Diane’s World

Thanks Dave for giving me this song a long time ago - called “You’re The Storm” by the Cardigans.

Ok ok ok… I suppose I should write before I go on “Vacation”. By that, I mean that next week I am planning to flee to West Germany during our spring break. I will spend time with my German uncle, and then some new German friends, and then hopefully make it to Zürich for a few days.

My parents came to visit me last weekend… it was very nice to see them here. Unfortunately, Dad has all the pictures, so you can only just imagine the incredibly good-looking Feucht family wandering around Berlin. How nice, eh?

I have finished the B12 level in the Goethe Institut… and now I’m in B2 (which technically means I’m an intermediate German speaker now… no longer a beginner!!!)

We had a nice goodbye party… here is some pictures of my class:

Narja (Brazil), Me!, and our German teacher:

Laura (Romania), Narja (Brazil), ME!!!, and Victoria (Canada)

We took a few pictures of the whole class, but those are currently in someone else’s camera. Dude, I really need to start learning to take my own pictures. I’m just too lazy, I guess.

Today I took the “Zertifikat Deutsch” test. I passed with a “good” (equivalent to the American “B”). That makes me glad… but then again, when you pay 110 Euros for a test, you kind of want to pass it.

The people correcting my oral exam say that I tend to not finish my sentences. I have a queasy feeling that I do that in English as well. Woops…

My host woman and I are becoming good friends. We had some good long chats since I’ve lived with her. Maybe I should take a picture of her, so then my blog won’t be this boring. Haha. Na ja, I am gonna shut up now!

Have a good weekend, everybody!

Love, DeeMarie

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Hallo Welt!

Ok… I’ll speak in English. (Yup, giving up THAT easily!)

Song of the week: MUSHABOOM by Feist! Do listen to it - I think it perfectly catches the mood I am in while writing this post!

Anyways, I’m already spoiling you with a new post. However, I don’t have much to say… I am just trying to bury the video in the last post because it may be too awesome for some of my readers to handle for more than a week.

But anyways, Berlin is treating me well.

I hang out a lot with this woman (my Brazilian friend, Narja). She is wunderbar!:

Sometimes we cook together. Last night I made some very very very very yummalicious (german friends: don’t even bother grabbing your dictionary for that word) twice baked potatoes with garlic and bacon and cheese.

But unfortunately, Germany doesn’t believe in Colby Jack cheese (waaaa!) - or any other kind of American cheese, in fact (waaa!) so I was stuck with using Gouda… which actually turned out really well, so I am going to stop complaining right now.

Also, the other night I made eggs in a basket. Mmmmm! Yay for American food!!! Here is a simple diagram I found just incase you don’t know what that is:

Today in class, the teacher wanted us to bring in a newspaper from our own land. I forgot, so I used cnn.com as my newspaper source. I was scanning for a good article… but I had to start bursting out in laughter after reading this article. Oh let me save you the time: CNN entertainment thought it a FRONT PAGE STORY to write about Britney Spears that she got into a car accident last night. No one was injured. No cars were damaged. No one was cited. Oh yeah… and she was driving a Mercedes. (very important information, people!)

Haha… no wonder Britney went crazy in the first place. Shall I quote my favorite Homosexual Britney Activist? LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE!!!

Also, I feel I have been lacking in the ExplodingDog as of late. Sam Brown has kept me happy the past few weeks - posting quite often!

“if you could only hear what my heart is saying”

“are you sure this is ok?”

“i’ll never get it”

Why do I bring up exploding dog all the sudden?

I RECEIVED MY VERY-OWN ORIGINAL EXPLODING DOG DRAWING!!! WHEEEE!

About a year ago, if you sent Sam Brown a stamped envelope and a title, he would draw you a picture and send it to you for free! Here is mine!!!:

“he makes me forget how to talk”

Finally, I started a list of my favorite German words. Maybe someone would find this interesting:

QUATSCH!: (=nonsense)

Ach So!: (=alas! A word way overused by the Germans)

Frühstück: (=breakfast… but technically translated is “early piece” it’s fun to say because of the two ü’s)

Dummkopf!: (=nincompoop!… but technically translated is “dumb head!”)

Kuh!: (=cow!)

Muh!: (=moo! Why can’t “cow” and “moo” rhyme in English?!?!?!)

Genau!: (=Exactly! Pronounced “Guh-Now!”)

Warum nicht?: (=Why not? Apparently I say this too much… people make fun of me for it)

Ok that’s it for now. You now know all the important German words! Rejoice and be glad! MY PARENTS COME THIS WEEKEND! So I should have a lot to say in a week! Woopies!

Bis Später

The Deeds

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Boy, is my brother going to love me!!!

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present you the greatest viral video EVER! Dun dun dun!

(The best part is Jonny’s left eyeball - I suggest watching it once with just that in focus!!!)

and my sister Sarah tagged me! Ahh! So now here we go! :

1. Ten years ago I was…
11 years old.
I was in 6th grade, a loner with a huge imagination, no social life, and I lived in the same room as my sister, Rachel. I liked to create fake newsletters on the computer for a world I created called “Cookie Planet” and pretend I was a cat.

2. Things on my to do list today:
Eat
Breathe
Think
Go to bed

3. Things I would do if I was suddenly a billionaire:
Buy an apartment with an art studio in Berlin.
Be an artist.
Pay for people I love to come visit me, starting with Dave & Trina.

4. Bad habits:
Feeling too much.
Dreaming too much.
Being disappointed too often.

5. Places I have lived:
Chicago, IL
Biloxi, MS
Puyallup, WA
Sioux Center, IA
Göttingen, Germany
Düsseldorf, Germany
Berlin, Germany

6. Jobs I have now or have had:
Babysitting
Filing for my Dad’s office
Advancement Calling
Target Sales Floor Team Member
Museum of Glass Intern
Resident Assistant
Contemporary Art History Tutor

7. Things people don’t know about me (quirky things about me):
I pay very close attention to how I walk - when I step on shadows, cracks, different colors, wet spots, etc… If one foot makes a step, the other foot has to step on a piece of pavement as similar as possible to the step I took before. I don’t usually walk in straight lines. Great fun, you should try it.

8. Things that make my life superfabulous right now:
Superfabulous? Well, I am in Germany, aren’t I? And I ate chocolate gelato today.

I guess I’m supposed to tag people! Well ok then… Dave, Trina, Jonny! Go!

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I have listened to this song way too many times in the past few days. The first time I really REALLY listened to it, I was in the U-bahn (public transportation) and I had to work really hard from doing some very embarrassing very public crying.

Damien Rice really has a heart that beats similar to mine, I think. Some of his expressions are ones I created myself to explain how I am feeling. When I am around someone I feel truly connected with, I claim to feel “warmer” - he’s the first artist I’ve heard use that expression in a song. To see the rest of the lyrics CLICK HERE.

Sigh… I think I’ve listened to more Damien Rice in Germany than any other time in my life.

Ok I have to admit - this is a content-loaded post. I actually have a lot to share with you, and it feels good.

First is the Buchenwald pictures - at the very end when we visited the place where the Nazis dumped the ashes of the cremated prisoners. It was creepy how it started snowing - the snow resembled ash a little too closely and gave me shivers:

I had been feeling quite down for the past week for unexplainable reasons (or let’s just blame anemia, yup? Good.) but suddenly things in my life got soo soo much better.

First of all, my wonderful sister, Rachel, video taped my art opening. She sent me a video of everything my art professors said about me, and it definitely cheered me up from not being able to be there. Here, now you can take part with me of my art show!

Second, I finally took the advice of a friend and picked up a paintbrush. I haven’t really painted for a month, but I’ve had paintbrushes, paints and canvases in my room for the past few weeks. Yesterday I finally finished my first German canvas painting!! I love it a lot, but unfortunately I can’t take it back to America with me. It’s 40″x60″… any German friends want a painting?

I also started a new art blog so I can post museum reviews, artists reviews and stories about my own paintings in order to help people understand my work and other art better as well. You can GO HERE and to the blog page to read the full story of this painting called “Erleichterung”. It’s part of a new technique I’m perfecting, called “Shower Paintings”. Yes, I may be going insane, but it’s all good. Insanity keeps me going.

And I just realized I had forgotten to post my very last Düsseldorf painting called “It’s Complicated”. It’s completely a desperate grasp of emotion… and sometimes emotion is admittedly very ugly:

I also visited the Neue Nationalgalerie this Saturday - I wrote about this in greater detail in my art blog on my portfolio site, but I recommend it - it was very good to visit my old friends Francis Bacon, Albers, Debuffet, Appel and Munch. Art brings me so much joy.

Oh… I dyed my hair! Ok ok ok… I know. Nothing special, I do that a lot. But this is my first time doing it… with the instructions completely in GERMAN! Good thing I’ve dyed my hair enough to know without instructions at all. I decided to make my mom happy by going a bit blonder. So mommy, this was for you:

Ok ok, I know. All I have to do now is start wearing pink and carrying a small poodle in my handbag. At least it matches the yellow in my eye color. Oof… I’m not sure if that is a good thing.

Finally, something actually quite exciting happened to me today. Everybody in our class is required to give a small presentation on their favorite thing. It only needs to be a 3-5 minute presentation, so it’s really no big deal. My teacher thought that it would be a good idea for me to give a presentation on my artwork, since she knew I was so bummed about missing my art exhibition in Iowa.

I showed the class photos of these paintings and a few others, and explained the first one in greater detail (in German! yay! I finally can say useful things!

after a quick 5 minute explanation in German of what I do, why I do it, and how I do it… my classmates started to ask many questions. I got to talk quite in depth about my paintings, and soon I was sharing a bit of my life story. The 5 minute presentation turned into a 25 minute long discussion about my life and my art work! Quite an unexpected bit of joy for me, thank God for little joyful things in my life I don’t expect.

…and I’m starting to notice more and more that my life gets worse and worse the longer I stay away from art. It’s like it’s unhealthy for me to not make art. I hope this continues to be proven true.

In other news: For anyone that lives in Germany: I have a free week at the end of April! I was thinking about going to Greece, but Greece had to screw up my plans by planning Greek Easter at that time. Grrr. So, I want to take a week long trip starting around Düsseldorf/Köln, heading to Heidelberg, and hopefully making it to Zurich, Switzertland. If you live anywhere in the line of this trip and would like to invite me over, I would love to make plans to visit you!

I think it’s time for me to finally shut up. I hope you all are doing well. Please keep keeping in contact, I absolutely enjoy hearing from all of you back home!

Much love and best wishes for your week,

Diane Marie

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