why, hello again!

So, it has been ages since I last posted. I tried to think of a reason but I couldn't really find anything other than the fact that my life has been really low key lately and I guess just a low key lifestyle does not a good blog make. A good blog post requires either crazy awesomeness or ranty worthy badness. I still don't have either of those two things, but I am still going to attempt a post and therefore you must suffer through my drivel. 

Christmas is coming and I am actually excited. I still have no idea what I am going to do but there are many offers on the table, which is nice. Really the most exciting part is Maria and Melissa. I can't believe it has been five months since I have seen either of them. All I can think about is how much I am going to laugh those eight or whatever days they are here. No one can make me crack up like those two and it is going to feel amazing to be able to just bask in it for a full week. 

In other news, Germany is unbearably  cold. I am not the type of person that gets cold easily, not at ALL. In fact, I am the exact opposite. I am always always always too warm when I sleep. It's like when people flip over the pillow to get to the cool side of the pillow, except I need a whole new fresh bed. At home I sleep in a minimum of two different beds per night, but here I am just NEVER warm. I don't think it's so much that Germany is colder degrees wise, but the house is wayyy older and the heating system is not as good. It's kind of nice though because I think because I am cold all the time I haven't put on any weight even though Christmas in Germany=a shit ton of delicious cakes, waffles, and cookies. Not to mention my Adventskalendar and then Nikolaus where I got tonnnnns of chocolate. Oh, yeah, and Gluhwein. 

I had a friend from college who always went on about Christmas in Germany and I always thought to myself "how different could it possibly be?!?" but she was totally right. It's totally lovely. The food is of course an amazing aspect but then their are the Christmas markets which are adorable and sooo fun. There are tons of gorgeous lights and it all just looks so much adorable on Germany's tiny little streets (even if they are terrifying to drive on).

i hate money.

i am feeling so stressed out right now and it is all because of money. it is even more ridiculous because at the moment i have more in my bank account than i ever have had before and it just isn't enough. i have to get christmas presents, have enough money to travel when maria and melissa are here and  i also need to sign up for my next level of german courses. that last one costs 700 euro alone. that is actually a great price considering it is 16 hours a week and four months but gah you have to pay cash in full and you need to sign up considerably in advance. the website says the class is almost full and it doesnt start until march. if i could pay in march that would be great as it would give me plenty of time to save up post christmas destitution but of course it needs to be paid to reserve my spot. i think i'll head over to the school monday or so and see how full they consider almost full and see if they can give me an estimation of when they think it will fill up for good. i remember when i signed up for this class it was yellow for quite a while before it got completely full. it's just german is SO important to me, it's why i came here. to learn the language, and i really can't do it without the classes. they guarantee me 16 hours of complete and total immersion every week and i neeeeeeed that to get better. i'm like hyperventilating right now. you can probably tell as there is nary a paragraph break nor a capital letter in sight. 

GR.

maybe if i write a budget here i will feel better.

my current account balance is around 650 euros. let's say i set aside 200 for christmas gifts. that leaves me with 450. ill get paid 500 euroes on jan 1st which is good because it will rejuice me mid travels. so that brings me to 950 euros, 700 of which needs to be reserved for my class. so 250 for traveling. aka, not enough. its actually super not enough because not is 250 euros not going to cover the traveling but it would leave me penniless for all of january. i need at least 25 euro to get through the month at the very least. it would be a sparse month but since my food and everything is paid for i would just need that for odds and ends here and there.

SIGH. i cant think about this anymore.

goodnight.

I CAVED.

So, I read Twilight.

I was falling massively behind on my reading list so I needed a book I knew I could get through in one sitting and I knew I could totally do that with Twilight.

These are my thoughts:

The characters are laughable. Stephanie Meyer either makes them insanely perfect, or something that bothers me even more, she deliberately gives them absolutely meaningless flaws. They are flaws that merely exist to make it more difficult for people to call her out on her terrible and uninteresting characterizations. Well, more difficult for a 12 year old anyway. 

The magic is also laughable. It's every single Vampire stereotype wrapped into one. Oh, no, correction, it's every GOOD vampire stereotype wrapped into one. Her vampires are strong, beautiful, intelligent and immortal. However, the sun doesn't burn them it makes them SPARKLE. Perhaps you think my summary is making it sound more juvenile than it actually is. Nope. Wrong. The vampires are so shiny they sparkle in sunlight. 

I pretty much have all the same exact criticisms for the book that everyone else does. I just find it totally hilarious that people who love this book most of the time love it for it's "great" romance. That is fucking hilarious. The book has the most ridiculously warped depiction of romance I have ever seen. The characters fall in love with one another before they have even spoken one word to one another. In fact, Bella falls in love with Edward whilst under the impression that he wishes her dead. They both have non existent personalities outside of the fact they love each other and every depiction of their "love" is a much clearer depiction of lust than anything else. And you know what? That is fine with me, books about lust can be great but it drives me insane that this book is parading around as the paragon of the ultimate romance when really it's nothing more than a 500 page exercise in unresolved sexual tension. 

In conclusion, everything about the book was 100 percent predictable and the writing was at times gag inducing.

I started New Moon yesterday.

kill me.

So, Thanksgiving went okay. I spent all day shopping and defrosting and prepping and then it was time to put the turkey in and WHATTAYAKNOW I have no fucking clue where the roasting pan is. But, like, I had already put so much effort in that I wasn't gonna waste it so I boiled it, haha. It was pretty plain tasting, but juicy and the boys loved it. The sweet potatoes came out PERFECTLY, but Max wasn't so into them. Mike predictably loved the marshmallows and ate a few spoonfuls of the actual potato part but was otherwise uninterested. We tried to find the wishbone at the end of it all but none of us could stomach looking at the inside of the turkey so we gave up.

It actually went fairly well and I would be more enthused but I am cranky. Right now, Germany can go fuck itself. I hate driving here so much, it stresses me like you can't even imagine. The streets are too tiny, there is no where to park and really the most annoying thing of all is that there are nine trillion rules you need to remember. Everyone else knows them because in Germany there is some pretty rigorous driving school required before you get your license, but for someone like me who is used to having signs letting me know when to stop and when I have the right of way and constant reminders of what the speed limit is, always being expected to know but no one ever telling you CAN GET REALLY FUCKING ANNOYING.

For example, there are no speed limit signs in Germany. They only have speed limit signs when you are entering 30kmph zones (in neighborhoods) and for like EXCEPTIONS. Otherwise, I'm guessing, you learn in driving school what speed limits are where. Or, in my case, you learn by getting a TICKET. FOR DRIVING 37 MPH (61 kmph). ON A MAIN ROAD. The speed limit on this road is apparently 50 kmph and just sjkdklehnrjkl gerklgner I want to kill someone right now. There are so many things about this road that would lead anyone to believe the speed limit is higher than that and I just can't FUCKING believe I have to pay 25 euros, and yeah that's shit, but this is just ANOTHER way in which I've fucked up. It sure looks great when the person you pay to drive your children around GETS A SPEEDING TICKET. DJSABNADLKJGKEJGNGJDFBGAKJBFDHJB DFHJB FBJBNERKJHBGHJREBHEBGHJGBERBGSJFGNJ

KGNJKFNBKALNFABIMREALLYUPSETRIGHTNOW.

Just one day late...

I am currently in the process of making my very first Thanksgiving dinner. Even though it's a modified version, it's still ambitious and I am very nervous. I bought a four pound baby turkey which I am currently defrosting using the cold water in the kitchen sink method. It should only take two hours and then the turkey itself should take just about two hours to cook. I roasted a chicken once before and it came out decent so I have my fingers crossed for this baby. Max loves turkey and is really excited so I don't want to disappoint.

I am also making sweet potatoes and corn. Let me tell you that it was a BITCH to find sweet potatoes. Of course, today I also had the obstacle of no car because mine is at the dealer getting winter tires put on so I needed to go to about a million super markets by bus, which is fine, but then I needed to get everything home, which was decidedly more difficult. In the end I went to three different super markets and only Real had sweet potatoes and they are...different. They were marked "Israeli Sußkartoffeln" which translates to Israeli sweet potatoes so, yeah, fingers crossed they taste good. I was worried I wouldn't be able to find sweet potatoes at all because after I went through the potato section of Real I found nothing but they were actually in the imports section. They probably only had 10 potatoes total (but they were sizeable), I bought three and it cost FIVE euro. I think the potatoes cost more than the turkey.

Sigh, hopefully I will be updating later today to let everyone know how FANTASTICALLY it all went.

Wish me luck!

Life observations...

So, I am about to dig deep here. Some seriously serious reflection is going to to go down.

The topic?

KitKat bars.

This weekend Nicole went shopping and she bought a bag of KitKats and on this bag it read "New and Improved Recipe!!!" and this made me wtf. Because I mean how can you improve upon chocolate and some wafers. Not that I thought KitKats were the greatest thing ever, but just you can only go so many places with chocolate and a wafer. Right? Right.

So, you could say I was skeptical. Skeptical, but curious, so I took one of these KitKats with me to my German class since I always get super hungry and I figured a KitKat would be easy enough to consume mid Deutschlernen. 

WRONG. I don't know how they've done it, but Nestle must have made some kind of deal with the devil because KitKats are flufferin' awesome. Was I missing out before? Can someone unexposed to this new formula give me their opinions on KitKats. I was always fairly neutral... actually if we were to use the Trick or Treating scale for judging candy, it would get a one because I would only visit the house one time whereas a house giving out king size bags of Skittles would get a "as many times as possible without having to resort to costume changes" and the house giving banana Laffy Taffy would get the elusive "Costume changes PLUS bartering away all other candy for more banana Laffy Taffy."

But this new KitKat...well, it might just resort to plain old theft.

America, the Beautiful...

Here are the 10 things I miss most about the U.S. of A. I wrote this list during my German class one day when I was bored because we were going over what accusatives are for like the 10th time and I my brain was going to implode if I didn't let my mind wander someplace happy.

10. Baja

Omg, I think about Baja all the time. It is hard to get both wraps and Mexican food in Germany and Baja has BOTH (their Mexican food being somewhat sub par but their wraps being OUT OF THIS WORLD) and I just want a barbecue chicken wrap with a side order of their spanish rice. Ok, yeah, I'm drooling, someone please Fedex this to me ASAP.

9. Wide Streets

I am going to a be a phenomenal driver upon my return to Commack. The width of the street I live on in the US is about four times as wide as any residential street in Germany. My mom told me before I came not to worry about driving on the Autobahn because the lanes are a bit wider to accommodate the high speeds. This is totally false. The lanes are smaller. You could probably say they are wider than MOST streets in Germany as they comfortably allow more than 2 cars to be driving at once, but compares to the vast expanse that is the Long Island Expressway, I constantly feel like I am about to trade paint with everyone around me. 

8. Free Parking

Parking is NEVER free. Even when you think it's free, it isn't. I can't even park on the street I live on without a permit. Parking lots in general also suck. At home there are jillions of spots free whereas here even the largest of parking lots sometimes require I circle through for over 10 minutes looking for a spot. And then a week later I'll get a letter in the mail letting me know it wasn't a spot at all and I owe Germany 15 euros. Curses.

7. Office Supplies!

Binders in Germany enrage me. They have only two rings and they are built to hold a LOT of pages and definitely not built for easy page turning. This has resulted in many torn pages. Also, try finding a good mechanical pencil in Germany. It's not gonna happen.

6. Starbursts

Yum.

5. Milk

This is more of a "this family" thing than a German thing (or is it? I'm not sure...) but the family I live with only buys fresh milk on occasion but for the most part uses condensed. Blegh. I looooove fresh milk and the thought of drinking condensed makes me want to vomit.

4. OMG TV on the Internet

Last year every single show I loved was on the internet. You can't watch them from Germany :(. Thank god Comedy Central is super generous and they stream their shows internationally so I still have South Park and the Daily Show. Also, thank god for youtube.

3. Free carwashes

My car is always a mess and it drives me crazy but something in me is opposed to paying to get my carwashed. Especially since in Germany you have to pay and THEN you have to do most of the work yourself!!! Isn't that ludicrous! I mean it's a bit cheaper but I'd rather pay an extra euro or two to have someone else do it, for serious. Also getting my car washed was always lovely because I could see my daddy! It's considerably less exciting when the only familiar faces at the car wash are two little boys who are either pouting that we are there in the first place or harassing me to buy them candy.

2. My bed

Anyone who has ever spent time in my bed can probably imagine the pain I am going through to be apart from this beautiful piece of furniture.

1. Target

Omg. I can't even talk about it. I might get teary eyed.