A Long-Overdue Update

Hello everyone,

I'm sorry I've been so absent these past few weeks- it's been a busy month. At the beginning of the month, I had a million things due (and by 'a million', I mean two papers and a presentation), then I was in Prague with my bffl (best friend for life) Katie, and then I had an oral final for one of my classes, then I had a performance for one of my classes, and then everyone left.

I'll break it down for you:

Prague

Katie and I hadn't seen each other since our birthdays in September, and we decided to meet up somewhere, and we somehow (after entertaining the idea of just about every other city in Europe) ended up deciding on Prague. We were in Prague in the summer of '08, so it wasn't a totally new experience for us, but it was still a lot of fun. We didn't do so many touristey things, and instead wandered around their Christmas markets, drank tea, found bagels (!!), ate Indian food, and went to a museum about Communism.

It was a good weekend, if stressful- I flew, and my flight was delayed, and finding Katie at the train station was a struggle, and then we found out I had booked our hostel for thursday and friday, not friday and saturday, so our reservation had been lost. Thankfully we were directed to another hostel...across the river, not 10 minutes from where we had just come from.

Bagels were a huge success, in that we found them and then ate a bunch of them and then came back the next day early in the morning to buy some to take home with us. The Communism museum was also something I would (and have) highly recommend- hearing the Czech version rather than from the American point of view was very interesting.

Oral Final/Performance:

My oral final was in the class I have with Herr Dörr- it's a reading, listening and understanding course where we write a lot, and practice reading articles and such things that increase our proficiency. So the final consisted of picking two of the articles we had read during the semester and reading them aloud to him, and then he would ask us questions about the Inhalt- the content, and the Vokabel- vocabulary. I was very nervous and prepared for it as such. I thought it went fairly well- he told me that my reading was very nice (I tried to hard to use all I had learned in both my phonetik courses) and, I'm warning you right now that the next sentence is me bragging: I was told by Herr Doerr that Dan and I had the best oral finals of the class. I felt so validated!

The performance was for one of my Phonetik classes I'm in- it was a performance of excerpts of Mark Twain's "The Awful German Language" or "Die Schreckliche Deutsche Sprache"- which is really funny, especially if you've ever tried to learn German. We were all assigned parts to practice and then we performed it in front of Heidelberg alumni on Friday. I also sang this little ditty here. That was most nerve-wracking for me, because it was an a cappella solo. We did well, I think.

Everyone leaving:
After Mark Twain on Friday, Haleigh and I headed to Annika's to make dinner, exchange Christmas presents, and then bake cookies before heading to Aaron's for a good-bye party. It was surreal, the whole weekend, saying goodbye to everyone, even when we were helping Annika pack up. After dinner, presents, some baking and some cleaning/packing, we headed to Aaron's where we met up with Aaron, Stefan (his roommate), Mattheis (Aaron's Sprachpartner, my and Dan's friend from church), Brian and Dan. Megan and Anne were in Paris for Megan's birthday, so they were unfortunately unable to come.

We ate pizza and drank beer and then at the end of the night said bye to Aaron and Stefan Mattheis and Brian, and headed back to Ringstraße with Annika and Dan to spend the night with Annika finishing packing and cleaning and all that needed to be done. After waiting outside her apartment for a while since she forgot her keys and it was two thirty, we got in and packed and cleaned with Annika until four, when we went to bed for 45 minutes in order to get her up and to the train station to meet Aaron and go to the airport.

I forgot to mention earlier that I fell down some icy stairs Friday morning (I have some great bruises). This will come into play in a few seconds. We gathered all of Annika's stuff up, including the bags of things we were taking from her and a box that was our Christmas present from her, we headed to the Hauptbahnhof, booking it because we were a tad late. In our hurry, I slipped down some stairs outside of the Ringstraße building (like I said, awesome bruises) and fell, meaning I had to limp power walk the rest of the way to the station. We got her on, and then found out which car Aaron was in to go say bye to him. I may or may not have cried as soon as the train pulled away...

Haleigh and I got home around six, and immediately went to bed. Later that day, Brian and Dan and I hung out since it was Dan's last night- watched Flight of the Conchords, went to Yufka's for dinner, and talked until it was time for him to go back to his apartment to get picked up. Mark left the next day, as did Megan- Mark and Haleigh and I hung out on Sunday night, and then Haleigh and I went over to Megan's in the morning to say bye to her.

All in all, a sad weekend. It was really not fun to say goodbye to my friends I've made here- it feels like I've known them forever, but it's only been three and a half months! It's pretty insane. The upside is that now I have friends all over the country and have more of an excuse to go travel to the Midwest and East Coast now. See how positive I'm being?

Christmas is coming!

A Story About How...My Life is Like an Action Movie

Here's a story for you all:

I nearly die almost every time I try to do anything in my room. I cannot tell you how often I nearly fall off my bed or out of the window. It's a death trap. Much like the Heidelberg Hauptbahnhof, but that's another story.

This morning I decided to be productive and do some more laundry, as our washer was recently repaired and it is now a viable option as opposed to the sink. I did the cycle, and as I usually do, decided to hang it to dry in my room. This is because a) it's easy b) it makes my room smell good c) it's good for the environment d) our dryer is a piece of crap and e) the dryer takes forever and I don't have that kind of time.

As I was hanging my sheet across my curtain rod, balancing on the edges of my bed so it doesn't collapse again, I lost my balance and fell into the window. Thank goodness a) my bed didn't crash and b) the window wasn't open/didn't break. I don't actually think I could have broken the window, but it's still unnerving, especially since this happens often. Every morning when I, half-asleep, balance on the edges of my bed to crack open my window, inevitably, I teeter and catch myself just in time not to fall and give myself a concussion.

Point is, I live my life on the edge. I do no-excuses laundry...