The redhead is moved into her new room.

    And so we reach the point of no return! Next time I am not in this room I will be an older, wiser, much better German speaking, more adultish person.  (I hope)
    I moved in yesterday and discovered something super awesome. Almost every bed you will come to in Germany will have a super freaking HUGE pillow. They are the same width as the ones in the US on either side of your head but they are longer so that they are perfectly square.
    I’ve gotten used to something, like first off everyone speaking a different language. Well, if this ever happens to you, know that you will not understand everything all the time. At first you will have to concentrate very hard to understand. No book can really prepare you to speak and understand German clearly immediately. Sometimes it is very hard to understand what people say, especially when they speak very quickly or speak a dialect of German instead of hoch deutsch to you. There are a lot of freakin dialects. There is a channel of news for every single dialect in Germany. In fact most Germans who speak only a certain dialect or hoch deutsch cannot understand a lot of other dialects even when spoken clearly. Wiablingen, where I live, is near Stuttgart and both are in Schwebia. Thus the dialect here is Schwebish.The parents in my host family are both from Siegerland and so when they first got here they could barely understand anybody.
    I’ve also gotten used to the water. Here we don’t drink tap water, we drink mineral water. I guess it’s because Germans think tap water is dirty or something. But mineral water’s pretty good, not so weird and different anymore. And also t seems here I eat a LOT more chocolate and meat and bread. I have chocolate crunchy neutela spread almost every morning, not that I’m complaining. Table manners are much different too. The most proper manners at another persons house you must hold fork in left hand and knife in right hand throughout the meal, and when we sit down to eat you must wait until everyone has what they want to eat on their plate before you begin eating.
    But other than that, we are all the same, just a few puddles apart.

The redhead is in Germany!

The first sesame street clip I saw in german was called,"Die Unterschied zwischen hier und da."(The difference between here and there) (click here to see "unterschied zwischen hier und da!") and when I got here and Christian started up the car to drive out of Frankfurt, I felt like I was in one of those picture games that I played when I was little. The game where you must find all the differences between the two pictures to win. The biggest difference I found was, here when I try to communicate I feel really dumb and slow, which is a very helpless pathetic feeling. But each time I feel this way I simply remind myself that the first step to wisdom is admiting ignorance.One day everyday will be much easier.... one day I will stop typing "z" when I am trying to type "y". (The letters are switched on this german keyboard)
But I like Germany so far. It is much more compact than America, much narrower streets that wind around and the houses are all beautiful and old. I've been in places much older than America itself and though I thought coming here and seeing these places and walking around would make me feel different , make me feel like a  new person, it really doesn't. (Unless of course, you count clumsiness and curiousity, both of which I havemore now it seems, than ever before.) While Christian (my host dad) and I walked through town today a gianormous truck flew past me and I being on the sidewalk next to it jumped three feet in the air because if I had flung my arm out I could have lost it! Christian laughed at me and I laughed too because trucks pass all the time and the germans around us looked at me very strangely. Otherwise the doors inside the house are slightly different.The lightswitches are slightly different also in the way that they are more square and you press down on either bottom or top to make it on or off. they are also sometimes more outside the rooms than usual and they are mostly waist height. (At least they are here, I've only been in one house so far.)
The food is soooooooo good. You have no idea, it's simply amazing in an unexplainable way. Richer, I suppose. but here it is also the same in that there are still churches and people and street signs and houses. And afterall this is someone's hometown and homeland too, just like the United States is mine. It is old and new, confusing and understandable, the easiest and the wierdest thing that has ever happened to me. AND I LOVE IT (:

The redhead loves...

The sound of her mother's voice. The sound of her father's voice. Her sister Sasha's voice. Her sister Jesse's voice. The way her nephew cannot yet pronounce his "r"s. Her brother-in-law Mathew's knowing reassurances and wisedom. Corn on the cob. The way everything just is. The smell of her house.

The redhead is leaving tomorrow at 8pm for Deutschland.

For the record, blogging while you cry is very hard. The screen gets blurry whenever a new tear overwhelms the capacity of your eyes.

Today, after seeing my last friends and family before my departure, I repacked my suitcase encompassing all the things I forgot about the first time. Just when I wish time would be more sluggish, it tends to drop like a brick on my foot.

You remember those movies where someone packing up their belongings to leave would sit on the suitcase to force everything to fit or force it in some other overly exaggerated way? They don’t exaggerate. Clothes seem very small in one-piece units, but like when people get together, when clothing get to together there is a lot of volume than you had originally thought there would be. And I suppose if we’re making equivocations, ask anyone who knows me and they will tell you I have a lot of vocal volume which means according to my ratio that I have a LOT of clothing. More than I thought I did. Because suddenly, 50 pounds seems very limiting, as do the walls of the suitcase.

Tonight before my mother went to bed, she read me my favorite book when I was little. I don’t know if you know it, it is called “Guess How Much I Love You?”. It is about a momma rabbit and a baby rabbit and the baby rabbit is trying to tell the momma rabbit how much he loves her. He measures it with things he can see like the length of his wingspan, the height of his hopping, but momma rabbit is so much bigger than him that she always wins the measurement of love until baby rabbit tells her how he loves her all the way up to the moon, and once baby is asleep, momma whispers that she loves him to the moon and back. Well needless to say the bedtime story ended in tears and snuggles. No matter how much I tried not to cry, I ended up crying so much my breath was jumping out of me in wild gasps. I eventually calmed down after much rocking. I tucked my mommy into bed and kissed her goodnight. I hugged my daddy, and kissed him.

It’s amazing how much I’ve cried in the past few days, it seems more than I have ever before. And though salt water could pour for a long time,  I know that I must not spend this great opportunity wishing I were in a place I am not. I love Pennsylvania, but a year will come and go like a kiss on the cheek. It can be sad, sweet, or happy but regardless it is there then not there. So it is best to appreciate it while it is. 

The redhead has puffy red eyes that match her fiery mane.

    Hello, Welcome to CRY FEST 2010. It can also be referred to as 4 days left and the last day of my period. Needless to say my emotions are a little bit hard to pin down because at any moment I could begin crying. Crying because I saw a person or remembered something, or heard something, or even am simply writing my blog. Crying is something that happens, like how shit happens, but just like when I take a number two, I’m just not a fan of crying in public. I would rather cry in private and wallow, and allow myself all the time I need to get it out of my system. It’s as though it were a sickness if I don’t give myself time to recover it will just stay in me forever.
    I find that when free falling into crunch time, I begin be very melodramatic in my head. I say very silly exaggerated ultimatums without thinking about it like,”The last sleepover at my best friend’s house”, “the last bonfire marshmallow roast”, or “the last barbecue” as though I’m about to die or something. And I can already hear my family rolling their eyes when “the last supper” is upon us before my departure. But then again, I suppose that maybe they do feel just as dramatic. Or maybe it’s just me and I’m just channeling super-drama-queen-teenager right now.
    With the stress of four days left much petty arguing can happen though. I understand why, but I know that it is just no good to argue. I had a good discussion with my brother-in-law and I’ve come to realize that pride means nothing if you have no humility. I have pride for my beautiful family but if I never surrender my self pride I would have no family at all. I have pledged to myself to have more humility, to listen more, to love more, and to have enough courage to know and understand that though I will love and miss all my friends and family it is me I must concentrate on for a while. To have the courage to be changed, to see with open eyes and heart and answer a question I have held for a long time: What do I want to do, where do I want to go?

The redhead is gone in a week.

A WEEK. 1 WEEK. SEVEN DAYS.
    Sometimes, I wish I could perform magic. This is one of those times.
    Yesterday I began the monstrous endeavor which is the emptying of my vast black-hole of a bedroom, and found it to be irritating, stressful, and hard to accomplish due to the unfathomable amount of crap I seem to have attained in the last decade and a half.
My mother bought me three large plastic storage bins, and I haven’t a clue how I am going to manage to tame everything I ever bought, stole, or was given into them!
    As I carried these three bins upstairs, the bottom one in the stack fell out of the stack and the edge of it banged the joint of my big toe. And though it seems pathetic, today I have a beautiful blooming bruise where it hit me.
    Between the bruise, approaching my time of month, having only a week left in the USA, obtaining the hiccups (the bane of my existence) three times in a row, and becoming very sweaty from the constant hotness of the sun I have surpassed grouchy and become something I cannot describe.
    This is why you are NEVER supposed to plan to do things urgently when you have your period. It is simply a bad plan.

The redhead is sleepy!

    I slept only six and a half hours last night, which is normal for a school week but very different from my normal ten-hour sleep-in summer days. It’s coming guys! School is rushing towards sweeping in around us. For me this not only reminds me I must LEARN things (oh, the horror!) but I must learn them in German, with a german speaking teacher lecturing and me taking notes and trying to understand. But I am so relieved to have to very well english speaking adults for my host family, and it should be crazy awesome. (:
    Three things happened today. (since we’re on day 9 of the countdown)
    The first and craziest was my enormous leap into adulthood which was my first withdrawal EVER of cash from an ATM with my bank card. Afterward my mother said,”Wasn’t that easy?”
    To which I replied,”...well, yes.... in ENGLISH.”
    I’ve been taking great license to dramatics lately and since my family won’t see me for so long, why not?
    The second accomplishment of the day was a task of incredible difficulty. In a completely objective perspective it should probably have been one of Hercules’ tasks or something.... If Hercules were a super bookworm nerd like me that is.
    Today I had to pick out of my towering three shelves and five randomly placed book stacks ONLY THREE BOOKS.
    Question: How do you manage such a punishing task? It’s like choosing between  children or choosing between Mother Jones and Alice Paul! I mean, it just simply cannot be done nor attempted without utter heart-breaking sorrow. (Wow I am dramatic today...)
    In the end after long pondering, I have chosen the complete set of Jane Austen’s work contained in one volume (which does have LOTS of volume), a battered copy of The Norton Anthology of English Literature (the most nerd-tastic poetry book ever collected), and finally “The Indispensible CALVIN AND HOBBES” (...this books holiness cannot really be expressed in mere words.)
    The third and final realization of the day took a rather strange downfall...
    If you do not already know, I am somewhat of an astrology geek as well and by a strange inkling of my mind I had the curiosity to check the dates of Mercury Retrograde.
    If you are not in fact educated much in astrology and do not know what Mercury in Retrograde means it is not in fact very retro. Mercury is the planet of travel and communication (both of which I will be doing a lot of in the next few weeks). Retrograde is when a planet appears to be moving backward by some weird optical illusion (want to know more? click here!!).
    Now generally speaking, backward movement, even the illusion of it, isn’t really a good sign. In this case it makes everything traveling and communication go wacko. Really, it’s not a good idea to go traveling anywhere or making any solid agreements with people. And lucky me, I’m traveling outside my own country for the first time in my life, AND I’m staying there for a year where I must speak my second language, risking much confusion for everyone. Well, wish me luck!

The redhead is too emotional sometimes.

Eleven days left.
Today my mother told me I must move out of my room putting the things I don’t take with me to Germany into the basement.
My room. An blue and orange smattering of my thoughts and belongings and dearest memories.
But I think I shall miss much more important things.
The familiar sound of my family’s laugh, much like Goofy. AH-HEEUK. (One that will most likely make me feel like an alien everywhere else...
The smile of my nephew.
My sisters publicly embarrassing me and talking about bodily functions at the dinner table.
My mother dancing to commercials and singing off-key to old show tunes or Elton John. My father’s old worked, worn hands and his drastically ridiculous farmer’s tan that creeps from italian dark to nerd pasty-white up his arms.
The obnoxious squeak of my bedroom door that ALWAYS wakes me up.
I suppose I shall miss even the eerie barking of my puppies that can irritate and awaken even the deadest and most decayed of people. As well as all my extended family (you know who you are). I shall miss all these things, these people. I shall miss too much more to name here.
But I must always remember that life is about today and tomorrow and the years that wheel by like cars in a hurry to find another road. They enter or exit, but simply go and usually find a way to come back to where they started.
And most likely, a year from now I will be missing people, things, and places on the other side of the puddle.

Well... here we go...

The redhead ist angry. Namely because she wrote half a page and then pressed something and it was gone.
The redhead has learned her lesson. WRITE FIRST ON A PIECE OF PAPER!
But also...
The redhead is scared today.... You have no idea. In two weeks (TWO WEEKS!) I am going to Germany for a year. But I was certainly oblivious until my sister called today. I picked up the phone and she said,"Hi, do you miss me?"
"Yes," I said. She asks me this everytime she calls.
"Do you know when your flight is?"
"Uhmm... Yes, Tuesday the 24th."
Wait--the 24th of August? But... that's only two weeks away! I only have two weeks!
I'm not gonna lie, my eyes were filled with tears. CRAP! So soon?
I am excited to go... I know I will have an amazing time. but sometimes I think it is so far from home. And it is. So far away.

Na...so geht's.

Die Rothaarige ist verärgert weil sie halb ein Blatt schriebt und dann sie etwas drückte und es war gegangen.
Die Rothaarige hat ihre Lektion sicher gelernt. SCHREIBE ERST ON EIN STÜCK PAPIER!
Aber auch...
Die Rothaarige hat Angst heute.... Du hast keine Ahnung. In zwei Woche reise ich nach Deutschland für ein Jahr. Aber war ich fröhlich vergesslich bis meine Schwester hat angerufen. Ich nahm ihren Anruf an und sie sagte,”Hallo, vermisst du mir?”
“Ja,” ich sagte. Bei alle ihren Anrufe fragt sie das mir.
“Bitte, Kannst du mir sagen, wann deine Flug ist??”
“Ähm, ja, er ist am Dienstag 24.” anworte ich.
Warte--Das 24 August? Das ist nur zwei Woche von heute.... Ich habe nur zwei Woche.
Ich werde nicht lügen, waren meine Augen voller Tränen. Schade! So Bald?
Ich freue mich nach Deutschland reisen. Ich weise dass ich eine fantastisch Zeit haben werde. Aber manchmal denke ich es ist so fern der Heimat. Und es ist. So weit weg.