Ende des Semesters

hot DAMN that semester flew by. seriously though, i can't believe i'm almost done with half of my stay here. i knew a year wouldn't be that long. (i mean i'm sure it's just an ETERNITY for my mothers, but they'll be fine ;) ). and the prospects of spring are quite delicious. it was warm(er) and i was woken up by sunlight streaming in through my window and i was most pleased.

had my spanish final yesterday and it was THE WORST, but whatever it's done. hopefully i'll get a decent enough grade. balancing that out, however, was the A++ i got on my historical linguistics paper. shaBAM. i've got two more finals, one of which i am just the least looking forward to because i know i'm going to fail because i only understood half of what the prof said, but i'll say whatever to that one too. in the spirit of studying and last-minute berlin love, this will probably be my last post before i leave for the states. very excited to see all my bubbies there. and in the spirit of laziness, i'm just gonna repost a couple of interesting things i wrote in facebook messages, like last time, since this thing is more for me than for the two people who still actually read it regularly.

yeah shit's bin mad crazy around here. january rolls around and people are like "holy crap! we have a ton of papers to write and tests to take that are the only thing we get graded on in the entire semester!" because that's how it works here. so i've been working my ass off.

i did have a pretty hilarious experience last night though. my friends were having a going away party for their friend, whom i didnt know, an american as it turned out. well i was planning on going for lack of anything better to do, but then my friend matteo called me and was like "james, i need your help to kidnap the guy and take him to the party - we meet in two hours." so we did. we covered our faces and he bought a fake gun and we were gonna go to his house but when we got to his street he was randomly outside, walking down the street. so we went and ran up on him, matteo with the gun, and pretended we were russian mobsters sent to bring him to talk to our boss. he figured out pretty quickly that it wasnt serious, so we blindfolded him and took him for a forty minute train ride to the party, the whole time speaking in german with russian accents, talking about how great things were back in moscow.

and this next bit is obvious and some has been said before so you can skip over it if you want but i guess i took the time to write it so i'm gonna post it here for posterity's sake.

that's the big reason why i chose berlin. or, well, why i chose germany. i've been taking german for years and came to a point where i needed to go to the country to learn it. esp with german, if you're not fluent, there's really no point, because if you're not there's a whole lotta people whose english is better than your german, which basically makes you obsolete (in terms of jobs, etc). and i figured that since i was already quite far, it would be stupid to not go the rest of the way. kind of like how macbeth was "stepped in blood so far that he [could] wade no more; returning were as tedious as to go o'er." but with less blood and creepy stuff.

and it SUCKS because the more you know of a language, the harder it is to make progress, so you feel more and more dumb all the time, even though that sometimes means you're just getting better. aghhhh.

anyway, why berlin? because it's sexy. i mean it's the cultural center of germany, it's super progressive, there's so much art and just artists and alternative-types everywhere. and its not like im a big tool and im like "ooh i want to be alternative" or really artsy or whatever but it's more like that sort of thing makes life interesting. i can also take stage combat courses at the acting school here, which is cool. i can box, rock climb, go to rockabilly concerts...in the spring and summer there's a ton of outdoor stuff like concerts and festivals and parades. there's a huge central-park-type park in the middle of the city, which is beautiful (again, summer, but sometimes things are worth waiting for). and there's a ton of history, some good, some bad, but being here and sort of feeling a part of this incredibly historically significant city it pretty cool. people are like "ooooh, the brandenburg gate" and im like pshh whateva i see that shit every day. haha i don't actually be a big bitch like that but you know what i mean.

right okay that's it because i don't really have anything interesting to write. super excited for my crazy vacation - chicago, stockholm, granada, then a ride around poland. and of course, i leave you with THINGS GERMAN PEOPLE HATE:

#25: Sneakers and Sweatpants
Do NOT go out of the house wearing these items, God forbid a combination of the two. If it seems superficial, then it is, but you just don't do it in Berlin. Because the people who do do it are "aso", or asocial, which basically means bums and people on the dole. Sad, yes, but true.

#26: Being PC
Okay not actually. In fact, given the country's past, Germans are pretty PC in general. But for an American, coming from a country where we have such unique and strange race relations, to come here and hear the phrase "Black-Music" used everywhere to refer to rap and R&B (as a single category), it's pretty odd. Because folks would flip out in the States, but here they simply don't have the same past with black people as we do. So there's nothing offensive about it to them and they certainly don't mean it offensively - in fact, it's the cool way to say it. "Radio 94.5 - All Black Music, All the Time." Love it.

#27: Losing Pencils
I was in lecture the other day and I looked around the room and EVERYONE had a pencil case laid out neatly on their little table. And they all had the same pencil case - cylindrical and of a soft, pleather-like material. People come to class, sit down, then lay out their books and pencils all nice and neat in preparation for the lecture. German orderliness and all that.

great! we're done. you rock. yes, i'm talking to you.

Liebe Grüße.