Everything and nothing, all at the same time

t’s always surprising how therapeutic it can be to clean (or, rather, to clean and have a glass of red wine). It probably has to do with a sense of control; the urge to control things that are controllable. To make better a tiny corner of one’s life. After a long night dealing with the aftermath of an academic tragedy, I was feeling a bit down-scratch that-like a failure. For the past two years of my wonderful life I have, through some miraculous twists of fate, received or been accepted to everything I have applied for. I felt unstoppable. I’m pretty sure I still am (if I keep repeating it to myself, it becomes reality, right? yes. thank you.), but due to circumstances brought about in part by a lack of follow through on my part, but also in large part by a bureaucratic cluster fuck, an application that I was really looking forward to turning in and crossing my fingers about wasn’t able to be submitted.

So, sitting in my sparkling clean studio apartment in Brussels, I felt it was time to reach out to this old friend, the blog. I’ve been neglecting this blog for, I think, three reasons. One: who actually reads this? I think it’s 7 people when you double count my parents. Two: I’ve been adjusting to the pace of a life that revolves around a full-time work schedule. I think adapting to school when I get back from Brussels will be the opposite of adapting to school when I got back from Berlin. and Three: I haven’t had much time to reflect and digest life. To look at it from a different angle and see my day-to-day as a lesson for the universal. Those who have helped me with applications or have seen me attempt to partake in small talk know how uncomfortable I get when talking about myself if it feels the slightest bit like bragging. But I must go on and I must update, so, I guess, here it goes:

Everyday is filled with comparisons to my life in Berlin. Besides the fact that both Berlin and Brussels are in Europe (and start with the letter “B”), these experiences couldn’t be more different. The shame I felt when not being able to speak German in Berlin is beyond non-existent. I squeak by at restaurants and grocery stores on the four words I remember from 3 1/2 years of high school French, but it’s not crushing to my soul when I have to ask someone if they speak English because I haven’t got the slightest idea what they’re saying. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to relearn French (and I will, one day), it’s just my daily life is on an American island. I went for a run in the park after work one day and was literally so surprised I almost stopped in my tracks when I heard people speaking French. “Oh yeah! I’m not in America!” I had to tell myself. One thing is the same, however: I miss drying my laundry in a dryer.

My internship is increasingly amazing, and a career in foreign service continues to appeal to me. I’ll update when I feel like I have more important things to say about it. I’ll just say that my immediate supervisor, a young woman named Kimberly, is a wonderful boss who is a wealth of knowledge regarding not just her job, but the Foreign Service, State Department, Brussels, and basically the world. She has become, in three short weeks, someone I can confide in, joke with, and always expect to learn a lot from. It’s great to see the human face of the State Department (and a young one, too) and it’s great that she’s my boss.

I truly have been having an amazing time; I feel like I’ve lived here for months rather than weeks. Europe, as always, feels like home and my automatic intern support network has made the transition from another amazing Del Mar summer to another European fall nothing to complain about.

Bon soirée!

We now return to our regularly scheduled broadcast

Hello again, friends. It’s been a long and complicated year since I returned from my year abroad. I spoke often with my roommate in Long Beach about the manifestation of reverse culture shock, the culture shock you get when returning to America after living abroad. More often than not, the reverse culture shock is the more difficult of the two. The sometimes subtle, sometimes not so subtle, changes in the everyday life of a repatriate are not met with the same excitement and blind acceptance as the analogous changes experienced by a new expatriate.

But, like all American students, I returned to my homeland and, at first, struggled to fit in, and later felt as though I’d never left. I once again excelled academically, leading the CSULB Model United Nations team through another fun-filled and successful season. But even with a school sponsored trip to Germany to participate in the Model United Nations, the travel bug continued to bite and the unscratchable itch of wanderlust proved impossible to ignore. So I found my self once again sitting at my parents’ kitchen table, hesitantly writing a letter of motivation and filling out an application for a program I was sure I would be politely denied from. That seems to be a tendency of mine. To apply for lofty programs to which hundreds of other, better qualified students must also be applying. On that March day, I sat, and I wrote, and I crossed my fingers, pressed submit, and laughed at my own audacity. The program? A 10 week internship with the US Department of State (the section of American government that I find most interesting and the department formerly headed by my idol, Madeleine Albright) at either the US Mission to the United Nations or the US Mission to the European Union, whoever (if either) would have me. A couple of weeks later, I received an e-mail requesting a phone interview, and after a pleasant, short, and way easier interview than I had prepared for, I was offered the position of Fall Intern in the Executive Office of the US Mission to the European Union in Brussels (Belgium, just to clarify).

As I write this, I’m somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean with one last Del Mar sunburn not wholly befitting my final destination. An air of trepidation lingers vaguely somewhere in the future and half of my heart hasn’t quite left Del Mar. It’s a funny thing about travel, how right before you leave your mind is already there. The way you view your present and your surroundings seen only through some sort of magical fog of that place you’re headed.

After a summer of extreme procrastination (I haven’t quite figured out my housing situation as of this moment, just to name one example), I once again head off into the wide wide world of Western Europe. At the behest of my father, I will again be posting updates and musing from abroad.

Welcome back!

Update: Since writing this while in flight I have made it safely to Brussels, lugged over 150 lbs of luggage around, walked the city multiple times, and am now headed to Bruges for the night.

Goodbye is coming

“Boah, die Zeit vegeht!” we’d say to each other, as if saying it would bring back a few valuable seconds of Berlin time. “The time is going by so fast!” we’d lament, as if calling Time by it’s name would slow it down. But there’s no stopping it and with less than 12 hours to go on my 11 month stay I still haven’t fully grasped what’s happening.

I’m extremely sad to be leaving such a magical city, such a comfortable city, a city I will forever call home. But like all good things that end-like all nostalgia-what I will miss is not entirely the city or the friends I have made here. I will miss this moment in time. These 11 months when Berlin started out as a blank canvas and a confusing system of streets and parks and public transportation and became for me a well know and well worn in city. I know the city will always be here and I can always come back, but I won’t have the luxury of deciding on the spur of the moment to go to Mauerpark or to take a detour and say hello to the American Embassy and the Brandenburg Gate. I won’t have the comfort that I have now.

But to be completely truthful, I am also extremely excited to reintroduce myself into my natural habitat. To not have to be so conscious when I speak. To see freeways. To have 1000 TV channels. To go back to school. As much fun as I had this year and as much as a learned and grew, I can truly say that I feel like I about about to hit the play button on my life again after this joyful little popcorn break of a year.

And I know I’ve always been a nostalgic personality and dwelling on what I will in the future be nostalgic about doesn’t help. With that I’m going to finish packing a years worth of life into 2 suitcases and hop on a plane headed for my homeland.

Watch out, America…I’m on my way!!

The future means never having to say good-bye

There’s a German saying related to adapting to a new life that says that a person “lets their roots grow.” After saying my first goodbye, exactly one month before I get on a plane and fly across the ocean, and a day before saying my second goodbye, I’ve realized that I really have let my roots grow.

But after being here for 10.5 months, I also suffer some homesickness. I want to drive. I want to be blonde again. I want to see my dog. I want to see my friends. I want to jump in the Pacific Ocean. I want to smell salty air. I want Pop Tarts. I want a dryer. I want I want I want. I am a tree with my roots growing ever deeper into the soil of Berlin while my green branches grow ever higher towards the sunlight that it San Diego. It’s a tough thing, this Heimweh/Fernweh, and I don’t think it’ll ever go away. The seeds of this problem were sewn in college. When I was in Long Beach I wanted to be in San Diego. When I was in San Diego I wanted to be in Long Beach. I’m in Berlin and I want to be in Southern California and I am 110% that when I’m in Southern California I’ll want to be in Berlin.

Maybe this is why the Germans have such a great vocabulary and are such travelers. They understand homesickness (Heimweh), the longing for somewhere else (Fernweh), and as a result they have a desire to travel (Wanderlust). I think I’ve adapted well. In the past 7 months I have been to 13 countries.
Maybe I don’t have Heimweh, maybe it’s a coping mechanism. If I weren’t leaving for another 6 months or year, I wonder if I’d be homesick. It’s like senior year of high school, where I stopped hanging out with people I thought I wouldn’t see after graduation just because I didn’t want to have to say goodbye. Maybe I’m doing the same thing to my social circle here and to my lovely city itself.

But it’s not like this cycle is ever going to end. I will always miss Berlin. I’ll always miss this year.
But I’ll do it again. Maybe France? Brussels? Graduate school for sure. Life is busy getting more and more mobile. And just as there’s always opportunities to keep moving, there are more and more ways to stay connected; we never have to say goodbye.

So maybe in a month I won’t have to rip my roots out. Maybe I can let them grow.
I’ll water them with many returns to this land I currently call home.

Working Title

There’s a strange solace in almost unlimited free time. But there’s a nagging anxious feeling laden guilt that sits somewhere between the pit of my stomach and the back of my mind.

I haven’t had this much free time since the beginning of my memory. I can count all of my responsibilities on one hand. I spend between 1.5 and 3 hours a day at a German University (that is supposed to imply that I never, EVER have homework) and fill my days with grocery shopping, commuting, reading, eating, and more reading.

At first I was disappointed at the almost non-existent amount of credit I am getting for taking the initiative, receiving a scholarship, and studying abroad on my own but I’ve learned to appreciate it. First of all, there is no way that my German would have improved as much as it has if I had done the program that would have allowed all of my classes to transfer. I haven’t been able to read this many books of my own choosing since high school. And Berlin in spring is something that just can’t be transiently experienced alongside a heavy course load. Berlin in spring requires you’re full attention. Everyone should spend a responsibility-free spring meandering the tree lined streets of Berlin.

So on my first rainy spring day, I’ve holed myself up next to a window and spent the past 10 hours on our new blue futon, wrapped in my comforter, surrounded by stacks of books and milk and cookies. It looks like a PhD student’s ground zero, but in reality I accomplished one “to do” for school (which was to watch a movie) and I spent the rest of my time napping, snacking, reading, and my current favorite, watching apple trailers and making mental lists of movies I want to see. My biggest decision today was whether or not I wanted to rent a movie on iTunes because or TV is broken.

Berlin Chapter 2

Maybe it was the light or maybe it was the travel grogginess, but my first thought upon waking up on the plane today was, “omg. this is an emergency landing. How did I miss the announcement? Where are we? It’s certainly not Berlin.”

Of all the times I have landed in Berlin Schönefeld Airport over the past months, only two have been during the day. And only this one has been while the sun was shining. Looking out the window down at the beautiful electric green of spring, I was convinced I’d gotten on the wrong plane. Or that the pilots were landing in another city. It was just so…green. And so not Berlin.

So it’s a new season here in Berlin. I live in a new apartment and I’m about to start a new semester. If this was a book and not a blog, this might be a new chapter (there’s no way to tell). Maybe, when I follow in the footsteps of my new found idol, Madeleine Albright, and I write my autobiography the experiences in this new season will be “Berlin Chapter 2.” But, back to the point: I’m back.

And I’m exhausted.
I travelled over 13,500 km since January and I have been traveling for a total of 6 weeks. To quickly summarize, I have made a handy count down:
10: Countries visited since January
Czech Rep, Denmark, France, Spain, Morocco, Portugal, Switzerland, Slovenia, Croatia, Hungary
9: Most number of days spent in one location
Geneva, Switzerland. A close 2nd is Paris, where I was for 6 days
8: Hostels
In Prague, Copenhagen, Casablanca, Marrakech, Madrid, Lisbon, and Geneva
7: Currencies
Czech koruna, Danish krone, Moroccan dirham, Swiss franc, Croatian kuna, Hungarian forint, Euro
6: New stamps in Passport
Barcelona (exit and re-entry), Morocco (entry and exit), Croatia, Slovenia
5: Free stays
In Paris, Barcelona, Ljubljana, Opatija, and Budapest
4: Modes of transportation
Airplane, Train, Bus, Car
3: Months
Between January 6 and April 11, 2009
2: Cameras
RIP Casio Exilim from Senior Year. You were a great replacement for the other Exilim that was stolen in Vegas. I hope some Barcelonian is enjoying your wonderful features.
1: Exhausted and cash-depleted American abroad

Tales of a Super-Nerd

It’s easy to forget how much fun things are when you are not doing them. It’s kind of the “out of sight, out of mind” mentality.
I just finished a one week Model United Nations Conference in Geneva and I can’t help but reflect on the utter nerdiness of the past week. It’s not just that I attended an MUN conference on my own and paid around 500 euros to do it, it’s that I was in the HISTORICAL Security Council. It seriously doesn’t get any nerdier than that. It’s 15 people sitting around a table, pretending to be a country, and passionately debating about an event that already took place. An attempt to “change history.” What I learned this week representing the People’s Republic of China in dealing with the “conflict/genocide” in Rwanda in April 1994 is that history happens the way it happens for a reason. We may have changed history, but we could not stop genocide. Countries have policies and they stick to them for good reasons. It’s a hard thing to explain in a blog post, but I find it all fascinating.
MUN is a hard thing to explain to an outsider. It’s like drama club for politics students. It’s like instead of getting a “runner’s high,” you get a “diplomat’s high.” MUN conferences are the only time where I feel like I am using my brain at full capacity at all times. It’s a week of very little sleep, a whole lot of talking in the 3rd person, and feeling like you are way more important than you really are. There are so many aspects of this that I could go on and on about. I know that I have to do something in this field when I grow up because there is no time that I feel more alive than when I am trying to figure out the best way to word China’s policy on non-intervention while a genocide is happening without sounding like the devil.

And like I expressed back in November about finding young people with big interests, MUN is another place that you will always find interesting, motivated, and international people. Clearly, we all have similar interests but European MUNs and American ones differ in one important aspect: the internationality of the people. In America, I’m pretty international. I’m American born, raised bi-lingual-ish and I currently live in another country. At this conference I met people who were Swiss born of French and Iranian parents who speak 4 languages and currently study in Shanghai. It’s ridiculous. I’m so envious.

And now I’m back in Berlin, where the sun and the clouds keep fighting. I’m sitting in my new room in Kreuzberg, surrounded by piles of stuff that needs to be organized, but not before I once again pack my bags and head out into the wide world. I’m excited to be visiting friends on the trip and to travel with them. I’m excited to be going to countries that I have never been to.

This time I’m not going to get my camera stolen. This time I’m not going to get held up at knife-point. This time is going to be all fun.

I can’t figure out a good way to wrap this entry up.
End.

An un-update to keep you up-to-date

So first, let me apologize for not updating. Life has been crazy! The semester finally came to an end and my sister came to visit and I have been running around Berlin like a mad-woman. So…sorry.

Second, I FOUND AN APARTMENT! I am so excited to be moving into a real, Berlin apartment. I am moving to Kreuzberg on the Urbanstraße at the end of March and I can’t wait. My roommates are my mentor and her boyfriend and they are both great people and I’m really looking forward to it. I would love to explain more, but I have a plane to catch in 4 hours and I still have to pack.

I’ll be gone for three weeks straight, so this is some heavy-duty packing. I will probably not be updating my blog in this time, as I will be visiting 6 cities in 4 countries in 3 weeks. Paris to Barcelona to Casablanca to Marrakesh to Barcelona to Madrid to Lisbon.

It’s gonna be a whirl-wind tour of Western Europe. Yay!!

I want to have my American cake and eat my German one, too

Germans are hard nuts to crack.

There’s a saying that goes, “Americans are like peaches-soft on the outside, hard in the center. Germans are like coconuts-hard on the outside, soft in the center.” It is supposed to mean that Americans are “fast friends” and Germans are “fast Freunde.” Haha. I’m proud of myself for that.
Germans take a while to get to know. Their world renowned “icy-ness” takes some time to thaw, but once you get through that, you are forever bonded with a German.

I find this situation to be difficult. In the past few years I have divided my personality traits into “European” and “American.” There are things I know I do because my mom is German and I spent a very formative year in Berlin when I was little. Things like…my inability to have “acquaintances” and only have a few close friends. Or my tendency to give advice instead of console people when they come to me with problems (this character trait, in particular leads to me being misunderstood and under-befriended in America).

After finding it especially difficult to be a human being in middle school and carrying that awkwardness with me into high school, I came to the conclusion, in college, that I have a more German frame of mind. It could have been helped along by the seeming “uncoolness” of being American in the last 8 years, but before I left America, someone asked me if I felt more German or American and I answered German. I hadn’t been to Germany for 14 years.

But I somehow identified more with the foreigner inside of me. It made my emotions and my personality easier to comprehend.

Let me tell you, though, there is nothing more self-defining than living in the country you feel like you belong to. I am so American. Sure, there are still things about me that are German. My liking for currywurst and beer, for example. Or my love of order and public transportation. But I will never truly fit in here. And it’s not just that I don’t speak the language perfectly. I also don’t understand the humor. And I cannot, for the life of me, crack the German coconut.

The strongest reason why I always felt German was my distaste for small talk. My dad can make friends and conversation in every occasion. At the supermarket, in line for the ATM-I’m sure he could even make people at a funeral laugh. I’m more like my mom. I sit. I observe. I like to talk about real things. What I would most like to change about myself, though, is that I wait for other people to talk to me. This works fine in America, because small talk is all we ever do. People come to me. We talk about them. We talk about me. We talk about the weather. And we talk about other people. As much as I hate it, it’s all I know.

Now I’m trapped in between what I thought I was and what I really am. I try-and I mean I really put effort in-to talk to Germans. But I have absolutely no idea where to start. Germans will talk about any real topic if it’s brought up. They’re real people. They enjoy discussion. But when I meet people, all I can do is ask lame questions and tell artificial stories.

In this sense I’m not a German in Germany and I’m not an American in America. I’m trapped in an identity gray area.

I don’t feel whole in either place. I love Germany. I love America. But what am I?

Can I live my whole life identifying myself as German when I’m in America and American when I’m in Germany? Is there ever really an end to an existential crisis?

Would that be called a self-fulfulling prophecy?

Just a short observation from my day:

At the beginning of this adventure, I documented my struggles with learning another language and I got some very insightful comments from some of my readers, one of which came from Kevin, my best friend’s brother. He studied in Japan and he said that I just have to keep struggling through and then eventually a time will come where I will think back on something I said and think “Wow! Did I just say that in German?” That revelation is already long gone, but what I am currently struggling with is reading.

It’s not that reading is hard, it’s that I keep having this revelation while reading and then I lose my concentration. I read part of a book and then I think, “Hey! I just read that in German and it didn’t even feel like I was reading it in a foreign language!” and by the time I’m done with that thought I’m two sentences farther and I wasn’t paying attention.

It makes reading take twice as long.
But it makes reading twice as fulfilling. It’s a perpetual high-five.