27 March 2013

Random stories

Hey all! Sorry for the epic lull in blogging, but nothing has happened to me. At all. The last week has been a blur of trying to get my schedule for next semester, working, Mexico, Mongolia, and general life nonsense. Today, Al and I went to the Mexican consulate in Hannover to see if we need visas to enter the country as tourists. Apparently, Portuguese citizens can hang our for six months with no visa, which is both highly convenient and pretty impressive. Dear My Parents, thanks for making me Portuguese, it has made my life so much easier.

In other news, Al and I went to a movie party at a friend's house the other day and saw Paradise Liebe, which is about sex tourism in Kenya. Had any of us known there would be that many naked people in it, we probably would have voted for the other option, which was Psycho, but we didn't. It was a really, really good movie though. Just so. Much. Naked.

I also went back to Celle (urgh) over the week to the Other American Friend and the South African, who are now married, yay! I got to spend a lovely two days with them, we went to a fun birthday party for a friend of theirs, had an epic pancake-making contest, and ate vegan burritos. Awesomeness! Slowly, slowly, slowly, Celle is filling up with some good memories.

Next week, lots of craziness coming up, plus a day-trip to Hamburg to watch cooking shows in the Portuguese consulate and with any luck pick up my passport.

Yay!

Adios!

18 March 2013

ANNOUNCEMENT TIME!

Hey all,

First, some news! Today I went to Hamburg to wrangle a passport out of the Portuguese consulate. As usual, it was a treat, and by "treat" I mean "a really long wait with only Portuguese cooking shows for entertainment." As always, the consulate made me feel very inadequate for not speaking Portuguese, although I've also discovered that while they inevitably switch to Portuguese as soon as they realize I don't speak it, I understand with no lag time and no translation in my brain--I just can't formulate answers. So that's exciting. It gives me hope that Portuguese is still buried in some dark recess of my brain and will be relearned very quickly.

Why do I need a Portuguese passport? Simply put, I don't want to enter Mexico as an American. While I wouldn't expect to attract attention at the airport, there's always the chance I run into some security guy whose harbors no love in his heart for us. Maybe his brother got deported, I don't know. At any rate, Mexico has no beef with Portugal, and I think I'm less of target going in as Portuguese.

And now, FOR THE NEWS!

Here's a secret. Sort of. Al and I have been talking about this for a while, but we've decided to go ahead and start the application process, so I might as well blog about it

Over the past couple months, I've found myself slowly becoming more and more...discontent. Weirdly so. At first, I thought it was just the stress of school that was making nervous, but school stress didn't quite account for the amount of time I spent flipping through Peace Corp and backpacking blogs. I tried cajoling myself out of this growing discontentment: after all, what did I have to be discontent about? I moved to Europe for crying out loud. I learned a new language. I started a pretty cool degree program. And then I realized where my discontent was coming from: that's all well and good, but it's not enough.

The first problem is (and let's be honest, we all saw it coming) that Germany isn't exciting anymore. German isn't exciting anymore--I speak it so well, I have a hard time telling it apart from English. Sometimes I'll watch a movie or read a newspaper and half an hour later can't for the life of me recall what language it was in. My accent is so minimal that half the time Germans don't even know I'm foreign until I tell them. I realized the other day I've been here going on two years (and learning German for nearly ten). Life immersed in German culture has ceased to be an adventure and has turned into...well, life. In short, I feel like I've beaten Level: Deutschland and now I'm just chilling out with my questionable turtle friends waiting for Luigi to show up so we can move on and kick some more ass.

The other problem is that my the end of my studies are in sight--just one short year away--and I've had to start asking myself what I want to do afterwards. And none of the answers I've proposed to myself sound particularly fun. I know I'm 25 years old, but jumping into the swimming pool of the work force with my floaties on sounds so supremely unexciting, I think I'd rather slash my floaties and feed myself to the fishes. So I've been saying I want to do a Ph.D in the U.K., and maybe I do, but at the moment I think I'm just saying it for lack of a better plan.

Things I know:
--I'm not ready to go back to America.
--I'm not willing to stay in Germany.
--I want an adventure.

I need a plan. I need a challenge. I need some new perspective, a change of scenery, an idea so ridiculous and so stupid and so irresponsible that I feel compelled to go through with it just to see if I can. I have to know that I can. And I'm supremely grateful that when I went to my boyfriend with this ridiculously stupid idea he said, "That's a really, really stupid idea. Let's do it."

How stupid, you ask?

...We're moving to Mongolia.

After we graduate. For at least six months, but probably upwards of a year or more. Turns out Al is just as hell-bent on having an adventure as I am, and has always wanted to live in a ger and ride a horse to school. Currently our plan is to go through a program run by the German government--basically, the Peace Corp except shorter and not reserved for Americans. Also they pay you better. And presumably do something if you get raped or killed. If that doesn't work, there are other ways and programs we can go through. And if none of those work, then we just show up.

Why?

Because FUCK YEAH, that's why!

(Also because I really want to be able to say "the Mongol hordes" on a daily basis.)

In all honesty, the only reason we have to do this is that both of us are suffering from a serious desire to get off the well-worn path from grad school to jobs in academia. It's a rut, and one that we'll fall into on our own terms, when we're ready. But we're not quite ready yet. So we're setting the beaten track on fire. If our getaway vehicle is a yak, bonus points to us.

15 March 2013

Minor fun things

Here are some minor fun stories from the past few days:

--It was my birthday on Tuesday! And we couldn't even really do anything about it because it was blizzarding outside. But I still have a wonderful day and now I'm officially 25 which really freaks me out.

--Having your birthday three thousand miles away from your family and friends is actually kind of cool, because it extends your birthday from one day to three weeks as packages slowly arrive.

--I went to a Ping Pong tournament at a friend's house the other day. As it turns out, I'm so bad at Ping Pong that the other players had to start playing with a handicap (i.e., their wrong hands) so that the game would last more than a minute. And I STILL never won a game, not even with the handicap!

--I totally beasted the oral part of my Spanish final yesterday. I felt really bad for my partner who couldn't put a sentence together so I kept helping her by filling things in where she was so obviously struggling. At one point my teacher said, "I know what you're trying to do, and while I'm sure she appreciates it, she has to form a sentence on her own." Sigh. I tried partner, I tried.

--My death paper is turned in, which is exciting, Next week I'm off to Hamburg to get my Portuguese passport and to Hannover to talk to the consulate people about whether or not I need a visa.

--I got exciting news today! My funding money has come in, which means I can start buying things. Yay!

That's all I got. Adios!

12 March 2013

An Open Letter to the Red/Green Parties in Germany

Dear The Red/Green Parties (SPD und Die GrĂ¼nen),

I get that you're weird. First, you're German, which doesn't help matters, and second, you're locked in a Commie/Tree-Hugger death alliance which is hellbent on tar and feathering all rational human beings while singing happy songs about energy-efficient light bulbs.

When you decided to close down the "dangerous" (read: well-regulated) nuclear power plants in Germany, I thought you were a bit weird. When you started importing less well-regulated nuclear energy from France and the Czech Republic, I thought you were weirder. When you talked a lot of talk about nuclear power plants being terrible for the environment but then opened up coal plants, I thought you were off your goddamn rocker.

When you started pushing for a minimum wage but refused to pay your interns, I thought you were a bit weird. When you decided to do away with holding failing students back in Lower Saxony schools, I thought you were weirder. When you talked a lot of talk about child development and encouraging student performance but then put it on your official party agenda to ban grades, I thought you'd been possessed by a demon.

When you declared it your goal to ban the German flag and national anthem, I thought you were a bit weird. When you started talking about implementing a Lower Saxony-wide ban on driving cars on Sundays, I thought you were weirder. When you talked a lot of talk about being liberals who let people make their own choices but then started pushing for one "vegetarian day" per week in which it would be impossible to buy or serve meat, I thought you'd hit the organic crack pipe a little too enthusiastically

But I would forgive you of all your nonsense if you would do one thing for me. Just one thing. One tiny, tiny thing.

When it snows, SALT THE GODDAMNED ROADS ALREADY.

Will it break your dog's feet? No. Will it ruin your cat's health? No. Will all the little birdies have a heart attack when they see what you've done to the places they normally crap on? Fuck no, what is wrong with you? Please for five minutes pull your heads out of your asses and acknowledge that the only thing worse for the roads than salt is the collective wreckage of multiple cars which have slid, crashed, flipped, or otherwise been pulverized into heaps of twisted metal that may or may not have already exploded into an environmentally-friendly fireball.

Just think about how much better it is for your dog's mental health when the bone he's chewing on does not turn out to be a human femur.

SALT THE ROADS.

Wishing you the best of luck in your future endeavors of asshattery,
Tina

09 March 2013

100th Letter = Chocolate

See this?

That's my box of letters and notes from people I love--91 of them, to be exact! And this blog post is me taking a short break from writing my paper to say for the millionth time that letters are the best thing ever--better than Skype, better than email, better than Facebook. Actually, the best thing every is seeing the people who send you the letters, but letters come in close second. And yes, I save every single one.

This box is a BOX OF LOVE.

Well, it would be. If I took out all the letters from Claire that remind me what a whore I am. 

So I'm offering a bar of German chocolate to whoever sends me my 100th letter. Yay! That's all I got!

04 March 2013

EXCITINGNESS!

Here are some things that are scary:

--Zombies
--Zombie movies
--Zombie TV shows
--The Walking Dead
--That moment you get something you really, really want.

I have a tendency to talk about things I want like I already have them, like they're on their way but there was an accident on the Autobahn and traffic's backed up so they'll be a bit late. I supposed it's a weird cross between magical thinking and just plain stubbornness, which probably  makes me a fairy mule, but it's also pretty good way to make sure I don't get scared and back out of things. Everyone knows getting started is the hardest part, and I'm secretly terrified I'll turn into that person who always says they're going to do awesome things but finds a way not to. So completely lacking in the natural extrovertedness that makes people do cool shit, I always try to make public declarations of my plans as insurance on my pride that I'll go through with them.

Am I alone in this?  Yes?  Anyway.

In the case of my field research in Mexico, I've been talking about it like we're a done deal skipping our way over to the churro stand, but I was only half expecting it to happen. Well, today I got super super exciting news--my project got funded! Technically only partially funded but who the hell cares? One of the grants I applied for came through (in full!) which means I can officially start buying equipment and looking at plane tickets. I am both out of my mind with jubilation and absolutely fucking terrified, all in the same weird rambling monster currently swing dancing in my stomach. I have no idea what to do with myself. What am I going to do with myself?

I know. I'm going to go to goddamn Mexico on a goddamn adventure and see if I come out the other goddamn side. Possibly with a thesis, although let's be honest with ourselves, I only signed up for this to see if I could hack it.

Adventuretime Mexicoland is officially a go!