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.