i have officially reached the sixth page (out of twelve) on my first hausarbeit. i felt that this monumentous achievement deserved a momentary internet break and thus i immediately thought of you all - my loyal blog public. the big question in hausarbeit land is whether or not i am going to ask for an extension on these papers. i can easily get one - unlike most people i have a really valid reason - but i honestly don't want one. i want to be done with this semester and these papers and move on to my two month whirlwind berlin extravaganza. for this reason i plan on working my ass off over the next week and a half, and if things are looking dismal i'll ask for one. if not i just want to be done. i think i can do it, and hopefully the next two papers will go more smoothly than this one has.


my birthday was last week and it was really fun. i have an amazing group of friends here and everyone got along splendidly and we had a really nice night. i made dinner - tagliatelle with tomatoes, artichokes, kalamata olives and feta cheese. i also made a caprese salad, bought a baguette to go with it and had some cheese too. laura made me a birthday cake which we all ate for dessert. all in all tyler, laura, deborah and her boyfriend til, luisa and cliff, kathi and kiki and tim were all in attendance. we all fit around my dining room table and had a great night full of food and drinks. tyler's present to me was a bottle of vodka and a bottle of kahlua and some ice, i provided the milk/cream selection and we all had white russians (<3) and there were a few bottles of wine and beer in the mix as well. i got two really nice books, a moleskine planner, some flowers and some very nice cards. i wanted to go to a club afterward but a few of us ended up just going to tylers, dancing around with his roommate, taking shots of cheap tequila, and i took the train home at 5 am. it was a really enjoyable birthday though, and i was genuinely happy to share it with all my friends here.


today is the first day in almost a week that it has not been raining. it is pleasantly brisk and windy and there are even large patches of blue sky peeking through, which is nice to see. this weekend was kind of a depressing weekend, culminating with yesterday, which i heard later is supposedly "blue monday" aka the day that has been calculated to be the most depressing day of the year. i find that kind of ridiculous, but for me it pretty much was. the depression is really a culmination of factors - christmas, new years, prague, ben's visit, my birthday ... they're all gone. all of these things were so enjoyable and i had looked forward to them all for so long that it's a big drop off at this point. all i have for the moment is work work work, and although i'm really looking forward to my mom coming, that seems really far off (even though its less than a month away). on top of this sort of lull in the action, a friend of mine here killed himself on saturday which has really shaken me up. he wasn't a really good friend of mine, but i used to see him pretty frequently around campus and i've gone to parties at his house and gone to concerts with him. it really shocked me and has sort of been lingering in the back of my mind ever since. i also started missing ben pretty bad a few days after he left, and the rain kept me apartment bound all weekend so the feelings sort of multiplied and fermented until i was really bummed out.


last night i went to the gym and went in the sauna and just relaxed, which was really nice and will become a more regular part of my routine i think. today i got a lot of sleep and i'm feeling better and i am halfway through my first hausarbeit, which is a big step forward, and i'm meeting a friend for coffee later. tomorrow i have a lofty goal of actually finishing the whole thing which might not happen, but you never know. maybe in an hour i will really pick up speed and just get it all done. a few big quote chunks, a lot of footnotes ... it could happen.

i have spent the majority of the last week or so trying to write my first hausarbeit and so far ive gotten almost nowhere. now ben and the other boys are here, which is really great, but i can't really go out and party with them simply because i have so much work to do. i have a finalized outline and an introduction to my paper and i know that if i set my mind to it i can get a lot done. seeing ben here has been really interesting, because it is very out of context. he said something yesterday along the lines of how this is my place without him, which is very true. middlebury is inextricably tied up with him for me, but this is my place that is just for me, even if i think about him while i'm here or miss him ... it is my place by myself. it's a way that i have not yet viewed berlin, but it's very true. i'm not sure if it is emancipatory or not, because i can't really see it as an "emancipation" from anything, but i do know that it has both allowed and forced me to mature a lot.


so far ben's visit has been a success, my sickness is pretty much all cleared up, we're getting a new washing machine tomorrow ... things are already looking up. it's just sort of shocking because i knew that ben was going to visit, but it seemed endlessly far off - january. my birthday is in three days now, and its a milestone. a week after my birthday will be my 4 month-anniversary of coming here (that was grammatically incorrect, but it's the easiest way to put it). as could be expected, things have started to move very quickly on this side of the atlantic and it's kind of unsettling but also exciting. im having my closest friends come to my house on my birthday for dinner and then afterward we are going to go out for drinks and dancing. this means i'll be spending most of my birthday on thursday in the library writing in order to spend friday sleeping. on top of all of the craziness, i also got a babysitting job with a very nice family. they live in a very nice/expensive part of the city and have a 3 year old daughter and a baby son on the way in a few weeks. the prospect of a little extra pocket money is really nice, and it will be good to have order in my life, even though it might cut into my travel plans a little ... that might be a good thing. i have to keep reminding myself that as tempting as it is to jetset all over europe (and as cheap as it is since i'm already here), there is still so much of berlin that i have yet to explore and despite the fact that i still have SO much time, i need to take advantage of all of it and really run around more and more every week.

i am now eight days into 2008 in berlin. i have already visited prague, spent the majority of the new years hungover and sleep deprived, and have yet to break any of my new years resolutions! a friend of mine and i were talking about whether writing a blog about your time abroad is really worth it. she says she reads this occasionally and that she's had friends who wrote blogs about their experiences which were pointless. i think that you have to be somewhat of an egotist to write a blog, especially one like this that only receives feedback from my mother. granted i find that people's study-abroad blogs are always interesting, i will admit that the ones from china or ghana are a touch more thrilling than mine. the fact that i'm not good at putting pictures on this one doesn't help. honestly, though, i think that the #1 reason you should write a blog is for yourself. i will be able to look back on this blog and remember my trip, and things can linger on the internet for a very long time. who knows, maybe i'll continue this blog once i'm back in the states. maybe after i graduate i'll come back to berlin and continue the blog even further. i know that almost no one reads it, but i write this blog for myself, to document my growth and my trip and i think its fun and useful to reflect on what's going on.


the wake-up call came in terms of my semesterarbeiten. im going to have to write roughly 36 pages in german in the next five weeks. that includes researching/reading and writing about three different topics. that is insane. things have gotten pretty rough in camp rachael, what with a fun bout of being sick, my washing machine breaking, finals stress, visitors stress and a general sense of being overwhelmed. then again, feeling overwhelmed is nothing new to me. in five weeks this will be over. i've written 20 page papers in english in 3 days. i know that i can do this, i just need to focus and stop procrastinating. ben is coming to visit in five days. my mom is coming in 5 weeks. i may have gotten a babysitting job. i got my ipod back (which has made my life better than i'd like to admit). things are good, but this is definitely a rough patch. the worst part is that tyler is leaving after we finish our final papers and i'm 100% sure we will barely see each other this month as it is. i'm hoping to get through this month of work and avoid any all-nighters/migraines. it seems ridiculous when i think of the amount of work i do regularly at middlebury. why am i freaking out about three papers?


recently i've given in and started buying junk food while living here. i think that this needs to stop. i'll remind myself in the supermarket that it's a budgeting issue (which it kind of is i guess). i have formed a newfound addiction to the "lite" paprika chips, erdnuss flips and "american style" chocolate chip cookies that they sell in plus. i bought myself a gym membership for xmas, however, and subscribed to a "gym mix" podcast, which is kind of awesome, so i'm sure i'll work off the junk food that i've indulged in in the last two weeks. i have to remember to enjoy the upcoming month instead of dreading it and complaining, and to keep my chin up, or as they say auf deutsch, halt die ohren steif!! (aka keep my ears stiff!!) (aka i love german idioms!!!)