an tagen wie diesen
After spending the majority of the day cleaning, and the past few days either packing or sitting listlessly at my computer waiting for the unshakeable heat to let up, I have something to share:
Things I Will Not Miss About Living Here:
the humidity
the hall's broom that is so old it barely could hit the dust out of my rug
the hall's vacuum that instead of picking up dust and dirt simply relocates it
the white surface of everything in this room that refuses to ever look clean
all the tiny gross bugs of summer
bike riding and getting said bugs in eyes, mouth, plastered onto skin
Yeah, thats about it. I've heard tell of the heat wave that is striking the States, but I've got to say I'd take dry heat over the drippy summer I'm experiencing here. The weather is almost continuously hot and humid, with the only moments of respite being the crazy thunder storms that sweep in to cool things down for a day or two. I have been spared a little today by the arrival of one such storm (or at least, it looks like it's going to be that way), but just remembering standing in line at Getraenkemart yesterday, my back completely soaked because I was wearing a backpack. It was ridiculous. I get home from an 8 minute ride and I am as sweaty as if I had just run a couple of miles. I don't think of myself as all that sweaty of a person, but I look around here and wonder how everyone else is dealing with it and not obviously looking like they are going to pass out.
So yeah. The last few days have been about figuring out I am going to get my stuff home, packing it up, and finally cleaning my room. Tomorrow morning is my Abnahmtermin, my inspection to move out. I am afraid of getting bitched out because my room has not posessed the ability to look clean long before I ever moved in, and I realize that is something the did go in they told me it was too late, and I realized as I was cleaning today that some shelves in my cabinet have been broken for the majority of the year and I just sort of forgot about it. I have had so many little problems (lights breaking, closet rack falling down, mold on the walls, etc) with my room that the woman who works in the Hausverwaltung, the housing office, actually fills out the portion of the complaint form that requires my house and room number without even asking me. But yeah. I just sort of want to get moved out and be done with it. She told me I could move out on Saturday (after arguing with her about it), as long as I dropped off my key in her mailbox. Well, if I can move out on Saturday (a day no one would be working here), I don't see why I couldn't move out on Sunday, so I think I am going to be doing that. My rough plan at the moment is to take a taxi with my boxes to the post office to ship, and then take a taxi to Andi's on Sunday when I go there to move in. Jacky moved out yesterday, becaus inspector may not acknowledge. I also never turned in my curtains to be cleaned, and when Ie she is going traveling with her boyfriend, and they walked all of her stuff over to Andi's yesterday, but I don't think I have the willpower to do that myself. I am slightly concerned about how I am even going to be able to get everything to the airport, if I have to change trains or anything on the way to Frankfurt. I have a backpack, a traveling backpack, a largish purse (which I think is going to contain all my dirty clothes from this next week), and an enormous suitcase. The airline lowered the allowed baggage weight limit from 70 pounds (when I came) to 50, so that is fantastic. All of this just makes me appreciate minimalism so much more.
I don't know how it's going to be staying at Andi's, because his apartment is about 1/5 the size of a sliver of a fingernail, and its at the very top of the building, so it is HOT. If only news of that whole air conditioning craze had made its way across the Atlantic!
It is frustrating, because everyone is leaving this week, and I have had to get a lot done so I could move out tomorrow. Once I move into Andi's on Sunday, I think I will just need to worry about closing my bank account and settling my cell phone debts (baeh, another thing I don't want to think about). But yeah, I feel like its all rush rush rush and then sit around for a few days. It would have worked out better if I could have planned out a traveling schedule earlier, but I have been stressed about getting just all of this done in time, and I know the few people who are leaving to travel are stressing out even more, just because that's one more thing.
Looking through my Europe guidebook, I am continually disappointed, reading all of the things I didn't get the time to do. Just Germany alone, there is so much that would have been really fun. My friend Jennifer and I are planning on leaving on Monday to go to a city on the Ostsee, staying there that night and then likely coming home Tuesday night. I am not sure if this is going to work, primarily because the Ostsee is a big german tourist destination, and we as of yet do not have lodging for Monday night. But hopefully we could work it out, because the Ostsee (Baltic Sea) was one of the things I really did want to see here. I also wanted to go down the Rhine, see the Schwarzwald (Black Forest), go to Nuernberg, Dresden... but yeah, time is flying by quickly. I have wasted a lot of it this week, just feeling hot and pissy about moving and cleaning and all that unpleasantness, but there really wasn't much I could do about it. There has been stuff to do every day. Ramble ramble.
Luckily the grossness of the past week has been made up for by stuff going on every night, due to everyone leaving. I've gone out to eat and/or hang out with people the past few nights, and that has been nice. I haven't been terribly sad to say goodbye to anyone leaving, because they are all not only Americans but Californians, and I could potentially, and hopefully will, see at least some of them later on this year. But thinking about the other goodbyes I will have to make soon enough... it's a strange feeling. I hope we all keep our promises to stay in touch.
Last night Jacky and I finally came through with our party. We've been talking the whole semester about the various parties we wanted to throw, but school and other obligations got in the way. We had wanted to do an end of the semester party in Jacky's Tagesraum (living room), and then have a smaller, more intimate party on the roof of her building, but what ended up happening was a combination of the two. The planning was pretty poorly executed, mostly because she and I have both been really busy. It was also frustrating to go through my phone book to see who to invite and realize that at least half of those people are no longer in the country (especially since I had a good amount of friends from the first semester group). But it ended up being a pretty good turn-out, and the atmosphere was very nice. For as miserable is it is in the daytime here, the summer nights are just about perfect. I advertised the party as a "Dress Up Party" (ie nice clothes), which in the telephone game got translated to "Shnazzy Party" and "Sexy Party." Almost everyone dressed up, which was really nice, and I got a surge of glee when a bunch of the Germans showed up, dressed up as well. Since it was still humid (if not hot), all the boys were wearing short sleeved shirts with ties, which gave me ample room to make cracks about church-attire. Unfortunately my camera ran out of juice halfway through, and I also think that no one got a good picture of Jacky and I, but here are a few that I liked:
Setting up
Me, Eileen and Andi's hat
Okay, there were a lot more people than that, but it gives you an idea of the atmosphere.
Stevie likes dressing up just as much as I do.
Things I Will Not Miss About Living Here:
the humidity
the hall's broom that is so old it barely could hit the dust out of my rug
the hall's vacuum that instead of picking up dust and dirt simply relocates it
the white surface of everything in this room that refuses to ever look clean
all the tiny gross bugs of summer
bike riding and getting said bugs in eyes, mouth, plastered onto skin
Yeah, thats about it. I've heard tell of the heat wave that is striking the States, but I've got to say I'd take dry heat over the drippy summer I'm experiencing here. The weather is almost continuously hot and humid, with the only moments of respite being the crazy thunder storms that sweep in to cool things down for a day or two. I have been spared a little today by the arrival of one such storm (or at least, it looks like it's going to be that way), but just remembering standing in line at Getraenkemart yesterday, my back completely soaked because I was wearing a backpack. It was ridiculous. I get home from an 8 minute ride and I am as sweaty as if I had just run a couple of miles. I don't think of myself as all that sweaty of a person, but I look around here and wonder how everyone else is dealing with it and not obviously looking like they are going to pass out.
So yeah. The last few days have been about figuring out I am going to get my stuff home, packing it up, and finally cleaning my room. Tomorrow morning is my Abnahmtermin, my inspection to move out. I am afraid of getting bitched out because my room has not posessed the ability to look clean long before I ever moved in, and I realize that is something the did go in they told me it was too late, and I realized as I was cleaning today that some shelves in my cabinet have been broken for the majority of the year and I just sort of forgot about it. I have had so many little problems (lights breaking, closet rack falling down, mold on the walls, etc) with my room that the woman who works in the Hausverwaltung, the housing office, actually fills out the portion of the complaint form that requires my house and room number without even asking me. But yeah. I just sort of want to get moved out and be done with it. She told me I could move out on Saturday (after arguing with her about it), as long as I dropped off my key in her mailbox. Well, if I can move out on Saturday (a day no one would be working here), I don't see why I couldn't move out on Sunday, so I think I am going to be doing that. My rough plan at the moment is to take a taxi with my boxes to the post office to ship, and then take a taxi to Andi's on Sunday when I go there to move in. Jacky moved out yesterday, becaus inspector may not acknowledge. I also never turned in my curtains to be cleaned, and when Ie she is going traveling with her boyfriend, and they walked all of her stuff over to Andi's yesterday, but I don't think I have the willpower to do that myself. I am slightly concerned about how I am even going to be able to get everything to the airport, if I have to change trains or anything on the way to Frankfurt. I have a backpack, a traveling backpack, a largish purse (which I think is going to contain all my dirty clothes from this next week), and an enormous suitcase. The airline lowered the allowed baggage weight limit from 70 pounds (when I came) to 50, so that is fantastic. All of this just makes me appreciate minimalism so much more.
I don't know how it's going to be staying at Andi's, because his apartment is about 1/5 the size of a sliver of a fingernail, and its at the very top of the building, so it is HOT. If only news of that whole air conditioning craze had made its way across the Atlantic!
It is frustrating, because everyone is leaving this week, and I have had to get a lot done so I could move out tomorrow. Once I move into Andi's on Sunday, I think I will just need to worry about closing my bank account and settling my cell phone debts (baeh, another thing I don't want to think about). But yeah, I feel like its all rush rush rush and then sit around for a few days. It would have worked out better if I could have planned out a traveling schedule earlier, but I have been stressed about getting just all of this done in time, and I know the few people who are leaving to travel are stressing out even more, just because that's one more thing.
Looking through my Europe guidebook, I am continually disappointed, reading all of the things I didn't get the time to do. Just Germany alone, there is so much that would have been really fun. My friend Jennifer and I are planning on leaving on Monday to go to a city on the Ostsee, staying there that night and then likely coming home Tuesday night. I am not sure if this is going to work, primarily because the Ostsee is a big german tourist destination, and we as of yet do not have lodging for Monday night. But hopefully we could work it out, because the Ostsee (Baltic Sea) was one of the things I really did want to see here. I also wanted to go down the Rhine, see the Schwarzwald (Black Forest), go to Nuernberg, Dresden... but yeah, time is flying by quickly. I have wasted a lot of it this week, just feeling hot and pissy about moving and cleaning and all that unpleasantness, but there really wasn't much I could do about it. There has been stuff to do every day. Ramble ramble.
Luckily the grossness of the past week has been made up for by stuff going on every night, due to everyone leaving. I've gone out to eat and/or hang out with people the past few nights, and that has been nice. I haven't been terribly sad to say goodbye to anyone leaving, because they are all not only Americans but Californians, and I could potentially, and hopefully will, see at least some of them later on this year. But thinking about the other goodbyes I will have to make soon enough... it's a strange feeling. I hope we all keep our promises to stay in touch.
Last night Jacky and I finally came through with our party. We've been talking the whole semester about the various parties we wanted to throw, but school and other obligations got in the way. We had wanted to do an end of the semester party in Jacky's Tagesraum (living room), and then have a smaller, more intimate party on the roof of her building, but what ended up happening was a combination of the two. The planning was pretty poorly executed, mostly because she and I have both been really busy. It was also frustrating to go through my phone book to see who to invite and realize that at least half of those people are no longer in the country (especially since I had a good amount of friends from the first semester group). But it ended up being a pretty good turn-out, and the atmosphere was very nice. For as miserable is it is in the daytime here, the summer nights are just about perfect. I advertised the party as a "Dress Up Party" (ie nice clothes), which in the telephone game got translated to "Shnazzy Party" and "Sexy Party." Almost everyone dressed up, which was really nice, and I got a surge of glee when a bunch of the Germans showed up, dressed up as well. Since it was still humid (if not hot), all the boys were wearing short sleeved shirts with ties, which gave me ample room to make cracks about church-attire. Unfortunately my camera ran out of juice halfway through, and I also think that no one got a good picture of Jacky and I, but here are a few that I liked:
Setting up
Me, Eileen and Andi's hat
Okay, there were a lot more people than that, but it gives you an idea of the atmosphere.
Stevie likes dressing up just as much as I do.
posted by Meredesu at 5:25 PM
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