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.