Sundays

Despite being in Germany for a year now, I'm still not quite used to Sundays. Nearly every single shop, including grocery stores, is closed. On Saturday, you have to remember to go and buy any ingredients or food you might need on Sunday, because if you want to make pancakes and have no flour, you're out of luck. But it's also a challenge of occupying yourself, and finding ways to enjoy the day that don't involve going shopping. I'm not a big spender, but I tend to do small errands throughout the week instead of doing all my shopping on one day (which, incidentally, would be Sunday if I was still living at home). So when a small part of my day usually involves stopping at Rewe for bread or juice and Rossmann for toothpaste on the way home from the gym or work, on Sunday I have to think of something else to do. It sounds insignificant but I like habits and I've been struggling to come up with a Sunday routine. This has turned out to be kind of interesting, though, because it's clear that most Germans see Sunday as a day to enjoy life and relax with friends and family.

In my attempts to figure out what the hell to do with myself on Sundays, I've fashioned a rough sort of routine. I generally wake up early, so the day starts with dragging out my breakfast by painstakingly constructing my Brötchen (the rolls Germans like to eat anytime, but especially for breakfast) with various spreads and toppings. I usually can't decide between tea or coffee, so I make both and that takes up a good chunk of time just waiting for the boiling water to become drinkable. The only other things I always do on Sundays are my 4:00 fitness course and my weekly phone call home, and maybe some lesson planning for the week ahead. This is all well and good, but there are a solid twelve hours or so that I try to fill with reading, catching up with emails, or vacuuming. Sunday is a test of occupation, of whether I am an independent enough person to occupy my time when I'm essentially alone for a whole day. Most of my roommates are occupied too, either at work or with their boyfriends/girlfriends, so other than the occasional breakfast together, I'm stuck staring at the elephant tapestry in my room. I never used to have problems keeping myself busy, so it kind of worries me when I look around my room and just feel at a loss. What's stopping me from being like these Germans with peaceful and content looks on their faces as they eat their Sunday apple cake and drink their milk coffees? Watching them just makes my love-hate relationship with Sunday grow even more. It's like a Rubik's cube with very clear directions you can read if you want to solve it, but I'm too stubborn to read the directions and out of frustration fling the cube at the wall instead.

blog resurrection!

Have been back in HH for a few weeks now and I guess it's time to resurrect this thing. But first, off to Köln!

update part 1

Man.  I'm sorry I've been such a slacker about updating.  It's just that lately I've been finding it difficult to find the the motivation to sit myself down and type anything.  Even e-mails.  Maybe I'm slowly entering the process of becoming a hermit?

I guess I will just make a list, since the caffeine hasn't kicked in yet and my brain is still tottering around like a two-year-old who occasionally bangs into the coffee table.

1.  The arm is almost healed.  It looks suspiciously different from my other one, though.  The doctor said that if we hadn't put a cast on it right away, it would have had to be operated on.  This is my last week of Krankengymnastik (physical therapy), so amen to that.  

2.  The weather has gotten to be very pleasant, so whenever possible, my WG piles into Ricky's cabrio and we depart Hamburg in search of a quiet meadow.  Last weekend we found one with a creek nearby and laid out blankets and basked in the sun and ran around full of glee.  It was awesome.

3.  The big thought that has been occupying my brain lately (I know, sometimes it's only capable of one task at a time) is what my relationship to my WG would be like if I understood every single thing that is said.  My fluency is decent, but I still miss stuff when something is said too fast or too unclear, or when there's a pesky verb in there that I don't know.  This is partly a good thing, because it forces me to be very neutral when judging my housemates.  I am pretty certain that if I had the fluency of a native speaker, my opinions about my flatmates would be very different.  More background information, stuff like that.  This also means that every day is incredibly interesting for me, because the process of getting to know my WG is never dull and constantly changing.  I've noticed, for example, that Anne is slightly OCD and very easily annoyed by lack of orderliness.  So when she's mad, she cleans feverishly.  Timo will go to great lengths to avoid conflict.  Lydi is almost never in a bad mood, but always talks to someone when she's angry and afterwards is cheerful again.  Ricky, on the other hand, always peaces out when he's angry and takes a drive or a walk.  And since he has a new job (his old job at Cafe Gnosa left him constantly pissed)  he is much happier and more relaxed.  Also, he recently cut all his beautiful curls off and looks very, very different.  For the better, I think.

To be continued, because it's time to go earn my meager living!

sleepy

I am sleepy.

That is all.

Also, Lydia broke her foot.

Will update later, calm down.  Jeez.

quick explanation

Ricardo and Lydia had to do this thing for university where they study communications design where they had to conceptualize and design a playground.  Then, one day in the kitchen, Lydia was lazily playing on the internet and realized that there are indoor playgrounds in Hamburg that might actually let adults play too.  Thus, my WG decided to go to Rabaatz in Hamburg-Stellingen, where they have an over-18 night once a month.  The word they chose to describe our planned mischief-making?  "Austoben,"  which roughly translates to rioting, scampering around in a wild manner, or "to rage oneself out."  

It was pretty awesome and we were jumping on trampolines and having good wholesome fun when I decided to try out this weird little thingy.  It was made out of wood with two small planks and four wheels, and it was something of a cross between a skateboard and a unicycle.  You stood on it and made cycling motions with your legs and apparently, if you have inhuman balance capabilities, you can move yourself along at a surprisingly snappy pace.  Unfortunately, I do not have such abilities, so what I did was fall, with lots of momentum, and land mostly on my left elbow.  Ow.

I didn't want to go to the doctor, even though I couldn't tie my shoes or straighten out my arm from the pain.  I figured it was just a bruise.  But I could barely sleep the entire night from the throbbing and in the morning I couldn't move my arm at all, so Anne called up this doctor in Wandsbek (one subway stop away) and Timo took me there.  After getting a sufficiently annoying cast and an MRI, it turns out that the one bone in the elbow joint smashed against the other one and made lots of hairline cracks in it, which is why it hurt so much to straighten the arm.  Anyway, I got a week off from work (apparently if the rowdy kids knocked into me it would not be good) and Lydia and Anne washed my hair for me after Ricky made fun of me because my head looked disgusting (I couldn't wash my hair very well with a cast on).  Luckily since then I've graduated to an ace bandage, but I still have to go to physical therapy so that I can eventually straighten the arm again.  Really, really annoying.

Yesterday I went with Ricky and Philipp to meet some other friends of theirs and grill outside in the fields of Meck-Pomm (Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the state to the east of Hamburg).  The weather has been encouragingly warm recently and it was nice to get out of the city.  My goal this week:  learn how to make stuffed grape leaves!

at last

I'm back, man.  I didn't update for two reasons:  1) I was in Berlin for a week and 2) immediately upon my return I effed up my elbow, rendering typing painful and frustrating.  But now I get to ramble again and people can stop asking me if I gave up writing in this thing.

Berlin was a good time.  All the Fulbrighters in Germany and some from other countries (around 500 people total!) converged in one of the sweetest cities ever for a romp through wholesome lectures and panels interspersed with plenty of Berliner Weisse and general depravity.  And it was mostly free!

We were all housed in this ridiculously massive hotel on Alexanderplatz.  This hotel was monstrous.  Amy put it best when she said that it was like the Star of David for drunk people, because no matter where we were, we eventually saw the hotel shining like a beacon in the distance and hazily trudged toward it, being too cheap to bother with the friendly Berlin public transportation.  I accidentally got Dan's and my train ticket for a day too early, and since Dan got back from visiting his woman in Australia the day we were supposed to leave, I nearly had a very inconvenient crisis at hand.  Luckily, his plane got in early enough for him to make our train.  And our other Dickinsonian in Germany, Annie, just so happens to be stationed in Berlin and was awesome enough to let us bum on her huge couch overnight until we could check in at the hotel.  It was nice to see her again and she showed us around Friedrichshain and we met her hilarious British roommate.  

Most of the trip was filled with panels about political issues I don't really care about and lots of speeches by important Germans, including the former mayor of Hamburg (HH represent!) and the editor of the newspaper Die Welt.  It was pretty cool that important people cared about us.  Most of my time was spent with Dan and our friends based in other parts of Germany.  Eventually our little group solidified into a quintet of Dan, me, Jonathan, Zach, and Chelsea.  We accomplished important missions like visiting a bar called Klo (toilet), where we were greeted by a waitress handing out pieces of toilet paper.  Complete with an announcer whose job seemed to be to belittle everyone and seats made out of toilets, this bar was hilarious.  There were TV screens that showed absolutely ridiculous videos of people doing stupid stuff, and we snickered and giggled the whole time.  It was awesomely bad and the night was capped when we were waiting for the S-Bahn.  Dan guessed that the train would come in five minutes when in reality it was coming in seven, and Amy, who had been rather sauced since dinner (free wine got the better of her), declared, as if she had solved some kind of impossibly difficult math calculus problem, "Seven minutes... is more than five."  

I guess you had to be there.

Anyway, I have a bunch of stuff to do yet tonight, so I will continue with describing our epic journey tomorrow.  And how my elbow came to be, according to a very nice German doctor, "microscopically shattered."

will update soon

i promise i will update soon, once this stupid splint is off my arm.  until then it's just too frustrating to type with one hand.  i will have lots to write too!  berlin and injury and future plans and stuff!

much-needed update

I am posting!  So that my dad doesn't have to keep reminding me...

Currently have spring vacation, so today has been relaxing, I did much-needed food shopping and am watching my bread bake in the oven.  On Friday I visited Sean and Karen in Göttingen and we ate yummy food and watched Vicky Cristina Barcelona, and then on Saturday we walked around the old part of town which was very picturesque-ly German.  We ate delicious cake at a Konditorei that reminded me of the coffee-cake places in Vienna.  It was lots of fun to get out of Hamburg and go somewhere new and have fun with friends.  Then I hopped up back to Hamburg and me and my flatmates went out Saturday night.  It was the first time we've all gone out partying together, which was tons of fun.  We went to Thomas Reade, this place that from the outside looks like a typical Irish bar but on the inside is insane, with all these different rooms and dance floors and different stairs.  To my hazy vision it was practically impossible to figure out where in the building I was, so I kept making sure I was with my roomies so I wouldn't get lost.  We ended up getting back at 6 am and I proceeded to sleep most of Sunday away.  Then our new flatmate Thomas arrived and moved in.  And here we are on Monday afternoon and I'm drinking coffee and watching my bread bake.

More interesting stuff later.

hatin' on stuff

So today I was talking with my colleague, Conny, about our beloved eighth graders from the bowels of hell.  And she mentioned this book called "Generation Doof"  (laugh if you must, but the title of the book appropriately translates into "Generation Stupid") and how it has helped her comprehend the reasons for the twisted psychology behind these fourteen-year-old freaks.  Generation Stupid seems to revolve around the why kids generally seem to be getting dumber.  I explained that I was convinced that I had just missed being part of Generation Stupid.  Yeah, it might be a biased thing to say, since I would hate to admit that I was like these kids when I was in eighth grade, but I thought of some relevant points that indicate to me that I was indeed lucky enough to miss out on this blessed generation:

I didn't have a computer until I was almost 12, and didn't have the Internet until just before I turned 15.    This was pretty normal amongst my friends, too.  And I am convinced that it had huge consequences on how we grew up.  I was absolutely obsessed with reading for a solid 90 percent of my pre-adult life.  We were forced to use our imaginations for entertainment, forced to use phones to call each other and have conversations, forced to rely on primarily expressing ourselves in person instead of through a Myspace or Facebook page (AIM profiles eventually became our first mode of virtually representing ourselves, but again, that wasn't until junior high school at the earliest).  When computers did become more common in the household, they weren't like the archaic Apples from the elementary school computer lab (NUMBER MUNCHERS!), but they definitely weren't as pimped out as computers today.  We had some shitty games that were essentially computerized arcade games like Centipede and Asteroids (with the non-shitty exceptions of Oregon Trail and Dr. Brain) and when my parents finally caved in and got us the internet, social networking websites had barely emerged and most people had crappy little tripod sites and didn't tend to do as much, say, shopping online as today.  It was fascinating and yet strangely boring at the same time.  Fascinating that such a thing existed, boring because it still kind of sucked.

In any case, we still tended to be a little creative when it came to hanging out.  You could put little quotes and stuff in your AIM profile and hope that people you wanted to think you were cool would read it and confirm that they did indeed think you were cool.  I mean, most of my friends and I didn't even have cell phones until well into high school.  So no texting, no sir, actual verbal conversation was required.  What I'm trying to say is that I think that I missed being part of Generation Stupid by only a few crucial years.  These kids have had stuff like the Internet crammed down their throats since they were drinking from sippy cups and have had cell phones since they were, like, eight.  That's a lot of media exposure.  And when you think about the media currently and how it is painfully obvious that one can become famous and wealthy either by physically doing stupid things, actually being a complete idiot (reality TV, anyone?), or just being deemed spectacularly good-looking, it's no wonder that these kids are not in any way inclined to think deep thoughts.  They also seem to have crippling self-confidence issues, beyond those I've ever seen in younger people before.  I think it has something to do with the fact that they put so much effort into expressing themselves two ways:  the first, through crap like fashion and makeup and sneakers and the like, and the second, through stuff like Myspace and the German version of Facebook for high school kids.  They spend so much time constructing their virtual personalities that they completely forget to develop their actual personalities.  It's been months and I still feel like the eight grade are basically shells of people.  They are literally all monumentally mind-numbing.

Maybe I'm wrong.  Maybe I am incredibly biased and, with my friends, just barely managed to escape from the insipid onslaught of Generation Stupid.  But I am not convinced that being so thoroughly dependent on technology from birth is at all a good thing.  

More on this later, I need to mull it over some more and write some sentences that are slightly more coherent.  I'm cracked out from lack of sleep, so sue me if I barely represent the degree in English that hangs askew in my parents' basement.

Fasching

On Friday we had a party for Fasching (aka Karneval/Carnival)!!  Here are some particularly fun pictures of the craziness (the police only had to come once):

Marcel and Lydia, the king and queen of chess

Anne and Timo

Me (genie) and Rix (tranny pirate)

The finest WG in Hamburg

3 things (well actually just two)

Today's agenda:

I.  How to speak

II. Movement

III. The powers of bigass headphones

I.  I've noticed something weird.  There are some students at school who quite literally have no language.  The situation is this:  they come from immigrant families and speak, for example, Russian at home.  But the rest of the time they speak German with their friends and in school.  The weird part?  They start forgetting Russian, because as teenagers they barely talk to their parents, and at the dinner table or in the house they don't tend to have lengthy discussions.  How was your day, when are you babysitting your sister, all topics that more or less get repeated rather often.  Then, they only know German through speaking it with friends and just through living in Germany, so often their German grammar is terrible and they don't know how to write, say, a formal academic essay about a book (and a lot of them don't have many books at home, either).  Needless to say, some of these kids have horrible, horrible English skills, because they can barely handle school in German as it is.  One girl barely speaks at all.  This concept blows my mind: literally having no language.  How do you express yourself at all?  How do you even form a complete identity?  What is happening inside the heads of these kids?  I'm dying to know.  Like I said, this completely throws my brain for a loop.

II.  I was talking to Beate and Sandra, two of my colleagues.  Beate asked me what I planned to do after I finish my work at the school and asked if I would go back to America.  I replied that I don't really want to go back just yet, that I have so much I want to see and do while I'm young and mobile and unsettled.  We started talking about why many Americans don't do that, why Americans seem to prefer not to travel extensively and often would rather stay put in one place, unlike Europeans, who seem to move around constantly (or at least travel regularly).  I started thinking and came up with these reasons:

1.  The US is massive and takes up half a continent, unlike Europe (imagine if every US state was an independent country?  How weird would that be?).  We've got Canada above us, where most of the people speak English, so if we need to move for a job within North America, we don't necessarily need any language other than English.  And since people don't usually go or move to Mexico for work reasons, we're essentially pretty isolated in Anglophone-land.  So the logic of many Americans is thus:  Why learn French when I live in the middle of Nebraska?  Europeans, on the other hand, often move to other countries for various periods of time, which makes being multi-lingual much more useful.

2.  This is my homestead theory.  I explained that, in the case of my family, nearly everyone lives in a thirty mile radius.  My mom lived down the street as a kid, and the land around her parents' house is essentially divided amongst her and her siblings.  So my parents built our house on a piece of land with a lot of family history attached to it.  Over the years, my parents have invested money and energy into our home, gradually adding things like gardens, a porch, shed, greenhouse, patio, et cetera.  When you've put so much into your home, you would, understandably, be less inclined to leave it.  In contrast, many Europeans live in urban areas with apartments and seem to be generally more mobile, since space and costs don't usually allow for big homes you envision yourself.  

So here's the homestead part:  I think part of the whole existence of America depended on this vision that your family settles a piece of land and that becomes yours.  You build your house and create your life there, and then your children inherit the land, and their children, and so on.  Your whole family's identity rests on this piece of land that you've cultivated, and you're essentially rooted there.  And so, in the history of America that's how our country grew, through people moving west and settling their little pie pieces and building their lives on that.  And I think that became part of the American psyche, the desire for rootedness and the way your identity becomes tied to your homestead.  Thus, less impulse to uproot and move and leave behind everything your family has created.  Yes, there might be whole other worlds out there, but when you live in the proverbial land of milk and honey, you could very likely think:  where could possibly have more to offer?

And of course you answer yourself with "nothing."  At least that's the thought process I imagine has shaped the general reluctance of many Americans to move to places far from home.  And if you can't bring yourself to move from Pennsylvania to, say, California, how would you ever handle moving to somewhere like Austria?

3.  The obvious emotions of fear and anxiety.  Throwing yourself into a foreign country when all you've ever known is rural America is perceived as not for the faint of heart.  In reality, it's easier than that, but many people seem to have a real fear of leaving behind everything they know for an unknown world.  But that's exactly why people need to travel:  you go to said unknown world and you realize that it isn't so different.  Different languages and cultures, yeah, but you gain a distinctly new understanding of humanity.  And the result is that you appreciate it more.  I would like to believe that this appreciation could help people learn how to do one apparently not-so-simple thing:  chill the hell out, man.

4.  Another smallish but obvious reason:  lack of opportunity (travel=money).  

All that said, I think I'm going to ponder this subject in more detail and maybe write a more coherent explanation.  But I wanted to get this down so I can at least have a reference point.

Anyway, Beate bets that I'll travel for six years or so and then go back to America for good.  We'll see if she's right.  I had to explain that the neatest thing about being in Hamburg is that every single day I learn something new or see something I haven't seen before.  It makes me thirsty to know what else I can stuff into my head.  And I think that means that I won't be satisfied being in tiny little Bath, PA forever.  Sorry, family.

Beate looked at me curiously when I said that I don't think of Hamburg as home.  No matter how much I travel, I still need a reference point that I can always go back to.  And, despite its sooty houses and gas stations and lack of public transportation, I'm gonna have to vote for Bath on that one.

Well, that was quite a load, so I'll save my music part for another day :)

Person B "enjoys" Person A

The funniest part of my otherwise long day:

The scene:  GK12, 6th lesson.  The kids are supposed have partners and write and perform dialogues.  The instructions:  Person A and Person B are two people who once went to language school together and are meeting each other again for the first time in ten years.  Write a dialogue for their encounter.

The students:  Dominic and Viktor

Their dialogue (performed enthusiastically):

Viktor: DAY-AMM, is that you, Person B?

Dominic:  Oh.  Hello, Person A.  It has been a long time since we enjoyed each other.

Viktor:  Wow, Person B, you look like the President!

Dominic:  Yes, I am quite well-dressed. 

Viktor:  You must make one thousand million dollars!

Dominic:  Not exactly... I am a lawyer.  What do you do?

Viktor:  I'm a professional PC gamer.

Dominic:  That's... nice.

Viktor:  Your wife must look like a PORN STAR!

Dominic:  No, she is intelligent and well-behaved.

Viktor:  Oh.

the philosophies of small children

Setting:  Hamburg-Othmarschen, tutoring Paul the Korean kid, age 9

Paul (looking up from his math problem):  What do you want to be?

Me:  You mean when I grow up?

Paul: Yeah.

Me (thinking):  I don't know.  I mean, I still don't know.

Paul:  You still don't know?

Me:  I want to be everything.

Paul:  You have to choose!

Me:  I don't want to...I want to be happy.

Paul:  Then you will be an artist?

Me:  Are artists happy?

Paul (pausing):  No.  They are unhappy.

Me:  Maybe I won't be one, then.  An artist.

Paul:  All people are unhappy.  I think.

Me:  Hm.  You might be right.

He reminds me of a postmodern Thomas Hobbes.

Familieneck Discussion

Time: Sunday, 25. February, about 10 pm

Place:  Familieneck, Hamburg-Ottensen

Julien:  I mean, skirts are incredibly impractical.  If all women would wear practical clothing, then they would stop worrying so much about being physically attractive and men would be forced to take their intelligence and personalities into consideration.

Thorsten:  But, didn't you just say that it's through choosing to be with women of one particular look that you yourself have gotten to know many different personalities?  You hit on these women...it doesn't usually work, but you consciously try...

Julien (pondering briefly):  Yes, but that doesn't mean I think skirts are practical.  For example, pants are much more logical to wear when climbing trees.

Me:  Yes, because I climb at least one tree every day in Hamburg.

(Thorsten bursts into snickers.  Julien, being French, completely misses the deadpan sarcasm)

Julien (completely serious):  Yes, so even though you argue that you like skirts and they provide pleasant air flow, you admit that you can't climb trees in them.  Thus impractical.

Me:  So Julien, what if you're walking down a nice little road and you see a cute girl in a poofy skirt crying because her kitten is stuck in a tree, like in those old cartoons.  What would you do, refuse to help her (which would afterwards make you her love you) because her choice of clothes isn't practical for climbing trees?

Julien (resolutely):  I might.

Me:  That's dumb!  What would you really do, say "NO, you moron, stop wearing these stupid skirts and DO IT YOURSELF," and then throw a stone or something at the kitten to knock it out of the tree and emphasize your point?

(Julien snickers)

Thorsten:  Or, he would say "Of course, you idiot girl," and plant a tree next to the kitten-tree and then they'd have to wait for it to grow so he could then rescue the kitten and show the girl the error of her ways.

Julien:  You people are sick.  Of course I would save the kitten.  And then get the girl.  The girl is still a priority, especially if she is hot.  Even if she's wearing the skirt.

Me:  So you see?  Skirts are pretty.

(Thorsten nods emphatically.  Julien grumbles and eats some peanuts from the little bowl at the table)

(fifteen minutes later, as we're leaving the pub)

Julien:  You're kind of smart for a girl.

(I pause, grin, and simulate a punch to his face)

Me: UPPERCUT TO THE CHIN!

Julien:  You know, you also have a pretty good sense of humor.  For a girl.

Me:  ...Yeah.  (pause) When I'm not stoning kittens.

(Julien bursts into laughter)

Julien:  That was beautiful.  Well done.

(gives me a hug)

Quick elaboration:

Julien=  Friend from Reunion Island, strong French accent, shock of curly hair poofing out, psychotic,  always has theories on everything that are simultaneously brilliant and preposterous

Thorsten= German friend who looks like Weird Al, guitar instructor, loves the English term "OCD", only drinks red wine and never drinks beer

There was also Thomas, but he generally sits and listens and giggles quietly, so he didn't really say much.

I dunno if this is humorous at all to you (it's probably not at all), but it was pretty great for an otherwise boring Sunday, so I wanted to write it down.  Becoming friends with Julien was actually a pretty big accomplishment, because when I first met him I thought he was out of his mind and he thought I was boring and probably stupid.  But now we're all friends and I get lots of satisfaction from making Thorsten laugh hysterically, because it's a big, booming laugh and anyone would feel glad to be the cause of it.  I like hanging out with them because I always need to use my brain a little in our conversations, something which I unfortunately feel I haven't been using to its capacity lately.  More and more often, I miss having to think.

continued!

Back to the mystery!

Before I moved into our little slice of heaven at the end of November, my flatmates had a birthday party for Ricky.  Attempting to be good neighbors, Anna and Ricky went up to one of our neighbors who live above us to let them know that because of the birthday party, things might get louder than usual.  Our lovely neighbors responded by yelling at them to get out and that if they ever came up to their apartment again they would get punched in the face or something stupid like that.  Then, during the party, the police came and gave the WG an "Anzeige," which is sort of like a police notice that might result in a fine or just being put on some records or something.  They didn't even give us a warning first, which is the usual protocol for loud parties.  

So, we've been having problems with our mail- namely, someone has been stealing it.  Ricky's cell phone bills were stolen, which resulted in late fees he had to pay, some of Lydi's and Anna's mail was missing, and when we were supposed to get our Anzeige so we could speak with the police and hopefully not get fined, the Anzeige suddenly appeared in our mailbox the morning after the deadline for us to call the authorities, and Lydia had to call the police and explain that we got the letter too late and therefore couldn't meet the deadline.

Since all this has been explained to me in German I might not have caught every last detail, but the general suspicion is that our jerky neighbors are doing it.  The motive is that on the other side of us is more of their extended family or something, and they want us to move out so more of their family can move in and essentially commandeer a huge chunk of our building.  These people are pretty foul.  They're essentially the ghetto immigrant stereotype personified:  there's way too many kids, the men are gross and beat up their wives, and they presumably hate Germans even though they could've picked somewhere else to migrate to (Europe doesn't exactly have a shortage of available countries).  So--we suspect--they have been stealing our mail in efforts to make us so exasperated that we move out.

Not happening.  Of course, our hypothesis might be wrong and it could be just some loser who has nothing better to do, but we don't feel like moving out and we would really prefer to receive all of our mail.  So we contacted the management of our apartment complex and they installed a wonderful little device in our mailbox.  When you put your hand in to try to take the mail out without unlocking the box, a very sharp piece of metal cuts up your hand and makes it difficult to remove.

Pretty cool.

quickie

YOOOOOO

Currently sitting in the kitchen with Rix and Lydi on this nice, slow-paced Friday.  I've got an hour of tutoring ahead of me and other than that, GAR NICHTS.  Yesterday was a doozy, I got up at 6:30 and got home at 7:30 in the evening.  Lame.  Although I'm excited because Lis sent me Newman-O's and I got applesauce and olives at the grocery store, so my fridge shelf is complete.  I also think I've successfully combated the lurking cold that was invading my throat and chest, mostly through ungodly amounts of licorice tea and orange juice.  Ummm, oh there is also drama afoot!  A mystery, nonetheless!  But I have to go in a few minutes so I'll continue later.  Try to handle the suspense.

ping ping! mindless crap

Howdy-do!

I just made onion soup!  'Cept I didn't really know how, so I just sort of chopped up two huge onions and put them in broth...it tastes okay though.  Today was a lot better than anticipated, because usually on Thursdays I have to stay at school from 8 till 4 and then do two hours of tutoring.  But I didn't have to go to class for periods

 3-5 and had free time till period 8, so I basically went home at 9:20 and took a nap until I had to go back to school at 2:00.  THEN I only had to do the 8th lesson and the 9th got cancelled!  YAY!  And THEN I only had 1.5 hours of tutoring!  SUPER YAY!

I am so glad it's the weekend.  Maybe I'll have the honor of losing at Risk again?

Pictures!

Me with a crazy unidentifiable dumpling with cherries!  I was so excited because it was SO YUMMY

Rix, Lydi, me, Anne, Timo!  Best WG in the world!  (Tini would've been in it too but she was in Stockholm  *jealousy*)

Plans for tonight:  Eat soup, watch the Big Bang Theory, try to think of a better blog entry.  In terms of profundity, this thing is definitely not a medal-winner.

julklapp and asshole kids

Here's a quote I probably would never hear in Germany:

"Yo, can you scooch the gun over so no one runs into it"

-my brother Cain, referring to his hunting gear laying on the dining room table

Last night I watched Pineapple Express in German with Rix and Timo.  I was pretty disappointed, because it's so much funnier in English.  I don't get what is with these people who translate movies.  Like, the German voices do a good job of syncing up with the movement of the mouths, but I think they purposely leave out some of the funniest comments.  Also, I think swearing isn't really as colorful in German as it is in English.  I have a hard time being creative with German swearing and still making sense. 

Today started off good because I didn't have to trudge to school until the 5th lesson, which allowed me to finally catch up on sleep.  7 hours of sleep in 72 hours was not fun, and I'm not even a student slaving away at college anymore.  So waking up without feeling like death was promising.  School went okay, nothing special other than stupid eighth-graders making me want to punch fist-shaped holes in their insolent little heads.  I don't understand how they can be so rude.  Almost all the other kids I teach at the school are generally pleasant, maybe a little wary but not usually rude.  This class, though, is the worst.  All the teachers hate them.  And I hate them too.  They take whining to a whole new level.  Example:  "Mrs. HAHHHHHHNNNN, I have a headachhhheeee, I can't write this test todayyyyyyyyy."  Did I mention that being referred to as "Mrs." really creeps me out?

I'd like to write more examples of these little jerkfaces and their annoying ways, but since I'm relaxing so nicely in my room I choose to block it out from my mind.  I'm happy because I went to my favorite Turkish stand and got a huge amount of veggies and fruit for around 7 euros, including my favorite PERSIMMONS!  Weeeeeee.  Now my planty-food arsenal contains, but is not limited to:  lychees, mango, kiwi, persimmon, potatoes, onions, spinach, lettuce, carrots, cucumber, chili pepper, avocado, and olives.    That's more than I had in the whole of December, I think...

Oh, and my flatmates and I finally did our Secret Santa (Julklapp)!  Since we were all at home last night for the first time in a while, we did our little gift-switching.  Lydia was very impressed by my gift of "American Party Cheese" in a can, Gobstoppers, Symphony Bar, and Combos Pizzeria Supreme.  My gift was from Rix, who gave me a cute little coconut shell with dried oranges and stuff on it and a little votive candle inside.  It's very winter-y.  It was also funny because the coconut shell came from a coconut Ricky bought like a year ago, and the coconut had been in the kitchen ever since.  He finally broke the coconut!  It was practically another member of the apartment!  I feel honored.

I'm brain-dead tonight.

GRR INSOMNIA

I hate not being able to sleep, and now it's getting ridiculous because jet lag usually never affects me this long.  I got three hours last night before getting up at 6:30.  Boo.

The weekend was pretty relaxing, spent the majority of it playing yahtzee, backgammon, and Risk with my flatmates.  I lost every single game I played, but that's okay.  I need to practice my strategy real fast.  Especially Risk.  I always get a stupid mission, like "free Asia and South America" or "Free the blue countries!  But if you're the blue army, capture 24 countries!" And of course I'm the blue army, go figure.  And how the crap do you free Asia?  It's huge and gets attacked from everywhere and is a pain in the ass to deal with.  Unless you have Australia, which is easy as hell to defend.  Gah.  One day I'll win a game of Risk.  One day.

That's about it, just wanted to check in.  I'm currently sitting with my flatmate Ricky in the kitchen, having my afternoon coffee and listening to goofy music.  I have nothing else important or interesting to say.

post-sylvester

Right. We had a New Year's Party, and I had a pretty malevolent headache pretty much all day yesterday. But now I'm all better. Some things Germans like to do on Sylvester (what they call it):

-blow up fireworks for a full 48 hours. This is fun for about half an hour. After that, I have a feeling they contributed to the headache.
-melt lead figurines on spoons, throwing the lead into water and seeing what shape you get. There's a list of shapes and what they mean. I thought I had a strawberry, but it wasn't on the list, so I flipped my piece of lead over and it looked like an Islamic lady wearing a burqa. The fortune for "woman" is that someone loves me! Unfortunately, I have a feeling that this somebody is Charlie, our cat, who likes my hair a lot and likes to take naps with me.
-eat doughnuts and soft pretzels

...etc. I don't really know if I made any resolutions. I don't usually make them. I want to make more paintings and play more backgammon and work on fluency in German and just do more stuff in general. I want to learn a third language and go to Scandinavia and Spain and grow my hair and take more pictures and write more creative stuff. I had an idea for a movie script the other night and I might take a crack at expanding it and doing a little project. And I want to read more books and ride my bike to cool places and be outside. Those are not really resolutions, though. Just some lofty goals?

And here are some pictures, since I don't usually post any and I should do more of that too.


Anne, me, Rix, and a guest at our party

Melting the lead


A picture I took in September when it was warm and sunny...the complete opposite of winter in Hamburg. Le sigh.

back to regularly scheduled programming

I know I haven't posted in a long time...but December was really, really busy.  I did a lot of tutoring which didn't leave much time for doing awesome stuff and writing about said stuff in blog.  I also experienced a bit of stress in the romance department and in the what-is-my-future-department which made me pretty reluctant to write new entries.  BUT, I went home for ten days and it was just what I needed.  Going home always helps me reposition myself.  Being so far away tends to make me feel unsettled a lot, and I worry sometimes that I don't really know who I am because I'm away from everything I used to define myself.  So I guess spending some time back in PA was sort of like, "Oh, that's who I'm supposed to be!"  It's like when you can't remember someone's name, so you look in your old yearbooks and find their picture and then you can't believe you forgot it in the first place.  Some people think that traveling helps you remember who you forgot to be, but for me it's the opposite.   

I'll write more later, but for now I have to recover from yesterday's epic New Year's Party 2008.