Berlin Life Takes Over

alright, it's been a little while since I have updated.

I have been back in Berlin for about a week and a half since returning from Tr-Tr. I've freaked about work, language, money, living arrangements, the whole thing. Now I'm doing a lot better, adjusting to things a little more. I am still freaked about spending all this money with no job, but I am at least starting to try and get one.

So far I have entered my name in two agencies for being a film extra, applied for a call center job looking for English speakers, gone to the finanzamt to get a tax number for freelance work, and I am now making posters for putting up around the city. I also wrote my resume (took forever) and looked up the addresses of some nice hotels that have massage services. I researched about working at the Embassy but you need a bachelor's degree.

I went to the other language school, but they wanted over twice the price so I am going to finish Rosetta Stone before moving onto a school.

It's finally starting to get warm here so that's good! I've been around to a few parts of the city now so I am feeling happier and happier about being here :) This city is so excellent.



Egypt is not looking so easy... it's expensive and the person I was supposed to meet the other night was talking about needing a big visa (he's from India turns out) on the phone after bailing on our plans. I wanted to go before April in case I got a call back from that Call center place, but now I think I will try and look up cheap flights to somewhere warm and new so a) Floh can potentially come b) saves money c) can still get to Egypt potentially if I don't get this call center thing in the future. I will get to Egypt, but not doing it in a week will eliminate a lot of stress for me.

alright time to work on my stuff! Will be updating again soon :)

Adjustments

I am still a mucous machine right now. My body has decided to make all kinds of multicoloured slime and spew it out my nostrils yum.I have that rubbed-raw face thing going on and I am not liking it.

The language thing is getting me increasingly freaked right now too. I am too embarrassed/shy/self-conscience to try and say anything yet - to the point that here I am supposed to be on the speaking part of my lesson and I am putting it off because there are people in the house and they might here me practice. It's very silly I know, but every time I try I feel overly aware of how wrong I sound and I end up making even more mistakes.

I tried doing an online test to see what level I am at, and it is dismally low. I feel like I've learned so many bloody words already but I am still just a beginner. Tried a 20 question A2 test thing and I got around 50%... ugh. I even failed the ultra-beginner 20 question thing the first time, and that's as low as it gets. I think I just suck harsh at languages. It's extremely frustrating when I try to read things because I will recognize the odd word but still have no idea what's going on.

It takes me ages to figure things out even when I know all the words, because I have to re order them in my head and sometimes the same word is used in totally different situations. I can see why people say learning languages helps prevent Alzheimer's now because I am pretty sure some of those unused gears in my brain are trying to start turning.

I am sick though, and I am always dumber when I am sick. Maybe I will learn a little faster when I am better.

I remember at first I was super excited about all the words I could understand compared to when I was in Berlin last, but now all I see are all the unknown words, so my attitude probably has to change too!

In other news, I uploaded the pictures from my point and shoot from Tr-Tr:

Here I am on the bridge



Floh and I



closer one of us awwww





















Floh knew a bunch of the Michael Jackson Thriller float

















original Porsche



The visit to the grandparents! Rene gave them his hairpiece haha





This is from the after party in the Hall









fun times eh!

Officially Living Here!

I am super sick with this stupid cold so I am going to keep this concise.

I managed to download a photo editing thing named "Photoscape" and it seems to do the trick. Here are the pictures from my nice camera before the battery died! More from the little one to come but I am too tired to do that right now...













you can see the ruins of a fortress in the background here:





























It's like a fairy tale, eh?

In other news, I obtained my registration paper thing today, plus groceries, pens, a shower head, mug, and an answer to my massage registration. Apparently to be State certified I have to have a certain level of German and make an appointment to see how similar my course is to theirs... but I don't need to be State certified to work. I think my biggest barrier will definitely be the language :(

Carnival

Ok so I am currently waiting on photo editing software. I had made image files of my Canon cd's to install things on this computer, but it turns out they are not going to work with my mini computer's screen resolution. Hopefully this downloaded version from the Canon website won't care that my computer is very wide screened.

My stomach is still not quite back to normal, but it's a lot better than a couple days ago. It did recover by that evening, so Floh, Rene, and I went to see a parade in a neighbor village :) They were serving hot wine which unfortunately I didn't like, but the atmosphere was really nice. Everything was on a hill, it was snowing, people in costumes, it was cute. I was a little grumpy from being sick and sleepy, but I still enjoyed the parade :)

There was a party thing in a big hall afterward but it was full of really young people. We left fairly early to check out the local bar back in Tr-Tr. This was more pleasant! I woke up the next day without the urge to puke which was really nice! There was another parade in another neighbor village that day so we watched that. There were repeat floats but it was still entertaining. I was having a hard time getting into the mode since I had just found out about the death of my cat literally seconds before being called to the car.

I had to get some privacy for a while, so I went out to a little red bench overlooking a valley. After a while I came back and watched the parade :) I felt guilty about being in less-than-perfect mental shape for my first weekend back in Europe. We went to Floh's brother's house for a while, then we were off to a cellar bar thing for the after-parade party. I was doing well, but then we went to visit one of his friends that lived nearby and they had a cat. I was messed up about that so when we returned to the bar I looked around and thought "no". I put my coat back on and went out for a walk. I ended up in the middle of nowhere.

I made my way back and people were ready to leave. Floh went down for his coat... but something was missing!! His camera was stolen! Someone had taken everything out of his pockets including some bread, and everything out of Rene's pockets too. I must have been outside when this happened because the only thing missing of mine was my wings and that's all I had left behind when I went for my walk. This was turning out to be quite a Valentine's Day...

We attempted hitchhiking back to his village, and a car stopped so we started running. This guy was a dick though because he drove off once we got close. Ass. Luckily some nice people stopped for us five minutes later :) We went for burgers, and dropped by barfly to see if anyone was there before going back to the house.

The last parade was in Floh's village. We were able to just walk right down and watch :) One of his friends were serving hot chocolate instead of wine so I was happy! The parade was fun; I took some pictures this time so once this photo editing problem gets solved (I have to be able to rotate and resize at least) you will see them! We visited his grandparents after this, and there are more funny pictures. They fed us some nice old white wine which I liked, then we were off to their after-parade party again. This one was more fun for me - I recognized more people and had a bit of wine, danced about, etc. Next was their discotheque. We had to get up super early the next day for our flight though, so it wasn't a really late night. Someone had made off with Floh's jumper at the hall! This was not Floh's lucky weekend :( I felt bad!

Waking up for the flight killed me. My nose had started running since the day before, so my head was dizzy, sick, and full of mucus. I was nauseous again and barely could stay awake while eating. I slept in the car, in the airport, on the plane, and on the bus/u-bahn. I then slept when I got home. It's been a lazy day; I organized my big pile of stuff into a corner and that's been about it. I'm too tired to do much else right now though. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

In Traben-Trarbach!

ok so I have a little time to write while I am here on the couch...

I got very nauseous yesterday after writing. I ate a piece of bread and pizza for most of the day, and both were earlier in the morning... I went to the Ausländerbehörde (I think that's how you spell it) but they were not taking any new people even though they were supposed to be open for 6 more hours. Walking out of there frustrated started some of the nausea. I am supposed to "register" within a week of arriving I believe, and I was getting on a plane the next day argggg.

So we visited a few people, which turned out super productive! They were trying to get rid of stuff, so I got a hair dryer (something I had to pick up), and there were a couple massage tables sitting in this place! One of them was owned by Paul, so Floh got me to call him and ask if I could borrow it sometimes. It's two streets away from Floh's! So I left there with a hair dryer and a borrowable massage table! Things were rolling along fast for my first day back :)

So next we went back to the house and I lay down to rest my stomach for a bit. Floh convinced me to come with him to see some boots and pick up stuff for dinner, despite my stomach. I thought it would go away being outside, but it didn't. I stared at a pile of snow near Haupbahnhof but nothing came out.

We picked up boots, dinner, and some missing toiletries for me and I went to lay down again. I ended up feeling too sick to eat dinner or play Settlers (and I love that game too) Rene came over, so we packed and went to his house to get up early for the plane to Floh's hometown the next morning.

I was still sick-ish when I woke up. I managed to down one plain dinner roll over the span of about 2 1/2 hours and slept on the plane. When I got off the plane I felt better though :) Floh's dad picked us up and drove us back to their house :) Traben-Trarbach is like out of a movie or something! It's super charming! His dad doesn't speak English and his mom only speaks a little, so I am the odd one out here. I am still way too freaked out to try and speak German, plus twice now someone has laughed at me so I don't foresee myself trying again anytime soon.

Since my stomach was feeling better, we went for a walk around the city :) It was all snowy, I took some pictures which I will post when I am back with my computer etc... We came back and ate soup, looking at the snow. Felt like winter for the first time. It's cold but cozy. Unfortunately my sleep is still messed up, so temporarily laying down at 5pm ended up being the end of my night :( My throat tasted awful, stomach unhappy again, dizzy, fatigue, so I couldn't get up afterwards and ended up being in bed until the next day!!!!

I woke up with my stomach super angry again, and this time I did throw up. It was before I'd eaten anything too so it was mostly acid. I was lightheaded and dizzy, but I downed food and managed to keep it down. Now I've had more food and some stomach drops and feel much better :) I am hoping this stays away for tonight!!

Back to Berlin

So the flights went well. Both left on time and arrived on the ground on time. My baggage arrived and I flew through customs and security on both ends :)

I was wearing a lot of layers so I was relatively sweaty for parts of the journeys, but surprisingly comfortable! I was allowed to check my bag .5 kilos over with no charge, and bring in a big purse with crochet hooks and tiny tubes of toothpaste with no plastic bag. I was actually surprised nobody gave me crap for the tubes not being in bags since they were standing there handing them out at Heathrow yelling to put everything into them.

The first flight was hilarious. The captain was funny, and had one of the smoothest take-offs I'd experienced. Food was good. One of the staff members was feeding me extra mini wine bottles and I ended up half drunk before stretching out on my three seats to try and sleep! I crocheted a dishcloth and helped another staff member with understanding her knitting pattern :) The staff were encouraging me to take more wine with me but I had to catch that connection and it was over 100ml. I didn't need it anyhow.

I only had to wait about 30-45 minutes for the next flight after clearing security and finding my gate. The flight was full, but arrived 20 minutes early (the first one was 10 minutes early too!). Unfortunately there was another plane in our exit spot so we had to sit in the plane for ages outside Tegel. That drove me absolutely nuts since I was hungry, had to pee, and was anxious to clear the border and see Floh.

I had to tell the Immigration guy I had a visa, and he looked at me and said I didn't need one for up to three months. He looked though, and when he saw it he went all smiley and started reading it aloud. I'm not sure he had seen many like mine though because he ended up asking why there was nothing listed under "duration of stay", and I had to point out the end date of the visa which was right above it. He then suggested that when I go to the Foreigners office I should ask for a new one, a residence permit, because this one is "only for the one time". Now this I was confused by. I just said ok because I wanted my bag, but I will ask the people when I register what the deal is. I know I can only get one Youth Mobility Visa at a time (you can do the program twice, but have to leave) but it says right on the visa MULT under # of entries, so I assume that means multiple entries? Maybe the guy didn't see that part either??? He stamped right ON the visa too. I think mult means mult but I will ask about this residence permit thing today. 


Floh was at the airport with my foxes (there is a baby one too!!) and a rose!! He watched me try and exit through the wrong door. I was super happy! I was so distracted I swung my backpack a little too forcefully after the toilet and pulled a muscle in my left shoulder which is pretty sore. My suitcase from Value Village decided that it didn't want it's left wheel while we were already on Floh's street. Poor guy had to carry my 50 pound suitcase about a block :( Luckily I won't have to move the stupid thing while I am at Flohs :)


Sleeping was interesting. I fell asleep early enough, but I don't think I slept too long and I had serious problems this morning. I tried reading my "Conditions Manual" to put me to bed twice. I was reading about conditions of the head and neck and made it to Stroke. Maybe if I keep failing at sleeping I will get a really good refresher of pathologies :)


It's snowy here and was -5 upon arrival, but I was wearing so much I didn't feel it. This is the yard thing taken from the kitchen window...

Goodbye Vancouver!

Well I am pretty much packed. I cleaned what I could, and weighed my bag a million times (it varies but says I am half a pound within the limit). Tomorrow I have to go to the bank, and take in my license plates to buy my theft insurance and get credited for this month's driving insurance. Hoping to break even...

So this six week visit has come to an end. I feel very strange right now. I just checked in online for my flights... I have a window seat for both! Yay! It will be daytime while I am arriving and departing from London, so I get to see the city again in aerial glory :)

The past few weeks have been good despite the sleeping problems and occasional moodiness. Honestly, I think it has to do with the amount of caffeine and sugar I've consumed while here. I've drank more pop in the past six weeks than the past year!

I've taken my camera(s) out for some photography around town, but haven't really posted much yet. I made a back-dated post about NYC. Here's some more!

East Van on a cloudy day, walking around with Mac and the dog



In summer these streets rock









Kat, James, and giant cat



I knitted this!



Kendra and her cute rabbit



My street



Distant mountain seen from Langley



More Langley



Played with this one, also on my street. You can't really see my mountain too well in this one :(



Sexy leopard car!





at the cemetery I used to go to









If you go over a part of run-down fence behind the cemetery, there is this really nice field with a view of Langley Township. I revisited.











These next ones are from last weekend!

Mike on the bus in Vancouver



Van street art :)



friends @ Body Modification Shop/Art Gallery/Venue



Swa making sexy face



RIP Cobalt



Olympics shut down Granville so now there are more buskers and art installations!



city by day





Granville by night





I don't know if we were allowed but...





I have never seen so many Canada flags