Wow today.
I mean really.
Are you trying to tell me something?
I know, I get it, I need to buy a bus pass. 50€ later, I understand. Germans don't mess around.
But really? Did I really have to essentially break my host mom's car?
Was that really neccessary?

What have I done, day? What did I do that was so wholly offensive for you to thrust these two things upon me within the span of two hours?
Not cool.
Not cool at all.

In other news, if you want to know what my classmates and I do when we drink alcohol,
we sit in dorm kitchens and eat chips and get each other to say silly things in our mother-languages.
and we play this song on the guitar and I'm really really good at doing Kim's harmonizing vocals.
It's always a hit.

I really really love The Pixies.

Other reasons:




There was this post on Genderfork:
"I identify with music more than I ever did with masculinity and femininity. I wonder how many weird looks people would give me if I started telling people my gender was “punk rock.”"
I love this. This is how the pixies make me feel.
And jazz, and soft acoustic guitar, and dance music, and jam bands, and...

"Bin wieder da!"

Okay. The thing about this blog thing is that you have to decide what kind of emotion or idea you want to put across - I tend to write about what's going on in my life (not just here, but in journals etc) when I'm dissatisfied or frustrated.
So I could just write a long thing about why I'm frustrated right now and it would sound like I'm having a bad time but I'm really not.

But also, what am I doing?

Birte is visiting us for the weekend. And Hans-Peter is back from his business trip. This means I am going to get pissed off a lot. I do not really like either of these people.
But anyway.

I don't know what to do and I kind of wish I was back home because then I would be able to find a job and a place with other young folks to live - I would like to do that here, but I am an "alien" and it would be a pain in the ass to even start anything like that.
Basically I just need money. And a car.
These things should be easy to come by!
I have run out of my monthly earnings (well, I have 5 Euros left) and don't get paid again until the 21st. Which is actually pretty soon. But we're going to Hamburg tomorrow and people want to stay the night and go out and I want to too but I don't have any money to do that and when I told Anette that today she just said like "übernacht?" and went "hmmm" and then somebody said something else and the topic changed.

So. Yeah. And some folks from my class are going out in about an hour and I don't want to deal with all the transportation issues that come with going into Kiel. But I also don't want to spend the night in my room. But I also don't want to sit downstairs and listen to Birte and Hans-Peter talk.

This is totally pointless. You don't need to read this. Haha. And of course it sounds like I'm not having a good time. Which is true and not true.


Money and a car.



But the world is beautiful and that is okay. There are trees and prickly bushes and clouds and snails and hedgehogs and music like Leonard Cohen and Camera Obscura and Beirut.
And that's pretty freaking good.

There are a lot of snails out lately because it's been raining so much and they're all over the trails where people ride bikes and every few hundred yards or so there's a snail that's been popped like a tube of toothpaste by a bike wheel. It's disgusting and totally fascinating.

"Präpositionen"

Just got back from having dinner with some friends from my German course. The Italians (Pietro and Giuliana) decided to cook dinner for whoever wanted to come tonight, so we met in one of the student Wohnung kitchens and they cooked yummy pasta (actual Italian food is very similar to what we eat in America - not really Olive Garden, but the smaller, more tomato-sauce focused restaurants). Behshad, from Iran, brought his guitar along and played some sexy Spanish music, and then great Iranian guitar stuff. I love when people you don't expect have these hidden talents.
I got up the courage to play a song I wrote a while back called "Dreams About People You Didn't Think You Cared About Anymore". It was the first time I'd played something I wrote for a large group of people, and it was exhilarating. It reminded me how satisfying that song is, and how much it is good and right and what I need it to be. So often I write songs and they're okay, but they're not what I'm trying to say. This song says exactly what I'm trying to say. And I could tell they got it. I didn't look at any of them the whole time I was playing it, and when I was done, I looked up, and they were all looking at me - not expectantly, not asking anything or trying to make me laugh - they were looking at me like they got me in that moment. And that's all I needed. That's all I ever need. Is for people to get it, whatever it is.
That there's more. That there's parts of us we don't allow ourselves access to enough. That there's such a base level of beauty in all of us, that all we need to do is express to each other our own beauty.
Hahaha oh man anyway. Whatever "beauty" is. It's all relative. Just that I like to feel nice and you like to feel nice and everything is so big and everything is so small and it's okay. At the end of everything, (even though there is undoubtedly no end to anything) it's all okay. Because how can it not be?
I'm not sure if this song actually says that. But it's says something honest and that's what's important.
I think this song says what I was talking about:



When I was 15 or 16, Gloria showed her to me, and I said I didn't like her because her music was like floating through space and time. And now, after listening to her again for the first time in years, I said the exact same thing, but describing why I love her.

Should I keep writing? If you give me enough time and the feeling that my thoughts are being appreciated in any way, I'll keep writing. Forever and ever and ever.

I'm 19. I can't comprehend all the different meanings that has. So I don't think about it.
Every day I'm here, the more at home and the more distant I feel. Which each passing moment, I create memories and grow roots here. And at the same time, I learn more and more that this is not Portland. That I am not home.
But I am home too.
I love that quote, "Wherever you go, there you are."
Which can be loosely translated to: "Don't worry, be happy."

I talked to my host mom today. I was feeling stressed like I haven't been doing enough as an Aupair and I don't know exactly what they want from me and she explained everything much more clearly and now I realize that I've been doing it right the whole time, I've just been stressing because that's the only thing I know how to do.
And now I'm feeling stressed because I'm talking about stress.

ANYWAY. This is far too long. And thus I send it into the ethos for strangers and people I used to know and people I know and people I may meet in the future to read.
Good night, it is 00:08 on Dienstag, 14. September 2010.
Und jetzt muss ich schlafen.

Today I switched from third class to second class. That is not a figurative sentence or about plane tickets. When I took the prufüng (what is the word in English??) for our classes, I was placed into class 3, the highest level class. It was hard.
So today I decided to go into class 2 and it was almost too easy but its so helpful at reinforcing things I already know but easily forget. So I'll stay there.
Also I like the people in 2nd class more.

We all just kind of separate off during breaks and after class into smaller groups and do whatever - it feels like every day I get to know someone else a little bit better. Today after class (it was over at 3pm; usually its over at 12.30. Don't ask me why it was longer today. I don't know) Marie - the main group social activity instigator - said "Leute! What are we doing today?". And we decided to get together at 6pm in the zentrum of the student apartments and play drinking games and someone would bring a guitar and we could make music times.
That sounded really fun to me. But today was Leonie's birthday and I didn't know when/if they were doing anything tonight and if I should be there and blah blah blah it's frustrating having a host family.

Regardless, I knew I had some time to kill, so we separated off into random groups as usual (there's a lot of "what are you doing?" "I dunno...What are you doing?" "I dunno, I guess I was gonna go to my room, but if you wanna do something..." "Yeah...Should we do something?") and Ville, a nice but quiet guy from Norway, and I ended up walking together. We wandered over to his dorm, because I hadn't been to any of them before, and he talked to his law student German roommate awkwardly about where he could find a place that sold cheap prepaid cell phones. I stood in the kitchen, not sure of what I should do, but also okay with not doing anything.
Then we headed in the direction of the city center. The university is kind of on the edge of town - but just a few blocks away from some really nice streets. We talked awkwardly but not painfully awkwardly about why we're here and what we think we want to do later in our lives. He's a jazz musician (saxophone) and composer and is almost done with his Bachelors. I'm a wandering, slightly confused person, just picking things up as I go. I also play guitar a lot.

I thought he had a place in mind, so I asked "So, do you know where we're going?" and he said "Well...I know where we are." And I was like "Oh." We ended up passing a coffee shop that I spent an afternoon in last week or the week before and I said "Oh! I love that place. It's really nice." And he said "Yeah? Should we get coffee?" And I was like "Oh. Yeah. Sure."
And then we sat outside and got coffee and I'm not sure what the point of this story is.

But whatever I ended up not going to hang out because my life sucks and fjdksaljgf. I hate that the only place to go is Kiel (there is NOTHING but houses and farms and one grocery store in a 5 mile radius from our house), and I have to ride Anette's bike for 25 minutes to get to the train stop which takes me 15 minutes later to the big main train station in Kiel.
It's just such a pain. I feel like I'm separated between my school life and my "home" life. All the kids at school live in the same general area and are having a total immersion experience and I'm only getting half of it. And it's not even like I'm really doing anything here in Flemhude. We all wake up in the morning, I take Holly on a walk, we eat breakfast and I wait for everyone else to be ready to go because I have nothing to do to get ready. I try to talk to the kids, and they say something and I don't understand it and I feel like poopy pants because I can't really interact with them. So I just say "Guten Morgen!" und "Gibts was besonderes heute?" und "Was ist das, denn?" when they're playing with something. And I just feel totally fake.
And then Anette and I drive to the university, which takes about 15-20 minutes, and ocassionally find something to say to each other and then she drops me off and we say "Tschüs!" like we've been chatting the whole time. And then I go to class and have a good time and etc etc that's where my life feels right now, and usually do something afterwards with kids from the class, and then feel like I should call Anette and see what's up, even though she hasn't contacted me yet, and she usually don't seem to mind, whatever I want to do.

I dunno, I know they're giving me freedom or whatever, but it just feels like they don't care.
Blech. Normally I would spout all this out to my mom or Gloria but neither are available at the moment, so you, blog reader (of which there is probably only my mom and Gloria) get this jumbled mess of words and thoughts.
I'm really tired. Today was eigentlich gut.
Haha. We call this mixture of German and English that all us students speak "Denglisch" (Deutsch + Englisch).
Weißt du was, let's end this on a good note:

"Ich kann wirklich kein Deutsch sprechen."

I feel more myself now than I have since I was a wee young lad. It's refreshing but also terrifying because I have to take responsibility for myself. The decisions I make are all for myself and my life. Other people can help me out, but in the end, all responsibilty and decisions rely on me.

My German course has started and so far I'm having a good, interesting time. We are all foreigners and without friends here, so it's kind of like a summer camp in the way that everyone is getting to know each other well and yeah. Not like a regular class at a university or what, where everyone already has their own life. Haha. That doesn't sound right. But you know what I mean.
I'm in the highest level class (oohhh yeaahh), and it's actually harder than I thought it would be - I'm just now realizing how sympathetic my other german teachers were with their speaking. Not with my current teacher. He just speaks richtig Deutsch to us. At first I felt completely over my head, but then I reminded myself that this is not philosophy or politics oder was, it's not an idea I have to understand - it's just a language that I already understand quite well. It is only a language course. The overall meaning of it all is: "this is how we say these things. There are lots of different ways to say things, and you have to memorize and learn them."

So it's nice to have something that is really just like learning and instrument or riding a bike or whatever: just practice. Learn the rules in class, and then practice.

I am definitely missing. Missing people and things. I've already been here about 6 weeks. I miss, but I feel really good here. I am well on my way to conquering the German language. Haha. It's really just...Great to be in a city other than Portland. I think I got really wrapped up in the whole Portland game without even playing it - I just liked the idea of it. I needed to leave to grow and other mushy things about life and experiences. But what I mean is that I am terrified but excited about life and here and everything. I finally feel a driving force behind me - a reason (not sure what that reason is, but it's there) to get up in the morning and do things. To talk to people and make connections and learn things and go new places.

On the plane ride over here, a part of The Lord of The Rings: The Fellowship of The Ring popped into my head. When Sam and Frodo are leaving The Shire to meet up with Gandalf in...Where are they going? Anyway, when they start their journey,
Sam stops and says: "This is it."
Frodo: "What?"
Sam: "If I take one more step, this is the furthest away from home I'll have ever been."

And that's kind of how I've been going. I just keep taking steps.
The further away from home I get, the more I appreciate it for what it is.

Anyway. I am sleepy (it's almost mitternacht) and I have to get up early tomorrow because we're going on a class trip to Lübeck! Lübeck ist eine sehr alte Stadt - like there's buildings still standing from the Middle Ages. A lot of cities in Germany were mostly destroyed in WWII, so buildings that were standing for centuries have now been gone in the last 70 years or so. But in some cities, like Lübeck, they're mostly intact and everyone says it's very beautiful and "perfect for an American". Hahahaha. So I'm excited.

Anyway. guten nacht, whoever reads this.