the end?

tomorrow is my last day at school. this is weird.

help wanted

yes, those are the words i'll be looking for when i get back to ann arbor--because i'm staying there. it's official. auf wiedersehen, deutschland! no, no, not yet. i still have another two weeks of teaching here, then a couple weeks of traveling and seeing various people in various places. but contrary to popular opinion--and my own previously voiced speculations, i'm not staying here for another year. if you've read this blog at all in the last week, you're probably thinking that that's a good thing. and it is =) i'm ready to go home for a while and figure some things out there. but don't worry, i'll be back--germany can't get rid of me that easily =)

so now that i know where i'll be--or at least where i won't be--next year, i *might* need a job... unless some of you want to feed and house me and pay my student loans out of the goodness of your hearts. yeah, didn't think so... so i'm brushing up my resume, and here's what i've discovered: i may actually be the most useless person on the planet!! i have two useless bachelor's degrees. several years of work experience...in the food service industry. and this past year in germany, where i've neither improved my german nor gained any "marketable" work experience... so that said, here's a list of what i've learned this year, lovingly entitled...

"things you can't really put on a resume OR life skills i've acquired in germany"

stalking spiders, navigating train stations and airports, controlling my temper when dealing with deutsche bahn employees--after all, it's not their fault, not only to look both ways but also to keep an eye out for stray senior citizens and/or small children before crossing the street, putting the stamp on the postcard BEFORE writing it, stalking spiders, the cheapest ways to make international phone calls, did i mention stalking spiders?!?!

things that make me laugh

people who call me "Beth" =)
people eating entire cloves of garlic!??!
watching kids on the train blow spit bubbles--like, actual bubbles, you know, that float like the soap ones!!!

reciprocity

i'm listening to lauryn hill. "tell me who do i have to be to gain some reciprocity?"..."no matter how i think we grow, you always seem to let me know it ain't working...it ain't working...it ain't working"...

yeah. this is definitely not working. it takes me about 3 years to put together half of the sentence i want to say, and by the time i've got that half out, i either can't remember why i was saying it in the first place, OR that wasn't even the relevant part, and it would just take way too much effort to actually get around to making the point i wanted to make. and if there's more than one person involved, someone's guaranteed not to understand something, which means the whole thing--my whole half-sentence--has to be repeated twenty times (ok, really maybe twice, but still), and by the time the whole thing's over and i've scraped together the last shreds of my dignity and self-worth, it occurs to me that it's all been for nothing. that i'm never going to be a real person here. that all the half-sentences in the world aren't enough. hell, that even all the whole sentences wouldn't be enough to make me half of a person here.

and it comes down to reciprocity in a way. or about the capacity for it, at least.

venting (not ventilating)

so when i said i was done, i wasn't kidding. this is a little bit of what i'm talking about.


so it's finally summer here. after a week and a half of cold, rainy grossness, it's finally starting to act like june. as you might recall, my room is practically in the basement, so it stays relatively cool. that, and i only have one window--facing west, so really, there are only a couple of hours a day, when the sun could potentially heat up my room. i open the window when i get up in the morning--i keep it closed at night because of the spiders, as y'all probably remember--and close it when i leave. again, the spider thing. pretty much, if i'm home, and it's nice out, i have the window open. otherwise it's closed.

now, some of you are also familiar with the german obsession with ventilating EVERYTHING (and the paradoxical obsession with protecting themselves from drafts.) i still haven't figured out the logic behind all of this, but i didn't really have to understand it, because I was in charge of MY window. at least i *thought* i was.

until today. i got home this afternoon, and my window was open. hmm, i thought to myself... that's strange. and sure enough, there on the wall, a couple of inches from the edge of the window...a spider. of the rather large variety.

(i know i said i wouldn't write about spiders again, and i'm not!!--this is really about the window thing.)

seriously, who just goes into someone else's room and opens their windows!!???!!? why would you do that??!! what gives you the right!?!? i'm not trying to be selfish here, and i know i'm just renting this room--it doesn't really belong to me, but i still feel like it's "mine"--hell, it's all i've got. and if i want to suffocate in my stuffy room, shouldn't i be allowed to do that?

maybe i'm being unfair. it could have been done as a favor to me. "oh, she forgot to leave her window open, and it's going to be warm today." maybe. but still!?!?!? i don't go in and out of their rooms opening and closing windows.

can i please just have my life back!?!

call and response*

*this post brought to you by the letter E

eyes wide open
to the great train robbery of my soul
impending blindness
of the kind that's beyond my control

eyes wide open
to the secret forest beyond those tear-filled trees
heart-rending blindness
won't testify that i'm on my knees

maybe i'm a little young to care
maybe i'm a little old to cry
i don't know
maybe i'm a little weak to dance
maybe i'm a little strong to die
i don't know

concentrating
love and i'm hating myself again
impersonating
the smallest shadow of my original self again

maybe i'm a little young to care
maybe i'm a little old to cry
i don't know
maybe i'm a little weak to dance
maybe i'm a little strong to die
i don't know

does anybody really want to grasp
my hand and lift me to my feet? does
anybody really want to be the breeze
that frightens off this heat?

eyes wide open
maybe i'm a little young to love
eyes wide open
maybe i'm a little young to love
eyes wides open
maybe i'm a little young to love
maybe i'm a little young to love
maybe i'm a little young to love
maybe i'm a little young to love
maybe i'm
maybe i...

Eyes Wide Open : Over the Rhine


Don't speak.
Words come out your eyes.
You're wet with this nightmare.
Like thorns you hold these secrets to your breast,
your slender fingers closing into fists.

Trace your bruise
like a guilty streak.
Hold the pain.
You're a connoisseur.
You think you have no other gift to give,
but we have so much left to live.

We don't need a lot of money.
We'll be sleeping on the beach,
keeping oceans within reach.
(Whatever private oceans we can conjure up for free.)
I will stumble there with you
and you'll be laughing close with me,
trying not to make a scene
etcetera. Whatever. I guess all I really mean

is we're gonna be alright.
Yeah, we're gonna be alright.
You can close your eyes tonight,
'cause we're gonna be alright.

So come on now,
I can almost see
that place
on a distant shore.
And courage is a weapon we must use
to find some life you can't refuse.

We don't need a lot of money.
We'll be sleeping on the beach,
keeping oceans within reach.
(Whatever private oceans we can conjure up for free.)
I will stumble there with you
and you'll be laughing close with me,
trying not to make a scene
etcetera. Whatever. I guess all I really mean

is we're gonna be alright.
Yeah, we're gonna be alright.
You can close your eyes tonight,
'cause we're gonna be alright.
All that I can see is your eyes.
Close your eyes.
Close your eyes.

Etc. Whatever : Over the Rhine

back in the saddle again

hello hohenlohe!! it's so weird to be back here. especially knowing i won't be here much longer.

i leave a month from today.

so after the crazy paris trip, there was a crazy vogtland trip. and then another crazy whirlwind tour of germany--with my dad. then a couple days in prague and a couple days in dresden. and after some 7 hours on a train yesterday, i made it back here in time to watch the sunset from the bus on my way home. there are definitely some things i'm going to miss about this place.

(bikers in spandex unitards, however, are not one of them.)

right. so 3 weeks of non-stop traveling. and now 3 weeks of school. you'd think it would be smooth sailing now, just a few weeks to go... but no. i knew this was going to happen, and i guess all i can really do is be glad that it's almost over--for my last couple of weeks, i somehow ended up with all of the super high-maintenance teachers. well, maybe not high-maintenance exactly, but high expectations and low (read: nonexistent) communication... it's a little frustrating. and i'm not sure if i should care or not. i'm just kind of done.

warning: blatant male-bashing

traveling with men is exhausting. first of all, they don't carry purses--which means anything that doesn't fit in their pockets, _I_ have to carry. YES!!! and then there's the whole directions thing...

argggghh!!!

enough of my whining. berlin is, as always, fabulous =)