saturday will mark the two month anniversary of my arrival in berlin. just thinking about that is insane. two months down, a little over 8 months to go. i haven't updated in a while because i've been running around like crazy lately. i decided that this week is going to be sort of a detoxification week for me, and then i came down with a nasty cold so it's definitely been a detox. my diet has consisted almost solely of fruit, tea, yogurt and crisp bröd*. today i strayed from my diet for the first time with a little börek, which is turkish junk food kind of. its phyllo dough, and i get mine with ground beef, feta and spinach. it's not exactly junk food, it's just really good. gözleme is more junkfoody, but i can never eat a whole one.

anyway, enough about my newfound love of turkish cuisine. this weekend i traveled to scenic weimar with the whole group of midd exchange students. it was really nice, if very cold. we were forced to leave at 7:45 am due to the bahn strike, which was kind of a pain, but it worked out amazingly for us. when i think about the luck i had finding my mom in italy, and the luck we had in switching trains to weimar, it makes me believe in karma. i feel as if my travel luck is my karmic payback for all the stress and crap i have to go through with money and computer stuff and school stuff here. anyway, we managed to switch trains immediately and got to weimar around 11 am. weimar, for the uninitiated, is the hometown of johann wolfgang von goethe, the man the myth the legend. it is also the birthplace of bauhaus, and was the home of friedrich schiller. for anyone reading this who is truly uninitiated with german culture - they're really really important. schiller is considered the most important german classical playwright and also wrote the poem "ode to joy" which beethoven then set to music. goethe is just a huge deal. he did everything and completely influenced everything about german culture and everyone in this country is just obsessed with him pretty much.

the nice thing about the trip is that middlebury paid for the hotel, the train tickets and the museums/theater. all that we had to pay for was food, which actually ended up costing me a little more than i'd like. friday night luisa, meredith, alice and i ended up going out for a ladies' night which ended up at a crazy techno club with a dance party downstairs. we were there for a really long time, and on saturday i came down with a really gross cold. all in all i visited the bauhaus museum, goethe's house (which was amazing), schiller's house, a (really cheesy) ginko museum, and also spent a lot of time eating thuringer rostbratwurst, drinking hot chocolate (because it was freezing), and drinking schwarzbier (which is delicious). on sunday we went to buchenwald, which was really emotionally disturbing. the weather was freezing and really foggy, which made it even more depressing and unsettling. there were so many striking aspects of the camp and i feel as though the way that they have set it up as a monument to the victims is really well thought out and powerful. the museum exhibit was really impressive and i had to restrain myself from buying a few books.

this week i've been battling my cold and trying to keep up with everything happening around me. there is so much that i want to do and see here, i really need to start planning better. i also need to clean my room and get organized. i have no drawers here, which is kind of problematic for me. i might need to take a trip to ikea and buy a few more things for my room. i also need to start visiting more museums. i feel as if the city is still so foreign to me. this is what everyone meant when they insisted that i go for a year - they said that after one semester you will only begin to feel at home there, and it's so true. i've been thinking about internships and i decided i want to try to intern at the checkpoint charlie museum or the jewish museum. i'm going to do a little more research first, but either one would be really enlightening i think.


on monday i had my first oral report - it was an interesting experience to say the least. i have always disliked group work, and at least at middlebury i am dealing with other english speakers. it's really hard to judge someone's personality when you're speaking in your second language - my relationships are slightly more superficial i think, and so it was hard to tell how we'd work together as a group. we also didn't have a choice, but i was amazed at how the guy in my group acted the entire time. he appeared to be really well put together but in reality did very little work, put it off till the end, forced us all to work on his schedule, COMPLETELY stressed me out, and then spoke for an excessive amount of time during the actual report on a subject that we had already gone over in the last two class periods. for my part, i got really nervous and spoke a little too fast, and went on a little long as well, but my professor said he was really impressed with my work and my spoken german, and 3 friends of mine in the class told me they thought it went really well. i felt like it could have gone better, but i have two more to do this semester for other classes so i guess it will improve. my next report is on 12/3, but it's not really a traditional "referat" like this one was. for the upcoming one i have to read this novel, which by the way, is over 1000 pages, and come up with 3 theses on certain characters. i dont think i'm going to be able to read the entire thing, but i'm pretty sure that luckily my characters are only in the first part of the novel. i'll be consulting a lot of secondary literature for this report, but i think that's okay. had i known that i would be reading this book, i might have begun in august. there's just no way that i have the time to read all of it within the semester on top of 3 other classes.


anyway, things are going pretty well i just need to get myself a little better organized and chill out this week. next weekend i'm going to london which is really exciting! i'm staying for free with my friend lisa, and my goal is to spend as little money as possible. then two weeks later i'm going to florence!! for christmas kathi is having a big dinner here, and then i'm going to her parent's house which is really nice. i'm also planning on staying in berlin for new years and spending it with my friend laura and most likely tyler and luisa, if they're here. my plans are extending longer and longer - i've even got plans in february already! time is flying by here, but it's really great - constantly overwhelming, but great.





*i felt that crisp bröd deserved a footnote. it is my german obsession. just like how polar pomegranate and vanilla flavored seltzer waters became important parts of my life at middlebury, crisp bröd is amazing. i only like viva vital brand. its like a flat bread, i think it's originally swedish, and my roommate got me addicted. its got a million grains in it and at first i hated it because i felt like it tasted really cardboard-y, but it has become one of my favorite foods and i'm not sure how i'll cope without it in the US. it's also mad cheap, which is nice.