The redhead will not be on for a little.

BECAUSE she is going on a SUPERMEGAFOXYAWESOMEHOT trip with her cousin around Germany to see various happy snowy places that have special german things.That means I am excited!! But also means you guys will probably not be getting a post for about two weeks because of this trip and the fact that I will not have a computer with me. But expect one soon afterward with lots of pictures and smiles and Deni hugs. (not in physical, but in computerized form. But I still have a bit of news.
But sofar my christmas adventures have been nice. After I got my diablo on our first day of christmas, we then traveled on christmas morning to Siegen, the place you might remember from the earlier days (meaning the first two to three days of me being in Germany.). It is where my guest family's families live, knitted into the heaps of piling snow that has replaced the ever lasting rain. We had second christmas with My guest family mom's family where I got a "Reckless" by Cornelia Funke. Which is sweet considering the family doesn't know that much about me and didn't really have to get me anything at all. We ate lots of yummy cookies and sat by the fire. Then today we arrived at my guest family dad's family where we got third christmas! Today I got chocolate, some yummy smelling soap, and some reallllllly warm underwear for skiing! Which I love and feel super kick-ass when I wear... not that I've ever skied before but... I don't know. It seems cool. Then we ate cookies and sat by the fireplace, watched the news and talked and stuff.
My host baby Sister got a Bobby Car that she adores and a hanging wooden cow with wings that can fly. It's fantastic... I kind of want it... (:
I really love that now I can actually talk to people and have conversations, something I was certainly incapable of when I first arrived and adds much to dinner that before was blank and lifeless and left me only time to overthink everthing I did and said.
Listening is a beautiful thing when it works. When your ears tell your mind something and your mind says,"HEY! I know what you're saying! I know what that means!".
The last token of the day was more snow, heaping down onto pre-set mounting pillows of white as if the earth needs one more cover, needs just one more cm there  to stay warm. We walked through Siegen, finding that there really is no better way of seeing it. The snow falling beautifully. We also found that the town had made it's very own advent calendar.
Twenty five different houses agreed before December to decorate their windows and close the shutters to the decorated window until the designated day when they opened it. An ISpy game for the residents and the visitors.
We also found a house whose very unlucky residents had the most gianormous icicle (is it sad that I had to look that word up in google to be able to spell it?) right above the front door. I don't know about them, but I'd go on vacation for a little while until spring if I were them.
I hope you guys had a very merry christmas! How did your go? I'dlove to hear some love from you guys!
I will write again on the 10th or 11th of January! Merry Christmas, Happy New Year!

The redhead got a diablo for christmas!

Don't worry if you don't know what a diablo is, for I shall explain.
For those of you who do not know, I am a juggler. I am not a hardcore, juggle 17 balls and pinwheels and chainsaws type of juggler, but I hope one day I might be the warm up act for one of those guys (mostly because chainsaws are sharp and painful, and I like my fingers). Now I know, you probably think, when I say "juggling", of three or more objects that you toss and catch in funny patterns that make people clap and giggle. There, my beloved readers, you would be wrong. juggling is the minipulation of objects in all sorts of forms from regular club juggling to poi (your on the internet, if you don't know what poi is look it up), and one of those silly, more obscure juggling forms is the diablo or the chinese yoyo. The blue thing in the picture at the right is my new diablo. It comes with two sticks that are attachted by a long string and the idea is to spin it while it is on the string and do tricks with it, such as basic throw and catch, or more complex like the elevator! But still it was rockin'!
We opened our presents at 6 this evening (the 24th). I know, that sounds funny (that's because it is), no not really, it's just the german way. It's different, but also kind of fun. Germany opens up their presents for christmas on christmas eve. Some say after dinner, some say after a certain hour. It all depends of the region and the family. But no matter where you are I guarentee that you will eat much more chocolate than you need for a lifetime and feel much more well rested than being woken up by younger brothers and sisters at the crack of dawn. It was quite a beautiful evening of food and smiles and laughs, and though I am far away from my family, I know that they are having just as wonderful a time leaving cookies and getting "big presents for big boys" as my nephew would say and I also know that I have new family members here, adding more love to the christmas love melting pot. Merry Christmas! Happy Holiday! Sleep well and get "Big Boy Gifts"!

The redhead was in the Fellbach newspaper today.

And this is it, but warning! It IS in German. I will talk about it in this post, so if you can't understand German, just keep reading.
The article was VERY big. it took up half a page in the local sports section in the Fellbach newspaper. The story is about me, my exchange, and most especially, me playing soccer for the girls team here in Rommelshausen, where I live. I am a goalie and the team here likes me a lot as a goalie. All in all it was a very good article with very few unfactual things, which was super awesome.
First it talks about how I come from the US and Kutztown specifically, about Christian my host family dad and how my family came to know him, and very briefly about my family, my sisters, my mom, and of course, my oma. Then about my take on the popularity of soccer in America, and a quote from Annika: (translated of course) "She's really positive, always on her toes, and plays some really good soccer." and then my coach: "That is a very special human being. I like her humanity and the joy for life that she brings with it: where Deni is, there is life." (This is the part where I internet-blush :)
The reporter also quoted me talking about things that were different,"The light switches work differently, and all the streets are much narrower. And we always eat our lunch at school in the school and here you can go where ever."
It was a very good article and it came in the paper with a nice little picture of me with my gloves and a soccer ball by the goal post smiling. (when the picture was taken, I was definitely freezing my ass off, but it was worth it).
Well... I have three tests in the next four schooldays, so... I must go and "learn until my brains all rot!".

The redhead is warding off sleep with dorkiness.

Deni is listening to the "Ministry of Magic"... a fantastically nerdy amazing Harry Potter based band that is cute...
But Deni also had a game marathon with her hostfamily and friends today and thinks you should check out the following games:
1. Yspahan (amazing planning game, won Germany's game of the year in 2007)
2. Dominion (card/planning game, won germany's game of the year in 2009)
3. Settler's of Catan (planning game, if you haven't heard of it you obviously aren't a board gamer because it is the bomb and everyone is starting to get sick of it already)
4. Munchkin (naturally)
5. Bonaza (DUH)
6. (DRAMATIC DRUMMROLLL, this is my favorite game of late, utterly fantastic) ROBO RALLY (p.s. made in USA :)

Check out the post below for more info bout my friday! Happy Weekend and Advent! Can't wait for christmas!!!

Yesterday, Friday  the 10th of December 2010, was, in fact, a waiting day. It was a day filled with waiting for trains, buses, gifts, everything. To begin with, yesterday my class and I went to the Friedrich Schiller Museum in Marbach  by train. We left the school at 8:05 and went to the Fellbach Bahnhof where the waiting began. Once we boarded our first train at about 8:15 or so we waited on the train to take us to another connect train station. Once there, we waited for and then missed our train to Marbach at which point our teacher took us over to the train station guy in charge of tickets who was very nice and let us use our old ticket (so we wouldn't have to buy a new one) to go to marbach on the bus. We road the bus to a connecting bus, and eventually made it to Marbach where we then spent 5 to 10 minutes walking to the museum. Strangely, this was the only fuun part of the class trip, because the night before it had snowed about 3 inches and had the perfect consistency for snowball making. So, to the tune of our German teacher protesting our large battle, we gather snow as we walked from empty benches, car tops, the ground, the stone fence-wall things, and the mail boxes and ensured that all of us were thoroughly damp with cross fire before we entered the luxurious large hall of the musuem with it's high ceilings, greek depictions and fancy mosaic floors. We entered into a tiny room, deposited coats and bags and began waiting for the tour to end.
Don't get me wrong, Friedrich Schiller was a cool homedog and stuff, however, when you enter room large rooms with nothing but barely ledgible scraps of paper in glass cases in German, while a woman just talks about schiller and his life, the most interesting parts are hard to pay attention for. The only time I truly participated was when the tour guide asked when Schiller's birthday was. Novemeber 10th (though I didn't know the year) and then she promptly asked me his astrology sign, probably as a joke, but I knew it and told her, of course, scorpio.
Once we were finished with the tour, the snow ball fight reccomenced in the quartyard and lasted until the train station where there were too many other innocent bystanders that could possibly be injured if we continued. We got on the train and waited on the train to arrive in Fellbach, waited for the bus, waited in the bus, and then finally I got home.
The second half of the day was slightly more inventful, as I had to leave at 2:50 for an interview. I was interviewed for the Fellbacher Zeitung, about my exchange and soccer. Many of the questions were about how I liked Germany, what was different about Germany from the USA, what do I miss about the US, and what will I miss when I get back the USA. Then also: When and why did I start playing soccer, why am I a goalie, what is my favorite part about it, which team I play for in the US (YEAH KUTZTOWN), and so forth. It was great because the reporter spoke both English and German. He was very nice and my friend Anni came with as a representative of the regular team. it was great fun, even though it was really fudging cold because we didn't really notice after our cute little heart-warming stories. I do not know when I ´t will be coming out but it shall be before the end of the year (don't worry I'll keep y'all posted).
AFTER THAT we then had the Rommelshausen Fußball Weihnachtsfeuer, which was really just a big fun celebration. We walked out into the vineyards and some people set off fire works. It was a decent walk and we talked the whole way and back. We ate some wurstchen(sausages) and buns and warm cider and sang and got a ball for a gift.
It was cute and the night was made all the better with the fresh snow that had begun as we walked from the building home (even if it was far too cold).

The redhead ate roasted, candied almonds.

Because it's Weihnachtmarkt time!! YAY!
Weihnachtsmarkt is much like an outdoor super market made solely for christmas that happensin almost every city from the 1 of December to the 23!
And I was at my very first one this last weekend.
We went to the one in Esslingen, which isn't so far from where I live, it wasn't the closest but my host family dad said that it would be the most interesting in all likelyhood because it has a medieval section filled with stuff you might see at a renaissance fair. Being smart as we are we went on a saturday night, like everyone else in the world. It was jam-packed with people and was freezing cold but the lights and the candied almonds, the little hand-crafted wooden figures and books and jewelry wereenough to warm you from the inside. the smell of warm cider, or hot food, wafting through the air. Joy. That is the theme of them all and don't we need a little, with such long, cold nights and short, cold days? It was beautiful, and I loved it.
Other things that happened in the last week include: getting back 2 tests that I got 3's on. (!!!!!) And beating the Harry Potter and the half-blood prince video game in one day.. (:
Also today is St. Nicolas TAG! Today is the day all the Germans put their shoes outside their door and St. Nicolas fills them with sweets and small toys. (They have this of course in addition to christmas later on the 24th!) So happy Nicolas Tag and 6th day of advent! Can't wait for christmas!!! (:

The redhead is not a fan of public buses.

Why may you ask?
They are practical, you could say, even convinient. And I understand that. I understand the practicality of public tranportation and I am glad they have it here, and in fact I wish that we had it more in the United States, however (!) I more hate public buses in place of normal school buses for us.
The main reasons include: The public buses are naturally not free because of course they are public, they are for the people at large and the people have to pay for services they use. You have walk to a bus stop to wait for the bus that could be a good amount from your house.The public buses cater, of course, to normal workers as well, making them jam-packed at seven in the morning when everyone is going to school and to work. It is this way here in Germany as opposed to the comfortable American system.
A system that, because of a lack of public buses, especially ones as reliable as public buses here, instead they provide the American grade school student with the life staple of the school bus, bright yellow, ugly sunshine caterpillar that gobbles you up at your doorstep in the morning and spits you back out at 3 o'clock everyday. It used to be a sight, a sounds that churned my stomach and made me groan. It was the roaring promise of another school day in a healthy engine. But I have become wiser.
How convenienced, how blessed I was to be giving a FREE, safe, warm ride 3,5 dangerous miles of winding country road into town to be fill my brain with interesting things. And it was not only free, but guarenteed you a seat, and a comfortably empty-ish bus in which you could day dream for 10 minutes until you arrived. The yellow school buses rarely encountering traffic-jams beside the occasional road-kill deer.
The school bus, where sitting down was not awkward because you already knew everybody and farts were more secretive. Where windows could be thrown down and wind blown inside. The school bus. Oh how I dearly miss you, I will see you next year.

The redhead is STILL the clumsiest person on the planet.

New mindbogglingly clumsy accomplishments:
Pick up her hoody and knocking over a glass, shattering it into a million peiced simultaneously.
Skipping home from soccer practice and overturning a compost trash can on the way.
Dropping a peice of pumpkin pie covered in whip creme onto the couch (the plates were slippery though!)
(:

The redhead has been a very bad, bad blogger lately...

and she apologizes heartily.
And quite a few things have come to pass. First of all, of course, the seventh Harry Potter film part one has arrived in theaters. And this redheaded geektastic child did not miss it, oh no. This geektastic child went the sunday after it came out with her friend Jasmine. She put on her special crazy stockings, a homemade harry potter t-shirt and her Time Turner (aka harry potter gangster bling-blang) and set out in pouring rain on her bike for the train station about an hour before her train left for Waiblingen.... because she was really excited. However, coming to the bahnhof early wasn't her most fantastic idea because it is outside. And though she had a bench and a little roof to stop her from becoming excessively wet, it was cold. Very, unbaribly cold (such as it normally is in November, go figure). So she read what she could of the her German copy of Harry Potter trying to finish anough that she remembers everything and waited for the train. People came and left, leaving her alone on the cold bench until finally the time came to leave... and the train was twenty minutes late. OF COURSE. But it all went fine. She and her friend walked two blocks to the theater and reveled in the warmth of the cramped theater with it's winding staircase. they climbed up and up to the top most theater, the one by a 1 stall bathroom that later would become an irritation and a relief as the movie ended.
The theater it self was smallish, but cosy with cushy seats and glowing lights hanging from the ceiling as stars. It also had a few strange differences from American theaters. First, when you buy tickets you buy them for specific seats like in dramatic theater and you MUST sit there or you would be breaking rules and system (something very frowned upon by the Germans). And also, each row of seats had a small shelf stuck on the back of it where the row behind could place food, drinks, and candy which I thought was quite better and more ingenious as the american ones. The movie was good as far as i was concerned. It was quite by the book except for of course the Horcrux scene, which featured some radical over exaggerations of things that were both annoying and innopropriate! but everything else was good, at least for Hollywood.
In the midst of the film I found that i had an incredibly full bladder which was annoying but managed to be less important as I became more and more absorbed int he movie, but when it was done and i stood up, I naturally made a break for it and came to the back of a short-ish line. we arrived home safely and I wore my dorky t-shirt (that was in german by the way) to school the next day and my friends of course thought i was ridiculous and crazy (at least I'm a positive American stereotype).
On Monday I got my first english test back which was a 1- (kind of like an A- except kind of harder to get) and all my class mates were very curious as to how the "-" came in. It ended up that due to my unexposure to English class I forgot to use my "formal" english speech and so, when one of the question asked me what the how the boy in the text we read felt about the girl in the text we read I wrote, literally,"He wants to get in her pants". Which isn't wrong but was less favorable as opposed to "He thinks she is beautiful and would love to be her boyfriend" or something like that. (Personally, I like mine better)
All week a bunch of my classes having been absent too because of teacher illnesses. Here, substitute teacher don't really exist. When a teacher can't attend the class because of holiday or sickness you just don't have the class, which is actually nice as opposed to pretending that you are actually learning something fom the substitute.
The really rouch day however, was Thursday of course. Thanksgiving. It is one thing to say you are not seeing your family for a year it is another when days like christmas and thanksgiving arrive where your mother's mashed potatoes and kisses usually fill you up with love and instead of the normal full table and fancy china and pumpkin pie you have a 10 hour day of school and a Physics test to study for. The only thing that was largely a comfort to me was the thought that after this year I will probably never have to be away from family on thanksgiving or the holidays ever again.
GUESS WHO's NOT GOING FAR AWAY FOR COLLEGE?
Deni

The redhead is making pancakes.

And while she was she found it hard to find a few things and thought she would let you know the plus and minuses of eating in Germany....
I've always believed in starting on a bad note and going to a good note, because in the end you're always happy... or at least in this case I will be, you guys might be jealous at the end... whatever, I'm gonna stop rambling now, you get what I mean.

The tragedy of German food:
1. Sweetpoatoes are REALLY freaking expensive here and so we don't have sweet potatoes... ever. At all.
2. Peanut butter, maple syrup, and chocolate chips are all very rare and when you do find them they are also very, very expensive and usually come in very annoyingly small portions.
3. Oreos, otherwise known as "Milk's favorite cookie" are virtually unknown, but are available. However, Double Stuf Oreos do not and the regular kind of oreos only come 16 to a package. Which is not enough AND is an even number.... and If you are a person who must eat an odd number of cookies (like me) you will have severe difficulty accomplishing that.
4. And FINALLY, Reeses peanut butter cups are UNavailable. Everywhere in Germany. Possibly everywhere in Europe. (to the extent of my knowledge)

The successes of German food:
1, 2, 3, &4. There are at least four fresh Bakeries in the vasinity of where I live. FRESH BREAD. EVERY MORNING. NUFF SAID.
5. Two words: Rot Wurst or in German one word: Rotwurst
6. Marzipan.
7. Though I have not tried it, but I know that the Beer is fantastic and definitely has much more variety here than in America.
8. Schnitzel.
9. ALL THE KUCHEN. (:

This has been the pros and cons of German cusine with Deni, thank you for tuning in.
I'm going to go make pancakes for my family for dinner and eat it with VERY EXPENSIVE maple syrup. Have a nice day. (:

The redhead is anxiously awaiting the midterm election results.

.... because she is a dork like that.
But I'm not going to talk about politics tonight, I am simply going to say, GO VOTE DUDE (if you haven't already and you can).
But while my fellow american were out standing in the cold waiting to vote or getting controversial robocalls, I was hiking through the Black Forrest, a place complete uncontroversial for it's amazing beauty. (jealous?)
This morning I woke up to the radio singing Alejandro by Lady GaGa. A song which normally would make me jam and sing aloud, but in this case made my roll into a tight ball under my covers and seriously regret reading "five more minutes" (2 more hours) than usual the night before. Once I was reasonably alive enough to function on a basic level, I joined in the frantic frenzy of breakfast eating, lunch packing, and backpack stuffing that preceded our day's adventure. At 8:40 we jumped in the car, clicked in our seatbelts and thundercats were definitely a-go.
An hour or so later we arrived at which point I found out it was really freaking cold and was very proud of myself for having provided in my bag a hand, pair of mittens, and H&M scarf that was amazingly warm and happy. I dawned it all, covering my mouth and nose with the scarf as well, giving my host family a good laugh in the process. In retrospect I'm sure I did look pretty freaking ridiculous and compared to the seasoned, long-sleeved t-shirt wearing Black forrest dwellers I stuck out like a sore thumb. We began our journey, finding the coolest path that took us alongside a creek in a little narrow path giving us much more close surface area to appreciate. And somehow I managed to manveuver a camera WHILE walking (!!!) which I find a great accomplishment considering that 1) the path had random roots and rocks jerking out at odd angles (you know like a normal forrest path should) and 2) I am the clumsiest person alive.
The forrest was vast and tall, it's hundred year old branches reaching out bare to us like arms looking for solace, and we must have looked like living action figures crawling between pairs of giant's feet. The trees grew straight and parallel for the most part to one another stretching so far towards the heavens that the sun probably had no idea where we were. They grew on earth and big boulders with full heads of spongey green, rich alien hair. (German word of the day: Moos=moss.) Mixed in with the tall pines and coniferious trees filling our noses with old book smell where bright Deciduous trees in different shades of orange. they where fire raining down on us with the gentle breeze and carpeting our path and as we walked they whispered the unison lullaby with each of our steps (Swish, swash, swish, swash). Once we made our way to lunch time we had come to a large castle with a beauty of a view. We ate our sandwiches and apples and decided that maybe once we got back to the car we would find a cute bakery and have some cake.
So we did. We made our way back, arrived at the car, packed it all in and drove five minutes to a cute little town with a hard to find bakery that over supplied our cake needs with nine or ten different types of cake making our mouths water. I went with a nice, classic Apple cake and really loved it.
That was my day! Hope you had a great one! Hope you had a great halloween! We just ended up playing board games here and carving a pumpkin or two. But don't go thinking pumpkin carving is popular! Actually we were probably the only ones in our town. We had one trick or treater and she was our neighbor. so halloween wasn#t a big blow out but hey, it's a small price to pay for the experience I'm having here!
Sorry for not posting in a while, I really have no excuse either because I've been on break but regardless, have a great week and drück die Daumen for the 112th Congress!
Machts Gut!
Deni

The redhead is long overdue for writing a new post.

And I don't really have any excuses as to why either because I had this whole week and I have the whole of next week for vacation. Now a LOT has happened... and as many of you know, I have quite a difficult time being brief, so instead, I am going to write two posts tonight.
   In this one I will be detailing the irritation with me getting my Aufenthaltserlaubnis or, for those of you who can't really pronounce that, let alone understand what the hell it means, the peice of paper that says that I can stay for the whole year for studying and such.
   I need this little peice of paper because if I do not, I am officially a tourist and after three months they can deport me. And I know you are thinking,"Deni Anne, how on earth could you, Miss Never-got-a-detention-in-her-life Tobin, possibly have ever been denied staying in Germany for a year when all you want to do is learn, AND you don't cost the German government a penny, IN FACT you are giving more money to the government?"
   Well, (I would say) first that was a horrendous run-on sentence, and secondly, because Baden-Wurtemburg is very funny.
   A few weeks ago my host family mom scheduled an appointment for us to apply for this Aufenthaltserlaubnis. What happened was this: Katerina (my guest Family mom) called the Auslander office thing at 6 in the morning to accomodate them. She explained about how we had a scheduled date for getting an Aufhaltserlaubnis, how I am a private exchange student, etc. The woman proceeded to say something along the lines of, "You cannot have an Aufhaltserlaubnis because she is not an exchange student working with an official exchange program or school program." I'm not sure how the rest of the call went but Katerina was very angry about it all. As I awoke that morning (8 minutes earlier than I had planned) she explained to my bleary-eyed unshowered person what was going on. Later that day she explained it to Christian (my guest family dad).
       Christian also knew (because he researched it before I came) that the law states something similar to: When you are in Deutschland studying you can stay,  because it costs next to nothing for the government to have you so it isn't really a problem. Katerina and I have also already got this thing signed that I am living now in Rommelshausen, and so Waiblingen, our "county" sent us a letter that told us I must attend a school or I am breaking the law. At that point I was already attending Fredreich Schiller Gymnasium. Then Christian, who is very good at reasoning things out, called the boss of the lady that Katerina spoke with on Monday and explained to her everything that was going on. First she said that in the states of germany they have special regulations of how they should read the law. In Baden-Wurtemburg the law previously described is more specific and says basically that they do not except a lot of exchange students unless they are in these special programs or with a school for these programs. Christian then told her about how I am attending a school like we were told I must and she pretended not to hear him because at the time in the STATE of Baden-Wurtemburg I was only a tourist. Meaning I may only be here for three months and then they must deport me. Even though in the TOWN I was living here officially.
     After all the careful stepping and fingernail biting, we finally got a new meeting to apply for the Aufenthaltserlaubnis. We went, and the lady we were supposed to meet was mysteriously sick, she was the first lady we talked to, the one who said that I couldn't stay at all and deportation was the only option. Which we thought was great because we went to this other lady who was very nice and even, upon hearing about what had happened with her colleague, hinted that she would probably get in trouble for doing that. the whole application process took about an hour, or less, and dashed my hopes of missing gym class. A few days later i was approved and now i have this cool thingy in my passport. It's pretty cool.
    The only really lame part about me finally getting it was, I was classified as a "special case" meaning normally, they wouldn't let a private exchange happen, and they let me because they felt like it.
    So now it's kind of funny. i was almost deported from a country, guys! And for what? Wanting to learn to speak their language.What a criminal I am!

The redhead doesn't know what to name this one....

What happened since last thursday?
I went to Ludwigsburg! (That place with the freakin' huge garden.)
Twas quite fun with my host mom and the babykins. We went to the garden there first and stayed to look around. They had creative entirely pumpkin- and gord-carved masterpeices and huge scultures made of pumpkins for fall. Then we went into Märchenland. For those who do not know what the heck that is it is basically an old Fairy tale land that takes all the Brother's Grimm fairy tales and other popular ones and brings them alive in little mechanical displays that kids go nuts over. It was cute. I really can't wait until next year when my nephew comes over because he might beable to actually enjoy it.
Sunday we hung out and did nothing of great significance besides watching Tatort.
Monday I had my first English Vocabulary test, which I am sad to report I got stumped on two questions with. I couldn't think of a great synonym for "to try very hard" so I just put "attempt with great determination", which isn't wrong but I'm sure isn't what everyone else put down.
After school we had soccer practice, where we ran alot and on our water breaks belted dumb pop songs at the top of our lungs so everyone stared.
Today, I was almost late to school, because my bike broke five minutes before I was supposed to be there and my hair looked like I had recently been in a wind storm at sea.
By the end of the day everything was cool though. I volunteered for the first time in my bio class, fixed my bike, and had a very yummy supper. As we explained to my host dad about the Visa (we were speaking in English) he said,"Why did they say we can't keep you?" which made me sound like a lost puppy they were hoping to keep and made me laugh.
Babysitting and math homework!

The redhead should write a long post but...

...she has a butt ton of homework, so here's a brief summary:
Today, Thursday, was my friggin' long day which means ten hours in school .(Yuck)
I had a very good sleep last night though about 9 hours! Score.
I biked to school, got there just in time for Religion, which was okish. I learn a lot of cool words in that class.
In Politik we talked about Versicherung or Insurance for various things in Germany. Which was cool because frankly, I like their insurance system, nay, I like their freakin' government system better than ours.
French... not gonna lie, I day-dreamed through. No grade= virtually no motivation to pay attention... at all.
Math was mathy. Lunch was yummy. NWT was fantastically boring as usually, except for the part where we play with fire. Chemistry was pretty  good today because I understood things much better. Basically the school day was awfully unremarkable.
On the way home: My bike chain freaked out and twisted this strange way, then I fixed it with the fantastical skills acquired from my father. then later somehow managed to run into a parked car.... (clumsiness points= another flawless ten) But luckily I only hit the rear view mirror, the owner was right there and he said it was ok and smiled at me and told me to go home. He was very nice, I liked him. Then I got home, saw a cute baby, understood my homework, and got MOCKINGJAY in the mail a DAY after I ordered it! Go amazon. More updates coming soon... sorry for this post, i know it's kind of boring and dumb but I have deutsch homework!

The redhead had 29 freakin' views yesterday.

Woah. Go people. it's nice to see in the stats how many views I have each day, but I would surely enjoy comments and feedback when anybody feels like it....
But aside from blog craziness, I had a week of craziness. Well, not really, it was pretty typical apart from it being the week of my Libra Gastfamilievater's Geburtstag (My host family dad's birthday, yo!). So, the most important adventures of the week included cookies, cake, chocolate, and Schnittzel eating! Some of the less pleasurable adventures, however, are brand new additions to our favorite series,"The redhead is the clumsiest person on the face of the earth." In this addition we will visit the notion of how a person could possibly accidentally drop their toothbrush in the toillet while in the midst of brushing their teeth. And how someone can get a flat tire on their bicycle by no apparent means.
Let start from the beginning. this week was pretty awesome as far as school, I understand my math class on a regular basis now, and because of that it has certaining become my favorite class. My other elected favorites at this point are Politik and Physik. I know, your thinking, "Politik? Wouldn't that be really hard with all the big German words and slightly different Democratic Socialist government?" And I would say,"Why, yes, however, I have the most fantastic Politik teacher who can speaks German the entire class, but will translate crazy big complicated words for me so that I understand and explains differences between American government and German government when they arise. Plus she can keep the entire class actually quiet. A quiet class at perfect attention here is quite a feat. Physik, I like because last year in German class we did this awesome thing where we studied what we were doing in Physical Science in German class so, not only do I know basically everything we're doing, I also know all the german words for those things! 50 gold stars for Herr Wert yo!
Tuesday, I got to skype chat with my two sisters, my nephew, and then later on in the evening, my mommy and daddy! That was great! I loved seeing their faces and hearing their voices together like they were there. However, I certainly felt the distance between us as my nephew jumped up and down and screamed in joy and asked if I could read him a book. I certainly made me cry. We used to read books over and over again, with him sitting on my lap and one day, he won't fit anymore. One day he won't want to read books anymore and I'm missing a whole year of it.
Wednesday, was my host family dad's birthday as I disclosed before. I was also the day I rode my bike to school, like every other day, but found on my return trip that I had to walk because I had a flat tire. How, may you ask, did I get a flat tire? I have no freaking clue. But then I got home, ate lunch, did homework, and we were off to Onkel Otto's Schnittzel joint. (Which is supposedly the home of the best schnittzel around.) We got lost and the baby was angry and screamed the entire way, but it made the schnittzel taste that much better once we got there, as the baby slept. And to top it all, after all our eating, as I finished brushing my teeth and went to go rinse my mouth out, I thought I had placed my toothbrush on the ledge above the sink, but instead as I stooped to cup water to my mouth, I heard an ominous sliding, clattering, and plunk. And found as I looked up with my shining clean fresh mouth, that my toothbrush was currently taking a bath in the toilet. Awesome. And it's another ten from the judges!
Luckily, my gastfamilie had an extra toothbrush. Today, has been pretty awesome so farsince I slept ten hours, woke and ate amazing jam for breakfast and now I'm talking to you lovely people. First soccer game I play in today! Hope it doesn't freakin' rain!

The redhead is the clumsiest person on the face of the earth.

So far Deni has tripped over the same doorstop three times outside her classroom building while holding the door for people. She has managed to trip over the soccer ball twice on the turf field while trying to look cool and skinned the same knee badly in two different places. She also somehow knocked over a flour jar with her butt while washing the dishes and dropped the serving spoon, full with dinner on the way to her plate on her place matt three or our times.
And her gracelessness acquired tens across the board. Thank you, thank you.

Please join us again for another report on "The redhead is the clumsiest person in the world!"

The redhead has seen Harry Potter und Der Stein der Weisen.

For those of you who have no freakin' clue what that says above... It means I saw the first Harry Potter movie in German yo.
(I'm not sure why I added 'yo' to the end of the sentence...)
In doing so, I also found out that the word for Earwax is "Ohrensmalz". Weird huh?
And in the time that has passed between today and the last time I wrote a post for those of you across the puddle, I have discovered that sometimes I feel like a baby being here. (a wittle tiny baby as my sister would so rightly proclaim.) There are a couple reasons for that. The first is that I cannot remember my dreams at this point, mostly because, my dreams are unsure whether they should be in German or English. I only dream pictures like a baby. Secondly, I pride myself with accomplishments like,"Answered a Question in History Correctly" and "Did Math Homework Without Help" or even simply "Understood". Not that I'm saying those are the accomplishments a baby strives for... but you get what I mean, they are simple things that not only happened regularly in the life before but were almost like breathing for me. You see in school it used to go like this: Teacher ask a question, Deni volunteer, Teacher picks Deni, Deni answers. Repeat, until of course my teachers would stop picking me because they wanted other people to volunteer.... Now, I am the person who asks about everything two or three times. the person who needs someone else to explain. And also lately, I've been getting songs stuck in my head from Kindergarten and the like such as,"Clean up, clean up, everybody everywhere" when we're done with a chem lab or "Can you feel the love tonight" from The Lion King, which I am still puzzled as to how I got it stuck in my head...
  (I think this baby analogy sounded better in my head than it does here...)
But there are a lot of things that make me feel much more independent and adultish too. I have taken the bus on a number of occations by myself and nothing has gone wrong yet. I rode my bike to school everyday this week and only got lost once only for five minutes and I wasn't even late for class. I clean my room on a regular basis. I try to do my homework by myself most nights. I help with dinner almost every night and I have money which I actually (mostly) spend on only things I need. I have a money card that I can use with the magical money machine and get cash!!!! I know, I'm so adult-like that you can't even stand it. (:

Oh and some good news: I am not going to die! (sorry, that was in Deni language, let me translate) I'm not going to be graded in French! YAY!
now have a lovely goddamn weekend, I know I will, even if it's raining because all I have to do for monday is English homework!

The redhead has had a week of school already! Weird.

OHMYGOD.
I know what you're thinking, I've been slacking a little with this blog things seeing as something incredibly big in "The German Experience"  happened... and that was... I went to school!!!!
Boo-Yay! (It's both.)
My first day was weird... for me. Because I did many things I had never done before. I used public transportation (and have been successfully all week), I experienced my first "Pause" and many afterward, I experienced math in German, I sat through a class I knew absolutely  nothing about (French), and I managed to lug about 13 books in my backpack.
First public transportation. Public transportation means it's crowded, sometimes loud, and most of the time it smells weird. My first day in the bus I got on and it was so crowded I was basically pressed into the windsheild. Mostly the other breif inhabitors of the bus were students like me and early morning workers. It was pretty loud and it smelled like a mixture of too much perfume and cigarrette breath and it wasn't exactly pleasant. When we got to the school we waited in the office until someone knew where I was going, then I went with my German teacherto sort of my 'Homeroom' ish. It's where I have the majority of my classes. I was told to sit next to the window and met my first schoolfriend, Carolin. She helps me in a lot of my classes, she's very smart. I met all the people around me and then suddenly after getting my schedule from the teacher we had a "Pause". This one was short 5  minutes or so. There is a pause every hour (I think). The pause after that is a longer pause for 20 mintues or so. When we have afternoon school we have a lunchpause for about an hour and the weirdest thing about pauses are that you can go anywhere. You can go anywhere and do anything as long as it's not against the law and you get back in time for class.
As of today I've had all my subjects all of which I sort of understand except French. I know how to say two things in French: Wi and Bonjour. That's it. The class I'm in has had French for about 5 years. Great. Luckily the teacher is very sweet and after I explained the problem decided that I would learn what I could learn what i could and that was that. Math we learned about functions, which was interesting the first two days because I understood nothing! luckily, my host family dad is a math super genius so he helped me understand it better and now i'm doing pretty good and i kind of understand my teacher!
another weird thing is that my schedule here is different each day of the week and depending on the day I could be home at 12ish or I could be home at 5ish. Today was a long one and I know that my blog posts are getting lame and I'm sorry... My next one will be SUPERMEGAFOXYAWESOMEHOTT, but right now... I'm tired. Guten Nacht.

The redhead has friends!

You know what I really love about Germany? Of course you don't! (it's not like I've said I liked anything about Germany in my previous posts.)
Well, I love how everyone is so nice and hospitable and sweet to people they have just met. Or I should say all the people I've met.
My new soccer team, for instance, is very nice. all the girls treat me with patience and kindness and really just want to help. Which is awesome, because I just want to learn! I just came back from my second practice and I don't know if they noticed but I was certainly surprised that after meeting them all one time they all hugged me to say hello and goodbye. It seems like it would an insult to a person not to hug them upon arrival or before leaving.
And I love it! It's so entirely different from anything I've ever known and yet this is how some people grow up, feeling such unity in groups and communities. it also makes me happy that when a German says "how are you?" they aren't just saying it, they mean it. They really want to know. It makes me think a German would feel very alienated and lonely in America were they in the opposite situation from me.
I start school on Monday! And hopefully everything going tolerably! Wish me luck!

The redhead learned the word for "anxious".

I wonder why? Oh right, because today, I am going to, for the first time, meet a lot of people my own age and become fastened into a society of co-existence with them. I am starting soccer practice today. I will have it mondays and wednesdays for the rest of the summer and hopefully it goes well.
I looked up quite a few words for soccer things so that I might possibly understand my coach, but today I have been understanding things decently well. We went shopping for a little to buy me new Goalie gloves and a pair of sneakers because I have no footwear for athletic activity what so ever. My parents have sent my soccer things but they are not here yet so i must make do with what I have.
Besides my impending social immurgence into teenage land... I'm pretty good.
This morning we had rolls and pretzels with cheese or meat or fruit spread and my host mother was quite disgusted when I decided to try putting raspberry jam on my pretzel. It was very funny. I didn't mean to disgust anyone, I just never have pretzels for breakfast, so what should I put on it. And though I resolved that perhaps I shouldn't do something like that in public, it did taste pretty good.
After breakfast I watched "Juno" in German which I wanted to see mainly because I wanted to know how theytranslated things like,"Jeeze Banana, shut you're freakin' gob, okay?". And it was also good since yesterday around the same time we left for a very long hike to an old castle ruin and a waterfall, and it was very good to rest and do something less involved.
Yesterday we also kept the German sunday night tradition of watching "Tatort". "Tatort" is a german murder mystery show like CSI except for it is only in German and has a rotation of detectives from different parts of Germany. Yesterday they spoke in Hoch Deutsch but the week before they spoke a special dialect and not even my host parents could understand it all completely without subtitles. It was crazy dramatic last night though because in the end like almost every character died except for the inspectors and the killer commited suicide. It was yucky.
i hope this post makes sense, if it doesn't I'm sorry, it kind of has no time order what soever, it goes all over the place. But I miss home! Hope the weather is nice there, it is here!

The redhead saw cologne and forgot to write a post. Whoops!

    Cities are big.
And the funny thing about European cities versus American cities is... in America a city is shopping, government buildings, and entertainment. In Europe, everything, everywhere is built right on top of historical things. anything you can imagine. In fact right now, I'm probably standing above the buried silverware of a very wealth person from a really freaking long time ago.
    Well, probably not, but you get the idea.
So in European cities there are lots of History museums and old Gothic churches and ancient cities up the wazzu! We have some history museums, but not really, these history museums explain the history of our history's history... so, yeah, Europe wins over America by superior age. Duh.
     Now Cologne. Well first off there's the name. The international name for airports and crap is "Cologne" which isn't actually what the Germans or anyone who can pronounce an umlaut call it. They call it "Köln". "Cologne" is a French name. And I know you are thinking,"DUDE, Cologne is in Germany, why the hell does it have a friggin French name? that makes no sense!".Oh but it does my dear friend. Because a long-ass time ago France was really big and half of what is Köln today on the left side of the Rhein, was in France. And the Rhein seperated the civilized city of Cologne from the uncivilized world outside of France.
   So other than the name, Cologne has many old historical buildings, the jemstone of which is their beloved Cathederal. It is the second largest Building in Europe, eclipsed only by the Eiffel tower. It was mountainous stain-glass windows and a spiral staircase mounting to the top of one of its towers. We climbed to the bell in the tower and I'm not lying when I say it was the most exerting and cramped tourist attraction I have ever attended because the staircase is really barely big enough for two people side by side on a step. But it was all fun, the view at the top is breath-taking and the view inside the church is just as so, beautiful, intricate, and huge. Our tour guide, a native of cologne, said that it was so ingrained in their life that he missed it when he went away.
    We also went to the Chocolate museum, which was interesting, and had all the explanatory descriptions in German and English, allowing me to learn a few interesting new words. And down the shopping streets which was really weird because, ´hier, their streets are not made for cars. their shopping streets are for people, their strollers, their, bikes, their dogs, and their feet. And I love it.
    The only thing that was not fun in the least was that it rained pretty heavily for most of the day, forcing me to learn the word "euchgeveicht"(soaked), because heck was I when we were leaving. Fall is coming, and how weird that my school in America has started already, yet here I am writing to you lovely people.

The redhead is being sentimental again....

      Somehow it never occured to me that my world in the United States would go on without me. But somehow it does. Building go up, detentions are given, teenagers forget they had homework, life goes on.
      While perusing through my handwritten letters I recieved from friends and family before I left I came across a quote to my favorite poem. It is by ee cummings and I have, infact, commited it to memory.
      "I carry your heart with me (I carry it in my heart)"(click here to read the whole poem).
      It is a beautiful thought and a beautiful line. It reminds me of how you can take the young lady out of Pennsylvania... but you can't take the Pennsylvania out of the lady. I carry all my friends and my town with me, always. Many times when I am at home I find myself ridiculing it, but it was central to the first 14 years of my life, and I actually miss it.
      And we all forget how important things we leave behind are sometimes. Moving on, it is a part of life. I will return home but it will be somehow a little different. I am not a child anymore, and I will never again be younger, and as I edit these words I'm losing time.
"(...)children guessed(but only a few/and down they forgot as up they grew (....) one day anyone died i guess/(and noone stooped to kiss his face)/busy folk buried them side by side/little by little and was by was/all by all and deep by deep/and more by more they dream their sleep/noone and anyone earth by april/wish by spirit and if by yes." (ee cummings "anyone lived in a pretty how town")
     In my high school last year one of my teachers said Time is the most important resource we have. And I agree and disagree with him. time is one very important resource, but the other and equally as important is choice. We are approached with choices every minute all the time. Jelly or cream cheese? Upstairs or downstairs? Reading a book or fly a kite? And it is our choices that make the time we have worth while.

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.