Star Wars Virginity

Tonight's the night. I'm going to lose my Star Wars Virginity.

That's right, I've never seen Star Wars. I, who lived on the internet in Middle School and still spend a sizeable amount of time in the geek-o-sphere, have never seen what amounts to one of its most sacred pillars.

I never planned not to see Star Wars. I mean, it didn't appeal to me as much as Lord of the Rings, but I never made a promise not to see it or anything like that. It simply... never happened. It's become so weird it's that it's become a part of my identity, a conversational asset. People I've been friends with for years have freaked out multiple times when it's come up (they keep mentally blocking it out, I guess it's just that hard to believe.)

And I'll miss my little joke about it: "No, I haven't seen Star Wars, but I know all about it, just like scientists know about Black Holes" - I've seen the way everything reacts to it, the void has a clear outline, but is a void nonetheless. Until tonight. O.O

A Little Bit of Guilt

Too much travel has made this semester seem disjointed, and my connection to Bonn less clear than it was with Pamplona. Sometimes I'm standing on a corner and suddenly things are familiar - its a corner I haven't stood on since the time of first arriving, say, when things were new and the air was colder and the Karneval Spirit was going around. It seems as distant as my months in Pamplona and as distant as Mizzou. I saw a lot of Bonn in those early days, and when Spring erupted I had more happy days here - wandering through Rheinaue and riding my bike down Poppelsdorfer Allee. But while Bonn has been nice enough and certainly convenient and comfortable, I don't have a love affair with it like I did with Pamplona.

Today I wandered around town for a long while, looking at all the different shops, taking an ice cream cone, sitting beneath the Star Gate. I do like Bonn, and it was a pleasant walk. But there was nothing that was tearing me up inside when I thought about leaving it. And here I was just thinking that I love Couchsurfing because it allows you to make a cool relationship that stops just short of getting weepy at the end of it. I open my heart up for too much separation with my style of living. Still, when I think that I'm leaving Bonn soon, I don't feel nostalgic especially. I feel nervous remembering that I have some food still to eat up, exams still ahead, packing to do, arrangements to make. I feel guilt that I don't know every corner of the city as I knew Pamplona, that I didn't try all that hard to make friends here... maybe because I already had German friends scattered around the world, maybe because it was simply so much easier here - I mean, I do have some friends, even new ones: Max, for example, Ansgar and the other Norwegian students, my roommates, etc.

But mostly it's silly. I HAVE spent some quality time in Bonn. I have loved the green spaces and long, summery-spring and the crepe stands and the gelato parlours. I've thought every day about how lucky I was to go to classes in an old palace. I walked down Poppelsdorfer Allee instead of taking the bus several times, so that I could take in the atmosphere. I've hiked to Kloster Heisterbach and Drachenfels and Bad Godesberg. I've given Nordrhein-Westfalen more time than almost anyone else on my program. And I /do/ like Bonn, I really do. And I've loved my semester in Germany every bit as much as my Semester in Spain, different as they have been. I guess my time here has just been too broken up, and I feel guilt that I haven't loved Bonn as much as Pamplona.

And a lot of this is probably simple stress at the end of a semester (and, possibly, my entire study abroad career). In a month and a half, back home again, I'll probably have nothing but rosy thoughts left. :)

What I Learned Today

Today I learned from In that in Korea it's considered very awkward/rude/inappropriate to lay down in front of a member of the opposite sex. Like, unless you are really good friends. Or in some special circumstance like a foreign hostel (and when sleeping it's not quite as bad). And it's worse for a girl in front of a boy.

And I learned that there's a frozen yogurt place in Bonn and that the Indian restaurant on Clement-August Strasse IS open sometimes after-all.  

I learned from my roommates that in Palestine vigilante revenge killings are still normal, that Persian and Arabic share an alphabet but interpret it quite differently, that in Iran they say 'merci' for thank you, generally, and that the word for frog in Farsi uses the weird 'q' letter twice, and the sound for a croak of a frog uses it, too.

And I didn't learn a thing in my classes. Five hours of class and all we did was watch two movies, one was a hot mess of sparse German narration, mostly Guarani dialogue without subtitles, and a bit of French and Portuguese thrown in for good measure. The other was probably a good movie but we had to stop it and leave right before it got to the point (about illegal immigration in Spain). Pretty much par for the course here, though. The International Office classes may be rediculously easy, but I understand the system and I can point to what I've learned. The other classes are just... weird. Too abstract. Too theoretical. Too many weird movies.

What Have You Done Lately?

So Lucia asked what I'd been up to lately, said we hadn't spoken since I went to the Netherlands or then-abouts.

Well.

I went to the Black Forest and picture-perfect Alsace-Lorraine for Easter
I went to Finland for May Day (that's Vappu to you!) and slept in a bird tower in the forest
Dad visited me and we went to Drachenfels and Rhine in Flames
Liisa visited me and we hit up Maastricht and took a castle cruise on the Rhine
I toured the grubby Ruhr-gebiet, Wuppertal, Dusseldorf, and some of the rural area around Münster
I went to Belgium, couchsurfed in Ghent and saw Oostende, Brugge, Brussels, Antwerp and Mechelen
I went to Niedersachsen, celebrated Abitur, saw Bremen and went for a walk on water in Cuxhaven
I flew to Venice for 20 euros and spent hours hopping from island to island
I swam in Lago di Garda and played in Verona and took the best train ride of my life to Innsbruck, Austria
I loved Liechtenstein, small as it was, then had a miserable time in Switzerland and a worse time getting home
I went to Berlin for a week and saw clubs and palaces and the Reichstag and the Stasi Headquarters and a concentration camp and the remains of 'the wall' and three major museums

And you know, just sort of lived in Germany. Went to classes and did my thing.

In other words, not much. How about you?

That Time

Three weeks to go. It's still awhile, but not that long, really. Two more weekends, and I'm spending this one to visit Nadine in Heidelberg and Esther in Frankfurt. But it's That Time, when I have to start wrapping things up. To try to use up the honey and the cocoa powder.To start trying to keep things tidier, looking ahead to pack.To start studying for exams and working on projects.To do laundry, wondering if I will do it once more, or twice more again. To make my exit strategy (and I'm going to go out with a bang) To make sure I have the presents and the photos I need. To make a plan to see each of my friends at least once more. To find a home for my bike and my rice cooker. To start saying a slow goodbye to Bonn.

Sunday

Beautiful weather. But it's too late and I lack the energy to climb any hills, and I have a hard time wandering around without a goal. Xenia and In are both studying, and I should be too, but it seems a crime to stay in when its so nice, and I'm terrible at studying outdoors. Thinking about trying anyway. Normally the wind and the flies and all the little things get on my nerves, but it probably can't be any worse than my wohnheim.

Got home yesterday from the 'okay' trip to Berlin. I should be in Dresden today but I can't be too sad it didn't work out - the extra time has felt good. I did my laundry (a HUGE load of it, and accidentally bought a dryer when I meant to buy a washer, and someone else stole my paid-for-dryer (no one ever uses the dryers here) before my clothes were clean. I bought a very few groceries (crawdads, garlic bread, a few packets of ramen), and gave my shelves a good cleaning. Surprisingly after being gone for two weeks the potatoes from the very beginning of the semester were STILL good, as were the lemons from a few weeks ago, etc. BUT, I found moths and their nasty larvae and eggs in my rice, so I made one last batch (washing very well, and confirming that the rice was very thoroughly infested with little baby moths) and then tossed the rest along with the crisp-breads and the Smacks breakfast cereal. Then I checked the cocoa and the spices and the seaweed, which were all fine, and the sesame seeds, which were a little infested but I just poured it all out into a shallow bowl and picked the little bits of web out. I warned all of my roommates to be on the lookout for nasty little creepy crawlies as well, but so far everyone else seems to be safe. I wiped down my cabinets and washed the outsides of the spice jars etc just because I felt vaguely dirty. I sort of feel sick about how much food I just threw out, but you don't want to mess around with these moth infestations, especially when you live with 7 roommates.

I rescued my bike. Two weeks ago the lock got jammed outside of the International Office and I didn't really know who to go to or what to buy to fix it, was wondering if it was even worth the effort with so little time in the semester but I couldn't just abandon it after everything we've been through, so I decided to go get it today, if it was still there, and carry it home at the very least - from there I could ask the dorm bicycle mentor for help, or take it by bus to a bike shop, or... well, I'd have options. It was still there, and I tried the lock again - still stuck. But for some reason I'd decided to bring a solution of 2 parts warm water to 1 part laundry soap along, and I poured it over the lock and tried again. This time, it worked like a charm. ^^ I'm pretty much a bike expert now, between this and wrestling the chain back on after someone wrecked my bike up pretty good trying to steal it from the wohnheim.

It bothers me that my roommates and their friends smoke in the kitchen, that my nextdoor neighbors doorbell is always ringing and ringing and sometimes they're accidentally calling me instead, that there always seems to be some huge dish in the oven all day at 200 degrees, so that if I just want to cook a bit of pizza or bread it's awkward, that the sound of Arabic music throughout the wohnheim can be oppressive at times, that Nezhla's mother has moved in to Hanenah's old room for the remainder of the semester, semi-illegally. A weekend visit, a week, even? Great, I'd be happy for them! But three months is way too long, even if I'm only here for one of them. I don't know how I feel about a grown woman who doesn't speak English or German sharing my shower and bathroom and kitchen with me... it just seems vaguely inappropriate. It bothers me that most of my roommates are here longer than me and therefore have their own fridges and freezers in their room, but still take the best parts of the shared fridge and freezer and are always spilling over their sections into mine. I can't even open the freezer without bulk meat and ice creams falling out on my head, and I have to take 100 things out to get my little bag of peas out of the back, and then place it all gingerly back in.

I was so happy to get home from Berlin yesterday, really felt like coming back to Bonn was coming home, love having my things around me, the privacy of my room, the familiar smells etc. But it occurs to me that I'm starting to feel ready to take things to the next level. I've still got a full year left of dorm living. Two if I work in Reslife my senior year, which I'm strongly considering (it's just such good money, and it's not really that bad, and I'm decently good at it). But I'm starting to see the appeal of an apartment of one's own, just as I could never ever go back to Freshman year and sharing my ROOM.

Sleepy

I got a whole seven hours of sleep last night, six the night before and PLENTY the two nights before that. So I shouldn't be this exhausted, looking at random blogs and links in an attempt to clear my mind and continuing to bargain with the air for rights to go back to sleep instead of heading to Norwegian German Translation Class.

Two Nostalgias

"One winter night while the soup was boiling in the fireplace, he missed the heat of
the back of his store, the buzzing of the sun on the dusty almond trees, the
whistle of the train during the lethargy of siesta time, just as in Macondo he
had missed the winter soup in the fireplace, the cries of the coffee vendor, and
the fleeting larks of springtime. Upset by two nostalgias facing each other like
two mirrors, he lost his marvelous sense of unreality and he ended up
recommending to all of them that they leave Macondo, that they forget everything
he had taught them about the world and the human heart, that they shit on
Horace, and that wherever they might be they always remember that the past was
a lie, that memory has no return, that every spring gone by could never be
recovered, and that the wildest and most tenacious love was an ephemeral truth
in the end."

- One Hundred Years of Solitude