integrating

marija and i moved into our new apartment yesterday. it feels kind of unreal, kind of unsettling, but mostly good. we're subletting the place from this german guy who's moving to austria for at least a year, which means he left all his stuff. this includes: a huge, old, ratty, l-shaped beige couch that could easily seat 8 or 9 people, a good 10 potted plants, some of which could be described as trees, a few dozen empty/partially empty bottle of alcohol on high display shelves in the kitchen that have clearly never been washed, and many other random pieces of crap/dirty things. so all of that is a bit difficult, but mostly we're so happy to just have a place where we can relax and feel at home, even if it means a week or two of cleaning and re-organizing.

the apartment is in neukölln, which is the hippest neighborhood in berlin right now, since most of the formerly punk/turkish kreuzberg has become too gentrified and overrun with americans. so i'm helping with the gentrification of neukölln, though i feel that living with a dirt poor serbian is helping to keep it balanced. it's also the most foreign neighborhood in berlin, with a huge turkish population but also people from all over the world. on the subway today i saw a cartoon (on the tv in the trains that plays news) of an old stereotypically german man walking down a crowded street looking anxious, holding a sign that said "kreuzberg und neukölln raus aus der eu!" which means "kreuzberg and neukölln out of the eu," seemingly making fun of german xenophobia and specifically the german fear of turkey becoming part of the eu.

i was about to write something about studying this subject on a daily basis, but then i realized that that's really not accurate. my program is so much more nuanced and engaging than i'd imagined, while also really allowing me to gain in-depth knowledge not just on the turkish-german relationship, but on the role of each country in their respective regions, their history, their government, their people, and much more, really. so yes, to some degree i'm studying turkish-german relations, but more accurately i'm studying social and political theory with a focus on turkey and germany, the middle east, and the eu, with the overarching theme of gaining a more firm grasp on how the relationship across and between each party/nation/region works. it's a rather huge task, but i'm nearly always so happy to be engaged in it. one of our main professors is a foucaultian political philosopher, so his research and mindset has heavily influenced the nature of how we tackle topics in many of our classes, and i'm surprised to find myself becoming more and more enthralled with foucault. using his theories as a jumping off point for examining german/turkish/eu issues allows us to maintain a human, social lens while working through dense political and historical issues. i'm so incredibly glad our professors are not hardcore rational actor theorists or something terrible like that, since i feel that the perspective we take allows me to draw on my psych background in a very positive and helpful way while engaging with constructivist/post-constructivist theories of what could be dry, de-humanized topics.

sorry, i think maybe that was a lot of surface sort of blather about my studies without taking the time to really get into any true topic... but instead of delving deeper i'm going to go back to my readings.

quickly,

some things are great:

i bought two scandinavian sweaters second-hand today for a total of less than $50 and am totally in love with them.

i performed in my first berlin pop choir concert tonight and thoroughly enjoyed myself and felt real camaraderie with some of the fun germans in the group and four get ma folks came to cheer me on and it was totally lovely. i'm going to sing in the christmas session as well even though i'll be in albuqueruqe for the december 20th concert, and in the spring i'll try out for the smaller ensemble group, which consists of six people and is more like a true a capella group.

marija and i signed a lease today for our new apartment together and we move in one week from today!

i had my first modern dance class last night and even though there was a random reedie in it who i'd met at tim's party this past saturday and then she was a total reedie elitist bitch to me, the class was great and made me feel healthy and happy, and the teacher was a super gay german with bright blond asymmetrical hair.

tim had a big fun party on saturday and even though 75% of the many many guests were gorgeous gay men (or maybe because) i had tons of fun.

next saturday i'm co-hosting that halloween party and my courtney love costume is really coming together.


so, it seems that most things are good. i'm still kind of unsure about classes, but they seem mostly good. and gudrun is acting weirdly super friendly, so i guess that's good? maybe trying to make me feel bad about moving out? i won't overanalyze it.

anyway, i'm really digging my new sweaters.

xoxo.

oops, four and a half weeks

so apparently i can't handle public blogging. i kept thinking about what i could post in the past weeks that would describe what i'd been doing without actually being offensive. and i couldn't figure it out, so i simply didn't post. and that's no good, so we're back to private blogging.

so, as for what's been up - i decided that i can't actually stay in my current apartment, basically. while i tried to describe gudrun's ocd/neurotic/mean behavior in a highly diplomatic way for public consumption, for those of you who can now read this i'll give a bit more of the full story. and full story short - she's the cleanest person i've ever met and got angry each time i used something in the kitchen or bathroom in a way that wasn't exactly how she wanted, or put something away in somewhere that wasn't exactly right, or left a door open, or a light on, or cleaned the stove wrong, etc. also, she made it clear that she thinks most americans are ignorant slobs, and while i might in fact share this sentiment to some degree, no one likes hearing such things from a neurotic german. and after a near break-down on her part after i cut beets on a cutting board and after washing it there was still a faint red spot, i decided i'd like to live somewhere where i feel like i can actually live without tip-toeing. also, her intense german weirdness reminds me of my host mom, who i really would die before living with again, so i sure as hell don't want to live with someone again who shares similar traits.

coincidentally, marija had still not been able to find a room in a shared apartment as of about two weeks ago, when i made my decision to move out, so we spent 8 days looking online and visiting at least one apartment per day, usually two or three. on the 8th day we were finally offered one, and we'll move in together on november 1st. gudrun has actually been out of town for about a week now, which made the whole search process less stressful. she was of course rather upset when i told her i was going to move out, though she had in fact stressed to me when i moved in that she didn't want to sign a contract because "who knows how our minds might change," which to me seemed like the beginning of a self-fulfilling prophecy. but anyway, i'm super excited to live with marija, since we'd in fact wanted to before but thought it might be too complicated. and the place is in neukölln, close to tim and to my new american friends marissa, lauren, and hannah. should be great.

in other news, school started this week, which was super exciting. monday was a "welcome day," meaning there were no classes, and language classes start next week, so i actually just went to two electives that i'm trying out and then our first get ma class with the whole gang. it feels so great to have everyone back together, and so exciting to be here instead of ankara. after our first class we all went to one of the dining halls and ate lunch together and joked about how different it is than the dining hall where we always ate in ankara. in ankara we were on a campus way outside of the city, but here the university is like nyu, with buildings just scattered around a neighborhood in the city center, but no actual campus. it really makes you feel like a part of the city, and the freedom offered to german university students is so much greater than in turkey it just makes me so happy to be here.

here is what my schedule looks like right now:
Winter Semester 2011/2012 Schedule:

Montag
Governing Wider Europe (GeT MA)
Unistr. 3b Room 205
12:00 – 2:00

Prozesse und Auswirkungen ethnischer Grenzziehungen in der Einwanderungsgesellschaft
Unistr. 3b Room 002
4:00 – 6:00

Modern Dance
Adlershof, Tanz-und Pilatesstudio
6:30 – 8:00

Dienstag
Ergänzungskurs: Grammatik B2
Sprachenzentrum, Dorotheenstr. 65, Raum 3.54
10:00 – 12:00

Mittwoch
Pilates
Gymnastiksaal Invalidenstr. 110 4. Etage Raum 423
3:15 – 4:15

Donnerstag
Die Arabischen Revolutionen - ein Paradigmenwechsel in den IB?
Unistr. 3b Room 002
10:00 – 12:00

Democratic Theory and European Case Studies (GeT MA)
Unistr. 3b Room 002
12:00 – 2:00

Contemporary Germany (GeT MA)
Luisenstr. 56 Room 123
2:00 – 4:00 or 4:00 – 6:00

Freitag
---

notice that i have no class on either friday or wednesday, which is pretty sweet. i'm taking pilates at school on wednesday so that i'll be forced to go up there, with the idea of spending the morning/afternoon before exercising in the library doing reading. should be lovely. also, the german class i'm taking is a strictly grammar class, which i rather desperately need. on top of that, i'm taking an elective in german, which will most certainly be challenging, but hopefully quite beneficial.

aside from school, i also went to a dinner meeting last night at my friend frithjof's house to talk about taking part in the german senior fellow's board of humanity in action, which is the fellowship i did in denmark. apparently the board is comprised of six people, and while there is technically supposed to be an election, only six of the fifteen of us offered the potential position expressed interest, so it seems that i'm automatically a member. that means that i'll be helping to write and edit the german senior fellows magazine, which is in english, as well as helping to guide the direction of hia in germany and offer a tether to senior fellows in the u.s. i'm quite interested in being an active member of the hia community, so i'm excited to see how this goes.

and in terms of fun, i've still been having lots of it. tim is having a party this saturday and i encouraged my new american friends to host a halloween party next week, so that should offer some good occasions for mixing get ma folk with new friends and potentially also meeting more people. also my chorus concert is next tuesday, which i'm not exactly prepared for, but i'm excited about anyway. so, although the whole housing business has been kind of intensely stressful and the main thing on my mind these past weeks, all is still well!

please do follow this blog, so that i know that someone is reading it! hugs to you all!

hurdling into week two

so tuesday seems to be update day. if i stick to that, i'll be proud of myself - weekly posts on the same day is a daunting task, but having a schedule is always helpful. and man, i thought that being here i would no longer be known as something of a task-master amongst our program folks, but apparently that image has stuck... and apparently people's propensity towards planless days and late arrivals has also stuck. the lack of planning mixed with a few good plans has worked out well for me in these first days, and i feel like i've been both productive and totally having a good time. i've been going to the summer school lectures/workshops every afternoon, and scratching one task off my list each weekday morning. once i turn in all of my paperwork tomorrow (my certificate of a registered apartment, certificate of bank account, certificate of health insurance, certificate of income, letter of enrollment), i just have to wait until i get my student i.d., then make one last trip to an official office to get my residence permit, and bam! all of my bureaucratic tasks will be done. while it's sort of a bunch, compared to turkey it has all gone so smoothly it's kind of unbelievable. so that's good.

on the life/friend/emotions side of things, i've already been having some good swings up and down, but mostly it's been up. tim has a lovely group of friends here which includes these three american girls in their mid to late 20s who've all lived here for a number of years, who've just totally accepted me into their friend group. last weekend we all went out on friday evening, which was marija's first night in germany, but then she and tim went home early and i stayed out with the girls, then wound up sleeping over at their place since it seemed far to difficult to get all the way back over to my, as gudrun calls it "more established" corner of kreuzberg. in the morning we woke up to dazzling sunshine and my new friends set about making a heaping pile of delicious banana pancakes, and tim came over to top off the feast with corner store fixings for mimosas. who could ask for a better first weekend brunch? after a lovely bike ride home (oh, i bought an adorable vintage pale pink lady's city bike, which i'm super into) i met up with the girls again for some leisurely park lounging in a newly opened park near my house. seriously fabulous. the evening got a little darker when i returned home and joined gudrun and two of her friends for drinks on our balcony, only because my german skills are actually negligible enough at this point that i started slipping back into feeling like the helpless teenager i once was, sitting in on a conversation where those around you inevitably think you're less intelligent and interesting than you know you are, if only you could tell them what you were really thinking! so damn, i need to study up.

the week looked up again though with dinner parties on both sunday and monday, the first hosted by gudrun as something of a welcome party for me. she invited a few friends, including an american playwright working towards a phd from berkeley and doing fieldwork here, and i invited tim and marija. the following evening it was back to marissa, hannah, and lauren's house for a feast based around the mushrooms they'd picked the day before in the brandenberger wald. delicious, and totally fun, including being introduced to a very interesting german girl who goes to my university and previously chose to study in magdeburg, a town in the east quite close to where i did my exchange, because she felt compelled to try to understand the other side of her country that most wessies simply write off as backward, racist, poor, etc. while i would never put myself back in sachsen anhalt, i do feel an odd attachment and defensiveness about it, and we had an interesting conversation about the type of person who puts herself in a situation she knows will be difficult and potentially sad/bad, and it is in fact difficult/sad/bad, but she comes out being glad she did it and feeling better for the experience. we are both apparently that kind of person.

oh man though, i do like happy and nice things too! one such thing i've found here is the berlin pop choir, with which i had my second practice this evening. for our concert in a few weeks we're singing "personal jesus," duran duran's "planet earth," "don't walk away renee," and "hold tight." i'm fucking stoked.

we also had orientation today, and those few stragglers who i hadn't seen yet were there, which was really a happy reunion. next week i'll register for sports classes, then the following week everything actually starts! so exciting!

yes, i still very much miss america and all of my lovely friends and family there, but i think i will indeed figure out how to be happy here. or at least i hope so.

first post, first week

but third country in nearly so many months. i woke up this morning, on my second day in berlin, and thought to myself "i live here now." i live here now, i live here now. both are true, and both are rather confusing, especially upon first early morning cognizance. while, at this point, i am fully aware of what it means to pick up and move somewhere new and foreign, it is still and forever a jarring act. particularly on one's emotions. or at least on my emotions.

my first night here tim came and met me at my apartment and we went out for tasty vietnamese food in the neighborhood after having a little tour of my new flat with my new roommate gudrun. tim magically secured this place for me after i was starting to feel highly anxious about the whole apartment deal upon being told by dozens and dozens of people to just give up and wait until i arrived. being me, i did not do that, but instead took my friend adam's advice and wrote a full page bio/intro of myself in which i was honest but also tried to include interesting tidbits that might set me apart, and sent that out to another 20 or so folks advertising rooms. apparently that worked, because it got a rather surprising response, including one from gudrun, who was intrigued by a new mexican named ursula. i relayed to her the story of being named after one of the main characters from d.h. lawrence's "women in love," in which gudrun is my sister, a fact that makes me very excited each time i meet a gudrun. she then asked if i had a friend who could come meet her and take a look at the apartment during an open house, and apparently tim made quite an impression, leading to a skype interview and a secured apartment in west kreuzberg, overlooking the former east/west no man's land of gleisdreieck, near the yorckstrasse s1 stop which can take me straight up to school. and thank god, because everyone else is in freak-out mode about housing, while i'm getting settled in a gorgeous altbau with hardwood floors, incredibly high ceilings, and a friendly graphic designer who keeps the place buddhist-clean.

jan came and meet tim and me after a bit on my first evening, making for a true reunion. seeing tim made me feel immediately at home, but hanging out with both of them was oddly unsettling. the anxiety and loneliness i felt in ankara were immediately on my mind, forcing me to remember that we're not there, even if we're once again together. not there, but here. in germany, where i need to really crack down and work on my language skills so that language anxiety no longer has such a high place on my list. which, honestly, right now it doesn't, but it would be nice to bump it down even further. obviously it's nothing like in turkey, where simply going to the grocery store was a stressful and sometimes overwhelming experience. here i can blend in, and once i speak and reveal my foreignness at least i can more or less communicate.

but oh, those emotions. i felt happy this summer, much happier than anticipated. i think that was largely due to having my sister and elena and a sudden built-in support network, but honestly i think it was also because i felt like i could communicate with people, something that had been glaringly lacking in my life for the year prior. it turns out that i like to be able to talk and connect with people (who knew?) but when i don't feel confident i'm not good at it. and language inability makes me strikingly unconfident. so, i've got to work on that.

but until then, i have to go deal with the 8,000 issues of german bureaucracy that must be handled in the next week. yikes.