tally me banana

so i just sent in my LAST TERM PAPER EVER and am going to check out a shared studio space in a little less than an hour. hot dog! seriously though, if i wasn't getting through my fourth cold of the year, things would be just about perfect right now. the whole continual illness thing is really not cool, but i'm trying to deal the best i can with that while still enjoying all the good stuff. maybe the good stuff is causing the illness? naaah.

speaking of: last weekend three of my friends and i got to be filmed in a segment for the travel channel about this water park about an hour south of berlin. my friend marissa came across the casting call for four women interested in doing a full day shoot for this new show about water parks all over the world. somehow they picked us and we showed up at 9:30am last friday with our overnight bags and little clue of what was going to happen. we got started just about immediately, with the crew mic-ing us and filming our (fake) first entrance into the park, chalk full of "ooohs" and "aaahs" and "wow, this place is so awesome!" turns out "reality" television is just minimally scripted advertising. who knew? in any case, we then spent the next 14ish hours going through the park ("did you guys know that this is europe's largest free-standing dome?" --> do not say "yeah, it was built by the germans to construct the zeppelin during WWI" "i heard that this is europe's biggest man made rain forest!" "did you guys know you can get a tan in here because there are filters over the skylights that enhance the sun?") our conversation throughout the day was riddled with such gems. but somehow, it was actually an awesome time. we had to go down the slides about a million times, enough to make me a bit scratched and bruised, but most of the times were just a rockin' good time. particularly after it was dark and they'd plied us with booze. weirdly there are zero safety regulations at this park, which led us to witness some super drunk middle aged polish dudes diving head first down the metal slides. yikes. but none of us got hurt, so that's cool! after the long day of filming we settled down in our incredibly hot tents in an area of the gigantor dome not too far from the slides, so that at 6:45 when the little kids started screaming as they enjoyed the kiddie slide, i was up and at 'em to listen. while i had a great time doing all of this for free, if you happen to venture to the tropical island water park, i would recommend going home at the end of the night.

then on sunday a bunch of friends and i met at mauer park, which is where there's a giant hand-made and flea market every sunday in part of the park and a giant hang-out in the other part, to "perform" a choreographed dance we decided to throw together the week before. we only have part of it choreographed thus far and our speakers were too quiet to really hear much, but we just danced through it a few times and enjoyed ourselves, with a handful of people casually stopping to watch or take pictures. because it's a very crowded park and this is berlin, it really didn't seem to surprise or entice anyone too much that there were six bewigged girls doing a choreographed dance, which i kind of think is the best thing ever.

us at the park:

assuming i hit it off super well with the girl whose studio space i'm going to check out, i told her i'll only be able to start renting it if i get the part-time job i'm interviewing for on monday. so cross your fingers on that count! i really hope that i love this girl and get the job, because then i can start my ideal schedule of 2 days of office job, 2 days of thesis work, 1 - 3 days of fun/art. sounds pretty damn ideal.

okay, off to go see the studio!

oh, right, the title of this post is in reference to the fact that i was invited to go see a tv taping of an interview with harry belafonte. sofia, if you happen to be reading, i immediately thought of you and your dad listening to him on vinyl!