Cradling the glass moments
So what if the three papers are riding me like three pizza cutters carving into my back, who gives a a catfish how messy my room is becoming, bottles rolling across the floor as though designed to trip me. As for this not-getting-enough-sleep business, I can sleep when I'm 85 in a nursing home chucking Skittles at hapless nurses. I mean, if that's the worst that's happening to me, I need to be throwing some form of parade, the I Have Not A Care In The Bloody World Fiesta.
I haven't described much here on livejournal, but I shall describe one evening in the life. It's only after the fact that I realize the value of times when I sit and listen. Ahhhhhhh, it was so great hanging out with a bunch of German friends tonight at a quasi-dinner party... Julia, Hanna, and Patrick I already knew, but their friend Chantal and Julia's roommate Steffi were unfamiliar. We thought we would barbecue, but it started to rain, so instead we had salad and pizza. I chopped onions for the homemade pizza until my hands reeked, as Hanna, Julia, and Steffi discussed how Americans were the primary brawl-starters in Germany, and yet the other foreigners were the ones always getting flak. Apparently sometimes it didn't even involve Germans, just one group of Americans ragging on another group until the violence got good and messy. However, the Turkish, ah the Turks... getting shut out of certain nightclubs because other (similar, of course) Turks got rowdy. And everyone knows one and another Turk are alike. Same with the Americans.
I'm being sarcastic, damn it.
The view from Julia and Steffi's place was breathtaking. Imagine fields, trees, and a green mountain, all shadowed dewily by a cloudy day, rain slanting down, and you'll have some idea why I gazed so long. They live near the Primatenzentrum, the Primate Center in Göttingen, and hear the sounds of the apes calling as they fall asleep. It's seriously like they live in a forest. Some kind of paradise, huh? Julia's room was decorated with Indian dreamcatchers, yoga rugs, cushy pillows, candles. Think she has a future as an interior decorator, if she weren't already headed towards therapist.
The place has its disadvantages, though. It's quite far away from campus and the downtown area (also uphill), so you really need a car to get there. Even for me and Hanna to get there in good time, Julia had to come and pick us up. And when it rains, the water gets inside and causes damage. Still. Still. The view makes up for just about everything.
When we all got comfortable eating our pizza and salad, with 9 or 10 lit candles snaked along the table, the conversation took all number of fascinating directions: first to whether it was ridiculous to celebrate an 8-month anniversary (they all thought 8 months was an extremely short time to start celebrating), marriage solely for financial or immigration purposes, whether it was all right (yes, they generally thought). Then discussion of marriage when the age was disproportionate. Other topics off-hand: imported fruit (they never buy bell peppers from Spain, apparently) and the difference between organic fruit/meat and "regular". How old you have to be before you get kicked off your parents' insurance plan - 25, I believe. Tax benefits for those with children, and working when you do have children. Promises made by the CDU and SDP. Whether to buy recycled toilet paper if you didn't like to use it. The way the Iraq war is perceived in the U.S. and whether Michael Moore has a point or is just annoying. Trustworthy German newspapers (Frankfurter Allgemein and Süddeutscher Zeitung, and in NO WAY the Bild Zeitung). Explaining to a Chinese guy, incidentally my friend Liang, that the water here is drinkable (you don't have to boil it), which launched a discussion of how so much water is sometimes conserved in Germany, reserves overflow in peoples' cellars. (This one confused the heck out of me.) Then on to more personal topics like Hanna's fear of heights but determination to go with her friends to the top of the Eiffel Tower, Patrick's fear of water, Chantal's fear of there being something disgusting in the Kisee (a small lake in Göttingen)... this led to Hanna telling her there actually was a corpse discovered in the Kisee. I don't think this helped Chantal's fear too much. And then Hanna started describing stories that appeared in the Göttinger Tageblatt, strange deaths that happened nearby, things you don't want to know, and then too the useless stories, like the marriage of two police on the FRONT PAGE, which also appeared because not so much tragedy happens in Göttingen, really, if you think about it, and this all got me to laughing hysterically because Hanna has this dry way of describing things and the subject she was describing was too hilarious, and then Julia looked at me and started laughing, and Hanna kept trying to talk but she was choking a little bit on her own laughter because WE were laughing. And even though Hanna started talking about her Diplomarbeit, Julia and I kept looking at each other and laughing and God, I was crying. These are the evenings you live for, you know?
All this was with the intention of saying goodbye to Julia, because my time here grows short and I'm trying to pay tribute or something already to the people who are out of my way but who I really had a blast with. Ulrike I tried this with too, but somehow for both of them, it seems I'll be seeing them yet again before I go, because they both said they wanted to say goodbye later. And then there are people I still haven't gotten in touch with, but I'm going to Berlin to see an American friend next weekend and saying goodbye to my host family and my language partner Marius and his girlfriend Meike at the end of the semester, and hopefully a few others who have meant a lot to me, Frau Leimkühler, my other language partner Katha, some crazy Russians, then maybe I'll be able to leave here with a sense of conclusion. rosinenschnecke is leaving right at the end of the semester too :( ::cry:: I've got lots of e-mail addresses... the connections will not be easily lost.
I didn't realize how attached I was getting. But it's a good feeling. I would rather have a part of me ripped out as I leave than to wonder what it would feel like, you know? :)
I've been doing all-German with the qualifier "with anyone who speaks German" this month, which helped my father out because he came for a visit... and it also makes it so that I don't have to cut off my friends in the U.S. It's quite brilliant, because my friends from my German class last year are e-mailing me in German as well (and the great thing is, I didn't even tell them to this time :O). But since it's mostly non-German speakers who read this journal, majority rules.
Yeah, times like this make it all worthwhile. My hands still smell like onion.
And I'm ever aware that I've got these right cool friends in the U.S, who've kept in touch through the distance, through the stress of time, who've sent me sweet little packages and postcards, e-mails and love. Not to even mention a Schnecke whose very voice on the telephone is enough to sweeten my cereal, turn my words to kernels of corn, and knock the moon off-kilter. Can't wait to see you guys again. I could overflow.
I'll tinge this level even-handed world with glints of joy.
Moin Leute, I thank you, and good night.
Die Liebe, die Liebe, die Liebe,
>^..^<
I haven't described much here on livejournal, but I shall describe one evening in the life. It's only after the fact that I realize the value of times when I sit and listen. Ahhhhhhh, it was so great hanging out with a bunch of German friends tonight at a quasi-dinner party... Julia, Hanna, and Patrick I already knew, but their friend Chantal and Julia's roommate Steffi were unfamiliar. We thought we would barbecue, but it started to rain, so instead we had salad and pizza. I chopped onions for the homemade pizza until my hands reeked, as Hanna, Julia, and Steffi discussed how Americans were the primary brawl-starters in Germany, and yet the other foreigners were the ones always getting flak. Apparently sometimes it didn't even involve Germans, just one group of Americans ragging on another group until the violence got good and messy. However, the Turkish, ah the Turks... getting shut out of certain nightclubs because other (similar, of course) Turks got rowdy. And everyone knows one and another Turk are alike. Same with the Americans.
I'm being sarcastic, damn it.
The view from Julia and Steffi's place was breathtaking. Imagine fields, trees, and a green mountain, all shadowed dewily by a cloudy day, rain slanting down, and you'll have some idea why I gazed so long. They live near the Primatenzentrum, the Primate Center in Göttingen, and hear the sounds of the apes calling as they fall asleep. It's seriously like they live in a forest. Some kind of paradise, huh? Julia's room was decorated with Indian dreamcatchers, yoga rugs, cushy pillows, candles. Think she has a future as an interior decorator, if she weren't already headed towards therapist.
The place has its disadvantages, though. It's quite far away from campus and the downtown area (also uphill), so you really need a car to get there. Even for me and Hanna to get there in good time, Julia had to come and pick us up. And when it rains, the water gets inside and causes damage. Still. Still. The view makes up for just about everything.
When we all got comfortable eating our pizza and salad, with 9 or 10 lit candles snaked along the table, the conversation took all number of fascinating directions: first to whether it was ridiculous to celebrate an 8-month anniversary (they all thought 8 months was an extremely short time to start celebrating), marriage solely for financial or immigration purposes, whether it was all right (yes, they generally thought). Then discussion of marriage when the age was disproportionate. Other topics off-hand: imported fruit (they never buy bell peppers from Spain, apparently) and the difference between organic fruit/meat and "regular". How old you have to be before you get kicked off your parents' insurance plan - 25, I believe. Tax benefits for those with children, and working when you do have children. Promises made by the CDU and SDP. Whether to buy recycled toilet paper if you didn't like to use it. The way the Iraq war is perceived in the U.S. and whether Michael Moore has a point or is just annoying. Trustworthy German newspapers (Frankfurter Allgemein and Süddeutscher Zeitung, and in NO WAY the Bild Zeitung). Explaining to a Chinese guy, incidentally my friend Liang, that the water here is drinkable (you don't have to boil it), which launched a discussion of how so much water is sometimes conserved in Germany, reserves overflow in peoples' cellars. (This one confused the heck out of me.) Then on to more personal topics like Hanna's fear of heights but determination to go with her friends to the top of the Eiffel Tower, Patrick's fear of water, Chantal's fear of there being something disgusting in the Kisee (a small lake in Göttingen)... this led to Hanna telling her there actually was a corpse discovered in the Kisee. I don't think this helped Chantal's fear too much. And then Hanna started describing stories that appeared in the Göttinger Tageblatt, strange deaths that happened nearby, things you don't want to know, and then too the useless stories, like the marriage of two police on the FRONT PAGE, which also appeared because not so much tragedy happens in Göttingen, really, if you think about it, and this all got me to laughing hysterically because Hanna has this dry way of describing things and the subject she was describing was too hilarious, and then Julia looked at me and started laughing, and Hanna kept trying to talk but she was choking a little bit on her own laughter because WE were laughing. And even though Hanna started talking about her Diplomarbeit, Julia and I kept looking at each other and laughing and God, I was crying. These are the evenings you live for, you know?
All this was with the intention of saying goodbye to Julia, because my time here grows short and I'm trying to pay tribute or something already to the people who are out of my way but who I really had a blast with. Ulrike I tried this with too, but somehow for both of them, it seems I'll be seeing them yet again before I go, because they both said they wanted to say goodbye later. And then there are people I still haven't gotten in touch with, but I'm going to Berlin to see an American friend next weekend and saying goodbye to my host family and my language partner Marius and his girlfriend Meike at the end of the semester, and hopefully a few others who have meant a lot to me, Frau Leimkühler, my other language partner Katha, some crazy Russians, then maybe I'll be able to leave here with a sense of conclusion. rosinenschnecke is leaving right at the end of the semester too :( ::cry:: I've got lots of e-mail addresses... the connections will not be easily lost.
I didn't realize how attached I was getting. But it's a good feeling. I would rather have a part of me ripped out as I leave than to wonder what it would feel like, you know? :)
I've been doing all-German with the qualifier "with anyone who speaks German" this month, which helped my father out because he came for a visit... and it also makes it so that I don't have to cut off my friends in the U.S. It's quite brilliant, because my friends from my German class last year are e-mailing me in German as well (and the great thing is, I didn't even tell them to this time :O). But since it's mostly non-German speakers who read this journal, majority rules.
Yeah, times like this make it all worthwhile. My hands still smell like onion.
And I'm ever aware that I've got these right cool friends in the U.S, who've kept in touch through the distance, through the stress of time, who've sent me sweet little packages and postcards, e-mails and love. Not to even mention a Schnecke whose very voice on the telephone is enough to sweeten my cereal, turn my words to kernels of corn, and knock the moon off-kilter. Can't wait to see you guys again. I could overflow.
I'll tinge this level even-handed world with glints of joy.
Moin Leute, I thank you, and good night.
Die Liebe, die Liebe, die Liebe,
>^..^<