Blisters On My Fingers

Day one of midterms is over... Thank God. It's now day 2, but I don't have any midterms, so it's a catch up/study/buy warm clothes day! Monday was quite possibly one of the hardest days to get through. I had German from 9-12, which was fun. We reviewed for our midterm, and our absolutely amazing teacher Tanja agreed to cancel our excursion for Tuesday so that we could use the time to study. This worked out so beautifully for me, as I don't have any class on Tuesdays, so canceling the excursion meant I could sleep in after a really rough day! After German, it was off to get Döner for lunch. Delicious! Then coffee and a quick review of my history study guide.

The History midterm was not what I had expected. He had given us 8 questions to study, and was going to ask 4 and have us answer 3. When J, K and I were working on the study guide, we narrowed it down to the four questions we were certain he was going to ask. He ended up only asking one of the ones we thought he would. Fortunately, our little study group worked wonders and I was able to hit on all of the points we had discussed in the group for the three questions I answered. It took 2 hours and 15 minutes to finish the three essays. Four pages (A4 pages that is), handwritten, front and back. I quite honestly never want to use the phrases: "Treaty of Versailles," "German Society," "political instability (and other denominations of the phrase)" or "Weimar Republic" ever again. I don't think I've ever written three papers that had so much in common. Also, my pencil has little grippy ribs on it for increased grip-ability (obviously), but after writing for that long, the grip just rubbed against my fingers and made them raw. I guess it's been a while since I've written that much by hand. And so, I now have little blisters on my fingers.

This proved to be a slight disadvantage when I got to my Film midterm 45 minutes later. At that point me brain was completely fried, the coffee had warn off, and apparently I was slightly delirious. These things happen. We watched clips from the four movies we've watched in class, and then were supposed to pick one or more of the movies to analyze in terms of historical context and style. At least I hope we were supposed to discuss historical context because that's all I wrote about. I'm not going to lie, I'm only taking the class pass/no pass, and I absolutely do not care about film analysis. I find it to be far too subjective, and feel that a film has so many people putting so many different things into it, that it is impossible to ever really analyze it to any legitimate extent. But that's just my feeling. I still managed to spit out 2 and a half, hand written, front and back pages, so I'm sure that alone will ensure me a C... which is all I need for a Pass!

It was a pretty rough day, so I was excited to hear that a group of people were going out to dinner, and were potentially playing beer pong after. It sounded perfect. I didn't ask for details and just went out and met the rest of the group. It was a different group of people than the people I normally hang out with; there were two or three normal people, but I'd never really hung out with the other people before. It was really nice going out and getting to know more people. As much as I love my little group, I like to branch out every now and then. We were apparently headed to an American restaurant that had 6 Euro steaks.... sounded fantastic! Until we got there (after a good half an hour of getting lost). Turns out it was 6 Euro per 100 kg. With a 250 kg minimum (ok, not sure if I want to use kg here or g, so my apologies. You catch my drift through). I was so hungry and tired from the day that I was fine with spending a little extra money on dinner... but no one else was. We ended up going to an Indian restaurant down the street. It was delicious! I got Mutton Saag (Spinach Lamb curry) and a Hefeweißen, my new favorite beer. It was probably the most delicious lamb curry I've ever had! And the whole meal only cost 8.50 Euro... a whole lot better than a 15 Euro steak! It was a really great way to spend the evening after midterms from hell!

And now, it's pretty much smooth sailing for the rest of the week. I don't have any midterms today, so I'm using the time to start research on my history research paper (on the nazification of the educational system) and going out to buy some long sleeve shirts (apparently, I only have 2). Then tomorrow I've got a midterm for Authoritarian at 4:30. It should be pretty easy. It's only 10% of my grade for the class, so there's not too much pressure. Plus he said it's going to be a relatively general analysis, and not focus on specific readings, so I'm just going to review the basic concepts tonight and tomorrow, and I should be fine. Then Thursday morning is the German midterm. I'm a little nervous about this one just because it's German, haha. I'm good on vocab and verb conjugation. I still need to study "his," "their," "your," "our," etc. I'm just nervous that I'm going to make a bunch of little mistakes that will add up. Fortunately, Tanja's pretty understanding about the little mistakes and doesn't ever mark us down too much for them.

I think after everyone's done on Thursday, we're going to head over to Grunwald, a forest just outside of Berlin. It should be pretty fun and absolutely gorgeous! The leaves here are turning, and while it's dark and depressing when I get up at 6:45, by 7:15 the morning Golden Hour has come in, and there is just nothing more beautiful than a golden sunrise coming through golden leaves. I tried to take some pictures the other morning, but it was 34 Degrees F and my fingers froze! I will definitely be bringing my camera with me :)

Then Friday it's off to Norway! We're getting to Oslo Friday afternoon, then staying until Monday when we take the train to Bergen. We're in Bergen until Wednesday, when we head over to Stockhom. Then we're staying in Stockholm until Saturday, when we return to Berlin in the afternoon! It should be amazing. I'm going with an incredible group of friends... and if they can make dirty, smelly, expensive Paris amazing, I can only imagine how great this trip will be :) Our hostel in Bergen is at the base of an amazing hiking trail, and we may be able to see the Northern Lights. There's also a really nice, relatively cheap Spa/Sauna/Pool place in Stockholm that I'm going to see if I can convince people to go to. I won't be bringing my computer with me, so hopefully my 17 GB of memory on my camera will be enough!