchild along, who was 12 years old and absolutely adorable. I love and miss children, so once we started talking, it was fun to hang out with her. She's a little spitfire, that's for sure, and going to be one heck of a heartbreaker when she grows up.

On Saturday I went to the Bauhaus-Archiv for class, which was sort of a strange museum to go in because it was only one floor (which is just as well, since I wasn't at all enamored with the stuff, anyway), and that was made up mostly of furniture and kitchenware. And frankly, a lot of it looks like stuff I'd find in a normal house. We have some chairs like that at our kitchen table, and our rocking chair is styled in a similar vein... why did I have to pay to look at stuff I could find in my house? I guess that was kind of the point, though-- I hadn't realized how influential Bauhaus was. I guess if I think about it, it is kind of cool that this 80 year old stuff is still inspiring designers today, that it still looks innovative and modern, that it looks out of place in a museum.

After that I went to the Nationalgalerie to see an exhibition on Surrealist paintings. I went just to see the Rene Magritte paintings, because I've loved his work ever since 9th grade, but unfortunately out of the four or so paintings they had by him, I liked only one. Oh well. It wasn't a loss of any kind, however, because I discovered that I really like surrealism. Who would've thought??? Certainly not me, that's for sure. I tend to be rather staid and traditional, I suppose, but I thought most of this stuff was great. Max Ernst, Sam Francis, Joan Miró, and plenty of other people whose names I absolutely cannot remember. http://www.soho-art.com/cgi-bin/shop/shop.pl?fid=1123472349&cgifunction=form That was in the exhibition. I think it's pretty cool, especially when you take it in connection with the title. So yeah, I learned something new about me and something new about art. Win-win.

I have a referat (oral presentation) tomorrow... I should probably practice that a couple times before I give it, huh? I've got all the research down and a good grasp of the material, but I do need to practice it, just to make sure I have the transitions down okay. I'll be talking for 15 minutes about the fall of the wall, and specifically just what happened on November 9th. A lot happened that day (duh), so I definitely won't run out of things to say. Always good.

I have such sweet friends over here! Most of our host families are gone this week, so we've been going to each other's houses and cooking and talking and just hanging out. It's been fun. Today we went to Aneta's, and she has a piano at her house, so I played for 2 hours straight. I miss my piano a lot. I was pleased at how some pieces came right back, although others were extremely rundown (as is to be expected after 2 1/2 months of no practice). I've been getting midterms back this week, and both the German and the Transatlantic Themes ones went well. I'm extremely grateful for the German one, because I really didn't study well for that at all. I figured it was either I knew it or I didn't-- I was too durcheinander to be able to study. Anyway, what else? Hmm.

Oh, duh, so I was on fall break last week and I went to Munich, Florence, and Stockholm. Munich and Stockholm were absolutely wonderful, and Stockholm was fine. I don't need to go again, but the architecture was pretty, the National Gallery was really good (small enough that I could take my time on every painting, the selection happened to be one that fit my interests, and they had an entire exhibit on Caspar David Friedrich that just happened to be going on while we were there), I enjoyed the archipelago boat tour a lot, and the Vasa museum (300 year old ship that sank on its maiden voyage and was preserved in the brackish harbor water) was also interesting. I just felt like 3 days was too much there, that it wasn't really a place I need to go back to, just a good way to say I've been to Sweden. Florence and Munich, however, well, I could go back there any day. Munich for obvious reasons (I met up with Narges and the Weinmanns, my old neighbors, and those were far and away the highlights of my weekend-- that and the cute Russian boy I met who showed an interest in me; very flattering :) ), Florence because of the art and the weather and the views and the buildings and the being there with friends (and, let's not lie, also for the gelato). Plus in Florence I saw not only Botticelli's Spring and The Birth of Venus, Artemesia Gentileschi's Judith painting, works by Caravaggio and Da Vinci and Reubens and Rembrandt, Dürer, Cranach, Holbein, Tintoretto, etc., but I also saw Michelangelo's David. For real. In person. And let me tell you, it's not in the least disappointing. Mmm I loved it. Europe is an amazing place for an art nerd.

Look! I wrote a poem! Dunno if it's any good, but Rob and I have been talking about writing so I figure I need to get back to it. We'll see how long this new effort lasts.

Please Talk to Me

I haven’t spoken to you in a week
Haven’t given in
You’re going to talk to me first
Or we won’t talk at all.
 
You should be proud of me
Or, rather, I should be proud of me
And I am
 
I’m not calling, not writing, not clicking
To see what pictures you’re looking at
Who’s currently missing you
What newspaper articles you’ve posted
 
Seeing photos of you still hurts
The songs you gave me make me sad
Even the summer ones
 
Your easy grin, your summer haircut,
Your jeans loose around the edges,
The jaunty, self-assured stance the same,
Just as if I’d never left
 
Hearing your name is a stab under my ribs
A cold shiver, a knife going in, going out,
I tense, wait for the sudden rush of blood--
 
It doesn’t come.
I’ve been hit somewhere darker, somewhere deeper,
And all my hopes, my sense, my confidence
Trickle out upon the floor.

Well, midterms are coming up this week. I've studied two chapters of my German work and then have everything else left to do... eh, whatever, it'll get done eventually.

Life in Berlin is good; yesterday I went to Potsdam with the FU-Best group. They don't do the best job of planning these trips out sometimes-- I had to wake up at 7:15, ride 45 minutes to Potsdam, wait 20 minutes for everyone else to show up, take a 20 minute bus ride out to Cecilienhof, wait 10 min for them to get tickets and stuff squared away, and then all that for a 20 minute tour. Then we had 2 1/2 hours free for lunch. Do you know how much more sleep I could've gotten if they'd planned that differently? A lot. That's how much. We then toured Schloss Sanssouci in the afternoon from 2:30-4, which was interesting and enjoyable enough, but really, did I need to wake up at 7:15 for all that? I could've slept until 8, at least, and we'd still have had more than enough time to do all the stuff they wanted to. Our lunch break was particularly enjoyable because I hung out with Nikki, Jen, and Balaji, and we ate Chinese food for lunch. Delicious. We also went by a discount bookstore, where I found a Berlin skyline coffee table book, a gift for a friend, and 6 classical music CDs I wanted, all for 11.50 (or if I'm going to be European about it, 11,50). Happy day! I forgot my camera, so I have no exciting photos on facebook for you (that after I remembered to charge my camera, too...), but c'est la vie. I'm just going to steal everyone else's pics. :)

Last night I watched crummy TV with my host parents-- Who Wants to Be A Millionaire (good for vocab) and some Top Hit Love Songs of the 80s show. The funny thing about the 80s one was that it was all done from a German perspective, so every so often there'd be a terribly 80s, kitschy German song in the mix that I'd never, ever heard of. Not that I knew most of the other ones, either, but still. And one of the guys they interviewed on the program was a drag queen. That was interesting. Germany's so much more liberal than the US; I'm not sure they'd interview a drag queen for a TV show in America. Well, maybe VH1 or MTV or something, and this show was also pretty off the wall... but it's something to think about, at any rate. 

Okay, back to studying.

Hi! Just a quick entry to say no, I'm not dead, and yes, I'm still having fun. I am exhausted right now (had some sort of headache for most of the day b/c I've been getting too little sleep for too many days in a row), so I have no idea why I picked today of all days to write an entry, but there you go. Sometimes I don't make sense even to myself. I should write more, I know, but all the updates are best saved for another time. I'm headed to Munich, Florence, and Stockholm starting on the 17th, though, so I'm pretty excited about that! I need to print off all the info sheets, and hopefully Ryanair will end up not causing any problems, the hostels won't be sketchy, and the bus tickets will be valid. I'm keeping my fingers crossed on all of that stuff. And now it is time for bed. Ich bin total erschöpft.

My architecture presentation went pretty well; I wasn't able to answer any of the questions people asked at the end (well, one of them), but the presentation I'd prepared was very thorough, coherent, and well-organized, so I was thankful for that. You can't have everything, I suppose, so I'm glad that at least the presentation part was good. Today Rob and I went to the St. Hedwigs Cathedral and heard a 30 minute organ concert, which was decent but not something I need to do again (it was free, however, and the experience was worth the time investment), and then we went to the Alte Nationalgalerie. There was one picture we both thought was pretty lame, and it turned out to be one of the few we saw that was actually by a famous artist. Haha. I also went to the Stammtisch tonight, where German ppl were supposed to come and speak German with us (and we were all supposed to all speak German, too), but the girl sitting at our table spoke English the whole time. We spoke in German to her and she still spoke in English. That always aggravates me-- if I'm making the effort, please play along with me; if you want to practice your English in America, I get that, that's why you're in America, after all. But the same thing applies the other way around-- I'm here to practice my German, and it's hard to meet German people to talk to, so please humor me and speak your native language. I did meet some really nice girls from the program, however, and spoke some broken German with them, as well as more coherent English. ;) The room was so loud, though (we were at a bar), that I could barely hear what was going on.

And I'm exhausted, as per the usual, but Djokovic is playing in the quarterfinal against Verdasco, so I have to watch. I do hope he doesn't lose, but he's not playing his best and Verdasco's beating up on him way more than he ought to be. So come on, Novak-- I want to watch at least one match you actually win!

Here's a quick procrastination entry to say that I absolutely do not want to be doing my Schinkel Bauakademie project, but I'm having a perfectly lovely time in Germany. This is way better than China. I went to two amazing concerts this weekend (one Mendelssohn, one Handel's Messiah), switched out of my terribly boring music class, and have been eating all sorts of new and yummy foods. Now I just need to get this project pulled together and out of the way. At least I get it over with early...

I was going to go to church in the Berliner Dom this morning, but my host family typically eats breakfast together on Sundays so I figure for my first week here, I should probably do that. Especially since I was gone yesterday. Heck, I've been gone most of the time. This Austauschprogramm is keeping me busy! But next week I will go to church. And this afternoon I'm for sure going to Bebelsplatz next to the Staatsoper (at least I'm pretty sure it's Bebelsplatz) to listen to Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet and his Symphony #5. The Philharmonic, directed by Daniel Berenboim, is playing it in the Staatsoper and then, thanks to generous financial support from BMW, they've got a huge public viewing area set up so you can take it all in for free. I happened upon this yesterday, when they were playing Tristan and Isolde by Wagner, but I didn't have much time to spend there (only about 30 minutes of opera until I needed to go home). That was okay, since I'm not much of a one for opera, and certainly not much of a one for Wagner, but Tchaikovsky? I adore him. So I am going. And that is that. :) This is such a cool city! 600 people showed up for Tristan and Isolde-- can you believe it? I mean, I guess I can, but it was so neat to see-- they had picnic baskets, glasses of wine, chairs and blankets and dogs and there were kids and tourists and goths and, well, pretty much everyone under the sun showed up. They also closed the streets behind and in front of the opera house so the noise from the cars wouldn't bother anyone. And it's a pretty major area of town, too. I'm going to have a fantabulous four months here, I can already tell. :)

Hey guys! I am not dead, nor am I sleeping (although I wish I were, sort of... but there are so many interesting things to be doing that I'm going to stay up a while longer)-- I've simply been spending the past two weeks traveling all over Germany (and we're talking serious traveling here-- from the very tippy top to almost the very bottom of the country) with one of my very best friends, Tine. It was absolutely wonderful and she planned everything out so I didn't have to stress at all. I am so thankful that my study abroad trip began that way; it was a great way to acclimate to the country, by staying with someone with whom I'm already comfortable (Tine's one of those friends you just instantly reconnect with :) ), who will help me with my German but not make fun of me, who was able to reacquaint me with customs and words and etiquette I'd forgotten or just never had known in the first place. It took the edge off of my nervousness and reassured me that yes, I can do this, and if something goes wrong I have several people I can go to for help. I got to spend several days with her family, which was great (I have always, always wanted older brothers, so it's fun to tag along with hers, and her parents are extremely kind and helpful), spent a couple days with Dani (I am so happy that worked out-- she has a great sense of humor and is just plan fun to be around), and saw so many historical things I don't even know where to begin. Beginning at the chronological beginning would make the most sense, of course, but I'm tiiiired so I'll do it tomorrow. Or the next day. I have Sunday all to myself, so maybe I'll do it then.

Today was spent dealing with study abroad meetings and such, and although it was a long day (left the house at 8, got back at 6:30), I'm pumped about the next 3 1/2 months. My huge major exciting thing is that GUESS WHAT I get to go see The Magic Flute! Live! In German! AAAA!!! I've loved this opera since 4th grade, when Mom gave me a children's tape of it. I listened to it every single night for at least 6 months and on and off for another several years, listened to the opera in its entirety (in German) on NPR once, and watched the Met's English production of it on PBS. I knew it was a frequently performed opera so I was hoping I'd get to see it (I was set on seeing it if I could find somewhere it was playing while I was here), but now not only do I get to see it, but the program is paying for it! And the whole Furman group is going, so I'll have people to discuss it with, too. Oh my gosh I can't WAIT. But I will have to; it's not until October 3. And that's just the tip of the iceberg with this program; it's shaping up to be quite a doozy. I'm thrilled about all the trips and concerts and such... and thus far my host family's been really nice, too. More about that later, though, when I'm not quite so worn out.

And here I thought I was doing so well about not being stressed out... HA. I am STRESSED and don't want to go to bed because I can't do anything when I'm asleep. Not that I can reasonably do anything to prepare at 12:15pm, but stress isn't rational. afjk sak fslajf daoi ieoa jk alfsow e okay. I leave in one day. I have a suitcase full of clothes packed. Everything is going to fall into place, I have more than enough time to finish everything, if I forget something I can have it mailed to me or buy it there, it's going to be fine, it's going to be fine, it's going to be fine. I am really looking forward to it, don't get me wrong; I'm just venting like this because obviously no one is awake to calm me down.

Okey dokey guys, I'm back from vacation at the beach. Here are some highlights:
1. I slept on a pillow that the other family brought, and apparently their cats sleep on it, too, 'cause I woke up two mornings in a row with swollen eyelids. Very attractive. I didn't know I was allergic to cats, but I guess I am. The last 2 days I switched pillows, and voila, no puffy eyelids! 
2. There was a lightning strike the next island over that started a fire, which was sort of exciting because we got a phone call saying don't worry, we'll let you know if you need to evacuate. We were never in any danger, but the idea that there could possibly be some sort of easily escapable danger was rather appealing.
3. We had a pool right behind our house, a ping pong table next to the pool, a tennis court a 5-minute walk away, the beach another 5-minute walk away, and free wi-fi! Plus the beach, which was on the Gulf of Mexico) was so uncrowded that you could walk 250 feet in either direction without walking by anyone else. And there were dolphins in the ocean. And on the other side of the island was a bay where they get 80% of Florida's oysters. 
4. Dad and I make excellent taboo partners. His clue: "peaches." And while he was thinking about the next word to say, I said "and cream. ice cream. plums." And guess what, the word was plums. :)
5. I finally got to talk with Elizabeth, whom I will see again tomorrow after far too long (it's been a month).
6. I finished 6 books. Everyone should go read Carter Beats The Devil by Glen David Gold. Now.
7. I listened to Regina Spektor's Far probably 20 times. I like it.

And now I am getting ready for Germany. I leave on Thursday (eek!). I was nervous about it (still am, of course, but that's only normal), but last year before China I had the last three weeks or so stuffed with beach and Dani and Tine's visit, and I wasn't nearly as grumpy or worried about it as I had been before all that, so I figured leaving right after I got back from the beach would be a good idea. And so far it has been; I was preoccupied enough last week not to stress (too much), and now I've got just enough time to pull everything together, so no real opportunity to get stressed now, either. It's the perfect plan. This year I have actually checked my flight info so I know which day I'm leaving, too. I do learn from my mistakes. Mom and I just finished going through my clothes, and I definitely do not have a cold weather wardrobe. It's kind of sad. We went out a couple weeks ago and bought a bunch of new clothes, but I won't even bring some of them because they'll be of no use to me for over half my stay. Plus I need to go shopping between now and Thursday and buy a couple sweaters to layer with. Whee. I'm not a cold weather fan at all, but I'll make do somehow. And now that my clothes are laid out in the middle of the room, I feel much more ready to go and excited about going. It's going to be fun, especially since I get to see Tine first!!!! And then we're going to visit Dani, which is also going to be a blast. Yay for Germany!

Last day of teaching 2-year-old Sunday School for the year... aww. The kids were sweet today, so it was a good Sunday to end on. I'm getting into goodbye mode, which is just bizarre. I'm waffling between being really excited and kicking myself for doing this, being incredibly nervous about the term, knowing something's going to go wrong, etc. Hopefully the really excited part of me will win out in the end (and I'm certain it will), but right now I'm having to convince myself that I'm excited more than actually being excited. (It does take a lot to get me visibly enthusiastic about anything, but study abroad should be a big enough deal to get a reaction out of me....) Once I get through this week, though, I'm pretty sure the excited part will ramp things up a bit. It's just that saying goodbye to all of my friends is going to be hard. Oh well-- I signed up for it, now I've got to go do it. 

Saying Goodbye

Well, here we are.

I imagined this day four months ago,
A muggy evening,
Your hunter green shirt,
My tulle-trimmed sundress,
Your hands warm and steady around mine.
 
Now I know
That the details in my heady daydreams
Were all wrong;
They couldn’t survive
The sturdiness of sunlight
And heartbreak.
 
And yet, here we are tonight,
Saying goodbye,
You
And I
In the damp heat of summer
Just as I knew we would.