terrible modern

Moving

2010-07-27T16:14:00.002+02:00

Terrible Modern is now moving. Because I no longer use my Milo in Maine e-mail address, which is what I write my blog under, it just makes sense to move my blog to my Gmail.

Unfortunately, Blogger will not let me do this unless I make a new blog at a different location. But don't worry, all of the posts I've written will move with me!

My new blog address is: www.terriblemodern.blogspot.com.

Kansas

2010-07-26T21:17:00.008+02:00

Our trip to Kansas was certainly sad, but it also included a lot of fun moments and all four of us were so glad we could go. It was the first time my mom had been back in about 10 years, which I'm sure was very interesting for her. We started off the trip by arriving at the Kansas City airport and stopping in Lawrence on our way to Topeka to visit some historic houses:

My mom and dad's first apartment.

My mom's first apartment.

The house where my mom was born was in between these two houses.

Mom, Dad, and Isaac examine the GPS in the rental car.

The house where my dad was born.

In Topeka, we spent a lot of time with my grandmother, Tracy, Bill, and Jena (and of course Grandma's dog Sammy.) We attended the (very nice) service for my grandfather. We also looked through many, many wonderful old photos:

My grandmother as a girl:

Her mom and some aunts (check out their outfits!):

I stayed in this room:

My dad and Tracy:

Jena and me:

And... on the very last night... a double rainbow ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE SKY!

A little update on the next few days

2010-07-16T16:26:00.002+02:00

Max left yesterday, and many tears were shed. He will come back in early December after WWOOFing in Spain on a Buddhist retreat center and then possibly in Patagonia. Now I'm waiting to hear from him and hoping that he has not gotten permanently lost on the Spanish bus system...

Other than that: I was hired yesterday at a fast food chain. I will be working 37 hours a week, which is obviously great, but the idea of having a job that I know I will learn nothing from is really scary. I really don't want to go back today to fill out paperwork, even. I am trying to think of ways to bring academia into my life.

My grandfather (my dad's dad) died yesterday. It was expected, but still really, really sad. My parents, Isaac and I are going to Kansas tomorrow for the funeral, coming back Tuesday or so.

All in all, it's been a rough couple of days and I am comforting myself with things like Mad Men, a DQ blizzard and the movie of A Streetcar Named Desire. I know I have a lot I want to accomplish before December, but first I think I just need distractions.

Independence Day

2010-07-04T22:17:00.003+02:00

"History is a protective armor against being misled." -- Howard Zinn

I will spend this Fourth of July feeling disappointed in myself for letting another year go by without finishing this book.

Working

2010-07-04T22:07:00.003+02:00

WWOOF Germany just re-did their website and it looks great. I am tempted to buy a one-way ticket there (which would pretty much completely deplete my bank account) and stay until they kick me out of the country. That was my plan this morning, until I remembered that I probably will find a job eventually, and until then I can babysit, and probably India will end up working out. The job search is just frustrating me at this point. I really hate applying at a bunch of crappy places and then having them not hire me.

Maybe eventually a place that's not crappy will hire me, though, after the college kids leave. I asked the nice guy at Arabica about employment and his advice was, "Just keeping hanging around! That's what I did -- and then eventually, I ended up behind the counter!"

In the meantime, I am enjoying Scrabble Sundays with David M. and my mom. We had a nice afternoon downtown at Bard, including some free scones from Standard Baking and MY VICTORY. (Maybe my first win against David M., an expert Scrabble player, EVER!!) I spelled "vibrate" for 80-something points. Too bad I didn't get a picture of that special moment. I think that means I have regained fluency in English. Then we visited the travel store down on Commercial Street, where I realized that they make quick-dry bras and water bottles with filters in them.

I am going to hold out for India.

Climbing

2010-07-04T21:58:00.005+02:00

In preparation from my upcoming Katahdin trip (about which I'm getting increasingly nervous,) Max, my dad and I climbed Pleasant Mountain yesterday morning.

It was, well, pleasant -- not an extremely strenuous hike, but challenging (for me) towards the end. I am trying to build my endurance as a relatively out of shape city girl. I know I should just go for it, but Katahdin feels very intimidating.

The prom

2010-05-23T18:52:00.016+02:00

The prom was awesome. I really didn't want to go at first. I resisted for a long time, and then just a few days before, Max and I decided we might as well just go.

I made Max an edible boutonnière out of lemon thyme and mint.

He actually did finish eating it entirely by the end of the night.

Our parents took tons of pictures of us. I wore a dress that I bought in 9th grade, a Gunne Sax from the 70s, which I thought didn't fit anymore but magically did.

We both wore flip-flops.

Us looking prom-y.

Some of my class.

We took some great pictures of Max, his brother Oliver and me, with us posing as the charming prom couple and him as the suspicious stranger in the background:

The prom was on a boat, which to me sounded like it could either be really nice or really claustrophobic. It was, in fact, quite pleasant, and I'm truly glad I ended up going despite the banality of prom.

Model UN

2010-05-23T16:54:00.008+02:00

For some reason, I was convinced I wouldn't have fun at Model UN. Social situations scare me. I worried I wouldn't do well. It turns out that not doing well is pretty difficult to do as long as you talk. I didn't say anything profound throughout the entire conference, but I talked a lot and as a result I felt really good about myself. I was a good Afghanistan, I think.

My friends laughed at me when I told them I had fun after all. They have a running joke about how I hate fun. Maggie said, "I TOLD you you would! This is exactly your idea of fun, because you hate fun!!" It's true that pretending to be the UN for five 3-4 hour sessions is pretty awesome. You get to sit in a room with a white tablecloth and a white placard in front of you and be talked to very seriously.

Yogurt

2010-05-07T23:01:00.002+02:00

Since I've come back from Germany and been quite un-vegan, I've been enjoying yogurt. My favorite breakfast is Greek yogurt with walnuts, oats, and maybe some dried cranberries in it. Today I started thinking about this yogurt, which I used to eat in Germany sometimes:

It's yogurt that comes in big glass jars and all kinds of obscure flavors, like mango and cookies and cream. When I live in Germany, I will buy it a lot.

That's all. Three AP exams down, one to go!!

WWOOF

2010-05-03T00:30:00.003+02:00

Something crazy happened to me this week: I got the NSLI. This is a full scholarship to study Hindi in India for a year. Last year only six people in America received it; I'm not sure what the numbers are this year, but in any case, it's pretty competitive. Here's the thing: I'm about to turn it down.

When I first got the letter, the thought that ran through my head was: How can I turn an opportunity like this down? This is amazing, learning a language like Hindi is perfect for me, and it's an award, affiliated with the State Department, where I (forgive me, I guess I'm "the man") may want to work someday. But I have thought about it a lot, and I think that working for a few months and WWOOFing in India from January to June is going to work better for me. I am no longer sure the exchange experience is the right thing for me to do right now, for my gap year, and I am so excited to travel somewhere as an adult, learn about farming, see everything I want to, etc. It's simply a different kind of experience, but I kind of feel I've done the exchange in Germany and I'd like to try something new -- being a worker, not a student, and an adult tourist, not a child. The other piece of this plan is that I'm going to go with Max. He has wanted to go to India for a long time as well, appreciates a good dosa, and knows an incredible amount about farming. I think we will travel together well, and without meaning to sound at all anti-feminist, I feel better knowing that I'll be traveling with a male person. I've heard that this diminishes the harassment that western women often experience in India significantly. We are beginning to plan things out a bit.

It's Sunday, my least favorite day of the week, but tomorrow there's no homework due (other than many IR readings) and I'm having lunch with my English teacher, who I love, so things are good. Also, tonight=pomegranate-ginger cupcakes. I will let you know how they turn out.

i came by myself to a very crowded place

2010-04-27T04:58:00.002+02:00

Yet another month has gone by without a single blog update. When I find my camera cord/organize my life, there will yet again be pictures.

Tomorrow is the first day back at school after a long April break. I have a lot coming up before school ends in a VERY FINITE AMOUNT OF TIME. I've procrastinated on my USM class again, and AP exams are imminent. Leonard Cohen helps. I like this first line because it makes me think about feeling lonely in places where there are lots of people around, like today. I appreciate his poetry a lot.

The "school drama" that has emerged recently seems to be mostly caused by the prospect of being totally done at the shack in a few short weeks. I feel bad about how detached from this I feel. I am really happy and excited to be done with school. I want Charlotte to come home and I want summer to happen. I am dreading having to say goodbye to people I care about (Max, Charlotte, Lilly, etc) but I feel very finished with school and ready to move on. I probably will not cry at graduation, which makes me wonder if I have no heart.

Also, GERMANY. Germany is like a piece missing from my soul. Forgive my melodrama, but there is a piece of me that I left there. I want to go recover it. And somehow also fit in the fabulous WWOOFing plan that I have constructed from January-June. I have a strong impulse to travel, stronger than I can ever remember having, and I wish there wasn't anything (i.e. money) holding me back.

Die deutsche Sprache fehlt mir. Ich habe jeden Tag Angst, dass ich sie total vergesse. Ich versuche Bücher zu lesen, Deutsche Welle zu hören, und so weiter, aber es ist einfach so, dass mein Deutsch nur schlecht wird, weil ich einfach in den USA bist, und kann nicht mehr regelmässig sprechen. So ist es.

barnard

2010-03-27T22:51:00.003+01:00

Today is a BEAUTIFUL DAY. For multiple reasons. Number one is, of course, that I was accepted to Barnard College today, my absolute-first-choice school. I will be living in New York for four years. At Barnard. This idea is kind of incredibly wonderful.

I feel very prepared for things in general. I am always a little afraid of optimism, as if it is some kind of jinx, but I am so much looking forward to tomorrow and next week and the months to come. I know I have some tough decisions to make in terms of my gap year, because while I still really, really want to defer and go to India next year, I am having second thoughts about my initial plan and I'm working on another plan for how to get there. I'm considering work for six months and then farming. And maybe a stop in Thailand somewhere in there??

The fact that everything will be so different so soon is scary, but I'm working on just being excited about it instead of worrying about change. I think I'm doing a decent job.

my favorite emily dickinson poem ever

2010-03-12T23:45:00.003+01:00

As a general rule, I do not like poetry. I am not easily charmed by it. Therefore, it is remarkable that for the past two or three days, I simply cannot stop thinking about this poem. I first heard it in December in the car on the way to North Carolina with Mana and Pop; we listened to four hours of lectures about Emily Dickinson. I find it eerie. It is striking.

It was not Death, for I stood up,
And all the Dead, lie down --
It was not Night, for all the Bells
Put out their Tongues, for Noon.

It was not Frost, for on my Flesh
I felt Siroccos -- crawl --
Nor Fire -- for just my Marble feet
Could keep a Chancel, cool --

And yet, it tasted, like them all,
The Figures I have seen
Set orderly, for Burial,
Reminded me, of mine --

As if my life were shaven,
And fitted to a frame,
And could not breathe without a key,
And 'twas like Midnight, some -

When everything that ticked -- has stopped --
And Space stares all around --
Or Grisly frosts -- first Autumn morns,
Repeal the Beating Ground --

But, most, like Chaos - Stopless -- cool --
Without a Chance, or Spar --
Or even a Report of Land --
To justify -- Despair.

weather

2010-03-07T20:38:00.005+01:00

We have had crazy 55-degree weather the past two days round here. I don't usually concern myself with the weather (either thinking about it or talking about it), but I have seriously enjoyed being outside in the warm sun and sweating while walking up the hill to Congress in my thin green spring jacket. Yesterday I went to the beach, and I actually took off my shoes and walked around in the sand and it wasn't cold. Stepping in water was pleasant, not icy. I was there with my friend Max, and afterward we went to Red's and got ice cream, and then we came back home and made coffee and played backgammon and scrabble and it was a practically perfect day.

Today, I walked downtown with my dear mother, visited some vintage shops, and met Enoch at Arabica. We also observed a man simultaneously riding a stunt bike and playing an electric guitar. Maybe a toy one, but still a guitar. I love my town.

Tonight we're having some people over for the Oscars. I'm disappointed that I never got to see Avatar, because I think it will win. When I saw the trailer for Avatar, I was violently opposed to it because there are blue people and the font used is PAPYRUS (!!!!), but since then a lot of people whose opinions about movies I trust have recommended it to me, so I'm keeping an open mind. Tomorrow I get my IR midterm back. My first midterm ever. I predict a B-C+.

microfinance, madness

2010-03-05T03:13:00.007+01:00

I'm in the midst of finishing up a project I've been working on since January on microfinance. Although I won't have my culminating presentation to the freshmen until next week, tomorrow I have my "dress rehearsal," which I'm actually being graded on; procrastinating now by updating my blog, of course.

Today I watched the movie Paprika for the third time with my friend. Its various plotlines are hilarious, but the visuals are amazing. More than anything, it reminded me how much I really love and appreciate the absurd. (Remember that re-occuring parade with the refrigerators, frogs, dolls, Buddhas, umbrellas, etc?) It was nice to remember that in the midst of all this madness and stuff on my mind.

there are power lines in our bloodlines

2010-03-03T01:19:00.002+01:00

I've decided I'd like to slowly ease back into regularly updating this blog. It's ridiculous to me that so much time has gone by. I'd like to somehow sum up the time between me coming back from Germany and now, but how can one accurately sum up seven and a half months? So much has changed.

It hasn't hit me yet that this my last year of high school. In a lot of ways, I still feel like a 10th grader. However, in some ways I'm packing my junior and senior years into one, so I've ended up with eight classes, including three APs and an International Relations course at USM. Because of this, I have a lot less time for "hobbies" than I'd like. Other than spending time with friends and occasionally working towards my New Year's resolution of watching the entire Criterion Collection (not going to happen by 2011), I don't do much outside of school.

BUT, while I have felt a bit of "senioritis" and I'm ready for my senior expedition to end, school isn't so bad. I've definitely learned a lot this year (both in and outside of school), mainly about American history, classic literature, microfinance, ethics, social skills, sociology, America, living the creative life, and poetry, to name a few things. I'd like to belatedly say that if you haven't read A People's History of the United States, GO READ IT RIGHT NOW because not only is it an "important" book for Americans to read, it's interesting and entertaining and absurdly well-written.

That's enough for now. I should get back to APES work. APES as in AP Environmental Science. Goodnight.

The last month

2009-08-02T19:07:00.002+02:00

I am, at long last, updating my blog. This past month has been crazy. I can't believe that it's really been four weeks since I left Germany, but at the same time, my whole exchange seems very far away.

I haven't really been experiencing any "reverse culture shock," apart from wishing they had good bread here and mire attractive street signs. However, the first couple of days back in America, I felt incredibly, weirdly disoriented. I greeted my family by hugging them and exclaiming, "This is so weird!! This is SO WEIRD!"

After a day in D.C., I met my parents, and we spent a couple more days in Baltimore, visiting Ellen's parents, and a day in Cambridge with Mana and Pop. I was really eager to get home! My house looked so different, I started running through each room shouting, "Our house is so stylish! It should be in a magazine!!" On my first day back in Portland, I had lots of visitors, including Flora, Artemis, Miss Gliss, and Enoch.

Since then, I've been keeping myself busy with spending time with friends, walking to Arabica, cooking Indian food, kombucha-tasting, going to Funtown, and absurd amounts of summer homework from the shack. I have a pretty regular babysitting job and I'm playing my uke a lot. Things are pretty much back to normal.

last day. ever.

2009-07-09T17:11:00.003+02:00

I don't know quite how this happened, but it appears that today is my last day in Germany.

Up until a week ago (ähm, pretty much from September), I was looking forward to going home like insanely.

I find that the idea that at approximately 3 pm tomorrow I will be in the good ol' US of A COMPLETELY unimaginable. I will never live this crazy comedy-series life with my host sisters again. I will never walk past the Döner-Laden on my way home from school. I will not drink coffee in the afternoon on my porch in those little white cups with the blue rims. I will not be able to hop on the bus or train and go wherever I want to. I will not be invited to those weird parties where people play drinking games and yell at each other in Spanish. I will not be "that weird American anymore," or "that American who learned German in a year," or even generally "that American."

This is impossible to comprehend.

I don't really have a real life here. I feel like I'm practicing for something. A lot of the time I find myself thinking, "Next time I will do this and this and this differently." But then... this IS my life!! And as embarrassing or awkward as some things are -- namely, how unmusical I am in comparison to my classmates, my American accent, and the fact that people think I am naive -- I will miss this, and over the last week I've been saying to myself over and over again, "Hey, it was worth it!"

To celebrate last-days-in-Deutschland, yesterday I went with Tang and Marlene to a bar in Pforzheim and had cocktails, and someone got very drunk, and we came home and Marlene taped her to the staircase with packing tape while I filmed it. It was a lot funnier than it sounds.

See you in America.

at dinner, the conversation goes as follows:

2009-07-06T22:51:00.002+02:00

Marlene: Do you know about star signs? Like, I'm a lion, Zoe is a scorpion?
Tang: Hm?
Marlene: Maybe you use like the Chinese ones? I think there's monkey, snake...
Me: No snake.
Marlene: Are you sure?
Me: Yes, there's no snake. There's a dragon, but there's no snake.
Marlene: Really?
Me: I'm sure. Tang, I'm a monkey, my brother's a rat...
Tang: OHHHHH! You mean like sheep!!
Me: Yes, there's a sheep too.
Tang: YES!!! I'm a sheep. Sheep is so sweet. Everyone comes and says "Awwwwww, you're so sweet," and they just look for something to eat. Marlene, you're 1990? You must be a horse. Ohhh, not so good. Horse isn't like sheep. Horse is a little stuck-up. Very proud. Not like sheep. Sheep just looks for something to eat, and everyone says they're SO sweet.
Me: I'm a monkey.
Tang: Oh! Oh, Monkey isn't so good. Monkey isn't like sheep. You don't ever listen, do you? Monkeys never listen. Monkey is definitely a lot worse than sheep.
Marlene (laughing): Not so the fan of monkeys, are you?
Me (laughing): Monkeys, Americans...
Tang (seriously): No, I don't like either that much.

The conversation turns to my day at school.

Me: We were talking about the viola. A girl in my class asked me if I know what a viola is. I said yes, I used to play the viola, but I stopped. She asked, why did you stop? I said, I wanted to play the saxophone. She said, Oh, you play the saxophone!! I said, well no, I stopped. And she said, Oh, I understand know. You're one of those people who always stops.
Tang: Well, that's true.
Me: Hey, not really. Well, yes. But not really. I felt like shit when she said that. That's my personality. It's the same with careers. I've wanted to be... (I list about 20 different careers, ranging from philosopher to marine biologist to baker.) But now I think I might want to be a doctor or a politician or something. Or an English teacher in Japan.
Tang: I have to warn you. Don't go to Japan unless you have a boyfriend. Japanese men are no good. If you marry one, you'll have to stay at home and clean the house and take care of the children all day while he works in an office.
Marlene: Do you want to get married someday, Zoe? Generally?
Me: Maybe. Maybe not.
Marlene: I do. I also know I want to have children, preferably when I am 26.
Tang: Hey! That's soon! We're all coming to your wedding.
Me: Whether you like it or not... ÜBERRASCHUNG!

last day of school EVER

2009-07-06T18:32:00.003+02:00

Today, on my last day of German school, I gave a little presentation in English about New England and Maine. It was weird. I felt a little unprepared, especially when it came to the actual speaking. It's normal for my English to be a little awkward, but today it was just bizarre -- I felt like I literally could not form a sentence. It was also just somehow awkward to talk about home in front of my class -- I felt like they thought I was being somehow critical, when I'm really just excited to go home.

After school, my class had planned a surprise party for me, which was really, really sweet. We sat by the Nagold River and ate cake. They got me such great gifts: a class photo and these absolutely amazing, cool shoes. One of the girls in my class has the same ones, and she remembered that way, way at the beginning of the year, I told her I loved them and asked her where she'd bought them.

Shoes. They're sailing shoes -- sneakers for sailing.

can you believe...

2009-07-05T10:32:00.004+02:00

...that THIS is Tang, sitting in the back row with the glasses?

And here she is now??

CRAZY, or? She suspects that at the airport, her own family will not recognize her.

Yesterday we went to Marii's "good-bye party" in Freiberg, and then afterward we went to Ludwigsburg, my new favorite charming little town in the world. As we wandering around its charming streets, I kept remarking, "Ludwigsburg is so cute!" We spent three hours admiring the statue of Schiller, going to the mall, and sitting in a cool cafe, and then we went to a big music-and-fireworks festival by the palace. We were there for almost five hours, until one in the morning. It was really, really fun. The band playing was pretty bad, but I love outdoor concerts where everyone brings picnics and blankets and sits on a lawn. We didn't have any picnic, since we'd come directly from Freiberg, so Tang bought a Bratwurst, and since there was no vegetarian option except fries, I was extremely German and bought a Radler, a beer with lemonade.

Marlene came later to meet up with us, but since she spent almost an hour looking for a parking place, she missed the fireworks. We stayed around a while anyway and listened to music and ate Brötchen. And completely randomly, I burst into tears. I don't even know why. Tang and Marlene were talking about the Abi-Move or whatever it's called, where the recently graduated German students get drunk and ride around their cities on floats wearing bikinis, and suddenly it hit me that I will be gone in a week, and with the approaching end of school (Monday is my last day), going home is started to sound less and less appealing. I have realized that I despise school, but I love Germany, and I love my host sisters too. Tang tells me sometimes, "I don't even notice you. You're so normal. But next year, I will miss you so much." Although the first time she said this, I was kind of offended, I think I feel exactly the same about her.

Anyway, as I am crying, this conversation ensues:
Me: Crying.
Tang: What's going on? Are you crying? I don't understand!
Me (hugging Marlene): I love you so much, Marlene.
Marlene: Oh Zoe, I love you too.
Tang: I don't understand! Are you drunk?
Me: Crying.
Me: No... I had one beer... three and a half hours ago!
Marlene: Laughing.
Tang: I don't understand!!

Today we're going to Martha's good-bye party in Karlsruhe. In case anyone's wondering, my "good-bye party" is on Thursday and will consist of eating Raclette and playing 6 Nimmt with my host family.

Some funny videos are on the way. Well, maybe if you spoke German, they would be mildly funny, but for most of you they will probably just be me talking for five minutes while Tang does some spastic camerawork.

some things to note

2009-07-01T15:25:00.003+02:00

1. Yesterday my ethics teacher told our class that Buddhism is not a religion.

2. Today my math teacher said that he still has my test (which the rest of the class received two weeks ago) and has come to the conclusion that I haven't understood anything all year.

3. Yesterday I went over to a girl from my French class's house and studied for our French quiz. It was, surprisingly, really fun.

4. Today my class teacher loaned me a big book full of beautiful pictures of the U.S. to use in the presentation I'm giving on Monday. On the cover of the book is a photo that turned out to be of Portland Head Light. When I saw it, I got really excited and said, "I think this picture is of NEW ENGLAND! Wait, I think it might be of MAINE! It looks excactly like where I live!"

5. If you want to see videos of me in my kitchen or in the Brothers Grimm garden, click on the vimeo link I added.

6. I'm so excited to fly home in NINE DAYS!!!!!!!!

according to my calculations

2009-06-18T20:03:00.004+02:00

It seems that tomorrow I've officially got three weeks left in Germany. Isn't that, as they say, extreme?

I will miss Germany terribly, but mostly I am just really, really ready to be at home. It's not Germany's fault. I think in a lot of ways I wasn't ready for this year abroad. I definitely didn't take everything I could from it. I meant to, but in a lot of cases, I waited for stuff to come to me instead of reaching out and grabbing it. Tang tells me, "Your problem is you always look up. Sometimes you need to look down, too." By this, she doesn't mean that I'm overly optimistic -- she means that I always want to be better. I look at the people who are better than me instead of realizing how much I have or have accomplished.

So this explains why I've got such weird mixed feelings about going home. A lot of people, including Martha and my host sister Marlene, say that they feel/felt conflicted about leaving behind lives they'd worked so hard to create in their host countries. But I feel like I didn't have time to create my new life -- like maybe that would take two or three years instead of one. I like it here, and I love my host family, and the other exchange students are wonderful, but I still have this overwhelming feeling that this is not me. I'm just a temporary person. I don't know if this is because I didn't try hard enough, or coincidence, or because of how closed-off I can be with people sometimes, or what. I just know I am leaving with a little regret.

But it's not that I am regretting everything, or that I'm miserable, or anything of that sort. I am happy! I feel like I tried something new and I got out of it what I could. Sometimes I start going over in my head everything that's happened in this last year and it's incredibly overwhelming. I want to grab my journal and write everything down exactly the way it happened so I will never forget. Only then, I realize that I'd never have enough time, and I feel that limited feeling that I get all the time at home when I attempt elaborate art or film projects -- the things I can do feel so finite!

Other pieces of news:

1. Right now my German and Thai host sisters are deciphering my practice worksheet for my math test.

2. In Music we are studying something called "tonality" and "Kadenz". It's something with chords, under them are Roman numerals I II IV V VI V V VI VII, and the chords change to other chords, represented by m and another letter. In other words, something that my five years of piano lessons as a child did not cover. More proof that I, a self-taught ukeist, should not be on the track with all the musical prodigies. As my music teacher (who kind of resembles Daniel Johnston and is nice, but also one of those rock-music-isn't-actually-real-music folks) wrote this on the board, he declared, "This is easy! Even a monkey could do it!" A monkey, perhaps, but not the American exchange student.

3. Today I officially gave up my career in jogging. For a while, I was really enjoying it, jogging three times a week, and feeling better about all the crap I eat. But I really think it is just not for me. I've gotten way way worse all of a sudden, and it's frustrating, and I think I out to stick to physical actvities that I enjoy instead of ones I have to force myself to do.

4. To replace my career in jogging, I think next year I am going to learn to swim and learn to ride a bike. This has been my goal for roughly as long as I can remember. I have been learning to ride a bike for approximately three years, but somehow I just can't get the hang of it. As for swimming, that's just really necessary -- I want to learn to sail, but before I can do that, I need to get over my fear of water, and learn to swim.

5. I don't have any idea what I'm doing.

summary of the last few weeks

2009-06-14T16:32:00.006+02:00

Well, first of all, check out today's how-to. I especially enjoy the line: "When a flag is no longer in good condition (e.g. if it is torn, ripped or badly soiled) it should not be raised or displayed. It should be disposed of in a dignified way (such as a private burning.)"

I picked a dumb day to forget my camera. Today I was very sad to be unable to take any photos in Pforzheim's wonderful DDR museum. It completely exceeded my expectations! It turns out that there really ARE worthwhile things to do in Pforzheim. This museum is really, really worth a trip. It's only open from 11:00-3:00 Sundays, but it's got a great collection of photos, newspapers, posters, books, food, money, etc. from the DDR. The tour guide was really nice, gave me a bunch of free booklets, and talked to me for a long time about how the Luftbrücke and the support of America after WWII and how it was "really not anything like Iraq; they helped us out." Which is something that I hear really often from older people here. When she was a young woman, her parents immigrated to West Germany, and she was not allowed to visit them. She wrote letters to her parents telling them that she would go over (to visit) as soon as she could. The Stasi read them and arrested her, and she was imprisoned for 6 months in a tiny room with "other political prisoners and murderers." I guess the murderers were very spiteful towards her because they had life sentences and they knew the political prisoners would be leaving pretty soon.

A lot has happened in the last few weeks. The last week of May, I was in Hamburg for a few days, and then in Berlin:

Hamburg:

We were there visiting an old friend of Ulrike's, who has three children. Svea, in the picture below, is Marlene's age and is studying fashion design in Hamburg next year:

Indian food! (A special gift for me.) I impressed people by eating a lot of spicy red sauce that was really not all that spicy.

Cocktails. Mine is a White Russian!

Berlin:

Berlin ABSOLUTELY ABSOLUTELY exceeded my expectations. I LOVED it. It's by far my favorite city I've visited since getting here and perhaps my favorite city in the world. in contrast to Bonn, the AFS folks were extrememly flexible. We had TONS of free time and were allowed to wander the subway system by ourselves. Unfortunately I failed to take any particularly good pictures:

They've got Muji in Berlin too!

Rebecca looks concerned because we went to an international market with five people and we kept losing them:

We ended up getting caught in the rain a lot; it was really fabulous. Me with some nice girls:

The first week of June, Tang moved in with us. She was having problems with her host family in Karlsruhe, and she stays with us every weekend anyway, so my host parents said it was okay! So now we are five kids. It's been a LOT of fun; she goes to my school with me (although she's not in my class) and it's never, ever boring here. I think every weekend before I go home, I've got something planned. Last week of school, we wrote our first "Zentralische Klassenarbeit", (which are big tests we have to take at the end of 10th grade in Germany, and for the Realschüler are final exams), in German. I was pretty pleased; I probably won't be getting a passing grade, but it was an essay in German. Next week we've got them in English and Math. I probably won't even pass in English, and I'll probably accomplish two or three problems in Math -- in 2 1/2 hours. Failure. But I'm trying (like I have been for this entire year) just to forget about all of it.

sansibar

2009-05-16T21:22:00.003+02:00

I did it! I finished the endless Sansibar oder der letzte Grund! This post proves that I really have been reading this book for almost four months. Eh.

I enjoyed it! It was really lovely and dark and poetic, plus I find it fasinating that this book is on almost every German teenager's reading list -- if you google the German title, you find a million study-help websites and essays written by pupils -- and yet, the English version is (in my completely unimportant and possibly wrong opinion) weirdly translated, and if you google the English title you find almost nothing. My favorite character was Gregor, the young communist director. I spent much time enjoying the description of the "bicycle clips" on his trousers and wondering what they were. I also liked a couple of lines at the very end of the book -- SPOILER ALERT -- right after Helander shoots the police. To paraphrase, something like "He didn't notice the fire burning inside him anymore. He stopped and felt alive."

encounters with strangers

2009-05-16T09:59:00.002+02:00

Have I told you yet that Pforzheim's insane-person-ratio appears to be very similar to that of Portland? There are days where I walk down the street and every single person I pass appears to have something serverely wrong with them. Yesterday, for example, I skipped my 7th-grade English class (because I don't do anything there except read Sansibar and I could do that outside) and bought a Schwarzwälder Muffin at the bakery. I sat by the Enz to eat it, and I thought I heard somebody speak, but I wasn't sure, so I just continued to eat. Then I thought I heard somebody speak again, so I turned around, and there was a extremely creepy-looking man there, dressed all in black, with large dark sunglasses (even though it was a dark, rainy day) and a HUGE grin on his face.

Me: Uh, excuse me?
Man: Guten Appetit!!
Me: Thanks!

Although not in the crazy person category, I had another funny encounter with a strager on Wednesday, at the cafe where I go sometimes after school to get a cheese/butter/tartar sauce sandwich and a coffee. I was reading, and since I still kind of need a dictionary to get through my book, I had one in front of me as well. A pretty normal-looking, middle-aged man came up to me.

Man (in English): Are you trying to improve your English?
Me: Nein, nein, eigentlich nicht. Ich komme aus Amerika.
Man: Are you trying to improve your English so you can go to America?
Me: No, I'm from America!
Man: So am I. Where are you from?
Me: Maine.
Man: I'm from the other end: Florida. So, how long are you here for?
Me: A year. I've been here since September. I'm an exchange student.
Man: So your German must be getting pretty good. What are you studying?
Me: I'm in high school.
Man: Great! Well, good luck to you. Oh, if you want to pay, do you just say "bezahlen"?
Me: Yeah, "bezahlen, bitte." (As opposed to "die Rechnung," Adam!!)
Man: Goodbye.
Me: Goodbye.

It was nice. Meeting other Americans pleases me, strangely. This encounter also made me feel so, so German. "I gave advice!!!" I thought excitedly afterwards. "I am not the idiot!! I am a person capable of giving helpful advice!!"

das leben der anderen

2009-05-15T19:00:00.005+02:00

i am kind of in love with this movie?

i watched it yesterday afternoon/evening. i was home alone, so i made some coffee, tore out my knitting (because i messed up sock number two again, alas), and WATCHED THIS MOVIE IN GERMAN. that is to say, no subtitles. it's not an easy movie, so i was pretty proud of myself. it was amazing.

one of my favorite scenes was the shot of the stasi man reading a bertolt brecht poem out loud. i googled "bertolt brecht schönen sommerhimmel" and managed to find it:

1. An jenem Tag im blauen Mond September

Still unter einem jungen Pflaumenbaum

Da hielt ich sie, die stille bleiche Liebe

In meinem Arm wie einen holden Traum.

Und über uns im schönen Sommerhimmel

War eine Wolke, die ich lange sah

Sie war sehr weiß und ungeheuer oben

Und als ich aufsah, war sie nimmer da.

I think yet another factor contributing to my apparent nerdyness is the fact that I really like Bertolt Brecht. We read a poem by him in German class called "Tannen": (Yes, my dear mother, as in "Tannenbaum".)

In der Frühe

Sind die Tannen kupfern

So sah ich sie

Vor einem halben Jahrhundert

Vor zwei Weltkriegen

Mit jungen Augen.

This one I feel I can sufficiently translate: "In early morning, the pines are coppery. I saw them so a half century ago, before two world wars, with young eyes."

I love German poetry. I think German is really an amazing language for writing, probably due to its unique grammatical structure. I cannot wait to comtinue to improve my German in the next couple of years. I have much enthusiasm partially because of so many pieces of German literature I can aspire to be able to finally read.

Starting with my dear Sansibar. Only ten pages left!!

wooden things

2009-05-10T21:46:00.003+02:00

Here are some things that my host brother Tobias made in school.

This knife is actually very, very cool.

dirndl

2009-05-08T16:53:00.003+02:00

the last month in photos

2009-05-08T15:28:00.016+02:00

I made Indian food for my host family (a long time ago.) It was quite good, although I ended up using way, way too much corriander in everything. That's what happens when you follow the recipe.

Afterwards we had chai in this adorable tea set from the fifties. I am in love with it. I try to invite girls from my class to come over and have tea with me, but they keep turning me down.

We went to a soccer match. It was a fabulous experience.

Me with my Bundestag person (and my book!)

hello

2009-05-04T14:27:00.002+02:00

I feel like things are still just so up and down. My mind is a constant back-and-forth between enthusiastically loving this country and absolutely unjusting hating it. Take, for example, last Wednesday. I started out my day by deciding that when I grow up I will live here when I noticed the red thing attached to the window of the bus is for smashing the glass if you're stuck inside it during an accident, and the amazing illustration demonstrating how to use it. When my French teacher humiliated me in front of my entire class and then handed me a test with a grade of 5-6, the entire country of Germany was to blame. But my faith in it was restored when I visited my Bundestag person Katja Mast, and before I departed, she handed me a big stack of papers about her and the SPD and the Bundestag, including one that stated exactly how much money she makes. That would just never happen in the U.S.!

I had a great weekend in Munich with Alisa. (Pictures coming as soon as I receive my replacement camera cord in the mail.) The first day, we visited one of the castles built by King Ludwig II, Linderhof. The king was a little crazy and built these crazy scenes based on Wagner's operas. We visited one that was underground. He built a huge artifical cave with a lake in it, wave machines, an orchestra played there -- it is so extravagant, and has absolutely no purpose other than the king's aethetic pleasure. On the second day we visited Neuschwanstein, and then headed to Munich.

I love Munich, and I would very much like to live there someday. Munich has everything you need, including Muji, lots of great vintage stores, and old buildings.

And I have a Dirndl.

And guess what.

It's mustard yellow.

stephin merritt

2009-04-29T17:50:00.005+02:00

i'm sure most of you have seen this video before, but this is incredible:

i love watching him play all those different instruments at once. it makes me remember why playing a musical instrument is fun. when i get back from germany, let's all get together and make stuff up like stephin merritt.

i also learned how to play this one. on my uke today. it's the first finger-picked song i've learned, and i think after a couple more hours i'll have it down. it's really incredibly easy.

when i get my camera cord from my parents, i'll post a picture of me with my bundestag representative here in pforzheim, katja mast. -- i visited her office today! there's also going to be an article about me in the pforzheim newspaper!

me not being witty

2009-04-23T20:59:00.002+02:00

I don't know how this happened, but suddenly it is 9:00 pm.

All I have time to say is that this week sucked. It was a flashback to October. I cannot do a sommersault for the life of me, my name was decidely NOT put on a "class list," I seem to have become invisible over April break, and I do not understand any of this music theory shit at all.

I feel like I've been waiting since September for my exchange to become fun. Maybe this is my problem. Maybe I should have just gone after the fun and made my own fun, but to have fun I really require other people, and people here (even the sweet ones) are generally not interesting in things like discussions and DNA-inspired quilts, or basically anything that I think is fun. Oh man. I do not want to be one of those awful people who only want to go home, I wish I could say that I never want to leave, but I DO want to leave. I will not even cry at the airport. In all honesty, I will be ecstatic. I am such a loser.

Even so, some of the people here are nice, and I am inviting two of the nice exchange students over tomorrow to play Risk with my nice host brother, and hopefully eat nice food. And Risk with nice people is really a close third to anything philosophical and science-inspired crafts.

I am just waiting for this to be over. Not my exchange (well, in this minute, yes, but hopefully not for long), but this unhappy spell. I think that after I ecstatically come home, I will rave about Germany, and I will miss it. We tend to remember the good things.

Prague

2009-04-14T10:35:00.010+02:00

This past weekend (Wednesday to Sunday) was spent brandishing Bohemian wit with Kayla in Prague, and it was probably the most fun I have ever had in my life. I also think I laughed more than I have my entire year abroad. Of course it was nice to speak English, be with a friend, and generally feel like my normal self again, but it also felt so spiritually healthy, or something. I did so many things I've never done before. Like:

moutain bike (almost eight kilometers)
eat meat
roast Wurst on a stick over a huge fire
attempt to converse with non-english/german speaking people
successfully find my way through the prague metro alone
be spat at on the street for speaking english
attend a czech sing-a-long
be stung by a poisonous plant
skin both my knees

My Student Agency Bus departed from Stuttgart at 10 am Wednesday. This bus is awesome. I got my two-way ticket for 70€, there's free hot chocolate and coffee, and movies play the entire ride (in Czech, with English subtitles). None of the staff spoke German, so I began my weird English/Czech immersion immediately. After a nine-hour bus ride, I arrived in Florenc Bus Station, and as soon as I saw Kayla I burst into tears, something that I would never, ever do under normal circumstances. I was just overjoyed to see her.

We took the subway back to her appartment, where I met her host parents Dana and Jirek. After a nice cup of tea, I exclaimed rudely in the middle of the living room, "I HOPE you told them I'm a vegetarian!!" Kayla got a worried look on her face and informed me that, no, she hadn't told them I was a vegetarian, because she'd thought that I'd switched to meat-eating while in Germany (something that I did consider.) I didn't want to eat the meat, but I'm glad I did -- otherwise I would have been a huge inconvenience, and probably very rude, and there appears to be a lack of vegetables in the Czech Republic. It was okay. I also feel new enthusiasm for vegetarianism now that I've tried meat and discovered that I really, really don't like it.

Thursday, we spent the entire day in Prague. In the morning we went to a lovely park overlooking the river, went in the Church of St.Peter and St.Paul (a really, really beautiful little church), and Kayla showed me her school.

Then we had vegetarian Indian food for lunch, which was awesome.

We wandered around more, I exchanged my money and paid her back for the metro and lunch, we visited some statues, and went to Prague's touristy Old Town. Then, Kayla told me about a street that she loves with the Prague Center for Performing Arts on it ("I always hear the strangest noises coming out of there!") and also a cafe called LITERARY ARTISTS CAFE that she's a little scared to go in alone. I will go with you, Kayla! I said. We were pleased that we'd faced our fears. And basically iced coffee = love. Introducing iced coffee is one of the ways I would like to improve Germany (or perhaps just Pforzheim? Perhaps they have it elsewhere?)

Kayla attempted to improve my Czech. When I told her I only knew how to say hello, yes, and no, she responded, "When I came to the Czech Republic, I only knew how to say the words 'neck,' 'wolf,' and 'trout'!" I have now extended my vocabulary to a series of semi-helpful nouns and phrases: "I don't speak Czech," "Do you speak English?," "Germany," "German," "dog," "Wurst," "water," "pretty," "good," "thank you," "please," "I'm sorry." During our little language-lessons, this dialogue seems to ensue:

Kayla: Prosím.
Me: Prosím.
Kayla: No, Prosím!
Me: Prosím!
Kayla: Just give it a normal R! It's better to say it with an American accent than a German one.

We took the subway to the cemetary where Kafka is buried, but sadly it was closed for Passover. So then we went back to Prague-center to a really expensive, disappointing vintage store and a horrible, teenagery, cheap one, where we found a shirt that said "I wouldn normally rock thi gs." What does this mean? Why is the N from the word "things" stuck on to "would"? And the phrase itself sounds weirdly apologetic, like "I would normally rock things, I'm just not rocking them right now."

Other highlights:

We went up to the top of a very tall bell tower, where we got to watch them ringing the biggest bell in the Czech Republic!

Later I climbed the tallest escalator in Central Europe. We went to a teahouse for a while, and then to a bar called "Jeep Bar", which is located in someone's house, in a residential neighborhood, and there were kids' tricycles in the yard. The place was tiny and filled with bizarre WWII memorabilia. We went home.

The next morning I was awakened to a neighbor BLASTING "The Lion Sleeps Tonight." I got up and Kayla translated something her host mom said to her friend: "TEN HOURS in the bus from Stuttgart, and then Kayla drags her for TEN HOURS around Prague!!" We departed for Kayla's family's little house in a village near Pribram, south from Prag. The countryside is incredibly beautiful. The next three days were spent doing leisurely things like bike rides, playing croquet and pool, sitting in the sun, eating cake, and drinking tea and coffee.

On Saturday Kayla and I biked through the Czech countryside to a little chapel on a hill. It took me a while to get used to the mountain bike I was using. I got frustrated with it, but Kayla reminded me, "You can tell people you learned to ride a bike in the Czech countryside." We stopped to walk our bikes up the huge hill, but it was absolutely exhausting. Still, at the top, it was amazing beautiful, and definitely worth it. We passed lots of little catholic shrines on the way, which was cool.

On Sunday we took a longer bike ride through the FOREST with Kayla's host dad. I fell down three times, skinned both my knees, and once I fell into a poisonous bush that gave me a painful rash all over my arm. The host mom of Kayla's friend Nick, who lives in the same village, had informed us just that morning that one could eat this particular plant "as a spinach," even though it's poison if it pricks you. The bike ride was terrific! We rode through picturesque hills and accross bridges and past horses grazing and everything.

Afterwards we walked to a pizza restaurant where we got funny pizza with ketchup on it. Apparently this is normal in the Czech Republic! I couldn't really enjoy it because I was terrified of returning to Prague the next morning -- Kayla and her host sister Vera put me on a bus, which I'd have to get off of, find my way to a metro stop, take the metro to Florenc, and find my Student Agency Bus. Luckily everything worked out, despite me almost walking away from the bus driver without my 400 crowns change!

In May I might get together with Kayla again, in Europapark. I'm hoping that works out. It was fabulous to see her.

Fahrradfahren

2009-04-05T12:36:00.002+02:00

The last few days have been WARM. Like, 20 degrees celsius warm. I'm a lucky person who never paid attention to the temperature outside at home, so I am learning celsius without having to translate it into anything. 10 grat=light sweater, 20=T-shirt. At some point I will probably have to buy some more T-shirts here.

Today was the first day I actually rode my bike in the real world! I walked with it to an empty parking lot in the next village over, practiced getting on and turning (the two things that I still seem to fail at) and then rode it home. I can break without looking like a crazy person, and I can change gears while I'm riding. Riding a bike has always been a little one-step-forward-two-steps-back for me, but I'm really proud of myself, and I can't wait to get back on in the near future.

For April break, I am going to Prague to visit Kayla. I haven't bought my tickets yet because the bus company won't e-mail me back, but if everything goes smoothly, I'll be paying $100 for there and back, which is really good. With the Bahn, it costs somewhere around 250€. I can't wait to see Kayla and maybe even Kafka's grave. I'll be there for Easter and everything. I am so excited.

parades go by, leave me behind

2009-04-01T18:53:00.004+02:00

I bought new sunglasses. They are quite lovely.

When I wear them with my pink coat from Susie and my Japanese barette I feel like a character in a story.

Me in my bathroom.

Yesterday we went to the Bundesverfassungsgericht in Karlsruhe, one of the most important courts in Germany. It was interesting (although I did have some scissors confiscated. It was funny because the tour guide had a note that said I needed to go back and get them afterwards, and I guess "scissors or knife" was written, and she kept asking, "Who needs to go back and get their knife??") Then my best friend here told me I dress "kind of old" and I have an "old personality; most old people also drink tea." Uh, thanks. I wasn't offended, but it did make the rest of my day a little gloomy.

Speaking of old things, there is a closet in my house entirely full of costumes and vintage wool coats. Sounds like... A GEHEIMNIS! I will have to investigate.

Today I had a lame day. I skipped my last class (not really a class; I sit in a 7th grade English class and read Sansibar for 45 minutes) because I felt so crappy. Then I came out of the building and about a million beer-drinking, 18-year-olds who just finished their Abitur today were yelling and dancing to techno music being blasted out of someone's car. Literally right outside of the school, on school property. People were handing out beer and vodka. That's so Germany! I became happy again immediately. That is what I love about living here. It only takes a minute for me to feel like a failure again, but it works the other way too.

I've been "überleging" (AAAAHHHH! WHY THE HELL ISN'T THERE A COMPLETE EQUIVALENT IN ENGLISH???) whether or not the school here is stricter or more easygoing than at home. At first it struck me as way stricter, but I'm changing my mind. It's defintely harder, or at least in all sciences and music, but in other areas it's flexible in a way that school at home isn't. It's completely normal for a teacher to be 15 minutes late, or to not show up at all. If the teacher that we have for the first class is absent, we can come to school later, and we can go home early if we don't have the last class of the day.

Another thing that's different is homework. At the beginning of this year, I decided that the teachers here were stricter about homework, because when they assign it, they expect you to really do it. But now, I've realized that while that is the case, if you don't have it, there are no consequences other than being scolded, while at home, I think you'd have to stay after school if you hadn't done your homework. Also, we get way, way less of it here than at home -- basically only in French, English, and sometimes math or German. Also, it's never collected, we can just volunteer to read out our answers if we feel like it, so it's quite easy to get away with not doing anything.

That being said, school is hard for me. I don't mean to sound like a snob, but at home I get good grades without having to try that hard. When something interests me, I try really hard, but when I'm bored or don't feel like it or something I still manage a 3.5. Here, everything is hard, mostly because of the language barrier, but also because of the way school is taught. This is like the complete opposite of "hands-on learning." This is: we sit in a room for 45 minutes and someone lectures us about WWII or Program-Music or the economy or geometry and we write everything down. If I were to move here, and have children here, I would absolutely 100% send them to the Waldorf school. Absolutely. Although before I came here I had a sort of a mixed impression of Waldorf school (not bad, just neutral), I know a lot of people here who go/used to go to Waldorf school, and they are the most interesting, creative, and like-minded people I have met in Germany. They really know what's important -- not "careers," maybe not even Abitur, but just being open and learning.

2009-03-29T15:06:00.006+02:00

My new host family. Marlene, me, Jürgen, Tang, and Tobias. Everyone is so nice.

The last couple of weeks have been pretty routine, consisting of school, some failed tests, and a visit to a gymnastics class (I will probably not be returning.) This photo was taken last Friday, when Tang came over and we had Raclette. The next Saturday we went to Calw, the birthplace of Hermann Hesse, since Marlene was running 10 km there!

Hermann-Hesse-Haus, maybe?

After the race.

This weekend, Tang and I went to the Thai restaurant in Durlacher Tor on Friday, then went to Martha's house to play Scrabble. I almost won. Then yesterday, we drove back to Tiefenbronn and went to Tobias's football match, played more games, and listened to many bad songs on the radio. Today I am having a lazy day. We had breakfast, and I went for a short walk and sort of cleaned my room. Marlene is in Tubingen (u or ü?) this weekend, BUT she is taking me to see Slumdog Millionaire sometime in the near future! I'm so excited!

Life is good. The week before Feburary break (or somewhere around there) was definitely a turning point. Changing families was a shock, but I am also really glad that I got the chance to meet these great people. I feel a lot more confident with my German, I don't really mind school, and I am just generally happier. It seems like one day I woke up and I suddenly actually had things to do on the weekends and things to look forward to, and that is NICE. Even when the people in my class still sort of think I'm weird, and some of my teachers actually actively dislike me.

I am looking forward to (hopefully!) a couple days in Prague during April break, and I'm also planning a trip to Thailand a year from now! Things are so good.

Sansibar

2009-03-16T22:08:00.002+01:00

I have a Deutsch test on Wednesday about a book: Sansibar oder der Letzte Grund. In English it's called "Flight to Afar." I know nobody cares, but if anyone wants to chat a little about WHY KNUDSEN BRINGS THE FRIGGIN' KLOSTERSCHÜLER TO SWEDEN, I'd appreciate it.

I liked the book. It was slow, but I thought all the characters were really interesting, even though I kept hoping it would turn into more of a novel novel with a more solid, satisfying plot. I'm really scared of the Deutscharbeit -- I have no idea what I'm going to write about! I don't understand the character Knudsen's motives at all!

In my German class, I often feel very dumb.

happy

2009-03-15T17:43:00.005+01:00

I am so happy. I just had four good weeks in a row. Highlights include:

Week 1: Hanging out with Verena who LIKES LEONARD COHEN TOO!, feeling really happy and comfortable in my (old) host family and in my school, no tests, guitar lessons, quality time in the library.

Week 2: Having great conversations with Alex, another nice day with Verena, VACATION, Franziska's fun party, borrowed DVDs, a delicious salad buffet.

Week 3: MID-STAY, nice people, complaining about the hard parts of exchange to people who understand, meeting somebody else from Maine and somebody from Boston, the Kölner Dom, modern art, a satisfyingly intellectual conversation about Salvador Dali, cola-beer, music I know.

Week 4: Meeting Marlene and going to the Peter Fox concert and doing Sport, talking to Marlene about exchange, more quality time with people in my class, our crazy performance in the school concert, hanging out with Alisa and going to the zoo, ice cream.

Which isn't to say that I still feel a little stressed about some things: tests in school, my lacking German, and the inevitable weirdness of a new host family. But I just feel good for the first time since getting here. Really happy and really satisfied.

2009-03-12T15:49:00.004+01:00

I had to change families becaue of my host father's ski accident. My host family thought they wouldn't have time for me because they would have to be helping him all the time. This was a surprise, but things have been going almost disturbingly smoothly. I really like my new host family, and I think I am going to become very, very fat here because the food is awesome. I came home today and my 18-year-old host sister had made me a big pot of risoto with cheese and cherry tomatoes. This is the kind of thing that happens here. I have two host siblings; Tobias, who is 15, and Marlene, who is 18. They're both great.

Also, people keep leaving the door to the hallway open -- people OTHER THAN ME!

My new bus number is 666; maybe you'll find that amusing. It made me think of when I was in New York with my dad, Isaac, and Leander's family, and we saw the "WE'LL BE THERE FOR YOU" moving truck, with the phone number (212) 666-6666. Good times.

I love having people around all the time. Somehow it makes the day seem much longer, in a good way! On Tuesday, I came home from school, my new host brother Tobias made me a pizza, then Marlene came home and we went jogging and did a sort of pilates-inspired exercise video. Later we went to a little bar in Tiefenbronn and had soda and baguettes with cheese. Wednesday we made artichokes and toast and watched Desperate Housewives. Yesterday we went to see this guy in concert:

He is very, very popular in Germany, and he played in a gigantic stadium. We stood behind hundreds and hundreds of people in a huge mosh pit and I didn't even see him once. Still, it was an experience, and I'm glad I went!

Today I'm playing piano in a concert with my class at school... Hopefully that will go well!

The end.

stuff

2009-03-08T17:36:00.002+01:00

I'm making a change here, so please don't send any letters to my address. Thanks.

love, zoe

Off to Bonn...

2009-03-02T13:51:00.003+01:00

Wow, my writing seems to be getting progressively worse with each blog entry.

I had a nice week, complete with many school supplies, a big, delicious salad at Karlsruhe's one vegetarian restaurant, a visit to the opera, and sweet potatoes. I was generally very social; in addition to Franziska's slumber party, I hung out with a nice girl named Verena on Wednesday, went to Stuttgart with Alex and Sonja on Thursday, and went for a stroll in Pforzheim's park with two girls from school on Saturday. Today I'm having a very lazy day. It's 2:00 pm and I'm still in my pajamas. Later I have yoga.

Tomorrow I'm leaving for Bonn, where I'm having my mid-stay camp. Many of the other Congress-Bundestag kids will be there -- I hope it will be fun! After that, I'm kind of dreading going back to school because there is undoubtedly a stressful math test on the way. I'm not that dumb, so I can't understand how the kids in my math class can possibly understand anything the teacher says! He talks rapidly and never stops to explain anything, he just keeps on going. We are studying the EXACT SAME THING I did last year in math -- really basic trigonometry, and also my favorite theme in math, and I still understand nothing. This is such a mystery.

That's all I have to report!

2009-02-22T17:50:00.002+01:00

I deleted that last post because it was irrelevant. My computer is fixed! Yay!

I had a great weekend. On Friday I made a German grammar poster and went to bed early and slept in Saturday morning. Saturday I went to the adorable Pforzheim library, then bought some pens and pencils because I am addicted to German school supplies. I went to Franziska's house, a girl from school, and Aline and Karo were there too. We watched some movies, including Amelie and one that was oddly reminiscent of "The Great Outdoors" -- AAAAAAHHHH!!!! Franziska lives in a beautiful appartment with many plants and high ceilings and she has a bunk bed. We ate toast with cheese and pinapple and a lot of Fanta and chocolate. It was really fun. I hope that I can get together with the nice girls from my school again soon.

I am sort of at a loss as to what to do with the rest of my vacation. I am dying to go back to Heidelberg, but apparently wanting to do this on my own is bizarre. I mentioned my idea to Alex, and his reaction was, "NO, get someone to go with you!!" So instead I will probably be watching some movies and knitting and reading English and being boring. More later.

there is nothing left to fear now now that bigfoot is captured

2009-02-15T14:42:00.002+01:00

This will be a short post, becaue I have to get started on an essay I must write for AFS. This is making me way more stressed than it should.

I had a nice weekend. Went to Karla's birthday party, which was in her house, not in Candela. She has just a host mom, an older woman with grown-up children, who seems really nice and lets her do really whatever she wants. I think about nine people stayed over, which would not go in my host family's house (the rule is ONE FRIEND AT A TIME. This is tough because sometimes with people who I don't know so well, like the other exchange students, having more people over kind of breaks the ice a little and is less stressful.)

No run-in with the police. We ate yummy pasta salad with curry paste and played games and watched movies.

I am feeling a little weird about the halfway point of my exchange. Although I feel better about school, etc, I still feel sad a lot of the time (I'm sorry, complaints) and my German leaves something to be desired. I guess mostly, I'm worried about regrets. Right now, this feels so, so normal to me, being here, and I'm afraid I won't even really realize I was here until afterwards. Even though my goal is to take every opportunity, that isn't always easy, especially in school, where I literally have NEVER raised my hand or contributed anything in some of my classes -- therefore many of my teachers believe that I don't speak ANY German. It's silly, but I'm afraid of looking stupid -- my first month here, I was brave about asking people, speaking German, trying everything. And it's like a little of that has worn off, and now I just feel like a non-fluent, weird, nerdy girl.

I just want to bring something back with me after this is over: a couple new friends, conversationally fluent German, more confidence, a bigger world view. And it would be nice if I could come back having seen some of Europe too, because I don't know when I'll be back. I have pretty realistic expectations, and plus, these are all really in my control. I think I just need to step it up a little, try harder in school, and stop writing and reading English every day. So we'll see.

i forgot

2009-02-10T19:24:00.001+01:00

TODAY is the official halfway point of my exchange!!

why i am in germany

2009-02-10T18:19:00.002+01:00

People often ask me why, of all places, I decided to come to Germany. This is a much more common reaction to learning that I am an exchange student than you might expect. There is an overwhelming attutide of: you could be in France, South America, anywhere? Why here?

Here are the reasons:

1.

"Kafka often made extensive use of a trait special to the German language allowing for long sentences that sometimes can span an entire page. Kafka's sentences then deliver an unexpected impact just before the full stop—that being the finalizing meaning and focus. This is achieved due to the construction of certain sentences in German which require that the verb be positioned at the end of the sentence. Such constructions cannot be duplicated in English, so it is up to the translator to provide the reader with the same effect found in the original text.

"Another virtually insurmountable problem facing the translator is how to deal with the author's intentional use of ambiguous terms or of words that have several meanings. One such instance is found in the first sentence of The Metamorphosis. Another example is Kafka's use of the German noun Verkehr in the final sentence of The Judgment. Literally, Verkehr means intercourse and, as in English, can have either a sexual or non-sexual meaning; in addition, it is used to mean transport or traffic. The sentence can be translated as: 'At that moment an unending stream of traffic crossed over the bridge.' What gives added weight to the obvious double meaning of 'Verkehr' is Kafka's confession to Max Brod that when he wrote that final line, he was thinking of 'a violent ejaculation'. In the English translation, of course, what can 'Verkehr' be but 'traffic'?"

2.

3.

little voices mimic you

2009-02-09T22:06:00.002+01:00

Today I had... one of those days.

The recipe for these days is simple: I get no sleep, am exausted, as a result my German becomes really bizarre, I feel awful about it, and then I decide I have no friends. Then something really small pushes me over the edge, and no matter where I am -- school, Leopoldsplatz, the dinner table -- I start sobbing uncontrollably and muttering encouraging words to myself.

The last day I had like this was exactly two weeks ago. I had gym, was on a team with a group of people who could actually play volleyball, and got angry with me when I messed up, and as soon as I reached the dressing room after the class I erupted into tears. Verena and Franziska and Rhonia ran away, but Aline talked to me and hugged me and it was really sweet.

This time, I bought the ABSOLUTE WRONG TICKET to go to Sinsheim on Wednesday. It was my fault for being such a Dummkopf. I thought I was buying one that arrived in Sinsheim at 9:00 instead of one that left Pforzheim at 9:00, and I DIDN'T EVEN LOOK to make sure the time was correct before I purchased it!! I just felt like a failure. I ran to the Volkshochschule and locked myself in the bathroom, not caring who threw me out since it's not a public bathroom and my yoga class wasn't until three hours later. In that moment everything felt impossible to solve. There was no way I could go back and ask for another, it was too embarrassing, and for the same reason I could not ask my host parents what to do. I ended up concluding that my only option would be to not go at all -- to tell the AFS volunteer who is having me come to the school where she works and talk about America that I couldn't go -- but my plan was foiled when Regina asked me how buying the ticket went as soon as I walked in the door.

"We actually have to speak about that," I said. I ended up confessing the whole thing -- although I did tell a little lie and say that I didn't buy the new ticket at all, because I had to change trains four times. I DID have to change trains four times, but I think it's better that she doesn't know I bought the ticket because that seemed like the line between partial and total humiliation. The ticket was only nine euros. So I guess I paid nine euros to save myself from total humiliation. This is acceptable.

And my host parents were extremely nice about my inability to figure out my route to Sinsheim on my own. I often feel funny about needing them for anything -- they remind me often that they "don't have time for that." No time to remember my schedule for me or make me lunches or make my bed. All things that a 16-year-old should be able to do on her own, but as a result, I feel just... weird about asking them for help. But in this case they were very, very kind and Alex (completely refreshingly figuring out this plan in about ten seconds) is driving me to Sinsheim on Wednesday. All is well.

Tomorrow I have Sport!!!!!! But I am trying not to take it too seriously. And now I should make myself a hot water with honey and lemon and e-mail Tang and go to bed. Gute Nacht.

you know what i mean, happy loving couples in matching lamb turtleneck sweaters reading ideal homes magazine

2009-02-08T16:15:00.002+01:00

I swear I have a life outside of writing rambling blog entries.

I had a lovely weekend. Thursday I had my first classical guitar lesson. (Music career update: I really did not enjoy playing the accordion that much. I wished I did, but accordion lessons just weren't as fabulous as I'd hoped, so now I've decided to pursue the classical guitar instead, and I'm really really happy about it so don't criticize.) The lesson went as follows:

Guitar teacher: Hello. Let's say "du."

Me: Good.

Guitar teacher: Do you already play the guitar?

Me: Not really. I can play C...G...D...

Guitar teacher: Do you play another instrument?

Me: Yes, I play the piano.

Guitar teacher: So you read music?

Me: Yes.

Guitar teacher: Here are some papers. This one has a list of notes and where you can find them on the guitar. Here's some music. Now play. (Guitar teacher wanders away to the other side of the room and stares at the wall. Apparently I'm supposed to pretend he's not there.)

Me: (Plays pathetically.) Ummmmm.... (Starts over. Makes mistakes.) Uhhhh... (Plays the song through once. Makes more mistakes.)

Guitar teacher (returning): You're strumming with your thumb. People don't do that in real life. That's why you have fingers.

Me: Uh, OK. (Tries again.)

Guitar teacher: OK. That's enough for today. You did good; you can already play a song. Have a nice weekend. Bye.

So, not a complete failure. I have played the song lots since then and now I can sort of play it, but the strings buzz and I don't like holding the guitar classical guitar-style. But really, I am so motivated and excited to start playing the guitar because I love the guitar, especially mine at home, and finally I'm learning how to play something other than "The Times They Are A-Changin'" and multiple stupid songs I wrote. I also bought a UKULELE last week and I'm having fun; at first I was sure that I'd ended up with one of those awful untunable ukes (not surprising for 30€) but after a few days of tuning and re-tuning, it actually holds a tune okay, and five months without a ukulele has completely rekindled my love for the instrument.

On Friday I hung out with Alisa. She came to Pforzheim and we went to Konsumat and went shoe-shopping. I tried on some amazing shoes that I could not walk in, and she bought two pairs of shoes, and the woman working at the shop was nice. We went to the Pforzheim library, which is small but awesome, and I checked out an English book and two movies. Then we went to Karlsruhe, had pizza in a really nice restaurant, and went to a Kareoke bar. The Kareoke was fun, but I was recovering from being sick, so by the end of the night my throat was killing me, and it still hurts a little today. We were there with a couple of her friends, and we tried to find songs that we all knew... so unfortunately I didn't get to sing "Brandy (You're a Fine Girl)". The people there were mostly groups of five or so teenagers sitting together, except for this one man who was completely alone, and maybe 45 years old, with big glasses. He was an awful singer and he sang only totally German Volksmusik, so in between teenage girls singing pop songs there would be these ridiculous Volks-Lieder!! The other really funny thing was that the videos playing were not the real videos from the songs; they were terrible quality and often simply bizarre -- for example, accompanying the song "Candy Shop" was a video of Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum. Whoa, that's just not right?! Lots of ridiculous zooming in and out.

I slept over at Alisa's house and then drove back to Pforzheim. As soon as I arrived in the Bahnhof I heard people yelling. I assumed there was some kind of political protest going on, but no, it wasm the football fans. At least 50 guys yelling happily and waving blue-and-white flags passed by me on their way to their Bahn. I went to my bus, and five or six people inexplicably dressed as woodland creatures soon joined me. This is why I love living in Germany, guys.

When I got home, I asked my host family, "Did Karlsruhe win something?"

"Later," said Hans-Peter. "They're playing at 3:30."

Alex said, "Why?"

I said, "The men in the trainstation were very happy. I thought maybe Karlsruhe had won. I always know when they have lost, because sometimes I come in the train from Karlsruhe in the night, and they are drinking beer and screaming, and sometimes..." I made a hand motion as if I were slamming a beer bottle over someone's head.

My host family laughed. Hans-Peter said, "But Hamburg is also blue and white. They were probably here for the game, for Hamburg."

Me: "How do you know?"

Hans-Peter said completely seriously, "Oh, the Karlsuhe fans don't start so early."

Dingern, das mir gefallen

2009-02-07T18:46:00.002+01:00

1. Pens, pencils, compasses, binders, protractors, school supplies.

2. The anti-ethanol ad near the Hauptbahnhof.

3. Kareoke.

4. The trains and buses.

5. Bread, especially the delicious Brötchen that Alisa's mom bought for me this morning.

6. My English class.

7. Hand cream.

8. The Pforzheim library.

9. Those hard core hip-hop kids who greet each other by kissing on the cheek.

10. Terrible TV movies that I watch with my host mom.

11. Being able to sort of understand and speak another language.

12. Umlaut. ä.ö.ü.

13. My daily bus ride to school.

14. Making friends with people who are unbelievably different from me.

15. Brief moments when I really feel like I have understood something thouroughly and/or contributed something to my life here.

16. Feldsalat. (It's called sheep's ear salad or something weird like that in English, apparently. I sort of don't want the winter to ever end because I love Feldsalat so much.)

17. Yogurt chocolate.

18. The fact that that word looks weird to me spelled with a Y now.

19. Having as much time alone as I'd like to. (Well, sometimes a little too much, but I generally don't mind being alone.)

20. Karlsruhe.

That was actually a lot harder than I expected. But it's refreshing to make a list now and then. I'm unsure whether the word above should be "das" or "dass." Normally, I'd write "dass", but the Rummy K box has recently made me skeptical.

i think i drank like five cups of tea today

2009-02-03T18:55:00.003+01:00

Today I came home early from school because I am sick. Normally I bet I could have stuck it out, but I had Sport. Volleyball is awful under any circumstances, but when one is sick, it's attrocious. So I spent my day: drinking tea, sleeping, writing, and watching Desperate Housewives. My family at home is watching The Wire. I am watching Desperate Housewives. Katharina has the first season on DVD, and truly, I don't understand how a show could start out so terrible. In my experience, even mediocre shows are often at least a little bit clever in the first few episodes, but no. No, instead there are terrible puns, ridiculous storylines, and the most God-awful narrator I've ever heard.

Semi-related: my ONLY after school-activity in my second semester here is a weekly guitar lesson (my first one is one Thursday). This kind of terrifies me. I also have NO school past one o' clock -- which is good and everything, but I haven't really got friends, and there isn't quite enough time after school to drive to Karlsruhe during the week. I'm not really sure what to do. You would think, I'm in Germany, I'll figure something out, but I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH MY TIME.

Blogs, egoism

2009-02-01T11:59:00.002+01:00

Reading my blog reminds me of something my dad said a long time ago.

Dad: Blogs are so irritating. All bloggers are egoists -- all they do is write about themselves!

Mom: But, you have a blog.

Dad: My blog has nothing to do with me!!

It's like a mojito party out there!

2009-02-01T11:22:00.006+01:00

This weekend, Tang and I went to Martha's birthday party. Here we are in party outfits:

Before we went to the party, we had dinner at the Thai restaurant in Karlsruhe called Chiang Mai. It is SO SO GOOD. It makes Pforzheimer-Thai food look so crappy in comparison. I had a delicious spicy rice noodle soup. Sorry this picture is so blurry.

Karen and Karla dancing. I like this picture because you can really see what Candela looks like.

We had mojitos.

Afterwards, we missed the Straßenbahn to Martha's house, so we had to take this weird night bus. We were all sleeping over at Martha's house, seven or eight girls. Most people had school Bahncards, but I (and another girl) had to buy tickets from the ticket machines that I FINALLY figured out how to use properly. So I ran across the street to get tickets and came back and we just caught our bus. I stamped my ticket in the bus and sat down.

In Germany, nobody checks your ticket when you get in the bus, but every once in a while the "ticket man" comes to check everyone's ticket. The ticket man came. My ticket was valid, but two others hadn't stamped theirs, so the ticket man started yelling "Raus, raus!!" and we had to get off the bus, and two other Polizei came and started yelling at us. Since the girls from Stuttgart and Manheim were staying with Martha, they took her to the police station to get her address, and told the others they each had to pay 40€. But they kept insisting that they didn't have the money, so finally they just let us go. Several people were crying at this point. But not me. It wasn't really scary at all, just a little irritating since we had to wait an hour for the next Bahn and it was cold.

Yesterday I had Waffles with Aline and Rhonia and Franziska from my class. It was really nice, and we are going to get together to watch movies the weekend after next. Aline asked me if it was boring for me in my village, and I said yes, sometimes. She asked me what I do with my free time and I responded, "Read, watch TV, computer." Yes, that is literally all. Isn't that embarrassing? She said, "Then we have to meet up more often." I hope we do.

Sort of related to my free time -- I picked a lame time to go abroad, creativity-wise. Before I left I was writing a lot and just getting into philosophy and writing music, and now, I feel purposeless. I spend a lot of time on the computer, or even just lying around doing nothing. I know I would be bored if I were at home, and that this is the right place for me to be right now, but I'm not feeling inspired in the same way I thought I would. And I think a lot of this has to do with being so alone, honestly. I'm not alone, and I have support, but at home, I spend so much time talking with my family or my friends about things I'm interested in or ideas or whatever. And the fact that so much of what I thought of as my personality might have come strictly from the people I was surrounded by depresses me a little.

And now, a book

2009-01-24T22:01:00.001+01:00

This is what we're reading in Deutsch right now -- too bad I'll never understand it, because I think it actually looks kind of interesting.

Pancakes

2009-01-24T21:34:00.004+01:00

Here I am:

I didn't wear this outfit out of the house. In Germany I usually try to blend in on the bus with my jeans-boots-H&M-sweater combo. Instead, I wore it to make "American pancakes."

And here's my face:

Pancakes:

Note how round these pancakes are. It turns out I am actually quite good at making American pancakes -- hmmm, I never knew! They weren't a huge hit, but that doesn't matter. Making them made me first think of the pancakes my mom makes, whole wheat vegan ones with pumpkin and that are SO, SO GOOD, but then I started thinking instead of my dad making "breakfast for dinner": eggs and homefries with lots of garlic. And about how nobody in my house cares if the whole house smells like garlic, because garlic smells friggin good.

Thanks for your volleyball sympathy. I know I am a complainer, but it's frustrating sometimes. And my life in Germany isn't at all as frustrating as this blog makes it appear to be, either; I definitely use this blog to vent a little, which is why it's taken on a slightly depressing tone.

Good morning.

Obama, Volleyball, Housewives

2009-01-23T18:50:00.002+01:00

First of all, OBAMA IS PRESIDENT. That was just... really nice. Really nice to watch, to be with my host family, and to chat with Isaac and my parents at length on Wednesday about. I did not cry. I liked the color of Michelle Obama's dress. I understood most of Obama's speech, but I would've liked to hear it in english, without the German overdub. I laughed when I saw Dick Cheney in the wheelchair. I think things will get much better. I hope they will. I hope.

Now, more about SCHOOL. Where should I start? Maybe my FAILING CAREER IN VOLLEYBALL. When I was in elementary school, I cried during almost every gym class, except when we were playing soccer. I was scared going into my class here that I would be yet again constantly on the verge of tears, but that luckily wasn't so. Until now. I find I am that person that nobody wants on their team. My gym teacher pulled me out of the game two weeks ago to try (unsuccessfully) to teach me to hit the ball, then I ended up just standing in the corner. Last week, I ended up in a pair with a girl who is especially good at volleyball, with was awful. I have gone back to feeling unathletic and horrible and humiliated. I have found that when someone throws a ball at me, my first instinct is to run away. My second is to catch it. And I have very slow reflexes. Volleyball is just not for me. I don't even take the tests with the class anymore. I sort of doze off and try to think at things I excel in, and I end up failing, and then I think, "Zoe, when you grow up nobody will care that you're terrible at sports, no one will care, no one will care," but then I think, "Perhaps, but then I'll be old and have to have a job and I won't be living in Portland, and I will probably aquire heart problems from my lack of physical exercise and it will be very, very bad." Other times I think of other people who are bad at sports. All of these people live at home. I don't think anyone in the entire country of Germany dislikes sports. Now I am making generalizations about my host country as well as speaking no language and writing boring blog entries.

On Wednesday I spoke to my math teacher for the first time. I said, "I have to speak about the test. I can't do it. I'm sorry. Math is not my subject." He said, "Well, you don't need real notes, do you?" I said, "No, I don't." (Liar.)

On Thursday my math teacher acknowledged my presence in his class. He was talking about a problem in German and then suddenly switched into English, and before I knew it, he was yelling at me all this stuff about "the housewife." The housewife. The housewife makes a certain amount of money each year and then it goes up by six percent increase and then you use a special feature on your calculator and find out how much she's making after 24 years... And, what an idiot, I couldn't even think about the problem. I felt really disoriented and started thinking, Where is all this money coming from? Isn't the definition of a housewife that she doesn't have a job? Is there some benefit for housewives in Germany that I don't know about? How awful to be referred to as a "housewife"! I can imagine, perhaps having an etsy shop and a band and some kids and that being awesome, even if I were filling a traditional female role by staying home while my husband made most of the money, but the word housewife just implies soccer and a minivan and pilates and plastic surgery and... ugh. My math teacher stopped lecturing me in English, turned to the class and said (truly), "She doesn't understand anything, she's so stupid."

I am serious. And this, after running into my host family's cleaning woman on the bus and having her say to me that I can't help being bad at math and physics BECAUSE I'M A GIRL. Okay. Now I'm also an unfair sexist stereotype.

The thing about math in Germany is that the pace is so fast, I can't keep up. I mean, I really can't keep up -- I literally cannot figure all the notes in my binder out and remember them before the teacher has moved onto something completely different. At home, I did well in math and enjoyed it, but I had to stay after school every once in a while and get help. And I have to work a little harder in math than the others. It doesn't "come naturally" to me, but I can figure it out, it just takes me a while. And I love figuring out problems, it's really satisfying. I especially enjoyed the little bit of trigonometry we did last year.

It's frustrating to me how impossible it is to get help from teachers, and how little they seem to care about our well-being. I guess my perspective is a little distorted from Casco Bay, where everyone in my humanties class cries on the same day, usually right before the end of the expedition, and Ms. Carter lectures us on "the amazing journey you've made this year" and then she starts crying too and then we all make posters about the changes we want to see in our school and listen to some kid read emotional poetry.

To close, a quote from Lukas Leonhard: "It's Herr Doktor Meyerstein! Hello, Herr Doktor Meyerstein!" And today = second viewing of Twilight with a girl from my French class. The end.

Roasted almond Gugelhupf

2009-01-18T16:58:00.003+01:00

It came out very tasty! Plain vanilla cake with apple pieces and roasted almonds on the inside, more almonds and red jam that tastes like Glühwein on the outside!

2009-01-17T15:23:00.003+01:00

I feel much better, and later I am going to make a Gugelhupf (a round cake with a hole in the center -- remember, Mom??) and hopefully get over my fear of the kitchen for good!! Plans for ribollita are also in the works.

I realized that my journal entries have become mostly in German. Well, maybe not quite, but maybe half-and-half. There are only certain subjects that I can discuss adaquately in German. Sometimes I feel bad about this, but sometimes it's kind of cool -- sometimes I just think, Wow, I used to not be able to talk about my travel aspirations in German, but now I can.

2009-01-17T12:46:00.005+01:00

A gift certificate. I am an idiot.

Adding Complaint Number 516, my Deutsch is absolutely terrible and awful and I am going to come back to the U.S. speaking no German and no French and crappy English. Goodbye, future philosophy studies.

On the upside, I bought two pens on Thursday to replace the one of Katharina's that ran out of ink (and it is a disposable pen.) They are lovely.

Weekend

2009-01-17T11:56:00.004+01:00

Yesterday I had a good day. School was nice, we had the second hour so I got to sleep in 30 minutes, and I went to see "Twilight" at the cinema with Tang. The movie was terrible, the sort of film that prides itself on having a "hot guy" in it and thinks you want to spend two hours looking at close-ups of his face and listening to him engage in unbelievably boring, cliche dialogues. That being said, I understood almost everything. And it was a very large theater with big comfortable seats, and since I had a... a Gutschein! I cannot remember this word in English! It's a thing that you get as a gift and then you don't have to pay, because it's beem paid for you. Well, since I got one for my birthday, I only had to pay €1.30. So I'm glad I went, and it was funny seeing Kristen Stewart, the "Angel from Montgomery" girl, play Bella Swan.

Tang, of course, loved it. She would not stop quoting it afterwards and told me I need to get the main actor's autograph for her when I go back to America! She asked me which guy I thought was "the cutest," and I half-heartedly said "Jasper." Jasper is one of the vampires, pretty much a filler character whose only job is to sit in the corner looking pale and gaunt and surprised. None of the characters were particularly endearing, but they did really look like vampires. I don't really see the appeal in being in love with a vampire.

I did read the book. I know you Twilight fans will probably hate me, but I had some concerns with it. I've thought about writing an essay on this, actually, because it will give me an excuse to read all the books (they are addictive) but also complain cynically about them. I am uncomfortable, first of all, which the amount of control that Edward has over Bella, his girlfriend and the book's protagonist. He decides whether she lives or dies, basically, and throughout the books loses his temper with her (which she responds to by submitting completely, apologizing or insisting, "You're right"), follows her around and spies on her when she is sleeping (which she finds endearing) and attempts to prevent her from seeing her best friend. All of which, well, creep me out. The writing is good enough to make me want to keep reading, and I have fun reading them, but I don't believe these books. I am reading them very much from afar -- when the characters claim that they are really in love, that they will always be together, I don't believe them. Also, the Romeo and Juliet metaphor was boring.

But really, this is to be expected when I read a book that is a vampire romance. Sure, vampires are cool, but I am not so easily charmed by "romances." I am not a romantic. I think the only book that has ever made me say "Awwwww," was Norwegian Wood, a good example of "just a romance" becoming an amazing, touching story that draws you in. I fell in love with Midori while reading this book, and isn't that sort of the purpose of a "novel," that you really believe it and feel what the characters are feeling, no matter how ridiculous that sounds?

In other events, I had a good couple of days. Right now I'm kind of back in my slump. It's brought on by the strangest things -- today, coming across a girl's blog from Iceland (the country that I originally wanted to go to.) I had a moment of "Oh my God, why am I in Germany learning German when I always wanted to go to Iceland and blah blah blah..." Which is ridiculous. Any issues I have are not a result of the country I am in, they're a result of me being immature or unflexible or cynical. It's an issue with me. I am in a really good situation, in a good family, in a mediocre school with kids that seem to like me and teachers that leave me alone. Someday maybe I will like Pforzheim. So then I started feeling very bad that I've started blaming Germany, when anything that bothers me is my fault.

I don't know why, but Flickr's flash uploader is not working. I still have photos backed up since November. I promise I'll get to it, it's just very, very time-consuming since I need to be sitting at my computer to upload them all. I hope to have pictures from Spain on here soon.

Der neuer Austauschuler

2009-01-15T16:32:00.003+01:00

We have a new exchange student in 10am. He name is Alaster and he's only here for the week. He's from Australia, and I appreciate having him around mostly because he is so weird, I look like a normal deutsches Mädchen in comparison. On my first day of school, I sat in the back row and was silent and wanted to disappear, because I was really shy. On his first day of school, he came equipped with four or five books of pictures of Melbourne, dozens of photos of him winter-camping with his family and him and his girlfiend dressed up for a school dance, a DVD, and a CD of his favorite Australia-themed music. He passed them out during English class. Then we all asked him questions. Aline was sitting in front of me with Pauli and she said (in German, obviously) "Is he going to the prom here? Do you think he's going to the prom?" The word for "prom" is "graduation dance", so she raised her hand and asked, "In this photo... did you go to... an Australian ball?" It was really cute. Next, Frau van der Wijst asked him, "How are the schools in Australia different from the schools in Germany?" He talked (slurring his words a lot, so I definitely couldn't understand him) about grading, his school, their partner school in China, and all this stuff, for about five minutes. Frau van der Wijst asked him a couple clarifying questions, which he answered with long, extremely complicated answers. It was so funny!

In Deutsch, when asked if he'd been in another German school up until now, he stood up and talked for five minutes about all the places he's been so far in Germany and Europe. Apparently he's doing some exchange program where he gets to travel everywhere and then spend one week in school and then travel more. I've asked him a couple times to clarify further, but it is so difficult to understand his German! When he learned I was American, he spoke in English to me, but I just answered in German and so I think he got the idea, and we don't speak English anymore.

On Tuesday, Mr. Australia was back. He's constantly either sitting with his head on the table or calling out half-hearted answers. He's a year older than me, and he speaks much better German than I do, and I never do things like that. Even in Physics and math, I pay close attention and write down everything the teacher says (copying, probably incorrectly, from the person next to me.) It drives me crazy. He kept remarking that what we're doing in math is so easy.

Today he randomly went up to nice Lukas Leonhard and said, "You know what most people in Australia think of when they think of Germany? NAZIS." And Lukas sort of looked at the floor and said, "Oh," very sadly. It really bothered me.

In a few minutes I am going to my Deutschkurs, which is ending really soon! I'm glad, because sometimes it's really boring and slow. But I had a good day today. I showed some nice people in my class pictures from home, and they loved them. They told me that Maine is beautiful, the pictures of me when I was little are adorable, my dad looks like a French football player, and my brother "has great style." I came home and successfully reserved movie tickets online. It was really good.

Update

2009-01-14T21:36:00.001+01:00

Katie, my aquaintance from the Congress-Bundestag orientation, might be coming to visit me in March! Hoping that works out...

Off to a little TV, then packing my bag, then sleeping.

You say I've cheapened a love that's deepened with time. Well, is that such an unspeakable crime?

2009-01-14T20:57:00.002+01:00

Things are up and down, always. I realized today that I can't remember the last time I watched TV downstairs with my host parents in the evening; I've been spending more and more evenings on the computer for three hours or more. At first that sounds awful, and makes me feel bad, but I also think that I feel more comfortable here, in the house, as demonstrated by the fact that I no longer feel required to watch TV with the family. Today I ate French Fries with a fork and knife. I am trying.

I read a lot of my journal today, the one from February 2008 until October 2008. I wanted to buy a new journal before I left for Germany, but I am unbelievably happy that I decided not to, because I can read my writing from home, remember it wasn't perfect, and also estimate how long six months ago feels. (On the 17th I will have exactly six months left in Germany.) Six months ago there was a huge gap in my journal-writing. All I have to remind myself of what I was doing last July is a post in which I was convinced I had cancer, and a dream that I was in a medical examination room with Mana and my Mom. My mom probably had cancer, and then I went home and there were all these tumor-like lumps in my feet, and they were moving around under the skin, and I got really freaked out. But then I found these skin flaps on the bottom of my feet, and open them up, and inside my feet were little round balls, maybe cereal. And I remembered putting them there for safekeeping.

It's SO WEIRD to think that my time here is almost halfway over. I have accomplished so little! My time here recently has been spent distracting myself from my thoughts with DVDs and chocolate and alt-country music. I love Conor Oberst's new album, despite the "experimental" aspects which I find a little overdone -- the voices, crazy baking vocals, SO MANY "ready now?"s before the songs. I've also been listening (still) to this Jenny Toomey CD that Jason sent me. It's really wonderful, full of witty and surprising lyrics. She's a lovely singer and a couple songs have almost heartbreaking moments, impossible to capture without hearing them.

That's all at the moment. Tomorrow = school and awkwardness. Friday = seeing "Twilight" at the cinema in German. Weekend = computer and lots of journaling and failing at German and more awkwardness.

I need to stop text messaging my parents, because I do it almost every day and I think it might be ruining my life. Or at least the next six months.

And I'm sorry about the overall negative overtone of this blog. I am not feeling good right now. I want to feel good. I pretend that I am, and I spend so much time making lists in my head of all the worse situations I could be in, but I am taking my mom's advice and really accepting how I feel: I do not feel good.

2009-01-10T13:08:00.003+01:00

I had a lovely time in Spain; on New Years we ate Raclette and watched many, many horrible 70s music videos on TV.

Today I'm feeling jealous of Katharina, who is having an amazing typically American experience and whose host family says that "their lives have changed because of her." I sometimes feel really tolerated.

I'm frustrated with my German, my piano ability, and my internet connection.

And I am frustrated that I have to go to school every day in God-forsaken Pforzheim when I could be off having adventures on trains, or at least doing a public policy project on abortion or the war in Afghanistan and possibly learning something, and speaking decent French.

And I'm so scared of "discussions" now I can't even bring myself to ask about guitar lessons, let alone possibly traveling/meeting with people.

And my host family thinks I am lazy and unathletic, and I feel really, really bad. I want to be a good exchange student. Today I half-heartedly tried to call someone from my class at school.

So. I don't know. I will post again, hopefully something more uplifting, and possibly some photos if I ever get them all loaded onto my computer.

Mysteries of the German language

2008-12-26T15:38:00.002+01:00

First, a disclaimer: I have been learning German for five months, and I really have no idea what I'm talking about.

I thought you'd perhaps like to learn some German on my semi-educational blog. And also, perhaps you're interested in finding out why German is considered "difficult", or about the nature of the sort-of-weird grammar:

First of all, German has three genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter. The coresponding definitive articles are der, die, and das. For example: Der Hund, die Frau, and das Haus. (In case you don't notice, ALL nouns are capitalized in German.) But the definitive articles don't always stay that way, because German also has cases (like Latin): nominative, genitive, dative, and accusitive. This makes it difficult (for me personally) to remember which nouns are which gender, as opposed to in French, in which I was always semi-able to associate articles with words, and thus remember them pretty well. But in German, I might first encounter a word in the dative case, and then later be unable to remember if it coresponds with der or das, which are both the same word in the dative case.

So, first of all, nominitive. The subject of the sentence is always in nominitive. For example: Der Mann rennt. (The mann is running.)

The object of the sentence is usually in accustive. Some verbs take dative, but those are rare. In the accusitive case, der changes to den, and die and das stay the same. Der Mann kauft den Apfel. (The man buys the apple.) The apple is also masculine, so its article changes to den.

Genetive is possesive. I'm not going into it right now, because I actually never learned the genetive. I always get away with saying "the house of" somebody or sticking an s onto someone's name.

Once you get into prepositions, it gets trickier. Some of them take accusitive and some dative, many of them take both, depending on the context. Ich gehe in die Schule. (I'm going to school.) The preposition in takes, in this case, accusitive -- thus, the die stays the same. But if you say "Bleib in der Schule!" -- stay in school! -- the die changes to der, because it takes the dative case in this example. In dative, der and das change to dem, and die changes to der. (Ich fahre mit dem Bus -- I'm going by bus.)

But wait! The fun's not over yet! Now, time for some crazy verbs! There are times when your lovely verb (mitgehen, to go with, in this case) spits in half, and the first half drops to the end of the sentence. When I first starting learning German back on Exchange Street in Portland, ME, this freaked me out. An example: Ich gehe mit. I'm going with (I'm coming too, a little more smoothly put.)

And then, totally simply, the infitive always drops to the end of the sentence. For example: Der Hund muss draußen bleiben. The dog has to stay outside. In english, it literally translates to "the dog has to outside stay," because stay, bleiben, the infitive, always ends the sentence. This was hard for me at first, because I can't make up my sentence as I go along, the way I'm used to -- and if you stick a prepositional phrase in there, it too must come before the verb! I have to go into the city in a couple of minutes! Ich muss in ein paar Minuten in die Stadt gehen! Gehen is at the VERY end.

Another thing that I find difficult are words like that, because, and if, because they do something kind of weird. Examples: Der Hund muss draußen bleiben, weil er zu laut ist. The dog has to stay outside, because he's too loud. After weil, because, the verb (auxilary! not the infitive!) drops to the end!! So the normal sentence would be: Er ist zu laut. He's too loud. And with because: Weil er zu laut ist. The ist drops to the end.

Holidays

2008-12-26T15:23:00.002+01:00

I had a really wonderful Christmas. I thought it would be very emotional, but it turns out most of the difficulties were actually leading up to the holiday, the apprehension. I got a couple modest gifts from my host family and a big box from my parents (and there's one from Mana and Pop here too -- only I have to go pick it up from the Zollamt, so I won't actually get it until I get back from Spain on the 11th of January.)

I had a nice chat with my host parents yesterday about Christmas, school, etc. I feel really happy that they have reasonable expectations around my school (i.e. they do NOT expect any passing grades!!) Also, I think Hans-Peter is really starting to get that I do understand him, and I don't care how good his English is; I'm here to learn German. Yesterday we had not one but several conversations, and I'm glad that we are starting to communicate a little, because out of everyone in my family I feel the most out-of-place with him.

I'm feeling excited to go to Spain and a little less scared of two weeks without a computer. I always tell myself that I don't need it, and then when something like this comes up, I'm left feeling a little terrified! It's so ridiculous.

Fröhliche Weihnachten

2008-12-24T15:44:00.003+01:00

Merry Christmas, everybody!!

In Germany, most (all?) of the festivities happen on the 24th, as I was informed ten minutes ago. ("So, are we going to open the presents tomorrow... or what?") Ours include: schmucking the Weihnachtsbaum (which I helped with this afternoon; turns out there are a lot of ways to screw up hanging ornaments on a Christmas tree), going to church, singing Lieder, listening to Bach's Weihnachts Oratorium on a CD, opening gifts, and eating Raclette (kind of like cheese fondue, I think. We'll see.)

I'm in the slow process of uploading a month's worth of photos to Flickr. Unfortunately, my computer is too slow to handle the extreme Flash uploader, so it's going slowly. But keep checking back -- I'm putting up photos of sort of baking cookies, Stuttgart, the Schwarzwald, and Nicola's Christmas Story among other things!

That last post sounded so angry

2008-12-21T20:33:00.003+01:00

I'm not so angry. I'm feeling, actually, kind of blissfully brain-dead. And I am also going to Spain. So it's not so hard, at the moment.

This is starting to feel like a science experiment

2008-12-21T20:08:00.004+01:00

You know: what happens when you stick a socially awkward 16-year-old in a foreign country, stop feeding her vegetables, make her speak virtually no English, and cut her off from people that she knows and real conversations?

Well, right now, I am sick. Yesterday I had a fever, which has gone down, but I've still got a headache and snuffy nose. I've been sleeping a LOT. I'm feeling a little sad around Christmas, which I suppose is normal.

I'm worried that I've developed a horrible attitude, or that something else is going on with me. I feel like I'm the only one who isn't having the time of her life in Germany, and really disappointed in myself in general, like I should be doing something that I'm not. I feel like I am so far from making real connections with the people here, includuding my host family, the people in my class, and the other exchange students. I miss honest conversations. I am constantly either censoring myself or simply being unable to convey what I'd like to in German. Or simply not speaking -- there are days when I say nothing, all day, but "hello," "good-bye," "how are you?" and "good" (in response to both "how are you?" and "how was your day?")

I am so frustrated! I never, ever imagined feeling so dysfunctional, and it has been more than THREE MONTHS, and I hate feeling like I am completely, totally alone in being out of place and lonely and unable to appreciate my exchange year.

I don't want to go home and tell people I hated my year here. I really, really want to have a good exchange year.

2008-12-18T21:00:00.002+01:00

I had a really awful day yesterday, complete with me not talking to anyone all day, losing a glove on the bus, finding out that I have to COMPOSE something along with my music class, a panic attack, and crying in my room for three hours.

Luckily today was way better. School was fine -- the first class of the day was German, and a aweet, gluten-intolerant girl named Cordula gave a presentation about Bertolt Brecht. I shall pause for a moment and explain that everyone in the class has to so a presentation, called a GFS, once a year for a grade, then several smaller presentations called "Referats" as well. It can be in any subject, but I believe that it must be realted to what we're studying in that class. For example, we just read Mutter Courage und Ihre Kinder, so Bertolt Brecht makes sense. It's like a lecture, 30 minutes long or less. It took me over a month to figure out why every so often somebody from the class would get up to speak about something, and we'd all listen and take notes, but now I think it looks like tons of fun and I can't wait to do one. I have lists of things in my head... outsider art, Simone de Beauvoir, etc. I think what I will actually end up doing is a GFS about the American political system, in January, for my English class.

In her GFS, Cordula mentioned that Bertolt Brecht met Hegel at some point... I'm not sure exactly since I understood little in this presentation. Afterwards, the German teacher asked, "Who knows who Hegel is?" I was dozing off (as usual, I'm sorry to say), but everyone was looking clueless so I raised my hand. "Hegel," I said. "He's a guy. Of philsophy. He was a philospher, actually, from Stuttgart." The class errupted into applause at my pathetic explanation. I felt really good about myself, then awful because I know so much more about Hegel than that, and had I had time to prepare I could've given such an impressive explanation! But then I went back to feeling good.

In French, my teacher Frau Egge (who is a TERRIFYING PERSON) decided to ask me why I am in Germany and be all nice to me suddenly. Unfortunately she asked me in French, and my French has become unbelievably awful. I throw in some German roughly every two words! My fear of Frau Egge lives on.

In the lunch break, I decided I wanted to buy a crepe from the Christmas market. So I walked outside, where I ran into Aline, who was waiting for her boyfriend Theo and wanted me to wait with her. We waited for a while, but he didn't show up, so she came along to the Weihnachtsmarkt too. I attempted to start several conversations, but failed miserably. Let's just say I am still completely unable to explain the (simple) plot of "Garden State" in German. At the market, we ran into Lukas and Lukas -- Lukas Leonhard was stessed about what to get Roya for Christmas. (We all have to buy something for someone in our class, whose name we drew from a hat.) Aline suggested some jewelry, but Lukas insisted, "I have no idea what to get for jewelry!" so we all went into the Schössle-Gallerie and tried on sunglasses. Then I accidentally pushed Lukas Leonhard into the sharp corner of a banister and was promptly hi-fived by Aline and the other Lukas, which made me feel really happy and German. We were so, so late to our history class, so we took a route through Theodor Heuss Gymnasium and ran up four flights of stairs! It was so fun.

Then I had my Deutschkurs, which is so pathetic it crosses the line and becomes hilarious. I laugh through every class -- the others must think I am insane.

Now I'm back to feeling exhausted. Unfortunately I have a few gifts to wrap before tomorrow... but fortunately, it's almost Christmas break! I'm so ready to have a nice break from school now.

Fun with Mitch Benn

2008-12-17T17:57:00.001+01:00

I love this Smiths parody. I think I've been in my Smiths phase for four years now.

Two funny details that I forgot to add

2008-12-14T21:30:00.002+01:00

1. Seeing some American tourists in the Stuttgart Weihnachtsmarkt caused me to start laughing uncontrollably. They were three young guys wearing sweatshirts and baseball caps. Just hearing their nasally accents struck me as so funny. "I think this might be a better place to take a pitcher, cuz the sun's behind us..."

2. When we were in the Bahnhof, Alex started telling me (in English) that when he was little, he used to love to go look at the high-speed trains with his grandfather. He said, "We had some... some... minature trains. So it was really cool for me to see the big trains, because I had the... mino ones. my-no. No, mee-no. No! Mini!" Sonja and I started laughing, and he said sadly (in German), "You never say my-no?"

Weirdness continues

2008-12-14T18:16:00.003+01:00

Today I went to Stuttgart with my host family, which was interesting. It was the first time I'd been in the city center, so it was nice to see a little bit of the city and get a sense of the feel of it. First of all we went to a "brunch", which was a little awkward. At first I felt really happy and excited because it was in a pretty hotel and there was a huge salad bar (I never really appreciated them at home, but here they are my favorite!) but then I got snapped at by my host mother for eating with my hands (who eats a spring roll with a fork and knife? Who?) and I felt awful again and had to try really really hard not to cry.

Then afterwards we had a small discussion about our day. They were under the impression that I really wanted to go to the Weihnachtsmarkt in Stuttgart, but in truth I just wanted to go into the city center. Alex was suppposed to take me but he was complaining about it so much. He really didn't want to. Finally he gave in, so he and Sonja and I were dropped off nearby and walked to the market.

I took a lot of pictures, which eventually you will see. It was so crowded, but it was still lovely, very different from the markets in Pforzheim and Karlsruhe. I have decided that I very much prefer Karlsruhe to Stuttgart -- it has a much more cozy, old-fashioned style, with its narrow streets and the crowded Straßenbahn and the university. After a short walk and some Glühwein, we took the bus to my host grandmother's house and sung some Christmas Carols. Actually I kind of hummed. I had a song book with lyrics, but the others were sort of off-key, so it was impossible to join in. I did take a video, though, which I'll post once I have this irritating issue with my USB drive/camera cord/whatever thing figured out!!

Right now I feel really, really tired and my usual headache is coming back... I've had some kind of physical ailment literally since I got here, from digestion issues to shoulder and neck pain to headaches and sore feet. I'm wondering WHEN I will start feeling like a normal human being again instead of a robot. I am also feeling a little scared because I'm afraid I'm stuck like this -- I don't want to sleep through my entire exchange, because it's the only one I have. The other thing is that I'm beginning (probably belatedly) to really notice the effect of German immersion on my English, particulary my reading ability, and it's freaking me out. Right now I really feel like I "speak no language," and even though I know this is a normal part of the process and it will get better, right now I feel really lost without the language-related pleasure that I normally experience: reading, writing, words.

So. In conclusion, I'm sorry about this complaining. I know I'm lucky to have this experience, and I hope that it will be a good one in the end. But I also think it's better to let you know what I'm really feeling instead of posting something artificial, or not posting at all.

My week

2008-12-12T16:13:00.002+01:00

I had a weird week. Actually, I've had a weird couple weeks -- ever since Thanksgiving I've been feeling a little down.

I thought everything was getting better, but now I'm back in my awful slump. I know after three months everything is supposed to suddenly click into place, but it's not happening. I'm tired of the people in my host family yelling at each other, and I'm tired of listening to them talk about money. I'm tired of people knowing I'm foreign as soon as I utter one word (or sometimes even before!) I want a sweet potato sandwich and some guacomole, and yesterday my host mother told me I am not allowed to eat with my hands. (Today on the bus I was reminising about all the things I like to eat at home... tea with soymilk and vegetable soup and grilled sandwiches, which they don't seem to have here...)

I feel really awful today.

Christmas

2008-12-09T22:22:00.003+01:00

(Image courtesy of someone else, due to the fact that there's probably something wrong with the cord that connects my camera to the computer.)

Despite the huge amount of Christmas here (demonstrated by the picture above of the Schlössle-Galerie all decked out for Christmas, and of course the Weihnachtsmärke), I feel like I'm kind of skipping over it this year. I have yet to bake any cookies, I have not learned any Christmas songs on the piano or recorder, and I haven't listened to any Christmas music, since I don't have Sufjan Stevens CDs here, and nothing tops his rendition of "Lo How a Rose E'er Blooming"!

I sang a little with Martha at the AFS Christmas party. It made Regina really happy because she loves hearing me sing, which I think is sweet. She told me a few weeks ago that I should sing more because Katharina sings all the time, which made me feel kind of bad. The Christmas party wasn't so much fun -- I felt kind of lonely and I was really exhausted for some reason. Sometimes I feel a little lonely when I am with all the exchange students together, because they are already very close and I feel a little left out. However, I did manage to get a video of a short segment of Nicola's Special Christmas Story, which is coming soon to this blog... I hope. My USB/Camera issues make me SO FRUSTRATED; luckily, there's still the trusty DM camera machine, where I can easily buy printed photos whenever I feel like it.

Yesterday I felt really sad, but the day ended on a good note: the Mexican exchange student in my Deutschkurs asked me to edit something he'd written for his English class, and it turned out to be about eighteen severed heads that were found in Tijuana! Plus, it contained the most adorable and hilarious grammar I've ever seen. I wanted to take a photo of it with my blue pen marks all over the paper, but I was worried he might be offended, so I didn't (probably wisely.)

Regina is in Freiberg (and they have snow... awwwww) and Hans-Peter worked late tonight, and Sonja is sick, so I had a nice evening with Alex. I made Maultaschen and Alex and I talked a lot about exchange. He would like to go to America in two years for a university exchange. It was great getting to talk to him today because I don't ususally get the chance to! He's really busy, but I enjoy talking to him because he understands a lot about how I feel as an exchange student, and I also feel more comfortable mentioning my problems with specifically life in my family with him sometimes, rather than with my host parents.

WikiHow

2008-12-09T22:05:00.001+01:00

I'll need this one.

Speaking of trying to blend in, I bought a purse today at H&M. It was €16 and it's pretty neutral -- gray, not hideous. Goodbye, huge bulky backpack! I'm choosing the popular purse, slung over the shoulder, and big binder carried in the hand. We'll see if I get fewer stares on the bus tomorrow.

How's It Gonna End?

2008-12-06T23:24:00.004+01:00

I have an iPod shuffle that hasn't yet run out of batteries, with 50-100 songs from home on it. One of them happens to be "How's It Gonna End" by Tom Waits, and I feel blessed that this is so, because that song is completely ingenious. Even though it's obnoxious, since all of you probably want to hear about Germany and not some song that's you've heard a million times, I'm going to post the lyrics:

He had 3 whole dollars
A worn out car
And a wife who was
Leaving for good
Life's made of trouble
Worry, pain and struggle
She wrote good bye in
The dust on the hood
They found a a map of Missouri
Lipstick on the glass
They must have left
In the middle of the night

And I want to know
The same thing
Everyone wants to know:
How's it going to end?

Behind a smoke colored curtain
The girl disappeared
They found out
The ring was a fake
A tree born crooked
Will never grow straight
She sunk like a hammer
Into the lake
A long lost letter and
And old leaky boat
Promises are never meant
To keep

And I want to know
The same thing
Everyone wants to know:
How's it going to end?

The barn leaned over
The vultures dried their wings
The moon climbed up an empty sky
The sun sank down behind the tree
On the hill
There's a killer and he's coming
Through the rye
But maybe he's the father
Of that lost little girl
It's hard to tell in this light

And I want to know
The same thing
Everyone wants to know:
How's it going to end?

Drag your wagon and your plow
Over the bones of the dead
Out among the roses and the weeds
You can never go back
And the answer is no
And wishing for it only
Makes it bleed

Joel Tornabene was broken
On the wheel
Shane and Bum Mahoney on the lamb
The grain was as gold
As Sheila's hair
All the way from Liverpool
With all we could steal
He was robbed of twenty dollars
His body found stripped
Cast into the harbour
There and drowned

And I want to know
The same thing
Everyone wants to know:
How it going to end?

The sirens are snaking
Their way up the hill
It's last call somewhere in
The world
The reptiles blend in with the
Color of the street
Life is sweet at the edge
Of a razor
And down in the front row of
An old picture show
The old man is asleep
As the credits start to roll

And I want to know
The same thing
Everyone wants to know:
How's it going to end?

"Behind a smoke-colored curtain, the girl disappeared, they found out the ring was a fake" = ingenious. I love how carefully-arranged this song is; I know I say this a lot, but everything is perfectly spaced here. I think it's also a perfect example of images making a song. This song is only brief images, but they're so perfectly crafted, we feel like we're getting a whole story. And like a lot of Tom Waits songs (in my experience) we're completely drawn in -- I feel like I am part of this criminal movie or whatever it is, I'm in that dark alley.

Three months

2008-12-05T23:46:00.002+01:00

After hearing a million times that three months into your exchange is supposed to be some huge turning point, I'm left feeling mildly disppointed. And a little defective, honestly.

Some aspects of my life after three months here:

Sprache: I am disappointed with my German. I can get the jist of almost everything said in normal conversation, but in my classes, I'm lost about 85-90% of the time. My speaking skills leave something to be desired. I suspect this is because although I speak almost entirely German, I read and write a lot of English. I rely on my journal a lot, to express all the quirky thoughts and ideas that I can't share with anyone because of my language skills. I've tried writing in German, and I write a little in German almost every day, but it's mostly in English and that needs to change! And reading really relaxes me. I'm basically at the level of a five-year-old reading-wise. Oh yeah, and I can read religious gift books too. But I am really addicted to my books here, and I can't imagine reading only in German since it frustrates me a lot.

Akkordeon: The accordion is hard, really hard. I never realized it was so difficult -- I have a little toy one at home and I didn't know the real ones were so big. Well, they are big, and really, really heavy. You can't see any of the keys on the left side of the accordion, which you use to make chords, and all of them feel the same except for the C and one other, so it's so, so hard to figure out which is which. It takes me about 10 seconds to find the C, actually! Also it's hard to control the volume; I always start out normal, then get quieter as the air runs out, then get so loud as I start going the opposite direction! I also constantly run out of air at awkward times and need to take 2-pauses to figure out what I'm doing. But the good news is, I have real accordion lessons now, and a kelly-green accordion to take home with me! I'm hoping to get really good by the end of the year; then I can impress everyone with my sweet accordion skills at school meeting.

Sterne: Tonight I got really tired while marching up the hill to my house. Earlier, I was in school until one, then had Thai food at the Thai restaurant Tang found (€4 lunch) and drank a heiße Schokolade at Cafe Mokka whilst wating for the train. I took the train to Karlsruhe, spent a couple hours feeling really awkward and non-profficient in German while sort of baking chocolate bread, and then bought a phone card. (I shouldn't, I know, but I bought it at the Asian goods store for €5 and you get 350 minutes, which is ridiculous. I had to get it!) I also got a Thai ice tea, which brought me back to meeting for "good conversation" with Kayla on Congress Street. It brought back memories for Tang, too. When we were sitting on the train to Kleinsteinbach/Pforzheim, she told me, "When you talk to me, I can smell your breath, and it's like Thailand!" Oh yes, also I am already planning to visit her in Chiang Mai/wherever she's living the year after next.

I ate a sandwich at Subway. I am so sorry. I was hungry and there were scary teenagers standing outside my Kebap/falafel place, and I went in and the woman working was so nice to me! While I was buying it all I thought about was how much money that company probably gives to the Republican party. I don't think I'll ever be a normal teenager. Still, the sandwich wasn't bad.

I had to wait an hour and a half for the bus. And then, a 15-minute walk uphill. I stopped and turned around and admired the stars. It was a hermit-and-the-well moment (for those who have read "A Pebble for Your Pocket" by Thich Naht Hahn -- look into it, Mr. Murray). It was so beautiful, there are so many stars in my little village, and I felt really happy and serene. Orion was right in front of me, and from there I thought back to my astronomy class, from back when I was a lil' homeschooler, and I tried to remember other things. Unfortunately, I failed. I identified the vague area of Taurus, but which stars were involved, I had no idea. I felt proud of myself when I finally identified the Pleites (sp?). But the sky was so big, and so many things I couldn't name... I remembered (predictably) the scene in "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" on the ice, when Clementine says, "Show me which ones you know..." That scene makes me tear up every time, or it would, if I were the sort of person who teared up during movies. I think the only movies to make me cry were "Capote" (as soon as the credits started rolling) and "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," when the dad is crying on the phone. Books get me much more easily.

Schule: Still not so fun. I feel really awkward in my classes, and bad that I can do so little of the work. My German teacher wants me to write the test next week, and I don't see how that's possible since I've read only one page of the book! I'm no longer taking chemistry -- instead, I'm helping out with a 7th grade English class. I'm not sure exactly what I'll be doing yet, but I think it's good -- no chemistry!

Familie: In all politeness, I am ready to have some people to hang out with outside my family. Sometimes I get irritated with life here, as much as I tell myself how welcoming they are, and how much they've done for me, and how easy I have it. It's still hard for me to get used to their family life. Everything works really differently from my house and sometimes it drives me a little crazy.

Müller: Müller is a big store in the Schlössle-Gallerie where you can get anything you'd ever need. Upstairs they have lots of food and shampoo and soap and toiletrie-type things, and perfume, etc, and downstairs they have toys and electronics. I go there a lot, just to look around -- today I wandered into the board game section and I was amazed! There are so many wonderful board game options! And SCRABBLE in GERMAN! (Unfortunately they had no Apples to Apples-equivalent -- I think something like that would be wonderful for learning new words.) I am ready to spend many euros on board games now. Too bad no one in my family plays them!

Tomorrow I am going to sing in a little singing group with Alisa and then go to the AFS Christmas party. Christmas here is crazy! It's really great! I'll have to post some pictures soon, of the Weihnachtsmarkt, the tree in my school, the Schlössle-Gallerie and other things!

Ethik Arbeit

2008-11-27T23:13:00.004+01:00

I have to take Ethics twice a week. It's supposed to be all religion-neutral, but in my opinion it's not. Our classroom is big with blank walls and a stylish chalkboard like all the other classrooms in our school. The window looks out on the Synagogue Pforzheim. Every morning the teacher wishes us a lovely good morning, and we say good morning back. Then he scolds us on how lame our "good morning" was and we all shout, "GUTEN MORGEN!" This quality in a person always irritates me a little, but I am still pretty fond of the ethics teacher. He brings out a big, industrial-looking bucket full of Bibles, and we need to read certain passages and discuss something. He writes on the board in illegible handwriting and I copy Aline's notes. Then I go home and attempt to translate them into English and learn charming phrases like "Opfer Christi für die Sünder der Welt" (Christ's sacrifice for the sin of the world.)

Today we had a big test in Ethik -- let's just say my knowledge of Christian Ethics makes me look like a jazz historian. He didn't even give me a test to write, and when I meekly said, "Er, entschuldigen Sie?" he didn't hear me. Sonya and Verena had to kind of shout in unison and then he handed me one. In the first section we had to write who Constantine was. I wrote an extremely charming, historically correct "Constantine was a king of Rome. He became king and then the Jews must to go out of the great city." I don't even know if that's true, I might be mixing him up with other antisemitic Roman kings.

Next I skipped some things, and anncounced that the Lamb symbolizes "Innocense and purity," the fish "the start and Jesus Christ." I next had to describe the differences between Catholicism and Evangelicism. I wrote, "In Catholicism the church is more necessary. In Evenagelicism it is also necessary, but not so very. In Catholicism it is a political power" (but I used the word like "magic power") "and it makes one's belief. Mary Mother of Christ is not so necessary in Evangelicism. She is the mother of Jesus and a good woman, but in Catholicism she is totally necessary. In Evangelicism there is no pope, and no defined ceremony to become a priest. In Catholicism there's a really defined ceremony with necessary words, and it's all especially necessary and defined."

Next came a poem we had to interpret. I wrote, "I'm sorry. It will take me maybe two hours to read that poem, so I can't do this!"

And, the "give your opinion": How do people use Christian ethics in their day-to-day lives? What do you think about these rules? I wrote: "I believe that for many people a God is good in that to believe. It gives them order and peace in the world. They know someone watches them and they can know they are a good person. Then they are good. They like to know what is good and don't have to deicde alone. So Christian ethics can be good for them. For people middle in America it is sometimes like this. Sometimes it is harder if you don't believe in a God because you need to decide without a God who says." (I had to throw that in there, maybe next time he quizzes us on our religious beliefs he'll offer "atheist" as an option!) "I find the Christian ethics sometimes too strong. We need to understand that they are from another time and understand them for today. Sometimes people don't understand this and think they are too defined."

So, maybe the ethics teacher (his name is Herr Häfner, which I think is funny even though it's a completely everyday name) will get a good laugh. Or maybe he'll think, "This girl's an idiot." We'll see.

The most adorable cake ever

2008-11-26T21:45:00.002+01:00

How to make better coffee in a hotel room

2008-11-25T15:40:00.003+01:00

I don't know exactly why, but this pleases me.

Heidelberg

2008-11-22T23:15:00.011+01:00

I know this is really belated, but I wanted to post a couple photos since they are beautiful (if I do say so myself!)

On Halloween, I planned a little trip to Heidelberg for four people. My plans were pretty self-centered, excluding the Schloss, but including a variety of vegetarian restaurant choices, a medical museum, and a 45-minute walk uphill on a road called "Philosophenweg" where Goethe and Schiller and Heidegger and other famous guys used to hang. (Although not all at the same time.) Unfortunately two of them decided not to come, after I'd bought the tickets... but instead of considering it a disaster, I went cheerfully to Heidelberg with just Tang, and we had a really nice time. I love Heidelberg despite how touristy it is -- I find it absolutely beautiful.

Picturesque view of the city by the river.

Here I am! Yes, I am significantly chubbier, but I think that's pretty much to be expected.

Käse

2008-11-20T22:28:00.004+01:00

"If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things." -- Descartes

I almost feel bad about including this quote on my blog. It's cliche -- it's like, "Obviously there's a quote involved here." But when I read this quote a little over a month ago, something clicked into place, and I knew everything would be okay. I thought, OK, I can do this. I can cope with this weird burst of self-loss, which is really the biggest roadblock here. Not the people, the city, the loneliness, food, whatever. It's me, because I really believe (perhaps absurdly) that I can change everything with a simple change of attitude. And lately I have been thinking, "What's going on here? Why are you so shy? Why won't you take every opportunity that comes your way? WHY AREN'T YOU HAVING A LIFE-CHANGING EXPERIENCE YET? Who is this person I'm suddenly stuck with here?"

Speaking of life-changing experiences and all, I recently read Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. I enjoyed it despite its God-yness, but I am very skeptical; I think she made some of it up. If there is anyone on this planet (including you, Elizabeth Gilbert) who has had such a predictably meaningful experience, I would like to hear all about it. I don't believe such a person can exist. I don't believe anyone can just say, "I'm having a meaningful experience now! Here I go, to Italy and India and Indonisia, having a meaningful experience!" For me, the small amount of meaningfulness hits me when I least expect it, like yesterday when I was being bombarded with gifts and songs, as a small example. I suddenly realized that I am welcome here, totally out of nowhere. And even here in Germany, I expected to come back a CHANGED PERSON and right now I think I am just floating a little. I am inevitably going to change a little, but it will never be what I expect. And that's why I am skeptical of any example of someone planning it out: "first I am going to learn this, then this, then this." I don't think it happens like that, at least not for me.

I apologize for this "Käse" (the cheesiness.) Yes, that's an expression in German too! Also at the risk of sounding completely egotistical, I have realized that I do learn languages particularly fast. When I started my Deutschkurs a month ago (in Pforzheim), the others were all better in German and the work was really hard. Now I am way ahead of them, considerably so.

Still really sore... I don't know why going to Germany has given me constant muscle pain. But my yoga class helps, I wish I had it every day!

Oh yes, also the girl at Cafe Mokka spoke to me today and also handed me my yoga mat. I love it when people are nice not just out of obligation.

Birthday!

2008-11-20T21:37:00.003+01:00

No offense to those at home, but this was probably the most wonderful birthday I have ever had.

My morning was normal, except for the addition of colorful paper napkins and a pretty candle to my breakfast table. I ate some strawberry müsli and ran to my bus. On the way to school I stopped to buy a stamp, and the stamp maschine ate my euro. I was pretty exhausted, as usual, and I went straight to my first class of the day, Deutsch. I entered the room and was immediately shoved outside again by a girl named Martina, who said (in English), "No, you must wait here now." So I waited for a couple minutes and then about ten kids LINED UP to hug me and say "Alles gute zum Gerburtstag"! I was basically in shock -- after all, I have only known these girls for a month, and usually I don't even interact with them except to offer such insights as "Today it is cold in the school!" and "In America the teachers are sometimes more nice, and not so strong." I went into the room and at my seat was a big homemade cake with candles, some cards, and some chocolate. I sat down, and a whole other wave of kids approached me and each person handed me a gift. Yes, I'm serious. I got chocolate bars and cookies and gingerbread and a book and lotion and soap and a pretty box -- AND a whole other homemade cake! (On it it says: "Alles gute zum Geburstag, für Zoe, von Pauli, Soni und Vere." Adorable!)

After the gift-giving was done, the class broke into song. It was a German song, and not "Happy Birthday", either. This song didn't just wish me happiness, it wished me friendship and kindness and love and hard work and all these other totally inexpresivably abstract things that made it so incredibly awesome. And they sang in a ROUND, and 80% of my class is in the chorus and they can all really sing. I laughed like an idiot. The Deutschlehrer looked a little aghast at this huge disruption, but he offered me "congratulations" and shook my hand. And let us eat cake before turning back to Mutter Courage und Ihre Kinder, which I have pretty much given up on.

In each class, someone informed the teacher it was my birthday, and I was sung to again. In French Frau Egge, smiling menacingly (like always) said in German, "I need two men, and they must be very strong, but also careful." Then the two Lukases in my class lifted my chair into the air (without telling me!) while the class sang "Something something something... und DREI MAL HOCH!" Oh my God, it was surreal. Getting all the gifts home was quite a production!

Then I had tons of cake and coffee with Regina and Hans-Peter and opened my presents. I got so many wonderful things, and it was so much fun to have all these packages to open. Aline (from my school) wrote me a really nice note about how happy she is I have come to Germany and she hopes I like the school and she would like to get to know me better; it was so sweet. I got many, many books. I started to tear up after reading the letter from Mana, and once I got to David Meiklejohn's letter I was crying pretty steadily... I was never such a crier before this year. Seriously. All it takes is the sentence "As you grow older, you will see a lot of people start to lose touch with themselves and their dreams" and I start bawling.

The gift opening took a while. The A.P.C. jeans still fit, even after two months of sugar and dairy products! Then we went to Karlsruhe and had Indian food with Alex and Sonja. I can open a menu and immediately know what everything is and how it will taste!! I mean, Navrattan Korma is basically always good! All my favorite comfort food... unfortunately I was SO full from the cake, and I didn't have much of an appetite even for Indian food.

So that was my birthday (roughly.) I had a really lovely day... tomorrow I will have a small party with the other exchange students in Karlsruhe. Should be fun, I think.

Today

2008-11-18T21:57:00.003+01:00

So. Tomorrow is my birthday. I am not sure I am ready to be 16 yet, personally, but I accept it as it can't really be helped. I got a stack of letters in the mail today -- one from Pop, one from Mana, one from Ribby and one from Jason, which I've added to my pile of boxes and envelopes! Seriously, thanks so much. It makes me feel so happy to get packages in the mail, and so loved.

Today I had a rather funny day at school. I knitted basically all day, which was good because if I have nothing to do, I feel really awkward sitting with the other students and having nothing to say to them. I thought I would be so good at this (I CAN be social when I try really hard!) but I have no talent for making conversations with non-English speaking teenagers.

We had P.E. today, which really, really sucks. The teacher is getting more and more annoyed with me as time goes on, which makes me feel really bad because it's not like I'm terrible at everything on purpose! We have been working these past few weeks on throwing a 4-kilo ball. Some of the other girls can throw it eight meters or something, in one loose, graceful motion. I always end up throwing it straight down instead of out, where it bounces a little and then kind of thumps a horrible defeated thump in the middle of the squishy, royal blue mat. I think (although I didn't really understand the explanation, I could be mistaken) that next week we have to throw the ball 6 meters or else we get a six. I'm kind of counting on the six.

In music class, we are studying "Programm-Musik." I only sort of halfway know what this is, after two weeks of study. Every day we begin our class with these ridiculous salmon-colored textbooks titled "Sound Check 10!" (Yes, with exclamation point.) On the cover are some healthy, active-looking German teens giving the photographer a thumbs-up. We then sing from a variety of "Lieder" -- there are maybe 25 different songs in the book, but the music teacher usually picks from some of his favorites. These are, more or less:

Tonight (West Side Story)
Killing Me Softly
Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
Blowin' in the Wind
Eternal Flame
Dona, Dona

...and so on. You get the idea -- "classic," English-language, and the like. I always cross my fingers for "Knockin' On Heaven's Door" (page 74!) but unfortunately my prayers are not often answered. Another that I enjoy is "Neunundneunzig Luftballons," but I can't sing that fast in German! And it's confusing because I know all the words to that song in English!

Then we begin listening to "Pictures in an Exhibition," and we read along in these old-fashioned bright yellow books with the orchestrated verson AND the Klavier! And it's pretty awesome because we listen to all of the pieces over and over again, and I think I've heard them all by now. I always wonder what the image of "Gnomus" looks like, because the tune is so scary. What's up with that gnome? Then the teacher lectures and I copy the notes of a girl who sits next to me, named Corina. And I don't understand a single thing I'm writing down.

After school I went to Cafe Mokka. I had about 45 minutes before meeting Tang's train from Kleinsteinbach, so I got myself an expensive Rooibusch Latte for a last-day-ever-of-being-15 Geschänk. She was a little early, so she called my cell phone and I gave her directions to the cafe. We were hungry, and she was wondering if there was a Thai restaurant in Pforzheim. I didn't think so, but she asked the guy at the cafe anyway, and it turns out there was one right down the street! Tang is never, ever shy about asking people things, and 75% of the time it seems to really pay off. I would never think to ask if there's a Thai restaurant around, or expect any definitive answer, but it worked out.

We shared some really, really spicy Thai curry. It was so spicy it made me sweat, literally, but it was really good. Then Tang showed me this cool machine in a convenience store where you can put in your camera card and buy photo prints for 40 cents each. And they print immediately! I didn't even realize such a thing existed. So now I have a nice print she gave me of us in Heidelberg.

Speaking of photos, my USB drive is still not functioning... I really need to ask for help, I think.

Tschüs,
Zoe

Practicum

2008-11-13T22:06:00.002+01:00

Sorry, I really don't know how to spell that.

So, today I borke the news to my host family that I'm planning on becoming a philosophy professor "von Beruf." I say "broke the news" because sometimes I feel a little like a tiresome deadbeat on society among all these future doctors and diplomats. (Two terribly practical professors that are really, really valuable in this modern age.) Before, when asked what I was planning on doing in the future I either said "I don't know yet" or "mumble mumble mumble professor of some kind." Yes, I know that's ridiculous, and I know I should be who I am and realize that philosophy can be very practical, and plus it makes me feel alive. And you that ol' saying, that the world needs people who feel alive? But still, I just feel a little umcomfortable with it; I feel a little what-am-i-doing guilt.

It came up because I have to make a Practicum. This is a week-long job shadow in February or March, and it's pretty important. My host family asked me what I wanted to do, and I said I wanted to be a professor.

"For what? For literature?"

"Um, yes."

They discussed options for a while (it looks like I'm going to be calling up the Pforzheimer Zeitung) and then asked some more clarifying questions. "For Shakespeare?" (I ranted for a while about my deep, everlasting love for Hamlet sometime during my first week here, I think.) "Or philosophy?"

"Philosophy," I said. "I will become a professor for philosophy."

They reacted not with the expected "What the hell are you doing with your life?" but with absolute enthusiasm and glee, and many stories about times both of them dabbled in philosophy. I was presented with a huge stack of books from the 70s set in beautiful fonts, which I probably won't be able to read for about five years (that's just a slight exaggeration.) With titles like "Existenzphilosophie." And Regina and I had a lovely conversation about Sophie's World, which she too has read! Anyway, they are both totally excited about my profession.

It's funny -- despite how different my host parents are from my real ones, these times come up when they remind me so, so much of my dad. And then I realize that despite how annoyed we sometimes get with each other, they really love me and I am really in the right place here.

Some words about school

2008-11-13T20:16:00.002+01:00

First of all, I'm really sorry I haven't been writing more. I'd hoped to wait to update with some amazing photographs of Heidelberg and Regina with Davy Rothbart, but alas, there's something wrong with my (external! weird!) USB drive. So those will have to wait.

Second of all, thank you thank you thank you to all of you who sent me a package/letter. I love you all so much. My host family is mildly disturbed by my abundance of birthday packages (which I'm waiting to open!) as I don't think birthday gifts are as common here in Germany, at least for adults. I'm also really sorry about not writing back, for those who I have yet to write to. I promise that you will recieve a letter from me really soon.

And now, to school: I have a math test tomorrow that I am undoubtedly going to fail, despite all of Alex's help. I honestly have not understood anything the teacher has written on the board for the past four weeks. I am also too scared to ask him (or warn him about my failing) because I am absolutely terrified of him. He yells at us, "You learned this in the 8th class! YOU LEARNED THIS IN THE 8TH CLASS! This is NO Hauptschule!!" He is so scary!

I have another test on Tuesday, in history, that I will also undoubtedly fail. That teacher scares me a little also, but Alex promises he's a nice guy, so I think I will approach him and warn him beforehand. I expect a comment about "those Americans," since he likes to tease me about being American in the class... Often the other students have to translate his remarks for me.

I am incredibly sore from Sport class on Tuesday. I played volleyball for the first time in my life, and I find that I am almost unbelievably terrible at it -- worse at it than I am at soccer, or football, or softball. But, I am so sincere about volleyball, and I try SO FRIGGIN' HARD. I jump up and wave my hands about spastically whenever the ball comes my way. When I miss it, I race after it as fast as possible, throw it up, and proceed to try four or five times before getting it over the net. I run to wherever the ball is, then hit it down instead of up, and then try four or five more times to "serve." Within ten minutes I am drenched in sweat, and most of the other girls play well and appropriately without moving more than a few feet at a time. The teacher often "takes me aside" to lecture me on my terrible, terrible volleyball style. But I really hope she notices how much I put into these pathetic volleyball games.

Today I answered a few questions (rather gingerly) in French. My French teacher is a psychopath. Then is biology, I answered five or so times!! I totally understand the entire class -- I have never felt this good at biology in my life.

You can probably tell from my tone that I am in a good mood. However, it is still really up-and-down: today was one of those days when I woke up crying just because I was dreaming about home, thourough enjoyed the bus ride (it's really pretty because the little villages are all lit up in the dark mornings), spent the whole day in a kind of tired trance, then spent the afernoon feeling absolutely miserable and trying to convince myself not to call Alisa and complain to her again, then had a really funny Deutschkurs and a nice drive home... and now I am completely happy.

The only thing really distressing me at the moment is just feeling not-so-good about my German ability -- and my lack of friends. Right now I feel like I will never find a place here! Today I went to Cafe Mokka for a tea, and it was really nice because they have amazing tea (although don't ask for milk, that's not culturally acceptable.) It was empty except for this irritating couple, and when it got dark the woman working there put this beautiful big candle on my table and it was so nice and cozy! It was like Christmas. Still, I was feeling sad because in my head I kept going over everything I'd accomplished here in Germany and everything I want to accomplish, and I felt like absolutely nothing has changed since I got here. I'm just as homesick, just as friendless, I feel just as awkward (sometimes) with my host family, and my Deutsch isn't much better. I also feel really bad because one day I'll be really talkative and comfortable, the next I'll cry literally all day long, and I think it really upsets Regina. She really wants me to be happy and it confuses her when I appear to be so happy one minute and so sad the next. Still, I'm trying to go easy on myself -- I really haven't been here that long, and I have a lot of time to figure this Germany thing out.

Oh yes, more about school -- my novelty has worn off. At first, the others found me so interesting, and wanted to talk to me all the time and sit next to me. Now, nobody talks to me, not even Aline and Karoline (who are so nice). Often I am asked about English homework, but other than that, I'm a little ignored. Still, I'm not completely sad about this because I KNOW that even if I were to leave tomorrow, I would keep in touch with my family, Alisa, Tang, Martha, and Chiara. And even though we don't have a lot in common at times, those relationships will just keep getting stronger, and I trust that by the end of the year I will have made some real friends.

Also I think I am going to have a birthday party. I am so excited about this, it's like I am suddenly seven years old. I often feel seven years old here -- I suddenly remember how frustrating it was to be that age and never be taken seriously. More later.

Clarifying

2008-10-27T17:26:00.002+01:00

By "inappropriately horrible attitude," I meant that I am still feeling homesick and this is hindering my adjustment a little. The main thing is that I'm still comparing EVERYTHING to home, all the time. I know that sounds like something I can immediately fix, but it's hard. I've talked to Alisa, my liason, about it, and she assured me that it's a completely normal way to feel, and also, it's good that I've at least noticed I'm doing it, because in her experience people often sink into despair without identifying the cause.

Here's a picture of Alisa, a truly awesome person:

Heute

2008-10-27T17:07:00.003+01:00

First, a picture of my new fountain pen (bought last Wednesday):

Here, it is quite common for kids to use fountain pens for school, and they're very modern, cool-looking fountain pens, too. This one is so unbelievably awesome, I use it every day.

Today I went to a Schwimbad in a town near Baden-Baden with our neighbors, Frau and Herr Lieber. It was quite nice, like a giant, swimming pool-sized hot tub. There were water jets along the walls, and many fountains and whirlpools and water current things in the center. Every single person there was probably over 50. It was so, so funny, but felt really nice -- it's a thermal pool, so the water is naturally warm. It was actually raining too, which I loved, even though Frau Lieber made me wear this horrible swim cap.

Afterwards we had a lovely lunch; I had salad with rotkraut and then vegetable Maltaschen (which are like ravioli, only bigger and with spinach and mashed potato and usually meat) in alfredo sauce. Then, green tea. Then, we went on a drive through the Black Forest and then to Pforzheim. We went on a lovely, scenic drive through Pforzheim (sarcasm intended), and then to an accordion store owned by a friend of Herr Lieber. It turns out that he has about 15 accordions of his own, and he will let me play one sometime. Isn't that awesome?

The day before yesterday, I spent the day with Tang in Pforzheim. It was really, really funny for me because she had never been there before, and she LOVES it. She kept saying, "I love it here because it is SO much cheaper than Karlsruhe!" She is very frugal, but she bought tons of things -- clothes and shoes and shampoo and makeup. I said, "I don't like Pforzheim because it isn't pretty." She said, "I LOVE Pforzheim. It is pretty!" This was not even by the river. This was by the Hauptbahnhof. Isn't that interesting? Maybe it does depend on how one looks at it after all. Anyway, Tang's absurdly good attitude Saturday combined with a decent falafel sandwich for lunch made me a little more eager to give Pforzheim a chance.

Of course, all of this dialogue was in German. When I am with Tang, we speak nur Deutsch, which is one of my favorite things about spending time with her. We even watched Freaky Friday (the one with Lindsay Lohan, unfortunately) in German.

In other events, I am SO EXCITED to see Davy Rothbart in Stuttgart next week!! Plus I have a vegetarian dinner in Mühlacker to look forward to, so while I've still got this completely inappropriately horrible attitude, things are looking up.

A little story

2008-10-22T16:38:00.003+02:00

Today was our first big test of the year, in Music class. Let me tell you: my first day of music class, all we did was sing little songs from a songbook about peace and Jesus. I thought, this is so awesome! This is like being ten years old again and playing the steel drums or autoharp or whatever. Well, music class is actually very, very difficult. I would say it is my second-hardest class, after chemistry. OK, and physics. In physics I literally understand nothing, nothing at all. It's probably even harder than math, or would be if I weren't such a dunce in math.

Anyway, we had a big test on jazz history, and jazz chords. I'd hoped that I'd at least be able to write a couple questions on the test, but that was optimistic -- I understood nothing. The music teacher came up to me, and I sad pathetically, "Ich kann das nicht." We looked at the paper, and then we looked at each other and laughed and laughed. "Continue to laugh!" he said in German. "You can just sit here laughing instead of writing the test! Tell me everything you know about jazz. You're American, you must know something." Miraculously, I understood everything he'd just said, but the satisfaction that comes with that is fleeting. Actually, it disappears in under a second -- as soon as I realize that there's no way I can convey that I understood everything, because I can't speak German! This is especially difficult when I'm talking to someone who speaks NO English (my music teacher.)

"Ich kann das nicht," I said sadly. "Ich kenne Jazz nicht." The music teacher just laughed at me. "Du bist americanisch!" he said again. Then he turned around to face the class and announced (in German, obviously,) "She's American, and she doesn't know anything about jazz! No wonder they say nobody learns anything in America." (Or something to that effect, I don't know exactly.) Everyone in the class started laughing at me.

"Country?" he suggested. "Kennst du Country? Just tell me what you know."

Well, that's pretty broad, I thought. That's okay. I started out by writing (in German), "Because I know nothing of jazz, and just a bit of country, I'm telling you all I know of the Beatles, and what I didn't forget."

I went on to schreib as much as I could, using such ingenious lines as, "Now the Beatles were in Beatlemania. They were beloved. One didn't hear in their concerts, because the crowd was too loud" and "In the next years, the Beatles had many changes. George Harrison was married. John Lennon divorced with his wife Cynthia. In 1966 John Lennon and Bob Dylan met together. Bob Dylan gave him marijuana. With the new drug was coming a new music style."

Then I finished (rather abruptly, after a brief description of Ravi Shankar -- "He was called the Sitar master and from him learned George Harrison Indian music") by writing, "Today the Beatles are still an influence. Like Daniel Johnston. Daniel Johnston is a beloved influence in 'outsider art.' He had mental illness. When he was young he loved the Beatles, and could with them identify." I included the lyrics of "The Beatles" to illustrate my point. (Ha ha.)

So we'll see how I do on the "test." I'm hoping for a five, personally (second-worst), or even an "ungradable." We'll see.

Second week of school, more aches and pains

2008-10-21T17:31:00.002+02:00

Today was the second day of the second week of Gymnasium. So far these two days have been better for me overall, mostly because I'm getting used to the dynamics there, I think. It is still (obviously) extremely difficult for me to follow the classes, even the simpler ones. Everyone is still very nice and helpful, but it's clear that all the kids are very close and I feel a little like an outsider. Also, sometimes I feel bad struggling with German when they all speak English so well, and sometimes they have the understandable attitude of "Why can't we just translate for you, it would make everything so much simpler?".

I am so emotional, all the time -- I have to hold back tears every time the smallest detail reminds me of home. For example, on Thursday or Friday, we had to write imaginary letters for French class. This girl named Anette, who takes Latin, was reading one, trying to decifer it. It reminded me of the good ol' days when we would all eat lunch outside and talk about how annoyed we were with French class (probably within earshot of M. Troyan), and Rafa would read our Franco-American-themed paragraphs. And there was always a group of people playing Frisbee or strumming guitars or something, and it made me so, so sad to be at school and not elsewhere. Like the song says, "PATHS kids at the window/Laughing off their ass/At the scary hippie kids/Strummin' on the grass." Or whatever the song (written by our very own Mark and Mama D) says -- all that sticks in my mind is the ingenius first line: "We're high school freshmen parents, and we don't take no shit. It's a freaky hippie high school and we're down with it."

The main issues for me yesterday and today were simply exhaustion. I hate to complain, but here I am absolutely exhausted 90% of the time, mostly because of the language, but also because I have not been getting enough sleep lately. That and the fact that I am very achy; I still have weird stomach pains, plus weirdly achy muscles in my chest, and shoulder/back things partially from carrying a huge backpack each day. It's really strange for me, and it feels a little unfair that I'm getting hit with this stuff all at once! I've tried stretches, but it only provides temporary relief, and breathing deeply only makes it hurt worse. My mom and Mana insist it's probably the stress, which I think is true, but I am so paranoid about weird symptoms, I can never forget about it, which probably intensifies the problem if it is indeed stress.

I went to a cafe in Pforzheim today, and it was a little weird, but not a bad cup of coffee. I wanted to take a picture to document the experience, but I didn't have my camera with me! Next time, of course. Also, I'm going to make a map of some kind illustrating all the places I've been in Pforzheim to look at when I feel like I am in the middle of nowhere.

Next week is school vacation, yay! I have no plans, since Hans-Peter and Regina must work, but I'm going to try to organize a trip or something with other AFS students, or maybe go on my own. We'll see.

Katie's advice

2008-10-19T23:49:00.002+02:00

Do you all know about Cultures Shocked forum? If you are a current exchange student or just curious, check it out -- it has been so helpful to be throughout this process!

I recently posted on it about my homesickness, and worries that after over a month I should be "adapted" already. Katie, another CBYX student, posted this great response that I thought you guys might enjoy. (Katie, if you are reading this, I hope it's ok with you.)

Hey, I'm on CBYX too. So I should know who you are, but I can't remember.

I'm Katie-- the girl with the short hair.

This promises to be epic:

I'm having a rough time too. I didn't think I would, and my host family is amazing. But I'm not in gymnasium yet and I haven't made any friends. I'm doing great with the language and everything, but sometimes I honestly feel like I'd be better off at home. Home where there's certainty and understanding and my family and friends.

I think I wasn't prepared for the enormous task of entering into a society where you don't speak their language. In the US, I have personality and am the top of my game-- here, I can't understand a lot and am just the exchange student. And it's little things-- like, I don't wear pants. And my host mum says that I need to wear pants because that's what German girls do. I feel like I'm being stripped of my culture. I never really realized I was American until I was in Germany. People stand closer than I'm used to and it makes me uncomfortable. I realize that I'd be so, amazingly screwed if I got in trouble and needed to speak German. My host family had been interpreting my silence (which I just am, a lot-- I think and look and don't talk sometimes) as stand-offishness, where for me in America, my parents think somethings wrong when I talk a lot.

When I went to my LOC, there was another CBYXer. She's doing great-- she loves it here and doesn't ever want to go home. She has lots of friends and loves school and I just... I don't know. But then I talk to other kids and they're having trouble and it's all okay. It will get better or you can go home (not meaning to be mean-- but if the homesickness doesn't get better or whatever, remember, you can go home... you're not stuck here).

I have great days and days where my eyes are perpetually leaking tears and days where time is just to get through. I'm exhausted almost always. Some days I'm just ready to pack it in and head for home. I just got back from vacation (my first proper European city) and it was so hard-- every time I saw something cool, I wanted to show my Mom, but instead I was on vacations with almost perfect strangers. My host family is amazing, but they're not my family. I think it's important for me to acknowledge who I am (with my culture) but also be willing to change. For example, yesterday I made my host family Thanksgiving and they were just thrilled and I was thrilled and I felt at home and perfectly content.

I think it's important to remember those times and how absolutely amazing what you're doing is-- living away from home is hard. It's very different, but it's mostly good. It's good for me to think about things to look forward when I'm sad. When I'm homesick, I like to go for a bike ride and when I look out at the world, I'm in Germany and that is so much better than it would be at home, where I'm breaking my soul in another year of unnecessary high school.

So, the homesickness is hard, but-- I think it gets better. Or I hope it does. I'm holding out for when I start school, so I actually have stuff to do. I think it might be good to talk to your host mum or your betreuer. Or if you'd like to talk, I can give you my email and we can correspond that way. So, that was long and sort of off topic.

Edit: my English is getting kind of gross. Sorry.

This was so great for me to read today, because she is going though the exact same thing as me! I have felt the exact same way about almost everything she mentioned. I have felt like however much I like my host family, they're not my family, and that's hard. I have felt like I am "losing my culture" at times, especially when it comes to the music thing. I haven't listened to any of my own music since I got here, and I haven't felt inspired to play music. Sometimes that feels really bad, like I'm turning into this complete stranger here. Same with when we were in Italy and I ran out into the rain... and Regina shouted, "Take an umbrella! You'll ruin your coat!"

It's those small things that it's impossible to prepare for.

First school days

2008-10-14T17:35:00.002+02:00

Hello! I'm updating, finally.

Today was my fifth day of school (third real day) and it went pretty well, despite the fact that I had my first gym class. I was surprised to find that almost all of the people in my class are ridiculously nice, interesting in talking to me, and extremely patient with my German. The teachers are much more formal with us than I am used to, and are generally very quick to resort to English. I already have a strong dislike for my German teacher, but the others all seem perfectly nice despite their formality. My chemistry teacher reminds me strongly of Mr. Burke, which makes me feel, strangely, very happy.

The reason I dislike my German teacher is because when we met yesterday, our conversation went something like this:

German teacher (in German): Oh, you're back.

Me: Ja.

German teacher (in German): Who's going to win the presidential election?

Me (in German, not understanding the word): The... presidential election?

German teacher (in English): President! It has the word in it!

Me: Oh! Barack Obama.

German teacher: Ich hoffe. (Implying, of course, "If he doesn't it will be because of people like you.")

Later in the class I asked if I have to buy the German book, or if I can get it from the school. The German teacher said (in English, of course) "The others must buy it, but for you there's no point. You won't understand it anyway." What a bad attitude! When I recounted this story to Regina, she said menacingly, "Wie heißt der Deutschlehrer??"

I have met many nice people. I usually sit with a very nice girl named Corrina who lets me copy her notes because the teachers all have the same indeciferable handwriting. I have met another girl named Anette who said to me cheerfully on Friday, right before our last class, "Hast du Französisch? Ich muss zu Latein gehen. Schönes Wochenende!" I really wish 15-year-olds in the US bid each other farewell with "Have a beautiful weekend!"

This is certainly a generalization, but I find that German teenagers in my school are very mature and take school very seriously. When someone has not done their homework, they are spoken to very sharply. When the teacher asks a question, at least ten hands shoot up. Everyone does the work. It is very different from school in the US -- and my school has kids from 5th grade to 13th. It also has, like, three orchestras and three jazz bands and three choirs. And a restaurant. It's really scary, actually.

I have been hit with some homesickness this past week. Starting school has been very stressful for me, mostly because it is like a whole other "culture" to get used to. And also, having to listen to Deutsch every day is exhausting! And although this is probably really unfair, since I have been here only three days, I feel like the teachers really treat me as an inconvenience, and like it is my own fault I haven't learned German yet. It's also hard to be in a class of kids, however nice, who have been in the same group for every class since the 5th grade. They are obviously very close, and I don't think I will ever bond with them that much. However, I am trying to look at school in a positive light, and realize that I am there to do my best, meet some people, and improve my German, stress-free (not really.)

I talked to Alisa about this this weekend, because I was worried that this homesickness flare-up is not normal after over a month here in Germany. She said that she felt the same way during her exchange last year, and that she thinks it's incredibly normal due to my starting school. I hope that this will pass, and I will get more comfortable with school after a couple more weeks.

Freudenstadt photos

2008-09-30T21:06:00.003+02:00

Right after the talent show -- the girl in the left-hand corner is Tang. Isn't her Thai dancing outfit adorable?

Walking in Freudenstadt

Freudenstadt house

In the room where we dicussed host families and such -- kid whose name I don't remember, Arthur, Karla, Chiara, Rafael, Jana, und ich.

Karla, Chiara und ich (they're from Poland and Italy, both really nice girls.)

(Photos courtesy of Francisco Xavier Torrez Herrera -- thanks!)

AFS Late Orientation

2008-09-29T22:46:00.002+02:00

I just got back yesterday from my first AFS orientation camp. I really didn't want to go, prefering to stay in my small circle of host family, the Sprachschule crowd, and my neighbors, but I ended up really enjoying myself. The camp was in Freudenstadt, a picturesque town in the Black Forest. We stayed in a very nice youth hostel with pleasant rooms and delicious food. I roomed with Tang, two other really nice Thai girls, Marii, and Martha. Unfortunately I thought my camera was broken (long story!) so I didn't get any pictures.

AFS in Germany is very different from AFS in the States. I often feel like our AFS chapter at home is full of nice people who studied abroad in 1983. Here, the volunteers are recent returnees under 21, and they are (I mean this is in the best possible way) completely irresponsible. We had 30 students and 5 volunteers at our camp this weekend. On Friday we mostly socialized, played some stupid games, and then had a party in the basement. The AFS volunteers went out and bought beer for everyone, gave us a brief lecture about "taking it slowly" and then a couple of them proceeded to get quite drunk. It was really funny. I actually had a lot of fun and danced a lot. I think I was the only one who didn't drink, but nobody cared.

On Saturday we had discussions about our host families and the differences we'd experienced between Germany and our home countries. At first it was interesting, but it started to get very repetative. However, there were a couple discussions that I appreciated -- one about free time, and one about travel rules. We went for a walk in Freudenstadt and I ended up talking to this really nice Russian girl a lot. She lives in Saint Petersburg and does modern dance like I used to -- also, she has read an extrordinary amount of classic novels. It's pretty cool. After our walk, we all had to go into a little room for an announcement. One of the volunteers told us, "hey, we're gonna have another party tonight. But it won't be as good as the first one because the responsible woman from the office is coming. And also, the cheerleading persons complained; they said we were too loud. I know, what the fuck?" (There was a cheerkeading club staying in the hostel as well.)

Later our group had a talent show... five or so people put on a skit eerily reminiscent of "Jock, Rebel, Hippie, Devil: The Saga of Bubble Tea", and it was hilariously funny. They acted out our party and some of the dumb games we had to play... I can't accurately capture it. Martha and I did an Irish dance, Tang did some lovely Thai dancing, and Maria (from Russia) and Karla (from Poland) sang in Russian and Polish and did a crazy Russian dance. The talent show was not as painful as I expected. Then, there was another party, but I was exhausted and so I didn't go. I ended up sleeping four or so hours both nights, mostly because the Thai girls (however sweet) were extremely chatty. Then yesterday I went back to Gräufenhausen, went on the computer for a while, and went for a walk behind my house, on the country roads. Then I stayed up ridiculously late. So, I again got four or five hours of sleep!

And again, I shan't get more tonight... I ought to go to bed. I promise I'll talk more about lanugage school and other stuff later.

Finally!

2008-09-12T16:11:00.002+02:00

Have you ever noticed how many exclamation points I use on this blog? It's a little embarrassing, actually. But anyway. I am finally updating my blog, after thirteen days away from home and six in Germany.

After a weekend in Baltimore with Erin and Sylvie, my dad drove my to the Dulles Crown Plaza hotel in Virginia, where all 50 of the Congress-Bundestag kids met up. The first day was spent doing nothing but waiting around and making awkward conversation. Although I didn't make any really good friends, most of them were really nice and welcoming. My roommate, Alyssa, was a really nice girl. Another person, Katie, was also very cool -- when I first met her, she was wearing a knee-length vintage skirt with mushrooms on it, and told me that she collects internal organs preserved in formaldyhyde. Therefore, she was definitely very different from the other C-B kids, the majority of whom had a more preppy style. She lives near Hamburg, however, seven or so hours away.

The next day, we went to D.C. to meet with our Congressional representatives and go to the German embassy, State department, and Goethe Institut. The woman I met with from Tom Allen's office, Joleen, was really great. She knew a lot about international exchange and AFS already, and she was refreshingly casual compared to everyone else we met with that day. I did not enjoy the State Department, but the German embassy was interesting -- we learned a little about the German political system, and I felt like the woman we talked to was a lot more straightforward about how the U.S. is percieved around the world. At the Goethe Institut, we watched a humorous video about Berlin. We had dinner at a German restaurant in the city, and I had a delicious portabello mushroom schnitzel with German salad (picked potatoes, beets, yellow beans, and sauerkrawt topped with lettuce.)

The next day was all activities and exercises related to fitting in in our host communities, etc. By this time, I was really ready to actually be in Germany, as was everyone else. The next morning we arrived at Dulles airport at 12:30 (our flight took off at 5:30 pm.) The plane ride did not feel too long. I watched an old movie dubbed in German and slept for maybe two or three hours. The next day was kind of awful. We had to stay in Frankfurt airport in the hallway, not being allowed to go anywhere except the bathroom, from 7:00 to 2:30, when our trains left. I drank my first Apfelschorle and talked to Katie and another girl named Becky, who is staying about an hour away from me. Other AFS students from Thailand, Italy, China, the Czech Republic, Finland, Russia, Honduras, Brazil, Paraguay, and more arrived, but I was so exhausted I was feeling really anti-social. I read about half of Kafka on the Shore.

We were sent away with local AFS volunteers to our individual trains. Ours was really funny, he was about 25 and kept telling us how much we would end up drinking and smoking and swearing over the course of the year. He was also not willing to keep track of us at all, so I kept feeling like I was about to be lost in the train station, lagging behind everyone else. I felt really bad by this time. I felt sick, hadn't eaten in ten hours, etc. I slept through pretty much the whole train ride. Suddenly I was roughly awakened by the AFS volunteer, then given lots of complicated instructions about how and when to get off the train. Finally he handed me my luggage and said, "OK, now!" I got off the train at the Karlsruhe stop and for some reason I thought I had to get on another train, but then Regina and Hans-Peter arrived to pick me up. I was so happy to see them and finally get to actually go home and sleep.

We drove 30 minutes to our tiny town, Gräufenhausen. It is on the edge of the Black Forest and has maybe 200 people. We live at the top of a huge hill and we can see the forest and other small villages from our deck. I have a lovely room to live in, and they have three pianos, a drum set, and a vibraphone. It's really nice. My host parents are wonderful.

I have been homesick this past week, but now that I am in language school in Karlsruhe, I feel much better. Also, my host parents have been really understanding. It's a lot more different here culturally than I ever imagined. Also, I never realized how much I really love Portland -- I expected to miss my parents, but not to miss everything about where I live. It's beautiful here, but it's so different. You can walk to the gas station or the convenient store, but not much else. The church bells ring every 15 minutes, and at 5 in the morning they go crazy, in remembrance of the miners who had to work every morning a long time ago. Oh yeah, and Gräufenhausen just celebrated its 900th birthday.

I have many charmingly German stories, but I can't remember any at this very moment -- ich bin ein bisschen müde. Well, here's one: yesterday when I was driving home from the train station with Hans-Peter, we stopped at the weird little gas station in Gräufenhausen. He went into the shop and came out with a piece of delicious, freshly baked Brötchen with poppy seeds and sesame seeds on it! Isn't that funny??

I went to real school in Pforzheim Tuesday and Wednesday, before language school began. The school is absolutely huge and scary. The kids in my class are really nice to me, and the teachers are very, very different from what I'm used to. My classes sound interesting, but I can understand absolutely none of what the teachers are saying, so they're absolutely boring so far. I'm taking ethics, French, politics, German, English, music (which is my "focus," so I have it four days a week), math, chemistry, biology, gym (unless I can somehow get out of it -- I'm going to try), history, and art. I think that's all.

I'll write again soon. And post pictures, if I can get Alex to help me figure out how!

Goodbye!

2008-08-30T23:10:00.001+02:00

I'm leaving in a few minutes. It still does not seem real.

Tschuss!

(Belated) birthdays

2008-08-28T00:09:00.005+02:00

Happy birthday to three of our good friends. On August 25th, Jill turned 13, on the 26th, Artemis turned 17, and today, Charlotte is 16. I celebrated Charlotte's birthday with some iced coffee at Arabica this morning. I got her a bar of chocolate, which will be followed with a slightly larger gift (hopefully tomorrow.)

Yesterday was Artemis's annual picnic at Kettle Cove. We took some pictures, but I'm having trouble getting any of them on my blog, due to my dad's fancy camera... I do not know how to convert them to jpegs. It was the last time I will see her until July 2009, since she's currently flying to D.C. for the week.

Other than that, I'm making preparations. I'm meeting with a nice lady from Tom Allen's office named Joleen next week in Washington, to encourage the Americans to continue supporting the Congress-Bundestag program. I'm pretty nervous about meeting everybody in D.C., to be honest.

A title

2008-08-26T01:11:00.000+02:00

I think I will change the title of my blog to something more exchange-themed. Currently I'm trying to think of something, but it's difficult since I've gotten so used to "terrible modern."

A successful party

2008-08-26T00:24:00.004+02:00

I think the party was quite a success. There was a perfect amount of food, everything was delicious, and no one seemed lonely. I got some gifts from extremely generous friends, including three beautiful journals, a Lonely Planet guide, a copy of Der Prozeß (complete with notes in the margins, my favorite), a hat, and a pair of A.P.C. jeans. Despite how many strange things we put in the pinata (Japanese and Korean candy, ballpoint pens, and third place ribbons) it was a crowd-pleaser, and even Nick, Ava, and Elliot appreciated it. I attempted to put some pictures of the party on my blog, or at least my Flickr, but alas, they claim to be in the wrong format. I know I can figure this out, but I don't have the patience right now.

I realized that lately I've been using a ridiculous number of commas, and I don't know why! What a bad habit.

Party time

2008-08-24T18:38:00.003+02:00

Kayla and Veronica are off! They left last Wednesday for the Czech Republic and Hungary, and have now finished their orientations and moved in with their families. Kayla is living in a small suburb outside of Prague, and Veronica in an apartment in the center of Budapest. I have yet to communicate with either of them, understandably, but I look forward to hearing about their adventures.

I bought a nice big L.L.Bean rolling duffel, and this morning I packed it full of stuff. We don't have a scale, but I really hope it's not over 40 lbs. I can hardly pick it up. Later I'll start collecting things for my carry-on.... I have a lot of space, since I'm bringing my Manhattan Portage schoolbag, and I've decided to ship my ukulele packed in bubble wrap. I am a little terrified that I'll forget something critically important, like Claritin, Stitch 'N Bitch, or Kayla's Ambrosia tea.

Today is the big day. 35+ people are coming over to celebrate my "retirement," listen to DanceyPoncey, and smash a pinata. We only realized a few minutes ago how many references to my new music video are included in this party: the pink-and-blue donkey, popcorn, a case o' Moxie, the Happy Retirement sign, and a Thao Nyguen snippet. Plus, there's vegan sushi and croquet in the yard! It'll be fun, for sure.

I'm still not nervous at all; maybe there's something wrong with me! I am just super excited to meet my family and experience all these new things... The only part that I'm nervous about is the orientation, because I am very shy and not very good at "bonding" with other teenagers. I've also been feeling a little insecure about my German abilities. I can make myself understood, but I'm afraid that everyone will have a "why can't we just speak English?" attitude, especially when I'm stumbling for the word for "pen" or whatever.

Today I found out the address of my language school in Karlsruhe, and it's just down the street from two Eiscafes (ice cream parlors), a Deutsche Bank, a brick oven pizza place, and a bunch of cafes! Karlsruhe looks so much like Cambridge. A little college town. I will be going to the Sprachschule for five hours a day, for a month, so I can learn German a little better before starting at the normal Gymnasium.