so sehr dabei

First of all...

YAY PHILLIES!!! Thanks for winning the Series...I wish I was home to celebrate *boo*

Secondly, I went to a sold-out concert on Tuesday after winning a ticket on Ebay (for less than the going price, might I add). The concert was Clueso & Band, this adorable German guy with hair that sticks out everywhere. He is virtually unknown in the US because he sings in German. A German friend of mine from Bremen gave me his cd two years ago and since then I've been dying to see him in concert because the cd has become one of my favorites. I went with one of my older students, Laura, because her friend works at the bar in the venue and we got in before everyone else!! I felt super special because we got the best spot and were really close to the stage. You know how sometimes you go to a concert and it's disappointing because you discover that the artist can't sing well live? Not Clueso! He sounded so good I was peering and squinting, trying to detect the presence of lip-syncing. Nope. He can really, really sing. The music is sort of a mix of different sounds from rock and rap and reggae and jazz...hard to define, but pretty unique and super cool. And his band was tight. Trombone, bass guitar, electric guitar, synth, drums, turntables, and he himself also played acoustic guitar for some songs. Every instrument played solos and damn, it was bliss. It was really just great music. His lyrics are awesome too, and what I liked most about the concert was that it was obvious that Clueso loves what he does and isn't a sell-out like most of those dumb popstars; he just loves to make good music and perform it. After three encores, I felt similar to when you finish a delicious meal. Satisfied and happy. I know I'm rambling and babbling and all that--sorry--but I can't help it. I'm still basking in the afterglow.

I also got to see my friend Gülay last night! We were classmates in Bremen and when I went to Istanbul, she was studying abroad there and was so hospitable, showing me around and taking me out and speaking Turkish in the bazaar for me and just being super cool. So when she called me to say she would be in Hamburg, we went to a nice coffee place and, despite her protests, I treated. Hey, it was the least I could do to repay her for saving my ass in Turkey.

Super fun German word of the day:

gebongt: This word doesn't have a perfect English equivalent, and I love it because it is used to say 'okey-dokey', or that you agree with something and you're okay with it. The word comes from the one Germans use to describe the sound/act when cash goes into a cash register and the receipt comes out (how awesome is that?) Also it sounds kind of like bong, and that makes me giggle.

Example:
Ich: "Ich komme morgen nicht in die Schule, kannst du mir bitte am Montag den Schlüssel geben?"
Tanja: "Gebongt!"

Me: "I'm not coming to school tomorrow, could you please give me the key on Monday?"
Tanja: "Alrighty!"

As you can probably guess, I use the word gebongt a lot.

humble request

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DEAR PHILLIES, please win the World Series.  I missed you in 1980 because I was still unborn.  But now that I've managed not to accidentally get hit by a bus for twenty-two years,  let's do this.  I even remember playing that baseball game on the old Nintendo and making you win.  And getting made fun of in school for saying I liked you guys even though you kind of sucked.  So although I was super excited when my second favorite team won the Series last year, now it's time for you to tell everybody to shut the hell up and win this mofo.

Thanks!

Caitlin

FEEL MY SUBTLETY!

So, one thing that I find pretty interesting about German and Germans has to do with subtlety.  I'm more of a person who says things in a roundabout way in the interest of being polite.  I do a lot of dancing around the point.  In my experience, though, most Germans I know are very direct.  They don't shit around, man.  And I think that's not necessarily always due to personality. The language itself and the phrases that people commonly use, well, don't really jive in English.  I'm probably not explaining this very well, so here's an example.

If you call someone in German and they are unavailable, the person who answers will often tell you "Sie hat keine Zeit."  This translates to "She doesn't have time."  You could throw the word "leider" in there (as in, "Sie hat leider keine Zeit")  which means "unfortunately."  But I think that if I called someone up and their mom or whoever said "She doesn't have time," I'd consider that to be pretty brusque.  As in, "She doesn't have time for you."  I mean, in the US we'd usually say something like "She can't come to the phone" or "She's unavailable," and maybe the slightly more curt "She's busy."  These phrases are a bit more oblique and tend to imply that she is too busy to come to the phone at all, it's not just you she doesn't have time for.  But "Sie hat keine Zeit" is perfectly fine in German.  The other day I was offered a coffee and I declined, saying "I think I'm good, thanks."  And the person said, "That's such an American thing to say."  Now it makes sense...instead of just saying "no," I used implications of uncertainty and contentment to decline the coffee.

Anyway, I'm going to the sold-out Clueso concert on Tuesday WEEEEEE

boring post

The cool WG called me!  The one with five Germans who can hopefully be my friends! I can move out of this insufferable dungeon!  At least at the end of November...given that my cranky flatmate finds a replacement for me.  God, it would be so dismal if she couldn't find anyone to take my room, thereby forcing me to remain.  Let's hope that does not happen or I'll set fire to this stupid place.

My trip to Bremen was pretty crazy.  We stayed out until seven or so both nights, because Dan's friends Gerrit and Mathe are mental and relatively bad influences.  Gerrit's really just a ridiculous, human social experiment.  I don't know how to describe Gerrit, really.  You just sort of know him and know that he gets these crazy ideas and drags you and your friends into them.  Before you know it, it's seven in the morning, your feet hurt massively, you had way too much beer, there are strange Finnish kids in your group, and you have learned way more obscene German slang than you thought you needed.  Note:  you can never know too much obscene German slang.  

Dan and I met up with the Dickinson kids who are currently in Bremen and I slept on Jessie's floor.  After two nights I really, really longed for my bed.  It was also really weird to be in Bremen, because we felt like we were in a time warp.  It was familiar, and to make things weirder, Rick (a Dson kid) has Jen's bed linens and Jessie has Matt's room (Matt and Jen were in my group when I studied in Bremen).  It was so odd.  I wished I could go back and do it again because being abroad was such a cool year.  I started to feel kind of sad.  I also met up with my old German flatmates and got to see their new apartment.  I was pleased to see that it still had the artsy craziness that our apartment did back when I was there.  If I had an apartment I'd want theirs- full of cool stuff and comfy and kinda messy and not pretentious.  We all sat and had tea and it was just nice.  We are hoping to set up a weekend when we could all go to a Werder Bremen game and cook and spend some more fun times.

Sorry my blog is so crappily written today-  I am sick and have been since I got back to Hamburg.  I knew that was going to happen, in my experience whenever I spend an entire weekend partying and being generally unhealthy, I immediately get sick.  And when I am sick, I can't think very well.  This is indicated by my choppy sentences mostly beginning with "I."

I found fifteen euros in my other jacket's pockets today!  That was awesome.  I went and bought desperately needed food, including an eggplant.  It looks pretty.  Almost as pretty as my roses on my windowsill.

The importance of umbrellas

Note to self:  ALWAYS prepare for rain whilst living in Hamburg.  Here's why.

Today started off fine, it was sunny when I woke up and still sunny as I prepared to meet a fellow Couchsurfer (will explain later) Julien for lunch.  I thought to myself, why not get some exercise and ride your bike to Altona?  Good idea, self!

Well, I drew myself a little map and set off on my bike towards Altona, where Julien lives.  And the minute I realized I was lost, it started to downpour. Totally downpour.  By the time I found my way to his building, I was soaked.  He answered the door and I must've looked like, well, a very not dry person.  I toweled myself off and we ate food and talked about dinosaurs and volcanoes and whether spiders have hearts and other cool stuff. 

Then, I headed to St. Pauli, which is next to Altona, to meet Lothar's friend Robert for coffee.  OF COURSE it started to rain on my way there, so by the time I got there I was totally soaked again.  Robert was nice enough to lend me a raincoat, because after coffee I had to go through Altona to Ottensen, to visit a new apartment.  And naturally it rained, and of course I got lost again, because despite my decent map-drawing and map-reading skills, Hamburg is a pain in the ass in terms of finding new places.  Some streets aren't obviously marked, and there are a lot of 5-point intersections and crazy fork-in-the-roads that trip you up, especially on a bicycle. AND to make matters worse, the silver thing on my bike that holds my bag broke midway and I had to fix it by wrapping my lock around it.  Go figure that my bike would freakin break while I'm already having a ridiculous day.  So I arrived at the apartment in Ottensen twenty minutes late, this time wearing a giant men's raincoat. 

The apartment was adorable.  The girl who is moving out is going to Alaska for seven months to see her boyfriend, so I would get her room.  And the girl I'd be living with is named Bente, and she's 19 and seems pretty quiet but still nice and relaxed.  The apartment is really cool, kind of like a farmhouse feeling...a gorgeous wooden floor and and really great location.  Anyway,  it got dark and I had to visit another apartment in Hamm-Nord, so I ended up leaving my bike in Ottensen and taking the S-Bahn to Hamm-Nord, walking in the rain to the next apartment.  

This apartment was fantastic too!  Everything was really pretty, with red and orange in the living room and blue and green in my potential room.  Steffi, the girl I'd be living with, is super nice and easy-going, and I made sure to ask her questions about her preferences because of my current asshole of a flatmate.  The apartment was super, but Hamm-Nord is pretty boring.  So who knows what's gonna happen.  I liked both apartments, but we'll see who calls back wanting me to move in.

Anyway, I really hope that I don't get sick from being cold and wet all day.  Tomorrow Dan and I are going to Bremen and it's gonna rule.  It's Freimarkt festival!  Thus, I will not post again until Monday.

ALSO:

Thanks for the suggestion, Emily!  I will try to find those magic erasers.

GO PHILLIES!  Finally...a World Series...I am beyond ecstatic.

I don't know if I said this already but I sent in my absentee ballot!  I even researched the stuff like auditor general and whatnot so I could make informed decisions about the PA candidates I didn't know.  Ya'll best be votin' too.

Me=screwed

Last night I think I lost a couple years of my life from freaking out.  As by now would seem apparent, I'm terrified of my flatmate.  Do you recall the incident regarding the paint on my walls? How it was "very expensive" despite its similarity to the color of wet concrete?

I got red wine on it.

I'm not surprised this happened.  It's only logical, given the events as of late.  She tells me I can't hang anything on my walls, yells at me for not cleaning well enough, I promptly get red wine on my walls.  

I was trying to open this wine and the cork got messed up and wine splattered onto the wall.  I frantically got a sponge and soap, and I got most of the color off, but now the wall just looks like it has some dirty patches.  Throughout my panic I was talking to Dan on Skype and he kept assuring me it would be okay.  I found out today that he thought I was talking about white wine.  Red wine in the hands of a klutzy person like me should be avoided.  I nearly always spill it on something because I get so nervous with fear of spilling that, well, it gets on stuff.  I just kept thinking to myself, "she's gonna kill me. holy shit. oh, no."  Basically...I really hope she never notices.  Or I am massively screwed.

On a side note-  I am not the cleanest person in the world, but I do think that I can be tidy when I apply myself.  But seriously, when I look at the closet full of cleaning products I am lost.  Reinigungsmilch?  What the hell do I use CLEANING MILK for??  Case in point.

GRRRR

Oh, man.  I need to get out of this apartment now.

Yesterday Dan come over to hang out and I dutifully knocked on Vicky's door and said I have a visitor, and she just grumbled "okay."  Woman, it's Saturday night!  I don't know what it's like having your dismal social life, but I personally find it perfectly acceptable to have a beer and watch The Office with my good friend.  Hmph.

Then today, she wakes me up to inform me that I have to clean the apartment and do the laundry today.  Fine.  I can clean, whatever.  So I sift through the massive assortment of cleaning products and clean the kitchen counters, the sinks, the tub, and vacuum the floor.  So I come home (after visiting another WG, ha!) and she tracks me down and chews me out for not cleaning properly.  Apparently I was supposed to WASH the bathroom floors, and the tub wasn't clean enough, and I messed up the settings when I did the wash, etc.  She was like, "did you clean today?" and I said "I thought I did..." and she glared at me like a woman with a piece of coal for a heart.  She went on to say that things have to be clean in this place, and I just said that it seems that my definition of clean is a bit different.  I mean, how the hell am I supposed to even know which products I'm supposed to use?  There's, like, six different detergents, and a giant bin of other stuff.  I can't even figure out what I'm supposed to use to clean the toilet.  So yeah.  I had no idea I was such a slob...I thought I was rather on the tidy side.

I need to get out of this OCD hellhole.  Luckily, tonight I visited another apartment and it was really  awesome.  I hope they take me...I can't stand feeling like a guest in my own place.  I am not paying all these euros a month to be controlled and bossed around like I'm five years old.

FERIEN

HAPPY BERFDAY CHRISTIAN!  I hope it's full of Gary Matthews bliss!

Tomorrow starts the fall ferien (break)!  No class for two whole weeks...what am I going to do with myself?

Well, I'm gonna sleep in and lovingly sip Flensburger and cook delicious yumyums.  I have very little cash money so I'm gonna keep it simple and spend most of the time in Hamburg with a little trip to Bremen inbetwixt various play dates and whatnot.  

Teaching the Förderkurs for the V (11th grade) class is awesome.  There is this group of four boys who, according to their teacher Sandra, "adore me and would marry me."  This is splendid because this little quartet pretty much does my bidding and when the class gets out of hand, they tell everyone to shut up the minute my eyes narrow.  I have to admit, I have a little soft spot for them because although they are jokers, they are adorable and really want to learn English because they think it's real cool.  What more could I want than my own personal minions?

My friend Chelsea, who is an assistant in Flensburg, is coming to visit Hamburg this week.  So I asked Vicky if it would be okay if Chelsea stayed for a night and Vicky was all wary and crap and like "well if it isn't continuous" and I was just thinking GOOD LORD IT IS FOR ONE NIGHT, WOMAN!.   For heaven's sake, she needs to have a beer or a Mexikaner or something and relax.  Of course, after this happened I promptly set up two appointments to visit other WGs that I could potentially move into.  No freakin way am I staying here until July...

By the way, the mushroom sauce I made for dinner tonight was also pretty scrumptious.  I had a little bit of avocado left that wasn't really soft and ripe, and little pieces of that made the sauce pretty cool.  

My mama and pop sent me a package! I got my Dson yearbook (sniffle) and some local licorice and tea and A LITTLE DACHSHUND PLUSHIE!!!  I saw a lady walking a doxie yesterday by the lake and I went up to her and the little doggie jumped on my knee and left a little snot mark on my pants.   I pretty much melted into a vaguely Cait-shaped puddle.  She was very sympathetic when I told her that my little puppies were across the ocean.  See?  She knows the vast hole that not being able to carry a little Belle around under your arm creates.  Or giving a Sadie a hug.  

I know the sentence before last was horrible for a so-called English teacher.  Obviously I have been speaking too much German...it's ruining my sentences.   I am chastened.

jog! then eat!

I just made probably my best cooking accomplishment ever, noodles with spinach sauce.  It was bangin'.  I made it to reward myself because today I jogged around the whole Alster lake! There are some ultra wealthy houses around there.  Holy crap.  I was drooling as I was running.  It was around seven kilometers, which for me is an endeavor.  But it wasn't too terribly difficult.  Although....I have a feeling I'm going to feel it tomorrow.

Today I taught the V class and they were so good!  I like them a lot...they dug my Aesop Rock song and I pounded the difference between simple past and past perfect into their German faces.  It was basically a preparation for their exam that's coming up.  I sort of have my favorites already, but I try not to show that...it's a tie between the V and the LK12 for my favorite class.  We'll see who comes out on top.

I have pretty roses in my room.  It takes away the pain of looking at my bland walls.

A sense of foreboding...

Hmm.  I think my apartment might be a brief experience.

Dan came over yesterday afternoon, because it was Tag der Deutschen Einheit (the anniversary of the reunification) and everything was closed and we were bored.  We made some noodles and watched TV before peacing out to go to Lokstedt.  I got home late, went to Ikea today, and have been chillin out since then.  So my flatmate Vicky comes home from work and is like, "Did you have a friend stay overnight?"  

I say no, a friend was over for a bit but we left and were gone for most of the evening.  And she informs me that whenever I have someone over I have to let her and Marjane (my other flatmate) know beforehand.  Uh, who does that?  Is spontaneity not allowed here? She explains that when people come over they use the toilet or whatever, and that costs money because water in Hamburg is really expensive.  Yeah, I know, but seriously?  This basically means that I can't ever have a party, and that even if a friend swings by the city and needs to stay overnight I have to clear it with my flatmates, even though it's my room and I have to pay 400 effing euros per month for it.   All because Vicky is turbo paranoid about the water bill.  She's pretty obsessed with the fact that the apartment is meant for three people, not four, and that when random people come over it raises the bills, etc.  I get that, but wow.  This is a little too intense for my taste.  This is the kind of thing you rarely discover before moving in...I told Vicky that we'd have to see if this works out, and that if our lifestyles clash too much I will look for another place.  As an adult paying rent, I would prefer some freedom.   And from what I've seen, I think she literally works all the time and has no life.  No big deal if I move out.

I can't even hang up a picture because the paint on my walls is allegedly expensive.  My walls are this kind of ugly shade that's sort of a combination between gray and sand and beige, if that's imaginable.  Who paid a lot of money to paint them that color?  My mother would have an interior decorating complex.  I probably should move out before I let her see it.

Anyway, I'm thinking that I will probably start looking for another room so that I can avoid the potential clashes that are definitely going to happen when friends come stay with me, or (god forbid) if I start dating someone here.  After the winter semester starts at the university it will be easier to find a place since there will be slightly less demand and I'll be able to take my time a little bit.  So I guess be prepared for tales of high-strung flatmates and agitated conversations in German.

On a lighter note, I found a store that sells mystic apparel and accessories, LARP stuff, and other super nerdy shit that I want to take pictures of and snicker at.  If you don't know what larping is, google it.  It's hilarious.

the usual

I'm beat.  I had to teach the ninth-graders today and since Lothar wasn't there, all hell broke loose.  Ugh.  Were we that bad when we were ninth-graders?  I kinda remember being a little afraid of most of my teachers, and if they yelled we freaking shut up immediately.  Mrs. Zehner, anyone?  She could be pretty scary sometimes.  Mrs. Rice?  Mrs. Wilkin? No one dared screw with them.  They would pretty much be in the shit house.

In other news, I used the Aesop Rock song "No Regrets" to teach a lesson on summarizing and analyzing texts yesterday.  For those of you who don't know, it's a rap/hip-hop song.  I was pretty satisfied.

I finally have my own room and today I went to the farm market and got tomatoes and a cucumber and an avocado and yummy bread.  And then I went grocery shopping for my depressingly empty cupboard and got banana juice and olives.  Mmm.

Sorry I haven't been writing as much but this week has been a bit stressful...hooray for the weekend!  PAR-TAY

Plus, going to Ikea with Sandra.  My room is sad and bare, but soon it shall be happy and colorful.  Effervescent, even?