stephin merritt

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




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

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

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

me not being witty

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

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

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

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

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

Prague

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

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

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

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

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

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





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

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

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

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

Other highlights:

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



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

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

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




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

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

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

Fahrradfahren

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

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

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

parades go by, leave me behind

I bought new sunglasses. They are quite lovely.




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



Me in my bathroom.


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

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

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

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

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

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