...More about what I do in my free time

Which is not particularly anything productive. I've been working on grad school applications, which is fucking annoying but must be done. For awhile I was using the daily show website non-stop to entertain myself but because of the WGA strike I really shouldn't use it at all since this is exactly what the strike is about. So what else. I've been downloading lots of podcasts, particularly Anderson Cooper, Keith Olbermann, and Bill Maher. Oh and also this one called The Bugle which is John Oliver and this other British guy. Then today I trolled YouTube watching random moments having to do with my favorite pundits--real and fake (which basically amounts to Stewart/Colbert/Cooper/Olbermann)

Um also I'm learning French, but the book/cd I'm using is in German. Which was all well and good to begin with, because it forces me to review German grammar a bit and I am learning new German words as well...but I just got to the section about explaining where you are from to someone and my options are Germany, Austria or Switzerland. I mean, yes its not that hard to look up how to say "American" in French online or something, but this does not bode well. That being said

je suis nous sommes
tu es vous êtes
il/elle est ils/elles sont

I totally did that without looking it up. So I hope it's right? and wait let's see if I can remember how to conjugate -er verbs....

I just tried it and realized I can't. I only started learning it last night. The one funny thing about the book though is all the things they compare to German, like "you may become annoyed at the fact the French do not pronounce the ends of their words. This, however, will pass."

Ok, and I will leave you with this video, which I love and makes me smile. I've watched it like 10 times already

Anderson Cooper swearing is adorable

...Still sick

I've found that I nap best with the soothing sound of Jon Stewart's voice. I think that maybe it's because I listened to America (The Audiobook) on the train from Bremen to Munich and was tired anyway, but I also think I used it to sleep on the plane. No, not because it's boring because I love America (both in book and audiobook form), and I know in general I sleep better with a bit of noise. Put the tv on and unless it's something I'm engrossed in I'm out light a light. Being sick the last week or so I've used it alot to sleep. I wish I could use the Daily Show website the same way, but it will only play one video at a time and you have to prompt it to go to the next one, which obviously defeats the purpose of trying to sleep to it.

You may ask why do I need variety if I'm going to sleep through it, I answer because I'm a fitful sleeper and wake quite alot and enjoy listening to the content when I am awake before drifting off again.

...I wonder if there is an audio version of Colbert's new book...though his voice isn't quite as soothing.

...I may have a home

Sooo, the girl I stayed with when I first came to Germany because Chinese student, whose apartment I was to rent, was not ready to move out, found another friend of hers who had an empty room in her apartment. So I get here and it turns out that while both of the totally empty rooms of this apartment are going to this other friend of everyone's the girl whose stuff is in the room where I am currently sleeping has been carted off to a clinic for anorexics. I assume that it's ok to post that because the girl who lives in 2 of the rooms in this apartment and girl with eating disorder's mom were talking about it openly in front of me. And that was also how I was introduced the room (You can stay here! She as at clinic for an eating problem.) So there are a few more details to work out, but yes. I may have a home. I dunno how much total I'll end up paying for it but we'll see. It can't be more than 300 Euro....I hope....which leaves me 407 Euro a month for food and incidentals.

At first I was a little taken aback by the fridge/cabinets because there was so little food in them. And then it was like, oh right, clinic...eating disorder. Small German girl with 2 rooms also has "eating issues" as she put it. I too have been known to struggle with "eating issues." While this may seem like a recipe for disaster I'm sure it will be fine. Especially with "large German male" moving in. If you see me online ask me what I ate that day, ask again to make sure I'm not lying. Not that I think that this house is going to turn into some sort of anorexia showdown because Small German girl is like 1/2 my size. I'll eat her before it comes to this.

My parents wanted me to write about the great time I had with them in Munich and I will. Just not today...but soon.

...so I'm homeless again

I'm getting kicked out of my apartment, well I mean everyone who lives here is. I think I might have been living under a slumlord, I'm not 100% sure. But I was told yesterday that everyone must vacate the apartment. I hate this and want to come home. I don't want to have to find another apartment. I was finally starting to feel comfortable in Germany, I was going out alot more and my days were starting to feel full. Its too cold to live outside. And if I don't shower every day I go crazy.

...weird things about Germany

I could write something substantial, but instead here are a few observations about Germany

1. Topless women on tv. One was hosting a game show the other day
2. Flaccid penises also seem to be ok. Additionally MTV shows this clip of one of the members of The Bloodhound Gang peeing on another member approximately 10 times a day. There doesn't seem to be any pattern for why they show it.
3. It is always time for meat
4. Beer can be mixed with anything. This includes sprite.
5. Beer can be mixed with _anything_
6. You must eat every hour on the hour.....or every half hour....or fifteen minutes. But there is no such thing as an obese German.
7. This doesn't mean there aren't fat Germans.
8. You can never bag your groceries fast enough.
9. I need a hug.

...Germans who think they are memebers of Dir en Grey

For serious, Germany. Way to imitate visual kei. The best part is how much visual kei in general seems to have no problem imitates Nazi uniforms and the like, and then these bands are imitating that. Way to go.

Case in point
Cinema Bizarre
And of course, the little boy from Tokio Hotel
You are not Miyavi

...Bremen and Chicago

http://chicagoist.com/2007/09/21/whos_got_our_da.php

For serious that chicagoist post makes me miss home. Mostly because it mentions two places I've been, once of which with some frequency. While I'd much rather go to Berlin (club, not city, though I will be going to the city while in germany) or Hydrate to get my dance on than Neo, I do enjoy the gothiness of it all on occasion. And my one time at Empty Bottle was quite fun. Point is I have no one to go clubbing with in Germany. So I'm totally home on a Friday night. Something I would despise if I were in Chicago.

(that being said I wouldn't pay $15 to get into Neo...ever....ok maybe if they promised to play gothy remixes of Depeche Mode all night)

That being said, the little shopping center in Walle (the district of Bremen I live in) totally has a clothing store called Depeche Mode. I laughed my ass off. As if my American self wasn't obviously out of place to begin with.

I've also started playing rugby here. Which makes life 10x better and may mean I'll start enjoying myself more.

Also my bicycle is a piece of crap. It needs to be fixed like every 10 minutes. But fuck it, as long as it holds together another 9 months I don't care.

And I hate herring. I'm paying the extra for tuna from now on. Mercury poisoning be damned. I go back and forth about how concerned I am about mercury levels in tuna. Right now I don't care as long as I get to eat something. Today I had tuna couscous, and broccoli for dinner, turkish pizza for lunch, and cereal for breakfast. The food situation is looking better. Tomorrow may be a pasta, pesto, mushroom day. If not it'll be rice, tofu and peas. In fact I may have another bowl of cereal after I finish writing this.

I signed my contract today. Maybe I'll get paid! I'd really enjoy that. I'd like to buy a basket for my bike, and another blanket, and a pillow.

Oh yeah and I did some teaching stuff. German 6th graders are hella loud.

...I feel so European

I bought a bike for 15 Euro

....and a bike lock for 8 Euro

It totally makes sense. I swear.

...I'm living in a language wasteland

oh my god this apartment is ridiculous. I'm in the process of moving in and wow, ok so like, yeah....um. No one in this apartment is a native German speaker. So we're going through the moving in/out process in three languages. Xinlei and Wong are conversing in what I think is Mandarin, and then speaking to me is a German/English combination. It basically makes everything 10x as complicated as it would be if we all just got by in German I think. Wait until I start studying French, bitches. Shit's going down in this place.

Also the German bureaucracy is fucked the hell up. I can't get a bank account without a visa. I can't get a visa without my contract, I can't get my contract without a bank account. It's totally awesome. Oh and I can't do shit until I register where I live. Tomorrow I'm going to register my address, and try to cry my way into a bank account. Saturday I'm going to buy a bicycle. Yeah that's right bitches, I'm riding a bicycle. Then next week hopefully its visa/contract time.

And I swear eventually I will eat better than I have been.

...back in Bremen

I promise over the next few days there will be a new post with all my German adventures including my first experience in a German bar, walking absolutely everywhere, drinking with Americans, and my quest to get a residence visa (which has only just begun!) But for now enjoy some photos via my flickr account.


http://www.flickr.com/photos/13067176@N02/

...I'm ridiculous

So I was too nervous to ask for the wlan password earlier. I was using the internet downstairs in the common room and waited until the desk person left. Then I snooped around until I found where they kept the password.

Asking people = scary
Being super shady = fine by me

...kitchen anxiety and more

Ok, so finally a blog entry where I sit down and take my time to write. So it could be cleverer or longer. I am for both.

So what have I done since getting here? First off, going through customs in Germany is ridiculous. Albeit I've only been through the following customs previously

US > Mexico
Mexico > US
US > England
England > US
US > Trinidad
Trinidad > US

Ok so maybe US > Mexico was still the easiest. You gotta love the revolving door across the border. Is that still there or was it killed off? But in both of the other instances where I entered a country from the US they at least wanted to know where I was going. Even in Trinidad they wanted an address where I could be located. Not so here, they just looked at my passport at passport control, stamped and waved me through. Customs declaration is always easy though, as I never have anything to declare. Maybe that only happens for Americans and EU nationals though? I did see some people getting hassled through customs declaration even though they went through the nothing to declare line. They had come from Tanzania (I think) but I don't know what their nationality was. They were very Indian looking though. There was some violence a week or so ago on some Indian people, my dad was trying to tell me about it but I didn't want to listen. I think I look pretty Western though to the untrained eye, and Bremen is pretty diverse because of the universities and such. I don't think I'll get hassled.

So what about people I've met so far...
Xinlei is my future roommate, he's been taking me around getting somewhat situated. He brought me to my hostel, let me nap, came back and took me to the apartment for dinner. After that I managed to find my way back to the hostel on my own.

So interesting story, the girl in the bed next to mine (Kristine?) tried to get me to go to the disco with her. At first I said yes because it's hard for me to turn down dancing. But the more I thought about it I realized
1) I had to meet with my contact person at the school the next morning
2) It was my first night in a strange city in a strange country which, while I know the language, if someone said something lewd to me I probably wouldn't understand.
3) There was something strange about the girl's speech.
I'm not talking about her English per-se, I spoke with her briefly in both English and German and something was off. She may have been hard of hearing but I don't feel I had to talk louder to her or anything and I doubt she was mentally impaired either. But just something about that made me nervous. Oh, and the fact she was 17.

Anyway, I gave a lame excuse (jetlag) and stayed behind with a very interesting 24 year old from Australia who I don't know the name of. He was nice though. He had been backpacking through Europe for the last 3 1/2 months and was on the final leg of his journey (he came to Bremen for the Becks brewery, then on to Amsterdam, then England for the third time, then home).

Oh yeah, so the 17 year old went to the club around 10pm and never came back. I mean...I assume she came back at some point because now her bags are gone. But she certainly didn't sleep here. I wonder what ever happened to her. When I left the hostel at 9:45am she still hadn't come back.

Xinlei met me at the trainstation at 10am and we went to my school. We were a bit early so we then walked back so he could mail packages. Walked back to my school, he went home and I met with my contact at the school. I spent about an hour and a half with him learning about the school, including this gem of a story.

So in Bremen there are maybe 4 or 5 Gymnasium left, they're considered kind of outdated I guess. Anyway, until the 1980s or so, the Gymnasium where I'm working had a rivalry with one about five minutes walk away. In the 1940s their way of competing was saying how many American fighter pilots they had shot down. Afterwards they became infantry units and most of them died.

Aren't German stories great?

Also he told me that when he was a little boy he and his friends would play in the ruins of the center of the city hoping to find bodies or gold. They never found either.

You know, the thing is I almost forgot where I was until he told these stories. Everyone is so nice here. But it's still Germany.

Also everything, by which I mean food, is cheap here. Let's list what I've eaten and approximate prices.

almond croissant + fanta = aprox. 2.50 Euros
pasta + canned herring in dill = I actually don't know, Xinlei bought all of that, but less than 2 Euro for the both of us
lunch in the university cafeteria (fish filet, broccoli, potatoes, muffin, milk) 2.75 Euro

Things I've bought but haven't eaten yet
box of 6 cereal bars + 1.5 liter bottle of water = 1.14 Euro
can of tuna, oven bake garlic bread, frozen peas, yogurt = 2.88 Euro

Now I realize that yeah, conversion rate and such, but its still hella cheap.

Anyway, all I've done since coming back from the school is nap and go food shopping. Oh, and talk to Justin online for a bit about the social implications of facebook. I think somewhere in there I played Nintendogs.

Before someone berrates me about how I'm in Germany and I shouldn't spend all my time in a hostel, that's exactly what I plan on doing until I actually get settled. Once I have my papers in order (which won't be until after the 6th) I'll start doing things, like going to Hamburg, Berlin and Hannover and maybe Munich, though Munich is so far away. And then when I'm really quite settled Amsterdam, Prague, and Vienna (Amsterdam is super close)

Also I love the street cars here. I prefer any mode of transportation on a rail as opposed to buses. The rail insures there are only so many places you can accidentally end up.

I'm going to go eat my cereal bar now.

Also, tomorrow, I'm going to try to find somewhere with prepared food. There is a kitchen here but my unnamed social anxiety issue prevents me from using it. So the frozen peas I bought yesterday are pretty much just sitting in the fridge, I may leave them behind. Right now I'm trying to work up to going in there, getting my can of tuna, opening it, and eating it directly from the can. Baby steps.

...I haven't been deported yet

I swear the next post will actually be interesting. I met with the teacher at my school who you know, is semi-responsible for me. He didn't seem to hate me, so well done. Things I still need to do include.

1) Getting that formal letter that proves I work here
2) Getting proof that I have somewhere to live.
3) Getting a bank account.
4) Getting a visa so I'm not deported.
5) like 500 things I haven't thought of yet

By the time I get through them all I'll be leaving. The only thing I actually care about is the bank account so I get paid. But unfortch that means I have to do all the other stuff first.

...because they're drunk

Ok so the plane lands in Frankfurt and people applaud. Obviously a german custom I was unaware of. Like "congrats! You didn't kill us, good job." But then I realized that they were probably applauding because they were all drunk. Lufthansa happens to be one big open bar. The men across the row during the duration of the flight had three beers, a glass of wine and a glass of cognac each. All for free. Because that's how important drinking is to the Germans, nothing like an eight hour flight to get a party started.

...visa?! letter of endorsement!?! Registering with the police!?!?!

Ok, so I couldn't sleep and started going through whole bunch of materials the commission sent me that I (regrettably) never read. Shoot me. It was in German so while I can read it its not nearly as fast (though probably still faster than the average American reads in English). I finally wrote to the school I was working with, something I should have done in July. I told them my dad was diagnosed with cancer so July was a pretty terrible month and that I was sorry. Still I'm having major paranoia issues about it.

So sometime before my birthday I had received an email from C.P. (Haverford prof, German/Film, moved to Canada, don't want him googling his name and finding this) that regarded my fulbright application or graduate school application or something. Point is the man was pretty unreliable. Shit maybe it wasn't my birthday, it may have been early fall. It was one of the times in the first semester that Justin was visiting. Anyway, continuing.

I had sent multiple emails to to C.P. with no response. Finally the message came in but I was struck by this bout of paranoia and couldn't open it. I knew what was said was said and C.P.'s opinion of me had already been altered by whatever message I had sent. But the drawn out delay had made me paranoid. I couldn't open the email. I think it sat there fore a week or two until at some point during Justin's visit I admitted to him that I had a slight problem with emails sometimes. I didn't want to read the comment someone had made if the result was possibly negative. The longer it sits in my inbox the more afraid I become of said message. Justin admitted to a slightly similar problem, though apparently when something like this happens he doesn't check his email _at all_ whereas I go about my business with other emails but freak the fuck out with that particular message. Anyway, I ended up opening it while sitting on Justin's lap in case I spontainously burst into flames he could smother me and put out the fire.

Anyway, in that case the news was good and I actually didn't have a similar problem with emails for a long time, I can't remember an incidence between then and now.

I think my not sending this email to my school until now was a similar situation. I know I fucked up not sending it sooner. But I also know that it probably really wasn't about the message at all. I mean, I feel like a jackass leaving the country while my dad has cancer. My brother is going off to college and he sleeps all day anyway and isn't much of a help. Since my dad has been diagnosed and started chemo I've taken over quite a few of his tasks and now I feel like I'm abandoning the family. I guess I felt like if I didn't talk to anyone at the school I could still pull out. But I leave in less than a week. It's go time and Justin's lap isn't coming with me to Germany. (if I could I'd take the rest of him as well)

Also, I just spent some time looking at my thighs. I haven't weighed myself in like 2 months but judging by how my pants fit and how my legs look I might have dipped under 130 again. I mean high 120's isn't unreasonable for my height, but I've been doing 0 exercise lately. Where is all of me going?

...apartment(!/?)

So it would appear I have an apartment. Sort of. Well the guy I would be taking the room of hasn't gotten an apartment to move into on the 1st of September. Which sucks and meas I could possibly not have anywhere to live until the 15th of September. But the people in my future apartment are very nice and the guy (Wang) said that he would help me find a solution which isn't a week in a hostel bed.

After about 10 minutes fucking around with my webcam I got to see my future roommates in a linguistic cornucopia of English, German, and I think (though I could be wrong) Cantonese. Basically I sat there like a dumb fuck and didn't say anything because my brain doesn't work well with multiple languages, particularly when I don't understand one of them. Luckily, I'm damn cute, that probably didn't hurt the situation.

Fulbright recommends not getting roommates who want to "practice english" with you. Instead you should speak German at home. But what if I get them to teach me the basics of a third language? I think it's worth the trade-off.

...an apartment would be nice

I'm fairly sure that I'll have an apartment by the end of the day today. I've been waiting online since about 11am for the guy I'm possibly renting from to come onto icq so we can (hopefully) finalize things. I just don't want to end up sleeping on the street when I get to Bremen.

Oh snap, maybe I should explain, since I haven't been awesome at informing people what is happening to me.

So basically, the only graduate school I got into was UChicago's masters of humanities, and I don't have that kind of cash. But apparently the Fulbright Commission was all over things. Which means...I'm going to Germany. I'll be there between September 2007 and July 2008 as an assistant English teacher. It's a pretty sweet position. I'm departing on the 29th of August.

Ok so list of things I currently need in Germany
1) Apartment
2) Bank Account
3) Confidence
4) Cell Phone

I'm sure there are other things...oh I'll need to buy shampoo and conditioner.

Once I know where I'll live I'll be sure to let you know how it went.