By the way, to any newcomers: this journal's been friends-only for a long time, but honestly, it's really not terribly scandalous at all, so if you drop by and comment, I'll probably friend you. :-)

Very quick update: Berlin is fabulous and I want to live here. So, who's going to learn German and join me? When we're all too poor to pay New York rent and our student loans, I think we should find a fabulous apartment here where it's like a quarter of the cost and hang out in a country that's not ruled by Bush.

Super-fast update, as other students are waiting! And I feel dirty writing this in English. See, I don't speak English here, and I am quite proud of this in a slightly smug and annoying Hermione Granger sort of way. Heehee. School has started! Today was a language placement test. Part of it was one of those "write a story to go with these pictures ( Read more... )

humandiscoball and I are hard at work creating slashy icons! I am posting to show off mine. She almost managed to convince me to use Smiths lyrics, but I think the Sindarin is more highbrow...

What started out as a productive attempt to learn more Swedish quickly degenerated into mad giggling with humandiscoball over how my phrasebook has this "dating" section. Now, if your command of a language is based solely on memorized phrases, attempting to seduce someone in that language seems kind of hopeless. But the folks at Berlitz are clearly more ( Read more... )

All is well. I'm back in New York, staying in my old room that's not really my room, in a strange but pleasant state between transience and familiarity. Today I've just been settling back in; I went grocery shopping and chatted with humandiscoball and talked on the phone with musetoself and made dinner and listened to my strange music, and oh, the normalcy of it all is ( Read more... )

Got something rather hilarious in the mail today: a brochure and order form for a class ring. I was about to just throw them out, as I've never understood the purpose of class rings. What kind of memories are you supposed to attach to them, anyway? The halcyon days of... filling out order forms and choosing white or yellow gold? If you want a ( Read more... )

My subconscious likes to entertain me. Whee! Like, for example, last night, in which I dreamed I was in a mall that was somehow both stereotypically Scandinavian and Eastern European. It was this odd combination of swanky minimalist design and Eastern Bloc bureaucracy and all of the signs were in both Finnish and Romanian! And I remember feeling ( Read more... )

I talked to my mother about how I want more space when it comes to planning my trip, and how I think it's better if we don't discuss it for a while and I just make my plans on my own. And I think I did a great job of communicating-- lots of I-statements! Go me. She was pretty defensive, but I think I would be, too, if I were in her place, and I ( Read more... )

I bought my plane tickets a few days ago. I fly to Oslo on 22 January. I fly back from Berlin on 18 August. I realised that I'll be spending my 21st birthday alone somewhere in Norway. Mostly, this makes me really happy; it's exactly the kind of life I want to live. But here, where I can spend hours talking to people but still feel starved for ( Read more... )