My room and general update

(-I'm so happy to be here! -Me too!)

I actually moved into my apartment at the end of August, but it has only recently started to feel like my room. I just need art and curtains.

I ended up looking at about 9 apartments. When I visited this one I put a star by my name when I wrote down my name and phone number next to the other dozen people who had already come over. They said the star really helped.

The sofa and two armchairs I bought on ebay for one Euro. Whoa.
Any idea on what I should name my new yellow cat (see rug) would be appreciated.

And I am, by the way, very lucky to know the Sagerts. They're the family of a German girl I met when I was 17 in Ireland (hi, Hanna)! They were nice enough to loan me the mattress, the table, the small shelves, as well as doing countless other things for me. I'm sure my Heimweh (homesickness) would be much worse without them.

(Yes, those are beds)



Oma! (Grandmom)

So anyway, this is the biggest room I've ever had in my life.

It's in a nice Altbau (old building) and it's with two great roommates (find my blog yet, Flo? : ))

It's in a great area. Very far from my work, but I wasn't going to live anywhere near my work anyway.

The Euro signs are where are work, the green house is where I lived 2 years ago, the volcano is where I live now and the 'i' is there I studied. And these two fucking little yellow stars I just can't get rid of.

Why is everything so crazy far from where I want to live?

It's really been ok, though. I only have to change trains once, which just gives me time to people watch and read. At the moment I'm reading Russian Disco by Wladimir Kaminer, I very much recommend it. It's particularly great if you know Berlin.
I've finally opened a library account (I needed my visa first). It's amazing, they have all sorts of books and magazines for German as a second language (DaF). I'm also reading these Deutsch Perfect magazines from the last couple of years, I really wanted them before but they're like 6 Euros. They're really great, because they give definitions of the hard words in German at the bottom of the page and all the topics have to do with Germany (obviously). Also highly recommended.
I also took out a beginners French book and CD, a book on how to write love letters in German, which is pretty hilarious, and at least 6 other books. Two weeks for magazines and 4 weeks for books. Seems reasonable. They charge you 2 Euros for anything that's on the bestsellers list, so it's going to be classics and just plain old books for me, but that's fine.

Berlin's changed a little bit. It's always so weird when I see something new. This guy here for example was not there before (see picture at the top of this page). Not SO many things are different, but I also just forgot how some things are and I'm not going to pretend it didn't take a little effort to get used to everything again. A lot of my friends had moved away, I'm not going to school anymore, so making new friends is harder and just the paper work in general was crazy.

So having a couple Minneapoliser here when I got here was nice.

Micah BF and I got to hang out a couple times, including at the Fuck Parade ("less commercial Love Parade", sure why not).

Make it a parade against Nazis? Sure, as long as we're protesting against SOMETHING.



Then Micah left.

I also got to hang out with Kiley.



...but then she left too.

Now I spend my time working and trying to get myself to do anything else. I had been sick for a couple weeks, so I'm excited to have some energy again.

Be excited to find out more about the school system in Berlin.