5 good things about today

1. craving a ginger ale all day and then finding a soda machine on the really creepy 2nd floor of schermerhorn

2. finishing my experiment credits for psych

3. telephone dance session i had in my room early this morning

4. talking to bebop even if it was only for a minute. she sounded happy :)

5. listening to agitata da due venti from vivaldi's griselda today in musichum

exchange with a kindergartner in regards to his coloring of a haunted house:

"marcus, that's beautiful!"

"ms. shirley said it was poppin'!"

nyc.

it is so amazing to be back in america. really i mean back in new york. i dont know much about the rest of the country. i've been with my sisters and laughing til my stomach hurts. we took the boat to fire island and i got to smell the beach and get really big hair from ocean spray and i got a tan! i have an apartment in manhattan and i am paying bills and i think it's really fun in weird way. everything here feels new and 1000x better than i remembered. 

packing.

packing is kind of fun when you don't leave it to the very last second. i am so incredibly organized! i printed out a itinerary for the massively fun european adventure me and paula are embarking on in 10 days and i've already printed out all of our ticketing info. i nearly killed a tree doing it, but it looks so fancy in its plastic sleeve! i feel like a grown up :).

2 weeks to go

i have used the word 'booboo' alarmingly frequently this week. mike is missing a sizable portion of his knee and whenever i am tending to it i call it that and afterward i always feel icky. i'm 21 and he is an 8 year old boy. neither of us are really at an age where calling an injury a 'booboo' is in anyway appropriate.  

i wonder if after this year i will ever be able to speak english properly again. 

cranky.

the housekeeper has been completely evil to me lately. i just don't understand. she acts like she hardly knows me yet during the winter she treated me like i was her daughter! i know she is upset with the family we work for because they seriously cut down her hours, but since that happened she has been down right cold to me. 

just today there was a cutting board on the table and she told me to put it away. i got up and did it with out saying but she started ranting that it was my job to clean up after myself and i said conversationally, whilst i was doing exactly what she asked me to do, that nicole had left it their. she repeated it was my job to clean up breakfast and now i was ticked off so i replied that i was in charge of cleaning up after the children's breakfast, which is perfectly true. i'm the au pair and she is the housekeeper -- which of us d'you think is responsible for cleaning up after the mother and father?!

i absolutely wouldn't mind either if she just asked with even a hint of the warmth she used to. i used to do all kinds of things for her with a smile on my face (i still do in fact, she has no problem leaving all the laundry at the bottom of the stairs without even asking me to haul it all up two flights of stairs) but it is much harder for me to do favors when she is so cold. almost everyone i've spoken to has warned me about her though. i'm just sad that it looks like our relationship is ending on such a sour note. 

i truly can't wait to not live in this house anymore. i am going to miss max and mike but it is very uncomfortable for to me to live with people who so obviously view me as an employee. many of my friends who are au pairs are much closer with their families, but i feel very uncomfortable around mind (the exception, of course, being the children).

well, here i am blogging again, and therefore complaining. this blog is really just a forum for me to whine. 

german class is over.

i want to take a moment to reflect on learning german. 

my class ended this past thursday and i have to that i really am satisfied with how much i know. before i got here i was convinced i could become fluent in one year, and while i think it is possible with many languages and even with german it was not possible for me. considering i never spoke german outside of my class save for a few phone calls or quick store interactions and a conversation here and there with the housekeeper i really know tons! i understand i would say 60 percent of the spoken language, but most everyday happenings i understand 95-100 percent of everything said. its just when i get into television aimed at anyone older than 14 i sometimes get confused!

with reading im even better! even when sometimes isn't immediately clear after a few rereads i am always able to work more and more out without ever reaching for my dictionary. ive read first harry potter book and am now working my way through feuchtgebiete, which is like legit. i felt like i was cheating with harry potter because id read in english so many times, but i feel just at ease reading this book which as of yet does not even exist in english. 

speaking. sigh, this is the real hurtle for me. i am still very embarrassed to speak german with native speakers. i trip and mumble and blunder and usually give up halfway through and beg for them to speak english with me. BUT on the few occassions when this hasnt been possible after a few minutes ive seen my fears get left behind and i stop thinking about grammar so much and i really CAN do it. sure there are mistakes and i need to search for words and i need to use some funny phrasings but its getting there! of course my opportunities to speak german are going to seriously dwindle once i leave, but hey, thats what the internet is for, right?

i just really want to keep working hard with my german. i dont want to forget anything and i want to go back to columbia next year even stronger than i am right now. 

 

once i began learning german with earnest my realistic goal was to learn enough to be able to take the 300 level once i got back to school. and i really think i am there!