A few days in Paradise

It seems like a long time ago that I was on the shores of that Caribbean island, doing nothing but figuring out how to do nothing. Today the realization hit me that only a week has passed since spring break. The week following one of the most relaxing weeks of my life seemed to take up the busyness of a month. Between working on a new major art project, twenty hours of work, developing a playable script for a directing workshop that would consume my mind for the week and my actions for the weekend, and getting settled back into a routine of “normalcy”, I found myself monumentally ready for a break in the action. So today, I take a moment in that break of action to revel in my experiences just last week.

A view of Old Town San Juan from a castle turret

Nine o’clock A.M. Sun streaks through the gap in the curtains of our cheap, bathroom sized hostel room, home of three other inhabitants besides myself. I have no choice but to wake up. I wouldn’t describe it as stifling, but it was the first time in a week that I experienced the sunny 81-degree Puerto Rican weather in something besides a hammock. I was just thankful to have a shower. Eventually we roam around Old Town San Juan and explore the Spanish castles. I didn’t know there were any castles in America that didn’t have the Disney stamp on them so I was super excited. After exploring in a manner that reminded my travel mate and I of times in Europe, we moseyed to the airport to spend the “night” there before flying out super early the next morning. While on our aimless amble, we came across a wonderful place to eat a local meal, something we had been looking for. Taco Bell and Walmart just seemed wrong when in the Caribbean. Walmart is how our troubles for the trip began in the first place.

I climbed a coconut tree similar to this one to get milk for our breakfast

Almost 180 hours before (the Friday on the preceding week), we had our taxi driver stop at Walmart so we could pick up necessities we didn’t pack along before spending a week on the island of Culebra. A day and a half prior, we set out on a journey to this island, and without sleeping (due to travel) we had made it to this point. Our brains were working at a significantly lower functional capacity than normal and mixing that with our communication barrier we had with our barely-spoke-English taxi driver, we got left at Walmart instead of him waiting for us. Oh well. We walked to the ferry from there through a part of town that would normally frighten us, but we hadn’t slept so we were only working on a mechanical level. This took about an hour. The ferry had left for the night and we, by happenstance, found a hostel right next door and stayed the night. So like the pirates of old, in the morning, Culebra would be ours.

Our view every morning when we woke up. Not a bad life
you might rightly say.

It was, and it was pretty swell. We ate cereal with the milk of coconuts since we didn’t know how long regular milk would last sans refrigeration, and it’s the Caribbean so why not? We cooked all our meals, except the cereal one of course, on a pit of coals, and had altogether a great time. One night it rained which was complicated because we were in hammocks with just a tarp that was about 2 inches above my head. Remarkably we remained dry; we cannot say the same for several of the tenters that didn’t last the storm. I got tanned and of course sunburned…because I’m white and that’s what happens. And on the theme of whiteness, one day I was looking for coconuts with which to eat breakfast, but they had all been scavenged by last night’s campers who were clever and didn’t procrastinate. However, me being a Colorado boy who grew up climbing mountains and trees would not be thwarted by the coconuts in the trees above me. I wasn’t, but I fell a few times.

Our trip ended similarly to how it began. We ended up not sleeping for a couple of days in transit. I am willing to loose sleep, something I do on a regular basis as a film student, to save money, something I as a film student rarely have. But all of our transit was beautifully uncomplicated, contrasting the way it was at the beginning and we got home safe and sound a mere 5 hours before I had to get up and go to work and start the week after spring break.

A random little pier in Old Town San Juan. It was closed so I couldn't walk on it. That doesn't mean I can't get pictures though.

The part of the beach opposite to our campsite. The green area across the water, about in line with the buoy is where our campsite was. 

Time is a spaceship

Some days life just seems to fly by. Other days it hurtles through space at warp speed. Mine never does anything other than the latter...at least that's how it feels. Sometimes there are moments where it seems to stand still for but a second. It’s in those standstill moments where I realize that it’s been entirely too long since I last did anything about updating people on my flyaway year. Today I end the unknown. 

I started school with a foray. I was ready to plunder all from life that I could. I was with my best friend again, and I was in a land where the hardest language barrier was trying to understand they "Hey y'all"s and the call to get some "fixins" for dinner; all of which I learned how to decipher from an early age. I endeavored to go climbing every weekend, to go camping and hiking and introspecting equally as frequent. But school and life had different ideas. The semester started and I ran here and there, doing this and that until soon enough it was Christmas break. In that time I acquired useful skills towards my major; I now feel a lot better about my Sound Design skills, and I have determined that it is actually a really enjoyable area. I soldiered through my design class that is the A&P of the Art Degrees. I retained my job at the film studio, got hired on to make a documentary about other people's abroad experiences and I procured a job in the language department where I tutor German. This makes me happy because it was one of the fears I had when coming back to America; that I would lose the German that I worked so hard to communicate with. For one of my classes I had to take a placement exam at the beginning and end of the semester and I actually managed to increase my German proficiency despite being in a country whose native language isn’t German.

As Christmas came, like all Christmases do, I was surrounded by a barrage of final projects and a test (yes, as an art student, I actually took a test), an oddly out of place warm December, and an overwhelming desire to be back in the land that invented the modern Christmas. Germany had left its mark on my being deeper than the American veneer I was able to use as a mask. So when I left school and headed home, the first thing that I tried to accomplish, besides finding a gift for my nephew, was to make my Christmas in Colorado like the one I enjoyed in Germany. Hours later, the pastries were done and I sat back and indulged upon the wonderful smells that are synonymous with baking and Christmas.

After the New Year, I was ready for a slightly less involved semester. I was burnt out by the 7am to 9pm nonstop shift of school and work that happened every day. These times didn’t take into account homework. I still had to do that when I got home. It was a huge difference from my schedule in Germany. Where I would get 10 hours of sleep a night, I would manage that in a week. Fortunately, my pace did slow and I am able to get more sleep through creative time management.

This semester seems like it started last week. But really it is almost half over already. Spring break is two weeks away and as I sit in my room looking out at the ice storm that has befallen this panic stricken region. My mind wanders easily to that time two weeks from now, where I will be able to relax on the Caribbean island of Culebra in Puerto Rico. I’m not usually one for the Caribbean, but a hammock in the shade of two palm trees as the ocean roars in the not-so-far-off distance really sounds quite indescribably lovely right now. I don’t know if I have gotten lazy, burnt out, or just tired of school, but my motivation for all but two of my classes seems to have gone away at the same rate as time has and an island adventure might just be my cure. 

My dad found a 65mm camera in our house over the break and now I want to take it with me to Moab this summer. I haven’t decided officially or not, but before my ninth summer of camp starts, I want to take a vacation to Moab and just go out and take pictures, relax and maybe shoot a short film or two. There should be plenty of action going on, it’s Moab after all. But sitting out over Dead Horse Point with a medium format camera on a 1980s era tripod sounds like a pretty fun way to start a summer. Basically I just need an adventure to run away with me. 

Who knew that travelling, an inherently stressful endeavor, would be such a good escape from the stresses of life? Ok I guess I did, but still…it’s an interesting thought.

Next week my professor from Germany comes to recruit at my school. I cannot wait to visit with her. She became family while I was there. Or rather I became part of hers. From the first day I got there, I felt as though I had been adopted into her family and since then have considered her as such. Maybe seeing her here will take me back to that place where I sat with my window open, my feet hanging over the ledge and me looking out over the middle-German landscape of trees and tall grasses. Where adventure was just a bike ride away, and a new and exciting land was just around the corner. 

Soon. Soon I will be there where adventure looms like the tornados on the plains of my favorite state, where I can escape to the lure of a place where excitement lives just on the edges of everywhere, to that new and fantastic place I have never been before. Soon I will be there, if only in my head.

I really should just need to think again, that everywhere is an adventure, and every day is a gift. Grinding away at life isn’t as noteworthy as taking a train through 18 European countries, but it can still be eventful. I never seem to have a boring time. Every day is an adventure and every location is a classroom. I learn more than I think and sometimes just sitting still for a nanosecond while the spaceship called time hurtles through space is the best way to remember all the blessings life brings.

It's all in the head

Adventure doesn’t rest even if I am not traveling. It is a mindset, one that I have developed and learned through the years. Even though I do not have a car right now and I haven’t really been off campus much I still find ways to have a good time. I was invited to hang out with my camp friends and go on a hike that led to a waterfall we could climb. Seems fun to me.

On the way to the hike a torrent of rain hit us as fast as a bag of bricks would if they fell from a bucket in the sky. The rainstorm seemed apocalyptic, as do most rainstorms in the south from the perspective of a western desert dweller like myself. Then out of the rain we saw a car with the words “Jesus is coming” written on the back. The irony of the timing was fantastic. Apparently they thought it was an apocalyptic rainstorm too.

Fortunately we were going the opposite direction of the storm and where we ended up there was no rain. The hike was relaxing and quite fun. All of us seemed to have a good time. The waterfall was beautiful.

Now I like climbing probably a little more than the next guy, but I do get freaked out sometimes, mostly due to falls I have had from me being stupid. A lot of times I second-guess the smartness of a climbing situation nowadays. Yeah I know, how boring. This looked like a good time to invoke the smartness. But then again you only do live once. I was the only one barefoot but decided that wasn’t a problem and I started going up with everyone else.

Yeah this wasn’t a hard climb, and I never actually got that high, but the last time I was on a waterfall climbing, the stakes were literally higher and it wasn’t a good time. I look back on it as a time of great epicness but at the time…nope. That in mind, I didn’t push it on these rocks. They were pretty slippery and there was no nice pool to land in at the bottom. If there was, then I start doing one of my favorite sports, cliff jumping, and life would be most excellent.

Just rocks sat at the bottom of this fall, and a pool about 5 inches deep at the maximum depth. So when we kept climbing higher I went to the side where I could cling to the very strong root systems tightly. I loosened up after my foot slipped and my weight went on the roots. Then I realized they would hold me and then life became a lot more cavalier. Now I felt I could be like a monkey and a parkour athlete all at the same time.

Or not. There was mud. On my way down, off to the side I tried my new idea. Yeah…I had to get back in the water at the bottom to clean myself off. Reminded that it had just rained by the mud on me, I had another excuse to sit in the falls again.

All in all it was a very fun trip. I had more energy than a squirrel on crack so I decided to run up the trail. I hate stairs. I hate running too. I didn’t make it more than two corners before I was panting and waiting for everyone else.  

Adventure doesn’t follow me wherever I go. I have to decide to make it happen. So maybe I will have more to blog about this year.

Year in Review Blog: Lebensfreude

As the end of my first year in Germany approaches its inevitable conclusion, I reflect on my time here, the lessons I have learned and the person I have become. Many stories will get told for the first time, some existing stories will get a behind the scenes look. This series will last a week and by the end of the week, hopefully you will have a better view of what it is like to be a student abroad.

Episode 6: Lebensfreude 

In 2 weeks from today I will be heading home. This comes with the obvious mix of emotions. I am not ready to leave Germany. That’s just how it is. America will feel foreign to me for a little while, which is probably good that I am pretty much going straight to the one place on this earth that has always felt like home. No matter how far away I get, no matter what things go on in my life, GVR is that constant. It is that place where I can always go to, where I can find myself both spiritually and literally closer to heaven.

When I board that plane in Hamburg to head home, I am sure I will feel more than I did when I left America for a year. I will be going home. But I will also be leaving a place that has taught me unbelievably much. I will have to, for a few months, not travel to a magical castle on a hillside, I will not be in a place where I have to work to understand what people are saying, and I will have a place that I have comfort in. I have gotten so used to the outside edges of my comfort zone, that it now feels like that is where my comfort zone is.

I know that these two weeks are going to fly by way too fast. The closer the day comes, the more I have to do to prepare. Time will fly by.  It will be an ironic contrast to the times in which I felt time sit still. I have talked about being in the wilderness and losing the care of anything else in the world. Now, as it seems, I will have all those cares bound down on me like a charging lineman after the quarterback, bound to tackle me and take away hopes of forward progress. But woe is not me, I will return to Germany in the fall to continue my quixotic adventures in this now not foreign land.

Living life to its fullest often takes risks. As mentioned in Adventure, life doesn’t always come easy, and it’s often the challenges that make it the most interesting. For those of you who know me, I like sports that aren’t your traditional team sports. Things like American Football, or Hockey are fun sports to play, but my favorites are things like rock climbing and cliff jumping (side note, deep water soloing equals the best of both worlds and therefore the coolest sport ever). But the funny thing to it is that I am actually quite scared of heights. When I am out leading a climb, especially a trad climb, I am freaking out a lot simply because I am scared of heights. My few falls that I have had have come from no higher than ten meters, so it’s not a terribly justified fear, but everyone has at least one I guess. Whenever I tell anyone I am scared of heights and they know that I like sports with heights, and that I worked in a ropes course for two summers, they have a hard time believing me. But it is the fear of heights that drives me to like these sports so much.

Not only is rock climbing really good for one’s physical health, the mental and spiritual side grows too. Trust me, at thirty meters, doing a lead climb when scared of heights, one’s prayer life increases a lot. But more to the point, I like the sports that really challenge me as a person. Like rock climbing or cliff jumping and my Höhenangst, Germany is that one thing that I can turn to that keeps me on the edge or outside my comfort zone as often as possible. I am always challenged here.

I have often been described as an adrenaline junky, but I prefer the term adventure addict. I have to have adventure or I become just a guy sitting around all day watching TV and daydreaming about the future. I have a fundamental problem with being that kind of person, and while it is okay to do both of those things in small quantities; I try to run my life in a balance system. Even in the way I eat it should be balanced. I can eat that delicious ball of sugary goodness or watch TV, but not in excess, if it becomes more than the healthy things, then it is no longer a balanced system.

Not only do I have an unquenchable thirst for captivating enterprises, but its because of this thirst that I have the joie de vivre that I do.  I find life awesome. I guess that is no surprise coming from someone who just spent nine months living in Europe, but in fact, there is no way to replace this. And that in a very short summary is why I am coming back next year. I love it here; I love the constant learning, the edification, the adventure, and the introspection of constantly writing a blog. I wouldn’t write much in America, not as many exciting things happen to me there.

My constant pursuit of learning and of adventure has lead my to my Lebensfreude. In Germany, I have learned a lot about myself. Now I just come back and learn a little more. Learning of oneself is a gathering of wisdom that covers many subjects, topics and themes. I cannot wait to continue my journey to myself via Germany. The tickets are bought. The plans are made. I just have to hold on for the ride. It will be exciting.

Year in Review Blog: Perspective

As the end of my first year in Germany approaches its inevitable conclusion, I reflect on my time here, the lessons I have learned and the person I have become. Many stories will get told for the first time, some existing stories will get a behind the scenes look. This series will last a week and by the end of the week, hopefully you will have a better view of what it is like to be a student abroad.

Episode 5: Perspective.

Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time – Steven Wright

 Over time, your opinions of things might change. You may have once loathed something that you now cannot get enough of. This happened to me with carbonated water. San Peligrinos and Perriers used to be something that I despised above almost all other beverages. My father would bring home Perriers and he would be the only one to ever touch them. The summer before coming to Germany I had a choice to make. I could continue hating this extremely popular drink style in Germany, or I could learn to like it. I figured the latter was more beneficial so I endeavored to like Perriers. (Since being in Germany I have forgotten the English name for carbonated water so I will from here on out refer to them by the companies in which they are the most common in the US). My trick for learning to like such a horrific thing was to drink it only when I felt I was dying of thirst. That way whatever I was drinking was quenching my thirst and I would learn to associate it better. It worked dramatically. Within the first few bottles of the stuff (back then they lasted longer) I learned to enjoy them. Now that I am in Germany, I drink it so much that I prefer it to regular water.

Water hasn’t been the only thing that I have changed my opinion on. Most kinds of foods that I didn’t like, which before coming to Germany were already a minimal amount, I learned to like or even love. Perspectives change when you are in the right situation. And though it may require you to feel like you are dying before you like it, as was the case with the Perriers, your perspectives will inevitably change.

In addition to flavor changes, my perspective on the world dramatically changed. I realized that as an American I was radically uneducated in what the real world was like. There were so many things that the media would show me that just weren’t right. I went to an Islamic country and had one of the best times of my whole year here. I did get tear gassed there, but the protest that was happening was one that, were it happening to me, I would have probably been right there in on. I never got blown up, taken hostage, or decapitated.

I also was uneducated in the ways of other cultures. You really have to learn on the go as you travel through some of these places. They do give you a little bit of leeway because they know you are a foreigner and you probably don’t know. But as soon as you are taught, you are expected to know and then act accordingly.

In America we are taught that it is the best country in the world, all other countries look up to us because we have so much to offer, and that everyone either loves America and is willing to risk life and limb to get here, or hates us and wants to blow us up. Before leaving for Germany I was one of those people that was blindly patriotic with an unbridled zeal like I was taught to be by…well everything in America. The truth of it is that most people don’t care where I am from. The dollar isn’t the currency to wave around in most countries to get what you want at least in this region. It’s the Euro. America isn’t any better than a lot of other countries, and no one, apart from a few shepherds with AK-47s in a cave somewhere, thinks about us that often. In Bulgaria I mentioned I was from America and it wasn’t that big of a deal other than, “wow you are a long ways from home.” 

In the beginning it made me a little sad…no one thinking about America. I wasn’t sure if I was sadder because no one thought about us, or because I wrongly thought everyone would. In Germany they think about us about as often as we them. America sometimes comes through the news headlines, but only things like “Giant flood in Colorado” or “NSA caught spying on Angela Merkel”. At that second news headline, many Germans did have a lot to say about Americans. I became a little less proud to be called an American, but I did keep my loyalties, I just wasn't waving a flag out in the streets.

But American is what I am. It is my homeland. While I was raised in the country with a blind patriotism, I have now changed into a well-informed person who loves his country. I may not always be the proudest person of my country but I do love it. So in case you were thinking I might be losing my heritage, I am not. I am always very concerned with where I have come from. I have just changed my perspective a little.

Well enough of that. To quote Marty McFly “This is some heavy stuff Doc” and well, heavy doesn’t fly. So on to something a little more my steam.

A final perspective shift I have had is that I thought I couldn’t handle spicy foods. Now don’t get your hopes up. I am still as white as the walls on a padded cell, but my spice tolerance is leaps and bounds above most Germans. To quote one of my friends, “If it is spicier than bread, they cannot take it.” Now I know we can make breads pretty spicy, with all kinds of peppers and all, but what we are talking about is your regular run-of-the-mill bread. I don’t really have a problem with their inability to eat spicy foods; back home I am normally the one who is sweating through something that has a jalapeño somewhere in it. The problem of perspective has arisen. Whenever I eat with Germans, I can eat the spicy things they cannot. I fear for the day when I get back to America. I am used to being somewhere on the upper end of the spice tolerance ladder. This just isn’t me in real life. As soon as I eat anything in America that is remotely spicy my mouth will explode and man will have figured out faster-than-light travel.

Perspectives changing can be dangerous in regards to spice tolerance, but I have found that most of the time, it is a positive thing. Altering the way we look at things because of the new information we have gathered is one of the most basic levels of growth. So I challenge anyone who reads this, to go travel outside of your own culture and country and develop your own perspective shifts. It is one of the coolest things to look back on. 

Side note: I had this in my notes for this blog but then didn’t find the best place to add it in. Another perspective change I had was about milk. In America, our milk is not all the way pasteurized for marketing reasons. Because we always had milk in a place where it was kept cool, people never changed it when selling it because they thought it would discourage milk drinkers if it wasn’t cool. Well in Germany, they don’t worry about this nonsense, and their milk is pasteurized. This means that one can pick up milk right off of a shelf…and put it in ones cupboard. This novel idea really made me happy. Now I can buy milk, not use it for a while, and keep it in my room without a fridge. Beware: it does need to be kept cool after it has been opened. But I have now gotten used to room temperature (or in America “hot”) drinks. I had a cold drink the other day…I was confused…it tasted funny. Room temperature drinks are now something that I have no problem with…unless its semi pasteurized milk in America that someone left out. 

Year In Review Blog: Edification

As the end of my first year in Germany approaches its inevitable conclusion, I reflect on my time here, the lessons I have learned and the person I have become. Many stories will get told for the first time, some existing stories will get a behind the scenes look. This series will last a week and by the end of the week, hopefully you will have a better view of what it is like to be a student abroad.

Episode 4: Edification

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust

The inevitability of one learning while in another country for a year is nearly equal to taxes and death. Learning doesn’t necessarily come easy. Like taxes, sometimes one learns with a painstaking arduousness that can comes with buckling down and just getting it done. Like death, learning comes inevitably to us all, but how we deal with it depends on the person.

Even though I have been in this country for about ten months, I still learn many cultural things on a regular basis. Between how you address someone older than you to how you find seating on a train, I am always finding new and surprising things.

One of the first things that I learned was what to do with backpacks at a restaurant. A lot of Germans carry around backpacks or some kind of extra carrying device because they like to be prepared for everything and need somewhere to carry it all. No really, I am pretty sure the average German could survive the Zombie Apocalypse just from what they carry with them in these bags. It is nice because as a tourist I carry a backpack with me everywhere and don’t look silly while in Germany.

I had learned within a short time of arriving in Germany that there is etiquette to having backpacks in a restaurant. I figured there would be but didn’t know it. I soon found out. Normally I sit my backpack on the floor beside me, mostly because I know right were it is and I can wrap my foot through one of the straps. I am not paranoid, this is just good life practice. The two older ladies at the table beside me told me that if there was a free chair at my table to put the backpack there. At first I was a little confused, but then I thought about it and it made sense, it is now out of the way of the servers that bring us our food, and it looks nicer to have it tucked away. Whenever there isn’t a free table having it likewise tucked under one’s chair like the extra carry-on bag on an airplane is the acceptable way. Maybe this is the same in America. I don’t normally go around with a backpack there. But it was a good lesson to learn.

Trains in Germany are famous. For people in Germany, the Deutsche Bahn means something completely different than say, in America. In the US, I hear people talking about how punctual the German trains are. I am on a campaign to educate America. German trains are not on time. Busses are, but trains are not. Even for this one major drawback, millions of people in Germany use the trains every day despite every German's intense basic life need to be exactly on time. Always. 

So with millions of people using trains there has to be order, because in Germany, there is always order for something. And if you thought that the trains would be an exception, you would be mistaken. The great finding-a-seat-on-the-train-when-it's-already-half-full-and-you-don't-have-time-to-wait-for-another trick has a complex "order" to it. Say for instance one is getting on a train in a not-so-main hub, like a smaller town or suburb (or German equivalent), he or she might have a hard time finding a spot, especially if that person is traveling with someone else.The train is probably mostly full already. No one likes standing in trains even for short amounts of time. What do you do? Well first you must search the entire train for an empty row. Not an empty seat, an empty row. If you find one somewhere that isn’t first class, good for you. You have ended your struggle and can now sit down for the duration of your trip. 

Suppose you do not find a full empty row however, because everyone else has done the same thing did and you now see rows (of two seats) with only one person in them. Because Germany is a populous country, odds are very high that you don’t know a single person on your train and you are now forced to sit next to someone you don’t know. Yes even the Germans, the well-known chatterboxes and overtly friendly people, are uncomfortable with this.

If, by the time you have searched the whole train for a spot and haven’t found an empty row, and you are not to your destination, you now go through the process of finding the best person to sit beside. Not the man sleeping against the window, when he wakes up that might be awkward, not the mother with two screaming children right behind you, you want to read your book, or listen to music in peace. Not the hottest girl on the train, you don’t actually want to talk to someone while on this voyage, so it could be weird. You find the most normal, average person you can find and then ask in as few words as possible if you can sit there. If they say yes, you are good to go and you spend the rest of the trip awkwardly sitting there next to a person you don’t know trying not to make eye contact. If they say no, you find a spot where someone lets you sit down. IF you are unfortunate to get on last, and everyone has gone through this process before you and there is only the last choices available, you can either sit next to the sleeping homeless man or you can stand just off the doorway waiting impatiently for your stop, probably blocking the door for that guy in the wheelchair now making yourself look like an inconsiderate jerk.

You may think that this description was greatly exaggerated or that because I am a foreigner and don’t really like talking to random people on a train that this isn’t how it is on a train. This is however, the struggle of most people in trains in Germany. The biggest difference I have found is that they won't walk through the whole train unless they are going to be on it for a really long time. Most people only search within their cars because they have already scouted which car is the emptiest from the platform outside. If you are sitting next to a person that you don’t know and the man that was sleeping in front of you wakes up for his stop and gets off, you now as the aisle person, have the easiest route to an empty row; and lots of people will change seats for that empty row. But there is a trick to this too. If you are in an area where lots of people could still get on, you run the risk of being one of the last free seats and might get stuck with someone who would be lower on the"Preferential Row Partner" list than the person you just left and now you might have to go past them to get off or go to the bathroom and maybe share that look of awkwardness that makes you uncomfortable that you ever changed.  You might also be potentially taking an old lady’s seat that you didn’t see getting on the train right after the sleepy man’s disembarking. On a side note, old people can be really good people to sit next to. They have had years of experience in this area and can profile a good row partner quickly. They also don't usually say much because they understand what being a good row partner means.

If you are an extrovert, love people, and don’t mind talking to people that aren’t really looking for a deep philosophical conversation on their way to or from work, you will have zero problems getting a spot on a train. However other people around you might just enjoy riding in peace and shoot you looks that mean to make you a quieter traveller. This however would  probably be the most confrontation you will get. A classmate told a story of how a man was abruptly screaming bloody murder on the train and the other passengers looked around to make sure he wasn’t dying, and once they had determined that, they tried to ignore the intrusion for the duration of the man’s journey. No one told him to stop, no one asked him to move, everyone just sat in their own awkward silence praying that the man would get off on the next stop.

It’s not that the Germans aren’t friendly. They are some of the friendliest people I know. It’s just that they may tend to prefer their commute in the solitude of a book, newspaper, or their iPod. One cannot blame them for this. Not talking to someone could be safer, I mean what happens if they are a chatterbox that tells you their entire life story. What if they recently ate garlic (and for Germans in this case recent could mean within the last 5 years). It’s a really great system, why change it? It at least gives you something to do on the train, and as an outsider, it can be really amusing to watch.

Many people have asked me if I do any schoolwork because I am always traveling. I always tell them the same; that I have school, and I learn a lot, it’s just not as good to write about. Not many people like to hear much about schoolwork, but to put everyone’s suspicions to rest I will briefly go through what I have learned in school:

Every day I learn the complexities in the German language.

Grammar and vocab are just a few obstacles in this prose.

As I learned to speak German, many problems arose.

A verb plus an ending can make a noun; umarmen is to embrace and Umarmung is an embrace.

Nouns have articles and articles change their face,

   depending on object, indirect object, clause, or case.

            Don’t think that is hard yet, the German language is never this easy.

            It has rules for everything…except when it doesn’t.

There is no word for complete randomness, because in German; random?…It just wasn’t.

            You always say what you mean so there is no word for “never mind”,

            Regardless of what truth you may glean or later find.

            School in Germany is different than back in America.

            Eating in class is considered rude,

            That is unless you offer everyone your food.

            Yawning and stretching is a sign of disrespect

            But watching TV all night makes one tired as you’d expect.

            College is loads of fun, especially in Germany

            Lots of breaks and travelling add to what we learn

            We may speak only English until we return

            But nothing beats our newfound sophistication

            Because studying abroad is all about edification.

There, that settles the discussion of schooling once and for all. I do have school, and that’s probably the most interesting way to hear about it. Some things that I found interesting were that during breaks, or holidays the weather is less than peachy but as soon as I go back to school the weather couldn’t be better and we are sitting inside pining away about how we wish we could be outside. Today is a fantastic example. It is some of the most beautiful weather of the year and I am about as attracted to class as two south pole magnets and tomorrow, when I have only a short time in class, it is supposed to rain. Murphy's Law is often the story of my life. 

Curriculum and external learning have all taught me about German, Germany, and the Germans. (Does that still count as alliteration?) And learning the finer points of a culture has been really fun for me. It has come with its uncomfortable moments, but that is all part of the learning. As I said yesterday, uncomfortableness leads to or is an adventure. And experiencing life vivaciously through another culture is the best way to learn. My views on many things have changed throughout my time here. I have thought about deep philosophical things, especially relating to foreign cultures, practices and traditions from all over the world, not just Germany, and I have looked at my own home country with an outside view that has really helped put things into perspective. The edification alone that one receives while living in a foreign land is worth all the struggles it takes to get.