Europe - A Retrospective

Being back in the states is a very strange experience, and not altogether pleasing. I am happy to see people I have been missing, but the place itself doesn't feel good to me anymore. The shops and the cars and the miles of roads and the lack of bicycles and the different air and the change in scenery - it is familiar, but it makes me restless. Playing guitar feels different, and not in the best of ways (although I am hoping with more and more practice, that will rectify itself.) I'm going to try not to be all gloomy-doomy about being back. I have an adorable apartment to decorate, and tons of people I have not yet been able to catch up with. I think those things will help propel me along to get through the year. Also, I want to explore cities here with the same vivacity and excited energy with which I explored cities in Europe. I also want to eat healthier, since I am a little "richer" (harhar) here than I was in Germany. I am excited about the future, but I am also kind of ready to get to a new place - as much as I've loved Austin, I'm ready to get out of Texas. There was a kind of magic in all of my adventures abroad, and (just like I said I would - remember??) of course I am now rose-color-glasses-ing everything. I know there were incredibly difficult times, but right now they seem to be so worth the rest of it all. I just feel very strange. A stranger in my own country. Anyway, I will try to update again once I've been here a while, to see what changes and what stays the same. For now, I just feel restless and a little tired and a little sad.

Just 'cause you feel it, doesn't mean it's there.

When Eric was visiting, he "fixed" my iPod, which has allowed me to delve into the one Radiohead album I *didn't* have on my computer, 'Hail To The Thief.' That is where the title to this post comes from:) Today has been a nice day; I managed to semi-sleep in, with only a little bit of waking up in between falling asleep and finally getting out of bed. Then I took off on my second-to-last bike ride. It's bittersweet, knowing tomorrow will be the last time I get to ride through beautiful Littenweiler, through steep mountains littered with pine-and-other-trees, clouds gently kissing the tops, blue sky background but without the intense heat of the summer sun. The air smells fresh (except the areas where cow and horse poop fills your lungs:-P) and the cool breeze is refreshing, chill without stinging. Sigur Ros was my background music today, and it was low enough not to overpower the whoosh of the wind past my ears. I have to admit, I feel pretty lucky to take the world in the way I do. I know not everybody can experience things, particularly in nature, the way I can. I know it makes me semi-weird, but I also love the richness it gives my life. There are magical moments that become imprinted in me; not that I can remember images exactly, but I know that the moments are changing who I am. The ride today was also easier than usual; I had more energy, and really enjoyed feeling the rise and fall of the hills. I also managed to get up one of 2 impossible hills on my ride! I'll go for the other one tomorrow:) Today, I tried it, but I also tried to shift down into a lower gear, and the lower gears on my roommate's bike just do not work - they always slip out of place and I kind of go out of control for a while:-P So I just have to push with all my own strength. It feels like pushing through thick mud or something, but it's kind of fun! The rest of today, I intend to start packing things away and sifting through all of the stuff I've collected, throwing out a good bit to make sure everything fits. It will take a lot of planning, 'cause I need to figure out what I'll be wearing the next 6 days. I also need to run to the grocery store and make sure I have dinner for tomorrow. Then I'll be seeing a movie tonight with my friend Belinda! Yesterday I saw "Mamma Mia!" (in German, except the songs:-P) with Uli, which was SO much fun. We also made quiche for dinner, which I'd never done, and it was fantaaastic. Tomorrow is a 'finish packing' day, and I'll also be meeting with Maria and Belinda for an ice cream farewell in the evening. Monday is INSANELY busy: I have to get up super early and turn my very last paperwork in to the campus office, come back and immediately start my laundry, then cleancleanclean all day (bathroom, kitchen AND my room). Then I have to pick up Eric from the train station. I can't remember if I've already regaled all of you with these plans haha, but here they are again:-P There is true sadness in my heart that I am leaving this beautiful place; also that I haven't had as much time to do as much as I'd hoped. Still, that just means I'll have to be back! Even on my bike ride today, I imagined bringing my family back to Freiburg in the decades that come, sharing with them a little bit of me. That's how I feel: I am taking a little bit of Freiburg with me, and it's keeping a little bit of me for itself. Anyway, I must get moving; time to soak up as much as I can:)

Oh, how it's been so long/We're so sorry we've been gone.

I am EXHAUSTED so I will keep this semi-short. I am wrapping up my time in Germany, and it's heartbreaking and exciting and difficult and painful and amazing and nostalgic and a million other things. I still need to finish up my notes for a class and turn them in, and to sign myself out of the university and city. I am hoping to accomplish 2/3 of that tomorrow, and then sign out of the uni on Friday. Then this weekend I am going to go through all of my things and throw stuff out and pack, and then I'll be cleaning the kitchen and my room and head to Stuttgart with Eric, and then back to America! It's been such a flurry of a life over here, and I'm curious how I will feel when I'm back in Austin. I don't know if that's home anymore; I'm not sure I know where home is at the moment. But I am not worried; more excited. I'm still kind of reeling from the past month-and-a-week's events, but it gets a little bit easier every day. It was SO nice to have one of my best friends, Eric, visiting these past four days. He headed out to Berlin today (I AM SO JEALOUS) and, like I mentioned, will be back to travel to Stuttgart with me. He said something when we were taking in the scenery on the terrace that I have written in my personal journal many, many times: you really have to be here and experience this for yourself, because cameras and words cannot capture the true glory of it all. Pictures are good for memories, but the eye is the best thing to take it all in. In the four days Eric was here, we accomplished a lot! We explored the town on the first day, and he got to see where I have been studying. Then on the second day, we did our epic 3-hour bike ride through the mountains. Then we did some more exploring in the city, and he bought some really cool fashionable things that made me really want to explore my fashion sense a little more when I'm back in the states and not as poor as dirt. Then the next day was a relaxing hang-out day, and we had super-German cuisine for dinner, followed by a beer on the Dreisam (the river through the town) and a glass of wine at the student favorite, Schlappen. It was a real treat for me to be able to share with someone a glimpse of what I've been up to! Today, after I saw Eric off, I did laundry and played guitar and lazed about. I am hoping to get a ton of sleep tonight, finally. I am supposed to hang out with my roommate David and past-roommate Corinna - I am going to force myself to go, because I am seriously wasted physically so I'm only going to stay an hour or something. But I haven't hung out with David since the first or second month I was here, and he leaves for a vacation in Budapest on Friday, so I won't get to see him again:( As people start heading out, everything gets more and more real. Anywho, there's more floating around in my brain, but nothing coherent:-P For now, I will just say I love music SO SO SO much and am looking forward to really getting all these last little bits tied up so I can just RELAX.

Let's talk about this.

Comment on my last post by "rich" - "Wow, that could be the most consecutive lines of bullshit I've ever read in my life."

I'm not sure who you are, although I can certainly make assumptions. I am trying to be respectful on here and deal with things in an adult manner, and truly this blog is for my friends and family. Seeing as you can clearly be neither, I would appreciate you explaining yourself. What about a person's recovery during a hard time is bullshit? I'm not understanding. Truly, if you have been offended in some way (which I can only imagine you have been, or else why would you take the time and go out of your way to hurt someone?) please share, because I am only trying to share my own experiences.

Hate me so good you can let me out.

A very brief update: for those of you who know me well, you know I'm kind of a crazy earth-mother type, which is part of the reason I've loved Europe so much. The environment around me is SO spectacular. And I feel a deep connection with the earth. Well, if you have read my last post, you know I'm dealing with a ton of pain and anger right now, more than I have ever felt in my life. It kind of culminated for me today, kind of really and truly officially finalized to the point where there is nothing I can do but try to move forward. As if mother earth knew of all of this, there is now a raging, spectacular, furious and beautiful thunderstorm outside. The great streaks of lightning flash through the sky and split the mountains, but the mountains remain, strong and steady and hurt but surviving. And I can tell, as the wind picks up and with the fury of it all, the rain will come and wash everything clean and the earth will be reborn, just like me. It just started in great huge waves that invite me to let it all out with them. There are little drops that sting, and softer drops that come in, steady and steady and steady. There is pain in a thunderstorm, and devestation, and despair, but there is also excitement and there is promise and there is rebirth. I look to this storm, and the ones that are expected to come for the next few days, to represent me, and my own slow and steady and violent and painful and exciting recovery.

I Ain't No Holla-Back Girl: Coming Clean

I have kept myself from posting about this, because I felt like it would be immature and irresponsible to air dirty laundry on a blog for all of my friends and family. Even though it has been the most major development in my life for the past month, since I didn't know what was going to happen, I kept it all to myself. Now that it has come to an end, I am prepared to inform everyone of what has been happening. Of course this is a one-sided interpretation of events, but I am pretty well convinced that the other party's side wouldn't be very enlightening anyway.

At the beginning of the month, on July 1st, Scott informed me he wanted to take a break. I was told to trust him, and that he loved me, and that he believed we would stay together. It hurt like crazy and I didn't understand, but I knew trust had been a huge issue for us for a long time, so I resolved to trust him. I won't go into super-gritty details, I will just say that there were clues that shed light on what was to come, but, sticking to my promise to Scott and myself, I trusted him and assumed the best. I felt that I knew, in my heart, that he loved me, and that we would end up together. The problem is, that was the Scott that I used to know and love. There is a new Scott that isn't the wonderful guy that I used to know. Essentially, I found out through the wonders of Facebook that, despite having held on for the whole month, despite keeping the faith, despite not trying to contact him, despite giving him the space he asked for, despite being the most devoted girlfriend in the history of girlfriends, and despite feeling like I knew in my heart that we must end up together/planning on sending him a happy message mid-week to plan out when we'd get to catch up this weekend; that despite all of this, he had moved on. Without telling me anything first, he had posted that he was in a relationship with a girl who had been messaging him all month. It was the most painful way to "let me know" about this, it was cowardly, and it has ruined the chance we had to salvage an important and wonderful friendship from what was, I had thought, a fantastic nearly-three-year relationship. It's been an incredibly difficult month not having the person I had considered my best friend to consult with. It's been scary and painful, and it has now gotten worse. I only found out about this new relationship of his yesterday; for those of you who have gone through breakups, you can sort of understand what I am dealing with at the moment. I have never known hurt or anger or betrayal as deep as this. It saddens me, and infuriates me. I am in despair for the death of a person I admired and loved so much, I miss the memories we made and can no longer make, and I am engraged at the asshole who has turned my world upside-down. However, even though I have had the most lonely moments I have ever had, as I am having to experience this abroad, particularly after many of my friends have moved away; there is a silver lining. My friends and family who have already heard about this have all joined together in support around me, and it has been so incredibly fantastic and moving to realize how many people love me and care about me. I feel proud to know so many amazingly wonderful and caring people. I feel blessed. Also, though there are indescribably difficult low moments. . .there are excitingly hopeful moments, too. I am single in the prime of my life; I have the opportunity now to meet new people, furnish new friendships, go on dates with crazy liberals (for once in my life!!) and rockstars and all of the other wonderful people I am going to meet. Once I am more removed from the sting of all of this, I will learn from it and be an even better girlfriend the next time around. My possibilities are endless. I can now also totally embrace my plan to travel as soon as I possibly can when I graduate; to think I was going to agree to compromise some of my dreams for a boy as undevoted as Scott is kind of scary, but as my friends have said, it's good that I figured all of this out BEFORE it got to that point. I will not just rip on Scott, of course; he has brought some of the happiest moments into my life, and has helped me through times that I thought I would drown in. That is why this is all so confusing, and why I feel like the wonderful, caring boy who did those things is not the boy who has done this horrible thing to me. Hopefully this update does not seem TOO vindictive or high-school-drama-bitchy, because I don't want to be just another Miley Cyrus acting the fool on the world wide web. That isn't the intent. My intent here is three-fold: 1)I want to let everyone know about this at once, because it hurts for me to have to go through it over and over again; 2)I want to warn other women about this, because I feel kind of like it's my duty to share what I have had to go through; 3)I deserve to be a little bitchy after what I was put through.
In sum, I have had to go through a living hell, and am still living through it at various intervals throughout the day. There are grittier details, but you'll have to ask me in person because I really am not so vindictive as to air my dirty laundry on my blog. The good that comes out of this is that I have found how many amazing people care about me, I am finding my own personal strength, and I have many amazing opportunities now - a clean slate. It's going to be an incredibly difficult year, because everything from concert plans to living arrangements were made with the relationship in mind. But I'm going to reframe it all and reclaim it all. I still have a little over 2 weeks left in Freiburg, and I'm going to live it up as much as I physically can. I still have one more paper to write, notes to type, and manuscript to edit, but I should be done with most school-related responsibilities by the end of the week. Eric arrives Sunday, which is going to be an absolute God-send. I have my guitar, and I'm going to write some songs about this. I also have some amazing music mixes from my dear Margaret, as well as my own choice songs (check out Damien Rice's "Rootless Tree" and "Coconut Skins" if you would like to know about how I'm feeling right now; particularly that first one.) I love you all, and I still even care for the boy that I once knew and fell in love with. I'm sad to see him go, but perhaps, at some day far, far in the future, he'll return and we can be friendly again. Ultimately I am an optimist and feel that people can learn from mistakes and change for the better. At this point, though, that/he isn't my concern. My concern is to better myself and grow out of all of this. I will keep you all posted about my last-week adventures and do a final grade update when I have all of them in:) Love to all and just keep me in your thoughts - I appreciate all the support I receive. I am going to be more than OK, it will just take time.

The random things you find when you're wandering the streets with an awesome friend.

I hope I have mentioned my pal Lindsy from Minnesota on here before, because she is wonderful and I am going to miss her SO SO SO much when she leaves for Sweden on Monday. Anywho, our last Swedish class was today (and I got a 1,7 which, in short, means I'm amazing.) Afterwards, Lindsy and I had dinner at a delicious (and cheap! hooray!) restaurant. Then we decided to wander around Freiburg for a few minutes. Our first randomly awesome discovery was a free art exhibit with toooons of amazing stuff - it's hard to explain it here, but it was really, really cool. Kind of abstract but the figures were recognizable. We got into a discussion about how perspective matters SO much in interpreting anything creative - this discussion kicked off because my favorite picture at the exhibit was an image of two people kissing with some kind of headphones over their ears. I had interpreted it as a guy and girl listening to music, but maybe not the same song, and yet they were still sharing a "moment" that was different for each because of their different music but connected all of the same, since they were kissing. I told this to Lindsy, and she jokingly said, "How do you know those are headphones and not ear-muffs?" I realized that, had that really been her first interpretation, it would totally make sense, as she is from Minnesota, whereas nobody in Texas needs ear-muffs. Plus my obsession with music obviously led me to associate the earphones with those attached to some kind of CD-player. Anyway, very interesting stuff! Then we wandered around a bit more, and finally we came upon the STRANGEST thing I have ever seen. There was music playing, so we started walking down the street towards it, and there were ALL kinds of people, so it looked like a festival. Lindsy said she believed the building they were standing outside of was some kind of art school for teenaged kids, because she would sometimes see/hear orchestras practicing. The band that was playing was probably faculty or just some hired group, 'cause the guys were all old. They were just playing this endless 90's-esque loop, and as we walked on, we discovered the strange part: there were kids, in weird costumes (we believe it was a Greek mythology theme, because there was Hermes and Medusa. . .I think those are the Greek ones anyway haha) standing around, and ALSO jumping out of a window, hooked up to one of those climbing cables, that connected to a tree and they floated down over their classmates towards the tree. What. In. God's. Name. Lindsy and I, still, have NO idea what was happening. We conjecture it was either the aftermath of a school play, or else graduation and these were the seniors being celebrated by. . .jumping out of a 3rd or 4th story window to float down over their classmates. It was the strangest thing ever. Neither Lindsy nor I had a camera, so all we have is this very odd memory of kids jumping out of windows, with a little fog machine running, and just kind of hanging like sad sacks until they got down haha. There were 2 girls who actually tried to look like they were flying down, but the rest really just hung there. Ridiculous. Then, after all the kids had jumped out of the window, the band started playing American Motown. AMAZING. They did "Hit The Road Jack" and "Mustang Sally," and then Lindsy and I had to go. Since I turned in my first Hausarbeit (major research paper worth my entire grade, basically) today, I have now been relaxing and playing guitar. Tomorrow I'm doing a bike ride, and then starting Hausarbeit number 2. I am hoping to finish that by Saturday, and then I'll just have 2 more assignments to finish up (but they aren't too bad.) Then it's relax until I head back home! It's insane how fast this has all gone. I really am going to miss my friends so much who are leaving next week. . .I wish people were hanging around! But it will give me more time to write poetry and guitar and whatnot. OK, bed time!!