Apologies

This blog has fallen by the wayside. 3 days until I'm home.... I'll tell you stories then. With hand motions and exasperating inflection.

The Countdown Begins

Numbers are the name of the game today. I've got:
1 final left
2 days until K getting here
3-4 days of excessive partying in celebration of finishing finals (I'll be posting about that, never fear)
5 days until I have to deal with the Hausmeister, resulting in...
30-40 Euros to pay for the spare key that I lost (it fell on my carpet, crept under and disappeared about 3 months ago)
3 Christmas presents left to buy
5 days until I really need to think about packing
6 days until my apartment needs to be cleaned
and 7 days until I board the plane back home.

In the words of every high school kid on That 70's Show: What a long, strange trip it's been. (or something to that effect)

Dead Week and Schnee!

(I'm going to apologize ahead of time for how boring this post is. But don't worry, come Thursday, once finals are over I've got some really fun things lined up, so it will start being more worth while to read this!)

What a crazy week. From term papers, to finals, to crazy weather, to Christmas markets, it's been one hell of a busy week! Monday started out wonderfully because I didn't have Deutsch. About 6 of the 10 people in my class were on an expedition for their other classes, so Deutsch was canceled! However, the day did not maintain this level of awesomeness. History was surprisingly good.  We didn't even discuss the reading, or do a wrap up the history lecture or anything, just dove straight into a movie. The name of it completely escapes me at the moment, but I'm sure I could ask someone in the class and find out if you're really interested! It focused on the issues migrants, specifically Turkish migrants, face as second-generation migrants. Unlike in the US, a 2nd generation migrant in Germany is still considered a migrant, not a citizen. The movie was incredibly dark... definitely not something I would suggest my mum watch! It also had a love story, but in a dark sort of way, in which you don't want anyone to tell you if they end up together or not, because it doesn't really matter either way. I don't know if that makes sense, but it works for me!

Film, aka the bane of my existence, was again long... Though we did get out 4 minutes "early." Meaning 19:41, not 19:45. We did a little lecture, heard a presentation, then watched the film and had a guest lecturer. He was incredible! I literally learned more, and was better engaged in the 30 minutes he spoke than I have been all semester in that class! It was painfully obvious to all those involved that my professor was trying to prove himself or impress the guest; it was like watching a puppy begging to come inside. Then we got to fill out evaluations. I am always happiest to fill out an evaluation when I actually have something critical or exemplary to say about the professor. In the nicest way possible, I definitely gave that evaluation a piece of my mind.

Tuesday morning was my Deutsch Sprechen final. It went pretty well. J (a completely different J from the previous one) was my partner, and he's a little better than me, so he was able to pick up if I started stumbling. We had three parts: W-frage (i.e. where are you from? What's your name, etc), Past tense (had to ask each other what we did last summer, last week, etc) and then Treffen (making plans, we had to choose a slip of paper and ask the person if they wanted to come with us to do whatever was on the paper, and then make plans to do it). It was all over within 20 minutes, and I feel pretty good about it! After that, I was exhausted from waking up early all weekend, so I went home and napped for a while.

Wednesday was the actual Deutsch final. It was also the coldest December 1st Berlin has seen in years. Absolutely, completely, utterly freaking freezing. It was barely even snowing too. Just cold. Anyway, armed with my 4 layers of clothes, I set out to take my final. It went pretty well. I felt far more prepared that I did for the midterm, though I'm sure there were still a bunch of little mistakes. In any case, I'm feeling pretty good about that class, and just my over all German speaking ability :) After that, I grabbed some lunch with C and P, and then headed back to school to nap before my next class. The next class wasn't really that interesting, so I'm going to skip that.

And that leads us to today! Well, probably a few days ago once I actually post this. I woke up early, yet again, to have Frühstück with my German teacher. She had our whole class over to her apartment, and we made an amazing Frühstück! Bagels, croissants, eggs, muffins, coffee, mimosas - a great way to start the day! It also helped that it snowed about 4-6 inches the night before, so everything was white and beautiful! The temperature had gone up from -10 Celsius to about -7, which was a surprising difference. Breakfast was so much fun, and Tanja was such an incredible German teacher, it was honestly a little sad when we had to leave. But, J (a different one again) was waiting for me, so I headed out to H&M to meet up with her!

J and I headed to Schloss Charlottenberg to check out the Weihnachtsmarkt there. Neither of us actually knew how to get there, and yet we managed to find our way quite easily. Once we got to the Charlottenberg S-Bahnhof, I went to check out the bus directions, while J ventured to ask the driver. Apparently after she asked him, he very seriously took a drag of his cigarette and told her "Kommst mit mir" (come with me). Haha... creeepy. But, he was right, and we were supposed to take that bus. It was absolutely gorgeous when we got to the Weihnachtsmarkt! The Schloss (castle) was so beautiful, especially with all of the snow, and the market was shockingly bigger than we had expected.

We wandered around for a while, checking out all of the random booths, me continuing my search for the perfect gift for about a million people (so far Alexanderplatz is my best bet for gifts) and J just wandering around with me. We got some drinks - I got Hot Bailey's (amazing!) and J got Eierpünsch (we're assuming since it translates to "eggs punch" it's a german version of eggnog...?) which was actually quite tasty, and tasted nothing like egg nog. I bought a pair of earrings that I have been searching for for years! They're normally about $30 for a pair back home, minimum, and these were only 8 euro for a pair! Such a great deal!  We also made friends with an American girl who was working at one of the booths. She was fascinating. She was born in Bergen, moved to Texas, speaks 5 languages, summer's in Norway, spent a year in Madrid, moved to Germany to find a job, just got accepted into the peace crops, and has a semi-boyfriend who is only semi- because why would she want to date a Spaniard when she's in Germany? Shouldn't she be dating a German? Absolutely fascinating. And made J and I feel dreadful about the fact that we only speak English and a little German (and a tiny bit of French and Spanish). After standing there for 20 minutes, the cold finally got to our toes and we headed home! We went around the corner to grab some dinner at the new Italian place that just opened up on our street. It was delicious, and B and D joined us which was delightful!

Now I'm off to bed. Once again, I've got to get up early tomorrow for some kind of mandatory FU-BEST meeting. I am going to get so much sleep on Friday night... and if I don't... well I probably won't be functional enough to competently take, let alone pass, my finals. So, here's hoping that I get to sleep in soon!

Never see what you expect to see, rather expect the unexpected.

This title is far more existential sounding that the following post will be.
Oh, also sorry for posting this a week late... I've been having some internet issues lately!

On a Note completely unrelated to the rest of this post, the reverse culture shock has begun, and I think it's going to be much worse than the culture shock was (because I didn't really have any). I'm making mac n cheese for dinner tonight, acquired from a friend who received it in the mail. While looking at the directions, I fully prepared myself for the struggle of trying to comprehend Deutsch directions, as well as figuring out how much 250 ml is. Google translate on the ready, I prepared to make my dinner, and wouldn't you know it? The directions were in English (obviously)! That was a major shock. I'm not used to being able to understand things. My life for the last 4 months has had a relatively constant level of confusion, and I kind of like it that way! It makes things more fun :) Guess I'm going to have to prepare myself for reading menus in English, actually being able to understand waitresses and cashiers, and being able to read everything around me. I don't think I can possibly explain to excitement that follows understanding a waitress, ordering coherently, or reading a poster completely auf Deutsch. It's going to be a little disappointing not having to put the effort into every day things.

Anyway, more on that later, I'm sure. Today wasn't as much of a tourist success as the last few days, but it was still pretty freaking incredible :) I again woke up early to work on my history term paper. It's all finished and turned in now, thankfully! No more term papers! Now, only finals... Okay, back to the interestingness! So, after I finished my paper, J and I headed to the Pergamon. A bunch of other people were thinking of coming, but were either too tired from the night before, or had already been, or just weren't even up yet. It was pretty freaking cold, and for some reason we made the executive decisions to trek all the way to the museum from Freidrichstrasse. You can switch trains and take the s-bahn one stop further, but it seemed to make more sense to just walk. Absolutely freezing.

We did, however, happen upon the museum island flea market, that I completely forgot was going on! Because we didn't get there until around 3, there wasn't much to be seen, but it was still a pretty fun stroll looking at all the old books and jewelry. I almost bought Freud's psychanalysis book, in the original German, but 1)Mein Deutsch ist nicht so gut, at least not good enough to read that! and 2)It was a relatively new version, and not an awesome, antique looking book. Oh and 3) It would just be extra weighted in my already weighted town bags for flying back home!

We finally got to use our museum cards, which was extremely exciting, especially because it meant not having to spend any money that day! We seriously had no idea what to expect. We're both history majors, so you'd think we would realize that "Pergamon" implied ancient Greek and Roman stuff, but we really didn't think about that until a friend told us about it. So we walked into this place with absolutely no expectations. And here, I'm going to let the pictures do the talking of what we walked directly into after turning the left corner of the entrance:

This was absolutely amazing. It actually felt like
we were in an ancient city! And the lighting
on the ceilings made it seems like natural
sunlight. It was incredible!

After climbing the stairs, we decided to veer to the left, and check out the super duper ancient stuff. This was again, not at all what we expected. Here are pictures of the next two rooms we walked through:

As we walked further back, we moved further back in history. It was really cool, and there were so many interesting things to look at. We didn't know where to start. There were rooms on either side of the hall, and these rooms led to other rooms, and these rooms led back to the hall, and it was very easy to get turned around! I think we covered everything, though we never did venture down the stairs in one room.... perhaps we missed something awesome.

On our way back to the Grand Alter, we passed by a staircase leading to an exhibit on Islamic art and history. I was so down to check it out, but J was being lame and didn't want to go... so we cut across the Grand Alter, and checked out the right side of the museum (the right and left here are being judged from being at the top of the stairs in the Grand Alter, for those of you who have been). As we walked into the next room, it was surprisingly less extravagant than the last few big rooms we'd walked into. There were a bunch of people looking at us as we walked in, so I turned to J and said "I bet we just walked through something awesome."

And we had.

However, as we ventured into the next room, and apparently the rest of the museum, you know, with all the Greek and Roman stuff, we were stopped by a sign informing us that some artifacts were being moved to the Altes Museum, and so the display was closed. Seriously? I mean, I know we knew nothing about it until 4 days before, but I definitely wanted to see some Greek and Roman stuff!! We did find another exhibit about "The Silver Horse." After trekking up tons of stairs, we discovered the strangest exhibit of our lives. We had no idea when or where in history the artifacts had come from, and since the entire exhibit was aud Deutsch, it was a little difficult to decipher anything. From what I could tell, the Silver Horse was belt buckle. What a disappointment!

Anyway, now that we were a little disappointed, we decided to check out the Islamic art stuff, because we didn't fell like we'd spent enough time in the museum at all. Such a good idea. The exhibit was beautiful! There were so many amazing jewelry and pots and boxes and corner decorations (<-- that is seriously the best description I can give them). And, similarly with Versailles, there was also some modern art interspersed with the ancient artifacts. Unlike Versailles, this art work was inspired by the ancient artifacts, and actually flowed with the exhibition. Again, these damn rooms leading into other rooms had us completely turned around, and we got lost trying to find the stairs back down stairs! What a hoot!

After that we decided to head back to the apartments because it was a little too early to get dinner, plus then we'd have to spend money :) I, of course, was drawn in by the allure of the Crobag directly on our S-Bahn station and got myself a wurstcroissant, aka the most delicious thing in the world, ever.

That was pretty much it for touristy stuff this weekend. Today I studied for my Deutsch final at Balzac for a while, and then me, J and B rented a movie and watched that. B has become increasingly frustrated with J and mine's love affair with German TV, specifically with terrible romantic comedies and Spongebob. So, instead of seeing what the number one Spongebob episode of all time was (they'd been counting down from 100 all day), or watched Patrick Dempsey in yet another incredibly terrible romantic comedy, he made us watch a movie with some culture to it.... not cool. haha, Though we did almost rent Cold Prey (the English translation of Fritt Vill, the terrible Norwegian movie we saw in Oslo).

Visual Stimulation

I think my internet should be running fast enough to load pictures! Wohoo!

Super excited for my Glühwein!

At KaDeWe... you can't really tell, but these chocolate Mr. & Mrs.
Klaus are sexy. The chili chocolate ones were scandelous.
It was exciting :)

Food! Yum!

Champagne!

Dinner!

Who knew you could fit this many people in my tiny apartment?

Schnee!!!

Ok, that's it for now! Off to the pergamon :) And this time I've charged my camera

Operation Bucket-list

Operation Bucket-list is ago. The past three days have probably been the most amazing time I've had in Berlin. Maybe it's because the snow has been coming and going. Maybe it's because I'm finally feeling safe and secure with the people here. Or maybe it's because I know I need to make the most of my time, with less than three weeks left! In any case, I don't care why, I'm just so happy to have had so many successful days in a row! Let's start at the beginning, shall we? After all, it is the best place to begin :)

On Wednesday, I woke up to find several facebook statuses about snow! I was so excited I jumped out of bed (how often do I ever jump out of bed? Pretty much only if there's a spider in it!) and ran to my window... And was severely disappointed. Californians have a different definition of snow than most people. White stuff was falling from the sky. But it was melting as soon as it hit the ground. And it was less flakes, more teeny tiny hail. But that's pretty much where the disappoints ended. I got to school, and watched Glee (the Britney episode!) to relax myself before my presentation in Totalitarian. The presentation went pretty well, so I was stoked about that. After class, a bunch of people were headed to a Weihnachtsmarkt for their German class excursion. I decided to tag along because I hadn't been to one yet. It was pretty awesome. The snow was falling (though still melting right away), there was so much delicious food and smells and cute little booths. My family will be shocked to here that I ate  Hähnchenleber mit Zwiebel for dinner... chickenliver with grilled onions. And it was amazing! Oh, I also occasionally eat mushrooms too. We left when the cold got to us, and headed home. A couple of people were planning on going out clubbing, but me and J decided we didn't want to have to stay out until 4 a.m. (because the s-bahn doesn't run from like 1-4 on weekdays) so we decided to watch a movie. 500 Days of Summer. I absolutely love this movie. It's so beautifully shot, and Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon Levitt are absolutely amazing. I wish I owned this movie (*hint*). Lately there have been a lot of movies that I want to watch again because I think I'd have a new appreciation for them both aesthetically and conceptually, a product of my new music interests, and personal changes. So, when I get home the following movies will be watched: Love Actually, Eternal Sunshine, Everything is Illuminated, Pan's Labyrinth, um... apparently I'm drawing a blank, but there are definitely others! Anyway, that was Wednesday :)

Thursday! Thanksgiving! Being British, one would think that Thanksgiving isn't that big a deal to me, but because we've been celebrating it in our family since we moved to America, pretty much as an excuse to have a family dinner more than once a year and for my sister's birthday, it's just been something I've grown accustomed to. And hearing about everyone going home for it has made me a little homesick, so I threw a little thanksgiving potluck for my friends. It was such a great success! We went to KaDeWe (pronounced ka-day-vay) to try to find a turkey. We hadn't really thought it through before the actual day, and of course all the turkey's were frozen :-/ But, KaDeWe didn't let us down. I think we easily could have spent an entire day wandering each floor of this huge department store, but we stuck to the food floor. There was so much good food, and a lot of American stuff like Oreos and peanut butter. We finally found the meat section, after walking past the delicious cheese, fish and pastry stands several times in a feeble attempt to find the meat. They had roasted duck and chickens. Naturally, we got a duck and two chickens. Such a good plan! Then we headed back to start cooking!

I, of course, hadn't cleaned my room, or done my dishes, so with people coming over at 7:30, I only had about 3 hours from when we got back to clean, shower, cook, bake, and organize. It was a little stressful, but K came over around 6 and she started making delicious pies right when I was done in the kitchen, so that was good! We had the most amazing food: mashed potatoes, mac n cheese, party potatoes, veggies, duck, turkey, gravy, pies, cookies, glühwein, champagne, beer, snowman poop (it's an oreo based delicious thing that's impossible to describe), potato buns (amazing!!), broccoli casserole. There were about 14 people who came, which was probably all my tiny little apartment could handle. Everyone seemed to have a good time, and we all agreed that all the food was incredible! After that, we headed to K's room (this is a different K. Not all the initials represent the same people. It's super tricky that way) and played some beer pong (or wine pong if you're me!). After that, I just went to bed, and left the mess for the morning!

The next morning, Friday, I awoke to a delightful surprise... and a less delightful surprise (ok, really I woke up to K knocking on my door to get her camera). The delightful surprise: Snow! This time it actually was covering the ground... it was so lovely :) The not so delightful surprise: I had lost my voice. I don't know how. I'm not sick, and yet I sound like a combination of a 70 year old, pack a day woman, and a pubescent boy. Not very cute. This happened last Thanksgiving too, perhaps it's just a new tradition. Oh well. My room still smelled like chicken, gravy and wine, and it was snowing outside, so I was pretty much a happy camper. I set about the arduous task of cleaning up, which turned out not to be too terrible, and then began writing my last term paper! Originally, I was going to just stay in all day and write the paper, but I decided to live it up, and get as much done by 2 as I could, and then go out and do touristy things. A perfect plan :) I got about 6 pages done, and the B, J, J and I headed out to the Berliner Dom (that's the cathedral that I've been obsessed with since my second day here, and yet haven't actually gone inside). We were originally going to go to the Pergamon, but B had already been, so the Berliner Dom it was!

It was so incredible! Honestly, the most beautiful church I have ever been in. Way better than Notre Dam, and yet receives so much less appreciation. The Crypt was amazing... a crypt full of Hohenzollerns, awesome! Freidrich Wilhelm II's tomb was definitely the most interesting. It was a casket that had then been put in a metal or concrete casket, had obviously been buried, and then moved to the crypt. It looked like at some point a bomb had gone off and exploded the concrete/metal outer casket, and yet the inner casket remained beautifully intact. Not something I can describe aptly enough, but unfortunately, my digital camera was out of batteries, and my film camera was a little too loud for using in the crypt without getting stared down by the guards! Unfortunately, the actual Dom was closed for some reason, so we couldn't go up and look over the city :( Hopefully it will be open when K gets here, when we'll be going here! (Apparently I know a lot of K's, J's and B's).

After the Dom, we decided to check out the Weihnachtsmarkt at Alexanderplatz, as it was right there, even though our original plan was to go to the one at Schloss Charlottenberg (another bucket list item!). This was the most amazing weihnachtsmarkt... I can't even describe. It had so many interesting things... Medieval clothing, the cutest little tavern you've ever seen (which sold Kirschbier... cherry beer, warm, surprisingly delicious. It's like glühwein, only sweeter), a booth selling drinking horns, an amazing photographer (I think I'm going to go back and buy one of his prints... it was amazing). We wandered around for a couple hours, watching the ice skaters, and getting really excited when santa showed up in the sky in his sleigh (complete with firework rockets for when he took off!). Oh, and they had one of those swing, spin around rides... I coerced J and B to go on it with me even though it was absolutely freezing out. So worth it. It definitely just made my day all that more amazing. For the rest of our explorations, none of us could feel our hands or butts, but I would definitely do it again in a heartbeat, especially if it's snowing! Eventually, around 6:30 the cold got to us, and we decided to grab some dinner. We headed towards Hackescher Markt, and found an Irish Pub which looked tasty. I, of course, got the Fish & Chips and an Irish cream coffee. Just the right thing to warm me up on a chilly evening :)

Now I'm back home, strenuously trying to finish this history paper so that I can have another touristy day tomorrow (definitely going to the Pergamon tomorrow), and then buckle down on Sunday and study German like there's no tomorrow! I've got my oral portion on Tuesday, and then the written final Wednesday! I can't believe our German classes are already over... that means this coming week is my last week of regular classes, then finals week! So crazy! Well, here's hoping the amazingness continues tomorrow :) Hope you're all having as wonderful a holiday weekend!

Oh, p.s. sorry for all the text! Pictures will be coming soon... once my internet decides to take less than 5 minutes to load a page!

In which my mind begins to resemble that of a corn maze

I've put a lot of time and thought into what I'm about to write. So much in fact, that it is completely beyond organization. There are so many things I want to say, that no matter how much I try to organize it all, something always pops up that needs to be said, that should have been said, but hasn't yet been said. Such is the maze through which I shall now try to direct you; and yes, it's one hell of a corny maze. Turn back now if you do not wish to be lost amongst the corn.

We'll find our way eventually, I promise.

These last three months have been incredible. And not just in the positive connotation. In every single connotation you could think of. Looking back on blog posts from the beginning of this incredible journey, I don't even recognize myself or my words. I feel like I have become completely different from who I was then. I think these changes have been mostly for the better; positivity has replaced those negative tendencies that used to make up a large part of my personality. That's not to say that these changes have been robust, or even obvious to anyone except me, but they are definitely there.

About a month into the program, I made the decision to be completely independent. To live for the first time solely for myself. Unable to run to my parents house on the weekends if things got too intense; free of obligations to people other than myself and my professors; completely capable of acting for myself without having to worry about other people. In this process of creating my new independent self, I know I hurt at least one person, for which I feel terrible; however, I do not think the growth I've experienced would have been possible had I not done what I had done. At the time I did not know what I was doing, or why. But I know now, and I know that it was the right decision at the time. 

It has been difficult having this much independence. It is almost too much. But it has allowed me to change in ways I never thought I actually would. My reading this week actually describes the situation perfectly: psychoanalysis alone is not enough to transform a personality, changing the environment will yield much more efficient, lasting results. My environment here is absolutely nothing like the environment's I have lived in my whole life, and that is why it was the perfect time to take a break away from obligation to other's, and turn instead towards my own needs and desires.

In the process, I have discovered the importance of friendship, and what it really means to be a friend, and to have friends. I know this sounds silly - after all, doesn't Disney brainwash us about the power of friendship from the age of 3? - but it is just not something that ever really clicked for me. I've been a member of several "groups" of friends, and have always ended up hurt and alone due to some arrogance or stubbornness on the part of either myself or the others, typically a combination of both. Instead, I turned my attention towards completely focusing on romantic relationships. The thought process here was that if I lost my friends, at least I would always have my paramour. This proved disastrous to past relationships, especially my most intense, longest lasting one, however I could not identify that as the problem until a month or so ago. It is absurd to put all of that pressure on a single person. They cannot be your only confidant, or the only person you see regularly besides those you live with. When they leave, you have to have other people to turn to. As much as we never want to admit it, one way or another, everyone leaves (wow... ok, don't take that to be as morbid or depressing as it sounds, I'm just trying to be realistic).

It's possible that these tendencies away from establishing good friends came from following my parents' example. Now before you get mad or upset parents, you too have changed. Over the last few years, you have become much more social and begun to develop amazing friendships with people, and I can tell how that has had a positive influence on your relationship, as well as your overall happiness in life. So now, though I am doing so on my own, I am essentially following your good example. I've finally begun to learn that it is okay to be alone, and that if you do begin to feel too lonely, there is no shame in calling a friend to watch a movie, or make dinner. I've spent a lot of my life being afraid and feeling awkward. There is always that voice in my head telling me not to call someone I met recently because they probably find me awkward, and any further encounter with them would only prove to extend the awkwardness. I've since discovered that this is ridiculous.

When I first embarked on this independence mission, I took it too far to the extreme. I made no effort to contact people, and instead resorted to being completely alone, and telling myself that I was happy to be alone. But I honestly do not think that anyone can ever be happy to be completely alone. We all need people. Even if it's just to have something to go to the grocery store with. It's actually a psychological fact that if a person is removed from human contact, especially positive human contact, they will slip into a depression that can result in antisocial behaviors, as well as other psychological issues. Fortunately, I made friends with amazing people.

Having the independence that being thousands of miles away from home has made me finally realize that friends are some of the most important things in the world. They are there for you when you need them and when you don't. They allow you to fulfill almost all of your needs, without putting too much pressure on a single person. And when you are in a relationship, they make it so that you do not just sit around waiting for the other person to come home. Friends are what make us independent, because they accept us for who we are and there are no feelings of obligations which you often get from family, and romantic relationships. There is no drama if you forget your anniversary, because there are no anniversaries. They allow us our independence because they keep us sane when we are alone.

So, my conclusions from this corn maze (yes, we have made it to the center, I hope you enjoyed the corn along the way!) are that I need to maintain this level of sociability when I return home. I need to be okay with being alone. I need to not allow a romantic relationship to become the main focus of my life. This means not ditching or ignoring my friends just because someone now occupies my time. I need to make time for both, something I have never been very good at doing. In any case, the main lesson to be learned is that I need to not be afraid to meet new people, make new friends, or even just make better friends with the ones I have. There's no sense in fearing that people will find me awkward; I am awkward, and that's something that is never going to change. I'll never make any friends hiding alone. This conclusion is getting confusing. Perhaps I shall stop here. Congratulations if you actually made it to the end of this tremendously personal musing. I think this was mainly so I could finally get all these thoughts to stop flying around, and actually be written down somewhere. So, thanks for coming along for the ride :) 

(I think that last line was me switching metaphors - we've now left the corn maze and arrived back on the road of life - don't worry though, there's still lots of corn to be had!)

Just a few pictures of amazing people:

Sometimes we all like to get a little awkward

Bittersweet.

With only 25 days left in Berlin, it seems kind of crazy that I've already been here for three months (it'll be three months in three days)! I'm looking forward to going home, but at the same time, I do not want to leave. I've honestly never felt so torn in my life (okay, that's not true, but it's a strange feeling). I've grown so much here (which I'll post about later), and I'm a little scared that when I go home it will just return to business as usual, and the changes will fall away and fade back to normalcy. I know a couple other people on the program are feeling this way too. In any case, 25 days means: 4 days until my last presentation, 9 days until my last term paper is due, 12 days until my German final, 16 days until my History and Film finals, 18 days until my totalitarian final, and 19 days until Kelsey comes to visit! I'm only really excited about one of those things, can you guess which one? It's a lot of stressful stuff to cram into a few short days, but there's also lots of time for more fun things too! And the 6 days that I'm here with Kelsey are going to be chock full of epic awesomeness :) Anyway, I thought it might be nice to take a positive look on this rather bittersweet time, and figure out all the things I'm going to miss about Berlin, but also all of the things I'm looking forward to back home!

Things I'm absolutely looking forward to:
- seeing friends and family (seriously, everyone would kill me if this wasn't the first thing I listed, haha. But I am really looking forward to seeing everyone!)
-In n Out, the Goose, Su Hong, Country corner, Saturn - I desperately need a delicious burger, amazing chow mein, a club sandwich and a fried egg sandwich... I've been craving these since I left!
- washing machines!! - I think handwashing all my clothes is starting to destroy some of them :-/
-warmer weather - it's definitely an experience living in cold weather, and I like the new fashions it inspires, but seriously? all negative temperatures for the next 3 weeks? Definitely looking forward to being in the 50's!
-Target - I just have not been able to find a store comparable in cost and awesomeness
-living in a house with people, and not being essentially isolated - we pretty much live in a dorm, and having a studio apartment has been good for some self development, but I like saying "hi" to people when I come home, and watching movies with people without having to call them
-driving? - maybe... I kind of like public transit, but that's probably just the public transit here, because it's, well, reliable
-making more of an effort to travel around back home, even if it is just to sf and la more often
- going to urban/bunnies with Lauren - we made such a habit of doing this, it'll be nice to get back into that routine :)
-my amazingly comfortable bed! - the bed here is also a couch, and it's hard as a rock, the pillow can fold into about a 2 square inch ball, and it kills my back. Looking forward to my marshmallow cloud bed :)
-wifi - specifically: fast, reliable wifi. I don't think I need to go off on another rant about how terrible the 02 stick is (though I easily could if you'd like!)

 I'll definitely be grabbing a few of these on the way 

back from the airport :)

Things I'm definitely going to miss:
-awesome public transportation, and being able to drink on said public transportation - you've always got a reliable way home! As long as you look up when the last train runs...
-watching tv/movies auf deutsch - it helps my comprehension so much, and makes it feel like I'm not wasting my time by watching TV
-all my friends - they're all so wonderful, and in a month we're all going to be hundreds or thousands of miles apart. Easily contactable by phone, but we all know that's not the same
-how cheap grocery shopping is - when was the last time you bought a weeks worth of groceries for $15? I just bought a can of soup for less than a euro... if memory serves, generally soup is like $3.50!
-the smallness of my deutsch class/how awesome tanja is as a teacher - I don't think I'll ever have a German class that only has 10 people, or has a teacher who teaches quite as well as Tanja does
-Balzac - my go to coffee shop in Berlin. They make a soy iced mocha that is almost as good as Mike's. And now that Mike no longer works at Borders, I won't have a go to coffee place to go back to :(
-seriously, food is so cheap here
-always something to do - you never have to go far to find something to do. And after 3 months, I've still got a sizable bucket list left
-so cheap and easy to travel - Germany has the most (or almost the most) boarding countries, so a completely foreign culture, cuisine and history is often only 4-6 hours by train away!
-tasty, tasty chocolate
-I get a lot more creative with my baking/cooking here - which is weird because my selection is actually much more limited... maybe that's why?
-all my classes being seminar's - I will always pick going to class once a week for 3 hours over two or three times a week!
-H&M is everywhere!! - though the quality isn't actually as nice as it is back home, oddly
-All of the little bakeries with such delicious food - Mainly all of the CroBag's at the s-bahn and u-bahn stations... yum! Best blaubeer muffins in berlin :)

Ignore the terrifying looking woman! Look at all the

tasty treats! The sandwiches, wurst croissants,

and blaubeer muffins are to die for :)

So, apparently the main things I'm looking forward to, and am going to miss are food. Guess I really do think with my stomach :)

Well That's an Unfortunate Development.

Unlike I had hoped, this ridiculous head cold I acquired on Tuesday has not gone away. I should have known it wouldn't when I woke up feeling worse yesterday than I had the day before (and the day before my body was so run down that I continuously fell asleep in class for the whole two and a half hours... even when we were doing group work!). I don't feel as awful as I did yesterday, probably because I actually forced myself to eat something last night, but there is just no way I'll be able to go to Prague. It's struggle enough getting up right now to go to German! And I know I could go back to bed, and that Tanja would be okay with my not being there (since she saw me and P in our sickly wonder last night for our German dinner excursion), but the last time I missed German I got so far behind! It was the day we learned prepositions, and prepositions are difficult auf Deutsch! Fortunately, everything I had booked for this trip was really cheap, so I'm not losing out on too much money, and I should only be charged for one night in the hostel (about 9 euro), so it's okay.

However, I did promise my friend back home that I'd go to Prague and take some pictures of the bridges for him. So here's a bunch of pictures of Prague from Google, and we can all just pretend that I took them, and that I actually went!

ooooo

aaahhhh

ooohh

Schönes Wochenende! Hope y'all have a better one than me :) (Though really, who doesn't like an excuse to stay in bed watching German TV all day?)

Why yes, I did get lost somewhere in Amsterdam.

Listen to this song, if you don't get the reference :)

We got back from Amsterdam last night, after spending a few glorious days in the enthralling city. It was an absolute blast! We caught the 2:40 train out of Hauptbahnhof, and got to Amsterdam by about 9. The train ride went by so quickly, possibly because I was researching and outlining my term paper for film (which was due today). Packing sammiches was definitely a good idea because we were on the train straight through dinner. Once we got to the hostel, we dropped off our stuff and began exploring the city! M had already been to the city about 3 times before, so we just let him lead us around for a bit. We stumbled across the "I Amsterdam" sign, and then headed out to a pancake house/ sports bar (strange combination, I know). It was pretty fun, but the music was incredibly loud, so I couldn't really talk to anyone. After that we just strolled around. M got us lost, but then found us again. And we found out that the Heineken factory/brewery/museum/whatever you want to call it, was only a couple blocks away from the hostel! As was the Van Gogh Museum, and a couple of other museums.

The next day, J woke up at 8:40 to get the hostel's free breakfast. The rest of us stayed in bed until 11:30 when she finally got annoyed at us enough to kick our butts in gear! We grabbed some bagels at a cafe down the street (it was weird, they toasted the bagels, but just to the point where they were warm, not toasted, and therefore tasted kind of stale), and then headed over to the Anne Frank house. This was absolutely amazing! When we read her diary in 6th grade, I think I probably read it about six more times because it just fascinated me (apparently my interest in this realm of history has existed for longer than I thought)! It was incredible to actually be in the annex, and see where they lived, and the real conditions they lived in. Each room had a few quotes from the book, and with each quote a flood of memories came back from the rest of the book. A-mazing!

After the Anne Frank house, we headed to Dam Sqaure, the center of the city, to meet up with K and explore around some more. We found a hilarious condom store - apparently there are 96 different sizes of condoms! haha After some more exploring, we found our way to dinner, and then headed back to the hostel to change. While we were exploring, we got some flyers about a pub crawl happening that started at K's hostel, s we had to get changed before going to that. We explored around the Red Light District for a while - that was quite the experience. Not as attractive as you'd think they'd be, though there were some attractive ones. The pub crawl took us through the red light district, and it was just a complete blast. With all of the drinks included in the overall price of the crawl, there really was no need to buy our own drinks (or at least, not for me), so it was definitely a good decision. I've always wanted to do a pub crawl!

The next morning, we slept in again. haha... waking up for class at 9 every day is really starting to take a toll on everyone! I only have class at 9 two days a week, and it's still killing me! We headed out to grab some breakfast, and I got the most delicious hot chocolate. Well, the hot chocolate was alright, but the whipped cream was just amazing! It was so dense and tasted like it was relatively real, and not from a can. We met up with B, who had been in the city but with other friends, and when everyone else went to the Van Gogh Museum, we explored - meaning got lost - around the city. I didn't want to go to the Van Gogh museum because I don't really like that kind of art, and it was a 14 euro fee... Nein, danke!

We walked around for quite a while, just strolling and peering into random stores we came across. He wanted to go to Dam, and I don't think he realized that it was an area of the city, not just once specific place. He's not quite the person to go on adventures with - tends to get a little stressed out, then repeatedly tell you that he's not stressed out, but constantly check the time and wonder aloud as to where we are. I personally love getting lost in cities. As long as you don't end up in a sketchy part of town, it's such a great adventure. I think I probably would have preferred to explore alone, but oh well. We just have different ideas of what exploring is! Once we found our way back and met up with the rest of the group, I broke off and joined Kw, D and M to do a tour of the Heineken factory/museum/brewery/thingy. They were already there, and I got completely lost trying to find it...

Fortunately, after being followed by a creeper for about 10 minutes, I found it! The boys had already started the tour (my frustration from being lost on a time crunch got to me, and I told them to just start without me), and had my ticket. At the point of the tour they were in, they couldn't come back down to get me in. Thank God M had his "who's your dj?" shirt on. I told the ticket guy that I was with the guy in that shirt, and he laughed and let me through :) The first half of the museum was alright... history of the company and that kind of stuff. Then we got to the ride portion - I had no idea there was going to be a ride! - where I finally caught up to the boys, and got my ticket and wristband, which got me two free beers :) The ride was one of those interactive platform things, and it took us through the process of making beer... pretty sweet! Then we moved to the next room, and got a surprise free beer! The rest of the tour was really cool. Lots of random Heineken stuff, like commercials from the '80's, and a giant foosball table. And then the bar where we got our final two beers :) Yum!

After the brewery/factory/museum/doo-hickey, we went to grab some dinner and then meet up with people. It got a little complicated with meeting up, but we finally found each other, and spent the rest of the night exploring around the city. Br, J and I, of course, decided to stay at this one cafe while everyone else went out to a bar (I'd just ordered a hot chocolate when everyone else decided to leave, terrible timing!). Then we grabbed some ice cream and other tasty treats and headed home. We wanted to go to bed early because we had to get up early for our train, but people kept streaming back into the room until about 1 a.m. When we woke up it was time to head for the train station. I made sure to get some delicious Stroopwafels before we left - they're amazing, but I honestly cannot describe them - and spent the first 2 hours of the train ride writing 7 pages of my term paper. Then my battery died :( Fortunately I had enough time to finish it up after we got home! So, that's about it for Amsterdam - next week Prague!

Oh, one more thing to say about Amsterdam: If the Dutch are so tall, why do they make their stairs so short, in both height and length. Seriously! My feet barely fit on the steps!

Germany A-Z

So part of our requirements for my German class are to go on bi-monthly excursions with the class. So far we've explored Ikea, gone on a scavenger hunt around town, and have been forced to ask for directions auf Deutsch. This week my class headed out to the Willy Brandt museum where they were having such a cool exhibit! The basic concept of the exhibit was to present an A-Z of what it means to be German. Each letter had it's own little display related to the word it represented. Before we went to the actual exhibit, we met at Starbucks (my first time in a Starbucks in months... their blueberry (or blaubeer, if you prefer) muffins are no way near as tasty as Balzac's, although Le Crobag definitely has the best. But I digress. We met at starbucks and began listing all of the stereotypes we had heard about Germany and Germans before we came here, and then a list of what we'd discovered since getting here. You know the usual stereotypes: they drink a lot of beer, they are angry and cold people, they wear lederhosen, and they're all blonde. My German teacher made us realize that most of the stereotypes Americans hear about Germans are based on the Bavarian section of Germany because that's the area that the US occupied after WWII. Something I'd never thought of before!

 Fortunately, this isn't how the Germans dress.

Anyway, after making our lists, we headed over to the exhibition. It was probably one of my favorite exhibitions I've been to - just absolutely playful and fun! We each paired up and had to choose our favorite letter, then present to the class what that represents about the German people, and why we chose it. My partner and I chose J - Jugend (Youth). I honestly think I liked this one because the display consisted of condoms, piercings, pink hair extension and a disco ball. It rocked! haha But seriously, it was a really interesting part of the exhibit because one usually thinks of the Germans as being very traditional, adhering to strict order and values, but the youth has so much freedom. It's like there's a youth movement that began with the most recent reunification and has continued to just provide freedom from the strictness of past generations. Though this too has it's down sides. The display said that about 30% of the youth essentially never speak to their parents, even when they live at home, because the divisions and differences between generations is just so large. It's easy to understand when you think about the fact that some of the parents grew up on the East side of the wall, and now they're children are living in a very unified, cohesive society. These generational differences are obvious everywhere, especially with language. Most older generations know very little English, whereas the younger generations were definitely affected by the total Americanization that infiltrated Germany during American occupation and the Cold War.

My German teacher, the ever so wonderful Tanja, picked D for her letter - Deutsch Sprechen (essentially speaking German). We all laughed at her at first, but then she pointed out something we'd all missed. There was a sound board with all of the different regions of Germany and their individual dialects and accents. We all knew the Berlin accent (the most obvious example is that Berliners pronounce Ich (I) as "ick," where as elsewhere the "ch" noise comes from the back of the throat, and kind of sounds like hissing. OK, that's a terrible example. I don't know how to explain it) but Tanja told us that she has a friend from Bavaria, and when she speaks her usual language Tanja can't understand a word she is saying. It's a completely different dialect. All Germans are forced to use "high German" in school, so it is cohesive throughout the country, but it's really cool that there are still different dialects in such an industrialized and Americanized country (ok, that might sound kind of weird. I mean that it's cool that traditional languages are still spoken and haven't been modernized out of society).

I have pictures from the exhibit, but I can't put them on the blog yet. I'll get on that either tomorrow, or when I get back from Amsterdam on Sunday! Unfortunately, it's supposed to rain the whole time we're in Amsterdam, but that's ok. We'll still have a blast. The best part is that our hostel is literally across the street from the Van Gogh Museum!

Bis Sonntag! (oder später)

Dancing Hippos

 The title actually does have something to do with the post. They just happen to be separate events. See, I'm starting to be creative with my titles again!

This weekend was pretty spectacular. We stayed in town, and M was wonderful enough to organize a whole weekend full of awesomeness for us! Ever since Scandinavia, none of us have wanted to organize things for fear of repercussions (whoever organized things had to deal with the pressure of figuring everything out, and worry about people being dissatisfied.) We started out on Thursday by going to an Irish pub, Oscar Wilde. It was pretty fantastic... real Irish food, which just made me crave English Breakfast so badly. I think F and I are going to go back there one day during lunch and order the Irish Breakfast, to remind us both of home (oh yeah, F is British too). It was a pretty fun evening spent drinking Guiness and watching Liverpool come back with a hat trick from Gerrard!

Friday we essentially had two nights, it was crazy! We started out playing beer pong and cards in my friends room, which eventually got the cops called on us for noise (seriously? it was ridiculous..) Fortunately, that happened about five minutes before we were about to leave anyway, so it didn't really effect the evening too much! We then headed out to Weekend, a club that's on the 12th floor of a building with a panoramic view of the city! It was pretty sweet... the music left something to be desired. I can handle techno and electronic music, but this was just absurd. The same beat repeated over and over for at least 3 hours. And every once in a while there wouldn't even be a beat that you could figure out how to dance to! In any case, it was still fun :)

Saturday, J and I headed out to a museum we had to go to for class. We spent about an hour and a half trying to find the damn thing, even asking some women at a different museum where it was. Even with J's pretty decent German, we were subsequently given directions to the DHM, Holocaust Memorial, Topography of Terror Museum, and the GDR. We were looking for the German War Resistance Museum. Eventually, we found it. It was pretty cool, but only one room out of the 15 or so had English subtitles, so most of our time was spent practicing our German (I could make out maybe 2 or 3 sentences per paragraph!) After the museum, we stopped off to get some groceries and headed home. I decided to pass on going bowling because I'm trying to save as much money as I can! Also, I was really tired, and didn't want to change out of my PJs :)

Sunday, that would be today, we went to the Zoo!!! Now, I don't think I've ever been to a Zoo before. At least not since I've been old enough to remember it. I was really excited! We saw my two favorite animals - Lions and Pandas! And some giraffes, leopard cubs, gorillas, orangutans, crazy nocturnal animals, rhinos, zebras, tons of birds (they had pigeons in a cage... weird), seals and sea lions, hippos, penguins, and a whole bunch of other animals. It was awesome! We spent about 3 hours there, until it closed. Then I headed to Balzac (a coffee shop) to study, which is not that much fun.

This coming Thursday, we are headed out to Amsterdam! And then next weekend, I am hopefully going to Prague! I might have to go by myself to Prague, which would definitely be an adventure, but seeing as I can't find anyone else to go with me, I suppose I could always make it a fun adventure! I'm also no longer going to Vienna after the program :( I tried changing my flight, but the latest one I can get is December 15th, or else I'll miss Christmas! But, this has inspired me to figure out all of the things I need/want to do in Berlin since my time is winding down so quickly! So I sat down tonight with my Berlin book and read it cover-to-cover. And thus evolved my list:

Museums:
Pergamon
Neues Mueseum (modern art)
Holocaust Memorial/Museum (cannot believe I haven't done this yet!)
Museum of Contemporary Art
Jewish Museum
Photography Museum

Food:
Barcomi's Deli (German food meets NY deli)
 
Clubs:
Cookies
Doughnuts
(apparently I like food named clubs)

Other touristy stuff:
TV Tower
Flohmarkt @ Arkonaplatz
Jumbo Second Hand (vintage store)
Turkish Market
Antikmarkt @ Ostbahnhof

Only a little over a month to get it all done!!

Sometimes

Sometimes I feel like a success. Sometimes I feel like a failure. I can't figure out which I am today. Perhaps I'm just uninspired.

Cookie Dreams

Anyone who's known me for more than a couple months, or meets me during so existential crisis or another, knows that when I'm stressed or depressed, I like to bake. Not in the Sean Penn in Fast Times at Ridgemont High sense of the word, more of the Paula Dean style baking. Yes, that does mean lots of butter, but really it means lots and lots of sugar. The thing I love about baking is that it's about 30-40 minutes where I only have to think about one thing, and it's something that I can do with almost no thought whatsoever. It's like meditation - time for my mind to wander where it will, and for some reason when I'm baking, my mind only wanders of positive thoughts. It's time just for me to reflect on life, or to not think at all. There really is nothing more relaxing than throwing on some Damien Rice, Norah Jones, or Eminem (depending on how stressed/angry I am) and just baking.

My go to stress-baking recipes are triple chocolate chip cookies, and cupcakes with a citrus frosting. If you've read my last post, you'll know that right now is a pretty stressful time in the semester. The entire month of November is essentially the most academically challenging month of my time in Berlin - it's when every single one of my term paper's are due! If you thought midterms were stressful, just try experiencing that kind of stress (if not worse) every other week, for the next four weeks. Not exactly the most relaxing of thoughts. Fortunately for me, and those around me, I've just discovered/created a new recipe that is definitely going to become one of my staple stress-baking recipes :)

Now baking in Germany is not the easiest thing in the world, as I think I've said before. I'm sure the average German person doesn't have nearly as much trouble baking as I do, but that's because they know the names of ingredients, measurements and also probably have the correct measuring devices. They also probably don't use this fake brown sugar stuff I've been using (now I know I've mentioned this before... boy, I hope I'm not repeating myself too much). Fortunately, since I've come to Berlin, I've experienced enough stressful moments to have gotten my German baking down to a mindless science!

These are my terribly accurate measuring utensils.

This is why every batch of cookies comes out different.

Given the utterly exhausting day I had yesterday (seriously, studying or doing something for school - yes, even when moving from one location to another - from 9:00 - 23:00), and the persistent nature of the nightmares I've been having for the last two nights, it was essentially a given that I would need to bake something today! Unfortunately, Mondays are my worst days. I've got class until at least 19:30, and as my film professor started off class today saying that it was going to be a long one, it was likely that I wouldn't make it home until 20:00 at the earliest. After falling asleep during one of my favorite movies (M), and feeling the nausea of exhaustion rearing its ugly head, I made the executive decision to leave class after the film. This was an excellent choice on my part because it got me home in time to make dinner at a reasonable time, and had enough energy to make cookies!

After spending some time to J to discuss our Totalitarian papers, I got to work baking. It did just the trick, and has left me feeling completely relaxed and refreshed. My new Nutella recipe is absolutely amazing, and the drizzling of melted Nutella on top is just delightful! They also go quite well with a small glass of Bailey's :)

Eating the batter is always the best part

 Judging when the cookies are done is so tricky here!

If you leave them in just a moment too long, they

go rock hard

 The final, delicious product

The Recipe (My German quirks to the recipe are in parentheses):

1/2 cup of butter (eye-balled because they don't sell butter in sticks)

1/2 cup of (fake) brown sugar (a little over half a tea cup's worth)

6 Tablespoons of sugar

1 egg

1 Teaspoon vanilla (or on package of vanilla sugar, because they don't sell extract here)

1 Teaspoon baking powder (at least that's what I think this stuff is...)

1 1/4 cup Flour (a tea cup and a bit's worth)

A couple of spoonfuls of Nutella, mixed in at the end - it's best to mix it well after every spoonful, and judge for yourself how Nutella-y you want the cookies!

1) Melt the butter and fake brown sugar together, then add to the sugar (just combine, don't melt, if you're in America)

2) Add egg and vanilla

3) Slowly combine flour and alleged baking powder to the wet stuff

4) Once you've got a good looking cookie dough, start mixing in Nutella until you think it's ready!

5) Bake for ?? minutes at 350 degrees (180 Celsius) -seriously, I have no idea how long to bake them for. I just eye ball it. They should still be a little spongy in the middle, and just about to get hard on the rim. Take them out before the rims are too solid, or else they'll turn into rocks (this isn't the case in America)

Morning Suprises.

I have my first term paper due this coming Wednesday. How prepared am I for this paper, you ask? Nicht soviel. The paper consists of an analysis of two novels (Darkness at Noon and Brave New World), as well as developing a definition of totalitarianism and discussing its prevalence in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. These are essentially four questions that could each, easily, be answered in their own 10-15 page papers.... but we have to find a way to cram concise answers to each question into one cohesive 10-15 page paper. I finished reading both of the books when I got back from Scandinavia, which was two weeks before the paper's due, so I figured I would be good. But then time just happened to sneak up on me! I started a brief outline for it on Wednesday, but couldn't really go into too many specifics because of a lack of materials. And then Thursday just turned into a fail of school productivity, but a success of personal productivity (and those days are always so rewarding). Friday we went to Sachsenhausen, a concentration camp on the outskirts of Berlin. It was one of the FU BEST excursions, and was probably the only time they've actually let us go off on our own. It was wonderful! I got more of an intense feel from Sachsenhausen than I did from Auschwitz purely based on the fact that I was only with two other people, and not crammed into a group of people. So yay for Fu BEST finally letting us explore on our own, and not forcing us into embarrassingly large tour groups! After that, I grabbed some lunch with some people, and took a nap. Then a friend had a party... and I slept in a little too much on Saturday than I should have! I was still able to get a lot of work done on my paper though, and ended up with a 5 page long outline, full of quotes and all sorts of good stuff! I had to go see a movie for my film class that night, and stupid s-bahn construction ended up getting me there late.... which means that I have to see the movie tonight. So, just a brief recap, tomorrow I have due: field report for history, field report for cinema, outline for cinema research paper, and Term paper for totalitarian due Wednesday. And because of some rather stupid personal decisions, I've got to cram this all into today, Sunday. Which means, going to a museum, writing about said museum, writing at least 8 pages of my paper, outlining another paper, going to a movie, and writing about said movie. Oh, and did I mention the museum takes an hour or so to get to and from? This leads me to the point of this procrastinatory blog (yes, that's a word I just made up). I woke up this morning (from a terrifying dream, I might add) to find that it was not 8:45, as I'd set my alarm for, but in fact it was 7:45! Sweet ignorance about day lights saving awarded me with an extra hour to get everything done today! I couldn't have been happier when I figured it out :) Unfortunately... it's now 16:45, the film starts in two hours, and I'm nowhere near as close to being done with my to do list as I should be. In any case, I'm still glad I got that extra hour :)

Post Script: Today is one of those days where I have so much to do that writing 12 pages of a 15 page paper means I don't get to check it off my list, thereby making it seem like I've done absolutely nothing all day.

Shedding Skin

First of all, I'd like to thank my amazing parents for sending me a care package :) For those of you who have actually read most of my posts, you'll remember how distraught I was at the concept of surviving these 4 months with only 7 pairs of socks. Well, my lovely parents heard my passive pleas and sent me not just a few, but 36 pairs of socks! My excitement is indescribable. They also sent me two pairs of gloves (one is the kind that are fingerless and flip into mittens!), a really cute scarf and a hat. And as you'll remember from the Scandinavia posts, I lost Hatty recently, so I was pretty damn excited to get a replacement :)

So before I go onto a more personal, self-reflecting musing, I'd like to share a quote from one of the books I'm reading that has inspired this self-relfection:

"At time I have the feeling that one emerges from what has been written as a snake emerges from its skin. That's it; you cannot write yourself down, you can only cast your skin. But who is going to be interested in this dead skin? The ever-recurring question whether the reader is ever able to read anything other than himself is superfluous: writing is not communication with the readers, not even communication with oneself, but communication with the inexpressible." - I'm Not Stiller - by Max Frisch (pg 284)

This book has, among other things, really gotten me thinking about these blogs. Who am I posting for? And what do I want, or even expect, to get out of it? Why blog when I'm in pretty stable communication with my friends and family back home. They've heard all this stuff before, they don't need to read it in a formal, gossip-less format. Am I just writing to remember the trip? Isn't that what all the pictures are for? Am I writing because it gives me a sense of pride and accomplishment when I see my statistics. It can't be this, because most of the time my statistics just make me wonder why I'm even bothering to write something that hardly anyone is reading. But perhaps it's not important that people read this. Perhaps the important thing is that I am having these experiences, and am growing and changing into a completely different person, and in order for me to be able to continue growing I need to shed the skin of my experiences as they come. This isn't the normal kind of personal growth that comes slowly; this is high-speed personal growth. Almost every experience I have here forces me to question and put into perspective aspects of my life: what I think makes me happy, or sad, what I really want to do with the rest of my life, my commitment to certain people and things, my relationships with everyone around me, and most importantly my own attitude and personality.

I don't know if the people here are also feeling this way, or this is perhaps the result of my own overactive self analysis. I know that this is probably the happiest I've been in a very long time, and that's without any qualifying statements. Usually when I'm incredibly happy, I always have to qualify it with something. Especially in relationships. "He's the best guy I've ever dated, especially because [insert negative quality of an ex-boyfriend here]." But here, I'm just happy. Even when I'm sad. I was thinking about it the other day, and when I'm sad here, my coping mechanisms are completely different than they are back home. I've yet to tell whether this is for better or worse, but it seems to be working well. One thing that I've just been shocked over is how well my friends respond to my depression. When you tell most people (or so has been my experience) that you suffer from depression, they look at you like you are a leper who is going to come into their lives and destroy their happiness. People just don't know how to handle it. They roll their eyes and tell to "get over it." They don't understand that some days you just can't get out of bed. But the people I've met here are so understanding, and don't roll their eyes. I feel comfortable telling them when I'm depressed because they ask me if I'm ok, if I want someone there with me, and to tell them if I need someone to talk to. It's unbelievable.

The men who I hang out with are also having a profound impact on my view of relationships. Hearing them discuss their present and past relationships has made me realize just how much crap I've put up with with former boyfriends because I thought that the things I found fundamental to a relationship, apparently weren't because I never received them. That isn't to say that my relationships have been terrible, most of them have made me incredibly happy, it's just that they've never been how I always imagine relationships were supposed to be. Like the relationships my guy friends have (and yes, I've heard negative sides of their relationships, so I'm not just looking at this through rose colored glasses). I tend to lose myself in relationships, and as a result, end up giving more of myself than I'm willing to give, making concessions and compromises that I don't want to make simply from fear of being left. I compromise who I am to make the other person happy. And that's not how relationships should work.

Some of the books I've been reading, and a few experiences I've had here, have actually been changing my concept of monogamous relationships. I don't even know if they are possible, at least without little hiccups along the road. It's like in 7th grade, when you have two best friends, and everyone tells you that you can't have two, you have to pick one. But you love both people, they just each bring different things to the table that fulfill your personal and emotional needs. There's no way you could ever pick between them because one person could never fulfill all of your needs, and you would never want to ask a person to try to. I think it's the same with relationships. People who try to make their significant other the bearer of all their needs just aren't in healthy relationships. This isn't to say that polygamy is the way to go, just that perhaps it is necessary to have different people to fill different needs. You can't just depend on one person. And you can't ask one person to be your everything. You would never want to feel the weight of the pressure that that puts on a person. And if you spend your life trying to find a single person who can aptly fulfill all of your needs, you will either never be happy, or end up completely remolding a person into the person you want them to be. This is a topic I haven't had too much time to digest, hence the disorganized thought pattern. I'll muse more about this again I'm sure.

Not all of the changes I've been experiencing are as romantic, or outwardly based. I've been seriously reconsidering and debating what I really want to do with my life. The plan has always (for the last 3 years) been to complete my degrees in History and Psychology this Spring, take a year off to work, and then start a PhD program. But I don't know if that's really what I want. Well, I know it's what I want, I just don't know if I'm capable of accomplishing it. If I even want to make the effort for something that I could potentially fail at. It's not just a little bit of effort that goes into getting a PhD, it's one of the biggest commitments I will likely ever make. Speaking with people on this program, I'm beginning to realize how completely ill-prepared for grad school I am. My gpa isn't amazing, I have no extra curricular activities, I've done no internships or jobs that have anything to do with my career path. If I was up against someone in this program for a spot in a PhD program, I can almost guarantee that they would get it and I wouldn't. I think part of this has to do with the school I chose to go to. I picked UCSC because the history and psychology programs were more in tune with what I want to study than UCLA's. I forgot to take into account the environment of students at UCSC. It's not the most serious school, there's no competition, general apathy surrounds the school. It's hard to thrive, or want to thrive, when you are surrounded by so much apathy. I've also got emotional issues that always interfere with my school work. Granted, they usually interfere with the work from courses that don't interest me, but it's still a major concern. You can't get a PhD when every few months or so you experience a huge depressive state that practically immobilizes you. I'm beginning to think that I'm just not cut out for this career path.

Or maybe I'm just too young to want to do it. I'm only 20, I'll be 21 when I graduate, and there's a whole wealth of experiences and things I haven't seen or done. I don't know if I want to lock myself down into a certain school or city for 7-9 years. Maybe I want to work on an archeological dig, or become a journalist, or work for a museum, or take the time to really embrace my photography and try to make something happen with that. I want to do all of those things, but I can't help this nagging feeling that if I don't start my PhD young, it will be too late. I'm also terrified that actually trying to make a career of photography would fail miserably, no matter how badly I want it. I feel like I'm floundering. I always have a plan. Always. And now I just feel lost. I know once I figure this all out, it will be amazing. I'll pick what I really want to do. And if it turns out that that's not what I want to do (like picking UCSC over UCLA, for example), then I'll survive and figure out a way to do what I really want. But until I reach a conclusion, I'm left here floundering. A planner with no plan or direction.

As stressful as these changes are for me right now, I know that once I fully shed the skin of these experiences I'll come out a better person. It may sound from this that I am tremendously depressed and lonesome, but I'm not. I'm just trying to make sure that when I finally do make changes in my life I'll know where they came from, and why I decided to choose that path. Like I said, I have an overactive mind that likes to analyze every aspect of my life. Self reflection is just not something I can avoid. And I'm sharing it here to help me work through it. As the reader, I expect you'll take away what you want from this post, and will likely not grasp what it is I'm really trying to say. But that's ok, this one's for me, not you.

Even More Adventures in Scandinavia!

I keep thinking that I'm spelling Scandinavia incorrectly. It's a hard word to type. Anyway, welcome back to the adventures! If you haven't read part one, go do that now. Because I said so. Not because you need it to understand the rest of the trip. Mainly because part one was my favorite part.

Tuesday Oct 19th - Our first (and only) full day in Bergen! There was no real set plan for anything we were doing in Norway or Sweden, so the first day in Bergen started out with trying to figure out what to do. Our Hostel was at the base of a hiking trail that went up to the highest point in Bergen, and we were going to do that, but then it was rainy and gross out, so we decided not to. The rain also made me not take my camera with me (it's not as if I can just put it in my pocket), so no pictures from this day - my apologies! We decided to take this train thingy up to another part of a mountain, and it was awesome. I was still a little moody from the day before, but that quickly subsided! The train was awesome... I can honestly say I never thought I would take a train up a mountain - and I mean up, as in practically vertical! Not just going around the mountain! At the top it was gorgeous, and I was so sad to not have my camera, as it had stopped raining now. We were all running around exploring, and suddenly we'd been hiking around for an hour! I was really enjoying myself and wanted to hike (well follow the paved path) down to the bottom, but apparently it was a 4 hour hike, and other people weren't down. I was totally down, but caved to the peer pressure and we took the train back down. Then we strolled around and found a cool Viking museum, but it closed 15 minutes after we got there, which was a total bummer! We found a restaurant, and decided to treat ourselves to an amazing fish dinner, so we made a reservation for later that night. Then we strolled over to a little pond and hung out there for a bit until we saw an art museum and decided to go there. It was a great museum - it had a Munch exhibit and a few Picasso's. I saw one painting that I've been inspired to recreate, so look forward to that coming soon (look up Trine Folmoe's "Back" to see it)! After the museum we headed back to the hostel to change for dinner - no one got dressed up, we just put more clothes on! The dinner was absolutely delicious! I got Salmon (shocking!) and it was sooo good. Honestly, the best salmon I've had at a restaurant, except for maybe the Teriyaki Salmon from the Elephant Bar, but that was a completely different type of dish. I spent about 20 minutes trying to decide between ice cream or Bailey's and coffee for dessert, and finally decided to get ice cream, then get Bailey's at the bar. It was a great decision. We headed to a little Scottish bar, where we caught the second half of an Arsenal game (yeah, they kicked ass), then headed back to the hostel. On the bus, J and I got the giggles about something silly like vacuums, and then couldn't keep serious while we were playing ping pong... it was a great evening :) (Apparently this post is super long because I don't have any pictures... haha or something like that)

I stole this picture from Br's facebook. That's me, Br and J

at the top of the mountain we explored

Me and J chilling with a troll.

The painting I'm planning on recreating

Wednesday Oct 20th - Our last day in Bergen. Our flight to Stockholm wasn't until 9 p.m. so we still pretty much had the whole day to explore, which was good! We checked out of the hostel, and they were kind enough to let up put our bags behind the desk while we went for a hike! We hiked up the mountain that the Hostel was on (the one we couldn't do the day before), and it was intense! I don't think all the hiking I've done in SC had rightly prepared me for this hike. Hiking in SC is really more like taking a stroll through the woods. This involved climbing over rocks, up frozen streams, through marshes, not being sure if you were on the path, slipping on frozen streams, and finally making it to the top. The first 10 minutes I was absolutely miserable. It was freezing (it started snowing about 3 hours after we finished hiking... that cold), it was hard and it was challenging. And we were on the easy trial. After the initial suckiness though, it got a lot better. The view was spectacular, and rumor had it there was a lift at the top that would take us back down! M, D and I got separated from the rest of the group and went around the back. I think we got off the trail for a bit, and ended up hiking through half frozen marshiness. This is when I discovered that my "water proof" boots, were not quite water proof. My toes have never been so cold! When we finally made it to the top we discovered that the lift was not open that day. Cue the 5 stages of grieving.... Finally, one acceptance had set it, and everyone else had made it to the top, we decided to go down the faster, harder and steeper way. Only because it was faster. I'm definitely glad this wasn't the way we came up because there wasn't really anywhere to stop and look out, unlike the slow way. It was so steep that the only way to get down without killing yourself was to hold a rickety pole... only a little terrifying! At one point, we had to hike down through a running stream - again, the whole apparently not water proof shoes thing became an issue. We made it to the bottom completely in tact though, and I have to say it was a great way to start the day. Exhausting, but absolutely amazing! After that we headed back to the Hostel, gathered our stuff and headed into town. We stopped by the fish market, and apparently the plan was to eat there. Br, J and I were not down with this plan because it was absolutely freezing, and we wanted to be inside somewhere! So we split off from the group, and found a cute little restaurant that wasn't too terribly pricey (for Norway...). We ended up staying there for a couple hours, which was a little shocking. When we got there, our conversation was a little stagnant, but after we finished eating we suddenly found ourselves fully enthralled in conversation (we started talking about psychology and I couldn't help myself!). Unfortunately, because we lollygagged so long, the waiter assumed he could take his time with us, and it took forever to get the check, even after we asked for it (we were on of three groups in the entire restaurant). This normally wouldn't be a problem, but we could see that it had started to snow, and really wanted to go out and run around and play in the snow. By the time we paid, the snow had stopped :( It was apparently the first snow of the season too! Anyway, after that, we met up with everyone else, and headed to the airport. Much to all of our satisfaction, it started snowing on the bus to the airport, and we got to play in the snow once we got there! Then we boarded our flight, and were off to Sweden! One of the flight attendants looked like a stripper, and I was completely convinced he was going to start stripping during the emergency procedures presentation. Sadly, this didn't happen :( We landed at about 22:30 or 11, and took a train into central Stockholm, and then wandered the streets until we found our hostel. Once we were settled in, we all promptly passed out (i realize that every time I say that it sounds like I'm sugar coating things and passing over crazy antics, but really, we just went to bed).

 Gorgeous view and icy paths

All of us on top of the mountain!

The view from the top of the mountain

Snow!! I was terrified of getting on a plane in the snow...

Thursday Oct 21st - Our first full day in Sweden. And I stayed in bed all day. I initially got up with everyone else, but I was feeling really stressed and exhausted. My money had all but run out, and I felt terrible asking my parents for more. I was also just exhausted from being around people for so long, with almost no alone time. It's kind of hard only talking to the same 8 people for a week straight. I could feel tensions starting to form, and I knew if I went out, I would just be grumpy and a downer, so I headed back to the hostel after checking out the Royal Palace and read and napped until everyone came back a few hours later. The hostel had free pasta, so I didn't have to pay for my dinner, which made me feel a lot better about the money situation, and I decided to go ahead and let myself have a good time - forcing away the depression. We had purchased some alcohol at the airport, so we playing a few drinking games at the Hostel before heading out. This was a good decision because then we couldn't feel how cold it was (and believe me, it was cold)! We ended up going to a couple of bars, and then to a club where Br and I apparently danced for forever. I really do have this problem where whenever I start dancing, I can't stop for hours. I feel like I should warn people who dance with me that it might be a long time before we stop, haha. Apparently for a while we were the only ones on the dance floor too, which is pretty hilarious. I had no idea, I was in my dancing zone :) After the dancing stopped, we headed back to the hostel and promptly passed out. Just kidding! We sat by the docks for a while (where I lost my hat, Hatty, who we found on the last day after he'd been snowed on. We gave him a funeral and buried him in the ocean), and talked and then went back to the hostel, where crazy antics were happening. And then finally, we promptly passed out.

Friday Oct 22nd - Our last full day in Stockholm! We started out by going to the cafe next to the Hostel for breakfast, which was delicious! And then we just sort of meandered around for a bit. We met up with Kr, who was coming to Sweden for two days, and then strolled down a big shopping street. Lh, Br, J and I got distracted by touristy stores and lost the rest of the group (yes parents, I did get you presents!). It was really fun, lots of silly hats, moose memorabilia, candy and scarves. We met up with part of the group, and then got separated again! Br, J and I tried to meet up with them, but for some reason our phones weren't working, so we went off on our own to a little cafe and got the most delicious chicken pesto pasta ever! And it was pretty cheap! After that we decided to just go back to the hostel and hang out for a bit. It really was too cold to really do anything, and it wasn't snowing, so therefore not worth it to be outside. We got some meatballs and rolls for dinner, and made an amazing pasta dinner (seriously, the only things we ate this whole trip - except for the occasional fish dish - were pizza and pasta. Pizza was the cheapest thing in Norway, and pasta was free in Sweden). At this point everyone was pretty haggard from the trip, and so we had a pretty laid back end of the trip. We stayed in and played trivia, which BR was awesome about and made for us! Then we all promptly fell asleep (getting sick of my saying that yet?)

 Br & J on a bridge in Stockholm

J, L and Br looking ridiculous in their awesome Sweden hats

Awesome Candy store... and so cheap too :)

Saturday Oct 23rd - The last day! We woke up early.... too early. We had to leave for the train station at 10. People started packing up at 8. I was perplexed, and didn't know the plan, so I got up with everyone else... and then realized I could have slept an extra hour. Not cool. In any case, since I was up, I headed to the cafe and got a sandwich for later that day. Then Br, J and I wandered down to the docks, where we found Hatty, and had a funeral. We ran into M, BR and K, and apparently M had seen Hatty the day before, on the docks, covered in snow, and thought it might be my hat. It was very sad. Anyway, we strolled on over to the train station, and took a bus to our airport. The bus ride was 80 minutes long, and our airport was sketchy as hell. But we made it home alive! The rest of the day wasn't too interesting... we took the S-Bahn home, I randomly ran into a girl I used to work with who was just leaving Berlin after being here for 2 days, and then I took the most glorious shower of my life. Later that night, Br, J and I watched Snatch and drank wine. Twas a nice relaxing way to settle back into live in Berlin.