Sannie interviewed me.

1) What is your biggest fear?

Losing someone I love, like my parents, my brother or a close friend. While I have been living away from home for 4.5 years now and have no problem living far away, even on another continent, I always know that they are there. If I need them, they are there; they will catch me if I fall. They are my family, where I belong, and I still need them very much.

2) If there was one person -dead or alive- that you could choose to meet, who would that be?

This is a tough one, I do not really know. There is not really one specific person that I find so admirable or who has influenced me so much that I would be able to say right away that is the person I would want to meet. I would not want to just pick a random person though, because I would want them to be meaningful, but right now I just cannot think of anyone, so I will go with - Johnny Depp. He is my favorite actor, he is so versatile, and I think it would be really interesting to meet him. But … I do not know if I would still pick him if I spent a few more hours thinking about this question. Maybe I would be able to think of someone “better”.

3) If there was one thing you could change about yourself, what would that be?

My attitude towards myself. I need to be more accepting of myself and be happier with the way I am. How can I expect anyone else to love me if I cannot love myself? There are other things I would want to change about myself, but I picked this one, because it is probably the hardest thing to do out of all.

4) What is your fondest childhood memory?

I honestly have to admit, I never thought about what is the fondest memory of my childhood, so here is just one, that might not be the fondest, but definitely a fond childhood memory: when I was younger, I loved listening to the Beatles - I got that from my dad - and I would sit in the living room with the CD booklet and sing along to the songs - the ones I loved most were the songs of the Red Album.

5) What do you miss most about the US?

I miss my friends most, but also the people in general and my life there; Americans are so different from Germans in a way. Life just seemed more careless there. I enjoyed going to school there so much and being on the beautiful campus of OU every day. I miss the school spirit. I also miss some of the food and stores, but you know, that is just… food and stores. The things I miss most are “inside things”, things of the mind and soul, not the body.

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Oh my gosh, I just got up and checked my e-mail, and I got accepted!!!!

I am going to Barcelona in the fall for a semester!!!!

Can’t write more because I have to go to work, just needed to get this out! I am so happy!

When I am sitting on the bus or tram, my mind grows wings. I am a daydreamer, and during the 30 minutes it takes me to commute to uni and work, I listen to music on my Sansa and dream. My mind travels to alternate realities of this world. Things that have happened, will happen, or things that have never happened and will never happen.

I like to dream, have my mind run wild, imagine. Use the wings of my mind to fly to places I would like to be. And sometimes to places I would not want to be in. My daydreams can give me hope and scare me as my mind explores my dearest wishes and deepest fears.

I wonder if other people can read the emotions on my face when I daydream. Can they tell whether my mind took me to a happy place or an unhappy one?

These beautiful wings of my imagination can put a smile on my face or bring me to the verge of tears. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

More here.

Week two of classes is over. I am already behind on my reading (though I plan to catch up this weekend). Yoga class on Monday was canceled, but tonight Bea and I are going to our salsa class. I am really excited and I hope it will be lots of fun.

Monday I had my ENT appointment. The doctor was very nice; it was the first time I had an appointment with him and I have a good feeling. My hearing test results did seem slightly better, but the doctor said that it could be due to my form on the day, as well as the different testing machines and persons. He said to finish taking the Trental, so I am back on meds but I do not mind as it is not cortisone and I will be done with the box in a week or so. He said to come back in three months to see how things are then. While I was there, I figured, I might as well have an allergy test done, as my last one was done in 2004 and allergies change over time. Well, turns out I am now allergic to most pollen as well as hamsters and dogs (wtf?). I never noticed anything around Petra’s dog, but according to the test I am. I am also slightly allergic to celery. This really made my day. I was joking with the nurse, how it would be cool if I was allergic to celery as I really hate it, and it would give me the perfect excuse and turns out the only food I have an allergic reaction to (though only a little one) is celery. Anyway, if you want to check out my test results, you can see them here. Considering all these pollen I am allergic to, I am surprised that I have not really been having any issues so far this spring.

On Monday night, Bea and I saw Scoop at the movies. It originally came out here in November, but Heidelberg didn’t manage to show it in English until just now. I really miss my movie theater in Munich here. Anyway, Scoop was really good. I enjoyed it, it was really funny! Speaking of movies, last night I ordered Little Miss Sunshine and The Life of David Gale on DVD from Play.com. I love their sales, LMS has not even been released on DVD here yet, and they are already selling it for €11.

Yesterday in class our prof mentioned excursions to London offered by the English department, and I would kind of like to go. They are both theater related (contemporary and Shakespeare theater) which, to be honest, would not be the main reason for me to go, but London would. I love traveling as you all know, and the last time I was in London was six years ago, so I would really like to go again, especially because I think now that I am older (and wiser, heh), I would look at that city from a different perspective. I would have to talk to my parents about it, as I would need their financial support, but I hope they would let me do it, as it is an excursion related to uni. And knowing more about theater would probably not hurt me either. I have yet to befriend this form of literature; for some reason it is my least favorite, and maybe that needs to be changed.

The first week of classes has already ended. It went well, and I like my classes so far. All seem really interesting, though we do have a lot (and by that I mean a lot) of reading to do. Since I have not been in the mood to read since February or March, I never made it past the first 60 pages (out of 760) of the book by Leslie Marmon Silko we are reading in my Am Lit Hauptseminar. Luckily, it seemed that the professor did not actually expect us to have finished it, and we will be reading it together in the next six weeks. The two American Literature Proseminars (1 & 2) will be a lot of work. I am not taking them for credit but out of interest, and I am very excited to learn more about these topics, but it will be a lot of work. The professor is using Moodle, the elearning platform of my university, and I think it is really cool that we can access all course material online. I did not even know we had that portal, who would have thought Heidelberg University would actually try to catch up with the 21st century?!

On Thursday I handed in my Erasmus application for Barcelona and Granada. I really hope I will get accepted. I saw that UB also accepts short-term students from abroad (independently, not through an exchange program), so if I do not get an Erasmus scholarship, I will look into that. I would have to pay tuition but here I do too, so it would probably even out (I would not pay tuition here during that semester).

On Monday, I cleaned the hallway and bathroom. It took me three hours, but now it is really nice and clean plus I made €30. I would not have thought it would take that long, but I was very thorough, I cleaned literally everything in the bathroom. I spent the next 24 hours with a headache from all the cleaning detergents, but in the end it was worth it. The bathroom is clean and Nicole is now moved out for good, so there is no one to mess it up again. She never came back to clean her room, but she sent her keys in the mail saying she has no time to clean (yeah right) and to keep the deposit. How lazy can someone be?
The most unbelievable thing is she seriously left her cat here! The poor thing has probably not had a lot to eat in the past two weeks. How cruel and irresponsible! The landlords are feeding him for now, but they will call the animal shelter soon to have him picked up. I feel so bad for the cat and I do not understand why she got him in the first place; she didn’t even have him for a year! And how can you just move and leave the cat behind? That is really beyond me!

Yesterday I was finally done with taking my medication. I have an ENT appointment on Monday, so I will see then how things are. I am just glad I no longer have to take three different medications every day. I called the blood donation center here earlier this week, and they told me I cannot donate blood for four weeks because of the cortisone I have been taking. I want to start donating thrombocytes and for that you have to do a regular blood donation first, and then a plasma donation, and then if you qualify for all the criteria, you can donate thrombocytes.

Other than that I have just been working, hanging out with friends and enjoying the beautiful weather. On Wednesday I met up with Tamara who I know from LiveJournal. She is from Brazil and moved to Karlsruhe last summer. We went to the Marstall-Café and had a really good time talking. I was really impressed with how good her German has gotten in the short amount of time she has been here. I hope that we will be able to meet again sometime soon. She is a really nice girl.

Well, I will end this here now. I am thinking I should get started on the reading for next week, or maybe I will watch a movie. Speaking of which, the other day I watched Los Amantes del Círculo Polar with Bea. I don’t know if I had mentioned it here before (as I had seen it before), but it is a really good movie, beautiful, romantic and tragic. You should see it.

P.S. Congratulations Tanja & Sean on the birth of your son Finn Alexander!