31 January 2012

German Winter

The German winter was late in coming, but it has finally reared its ugly dragon head, and I must say, DO NOT LIKE.  Everything is covered in ice, we're going down to -4 degrees Fahrenheit tomorrow (lower with the windchill), and this just generally blows.  But ever since the weather caught up with us two days ago, I've had the same conversation about it approximately twenty times, in which some German shouts triumphantly through twelve layers of fleece and animal pelt,"DOES IT GET THIS COLD IN NEW JERSEY!?!?" as if Germany trained very hard for the annual World Suckage Games and took home a close bronze metal, right after Siberia and Hell. "Yes," I say, "it does get this cold in New Jersey."  In fact, it gets colder, but the difference is, we don't go outside.

This is how horrendously cold days work in my American life:  you don't do anything. If you're feeling particularly ballsy, you put a pea coat and a scarf on, run to the car, complain about how far you have to park from Target and these cookies better be goddamn worth it, and then scream at the heater on the way home until it starts pumping out a toxic mixture of carbon monoxide and fear.  At some point, your mother will walk in, slam the door, say "Brrr, it's brutally cold!" and roll the r's extra hard, just so you know the temperature has officially dropped to the point where you lose control of your tongue.  You try fruitlessly to convince your friends to brave the elements for the seventeen seconds required to get in their car and drive to you, and they try to convince you to brave the elements for the seventeen seconds required to get in your car and drive to them, and in the end, nobody moves.  Eventually you go in your room, huddle in front of your space heater like it's a trashcan fire, watch Hugh Jackman movies, and bemoan the state of the world.

This is how horrendously cold days work in my German life:  nothing changes.  Except suddenly, instead of biking around and saying, "It's a bit nippy out here, isn't it?" you say, "Hello Jesus, if you love mankind, you will unfreeze my kidneys from my spinal cord.  Oh, I'm sorry, maybe you didn't hear me?  I HATE EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD AND I WANT TO CRASH MY BIKE INTO A GAS STATION SO AT LEAST I CAN GO OUT IN A BALL OF WARMTH."  That L.L.Bean jacket meant for arctic temperatures that you totally thought was overkill?  Nope.  Nope.  It is not.  Because as it turns out, not only are you biking headlong into the windchill, you are also, by virtue of your activity, making the windchill that much worse.  Not only does it suck, it sucks more than I could possibly exaggerate it sucking.  It's the kind of soul-numbing cold that gulag prisoners lose eight fingers and a nose escaping from, only to arduously type out a bestseller with their thumbs, sell the movie rights, and then show up on Oscar night with an escort-I-mean-model on the end of their prosthetic hands.

In other news, my procrastination project of the week has been attempting to revive the potted plant in my room.  I'm really, really bad at plants, as is evidenced by this one, which I forgot to water for six and a half months.  Currently my plan of attack is to feed it every ten minutes and drag it around my room as the sun moves.  I think it's working.  I tried to prune some of the worst bits today, and it spit yellow plant juice at me. So either my plan is working, or it's turned into that dinosaur from Jurassic Park that spits acid in your eyes and then tears out your intestines while you try to beat it off with stolen embryos.

Adios!

28 January 2012

Haircuts and Fender Benders

Today I was biking along, thinking about how nothing blog-worthy had happened to me since I last posted, and then I unintentionally caused a fender bender.  So there was that.

In other news, I finally went and got a haircut, but discovered that German haircut chairs don't go up high enough for the lady to deal with me.  So I had to stand while she sat on a small stool, and everyone in the place came and touched my head and said, "Christ on a sidecar, what do you do with so much hair on your head?"  "I braid it."  "And...?"  "I braid it different ways."  "And...?"  "Sometimes I wear it up with a pencil."

Then I went food shopping, and here's where the adventure begins.  Host Dad had taken the car to work, so I had to food shop with my bike and the giant red bike-bag things.  Since I had to buy the family's groceries for the week, the bike-bag things were really, really full, by the end of the trip, and really, really heavy.  It was like having two midgets hanging on my bike wheel, or at least what I would imagine having two midgets hanging on my bike wheel would feel like.  The balance was thrown off (midgets don't all weight the same, you know), and to make life easier, it snowed today, which meant that I had to bike very slowly to avoid falling down like that cruise ship in Italy and sending my edible passengers into oncoming traffic.  Don't want to cause an accident, you know.

To turn onto my road, I had to cross from the bike lane I was in to the one on the other side of the street.  The bicycle-man light was still green, so I very slowly started to cross.  A car turning left onto my side of the street saw me coming, but instead of stopping straight before turning, like they usually do, he turned almost completely into my lane and then stopped.  When I was right in front of him, I heard a screech and a bang, and his car jumped four feet at me and almost ate my bike.  I made it to the other side and turned around.  A bright blue car had rear-ended him from behind.  I stared at them.  They got out and yelled at each other.  I biked away as fast as I could before they remembered the first guy had to stop on my account.  My bad.

New favorite song of the day!  I found a Norah Jones CD in my room, and now I'm on a total Norah Jones kick.  Thanks to the handy dandy remote, I turn the CD on the second I wake up, and I've discovered at makes for a most excellent start to the day.  I would high recommend it.  Here's Norah Jones covering Townes van Zandt.

25 January 2012

We are girls crossing things off the bucket list

As of yesterday morning, my plan for today looked like a haircut, tracking down a professor, essay writing and a dermatologist appointment.  But then last night, Other American hit me with a spontaneous alternative: fuck all that, and go to the British army base instead to hang with the South African.  I polled everyone I talk to on a daily basis, and the consensus was that this was a bad plan, and I shouldn't do it.  The exception being Claire, who said it was a bad plan, and I should do it, duh.  So that's what I did!

It could have to do with the lots and lots of men in uniforms who drive tanks, or it could be my secret pleasure at getting on the other side of the barbed wire and seeing what's so flammable they're trying to keep me away from--but whatever the reason, I really, really like army bases.  But I also really, really like crossing things off the Bucket List, and, coincidentally enough, Go To The British Army Base is number 18!

So Other American and I woke up nice and early to take a bus to Bergen, the nearest town to the base.  There, we ate donuts and messed around until the South African stopped playing hockey long enough to pick us up.  We also discovered that in Bergen, we get royally stared at, like, British-guys-driving cars-with-wrong-sided-steering-wheels-slapping-their mates-and-pointing-to-us stared at.  I have several theories for why this could be:

1)  We are clearly girls.
2)  We are clearly foreign girls.
3)  We are clearly foreign girls not selling our bodies out of camping trailers parked on the side of the road leading into town.*
4)  I was wearing my hot purple coat, which means I was the brightest thing to be seen.  Even brighter than the sun, mostly because no one has actually seen it in several weeks.

At any rate, as awkward as being gawked at doesn't make me feel, it was a relief to get picked up.  Unfortunately, I only had an hour to explore before I had to catch a bus back to pick up the charge.  But I got to see the barracks, Some Other Buildings, and the South African's room.  Also, we watched Desperate Housewives.  Anti-climactic? Maybe a little bit.  But we still had lots of fun, I met County Cork's roommates,  and we got waived through a giant gate by some guy holding a semi automatic rife.  Did not see a tank.


Whatever.  I still get to cross it off the Bucket List.




*It's true, they actually do this, and yes, they do drive campers.

23 January 2012

Customs Wars, Part the Third

I used to believe I had seen every creative spelling of my name possible.  I believed this for a very long time, all the way up until Friday, in fact.  Because on Friday, I got a letter from the German Customs informing Herr Timo Marie Jjagum he had received a package from one Jean in America, and would he come pick it up at his earliest convenience?

You see where this is going.

I've done this before, as you'll recall, not once, but twice, albeit never as a man. However, there was a slight kink in the works, namely, that the package was from Jean of all people, who victoriously posted this to my Facebook after sending it:

"I sent you a package.  I had to explain to the post office guy what was IN the package.  It was awesome."

I had hoped against all hope the post office would deliver it without trying to tax me for it, but no such luck.  And unfortunately, the Customs office was already closed by the time I got the letter. Which, of course, meant I spent the entire weekend imagining the whole host of terrifying things the package could contain, each more mortifying than the last.  By the time Monday rolled around, I was no longer even sure I wanted to know what was in the damn thing, and briefly considered letting it sit the obligatory fourteen days, until Customs shipped it back to Jean at her own expense.  But in the end, my curiosity won out, and I headed down to the Customs office, prepared for battle and determined to be victorious.  Or my name wasn't Timo Marie Jjagum.

As soon as I walked in, the nice guy whom I've dealt with on the previous two occasions looked up, recognized me, and left the room.  Which left Mr. Asshole, who, despite his name, rather closely resembled a Neanderthal.

Hello," said I, "I've come to pick up a package.  And frankly, I don't understand why my packages keep coming through here.  My host family is constantly getting packages from the US and Canada, and you guys never pick up theirs, you only take mine."

"You're from America?"

"Yes."

"Well, you see..." and then he proceeded to serenade me bullshit about illegal child laborers in the US and China bringing about the End of Times by sneaking packages marked as gifts into Germany. And how did I know the sender?

"She's my former roommate, look, here, her number is in my phone."

"I don't need to look at it."

"If you're not going to look at it, then you can't try to tell me I don't know her."

"I'm going to need you to open up this package."

"It's supposed to be a surprise, which I would rather not spoil by opening it up in the Customs office.  And if you'll turn your attention to the back of the package, you will notice it tells you a) the contents, b) that the contents are worth exactly one dollar, and c) that the contents are labeled as a gift.  I believe all of that constitutes a package that is supposed to be delivered, not one which gets kidnapped by you people."

"Much smaller packages than yours also come through here.  Are you trying to tell me we should allow such packages to go through the system!?" he said, horrified.

"Hahahahaha...yes."

Then he yelled at me about how I'm trying to cheat German Customs, and I'm showing disrespect with a flagrant ignorance of the security risks I'm implying the Customs office adopt.

So I opened the package...and triumphantly shoved Justin Bieber Silly Bandz in his face.

"Do you think this is worth more than 45 Euros?"

Glowering silence.

"Is this a security risk, do you think?"

"What's the piece of paper?"

"One is a letter.  The other one is a collage entitled 'Unnecessarily Attractive People Modelling Safety Gear.'  How much do you generally tax those?"

He said nothing, just shoved the release papers at me, and I signed them.  I hit the door with a pleasant, "Pleasure doing business with you," and laughed all the way home.

Herr Timo Marie Jjagum, for the win!

19 January 2012

The name of the game is scholarships!

Move to Germany...check.
Take the DSH language test, and almost die doing it...check.
Get into grad school...check.
Find a place to live...check.
Get a scholarship...ch--wait.  Crap.

Being the brilliant soul that I am, I chose to go to university in one of only two states that charges students tuition (the other being Bavaria, as if lederhosen wasn't already enough of a reason to never, ever go there).  And when I say "tuition," I mean "allowance" for everyone in Short Hills, to the tune of about 900 dollars per semester, times four semesters, equals 3600 dollars.  But I worked for a year, put up with all the people who refer to carbonated fruit punch as "juice," and saved up the tuition.

However, I was thinking things over recently, and I realized: I mean, I have that money sitting in a bank, but wouldn't it be nice to get a scholarship, and spend that money on cooler things?  Like a bed, or things to eat, or a trip to Mongolia?

So, I've spent the last couple days researching scholarships, and there are some kickass ones.  So kickass, they give you a thousand dollars a month, which theoretically would not only cover my rent, my bed, and things to eat, but also as many trips to Mongolia as it would require for me to learn to build a yurt.  The problem is, they all require a metric fuckton of paperwork.  It's like playing Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego, except instead of tracking down people, I'm tracking down nine million other things: transcripts that Rutgers makes me pay for but never arrive, professors to write letters of recommendation except they no longer work at my university, multiple certified copies of every document under the sun, and on and on and on until I get so intimidated, I give up and watch Friends.  Great work, Gumshoe.

What I need is a syringe-ful of world-destroying gumption straight to the heart...or else a genie to magically appear and give me a thousand dollars a month in exchange for a high five.

Back to applications.  As soon as Friends is over.

New favorite song of the day!

17 January 2012

Not sleeping under the bridge!

Aaaand...I HAVE A PLACE TO LIVE!

The apartment hunt today was interesting, to say the least.  I wound up only having three to go look at, but I got into the city early so I could go to the English bookstore and read The Hunger Games.  Here's a rundown of the apartments I looked at:

Apartment 1:  Non-Hipsters Need Not Apply

The people of Apartment 1 were lovely, but the place itself...well, suffice to say, a hipster would have rubbed his scent all over that shit in a heartbeat.  It's right in the center of town, which is awesome, but I was slightly confused looking for the place because it didn't occur to me to check the giant building that looked like an old abandoned factory.  Which is probably what it was.  I got buzzed in to the cavernous ground floor, where no one actually lives: there's just a staircase, or, if you choose, you can forego stairs and just walk through the factory thing to the garden.  But I went up three flights of stairs to discover that there's no actual door to the apartment, you just...walk up the stairs and into the hall.  Carrying on with the Important Things Hipsters Don't Need trend was a kichen: they've only got a deep factory sink thing and no oven to speak of.  But the weirdest part was the room I would theoretically be living in, which isn't actually flat.  God knows flat floors are way too mainstream.  The guy renting out the room said you get used to functioning on an incline pretty quickly, but then again, he had a Nintendo shirt on.


Apartment 2:  Needs More Orange

Also an awesome location, and retardedly cheap, costing barely over 200 dollars a month.  The door was opened by a goth girl with more piercings than I could count, but she turned out to be the super nice one.  The other girl was nice enough, but a little weird.  No one sees the guy for days on end and occasionally have to knock on his door to see if he's alive.

But as I discovered, there's a reason the room is retardedly cheap: it's retardedly small.  Without a loft bed, there's no turning around in that place.


Apartment 3:  The Winner!

The last apartment of the day is a little ways out of town, and by "a little ways," I mean it takes you all of about seven minutes to get into town by bike.  Or, if you feel like walking the hundred feet to the bus stop, then you only have to travel approximately three minutes, which is perfectly acceptable.

Because of the location, this place is slightly quieter, but!  The apartment is gorgeous, at least by student standards. It's like the Cook apartments at Rutgers, but with hardwood that's never had vomit cleaned off it.  And for this, it costs just as much as the Hipster Student Shithole Apartment 1, so that's good.  My (ginormous) room comes equipped with a slant, but a fun roof one, not a slightly alarming floor one.  And the girl I'd be living with is super nice--she showed me the place, and then we sat and drank tea and talked about boys for an hour.  Yay!

Oh!  Rewind!  Our concentration camp date over the weekend!  Was hugely fun, although we initially got yelled at for not being somber enough as we walked through the doors, and then they followed us throughout our wanderings to make sure we were being properly somber.  After about an hour of being horribly, horribly somber, we decided to skip the second half of the exhibit and just got to a 1950's American-style diner, where they serve Bratwurst with an American flag toothpick.  Then we went to the barn to go visit the horses, the highlight of which was the barn bartender (there are such things in Germany) trying desperately in broken English to explain to the soldiers he wanted them to procure him a bottle of wine.  Afterwards, the soldiers and Other American went and played pool, and I took over babysitting duties from the parents.

All in all, life is full of successes!

13 January 2012

The Apartment Hunt

Well, it's officially that time of year where I have to grow up and organize myself a place to live, unless I plan on sleeping under the bridge, which I don't.  Unfortunately, finding a place to live in any German student city is a total bitch right now.  Here's why:

1)  German high school used to go until the 13th grade.  For whatever reason, the German government redid the system so that it now only goes until 12th grade.  That means this year and this year only, the 13th and 12th grades graduate at the same time, and are both looking for apartments.

2)  Germany just ended the mandatory two-year service for guys, army if you felt like blowing shit up, civil if you preferred driving a bus full of old people to and from the nursing home.  That means that the boys this year are not starting two university two years later than the girls.

All in all, there are now three times as many students than normal trying to get into university this year.  Which is a major bitch if you're looking for housing.  All the dorms in Göttingen have a 3-16 month waiting list, which is why I just said, "fuck it, I'm finding an apartment."

But apartments are also super difficult to find, and competitive to get into, because, let's face it, there are eight million people trying to get the same three spots.  So I have been on an intense search this week.  Here is a list of my dream criteria, some of which are more negotiable than others:

--Less than 250 euros a month (317 dollars).
Negotiability:  Would consider going up to 250 euro and 99 cents.
--One to three roommates.
--Mixed gender roommates.  Negotiability:  I could live with all girls.
--Central location.

People I refuse to live with:
--All vegetarians.
--All Baptists.
--All boys.

So those were three ads I did not respond to.

With that being said, I'm emailed my top 10 favorites, and received a response from three, one of which was a "Sorry, we already found someone," one of which was a "Come on Sunday!" that has not yet responded to my, "Ähm...could I come on Monday?" and my favorite of which said, "Come on Monday!"  My favorite is right in the middle of town, 272 dollars a month including heating and internet, two girls and one guy.  I'm off to go check them out first thing Monday, and hopefully by then I'll have gotten a couple other "Come and see us!"s.  However, as frustrating as the 30% response rate is, but as one of my German friends pointed out that this is one situation where it helps to be foreign.  I generate interest before they even meet me, just by virtue of being American.  Yay, I think.

In other news today I met up with an Indian guy and a French girl who live in the area, both of whom were super awesome, and we've already got plans to hang out again. Tomorrow, Other American and I are roadtripping with County Cork and South African Dude to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, and possibly the army base as well, seeing as how they're all of about thirty feet from each other.  Not much to see at Bergen-Belsen seeing as how the British burned it down (before the army lived there), but Anne Frank died there, and I think there's a memorial or an exhibit or both. Clearly, exactly the right place to visit with hungover soldiers.  At any rate, I'm sure it'll be an adventure.

Adios!

11 January 2012

The Slumber Party I Missed

If you came to this blog today hoping for an awkward, over-honest, and embarrassing story from me, congratulations!  That is exactly what I've got!  I wish I could get away with not telling this story, because my incompetence at life is occasionally so great as to embarrass me, but I'm a crappy liar.  So story it is!

Now, I am what I enjoy calling a "late-bloomer," but other people call "slow, misguided, and/or juvenile."  My attempts at getting on the Fashion U-Bahn have already been reproduced here, but this post is an official documentation of that time I tried to navigate the confusing world of make-up.

I have always been staunchly anti-make-up, mostly because I a) resented the concept of putting on a different face, and b) was always fine with how I looked.  In fact, I have historically rather liked that about myself, that I can walk outside make-up-less, confident, and be happy with myself.  When it came to boys, I tended to rely more on my wit and my hair than on my supermodel good looks (which may or may not have something to do with my general relationship failures) and plus, people always told me I looked like a sixteen year-old, so why the hell did I need make-up?

The problem is that I've also had crappy skin for most of my life.  Unlike every other adult woman on the planet, my body never got the memo that puberty had ended years ago, and instead of holding on to all the good puberty traits, like boobs that never stopped growing, I was stuck with all the shitty ones, namely, skin that never stopped breaking out.  Mostly it was hormonal, and I was more or less resigned to breaking out once a month for a week, and then being done with it.  But then, a few months after I arrived in Germany, something bad happened.  Suddenly, my mildly shitty skin actively mutinied, and next thing I knew, my face was breaking out in giant, painful cysts that refused to go away and scarred like a bitch.

You know the really annoying Pro-Activ commercials, where girls get up and complain about their faces and say they refused to leave the house until Pro-Activ got them boyfriends, and cured their AIDS?  Secretly, I'd always mocked those girls, I mean, really?  Sorry to break it to you love, salicylic acid does nothing for your HIV.  Except suddenly, I was that acne commercial, and I did not enjoy it.  I stopped wanting to go outside, I stopped making eye contact with strangers, and I avoided mirrors like the plague, lest I stand in the middle of the store staring at myself in horror.  I tried to harass myself out of it, and get back into my standard Tina cheerfulness that's oblivious to social cues and grates on people's nerves.  But I discovered that not only does this make you hate yourself more, it's also virtually impossible to do when you're sitting in front of your computer blankly watching Tough Love Miami, alone, miserable, and with ice packs slapped to the bottom of your face in the hope they'll make the swelling go down.

Finally my misery outweighed my paralyzing fear of all things medical, and in mid-December, I went to the dermatologist...who took one look at me and basically said, "Yeah, this shit needs to get fixed PRONTO," that's how bad it was.  She immediately put me on a whole slew of medication I could sell for a lot of money on the black market, antibiotics, medical creams, the whole nine yards.  Slowly, very slowly, the cysts cleared up, but left behind as a parting gift a particularly sexy brand of mottled purple scarring.  LOVELY.

In the meantime, however, I had discovered that almost as bad as my face were people's opinions on why my face was so suddenly terrible, which they shared with me in the unprompted way of those who think they're doing you a favor, but are blissfully ignorant of the fact that they're actually making you want to throw yourself into the river tied to the family piano.  Host Mom told me it was because I eat white flour.  Other American told me it was the bread. The Portuguese Tias told me it was chocolate. The cab driver told me it was the weather. The dermatologist told me it has nothing to do with what I eat or drink, or how I take care of my skin, but that it's probably a delayed reaction to major stress experienced in the last few months...i.e., moving to Germany.

I could only take so many comments about how it's my own fault my skin blows before I decided this shit needed to get covered up.  Luckily for me, I'm a chick, I can throw on some make-up, e voila!  Oh wait, that's right.  I'm 23 years old, and I have no idea how to put on make-up.  Woman fail.

So, as I am wont to do in times of doubt, I turned to the internet.  I looked up make-up tutorials, I wrote down product names, I did grade-A research.  But the thought of walking into a drug store with a post-it note and zero concept of what I was doing terrified me, and I was almost as scared of doing it wrong as I was of asking Helen of Troy's smug German counter cousin for help.  Because in swearing off make-up, I had successfully avoided that awkward phase where you put on too much blush in eighth grade and make yourself look like a mistake from the 80's, which at the time I congratulated myself for.  But in retrospect, I'd also skipped the part where you eventually figure out what you're doing.  All these tutorials I was watching were talking about brushes and minerals and toners and all sorts of dangerous-sounding shit that sounded less suited to a medicine cabinet, better suited to a surprise safety inspection of a Chilean iron mine.  They were tutorials meant for people my age, except they also assumed that people my age knew that foundation was something other than the bottom part of a building.

Where did I go wrong? I wondered.  How did I miss something so integral to the lives and self-esteems of women all over the damn world?  So I googled that too, and apparently, you learn this shit a slumber parties.  I understand now.  Because at our slumber parties, we played Charades and Trivial Pursuit while watching Teen Girl Squad on homestarrunner.com.  At some point, someone would put on the Spice Girls and the movie Clue (not simultaneously), and around midnight, Sam would start come up with innovative experiments (whispering in Japanese) to be conducted on the first person who fell asleep (me).  Then my mother would pick me up in the morning, and I would be sick as a dog from lack of sleep.  We would go home, I would eventually throw up, she'd vow to never let me sleep over Sam's house again, I would discover random Japanese words slipping into my protests, and then I'd take a three hour nap. Repeat in two weeks.  Best Saturdays ever.

Unfortunately for me, I never attended the slumber party where pillow fights take place in training bras, nails get painted, legs get shaved communally, and seventy-five dollars of Mom's Dior cosmetics are destroyed in an organized raid on the medicine cabinet that results in nine little escorts.  I was conspicuously absent when that particular girl posse gave each other facials, practiced making out, and shoved bananas down their throats.  I was too busy trying to get the godforsaken orange sports wedge.

But because crashing a strange twelve year-old's slumber party with a smile and a barrel of Chiquita bananas was both creepy and a fast-track to not being allowed within one thousand feet of a school, I decided I needed a new plan.  So I thought about it. And thought about it.  And steeled myself, then lost my nerve, then steeled myself, then lost my nerve, and then finally, I texted The Plan, and The Plan's name was Claire.

Here is an abridged version of that text conversation:

Me:       Okay, don't laugh at me, but when you come to visit, can you teach me how to put on make-up?  I feel like this is a skill I should have.
Claire:   Hahahahahaha.
Claire:   Do you own make-up?
Me:      No, and I have no idea how to buy it, you'll have to teach me that too.
Claire:  Okay.  We will buy it together and I'll show you what to do.
Me:      So my goal is to wear as little make-up as is necessary to hide the fact that my skin blows lame ballz.  In your professional opinion, is this possible?
Claire:   More than.
Me:      You're the best friend I've ever disliked enough to sell into Mongolian sex slavery for the price of a turkey sandwich.

Well, The Plan eventually arrived in Germany, and after a particularly brilliant weekend in Berlin, we hit up Celle to shop for postcards, honey, and shit for my face.  Claire marched me around town like the professional she is, while I had mental breakdowns every other moment and made her explain every cosmetic product in the store to me multiple times.  We bought mascara.  We bought eyeliner.  We bought eye shadow. We bought 27 euro foundation, because apparently, that's what you do.  More accurately, Claire told me what to buy, and I bought it.  How she put up with me, I do not know, but I bought her chocolate for it.

But the most frightening part lay ahead: actually learning to put this stuff on.  For that, we bussed it back to my house, sat ourselves down in front of my mirror, and monkey-seed, monkey-doed our way to more or less success.  Claire had to slowly and painfully demonstrate what goes where and when, and how brushes can also be used for things other than horses.  I slowly and painfully attempted to copy her, all the while complaining incessantly.

The next week was spent coming up with excuses to go to the drug store so that I could buy more shit;  concealer, blush, the one affordable makeup bag that did not have "Good Vibrations" printed on it.  I spent an obscene amount of money on this crap, which is what happens when you buy in one go what normal people have been slowly collecting since they turned eleven.  Meanwhile, my sister was dealing with increasingly panicky Facebook messages from me as I grilled her on everything from eyeliner colors to whether or not blue eye shadow could conceivably make me look like a Teletubby.

On the downside, what I wound up discovering was that while make-up has more or less solved the problem of my skin, it's opened up a whole new can of worms to worry about, like Is My Mascara Running?  Am I Twelve Different Colors?  Are You Sure I Don't Look Like A Teletubby?

In the end, it has turned out to be not nearly as horrible as I imagined it, and thankfully, you don't need to devote two hours of your life to putting make-up on in the mornings.  I've got it down to under ten minutes, which is more or less acceptable.  It's (sort of?) easy, I guess.  And the end result is...still me!  I look like me!  Except with slightly better skin and bigger eyes. And I have to remember not to rub my eyelids, or else my hands come away all sorts of fun colors.

So all in all, this is the unfortunate new direction my life has gone in, but it's better than holing myself up inside the house and refusing to talk to anyone.  And while I enjoy not blessing small animals with heart attacks when I look at them, I still don't think I'm going to put make-up on every day.

Just on the days I go outside.

08 January 2012

Claire Episode Recap, Part the Everything Else!

Tuesday, January 4th:  Making Friends With Icelandic-Wannabes


Tuesday was the first day we saw the sun, and also the day we had to leave.  We almost missed our train, and the guy trainpooling with us did not love us.  That is, until we somehow discovered that he speaks Icelandic as a second language, and then we discussed Icelandic cows, Icelandic people, and Icelandic polar bear hunts.  It was a good time.  As soon as we pulled into Celle, we discovered it was raining.

The rest of Tuesday we just kind of chilled out and relaxed.  We briefly went into town, searched in vain for a place that sold both raspberry cake and hot chocolate, and settled for hot chocolate and donuts.

Wednesday, January 5th:  Show Me Your Boobs


Wednesday was another Celle day.  We ran around town, had lofty goals of doing touristy things such as climbing the church tower, but this died as soon as we started shopping.  Then we bough raspberry cake, took it back to my house, and ate it with tea and whipped cream.  Twas delicious.

That night, we headed back into town to meet up with Latvian Friend for salsa.  We spent most of the time just trying to convince her to eat our cookies.  The Czech Girl, her boyfriend, and his friend showed up, and the party was on.  They were absolutely hilarious, especially the friend, who was wasted and hitting on Claire like it was his job.  Somehow the conversation morphed into bargaining to see Friend's tattoo.  He claimed the cookies we gave him weren't enough, and that if he was going to show us his tattoo, he needed to see Claire's boobs.  When the phrase "percentage of boobage" got thrown out there, I knew the night was more or less over.  Sure enough, it was 1.30 in the morning, and we had to get up early the next morning.  When we got home, we discovered Friend had friended Claire on Facebook, with the all-popular pickup line "Only your boobs."

Thursday, January 6th:  Hannover!


The next morning, we were off to Hannover!  The shopping is way better in Hannover, so that's what we did. We also managed to located 9 Euro woolly tights, so wins all around!  We also walked around in a hailstorm, found English language copies of The Princess Bride, and took pictures in front of Hannover's hideous Christmas Pyramid, which for some unknown reason was still up.

We found some tiny little cafe with most excellent goulash and a creepy picture of a monarch on the wall.  We ate it.  The goulash, not the creepy monarch.

And then we found the street with the strip clubs, highly entertained ourselves by running around, and mortally embarrassed two seventeen year olds coming out of a live peep show.  Here's Claire with Thai Girls:

And me with a tabledance.

Aaand...that was our week!  Pretty much the best week ever.  Now here, have my favorite song of the day.  I hate this song, but mostly I hate that I can't get it out of my head.  And I hate that it got stuck in my head while watching Twilight.

06 January 2012

Claire Episode Recap, Part the Berlin!

brCLAIRE CAME!  And it was the greatest week ever and I totally got teary in the airport and I'm still very very sad and it has been several hours since I put her on the plane.

I'm going to attempt to do what I have never done before, and sum up an entire week as concisely as possible, i.e., in two posts.  I shall do this by strategic use of BEING CONCISE.  And throwing in a shitload of pictures.  Aaand...go!

Day 1: Thursday, December 30th: Baking and Ice Cream, not at the same time.


Host Dad kindly offered to pick Claire up from the airport, so that is what we did!  I found her arrivals gate, which is separated from the main area by a giant piece of what is probably terrorist-proof glass.  While staring intensely at the passengers waiting for their bags, I noticed out of the corner of my eye a lone figure walking in completely the wrong direction, towards the empty corner where the the terrorist-proof meets the wall.  "That has to be Claire," I said to myself...and sure enough, it was!  And that's how we wound up laughing our heads off through the giant glass, despite barely being able to hear each other.  The whole thing was vaguely
reminiscent of prison, except Claire wasn't there for prostitution.

Then she came out and there were hugs and we drove home.  We didn't waste any time, and started baking immediately.  Sugar cookies sandwiched with icing she'd brought from America, dyed four separate colors.  Delicious?  Yes.  Appetizing to Europeans?  No.  Then the Host Parents threw a little dinner party, and Claire tried (and enjoyed) the funky German bread.  Afterwards, we walked into town to see things and eat Spaghetti-Eis (ice cream that looks like spaghetti?) in the freezing cold.  Bangin.  On the way back, Claire informed me that I have ceased to sound American.

Day 2: Saturday, December 31th.  Making Craptons of Friends.


Claire and I woke up bright and early to hop several trains to Berlin.  The German train system, while generally blowing, does have a few convenient things, namely, a ticket that allows you to travel with four other people on the weekend.  I put out the call on the internet, and roped in three people who wanted to come with us, meaning we each went to Berlin for a grand total of 8 euros.  However, so many people wound up emailing me, I helped a bunch of them find each other, which meant we wound up travelling together as a group of ten.  We bonded with a few of the other girls, one of whom worked as an au pair in the States.  Apparently she didn't realize from our email conversation that I was foreign, but, and I quote, "I did think it was really weird that you were being so nice to me."  She said I don't sound American either.

Once in Berlin, we navigated public transportation and met up with our couchsurf, who was hilarious and actually built us a blanket fort in his room to sleep in.  He asked us if we had any particular New Year's plans.  I had brought a crap ton of fireworks, but other than setting them off, we had nothing.  He said, "Well, if you want, we're going to climb to the roof of an abandoned building and shoot them off there if you want to come."  Who says no to a thing like that?  But we still had several hours before setting-shit-on-fire time, so we decided to run around the city a little bit.  A random guy I asked for directions told me I was adorable, then asked if I was single, and a British guy we ran into at Brandenburger Tor told me that I don't sound like an American.

Here, have a picture of Claire at the Tor with the Swedish Moose.

And one of just the street.

After we got back, we joined up with our couchsurf to go explore the abandoned building.  Unfortunately, as we discovered when we got there, the city had walled off the access to the roof, so we (the so-labeled International Guests) wound up just setting off our fireworks on a street corner and avoiding New York, a random drunk guy who keep trying to get into our pants with that eternally successful pick-up line, "Hey!  Did you know Philadelphia BLOWS?"



The giant group then headed to a Drum and Bass party at a club called Badlands, and, suffice to say, we did not fit in.  Here's how you dance to drum and bass:

Step 1.  Look angry.
Step 2.  Hunch your shoulders.
Step 3.  Start bobbing your head.  Do not make eye contact with anyone.
Step 4.  Start getting some shoulder action in there.
Step 5.  Start shuffling your feet.
Step 6.  Have an extended body spasm.
Step 7.  Be entertained for twenty minutes.
Step 8.  People watch for another twenty minutes.
Step 9.  Hide in the bathroom.  Watch two people go into one stall.
Step 10.  Grab your American friend, and go to a really overpriced bar instead.

On our way there, we passed a car with a hole blown in the roof (courtesy of some asshole setting a firework off from it), and a mattress.  Which meant that Claire's directions to the club for the three lost British guys we encountered went something like "Take a left at the mattress and keep going until you see the ashy car."  We asked them if I had an American accent, they told me no.

Then it was our turn to ask for directions, and the random guy I picked decided he wanted to come with us.  He had apparently just been thrown out of the party by his ex-girlfriend, who did not appreciate him spilling the beans that they were broken up.  I had possibly the strangest conversation about romance of my life, the best part being this:

"My ex-girlfriend hates me."
"Oh yeah?  That's sad.  Why would she do a thing like that?"
"Because she loves me."
"..."

He also fondled the Swedish Moose.  Swedish Moose was not pleased.

Anyway.  Really overpriced bar, went back to the couchsurf's (he gave us a key), and tried to sleep.  Did not actually sleep.

Day 3:  Sunday, January 1st.  Nazi Airports Make Everything Better.

When we woke up the next morning (or, more accurately, just stayed conscious after five failed hours at sleeping), we discovered our couchsurf still hadn't actually come back.  But we decided that despite the weather, we were going to go do touristy things, like go to the old Nazi airport.  Which was cool, until it started really really raining.  And then it was still pretty cool.



Then it was Go Take Pictures On The Artistic Berlin Wall time.


Then we met up with my friends!  Sungmi and Alex are two very dear friends I studied with in Konstanz, and seeing them again was awesome.  We ate super traditional German food, caught up, and enabled the Swedish Moose's drug addiction.


Not ready for the evening to be over, we all trekked to the Berliner Dom, to hit up random ladies in crazy coats passing by until we found one that could work a camera long enough to take a picture of us.


After parting ways, Claire and I went back to the Tor to see it minus eighty million other people.  This was our "look really surprised that there's a giant gate behind you" picture:

When we got back to the couchsurf's at the end of the day, we discovered he hadn't come back from the club until two in the afternoon.  Speaking of commitment!

Day 4:  Monday, January 2nd.  Twilight Is The Most Unintentionally Hilarious Movie Ever.

Monday morning, we had a plan.  We were going to Checkpoint Charlie.  We were going to the wall.  We were going to the Dom.  We were going to the Stasi museum. We were going to do ALL OF THESE THINGS...until we got distracted by Starbucks. And then we drank non-coffee beverages and split a muffin.

But conveniently, the Starbucks was right next to Checkpoint Charlie, so we did actually see that.  And thankfully, this time I did not get slapped by a Romanian lady. Have I told that story on here?  


Also highly convenient, turns out a giant piece of the wall is located all of about three minutes from here, so we saw that too.  At first, out of respect for history, we tried to be solemn.  We did.  We took very solemn pictures.

But it's hard to be solemn when you're holding a Swedish moose and your umbrella is pink.

And unfortunately, a little bit of unsolemnness lead to a whole lot of unsolemnness.  



And that's how we wound up climbing under the railing and posing for "escaping East Berlin" pictures with a stuffed moose.

More out of love for my sister than anything else, we reluctantly went to KaDeWe, one of the biggest, if not the biggest, department stores in Germany.  

Plus side: it was huge.  Downside:  we were lazy.  Plus side:  they sell BROWN SUGAR CINNAMON POP TARTS. Down side:  They cost 14 dollars.  Plus side:  There are bears.  Down side:  They are not real.

Somehow at this point we had convinced our couchsurf that he should come and see the new Twilight movie with us.  Let me explain: Claire and I traditionally see Twilight together, and occasionally with other people, as long as we can blackmail them.  We go because the movies are so unintentionally hilarious, which means we start laughing the second the lights go out.  The people around us...not so much.  This time was no different.  The most recent Twilight film is so bad as to be absolutely amazing, a sentiment our couchsurf did not agree with.  But we were DYING.  

Later that night, we met up with the SHBF!  I now have a witness.  Claire can attest to it: not only has everything I've ever had to say on the subject been accurate, it's also been somewhat understated.  And the brownie was delicious.  It was a perfect end to our weekend in Berlin.

There you have it!  That's what we did!  We saw old friends.  We made new ones.  We shot off fireworks, some of which went into the sky.  We lit up 30 sparklers at once and almost set ourselves on fire.  We discovered our couchsurf has partied with the cast of Jersey Shore.  We  ate a crapton of chocolate.  We lost our way and our accents.  We had the singular most epic New Year's ever.  

Up next tomorrow, Claire and I run around Celle and Hannover, sorely embarrass ourselves on the erotic dancing street, and eat goulash.  

03 January 2012

Dearest Citizens Of The World

take two......
omg so lets start with how the whole thing i just wrote disapeared and i am now devistated beyond belief :(
ok so lets start again.......

I want to make a shout out to Amy!!!!! For being the awesome supermodel that she is and that she has mad skillz that i am not allowed to mention

For those of you who dont me i am not going to tell you who i am but tina aka tino or whorebag wanted to make sure that you didnt confuse the two of us because for some reason she admits to how amazing i am and desnt want any of the credit for the amazing things i do because that would be plagerism.  so all you need to know is i dont like grammer or spell check or other modern convienveces that help demonstrate my point most clearly.  Also we have the added advantage of the german key board so some of the letters and symbols are moved around that could also make things more interesting.

So i guess we should start somewhere near the begining:
The day i arrived whorebag surprized me with Berlin for new years!!!!!!! super super exciting!!!!!! because first off i love love  love surprises more than i have the words to tell you about be loveing surprises they are just so amaying.  (the z and the y are switched and i cant seem to get used to it so zour going to have to deal because im tired for fixing all the words....sorrz bitches) 2. I had no idea that we were going to berlin because i had talked myself out of the possibilitz for reasons that i dont think i am aloud to disclose.  So we got up earlz the next morning and walked to the train talked to the super nice others that were going to the same place ect....ect...and we never got lost on the waz there score!!!!!! so then we met couch surfing host guy (cshg) and he was verz verz verz nice but still a little odd but he whole heartedlz agreed to go see twilight with us.  Now tina wants people to think that she onlz watches these movies for the comidic aspect not for their core values and overall amazingness the writing the acting the everything was just perfect it was like taylor laughtnor ripped off his shirt and wrote the screen play with his perfectlz chizzeled abs.  Now seeing this is the 4th movie and the third that she has taken time to see in theaters i think that this is complete and utter comitment and this is far more that a love of the comedy of the overacted poorly writen work of some seriously toned abdominals....just saying

Anywho that was actualy on monday so lets skip back to saturday whitch was actaullz new years eve(and yes i know that i combined which and witch but i like it that way)  we went to this square thing alexanderplatz that was full of stuff to do like eat sausages and drink bier ICE SKATE!!!!!!!!! so obviously we did that because ice skating is AMAZING!!!!!!!! then we went back to cshg and he made pizza dough from scratch whitch was cazy exciting becuase i mean who says hey im making pizza the dough will be ready when zou get back NO ONE IN AMERICA!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So then we got over the shock of freshly made piyya dough and ate and then went out for the new year!!!!! The original plan was to shoot rockets off the top of an abandoned house but that didnt happen because when we got there it was clear that everyone was going to die trying to get down so instead we shot our rockets off on a street corner with like 500000000000 other people and nearlz took out a couple of them.....oops then there was tons of smoke like so much it was hard to breath and see but it was sooooo amazinglz fun that it was worth having to walk thought the ash and dirty rain for the next few days (but still really gross)  Then cshg took us to a drum and bass club.... ok so heres the thing it was fun for like 20 minutes learning to dance how they do and then even watching them dance was fun but we stuck out like barnacles on a hobbit it just wasnt a our scene so we moved on to a bar and then finnaly went to bed around 6am.  (cshg said he didnt get back from the club until 2pm the next daynow thats comitment) The next day we got up bright and early around 1030 and the sun wasnt even up yet to be truthfull the sun didnt come up all day it just rained but still we ran around that did things nazi airport east wall gallery dinner dome kind of things.  So by Monday we were super super tired but had this big plan set and dispite wanting to sleep we trudged on again through the rain but when we got to check point charlie there was a starbucks so we deceded that we needed a pick up and that turned into an hour; a very enjoyable hour of drinks and a shared muffin, but not what one might refer to as a successful motivated hour.  Then we tried to climb the was which may have been slightly inappropriate due to the atmosphere that is requested...but that didnt stop us and no one should have ever expected us to lets be honest.  Last night we met with shbf and he was everything that was described and then some so if you have no idea what im talking about just be really realy jealous and for those of you who do shbf is even better in person.  Then we had the best brownis ofr my life it was like a lava cake but it was a brownie and it was warm and it was the most amazing thing of my life.

So that was belin minus that part where we nearly misssed the train and the part where when we left the club there was a car covered in ash because someone had set a firework off from the top of it leaving a hole stright through the center and the materess that was on the street and when we had to use those as landmarks for directions but i mean who could zou miss those sorts of things.  An then there were all teh people who thought that i was german because i blend in and tina doesnt but shes the one who speaks german that left more than a few perplexed.  In the end i learned the there are two words for train but i cant spell either of them and i cant count to three but to be honest cool runnings can teach you that.

ok i hope that wasnt too painful for zou all it probs was but sorrz about that.

In other news tina sounds like a canadian when she speaks english i think its because she actaully pronaounces letters when she speaks and she is still a whore and its hialing outside and she can drive a stick shift and she eats mushrooms (ew gross) and we made cookies because we are just talented like that soooooo
latazzzz biotchezzzzzzz
Lady Luv Killah