01:00

so, i left berlin yesterday at 4:40pm... and got to freiburg at 1am. well, that was with a one hour stop in braunschweig-- there's this special ticket that's kinda picky about where you buy it, and long story short, i had to buy it there; there's also a limited number of tickets, but luckily i got one. i'm going to be using the schoenes wochenende ticket on the way home on sunday, which means that it's going to take about 13 hours and i'm going to have to change trains about 10 times. hopefully i'll be healthy by then. last night didn't help anything. it was Mark Shot night at the student bar (1 shot = $.50), which is just plain dangerous. i went there protesting that i wasn't going to drink so much... got there around 2am, left around 4 after 5 shots and a beer. yeah. didn't help the cold.

it's really kinda weird here. matt said that it's like living in the dorms all over again where he lives, and that's the truth.. they know so many other americans, and it's really a lot like a transported little pod of american life here... the bar here it a lot like an american bar (except there's good beer for cheap and it usually closes around 4ish.) There are tons of americans and if they're not from the us, then they speak english pretty damn good. it's been like english overload. even though i can still generally write in english, due to the fact that i never SPEAK english, i've been having problems speaking the language. kinda cool, if you ask me. so, i'll admit it. i have a problem. i'm addicted to german. i can't help it.

so today i wandered around downtown freiburg with andreanna and matt-- it's a really nice city. the Altstadt and ped zone is really pretty big. and there are mountains. :) anyway, like usual, it's nice to see something different than berlin. i think i'm kinda in a bubble in berlin-- i almost forget that not everyone in the world lives in a large city. anyway, life here is completely different for matt and andreanna than it is for me in berlin. it's fun to experience a day in the life of a freiburger. yeah.

yeah. having a good time, weather's nice, probably going to party too much tonight, but would definitely welcome a break... i need to sleep more. oh! we were thinking about going to Basel, switzerland tomorrow or saturday, but stupid me didn't bring my passport. damn. oh well.

22:20

here... i'll start whining now, so i can get it out of the way. that way you won't have to read about it for very long. i don't feel very good. i'm coming down with something. i mostly have a sore throat, but i also kinda feel weak and stuff. blahhhhh. feeble. i can't speak german very well today, and angie doesn't seem to understand german so well today-- which means i have to repeat myself, which just doesn't make me happy when i already have to make an extra effort today to speak the friggin language. even though i like german. so angie's kinda gotten on my nerves, although she really hasn't.. i'm just not in the best of moods. i slept about 10 hours last night, but i'm still tired. 10 hrs of sleep + still tired = sick.

well, i probably kinda know why. i got home at 3 on wednesday night and 4:30am on thursday. so the weekend came a little early. :) Wednesday = bar with ang, so (her friend from japan) and Chris, her german conversation partner. he wants to learn more english, she wants to learn more german. so they get together and talk. so i went with them to a cafe, then we went to a bar afterwards. had a good time. involved a 2:30am run to McDonald's (i swear that was only my 2nd time at mickey d's since i got here) and waiting for the bus for awhile. i wasn't drunk-- i'd only had 2 beers, but i was in a good mood.

Thursday was thanksgiving. the int'l cafe at school had a special thanksgiving dinner for international students who wanted to go (hell yeah! good food for ~$5. it was a good time. afterwards, liosa had the great idea to get plastered and go dancing somewhere. so we went to a cafe with Bea for a bit, she went home, then we snagged a margarita somewhere before going to this club-- there was $5 cover, but all cocktails (the drinks that are usually about $7-8) were only $4! yay. so we drank a cocktail. i had a lousy bloody mary.. i had one sip and it was basically ONLY vodka and tomato juice. so i asked for some salt and pepper.. they gave me some and mentioned that they'd run out of tabasco sauce. fuckin' a. shoulda told me beforehand. oh well. that's life. afterwards, i had a Zombie, which is comparable (i was about ready to type "vergleichbar", which means comparable) to a Red Shed Long Island... about 85% alcohol. Then i could dance. what was funny is that some high school was having a party there that night, so most of the people were about oh... 18 years old. oh well. we danced anyway. Liosa told me that even though it was just the 2 of us, she had a good time... yay! (sidenote: Dave, if you were in Germany, i'd probably try to set you up with liosa. she's cute, intelligent and has an irish accent.... good enough? not redhead, though... blonde.) Anyway, got home around 4:30am and passed out.

Friday: hangover. headache until about 8pm. Grand, as liosa would say. i didn't really do a damn thing all day. went to int'l coffee hour, but yeah.. that's it. sat in my room and read.

tonight i'm not going to do anything, either. i'm leaving for freiburg to visit andreanna and matt on wednesday, so i want to make sure that i'm healthy by then. i'm getting excited. i'm also getting excited for jim to come visit me in january. angie just bought her tickets to the canary islands for christmas this week, and she's not getting back until a few days after jim gets here. good planning on her part. :)

i'm joining the world of the cellphone owners on monday. kinda scary. the end.

20:34

My group is giving a presentation tomorrow in the other class, and I haven't really gotten everything ready for that yet. that's what's on tap for today. And the other class-- well, i was supposed to have read a TON for my presentation in that class the NEXT Monday, plus what I should read for tomorrow. it's just too much. so i'm going to take the wusses way out. i already feel like i have a pretty light load, but since everything's in german, i guess that's a different story, huh? well, minus russian, but that's still in german, more or less. I guess I'm going to have a lot of classes next semester. that sucks. the weather's going to be nicer, too.

Yesterday was fun. I was in Rostock with Liosa and about 10 other foreigners. we were the only english-speakers, and for once, we actually did speak in english for part of the day. i want to speak with an irish accent! oh well.. i met some nice people, and rostock was interesting. The weather sucked, but it was nice to be somewhere other than berlin for once. don't get me wrong-- berlin's pretty damn cool, but the change in scenery was welcomed. we wanted to go to the Baltic Sea, but that didn't exactly happen. Rostock's realllly close to the coast (like a 20 minutes train ride away), but due to screwy train signs and liosa's wonderful sense of direction, we ended up a) not getting off the first train at the right place (and having to wait for the next train going in the other direction..) and b) taking the next train in the wrong direction. It was easier to do that you would think.. the sign said one thing, but the train was heading in the other direction. After that, we just said screw it and went to a bar and had some Gluehwein before we had to leave. oh yeah-- i got up yesterday around 5:30am and was dead tired by the time we got back. didn't do anything other than drink some tea with liosa after we got back. i was home by about midnight.

i'm hoping to go to Freiburg in a couple of weekends. I'm waiting to hear back from Matt and Andreanna (2 friends from the UW who are spending the year there) to see if they're up to anything that weekend. hopefully not. that'll be fun. the one thing that won't be fun is getting home-- i'm planning on using the Schoenes Wochenende Ticket for the train... that means that i can't take any fast trains and that i'll have to switch trains about 6 or 7 times. Freiburg's in the SW corner of Germany, and Berlin's in the NE... that means that it'll take more than 12 hours to get home. sounds like fun, eh?

anyway, i'm going to see if they've e-mailed me back... and then I'm going to work on my presentation. i need to talk for about 10 minutes about literary epoches. yay!

15:07

Anyway, Anna and her roommate Johanna were pretty funny tonight... angie and i were amused. i didn't have much for dinner and drank one cocktail (a mai tai) and am definitely feeling it. hopefully that means that i'll fall asleep easily. hmm... i wanna call jim. don't think it'll happen though. i think he's on a bus right now from school to work. blah.

good night.

23:59

I think that's about it. I was supposed to go out with Liosa last night but due to lack of planning/headache, we decided not to. I'll see her today. and we're going to rostock on Saturday. the end.

9:31

so, things have been cleared up with the landlord. she went to the doctor, who told her to quit being neurotic and she let me do some laundry today and jim gets to stay here! yay! it would have been a real pain in the ass to look for another place to stay. and she suggested that we maybe sit down and just chat like once a week or once every 2 weeks. not a bad idea. :) i feel much better about things. i don't think that angie's all that excited about my newly formed relationship with Esther, though... she still wants to have the option of dragging someone home from the bars. oh well....

the piercing still doesn't look all that great at the moment, but I was at the piercing place on Monday, and they said it's not necessarily normal, but it's not horrible.. it can happen.. I have something like a blood blister on the back of one of the holes. they said that if it's not better next week, I should come in and they can take another look at it and maybe send me to a doctor. let's hope it doesn't come to that.

so i saw today (and have noticed in the past) that someone from Bielefeld checks out my page... i think I only know Jasna in Bielefeld. send me an e-mail, whoever you are! i'm curious.

I went over to Jutta's apartment (a friend of Liosa's) to watch ER & Sex and the City. It was very entertaining and i ate WAY too much! there was a bowl of chips, some chocolate, beer... too many temptations! i didn't have to eat dinner before going over there.. too bad I did. oh well.

Excitement! Esther's leaving tomorrow and is going to be gone for a week! I'm excited. I told Liosa we should go out and she can sleep here...

Anyway, I should probably get going. i could actually crawl into bed at a reasonable hour tonight! (even though class doesn't start until 2 tomorrow.) anyway..... later.

23:45

Cool, eh? This is the best pic I could find of it. I dig it, but unfortunately, my hair gets in the way.. you can't really see it unless I have my hair up in a ponytail (but that doesn't work all that well.. I got my haircut last week, and my hair barely fits in a ponytail. Most of it comes out of the ponytail) or behind my ears, but that's kinda hard somewhat for the same reason and also because I always manage to jar the piercing a bit in the process of putting my hair behind my ear. Ouch. I was going to not tell anyone about getting it pierced (like I did my eyebrow), but I guess that's not really going to happen. (if you're reading this, surprise Mom!)

So, today was an exciting day. Angie lost her keys. And found them again. We were at this party last night for people studying at the Goethe Institut (lots of international students. A few germans in there, but mostly international.), and I wasn't really up for a huge drinking evening (only had 2 drinks all night). Angie, however, was. I ended up leaving by myself around 1:30am.. Angie promised me that she would be OK getting home by herself. (sidenote: it was fuckin COLD last night. well, not by winter standards, but it was one of the first cold nights of the year.) Anyway, long story short, Angie lost her keys last night and our landlord told her that she was going to have to pay up to $3000 to get all the locks replaced and keys made for everyone in the building (there around 8 apartments, I think). So she was pretty damn stressed today. She ended up finding out that they found some keys at the party, and they were hers. LUCKY. Lucky that they didn't fall out in the bus. Oh well.

I hung out with Anna and Dagmar some today-- I'm probably going to get a Handy (cell phone) in the next 2 weeks. Yeah! I'm going to get Anna's #, Anna's going to get Dagmar's, and Dagmar'll get her boyfriend's. Lots of swapping of contracts and stuff. Yay cell phone!

Tonight, I saw Berlin is in Germany with Liosa, Bea, and a chick Liosa met in one of her classes. It was pretty cool. I heard that it came out ih Berlin first and no one else has really heard of it. It's about this guy who goes to jail right before the Berlin Wall falls and gets out 11 years later.. He's from East Berlin and now he lives in the united Berlin. Lots of little subplots, but decent. It's especially cool because i live here and recognized a few of the scenes. The end.

Well, I think that's about it. Tomorrow's going to be a homework day, I hope. Oh well.

00:57

I'm slowly but surely adding to my circle of Irish friends. I have two classes with Stiof, and she seems pretty cool. A bit of a party girl ::::or something::::, but that's definitely cool. Liosa and I were talking about this past weekend and mentioned Tresor, where we were trying to get into on Saturday, and she said that the last time she was there, she got there around 3am and stayed until 10am. The end.

picture of the week


My mom's crazy. For Halloween, she was a blonde Wal-Mart greeter. Cute, eh?

23:92

run down of events

Friday: haircut, international coffee hour at the uni, shopping with liosa/bea, home (dinner), hanging out at anna's with a few people while drinking some wine, unsuccessful attempt to go to bars (1st too full ::: 2nd no one there), home, sleep.

Saturday: shopping, buying boots (kinda a long story... anna was supposed to bring my shoes that I'd left at her place the night before, but she forgot, so i was stuck wearing crappy shoes while shopping. so i bought some new shoes. the end.), home (dinner), restaurant/bar with anna/angie, cool bar with liosa and her irish friends (irish accents are so cool!)
1:00am: hey, we all think it's a good idea to go to a club to dance.
1:05am: leah downs her almost-full beer, but she, liosa, bea miss the first group going to the club; leave on their own.
1:30am: arrive at club, don't see anyone they know; wait in line anyway.
1:45am: hear 2 guys loudly speaking (american) english in line nearby. continue to speak german to one another.
1:55am: overheard guys talking about liosa's purse, I advise them not to take it; guy #1's comment: "note to self-- everyone speaks english."
2:00am: start talking to guys; guy #1 is beginning to roll. other guy is his half-brother and is german but not rolling. yet.
2:25am: guy really rolling and really hitting on liosa. he gives her backrub, she gives him her #.
2:45am: the girls decide to leave. we're about 15 feet from the door but move about an inch/minute. suck. liosa gets a kiss goodbye and a promise that he'll call. due to downed beer see 1:05, leah really has to pee, but sees NO cafes or bars nearby. however, there is a tree.
2:55am: happy leah + liosa/bea reach subway station to find.... Angie! (...who is kinda messed up and incredibly relieved to find leah.) angie has been waiting about 25 minutes by herself for the subway. it comes after about 3 or 4 minutes.
3:45am: angie and leah get home. eat food. drink water.
3:50am: jim gets a call from leah.

speaking of jim, he's coming to visit. i think i mentioned that. me, being a considerate person, decided to bring up the subject with the landlady (who lives in the same apartment). esther doesn't sound thrilled at the prospect of a visitor (who, btw, will NOT be sleeping in her room and will not bother her at all...), but kinda agrees. but then she asks if he has pets. yes, a cat. because of that, regardless of the fact that he's not going to bring the cat with him *duh*, he can't stay here. I guess she's incredibly allergic to cats (never heard her mention it before....) and even if he washes his clothes before coming ("washing clothes doesn't get rid of the cat hair..."), he can't stay here. fucking a. really fucking pisses me off. she never mentioned that before. and she didn't seem to have a problem with cat hair on MY clothes when i first arrived. i don't know. the lady's weird. angie and i were talking about it. there are multiple things that she's done that are somewhat questionable. she left a note for me on my door with "Angie" on it and one for "Leah" on angie's door. she's opened a few letters ("i thought it was for me.. i didn't look at the name") before giving them to us. she will frequently tell one of us something and not the other and think that we're a single entity, so the other will automatically know 5 minutes later. anyway, we were somewhat discussing maybe moving out. i was just thinking, and maybe a better plan for me would be to move out for about 2 or 3 weeks (christmas and jim's visit). i'll have to talk about it with angie. that sucks. going to have to talk to my mom and see what she thinks about it.
anyway, it's getting late and i should go to bed. i only read about a fourth of what i should have for class tomorrow. suck.

00:06

thanks for the e-mail! speaking of e-mail, I'm going to use this address ([email protected]) for awhile, so send stuff there. yeah.

things are going pretty good around here. Berlin's a pretty fucking cool city. Too bad class had to start last week. I think I had my only bit of culture shock up to this point last monday when I attended my first 4-hour long class. And heard everything that I had to do for the class. Things are a bit different, and believe you me, the thought of not taking classes this semester and doing taking all the classes I need next semester HAS crossed my mind. :) The cool thing about that is that they wouldn't care! I talked to someone in advising, and basically because I'm not with a program through the UW or something else, I'm can do whatever the hell i want. she literally said that i could take anywhere between 0 and 30 credits if i wanted to. most germans take 20, which i think is nuts. so i've settled on 16, including 4 hours of russian. what the hell... a new language sounds like fun at this point in time. and one with a different alphabet sounds even cooler!

(Start of a letter to someone else, but explains a bit more) Howzit going? Well, I've started my 2nd week of school here, and i fluctuate between absolutely hating it and thinking it's kinda cool. that's life, i guess. I had my killer day today, but i've also rearranged my schedule, so I'm going to have 6 hours tomorrow, too, but everything's pretty different and only in 2 hour chunks (as opposed to the 4 hour long class i had today), so I think i'll be able to handle it. russian, intro to medieval lit, grammar.

anyway, i was in Minden this weekend (where I was an exhange student) because one of my host families was celebrating their silver wedding anniversary. Man, do they know how to party! (back to other e-mail) we got there around 5ish, things started at 5:30pm, dinner started at 7 and ended around 10 (5 course dinner: appetizer salad, soup, entree, desert, coffee/digestive liquor). Excellent food.... AND there was a buffet that started around 1. THey had a live band, which was pretty good. It was pretty damn funny what they played. Everything from modern techno to German folkssongs to YMCA. I was amused to see adults dancing to Eiffel 65's Blue. Anyway... the first guests left at 3am. Now that's a sign of a good party. We left a little after 5:30am (and we were last). Most definitely an experience.

i got to drive a Mercedes this weekend! Even if it was a jeep-like Mercedes, i still drove it. I was with my host brother at a friend's place, and he'd had a bit too much to drink, so he made me drive. the funny thing is that i can't drive stick, and that's what it was. he shifted for me while i did the clutch. every 10 seconds, he was like, "right pedal out, left pedal in.... left out, right in...". in german, none the less. yay! it was fun.

Yeah. I'm tired, like usual. I think I'm going to go to bed. I actually did homework today. Wow. I was pretty amazed. The end.

Oh yeah.. I added some entries from back before I had internet at home that I had sitting on my computer. I italicized them. you're smart; i'm sure you can figure it out.

23:55

where am i? I wanna go home