Diane’s World

HELLO WORLD!
Abba is playing. Why Abba? Someone convinced me to go to the musical “Mama Mia” this weekend, so I’ve been listening to Abba to prepare for it. I’ll give a full report on that later.

So, yes! I’m still alive! I know it’s been forever since I’ve last said something, but unfortunately I got to Bremen… and there is no internet. Darn.

So I go to the Goethe institute, and there is Internet, but I need an internet password. Darn.

Everybody got their internet passwords last week. Mine wasn’t there. Really Darn.

A nice American/German guy in my class gave me his password because he has internet at home. Yay!

My teacher is a very strict, quite boring teacher who always has a displeased and arrogant look on her face. She pretty much pummels kids when they get the wrong answer. For example, some poor fellow hand the wrong answer, and she answers (in German which sounds 100 times more mean than in English) “WHAT? What did you get as an answer!? NOOO! That is impossible! That can not be!” Our class is becoming quite bonded over this common problem of the “Hexe Lehrerin.”

Oddly enough, I have never had so much homework since I’ve came to Germany. I pretty much do homework all the way up to going to bed.

I said I was only going to speak in German when I came to Bremen… but unfortunately a huge road block happened.

She looks like this:

Yes, I have a roommate.

Nicole is American, and is at the very beginning level of German… so the whole speaking German thing had to go out the window. I need to get along with the person I am living with. However, to make up for it all, I help her learn German by making her listen to German things. I also help her with her homework, and it’s really a good practice for me as well.

But it’s really nice that I have someone to cook with and entertain myself with when there is so much homework for me to do.

Here is me cooking. Yup… semi-homemade food for once, can you believe it?

Here is our apartment:

We share a homework table, and we built the “Bremen wall” so that no one steals the other side of the table.

Sometimes the wall likes to move… and usually to make east bremen bigger. Here is East Bremen.:

And here is the oppressed West Bremen:

Sometimes East Bremen gets sick of homework and tries to escape:

Besides homework, to relax I read this book that I bought (I have a copy that is translated into German), that describes the life of a young woman who moved from the USA to Germany and all the problems she had with adjusting. Reading it makes me smile, because she is talking about all the things I had to get used to since January, and now I see how much progress I’ve made with becoming “Germanized”.

I’ve also bought “The Little Prince” in German, and have made progress reading that.

Finally, I bought a collection of Fairy Tales from Hans Christian Anderson, The Grimm Brothers, and other European Fairy Tale masters that I am really enjoying listening to before going to bed.

The town of Bremen is very nice. It’s small compared to Berlin but I think it will be very easy to get to know in only a month. Here are some pictures:

And here is the famous bremen musicians! If you grab the legs of the donkey, it’s supposed to bring you good luck. And indeed, I finished my homework in record timing that night! I even had time to read calvin and hobbes for a while!

On the fourth of July I simply went bar hopping with my roommate and two other friends. It was nice and low key. No fireworks. No Star spangled banners. Quite a lovely evening without anything actually american except some of the people.

So yes, I am doing very well here in Bremen. Only 29 days until I am back in the USA, so I’ve got to make the most of my last month in Germany! I will try to update more regularly from now on now that i have internet!

Much Love,

The Deeds