I've Returned

I'm back from Paris.  It was so amazing, so jam-packed with seeing the city, so delicious, etc., that it will take me a couple days to write an appropriately detailed yet concise enough post that won't bore you to tears after reading.

I have, however, edited my photos from Prague!  You can see some of them on my Flickr page - here is the link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/devannn/sets/72157629143508948/

But for now, know that I had an amazing time in France, and enjoy one of my 790 photos which I haven't edited yet:

my first crepe in france. it was disappointing, but it was my fault I chose boring fillings.

And this one from a friend's camera:

my friends and I at the Tour Eiffel.

Thursday

Today started off with my German midterm, which went really well!

Devon and I treated ourselves to a lunch in the Mensa because we hadn't been there in a while, they have great cheap food, and the people watching is superb :)

After some essay writing, we had our meeting for the details of our trip to Paris! As you can imagine, I'm more excited now.  Apparently if you order a drink with dinner it's about €15 (which is about $20).... so, water it is!! I knew it'd be expensive but oh my goodness.. that one drink is about half of my (attempted) grocery budget for a week in Berlin.

At 8 tonight one of the student workers brought me to get registered at McFit.  He was really interesting - he was raised bilingual (chinese and english), studied German through school, studied abroad in Austria, did Fulbright in Berlin, now is a Humboldt masters program, and studied abroad in that in Paris.  So now he's quadrilingual and will get a job anywhere.  It was really nice to have a conversation with another person my age who has a broader and more knowledgable view on how it is living in Berlin as an American.  It gave the whole thing a lot better of a perspective than the one through which I've been viewing it.

When we're in Paris, I'm in the other student worker's group, and he doesn't speak French (so he says.  In europe "not speaking _______" seems to mean that you can still hold a conversation in said langauge, because seemingly everyone educated in the undergrad level or above can do so in several languages). So they've assigned me the job of helping him translate when our group is out to dinner each night.  As my director joked, "einmal in Französisch und einmal in Deutsch" (joking that I have to say everything once in French and then once in German - no English).  I think by May I'll be able to do that better.

Well, I should get back to searching for a summer internship.  Lis comes tomorrow, and we'll need to explore the city as much as possible during her limited time here, so you probably won't hear from me for a couple days.
Have a great weekend!

A random assortment of information

Today I got my itinerary for the trip to Paris, and people on the train must have though I was crazy because the whole time I was reading it I had the biggest grin on my face.  I cannot wait!  I'll need to stock up on sleep before I go so that I can spend the maximum amount of hours of the day exploring.  I also plan to eat crêpes and lots of cheese every day, which will do wonders for my frame.  Which brings me to my next point:

I'm going to join the gym on Thursday which I'm really excited about.  I originally thought it was a dumb idea because that was precious time that could be spent exploring Berlin.  But, on second thought, for my physical health (thanks, German eating habits) and mental sanity (physical exercise is mental is also mental exercise. I miss it!), I've changed my mind.  I just have to wait for Ryan to take me to register on Thursday since I can't communicate with the German public.
The gym is called "McFit" which we found really interesting, because a name like that would never fly in the states (because of McDonalds).  Even though there are McDonalds here (...a lot of them). 

Last week I mentioned to my German professor and John, one of the directors of my program, that I was going to make banana bread muffins.  One of them asked me to describe the difference between a cupcake and a muffin.  I started in German, and got confused.  So I switched to English and was still stumped.  I've never thought about it before.  I challenge you to take a good 60 seconds and try to verbalize the difference between the two, without using any America-specific references such as brand names, etc.  You may think "well that's easy, one's desert and one's breakfast".  But that's cultural - why is one for breakfast?  Because our society decided that it'd be an acceptable breakfast food, even though it'd be fine for desert, too.  Tricky!  (Or maybe that's just amusing to my sociologically trained brain - sorry if I've bored you with that paragraph). 

On another note, it's great having Lucy and Lis over here on the same continent/time zone as me.  It's so helpful to share our experiences with each other and be there for some good emotional support.  By seeing everyone's photos from being abroad, we all kind of build up an idea of all of the fun it will be, but never really think about the really difficult and frustrating aspects that we encounter almost daily (nor would we listen to anyone who told us there will be hard times.  Let's be honest, it's even taken me 1 month to admit this on my blog!).  But luckily we're all going through it at the same time, so we don't feel like we're the only person struggling with aspects of life-in-a-culture-you-haven't-studied-for-years.

Mom told me that I should treat myself to one of the (very precious) peppermint patties she sent me, so happy valentines day to me!  

yum yum yum yum yummmm 

Tomorrow I get to have my first experience with the German healthcare system (eeks!) so I'll report back if anything culturally noteworthy occurs!