so the going home countdown is now around 19 days. nineteen days. thats really really really nothing. i successfully delivered the oral report on tramhalte beethovenstraat, successfully finished my first hausarbeit, kicked my klausur's ass (still waiting on a grade), and have generally been having crazy full productive days every day. in the next 19 days i need to write two more papers, finish up the formatting on all three, and take another exam. do-able? yes. crappy, yah, but even though i wanted to get started earlier i knew i wouldnt ... i dont actually know anyone who lives any sort of interesting or enjoyable lifestyle and simultaneously spends every week writing their final papers. i mean come on.


last night i had a fun pre-quarter-life quarter-life-crisis. my newest irrational fear is that i will return to the united states and have my ego completely deflated by everyone's lack of interest in my life. its not the first time that it's happened. see also: thanksgiving break freshman year, xmas break freshman year, summer freshman year, every other time i've ever come home from college, and about a month after i left for berlin. i can't be mad at anyone but myself over it all ... i build up all these ideas in my head about what i want to happen, and when it doesn't happen i break out into full only-child-brat-mode and get all pissy that no one follows through with my imaginary plans of lavishing me with attention and parties. i get frustrated with myself, because it's kind of unattractive for a 21 year old to act like a 5 year old, but sometimes i just want to stomp my feet and pout and yell at everyone for not being more FUN. the thing is, im not a child anymore, i'm essentially an adult and i moved away. when you move away you move out of people's lives and i can't expect everyone to just, like, bookmark the place that i used to occupy and wait for me to saunter back into it whenever i feel like it. while its normal to want to be missed, i am fully aware at how most of my friends have lost almost all contact with me, and as sad as it makes me i know that its really not coming from my end. it would be one thing if i left for berlin and kissed everyone goodbye, but after so many unanswered emails and awkward trans-atlantic cell phone messages, i have very low expectations for my return.


add to that the fact that so many people at middlebury has been somewhere for a semester or a year and that its JUST NOT THAT BIG OF A DEAL. for my family, yeah its great, and in the larger scope of things, yes its big and its something to be proud of. i packed up my life, peaced out of new jersey (which is NO easy feat), transplanted myself into germany and started a brand new life here. not many 20 year olds do that, this is true. then again not many people leave new jersey at all, so its all relative. but coming back from study abroad and being in middlebury is anticlimactic by definition: everyone sits around, head swimming with their year long adventures, and after a few drinks and a week everyone gets over it and moves forward. you cant drag your friends through your memories and expect them to give a shit. they werent there, they wont find the inside jokes cute, they dont want to see 85 pictures from random parties nor do they really care about the angle at which YOU captured the eiffel tower or a canal in venice. part of coming back is just a big get over it, i think. being up to my ears in post-holocaust literature is probably (um, read definitely) affecting my mood/perceptions of things - but its true. people only want to hear about the past so much, and when its your past (read the last 10 months of my life), most people could really care less. of course my mom is going to tell me that im special and smart and awesome (and is the only person reading this anyway ......), but thats why she's my mom and thats her job.


i knew i wouldn't want to leave berlin, and even though i have readily admitted a sense of homesickness, i have always been very clear about wanting to stay here forever. now that im down to less than three weeks its even more apparent. i dont want to uproot everything here. i know that my friends here will disappear from my life just as quickly as friends anywhere do. berlin is a fast paced city of hedonism and excess ... it is full of interesting, smart, active, fun people and i try to remind myself that even though people will miss me - i'm not necessarily irreplaceable (to the left to the left!)

and with that beyonce reference, i think i should end this depressing blog post and read more heinrich böll. bis aufs bald.