Man, I am such a blog slacker. Sorry for those who've been checking my blog and finding nothing new for however many weeks.
First things first--I have pictures from Munich!!!
by stinaberlin
We had an incredible trip. It was an excursion for the BCGS program. We stayed in a youth hostel right across the street from the central train station. The agenda included an opera (La Traviata--soprano was AMAZING!!! such a hard role!!!), a tour of the city with a focus on Hitler/WW2 history (very interesting), 3 different art museum visits (too many if you ask me, but they got progressively better and the last one was awesome!!!), and plenty of time for shopping and stroling along in such amazingly pretty areas as the English Gardens and the famous Marienplatz (where the big glockenspiel is!). To top it all off, we had ridiculously amazing weather... At night in the 50s maybe, during the day in the upper 60s. I only needed a real coat at night--the rest of the time a sweatshirt was plenty if not too much. (For you mathematicians who want to calculate more precisely, the papers said we had lows around 13 and highs around 18 Celsius.)
After getting back things were relatively low-key again, just trying to catch up on all that I missed. Oh yeah, when I got back, the "other roommate" had finally moved out, so I finally have my room now!! It's still a work in progress but I'll send pictures soon. The best part about it is that I have a double-size bed, which is quite a luxury for not being at home. =)
Last Sunday was really really really cool. The church celebrated it's 1st birthday, so we had everything all decorated like a birthday party with colorful balloons and streamers EVERYWHERE. The kids loved it!!! At one part of the service the kids brought in different "presents" that were reminders of different blessings from throughout the last year. A small choir from a nearby music school heard about our celebration and asked if they could come sing for us, and that was really cool. It was such a cool opportunity to share with them all that God has done in our church in the last year. Then, in addition to that, I officially became a member, along with a couple other people. That meant I got to share my testimony, which was an incredible experience. I think it was the most fluently I have ever spoken German before. I didn't have to think about the language, the words were just there and I was able to just speak freely. It was really awesome.
Afterward we had a ridiculous potluck feast... I of course ate way too much. Pastor's wife even made American birthday cake and we put candles on it let the kids blow them out. It was lots of fun. I spent the rest of the day at pastor's house, went to an evening service at another church with Tobi (there's a church in the area with tons of people our age, and it's a nice chance for us to go to a service where we can just sit back a bit and soak it all in, rather than having to run slides/play guitar/lead children's church/sing/etc), then afterward a prayer meeting back in Pankow. An incredible day, but at the end of it I was exhausted!
Then this past week was relatively normal, just with the added stress of trying to catch up from the week before and trying to prepare for a presentation I have to do on Tuesday. I'm nervous, but fortunately my prof is really nice and gave me some good tips. My presentation is about the influence of Western television on East Germany. About 80% of East Germans could receive West German TV, and it was never really expressly forbidden to watch it in East Germany, probably because it would've been really difficult to enforce. The effect of it though is pretty interesting...
Of course, Thursday was Thanksgiving, but no holiday for me. =( Germans didn't have pilgrims and Indians, unfortunately. =) But, the director of BCGS invited us all over for an incredible Thanksgiving dinner! Then, on top of that, pastor's wife thought it would be fun to have a Thanksgiving dinner at the church, so yesterday (Friday) I had a second Thanksgiving!!! Both were very nice. Who would've thought that in Germany I'd get to have two Thanksgivings?
Here's a really exciting piece of news too: My brother got into his first-choice college!!! He's going to Columbia College in Chicago to study composition and eventually film-scoring. He found out on Tuesday and left me a message on my cell phone. I am so excited!!! Of course, it's really strange to think about my little baby brother being all grown up... but he's awesome. =) Mom's birthday was Wednesday too so we got to chat, which was great. I wish my family could just get on an airplane right now and come visit me!
What else...? I can't think of anything in particular. Life is pretty good. School is frustrating sometimes--hard to motivate myself since it's hard to keep the long-term goals in mind when I'm bogged down in short-term stuff--and I definitely think the university system here has been my biggest culture shock. But it's getting better.
Oh yeah! Totally random, but people ask me all the time if I dream in German now or in English. The answer is both--not both separately, but both together. In fact I frequently dream that I'm somewhere and I can't figure out what language I'm supposed to be speaking--I always try to speak German to Amerians and English to Germans and I keep getting confused. But the other night, for the first time, I dreamt that someone who can't speak German at all spoke to me in German! (It was my high school choir director, for those who are curious.) First she was speaking English, then all of a sudden switched to German, and when I woke up I was slightly weirded out. Since then it hasn't happened again but if I meet any of you non-German-speakers in my dreams speaking German, I'll be sure to tell you. =)
Okay, enough silliness. Back to work. Much love to all!!!
