Matt came back from Italy last night, and he bought me an off-red leather purse from Florence! I am thrilled with it. He even had the front personally stamped and the shoulder strap shortened, just the way I like it. ♥

FLICKR SET: A Continent in Food

I tried to stay consistent with foodblogging, but I'm sure I let a few regional specialties and delicacies escape my memory, either from not having my digicam on me 24/7 or. . . during that dark 2 week period when I thought I'd lost it. :D; In retrospect, the food in Germany honestly is quite superb, especially if you like heavy meals that leave you wholly satisfied. Prague was rather talented at mimicking other cultures' culinary tastes; Paris was the best for whimsical snacking; all I remember from Dublin was Guinness; and London was rather unimpressive, but that might also be because I couldn't buy anything without converting the pounds to USD, yikes. I'm a little bummed that I didn't get to visit Italy and see if my disagreements with Italian food were due to cheap American imitation or. . . actual Italian food.

One of the girls on the program left for home on Tuesday instead of Thursday with the group flight, and we decided to send her off in style by ordering a round of beer at the corner bar. UHHH a round turned into a few more and before I knew it I had somehow drunkenly promised to see her off to the airport at 5 AM. Long story short: I stayed up the entire night and was, indeed, at the airport at 5:30 AM with 5 other girls in varying stages of hungover and inebriation and 2 very drunk German boys (who we had somehow recruited to help with the luggage). It was possibly the worst experience since London; I thought my face was going to split in two from the pain. We stumbled home at 8 AM, just as people were leaving the dorm for their morning classes. So insane, I've had my share of ~wild nights~ but never until 8, okay. Our group flight is at 6 AM tomorrow morning and we're meeting in front of the dormitory at 3:45 AM. :| Three guesses on how we'll probably spend our final night in Dresden and the last two don't count. ( +2 )

Including this entry, I have 25 entries in my across the atlantic tag, which is not nearly as impressive as the 36 entries tagged boys (suck) or the 44 entries in clickclique, but it's safe to say that I enjoyed blogging about Europe much more than the other two. /:) I also temporarily unlocked all of the entries in my cityhop tag. A SUMMARY: Dresden, Prague, Berlin, Munich/Oktoberfest, London, Dublin, and Paris. If you include my previous entries on Toronto, Beijing, Xi'An, and Lhasa, and include Boston, that means that I've visited 12 major cities in 8 different countries in the year 2007. That is incredible.

Studying abroad has honestly been indescribable; it's completely different from simply visiting a country or vacationing with friends and parents. There have been definite ups and downs and peaks of frustration that almost made me regret my decision, but at the end of the day I wouldn't trade these past 5 months for anything else. I won't lie: there's a reason why most study abroad programs are slated for juniors; studying abroad first semester sophomore year is a trade-off. Freshmen year happened in a frazzled blur for me, and now I've missed yet another year of getting involved in university clubs and organizations; I gave up a semester of taking necessary prerequisites for advanced courses required for my major. Despite everything I've learned, I'm extremely nervous about how I'll transition socially and academically back into university. In the past two weeks, I have: declared myself a psychology major with a public health minor; sent in a volunteer application & set up an interview with Boston Children's Hospital; contacted Professor K about working with him in his biochemistry laboratory again for Spring. So, uh, I'm going to hit the ground running; if I must crash, at least there'll be fireworks. :|

And to not sell the program short, my most important lessons learned: basic cooking, surviving in a second language, budgeting a 9-day European extravaganza, blowing my comfort zone out of the water (sup Oktoberfest), self-awareness and realization (thx culture class), the build-up after the breakdown (sup Orgo). Am I genuinely more self-confident and accomplished than before? Truthfully, I won't know until I go back. Whenever I think about growing up, I always refer back to petronia's commentary about her solo Italy trip, when she said that there's not ever an age when you're suddenly ready to tackle certain obstacles; either you just tell yourself to do it, or you don't. All we can do is bluff our way through our first experiences and try not to act scared. Sometimes, the fear never goes away, but you get used to it eventually. And sometimes, you never get used it, but you learn to do it, anyway. Maybe growing up is nothing more than learning to disguise and channel our fears better.

Thanks for staying with me on my transatlantic journey, you guys. I really appreciate it. ♥

Firstly, I am finished with the semester! I fly back to a hopefully snowy Indiana in four short days! In a little less than a month, I get to fly back to one of my favorite cities in the world and, in exactly one month from today, I start the Spring semester for my sophomore year of university. Where does the time go, seriously.

Despite lazing around and doing nothing of importance for the past four days, I have somehow accrued a rather hefty backlog; what else is new. Everyone in the program celebrated our last group dinner on Wednesday at our favorite Indian restaurant; it quickly turned into a photo-op with multiple cameras flashing in every direction for the greater part of the evening. I wait in nervous anticipation of the shameless Facebook tagging that will most certainly surface once everyone returns from their last-minute vacations. :T

( A series of embarrassing and unflattering photographs. +8 )

Since I was pretty much the only one left in Dresden this week, I did a lot of walking and exploring. Half of the city is covered by Christmas markets; it makes me really happy. I also finally visited the Panometer Exhibit, a huge 360 degree view of baroque Dresden that was painted a few years ago using modern technology and old-fashioned art technique. It's almost unreal how realistic the exhibit is; I rented a pair of binoculars and the detail is incredible, from people's faces to rooftop tiles to tree leaves. The museum even has a continuous lighting loop to mimic day and night; it became a little annoying after a while because I only had a few minutes to enjoy full daylight before the light started dimming into evening and then 5 minutes of darkness for night. :| The baroque soundtrack made me really sleepy, too, alfkjd. I obviously lack refined tastes. ( +5 )

5 questions meme from arboretum ( More. )

If you want questions from me, leave a comment with. . . your middle name! Or lack thereof, that works too. :)

IN DIFFERENT SELF-ABSORBED NEWS, uh, I'm getting tired of Johnny's Entertainment fandom. :T I'm not sure if it's the source canon or simply the fandom; I've tried reading multiple fics in the past week and I always end up skimming. Nothing really excites me anymore. The only thing that keeps me solidly interested is Yamapi and Ryo's jwebs (absenceofmind tells me that he wrote the message AS A HAIKU; oh Ryo du bist mein nur idol). This is the longest I've stayed in a fandom since Prince of Tennis, so it's probably just me hitting the end of my attention span. This is pretty awkward to say, but in the spirit of preemptive clarification, I might do a friendscut soon; my journal hasn't been remotely fandom-related since September, so if any of you have considered dropping me but haven't worked up a good enough justification, think of this as your no-special-occasion-needed opportunity.

GUESS WHAT.


EINS I received a lovely German letter yesterday that informed me one of the buildings on campus found kleine Tasche mit einer Digitalkamera und Schlüsselbund verloren. Unglaublich! Wie glücklich! I raced there today after my Sociology final and OMG, I have my purse again! With my digital camera! And keys! And driver's license! I won't even question how my purse found its way into a building that I'd never been inside before, or how I could've probably found my purse weeks ago had I only known what department to go to, because I'm just so relieved to have my camera and keys back.

ZWEI sesame_seed & absenceofmind I GOT YOUR PACKAGE. SCREAM. I can't believe you got me an issue of Popolo, thank youuu! ♥♥♥ The Hey! Say! JUMP spread is hilarious, and there's so much Ryo and NewS. *_* Matt and I pored through every page. *_* The dieting adverts in the back are pretty disturbing, though; I know Japanese girls are more on the petite side, but you have girls boasting how they went from 120 lbs to 90 lbs, terrifying. Oh, Nippon.

DREI Dreams of flying, a photography project by Jan von Holleben. Adorably uplifting; the perfect winter pick-me-up.

VIER Completely finished with Organic Chemistry for this semester. The final was a bitch but the studying paid off, so I'm pretty pleased. >:) I still have Cell Biology and German on Monday and Tuesday and I need to nail both of them, so. It'll be another long weekend. :T

FÜNF Everyone is jetting off after next Tuesday for some last-minute traveling: some to Croatia, some to Italy, some to Poland, some to return home early. I uhhh realized that I WILL BE THE ONLY PERSON IN DRESDEN FOR A FULL 5 DAYS next week, which. . . . is actually kind of relieving? I chose not to go anywhere firstly because of finances and secondly because I need a period to de-stress and recharge, and I'm looking forward to a week of lazy eating, Sex & the City marathons, thrift store hunting, and exploring Dresden one last time. Maybe I'll even finally finish the two books I brought with me (Invisible Cities, The Stranger) and write the fic I've been putting off since September (lolol).

SECHS The weather has been so mild lately; the temperature hit 12 degrees C / 54 degrees F today. Insane. I'll never understand this country, where the temperature drops as the day progresses (e.g. colder at noon than at 7 AM) but gets warmer the deeper we go into winter. Oh Germany, you're so curious.

SIEBEN Every year Dresden hosts the second largest Christmas market in Germany. Caramel apples and Quarkkeulchen and bratwurts and homemade chocolate, omg. I bought arm warmers from a vender; they make me ridiculously happy.

( 2 for posterity, +1 more for the road )

SOMEHOW I SUDDENLY HAVE A PAID ACCOUNT AND EXTRA ICON SPACE? Omggg. Please reveal yourself, my engimatic benefactor~ Or at least comment and tell me what you would like from me in return, because baby you know I'll do it. To be honest, I'm the worst paid time user ever, but I WILL PERSEVERE AND CHANGE MY WAYS, FOR YOU (i.e. voicepost coming up soon!)

I suppose I should also, I don't know, resolve to post more, except it's even more difficult now because I don't have a camera. Which, on that front: dead end. ( More. )

Enough whining. Since Germany doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving, the American students here cooked a traditional Thanksgiving dinner for our professors and friends! We had 64 guests and we probably made enough food for 100 people, gosh. 5 different types of mashed potatoes (with skins, without skins, lumpy, smooth, and sweet), stuffed squash, candied yams, 4 different types of stuffing (cornbread-based, barley-based, meat, vegetarian), 4 giant turkeys, 13 pies (pumpkin, pecan, and apple), 10 cans of corn, 2 carrot rings, 4 green bean casseroles. You guys, I literally ate two plates the size of my head. I thought I would die from food consumption.

( +7, abuse of Facebook albums )

In other news: an interesting interview with Sumie Kawakami, who recently released the book Goodbye Madame Butterfly: Sex, Marriage and the Modern Japanese Woman; she shares some interesting observations about Japanese women and marriages. And she mentions the infamous Johnny's Jimusho!

You have a story in the book about a woman who’s into the hanryu Korean boom. Do you think there is a deeper meaning in the current popularity of this culture with older Japanese women?

I don’t know but it’s just something for them to do. They are cute boys, and everyone is having fun screaming at them.

But they are different from Johnny’s Jimusho idols?

I think they are similar. But Koreans seem like the Japanese of old. They are strong and a bit macho. Johnny’s idols lately are a bit neutered. More than "men," they are "cute" and "pretty." There are no men in Japan like those in the past. But in Korea, they still have a bit of that old strength. I don’t mean to say that Korea is like an old version of Japan, but they have something that modern Japanese men have lost.

You can't really argue that logic with the older idols, or even with boys like Yamapi, Jin, and Ryo, but then you have Hey!Say! JUMP and, well. This is so hard to confess, but I've actually had that video on repeat for the past two days. They're just so. . . short and young and. . . guiltily mesmerizing. I'm a little curious about the boy on the left at 00:47; he has decent moves.

I went to my first football game last weekend! The Dresden Dynamos are a third tier team, but the people here still get ridiculous on game days. ( More. +5 )

Later that night, I heard a flurry of footsteps stampede down the hall and a hurried pounding at my door. Apparently, the first snow of the year came: OH SUP IMPROMPTU SNOW FIGHT. ( +7 )

My Organic Chemistry midterm was on Thursday and it was pretty ugly; honestly, you'd think nucleophiles and electrophiles would be self-explanatory, and then you get "NAME THE REACTION MECHANISM FOR OXYMERCURATION" and it's like, shit. I did, however, nail the H-MNR graph due to Marshall giving me a 10-minute crash course at 1 AM, which made absolutely no sense to me until I woke up 6 hours of restless sleep later, flipped through my notes, and suddenly all the peaks and static scratches made miraculous sense. Good to know you haven't completely dumped me yet, Chem; don't worry bb we can still work it out. :((

My week brightened up considerably, though, because MY FRESHMAN-YEAR ROOMMATE SENT ME A SURPRISE PACKAGE. :") OMG OMG. I LOVE ANNA.


I love getting mail. :(( Don't worry, guys; a postcard-request post is coming up soon. Some of you may even get extra *~surprises~*.

shounenhero predicted my Meyer-Briggs a few days ago (ENTP, an almost terrifyingly accurate analysis of myself, even though I probably stray toward INTP), and she mentioned that she totally pinned me as an intelligent party-girl, which (laughing) is possibly one of the biggest misconceptions about me, ever. Okay, truth, I'm probably more pro-active and social than the average person on LJ/fandom, but despite what my recent entries make me sound, I'm pretty anti-social by nature. I have no problems keeping myself entertained, and large crowds always make me uncomfortable. It's better here because we have so many planned excursions (like last week's football game) and I see the same people every day, but I rarely leave my room for the sake of pure socializing. I don't know, I guess it's because there's always something I know I "should" be doing, either online or offline, that I have a hard time justifying small-talk with people who I already know.

Plus, and this is hard to articulate properly, I don't find most people interesting enough? alsfkjd, I mean, I like people, I really do, and I find people (in general) more interesting than books or numbers or machines, but unless I genuinely 1) care about a person or 2) am interested in him/her or 3) find the topic fascinating, I feel like I'm just wasting time after a certain point in the conversation. I consider most parties boring unless I like the people going or it's small enough to actually meet new people, and I really only like clubbing because I can never turn down a dance party. I've realized that I'm not really big on bars or just wandering around on the streets ~looking for adventure~ (uh well, maybe in the summer when it's 70 degrees out; in freezing weather, not so much). Actually, the more I think about it, the more I'm weather-influenced. Why do I go to school in Boston.

THE SHORT VERSION: London was wretched except for calculette, who was a shining beacon of love amidst a sea of gray skies. Dublin was adorable; Paris even better. No limbs were lost, and no hearts broken. Success.


FLICKR SETS: LONDON | DUBLIN | PARIS | EUROTRIP

( >> YOUTHQUAKE << )

Cooking is sort of this mystical concept for me. Before I came to Germany the most complex food I could make was grilled cheese, but now that I have my own kitchen and am forced to do my own grocery shopping, I've realized that the actual cooking portion is such a small step in the process. Firstly, uh, everyone already knows of my obsessive-compulsive nutrition tendencies where it physically pains me to use oil, sodium intake constantly worries me, the label is the first thing I read when I pick up something, etc. Cooking can be fun if I'm cooking for other people but I'm pretty lazy when cooking by myself; what's the point if I just need to load up on vitamins and make my stomach happy. :T

I eat the same thing Monday - Thursday, which drives Matt crazy because he doesn't know how I do it. Look, I'm in class 20 hours a week; I'm just looking for a little stability and comfort at the end of the day. :((

☆ DAILY FOOD BLOGGING MEME ☆ for the week of October 15 - 20: ( +5 )

We use the weekends for our great cooking escapades and experiments. Last Friday I made vegetable potstickers from scratch. *_* THEY CAME OUT PERFECT. ( +7 )

And then Matt made the best pumpkin ravioli in cream & hazelzut sauce ever, omg. ( +3 )

I wasn't planning on going out last weekend because I had an Organic Chemistry midterm on Tuesday (what shit, YOU ARE DEAD TO ME, RESONANCE STRUCTURES. >:0 YOU TOO, CYCLOHEXANES; FUCK YOU AND THE 6 CARBONS YOU RODE IN ON) but before I knew it somehow Marshall had poured me four vodka shots and I spent the majority of Friday night falling in and out of sleep and throwing up water. Lesson learned: Marshall never has my best interests in mind (but it's okay because Matt always does). FYI, the Teddybears sound even better when you're inebriated; Marshall gave me a toffee lollipop and folded paper airplanes for me and flew them out his window. I distinctly remember telling him, "THAT'S CALLED LITTERING." ( +4 choice pictures. )

My Cell Biology and Orgo midterms are over with, my Sociology midterm is tomorrow, and then it's SWEET SWEET LONDON DUBLIN PARIS; I can hardly believe it.


CRUCIALLY IMPERATIVE EDIT: THE NEW NEWS WEEEEK PV. SETTING ON REPEAT FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE, OH MY GOD. THIS IS WHY NEWS IS MY FAVORITE.

You know those days where you get up and decide with no excuses that you will look incredible that day? Today was one of them. ( Apparel blogging: the tangible effect of fashion on self-confidence. +1 )

lovedoesthat, panpipe, unrequitedangst, and I are starting a new band: ...unrequited if by lovepipe☆. We're debuting in Japan with our highly anticipated single "one angst does pan". I don't plan on contributing any actual musical talent; my job is purely to steal fans from Morning Musume. ( +5 )

OKAY, ACTUAL UPDATE NOW: last week was insane. Spent 6 hours prepping for a 5 hour lab, took another Sociology fieldtrip to the Dresden city museum (gorgeous), went to the Opera (more gorgeous), attended a dinner mixer with my professors (awkward), caught a cold and sore throat, got drunk off one beer (wtf, not impressed), and read 100+ pages of nucleotides and citric acid cycles and genetic transcription, though not necessarily in that order! I have a German quiz tomorrow, a Cell Biology exam this Friday, and an Organic Chemistry midterm next Tuesday. I am terrified. But first! ( Opera pictures. +9 )

This entry is an entirely inadequate recap of the most surreal 24 hours I ever experienced.


hours spent on train: 15
liters of beer consumed: 1
marriage proposals received: 1
inappropriate places fallen asleep: 6
moments thought "NOT DRUNK ENOUGH FOR THIS SHIT": uh lost count
times hit on, accosted, violated, & molested in differing languages: also lost count

( OKTOBERFEST 2007? PRICELESS. )