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.