Productive Day!

Feeling good.

Today was super productive - got up at a reasonable hour, wrote a blog post for MU Study Abroad, showered, cleaned (threw away a huge garbage bag of papers and stuff), ate lunch, recycled, went to class, talked to the professor about the credits, went to the dentist, called my mom, searched for a couchsurfing host in Poland, accepted a couchsurfer for tomorrow, figured out how to borrow a DVD-playing laptop for my Referat and a one-language dictionary for the DSH, went and bought a new suitcase, studied German vocabulary in the Hofgarten for awhile, and now I'm back home fully intending to get a tiny bit more cleaning done, and finish my Protocol for Latin American Literature.

I'm feeling good because I pretty much have everything planned between now and going home - two weeks of exams and saying goodbye to friends/Bonn, moving out, two weeks in East Europe with In, quick visits to Cynthia and Damaris, and a week in Scotland with Allan and Lucia, here I come! I finally know what I'm going to do for all of my classes, and it's not too bad. I'm actually only taking two exams through the main University that actually scare me - the Norwegian ones don't really matter for my grade, and I'll pass the DSH class even if I fail the exam. Even in the classes that scare me I've got certain safeguards in place - it's much better for me if I pass, but it shouldn't show up as an F at Mizzou if I don't. So things are pretty good there.

I decided to go for Option #2 in my Bag Delimma. Tina helped steer me away from buying my shiny backpack now (it deserves a bigger budget and more time than I can give it now), and my quick trip to Heidelberg and Frankfurt confirmed for the thousandth time that I do not want to take another real trip with just my overloaded backpack. So, a roller it was. I ended up paying 40 euros for it, not quite the 20 euro pipe dream, but although there was a bag that was 30, it felt a lot cheaper and, while smaller overall, it was actually too big to be 'cabin luggage' because it was thick in one area. Even this one is 22 cm thick, whereas the official limit is 20 cm, but I practiced cramming it in the size-checker and it will go as long as I don't overpack it/put anything really in the front pockets. It's well under the dimensions in the other directions, though. It feels so small, light, and new! :D I love it!

(Major Geek P.S. - It's this lovely dark blue colour. My BIG suitcase here is a lovely burgundy. If only I had a nice forest green backpack, my bags would be colour-coded to Link's Tunics in Ocarina of Time!! :D :D And yes, seriously, that's what I thought when I saw my two suitcases together.)

It's funny how I feel so good when I have a productive day, I feel so much less stressed out once I actually start tackling the to-do list. Why do I let so many days go by where I just hide from the problems, instead? This is something I really need to work on, and remembering how good and fresh I feel on days like this should help with that.