recent

hi!
i don't know if anyone still reads this, but i have been back in berlin for the past month and i actually leave this tuesday.
it has been loads of fun and truely relaxing.
since i can't really catch up in one post here are some snapfish photo albums of what i've been up to :)

http://www3.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=911353011/a=142399207_142399207/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/COBRAND_NAME=snapfish/

and

http://www3.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=842485011/a=142399207_142399207/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/COBRAND_NAME=snapfish/

enjoy! :)

my last week with pals

hi!
so here's what i've been up to since i've been back from my holida

saturday:

took a long train back from amsterdam.
met up with jean-marc and crew + his friend (an oboist!) from Genf
went to goldengate club in Jannowitzbrücke

sunday:

met up with a bunch of swiss people (although all really nice) and saw der Vorlesor (aka, the reader). i was kind of disappointed. kate winslet had the same stupid face on the whole time and i think it was overrated

monday:

went to the Judische Museen in Kreuzberg. took THREE and a half HOURS LONG. it was pretty cool and the architechture was soooo sick.
went to dinner afterwards at a chinese restaurant

tuesday:

ran a ton of errands
went to a jazz jam session in Mitte
ate falafel afterwards

wednesday:

saw the annie liebowitz photo exhibit on Oranianburgerstraße. really cool and only 5 euro!
ate at a really crappy indian restaurant afterwards
went to ida's geburstag fest afterwards, first we hung out in Grunewald for a bit then we headed to Mittwoch which is a 'secret club' that you need to have a password to get into. it was in Prenzlauerberg underneath some apartment building. we had to be super quiet going in because people lived above. if you didn't know what mittwoch was, just walking past it you wouldn't know that it was a club.
they played really fun old rock and roll music

thursday;

woke up REALLY late
did a bit of shopping in the rain. i need some new shoes for when my family come because what i have now is just not gonna hold up to the walking thats coming up
met up with jean-marc and went to kreuzberg to see the Eagles of Death Metal. we bought our tickets from scalpers outside because they were all sold out. it was really good fun rock and roll (not death metal), but i ended up getting so much beer spilled on me throughout the night
ate in the s-bahn station

today i'm going to try and see the dali exhibit

Pictures via the fabulous Melissa Rachel Black

Melissa took these beautiful pictures while we were in London. Enjoy!
And if you're interested in seeing any of her other awesome photos, check out her website at http://www.melissarachelblack.com/

i uploaded them kind of small and they look way cooler enlarged, but if you click the pictures they get bigger.




















!

cliff notes of london and amsterdam

Saturday 28 February:

-woke up really early to catch the early train to Schonefeld Flughof and met Ida and Linda in the airport.
-got into london mid afternoon and checked into our hostel in Kensington
-had serious communication problems with melissa, so unfortunately didn't see her this day
-went to trafalgar square, took pictures of stuff
-went to picadilly circus, picked up some chapstick because the wind made my lips INSANELY chapped, i'm talking like frostbite infected looking nasty lips. pretty gross, and the chapstick i had brought just wasn't cutting it. and the one i bought didn't either, this resulted in lots of lotion on the lips and complaining :)
-ate at a really good indian but not indian but in the area of india, restaurant in soho. SUCH tasty food. mmm :)
-our hostel was really ok, minus the perpetually drunk staff. maybe there are no rules in England about drinking on the job, and if there are, then these hostel employees were definitely violating that

sunday 29 february:
-reunited with Melissa when she met us at our hostel in the morning, it was SOOOO great seeing her and we ended up chatting the whole time about how wonderful california and UCSC are...which was great :)
-headed out early and went to Camden Market, it was really cool but all the kiosks had pretty much the same stuff. all stuff i would have begged my parents to buy me circa 8th/9th grade. i'm talking the faux punk stuff in all its greatness. however, i did buy a really cute, cheap handbag inside when you get past all the food stuff. it was only 7 pound!
-from camden market we stopped for some coffee to recharge then headed out to see big ben and the house of parliament.
-the stupid freaking tube betrayed us like usual!
once again not making sense, the british transport people closed the camden market tube stop due to 'overcrowding' due to the market. so pretty much they stranded everyone who was there...thanks tube, so we walked a bit to the next stop and complained in excess :)eme cool really old grave markers.
-stopped for a wrap of some sort and then met Jean-Marc, Trouni, Esther and Esthers friend and the Tate Modern.
they got there earlier than us and were finished by the time we got there. they made it through in a speedy 45 minutes. us? 2.5 hours. Mellissa and i had a blast making fun of lots of the art, but all in all it was pretty awesome, minus the one installation that actually looked like literal poop.
-after exhausting ourselves at the tate we spent a long time trying to find the tube. of course the closest stop was closed UNTIL 2011 (i hate the tube). this forced us to walk really far to the next stop. we decided upon searching for a restaurant on the way to tube station.
-turns out we were in an area of pretty much NO restaurants. anyhow, after seriously backtracking we ate at the first restaurant we saw, a burger place, and i ate a delicciousss lentil/potato/curry burger.
-after satisfying our stomachs we headed back to soho and drank a beer at the BrewMaster, a pub with club music that did not match the ambience.
-met up with Jean-Marc and crew for a bit but instead of going out with them we headed back to to the hostel because we were all pooped and couldn't feel our legs anymore from all the walking.

monday 1 March
-saw the outside of buckingham palace but didn't go inside because it's closed for all of the year but like 2 months but it was a really beautiful day so it was great just being outside.
-walked through hyde park and met the friendliest squirell ever
-walked through harrods and commented on how none of us would ever buy anything as expensive as what is sold in there. all the sales associates were really snobby and looked like models...except with hairy faces.
-ate lunch at the worst cafe ever
-melissa headed home :(
-ida, linda and i went to visit the kensington gardens, didn't go inside because it was about 20 pounds. NO WAY JOSE! but we did have tea at the Orangery which was great
-met up with jean-marc and crew in Notting Hill. drank some coffee and looked at all the insanely expensive houses and ridiculously chic little kids.
-dropped by our hostel to take off our shoes for .5 seconds then rushed directly out the door
-were really late to meeting jean-marc and crew for dinner due to the tube just never functioning correctly.
-went to some really hidden pakistani restaurant and ate THE BEST FOOD EVER
NO JOKE
seriously, i think about this food and start salivating, rubbing my stomach and just going 'mmmmmm'. it's impossible not to after eating such delicious food. it was totally packed but totally reasonably priced. i had 2 plates of vegetarian dishies (eggplant stuff and then lentil curry) with parantha and other sorts of breads for just 10 pound!
-took the tube home happy and stuffed with food

tuesday:

ok, i'm gonna have to get back to you guys because my computers getting really hot and my fingers are tired :)

but i'll be posting some of the beautiful pictures melissa took soon since i can't post a link to the slideshow. but trust me, they're really great

londinii

hi!
london and amsterdam were both so much fun, and a much needed holiday.
it's good to be back though. one can only take so much eating out and walking for most hours of the day.
i promise i'm going to make a big detailed post either later today or tomorrow, and i have TONS of photos but until i upload all of them to snapfish, you can check out the album i made in the meantime.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/36120781@N05/

so so SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO angry about my last exam.
well it's not my last exam because i'm having to retake it.
apparently i learned well, and know lots of things, but i memorized too much and don't actually 'understand' things in relation to 'everything else'. he said my problem was that i thought i knew things...
excuse me ?

he also mentioned something about exchanged students expecting to get great grades automatically and that he could tell i expected to do well.
i mean, anyone that knows me know i don't blow off exams, and i definitely didn't with this one. But I've never taken a worse exam It wasn't that i hadn't prepared, but rather that the questions just plain didn't make sense and the professor wasn't willing to clarify. when i asked him to rephrase, he replied more than once (in german) 'it is clear that you don't know so we are moving on'.

at least i get to retake the darn thing...unfortunately again with him. so fingers crossed that the large stick up his butt doesn't put a glaring blemish on my academic record.

thanks for pooping on my vacation prof.


and the funny thing is, this was supposed to be my EASY exam!


oh, and i leave for london/amsterdam tomorrow for the next week so that means no becky for a week and pictures in a week :)... probably



edit

so i'm studying now (again) to prepare some more before i leave berlin, and i keep finding errors in what the professor asked me! arrrrg

ein bisschen krank :(

All these exams have taken a toll on my health. I've been kinda sick for the past 2 days.
Exams have been INTENSE though. I have 2 more, so I'm almost done and then off to London and Amsterdam!
Yesterday I took my Mikrobiology Praktikum exam and it was quite difficult. Afterwards a friend came over and we split a beer. THen emilia and i met for coffee in Hackescher Markt. We had wanted to go to the Cinema Kneipe but it was totally full with a waiting line so we ended up going to the Starbucks nextdoor. Still good just to chat and relax. Then directly after a friend and i went to eat some sri-lanken food. Sooooooo goood.
Today emilia, jean-marc and i went to the turkische markt to buy some cheap fruit and vegetables. The weather was really miserable though and i was not in a super great mood because i was feeling sick, like body aching, difficult to breath and think sick. But afterwards we went to the best falafel in berlin where they ate falafel and I ate some soup. we topped it off with some mate. it took wayyyyyyyy longer than usual however, because there were people in front of us who bought food for i think all of berlin. the problem was is that they didn't call before to make the order and it's only one old lady running the place. i felt really bad for her because it was really crazy and took a really long time. I didn't mind all that much and felt way better after sitting for a long time and sipping mate.
I still feel sick but i'm gonna go out a LITTLE bit tonight just because Emilia is heading back to Poland for the next month on monday, so i wanna spend some time with her before then. I'm just gonna take it really easy. Plus i just got up from like a 4 hour nap so that helped a bit. :)

let's hope the rest of my exams go well, but i do say, it's REALLY difficult studying while sick, my brain just doesn't work.

some photos!

friday:
i had my Genetik exam, it was pretty difficult but I knew most things so that was good.
directly afterwards emilia and i went to KuDamm to shop a bit. I haven't been shopping for quite a few months. now that my scholarship is over i can REALLLLLLLY see my money go fast, so i spend it only on food and 'cultural' things pretty much.
so it was nice to treat myself a bit but i'm gonna have to save now!

then pretty much directly after that Gui, Esther Jean-Marc and I went to see the Berliner Philharmoniker. Really great as usual. There was a japanese pianist who was nuts.

directly after the philharmonic we headed back to siegmunds hof where we threw Gui a big going away party. The theme was 'Berliner-Punk' so i sported my pleather leggings, pleather jacket, black nailpolish and some stylin' black lipstick. it was tons of fun to say the least.

Saturday:
I was sooo pooped from the following day that i took it really easy, I went to Friedrichstraße and ate at an italien restaurant for the 'Happy Hour Special' where the food was way cheaper :)
took some pictures on the HUGE bench outside of a concerthall/playhouse that i forgot the name of.
later that night i got some deliciouuuuuuus, sooo tasty falafel in Friedrichshain and then watched Borat.

Today: I headed over to potsdamer platzt to pick up my Berlinale Film Festival tickts. it's snowing now! it's actualy not really cold, it's just snowing a lot. it's pretty but i'm ready to see the sun again.
but tonight at 11pm i'm seeing a french film for the Berlinale Film Fest. It's not at the red carpet
(those tickets were sold out :( ) but there still is A red carpet so that's cool. There were tons of celebrities in Berlin for the past week because of this festival. Because of my exams i havne't gone out to see any of them. But it will be nice to see a film from the festival.

haven't had time to take any pictures
just been studying pretty much all of the time
this weekend i'm going to see the philharmonic again, throw an abscheids (going away) party for a friend and go see a film at the Berlinale Film Festival

haven't had time to really look into housing for spring or a praktikum for summer, but i'm hoping that all falls into place soon. but i'm soooo booked with studying

study break!

So i'm taking a study break and am gonna fill you in a little bit about today.
I woke up early and went on a really good run through tiergarten and dropped by the gym for a little bit afterwards.
unfortunately, there was a metal-head couple in there who were blasting black metal-unenjoyable music in between kind of working out and making out.
a bit uncomfortable to say the least.

anyhow, after that i met up with a friend to buy groceries at the turkische markt in kreuzberg. i had to take some really strange way because the U8 wasn't running as normal. But it was really nice. I got so much produce for so cheap too! i'm trying to watch my cash because literally ALL my money has been going straight to my stomach. NO JOKE.

anyhow, after a good hour or so of food shopping we went to the 'best falafel restaurant in berlin'.
and it seriously was.
SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO GOOD
it was called the King of Falafel, but should have been called the Queen of Falafel.
It was an old turkish ladies kitchen pretty much. She made the falafel fresh for you by order and assembled it right there. soo tasty and warm. there was a bunch of cool turkish stuff in it but i don't really know the names of any of it.
but we spent about another hour savoring our massive falafels, eating fresh cherries and sipping delicious mate tea.
after this i headed back home

and then picked up my new running shoes! i ended up ordering an older version of the shoes i already had because they were cheaper, but probably exactly the same.
i;ve been studying for the past 5 hours but think i've pretty much hit a wall.
i have a paper due monday, a pratical exam tuesday and a written exam on friday. so it's kinda a stressful time. but that's not gonna keep me from seeing the ballet tomorrow and the berlinaler film festival on sunday!
schools not really the important aspect here. i mean don't get me wrong but i'm not going to lock myself inside to study like i do at home, hopefully it won't reflect too much in my grades but it's worth it :)!

just letting you know that I'm still alive!
it's exams time so I've been spending most of my time in the Bibliothek.
Tonight I'm going to see the Umbilical Brothers, they're a comedy duo.
This weekend I'll probably be spending most of my time in the library also :(
but when i take interesting photos I'll post them here!

i just got my photo taken with me and my room for some newspaper about the studentenwohnheims. quite cool!
if i ever find out the newspaper or the pictures, i'll post it.

kleine ausflug...

before i get started on what i've been up to for the past week, i just want you to take a little look at this map of berlin. and zoom in real good so that you find Babelsberg, it's the stop before Potsdam. Meaning the far bottem left corner. So Mateusz and i fell asleep on the s-bahn on our way home from a WG (Wohnheimgemeinschaft) Party last night. the party was in Friedrichshain, so an u-bahn away from Alexanderplatz. On the S-Bahn back to Tiergarten from Alexanderplatz both Mateusz and i fell the heck asleep and woke up simultaneously as the s-bahn was pulling into Babelsberg. The stark realization occured when i saw on the stop announcer thing that potsdam was the next stop. that is SO FLIPPING FAR AWAY from where i live. so we sprinted off the train and luckily, at the same moment another train had just pulled in going in the opposite direction. It's about another hour or so from where we were to where we live, so naturally we fell asleep...again.
gosh darnit!
we woke up in alexander platz...where we started, except for about 2 and half hours later. We jumped off the train and watched our train pull away the second that we stepped foot on the platform. so we had to wait about 10 minutes or so and then DIDN'T sleep from alexanderplatz back to tiergarten.
ive never wanted to be in bed so bad.
but i can now say i've experienced the proverbial 'fall asleep while on the s-bahn and wake up somewhere crazy' experience that seemingly all exchange students go through.

anyhow...
yesterday i was quite busy.
romain, ida and i went to see the philharmonic. it was great to get out and have some 'culture' for the weekend. the building was beautiful and the music was even better. i chatted with some old german dude about silicon valley and witnessed a medical emergency also. our seats were 20 euro and actually not that bad, it was one of those music halls where every seat in the house is a good seat. afterwards we got ida a döner and bought a few beers.
we headed back to siegmunds hof where a few friends were meeting. a guy from my floor is moving back to brazil so he had a going away party. i knew this was going to be happening, and i was already planning on going but i didn't realize how massive it was going to be. i've never seen so many people on my floor, ever!
it was a blast listening to brazilian music and drinking Caparenas. Hanging out for a bit was fun then we headed to a WG wig party in Friedrichshain. lots of people were wearing wigs and it was reallly fun.

then mateusz and i fell asleep on the s-bahn :( but still a pretty funny adventure
but today i was 'total kaputt' and didn't wake up until about 2.
emilia and i went for a bit of 'sonderpreis' shopping in alexanderplatz. at zara i got 2 shirts for 6 euro!!!!
today i'm taking the night off and staying in, i'm just too tired. i'm going to try and get some work done because i have a presentation in my german course on monday. last monday a girl present and got totally torn apart by the professor..for abotu 10 minutes in front of the whole class, so i definitely don't want a repeat of her experience so this presentation has to be good.
but lots of studying in anycase, our exams are coming REALLY fast.

in the meantime though i've been plannng my trip to london and amsterdam.
i can't wait!!

i have lots of pictures but the uploader thing isn't working, so you're just gonna have to wait. sorry!

I'm Back!

Sorry I haven't posted in a while, things have just been really busy over here.
But here is a synopsis until i get to a real post, and I've been taking pictures so there will definitely be lots of those coming your way soon :)

-I've been studying my caboos off because finals are right around the corner,
-saw the duke spirit last week (i'm not sure if i mentioned that yet)
- got vegetarian burgers in prenzlauerberg on a beautiful sunny saturday. didn't leave the house the following sunday...just studied :(
-saturday found a really really cool club in friedrichshain (i think). We started out with 7 people and ended with just mateusz and me.
-met up for coffee with emilia in prenzlauerberg on monday. it was rainy but still really great to catch up.
-bought tickets to london/amsterdam! I'm going to be spending a week there after my last final and before my parents come to Berlin. I'm expecting it to be really great but unfortunately expensive
-am working my butt off trying to find a job/praktikum for the summer but it is actually quite hard. for praktikums i can just find chemistry ones. and for jobs i only see ads for: telemarketers, sex workers and models...and i'm not interested in doing either three so it seems i'm going to have to search a bit harder.

it's crazy that my time in berlin is actaully starting to come to an end. everything is kinda building up and there is a TON of stuff to do in really little time. I'm just trying to enjoy every second here!
and fingers crossed that i can find a praktikum/job for summer, that way i can come back :) :) :)

finally finals

ugh.
so the studying has begun. I have a presentation, 3 oral exams and two written exams coming up early-mid february. This whole school thing has been pretty non-commital until about now when i realize that i have to seriously start hitting the books. But in between that i've been out to coffee a bit and saw a concert on tuesday.
the duke spirit, and they were soooooo good.
i met up with a girl from my german class there and we enjoyed the good tunes.

i'm heading to the opening of the new EAP office here in berlin soon. free bagles and prosecco, i'm there! afterwards we'll see if i can boulster up the energy to go to the gym, and then i'll be hitting the books again.
the weather today made berlin seem like a scene out of harry potter and sucked all the energy out of me.
things were so sunny and beautiful before also! :(

anyhow, wish me luck!

warming up

just finished up the weekend and my first week back from the states. and i can say that it was awwwesome.
i went out to lunch, and my 'out' i mean in the mensa, with ida and anna. we sat there for quite some while just chatting and stuffing my face with salad.
i also dropped by mateusz's place and gave him his xmas gift. he gifted me a bottle of really good polish vodka. i actually ended up getting a second bottle from emilia too! a true polish gift, vodka. but really, when you mix the stuff with some apple juice it tastes like actual apple pie! this is both pleasant and dangerous. it's called 'bison grass vodka', it has a strand of grass in it, but its a saying or something that they only use the grass that bison have peed on. hahaha, don't think thats true but still funny.

on friday everyone met again in the weinerei. if i didn't explain earlier this is a 'pay what you want' weinerei, and they have food too! we got lucky finding a big table because there were probably about 15 of us. here we just hung around till late drinking wine and catching up, it was quite nice.

on saturday i woke up too early :( (i've been having trouble sleeping in lately) and studied a bit. final exams are coming up and i have to make sure i know everything. it would be really unfortunate if i threw these grades down the toilet ecause it still affects my GPA. but i'm not doing that! at around 2 i went to idas place, shared some music and did some grocery shopping for dinner later that evening when ida, merce and i ate dinner at emilias place. we all brought a little something and emilia made some tasty tasty spaghetti.
we chatted, ate and drank some wine. the wine plus not that much sleep made me REALLY tired so i went home and took a little nap before going out. i almost stayed in because i was so tired, but boy am i glad i didn't!

a seminar for architecture students has a project of designing and building a school or something 'charitable' in mexico and threw 'MEXICO PARTY' to raise money for it.
soooooo much fun.
it was in Festhaal Kreuzberg. it had some fun live reggae/ska-ish danceable music. there was also german rapping which was quite fun to see :)
it had tons of mexican decorations. everyone working it wore either a wrestling mask, a sombrero, an eyemask, or all three! later in the night they played some really fun mexican/spanish/mexican-american music. i could have danced till morning but a friend got sick and was not in a state of being able to get home safely alone, so i left a little earlier...4am. it was still a blast.

on sunday emilia, merce and i went to mauer park floo markt. it wasn't that cold out...i mean, it was cold, but not as much as the previous week. however, the ground was still covered in snow and my feet were FREEZING. absolutely freezing, it was unbearable. emilia was in the same boat so this sped things up going through and we went to a cafe immediately afterwards to warm up a bit. drank some tea, sat around to warm up and then went home to do a bit of work.

today i had class but am going to get some coffee with a friend later and am planning on seeing the Duke Spirit tomorrow.

definitely new

nothing too exciting has happened in berlin for the past few days except for the cold. the cold cold bitter cold. but i assure you, i'm not complaining because it actually is pretty cool to see the snow every day and get all bundled up.
i've kept up the running bit as well. i go incredibly slow and have to carry those little heat packet things today.
but today it was insane! my eyelashes froze, a drop of sweat on my face froze and even my nose hair froze (sorry for the overshare)!
MY FACE FROZE.
a bit painful, and i can't really think of a way to avoid that again except for wearing a mask...which i'm just not going to do.

but i do say that this weather sure makes me feel more tough. compared to california weather i'm living in the arctic, and it's cool to dip into negatives.

i'm glad to hear also that my friend told me there are plenty of Praktikums (like internships) offered for short periods of time that i could probably get hooked up with.
wish me luck!

thank goodness for hats!

well,
i'm a bit ill, i'm not exactly sure what's wrong with me but i'm not feeling too well. i'm quite nauseated and get shakey everytime i get up or down. so after an attempt at the gym i really needed a nap....a 5 and a half hour one.
i hope i can sleep tonight!
anyhow,
i was just about to head out the door to the grocery store until i caught myself in the mirror. NOT ACCEPTABLE appearance for anywhere.
my hair was/still is just too hilarious to keep to myself. and while these pictures probably should never be hitting the internet, i am still in a sleepy stupor and think they're funny. let's just hope future employers don't find this blog!
anyhow, here you are!







...

i have luggage!
yay :)

after a long journey and a great break I am back in berlin.
and naturally, my luggage was lost along the way.

i haven't done anything but groceryshop and read since i've been back because i've been too tired to do anything else.

hopefully i will be back to my normal shenanigans soon.