Regular ol' blog entry!
After the hullaballoo of the first two weeks of this month, both here and back home, my life here has settled down into a rhythm I find very much to my liking. Life in the Icelandic Community Center at Seestraße 114, as we have come to call it, is quite pleasant - a great deal of baking and music-making, laid-back dinners followed with Icelandic pancakes and ice tea, and the occasional DVD and microwaved popcorn (Bio, of course, like everything in this country...) are the principal activities in our little colony. The "alvöru íslensk pönnukökupanna" - real Icelandic pancake pan - that Hildur's mom sent her has been getting quite a workout.
School has its ups and downs. On less sunny days, the sterile coldness of the academic environment (especially in Potsdam) gets under my skin, but on the whole I think that is more my yellow side speaking than anything else. Being treated like a nuisance, a statistic, or simply a non-entity in most situations does little to defuse the already alienating nature of being a one-semester exchange student without the support of an Erasmus network or any sort of an academic advising system. The language barrier only rarely hinders my comprehension, but I find it requires an almost gargantuan effort for me to find my voice in class. As many of you know what a tendency for verbal diarrhea I have, you can imagine how ironic this turn of events is!
The high points, however, come when I am curled up with a book, or two, or three, in my room in the afternoons and evenings - which is a good deal of the time. It is then that I find myself thinking, "this is how one should study literature!" My days are almost entirely taken up with reading - on the trains, at the breakfast table in the mornings, all afternoon and evening when I get home from class, and at narly every free moment in between. Even though only a two weeks have gone by at Potsdam, and three at Humboldt, I can already feel the web of associations growing, and the reading list for the rest of the quarter should only capitalize on that.
I got my library card for the amaaaaazing Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (Berlin State Library) yesterday. I'm still finding my way around the library system, which consists of three separate locations, a bazillion different reading rooms, and all sorts of regulations governing what you can take in to the main part of the buildings with you - for example, no backpacks or bags, no jackets/overcoats, but a clear plastic bag with the stuff you need to have with you. I decided to do things the old-fashioned way yesterday, went in with just a notebook and a pencil case, and spent five hours copying quotations on Schwanengesang from various books about Schubert by hand. It was so much fun! I also ordered three books online, and have to go get them from the house in Potsdamer Straße today. They're all for my honors research project, and look downright delicious. Can't wait!
In other news, Prince Polo supplies may soon run out in Iceland...wtf? Also, my heart goes out to the thousands of people who lost their jobs this weekend. After a month and a half of fear, things are now really starting to get bad for a lot of people, and I worry. This is all so darn surreal...
School has its ups and downs. On less sunny days, the sterile coldness of the academic environment (especially in Potsdam) gets under my skin, but on the whole I think that is more my yellow side speaking than anything else. Being treated like a nuisance, a statistic, or simply a non-entity in most situations does little to defuse the already alienating nature of being a one-semester exchange student without the support of an Erasmus network or any sort of an academic advising system. The language barrier only rarely hinders my comprehension, but I find it requires an almost gargantuan effort for me to find my voice in class. As many of you know what a tendency for verbal diarrhea I have, you can imagine how ironic this turn of events is!
The high points, however, come when I am curled up with a book, or two, or three, in my room in the afternoons and evenings - which is a good deal of the time. It is then that I find myself thinking, "this is how one should study literature!" My days are almost entirely taken up with reading - on the trains, at the breakfast table in the mornings, all afternoon and evening when I get home from class, and at narly every free moment in between. Even though only a two weeks have gone by at Potsdam, and three at Humboldt, I can already feel the web of associations growing, and the reading list for the rest of the quarter should only capitalize on that.
I got my library card for the amaaaaazing Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (Berlin State Library) yesterday. I'm still finding my way around the library system, which consists of three separate locations, a bazillion different reading rooms, and all sorts of regulations governing what you can take in to the main part of the buildings with you - for example, no backpacks or bags, no jackets/overcoats, but a clear plastic bag with the stuff you need to have with you. I decided to do things the old-fashioned way yesterday, went in with just a notebook and a pencil case, and spent five hours copying quotations on Schwanengesang from various books about Schubert by hand. It was so much fun! I also ordered three books online, and have to go get them from the house in Potsdamer Straße today. They're all for my honors research project, and look downright delicious. Can't wait!
In other news, Prince Polo supplies may soon run out in Iceland...wtf? Also, my heart goes out to the thousands of people who lost their jobs this weekend. After a month and a half of fear, things are now really starting to get bad for a lot of people, and I worry. This is all so darn surreal...