My thoughts on the presidential election

The recent presidential election may be one of the most exciting and important that we in our lives will ever experience. It's got to be one of the longest--the campaign has apparently been going on for 21 months (and god knows it really has felt like years---I mean i can even remember right when Obama was just this random longshot, everyone was like his name is WHAT?)

Witnessing the whole thing from abroad has been a very unique experience. Because you're affected by it (seeing as it's been the world's obsession) but also so distanced.

I was constantly reminded of it, because one of the stock questions I get after non-Americans find out I am American is "...so, you voting for Obama, right?".

But at the same time, you're not there. Which is I have to admit a little sad--because i'd like to have really gotten into the spirit of the election. Europe was definitely following the election, but it's just not the same.

I did manage to find a free election party going on down in Munich which promised full election coverage (true, although it was totally streaming off the internet-- given the fuzzy quality---and onto a huge screen) and hotdogs and popcorn all night (FALSE. The hotdogs were more like wurst in disguise with wierd sauce and pickles and onions sprinkled on top, not so bad but definitely not a hot dog--AND they totally ran out of hotdogs and popcorn a few hours in! They did have plenty of overpriced beer though. laaame.)

But it was still nice to have a big location to watch the election with some fellow americans (as well as some brits and germans). Lamely enough it emptied out pretty early, even though the definitive results didnt' come in till 5 am german time. Which i guess is understandable since I don't think I'd want to spend eons watching some geezers at CNN talk out of their asses about random and irrelevant statistics unless i was really personally invested in the matter.

Which is of course why I stayed until the bitter end. And it was absolutely, without a doubt, worth it.

Just to see Obama's acceptance speech live, was worth every overpriced beer, funky hot dog, CNN moron, and crazed gay man terrorizing the audience.

It's one of those moments when you can truly feel inspired. His public speaking is very eloquent and very moving, and it really made me feel like I was truly experiencing a piece of history. And I was I think.

I mean the U.S. has not been in worse shape, at least in my life time. It's actually a very strange experience, because it wasn't quite so bad when I left but since I've been in Deutschland I keep hearing about all these job layoffs and school cuts and whatnot and it's so surreal to be honest.

But to be honest I think it's good. I mean of course the situation is bad, but maybe it's the kick in the pants we've been needing. George Bush brought us to a new low in public opinion and the far right has been leading us into bad decisions about abortion, education, and pretty much everything less.

Maybe this recession has been the wakeup call we've all been needing. Would Obama havven been able to touch so many people if we hadn't had this crisis?

To be honest, I've always been a bit skeptical of Obama. Maybe it's just my general skepticism for politicians---he just seems to be a little too good to be true.

But I sincerely hope I am wrong. It will be nice to have a fresh face in the White House and I am praying that maybe he can really inspire us all to create real and lasting change for the better in the way we run our country.

For the moment, I'm just happy that people are now greeting me with "Obama, wooo!" and that I can hold my head a bit higher when I tell people I'm American.

Germany may be bad for my health...

So I know that supposedly you get sick more when you go to other countries, but this is starting to get ridiculous.

In the past couple months I've had two awful colds, a one day freak stomach virus, and now I got a gastrointestinal virus (big words for painful stomach cramps, vomiting, dizzyness). This is the third day of work I've missed and it's starting to get annoying. Hopefully i will be better tommorrow though.

Sorry for the lack of updates. Things have been hectic, but I have been working at a job in Munich for about a month and finally found a place to live about a week and a half ago (after spending waaaay too much time in a hostel). I also just got my bed delivered from ikea a few days ago, so life is good other than all these diseases.

I'm seriously starting to wonder if Germany is out to get me...

Oktoberfest: Day 1=Day of hats

There are a lot of crazy hats at Oktoberfest and on the Tuesday we went, I wanted to try them all!




Daniel's hat




Jorgens hat...stole it for about 6 hours hahah






Crazy lion hat!



I even put up with some obnoxious Americans to take a picture with this hat! :D



Bruna liked hats too!





Ok technically, this isn't a hat---but its still cool!

Oktoberfesting: Day 1

Okay. Let me say to start off that any one that tells you Oktobefest is a liar. Or more likely just plain un-fun. Oktoberfest is the greatest drunken party EVER. seriously. It's great because its just a mass group of people, from everywhere in the world, that just want to get drunk and become friends. You meet a lot of random crazy people and make tons of new friends---especially if your name is bruna or melissa. hahaha.

So, the first day we went was Tuesday. Which was awesome. Its cool because it is ALOT less crowded--i.e. you can get into any tent you want with out a wait.

So on the outside it sort of looks like a county fair ground. And then you go into massive tents to drink.

The weather wasn't too great but it was still cool.


So a lot of different breweries make beer for the Oktoberfest (aka Die Wiesn to the Bavarians), so they had all these cool decorated carts with big barrels of their beer. They were pulled by giant horses, though and Bruna and I nearly got run over hahah.





The first tent we went into was the Armbrustschützenzelt. Ha ha now thats a tongue twister.


There we met up with Torbjorn (my norwegian friend I met in Oz)!!! and also his other cool norwegian friends studying in Germany.







At the next tent though we got lost from the norwegians and met some crazy steel worker german dudes.

They were hilarious because they kept sayings things like this (in a very thick german accent): Vee vaaant youuu for vonne night! and Veee are hooorny. hahahahah

On the plus side: We got free beer and i got a cool light up heart necklace from them.

On the down side: I left my phone with them after we ran off, and had to track them down at the pizza hut at the hauptbahnhof. hahahah they weren't very happy that we ditched them either :D



Luckily, in the end we did meet up again with our lovely norwegians. Of course not before, Bruna fell down a couple times and bought sausages and popcorn. hahah





but we found them at last! And partied the night away :)

Urgh

Today hit me like a ton of bricks.

Although I drank a decent amount at Oktoberfest I was sober by the end of the night and was not hung over at all yesterday. But then today I woke up and thought huh I'm really hungry and nauseous (sometimes I am when i'm really hungry in the morning)...but then all day i've felt like crap and haven't been able to keep even water down. Only now, 1030 at night, have I started to feel okay.

Bruna tried to convince me i was either hungover (only a day delay you know ha ha) or have mono (definitely NOT TRUE). But I'm just hoping its some freak one day illness (possibly food poisioning, although bruna ate the same stuff as me and wasn't sick). Definitely need to get better for Oktoberfest again tommorrow!

I'm sure i'll wake up fine...or at least i hope...

Diet Doom

So, after careful consideration of our recent weight gain, both Bruna and I have decided to diet. We are using this diet we got from her sister, which was apparently made by a nutritionist.

Not trying to do anything too drastic, my goal is to lose 4-6 kilos, making me a little lighter than my normal weight. German food is REALLY good but also kind of unhealthy and fatty since its mostly bread, meat, and chocolate.

So the whole point of the diet is that you eat small portions but you eat every 3 hours.

Yesterday I ate:

Breakfast: cornflakes and milk

Lunch: two spoons of mashed potato, 2 peices of sliced turkey breast

Snack: 2 small apples

Dinner: 2 peices of toast with two slices of turkey

oh and a cup of a coffee (think that might be breaking the diet but it was also very necessary).

I was HUNGRY. seriously. I eat ALOT normally, especially since i've been in germany (too many good options for sweets). Both Bruna and I were starving.

Today I ate:

Breakfast: Cornflakes with milk. Plain yogurt (apparently this is very very gross--so sour, so i cheated and put a bit of jam in it too)

Lunch: Turky breast on toast sandwhich

Snack: 2 spoons mashed potatos, 1 1/2 cups of apple juice, wierd healthy crackers with tiny bit of cheese

Dinner: Chicken leg, salad (no dressing of course, just some vinagrette)

Snack: one nectarine, some carrots


Don't worry guys--I'm not going into dieting too hard--it's only a 15 day diet. And I'm going to break it a lot tommorrow anyway when I go to oktoberfest--since I'm going to drink a lot of beer (not exactly diet food eh) and have one big meal of german food, just because.

Nor am I positive we will be able to last the full 15 days. I can't even imagine how hard it is to a smoking or other types of drug addictions---since all I can think about is cheesburgers and chocolate cake :)

The Confusion Stage

So now that camp is over, I have to admit I am feeling like things are a bit surreal.

Camp was definitely its own enclosed world. It felt long and short at the same time. Although we definitely got on each others nerves at times, we had some great times as well.

Now i'm on to that scary part where I need a job and other grown up people stuff like a place to live etc.

Thankgoodness i met a nice host mom in Nurnberg (not even MY host mom actually, but she always lets people stay over so we spent a lot of weekend nights camping out there) who told me i should stay until i find a place/job which is a LIFE SAVER--since Oktoberfest has filled up all the hostels in Munich--not sure where i would go.

Currently I'm looking for a job in some sort of international/bilingual school, a job teaching english, a restaurant/bartending job, or if I really can't find anything else, an oper job.

I've had some interviews but nothing has really been that promising yet. Ideally i'd like to live in Munich, but since I'm staying 2 hours away from it, I'm having the timeing problem of needing to get a job and a place almost simultaneously. Today i'm going to Nurnberg with Bruna, they are having some fest or something, but she is also going to be my moral support while I try to apply to some bars/restaurants in Nurnberg. I'd prefer Munich because it is a more interesting city (although Nurnberg is cool too) and just because i haven't spent as much time there--its more new and exciting. But its easier in Nurnberg because i have a place to stay until i found a new place--thus alleviating the timing issue. Plus i'll have a friend to hang out with.

To be honest, at this point it would just be nice to get some source of income, since my euro savings from camp are starting to dwindle due to beer and dirndle purchases.

I'll definitely keep you all updated on my unemployment status

Lost in Translation

Living in Germany is fun, but I am definitely understanding the whole foreign-person-lost-in-a-strange-world phenomenom. My german has improved a bit, but only slightly i feel. A lot of this has to do with the fact that I have been spending the majority of my time around English speakers or pretending to not understand German around German kids (at least i could hear them speaking german tho).

I must admit I do get a bit nervous when i have to speak German to a real-life German--which of course makes my already sloppy pronunciation and giant accent even more uncomprehensible. To be fair, I don't always have problem (especially not when I've been drinking ha ha) but it is quite frustrating when it does happen.

Today when I was ordering a taxi was a classic example of this problem:

Me: Ich mochte ein Taxi vom 45 Dresdner (pronounced: DRES -like Fez with a D- DNER) Strasse zum Bahnhof (in English: I would a like a taxi from 45 Dresdner St. to the Train Station)

Taxi Phone Man: Ich hab die Strasse Name nicht verstanden (I didn't understand the street name)

Me: Dresdner Strasse

TPM: Heh?

Me: DRES-DNER STRASSE

TPM: Oh. Dresdner Strasse! (pronounced DRAY-SDENAIR)

Me Ja, Genau.

TPM: Und die Name?

Me: Melissa

TPM: Maussi?

Me: No. MEL-ISS-A.

TPM: Maussi?

Me: Ja. Gut genug. (English: yeah, good enough).

TPM: Okay es kommt gleich (okay, its coming soon).



GAH. It sucks not being understood because it makes you feel like an idiot. Everything is also much harder over the phone--sounds less clear or something. Hopefully I will be getting better soon, now that the majority of my english-speaking friends (actually friends in general :( are gone (thankfully i've still got Bruna!).

Even though this is a German-to-English problem, I have SO MUCH empathy for this guy.

An Austrian Went Yodelling...

Camp is officially over, which is sad because almost all of the cool people i met have jetted home or off onto european backpacking excursions. Also it really signals the end of summer--especially since the day after camp ended for good fall and freezing temperatures were ushered in. Thank goodness i brought a warm coat and boots, otherwise i would most certainly have frozen my California toes off by now. I definitely am missing September being the warmest month right about now.

Originally a few of us were going to go camping in the Black Forest but after finding out that not only would we only have 3 sleeping bags for 6 people but also that it would be about 6 degrees Celsius (ie. butt cold at night), we opted for an excursion in Austria.

We stayed the night in Salzburg and then got up the next morning to go to Haalstadt, a cute Austrian town on the river.

Some of us (ahem ahem Jenny and Gemma :) were still in the summer mindset and brought only flip flops along, so we made an emergency stop in a small town to buy some warm shoes.

Note the flip flops:


Also note my disbelief at how freakin' cold and rainy it is



Luckily the girls ended up finding some cheap shoes and I found some cool gloves for two euros---cool because they can transform into fingerless gloves too! And they fit my freakishly small hands---perfect!

We contemplated ear muffs but decided they weren't worth the hassle/how stupid they looked





But we did manage to make it to Haalstadt, and it was AMAZINGLY beautiful. I think the foggy/rainy weather added to its allure--very mysterious looking.









I also got really fascinated by some weird water sculptures around the river, my favorite being the dining room set just floating in the water.







We also went to this really cool cemetery there, which has this room of skulls. Apparently in the beggining they started putting peoples skulls in there and other large bones once they had been buried awhile, because they were running out of room in the cemetery. Then this guy would paint them with the name of the person and different pictures which symbolized different things like piety, courage, etc. Now you have to pay if you want to have yourself buried in the room--the last woman who did so died in 1985 and was put there in 93 or something. Not as eery as you would think---pretty cool looking actually--and the cemetery was stunning as well.











Afterwards, we went back to Salzburg and chilled at a cool beer hall.









The next day we went back to Neumarkt to chill, until all the others needed to head off. Definitely a nice way to end the summer--although i'll definitely miss everybody. But i've got job hunting and house hunting to distract me at least...

But all that I can see is just another lemon tree



This is pretty much my song of the camp. We have to prepare a few things for a show on Fridays---songs, drama, etc. And I like to do the Lemon Tree song. It's this crazy song from the 90's that all German kids seem to know even though most of them were barely or not even born when it came out and I never heard of it before coming here. It's addicting I think, although some other counselors find it really annoying. The videos nothing special but check it out cuz the song rocks.

My foot smells like onion

Okay technically this happened a couple weeks ago, so my foot no longer smells like onion. But it sounded better in the present tense, so there.

But yeah, just a funny camp story to entertain you all.


We often sing "The Moose Song" with all the kids and have them perform it all together for their parents in the drama show we always have at the end of camp. We had been practicing in the morning on the grass and I was leading it.

In the middle of the song I happened to step on a bee.

So it went something like this:

Me: There was a great big moose..

Kids: There was a great big moose...

Me: He liked to... OWW. What the FUCK! FUCK FUCK FUCK SHIT FUCK!


The kids were just like woah is she okay and I was sitting on the floor in agony. The whole bee was stuck to my foot at first, so i just instinctively pulled it out---which of course left a tiny sliver of the stinger in my foot.

At the same time Gemma and Scott are just pissing themselves laughing and refusing to get my tweezers, while I am just speaking like a sailor and trying to attack them so they will get me something to fix my foot. And Braden is just leading the kids in weird stretching exercises.

It was pretty hilarious, although pretty painful.

And so at training week they had told us about this German first aide trick that they use onions on bug bites and bee stings and we all thought it sounded pretty funny.

BUT my foot was painful, swollen and itchy. So I gave it a shot. And it looks stupid but it DOES actually work quite well. It looked a lot better in just an hour--although it was itchy most of the week (but then again I wasn't super diligent with my onion usage, only used it the first day).

So lesson of the week: Onions really do work.

I hate Berkeley

So I thought I had finally escaped the red tape of Berkeley, but it is apparently still haunting me. For some reason they think I haven't graduated so now they are trying to charge me tuition and apparently I also had a telebears appointment (I didn't check before since I just assumed I wouldn't) so I don't know what the heck is going on. It is of course difficult to clear this up being out of the country because I only seem to have access to generic email accounts and it seems to be the sort of thing I need to really do over the phone.

blargh. I am paranoid I secretly didn't graduate or something somehow ha ha. But they are going to have to pry that tuition from my cold dead hands. I'm sure it will get resolved it's just probably going to be annoying gargh.

Camp Times

So i've been working hard at the english camp. Sadly internet has been almost impossible to get a hold of. Thankfully now I am working at an overnight camp in Vorra (a very very small town in Bavaria---it literally has one beer garten/restaurant, a candy store, a bakery, and a hardware store/liquor store and thats IT). Really cool camp though, lots of room for the kids to run around and nice mansion type house plus a guest house.



I went exploring on my own a bit on Sunday, just checking out the little town. Liked the cute sign.



This is the main building, schloss (which technically means castle in german, but its more like just a big house).



view from my window--cool.



Vorra, such a cute little german town.

Vorra is an amazing camp, the best one of all the different camp locations. Nice for a change to be in a night camp instead of just a day camp---you get more of a community with the kids adn it seems less like a school. Great fun--working with the older kids this week (6th and 7th grade) and its nice because its mostly girls (8 girls, 3 boys) so there aren't too many trouble makers.

So before hand i've been in a small town named neumarkt, then two weeks in nuremburg at day camps. Also will be updating about my time in Koblenz and Salzburg (austria). Next week I have a week off---not sure what i'm doing yet, will be going to Munich for a couple days hopefully to find a job in some magical way, but we'll see. I should be able to fill everyone in on my crazy life as well (although it mostly involves bratty/retarded children, beer, and sleeping on trains/ in beds that are too small ha ha).

tschuss!!!