my favorite emily dickinson poem ever

As a general rule, I do not like poetry. I am not easily charmed by it. Therefore, it is remarkable that for the past two or three days, I simply cannot stop thinking about this poem. I first heard it in December in the car on the way to North Carolina with Mana and Pop; we listened to four hours of lectures about Emily Dickinson. I find it eerie. It is striking.

It was not Death, for I stood up,
And all the Dead, lie down --
It was not Night, for all the Bells
Put out their Tongues, for Noon.

It was not Frost, for on my Flesh
I felt Siroccos -- crawl --
Nor Fire -- for just my Marble feet
Could keep a Chancel, cool --

And yet, it tasted, like them all,
The Figures I have seen
Set orderly, for Burial,
Reminded me, of mine --

As if my life were shaven,
And fitted to a frame,
And could not breathe without a key,
And 'twas like Midnight, some -

When everything that ticked -- has stopped --
And Space stares all around --
Or Grisly frosts -- first Autumn morns,
Repeal the Beating Ground --

But, most, like Chaos - Stopless -- cool --
Without a Chance, or Spar --
Or even a Report of Land --
To justify -- Despair.

weather

We have had crazy 55-degree weather the past two days round here. I don't usually concern myself with the weather (either thinking about it or talking about it), but I have seriously enjoyed being outside in the warm sun and sweating while walking up the hill to Congress in my thin green spring jacket. Yesterday I went to the beach, and I actually took off my shoes and walked around in the sand and it wasn't cold. Stepping in water was pleasant, not icy. I was there with my friend Max, and afterward we went to Red's and got ice cream, and then we came back home and made coffee and played backgammon and scrabble and it was a practically perfect day.

Today, I walked downtown with my dear mother, visited some vintage shops, and met Enoch at Arabica. We also observed a man simultaneously riding a stunt bike and playing an electric guitar. Maybe a toy one, but still a guitar. I love my town.

Tonight we're having some people over for the Oscars. I'm disappointed that I never got to see Avatar, because I think it will win. When I saw the trailer for Avatar, I was violently opposed to it because there are blue people and the font used is PAPYRUS (!!!!), but since then a lot of people whose opinions about movies I trust have recommended it to me, so I'm keeping an open mind. Tomorrow I get my IR midterm back. My first midterm ever. I predict a B-C+.

microfinance, madness

I'm in the midst of finishing up a project I've been working on since January on microfinance. Although I won't have my culminating presentation to the freshmen until next week, tomorrow I have my "dress rehearsal," which I'm actually being graded on; procrastinating now by updating my blog, of course.

Today I watched the movie Paprika for the third time with my friend. Its various plotlines are hilarious, but the visuals are amazing. More than anything, it reminded me how much I really love and appreciate the absurd. (Remember that re-occuring parade with the refrigerators, frogs, dolls, Buddhas, umbrellas, etc?) It was nice to remember that in the midst of all this madness and stuff on my mind.

there are power lines in our bloodlines

I've decided I'd like to slowly ease back into regularly updating this blog. It's ridiculous to me that so much time has gone by. I'd like to somehow sum up the time between me coming back from Germany and now, but how can one accurately sum up seven and a half months? So much has changed.

It hasn't hit me yet that this my last year of high school. In a lot of ways, I still feel like a 10th grader. However, in some ways I'm packing my junior and senior years into one, so I've ended up with eight classes, including three APs and an International Relations course at USM. Because of this, I have a lot less time for "hobbies" than I'd like. Other than spending time with friends and occasionally working towards my New Year's resolution of watching the entire Criterion Collection (not going to happen by 2011), I don't do much outside of school.

BUT, while I have felt a bit of "senioritis" and I'm ready for my senior expedition to end, school isn't so bad. I've definitely learned a lot this year (both in and outside of school), mainly about American history, classic literature, microfinance, ethics, social skills, sociology, America, living the creative life, and poetry, to name a few things. I'd like to belatedly say that if you haven't read A People's History of the United States, GO READ IT RIGHT NOW because not only is it an "important" book for Americans to read, it's interesting and entertaining and absurdly well-written.

That's enough for now. I should get back to APES work. APES as in AP Environmental Science. Goodnight.

The last month

I am, at long last, updating my blog. This past month has been crazy. I can't believe that it's really been four weeks since I left Germany, but at the same time, my whole exchange seems very far away.

I haven't really been experiencing any "reverse culture shock," apart from wishing they had good bread here and mire attractive street signs. However, the first couple of days back in America, I felt incredibly, weirdly disoriented. I greeted my family by hugging them and exclaiming, "This is so weird!! This is SO WEIRD!"

After a day in D.C., I met my parents, and we spent a couple more days in Baltimore, visiting Ellen's parents, and a day in Cambridge with Mana and Pop. I was really eager to get home! My house looked so different, I started running through each room shouting, "Our house is so stylish! It should be in a magazine!!" On my first day back in Portland, I had lots of visitors, including Flora, Artemis, Miss Gliss, and Enoch.

Since then, I've been keeping myself busy with spending time with friends, walking to Arabica, cooking Indian food, kombucha-tasting, going to Funtown, and absurd amounts of summer homework from the shack. I have a pretty regular babysitting job and I'm playing my uke a lot. Things are pretty much back to normal.

last day. ever.

I don't know quite how this happened, but it appears that today is my last day in Germany.

Up until a week ago (ähm, pretty much from September), I was looking forward to going home like insanely.

I find that the idea that at approximately 3 pm tomorrow I will be in the good ol' US of A COMPLETELY unimaginable. I will never live this crazy comedy-series life with my host sisters again. I will never walk past the Döner-Laden on my way home from school. I will not drink coffee in the afternoon on my porch in those little white cups with the blue rims. I will not be able to hop on the bus or train and go wherever I want to. I will not be invited to those weird parties where people play drinking games and yell at each other in Spanish. I will not be "that weird American anymore," or "that American who learned German in a year," or even generally "that American."

This is impossible to comprehend.

I don't really have a real life here. I feel like I'm practicing for something. A lot of the time I find myself thinking, "Next time I will do this and this and this differently." But then... this IS my life!! And as embarrassing or awkward as some things are -- namely, how unmusical I am in comparison to my classmates, my American accent, and the fact that people think I am naive -- I will miss this, and over the last week I've been saying to myself over and over again, "Hey, it was worth it!"

To celebrate last-days-in-Deutschland, yesterday I went with Tang and Marlene to a bar in Pforzheim and had cocktails, and someone got very drunk, and we came home and Marlene taped her to the staircase with packing tape while I filmed it. It was a lot funnier than it sounds.

See you in America.

at dinner, the conversation goes as follows:

Marlene: Do you know about star signs? Like, I'm a lion, Zoe is a scorpion?
Tang: Hm?
Marlene: Maybe you use like the Chinese ones? I think there's monkey, snake...
Me: No snake.
Marlene: Are you sure?
Me: Yes, there's no snake. There's a dragon, but there's no snake.
Marlene: Really?
Me: I'm sure. Tang, I'm a monkey, my brother's a rat...
Tang: OHHHHH! You mean like sheep!!
Me: Yes, there's a sheep too.
Tang: YES!!! I'm a sheep. Sheep is so sweet. Everyone comes and says "Awwwwww, you're so sweet," and they just look for something to eat. Marlene, you're 1990? You must be a horse. Ohhh, not so good. Horse isn't like sheep. Horse is a little stuck-up. Very proud. Not like sheep. Sheep just looks for something to eat, and everyone says they're SO sweet.
Me: I'm a monkey.
Tang: Oh! Oh, Monkey isn't so good. Monkey isn't like sheep. You don't ever listen, do you? Monkeys never listen. Monkey is definitely a lot worse than sheep.
Marlene (laughing): Not so the fan of monkeys, are you?
Me (laughing): Monkeys, Americans...
Tang (seriously): No, I don't like either that much.

The conversation turns to my day at school.

Me: We were talking about the viola. A girl in my class asked me if I know what a viola is. I said yes, I used to play the viola, but I stopped. She asked, why did you stop? I said, I wanted to play the saxophone. She said, Oh, you play the saxophone!! I said, well no, I stopped. And she said, Oh, I understand know. You're one of those people who always stops.
Tang: Well, that's true.
Me: Hey, not really. Well, yes. But not really. I felt like shit when she said that. That's my personality. It's the same with careers. I've wanted to be... (I list about 20 different careers, ranging from philosopher to marine biologist to baker.) But now I think I might want to be a doctor or a politician or something. Or an English teacher in Japan.
Tang: I have to warn you. Don't go to Japan unless you have a boyfriend. Japanese men are no good. If you marry one, you'll have to stay at home and clean the house and take care of the children all day while he works in an office.
Marlene: Do you want to get married someday, Zoe? Generally?
Me: Maybe. Maybe not.
Marlene: I do. I also know I want to have children, preferably when I am 26.
Tang: Hey! That's soon! We're all coming to your wedding.
Me: Whether you like it or not... ÜBERRASCHUNG!

last day of school EVER

Today, on my last day of German school, I gave a little presentation in English about New England and Maine. It was weird. I felt a little unprepared, especially when it came to the actual speaking. It's normal for my English to be a little awkward, but today it was just bizarre -- I felt like I literally could not form a sentence. It was also just somehow awkward to talk about home in front of my class -- I felt like they thought I was being somehow critical, when I'm really just excited to go home.

After school, my class had planned a surprise party for me, which was really, really sweet. We sat by the Nagold River and ate cake. They got me such great gifts: a class photo and these absolutely amazing, cool shoes. One of the girls in my class has the same ones, and she remembered that way, way at the beginning of the year, I told her I loved them and asked her where she'd bought them.



Shoes. They're sailing shoes -- sneakers for sailing.

can you believe...

...that THIS is Tang, sitting in the back row with the glasses?




And here she is now??




CRAZY, or? She suspects that at the airport, her own family will not recognize her.


Yesterday we went to Marii's "good-bye party" in Freiberg, and then afterward we went to Ludwigsburg, my new favorite charming little town in the world. As we wandering around its charming streets, I kept remarking, "Ludwigsburg is so cute!" We spent three hours admiring the statue of Schiller, going to the mall, and sitting in a cool cafe, and then we went to a big music-and-fireworks festival by the palace. We were there for almost five hours, until one in the morning. It was really, really fun. The band playing was pretty bad, but I love outdoor concerts where everyone brings picnics and blankets and sits on a lawn. We didn't have any picnic, since we'd come directly from Freiberg, so Tang bought a Bratwurst, and since there was no vegetarian option except fries, I was extremely German and bought a Radler, a beer with lemonade.

Marlene came later to meet up with us, but since she spent almost an hour looking for a parking place, she missed the fireworks. We stayed around a while anyway and listened to music and ate Brötchen. And completely randomly, I burst into tears. I don't even know why. Tang and Marlene were talking about the Abi-Move or whatever it's called, where the recently graduated German students get drunk and ride around their cities on floats wearing bikinis, and suddenly it hit me that I will be gone in a week, and with the approaching end of school (Monday is my last day), going home is started to sound less and less appealing. I have realized that I despise school, but I love Germany, and I love my host sisters too. Tang tells me sometimes, "I don't even notice you. You're so normal. But next year, I will miss you so much." Although the first time she said this, I was kind of offended, I think I feel exactly the same about her.

Anyway, as I am crying, this conversation ensues:
Me: Crying.
Tang: What's going on? Are you crying? I don't understand!
Me (hugging Marlene): I love you so much, Marlene.
Marlene: Oh Zoe, I love you too.
Tang: I don't understand! Are you drunk?
Me: Crying.
Me: No... I had one beer... three and a half hours ago!
Marlene: Laughing.
Tang: I don't understand!!


Today we're going to Martha's good-bye party in Karlsruhe. In case anyone's wondering, my "good-bye party" is on Thursday and will consist of eating Raclette and playing 6 Nimmt with my host family.

Some funny videos are on the way. Well, maybe if you spoke German, they would be mildly funny, but for most of you they will probably just be me talking for five minutes while Tang does some spastic camerawork.

some things to note

1. Yesterday my ethics teacher told our class that Buddhism is not a religion.

2. Today my math teacher said that he still has my test (which the rest of the class received two weeks ago) and has come to the conclusion that I haven't understood anything all year.

3. Yesterday I went over to a girl from my French class's house and studied for our French quiz. It was, surprisingly, really fun.

4. Today my class teacher loaned me a big book full of beautiful pictures of the U.S. to use in the presentation I'm giving on Monday. On the cover of the book is a photo that turned out to be of Portland Head Light. When I saw it, I got really excited and said, "I think this picture is of NEW ENGLAND! Wait, I think it might be of MAINE! It looks excactly like where I live!"

5. If you want to see videos of me in my kitchen or in the Brothers Grimm garden, click on the vimeo link I added.

6. I'm so excited to fly home in NINE DAYS!!!!!!!!