according to my calculations

It seems that tomorrow I've officially got three weeks left in Germany. Isn't that, as they say, extreme?

I will miss Germany terribly, but mostly I am just really, really ready to be at home. It's not Germany's fault. I think in a lot of ways I wasn't ready for this year abroad. I definitely didn't take everything I could from it. I meant to, but in a lot of cases, I waited for stuff to come to me instead of reaching out and grabbing it. Tang tells me, "Your problem is you always look up. Sometimes you need to look down, too." By this, she doesn't mean that I'm overly optimistic -- she means that I always want to be better. I look at the people who are better than me instead of realizing how much I have or have accomplished.

So this explains why I've got such weird mixed feelings about going home. A lot of people, including Martha and my host sister Marlene, say that they feel/felt conflicted about leaving behind lives they'd worked so hard to create in their host countries. But I feel like I didn't have time to create my new life -- like maybe that would take two or three years instead of one. I like it here, and I love my host family, and the other exchange students are wonderful, but I still have this overwhelming feeling that this is not me. I'm just a temporary person. I don't know if this is because I didn't try hard enough, or coincidence, or because of how closed-off I can be with people sometimes, or what. I just know I am leaving with a little regret.

But it's not that I am regretting everything, or that I'm miserable, or anything of that sort. I am happy! I feel like I tried something new and I got out of it what I could. Sometimes I start going over in my head everything that's happened in this last year and it's incredibly overwhelming. I want to grab my journal and write everything down exactly the way it happened so I will never forget. Only then, I realize that I'd never have enough time, and I feel that limited feeling that I get all the time at home when I attempt elaborate art or film projects -- the things I can do feel so finite!

Other pieces of news:

1. Right now my German and Thai host sisters are deciphering my practice worksheet for my math test.

2. In Music we are studying something called "tonality" and "Kadenz". It's something with chords, under them are Roman numerals I II IV V VI V V VI VII, and the chords change to other chords, represented by m and another letter. In other words, something that my five years of piano lessons as a child did not cover. More proof that I, a self-taught ukeist, should not be on the track with all the musical prodigies. As my music teacher (who kind of resembles Daniel Johnston and is nice, but also one of those rock-music-isn't-actually-real-music folks) wrote this on the board, he declared, "This is easy! Even a monkey could do it!" A monkey, perhaps, but not the American exchange student.

3. Today I officially gave up my career in jogging. For a while, I was really enjoying it, jogging three times a week, and feeling better about all the crap I eat. But I really think it is just not for me. I've gotten way way worse all of a sudden, and it's frustrating, and I think I out to stick to physical actvities that I enjoy instead of ones I have to force myself to do.

4. To replace my career in jogging, I think next year I am going to learn to swim and learn to ride a bike. This has been my goal for roughly as long as I can remember. I have been learning to ride a bike for approximately three years, but somehow I just can't get the hang of it. As for swimming, that's just really necessary -- I want to learn to sail, but before I can do that, I need to get over my fear of water, and learn to swim.

5. I don't have any idea what I'm doing.