Back in Berlin

Greetings from Berlin! Here I am, "home" again. It actually feels pretty good to be back here.

My journey back was a little interesting. Everything went as planned, except that my bag didn't make it (but it wasn't lost, it's being delivered today, thankfully!), but it was just like the weirdest day/two days ever. My flight took off from Nashville at 5:15pm on Sunday, and I arrived in Berlin around 4pm (Berlin time) on Monday, having stopped in Detroit and London inbetween. Tobi picked me up from the airport (and was a good sport about waiting with me to figure out what was up with my luggage) and brought me to my apartment, and when I got there, I had less than an hour before I had to leave to go to a film viewing for one of my classes at 6pm. Amazingly, I did not fall asleep during the movie (thanks for British Airways for flying me on a cozy 777 with newly designed economy class seats that have nice foot rests and adjustable lumbar, I slept pretty much that whole 8 hour flight). The movie was actually really good. But long. I mean, L-O-ong! It's actually a made-for-TV film series about the Holocaust, and we watched two parts of it, which lasted altogether almost 4 hours. I had never seen it before, but it's actually American (dubbed over in German) and pretty old. Meryl Streep stars in it, playing a young newly-wed. I spent the first hour of the movie trying to figure out if that was really her and the film was really American--you know, sometimes the lips don't move exactly the way they sound, but when it's an old film, it's hard to tell... Then in one scene a family was singing "Silent Night" and gave themselves away when their mouths said "holy night" while the voices sang "heilige Nacht". Those don't look anything alike.

So I made it through the whole thing, got home, and still thought it was Sunday. I was confused why there were so many people out and about on a Sunday night, and why the subways and buses were running more frequently than usual for a Sunday (when they more or less don't exist). I managed to go to sleep around midnight and woke up feeling better though. First thing in the morning was the class for which we had the film viewing, and the prof was like, "Frau Lordeman, can you give us a recap of what we saw for those who couldn't make it? And what was your impression of it as an American?" My first thought was, "Uhh, I didn't even know what day it was last night, why are you asking me?" but miraculously, German started coming out of my mouth! Alas, I can still speak the language--the two weeks at home didn't seem to deteriorate my language skills much. Just occasionally I think of words in English first instead of German, much like the reverse of what I did at home. Interesting.

One thing I do have to confess though is that I am still majorly missing Mexican food. I ate sooooooo much of it at home, and yet I still crave it. I've indulged myself in Turkish food twice now in the last 24 hours, which is a good substitute not available in the states, but still... anything for some chips and salsa and queso... sigh... I also ate a "sandwich" yesterday, which no one in America would really call a sandwich. It was very disappointing. Gotta go grocery shopping so I can make my own.

On a more positive note, the weather here is GREAT. And by great I mean not freezing, for one thing--around 50 most of the time, actually!--and there is much more sunlight than when I left. This morning was really beautiful and sunny. It's amazing how much that helps me feel better!

Now it's time to get cracking on some homework. Prayer is greatly appreciated for the work I have ahead of me the next two months--namely, 3 huge term papers which at the moment I'm rather scared of. But, there will be many fun things to come as well... just gotta muscle through, like Stelmaszak used to say, haha...