I am so glad I had this experience.

Good Things

meow. I'm actually in the mood to socialize/do something creative/worthwhile, but there's not a whole lot at my fingertips.

Less than two weeks.

Next weekend I'm going to a PPK meetup in Hamburg. PPK is Post Punk Kitchen, it's a vegan forum and it sounds super geeky describing it (because it is) but the folks on it are really funny and interesting, and I thought, hey. I'm in Germany. And some post punk vegans are meeting up in Hamburg for a weekend. Why not.
So that's happening.

This was me around 11am:


It is now almost 3pm.
I could probably talk about how I am living in a foreign country.
It hasn't really felt like that.
But when I go back to Portland, I won't be in Europe anymore.
That seems weirder to me than coming to Europe and not being in America anymore.
Does that make sense?
Who knows!
I am super bored today.
It is going to be very strange to not have Silas and Leonie in my life anymore. They have really become like little siblings to me. It's going to be so weird to not have them coming in my room just because they're bored. It's also going to be weird not being around Holly (the dog) and Findus (the cat) anymore. No more snuggle times, going on long walks, playing on the couch.
Will it be weird without Anette and Hans-Peter around? Maybe for a while, but I don't think I'll miss them much.

I'm looking forward to going home. To being more in control of my situation, and to live in Portland again. Portland is home and I am so happy it is. These words don't mean anything but they're all I can come up with to even begin to try to explain what I'm thinking/feeling. I want 2011 to be a productive and fun year full of experiences.

See you soon.

schon eine Weile her...

Sorry this blog has never been really light-hearted or full of pictures and stories of my adventures, like...
when a friend and I got stuck in a tiny town, bought 70 cent beer fom the train station, and laughed as the sun set.
Or when Austin and I sat in the Berlin Hauptbahnhof until 2 in the morning, watching the partiers and drag queens and hobos and lesbians and business people travelling late, talking about life and love and home.
Or when I travelled to Munich alone, took a free city tour, went to the Dachau concentraion camp, got mediterranien food with people I had never met before, played guitar and spent two nights in a dirty student house up on a snow-covered hill.
Or simply, how many times I played Uno with the kids, washed dishes, vacuumed, went on walks with the dog (through fields in summer, fall, and winter), cooked spaghetti, and took bubble baths.

We do the best with what we have. We do the best we can in the moment. We could have done better, but really, we couldn't. Because we didn't. We are who we are and we react how we're going to react.
Sorry this is vague.
I am terrified of growth and change. As much as I need it, prophesize its necessity, supposedly revel in it...I am terrified of real change. Real growth. This requires strength of character and the ability to remove ones self from the needs of the moment. To make the conscious decision to take a step forward, to leave behind the parts of the old self that are destructive and un-helpful. But I get comfortable. I get comfortable in a broken cycle, in a self that rings untrue, but I don't have the confidence to change. I am finally taking that step. I am tired of being miserable and always looking for an escape.

This is turning more into a coming out letter than I realized. I like boys, y'all. It is such a silly thing...I know this will catch almost all of you (whoever happens to read this post) by surprise. But there's no reason to be anything other than one's self. And, I cannot be my full self without recognizing this part of myself. It feels like, after all these years, admitting this preference is a kind of character betrayal, a dirty little secret, a fact that states "I am less than".
Which is of course completely ridiculous. But we let ourselves think this way, when we hold up and image for so long.
But. Yes. It is not that I am heterosexual, I would actually identify more as pansexual - which generally boils down to being able to be attracted to any gender or non-gender. But I am not a lesbian. I'm just a human. We're all just human. We do the best we can.

I have had fun here.
I have had life here.
How do I keep doing that?
This is difficult.

I really like being in Germany and having cross-cultural experiences and meeting new people.
It's the host family part that has always been an issue and continues to be.
I mean, they have done and do so much for me (give me a place to stay, feed me, include me in their family vacation, pay for a month-long german program, shell out 200€ spending money every month)...And what do I do? I was just going to complain about the family, but really, what do I do? I play with the kids. I cook food sometimes. I do light housework.
But we don't really click, and the language is hard, and I'm just a pretty lazy, childish person anyway...I feel really bad now. I've been so wrapped up in my own "emotional turmoil" that I haven't been able to even look at the situation clearly.

I should be happy to be here. I am so lucky to be here, and I should be so grateful. But I have just been whining to anyone who would listen, and holing up in my room with the computer.
I need to start accounting for myself and appreciating what other people are doing for me. I feel like what I do goes unnoticed, but what about everything they are doing for me that I don't take into account? I've been selfish and single-minded.

I feel like my German doesn't really get better when I talk to them, though. And that is one of the main issues in our relationships - me being able to understand them, and communicate what I am thinking/feeling to them. It's hard, because I can understand the basic gyst of what is usually being said (or at least the topic), but the specific details of what they are communicating is usually lost on me. And I don't speak enough (because they are the main people I am around lately and before that, I hung out with a bunch of foreigners who spoke better english than german), so my accent is horrible and getting sentences out right is a chore.

So, yeah. I need to keep keeping other people in mind. Oh, I don't know. You know. Whatever. Learning experiences, etc.

I miss being sure of things.
Things like reality, who I am, what is worthwhile,
The last time I was sure of things, I liked The X-Files and feminist/queer music I was too young to understand and chinese food from Safeway and reading books I was too young to understand and intense female friendships and school and black clothing and trying to understand my sister's life and the internet (which I usually had to sneak onto, as I was often grounded).

That's not actually true. That was the second to last time I was sure of things. The last time I was sure of things, I liked musical theatre and vegetarianism and Kimya Dawson and text messages and painting on my bedroom walls and intense female friendships and silly faces (and noises) and the smell of the Southridge theatre department.

Is this how we are happy? By finding things to be sure of?
I think right now I do not have things or people I am sure of, I have the idea that where I am is where I am and so I am sure of it.
But also I went to Berlin this weekend and hung out with people I like and started to feel like I could have some things to be sure of. Like having actual conversations in German and being completely open to people as who they are in the moment and going where you want to go and beer and wine and love and asian noodles and a cold Autumn breeze.

I'm not a huge fan of my host family but I feel like we've finally reached a spot where we are okay with it being what it is. I need time to be a 19 year old kid, and this experience has been totally...interesting and obviously life changing and a little odd. But it is positive. I am excited to go "home" and move out and start being (duh) independent.

I am starting on my second year out of high school. Time. Moves. So. Fast. It is kind of terrifying.
But I also cannot imagine living another 10 years and still being relatively young.
10 years ago I was 9.
How do we even know ourselves?

I'm not sure if this makes any sense to anyone (even myself) but I like writing it and I think that's what matters.



Someday I'll be able to account for all parts of myself all at once.

I like music.
Here's some stuff from my past (prone to nostalgia. This really isn't for anyone but me.)




(Gonna keep going.)

Today was a video kind of day.


The second video wasn't originally for my blog...I kind of have a habit of video taping myself playing guitar. Haha. But it turned into a sort of musical blog, so I thought it'd be fun to show rather than a written post.

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...