The Final Stretch

It starts today!

Well, not officially. I still have to sign the paperwork sometime in August to start my offical 6-month working period, but the dissertation topic is chosen, y'all! I'll get some preliminary data within the next few weeks and then it'll be time to do all the science.

I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. It's crazy how these 2.5 years have gone by. On the one hand, it feels like no time at all; I can still remember meeting all of my colleagues for the first time, and that first class (a finite elements exercise) seems like it was yesterday. And Kiel is just starting to become home. I know it takes a while to become accustomed to a new place, but it seems a shame that it has to happen so late in the game. Better late than never, I guess?

But then, so much has happened in Kiel. I came into this program and this city excited to learn but unprepared for everything- the culture, the language, the area of study, etc. It was rough for a while, and I wasn't sure if coming to Germany was a good decision or if I would be able to make it through the master's. Now, I still can't say by any stretch of the imagination that I am now prepared for these sorts of things - my German is still dismal, and grad school is really good at teaching you about how much you don't know - but at least I'm less unprepared (is this a thing?) and still excited to learn...and I'm about 95% sure I'll be able to BTHO this thesis and graduate, so that's promising!

And I'm realizing (and telling way too many people) that I will have been here, with my only breaks being for holidays or work, longer than I have been anywhere since Detroit. The feet are starting to itch again, but saying goodbye is going to be difficult this time around. The Germans might seem standoffish, but some of them definitely know how to warm a girl's heart.

Ok, this is getting too sappy. My apologies. I leave with two four quick notes:

• My friend Greg and I are taking wagers for who can best include Bill Nye in their master's thesis. Right now he gets $100 if he has an inline direct quotation. We're taking outside wagers! We're poor graduate students, and we can't be that picky as to where our food comes from.
• On a side note, I'm seriously impressed with how many oceanography episodes Bill Nye had...trying to teach 5- to 12-year-olds about the thermohaline circulation (using a Stommel box-type model, at that!) can't be an easy task.
• Wait, do Germans even know about Bill Nye the Science Guy? (Bill! Bill! Bill! Bill!)
• Working with graduate students is dangerous. Case in point: Theodore Streleski, a math Ph.D. candidate who snapped after working for his advisor for 19 years and murdered him. Now I know why the professors at A&M tried to kick out their Ph.D. students early...

March 6th, 2016

There are a lot of things that are scary about living abroad. Being surrounded by a new culture, having to start from square 1 in terms of making new friends, relearning everyday routines (like going to the doctor or arranging appointments), and the eventual but continual change that is really only recognized once you "move back" are all things that bring out insecurities, at least for me.  But at the end of the day, these aspects of moving abroad are more inconvenient than scary. I fear them because they push me out of my comfort zone, but I can work past them, either by learning or by asking others for help. By the end of my time in Germany I will feel comfortable enough with it all.

But there is another fear that always lurks in the back of my mind. It's usually an unwarranted fear (statistically speaking) and always very faded. For me, and probably for many others abroad, it's the sort of thing that you can't really deal with except for when it is too late. It's the fear of not being there, of the physical separation that makes you useless in times of a crisis, when you are needed most immediately.

The best way I can think of it is through Donne's Meditation 17, with that "no man is an island" line. When we leave a place, we don't just remove ourselves- we also leave others behind. We implicitly assume that everyone else will be able to take care of themselves and live their lives without us. And that's a good and necessary assumption to make; we hope that our time spent with others has been a good influence and has helped everyone become more successful.  But the assumption is always false. There is always going to be some hypothetical scenario where a family member or a friend needs you, and if that happens, there's this undeniable guilt that you chose not to help. "Choose" might be a strong word, since you've only chosen to pursue an opportunity somewhere else and have probably not made that decision under the thinking that you can avoid all the people from back home, but the guilt will make it feel like the latter was an active choice.

I was lucky enough to avoid one of these scenarios over the winter break. After Christmas, my family had to put our dog down after a totally unexpected change in his health.  I know everyone has their own way with animals, and so this might seem overly sentimental to some, but Tycho had helped the family through some very tumultuous years- we had gotten him when we first moved to North Carolina, when things were fresh and scary and we weren't sure how everything was going to hold up, and he quickly became a member of our family. Those last few days of my break were terrible and filled with a lot of sadness, but I knew even that as it was happening that I was glad I could be there for my family. We were all able to come together and (hopefully) lighten the load a little bit, and for that I was (and am) truly grateful.

This week did not work out so well. On Friday I learned that one of my best friends in NC had passed away. It was one of those experiences that you seen on TV but never fully believe- I was so shocked that for a few moments I couldn't cry. I could barely even breath. But that passed and soon I became a bawling, morphine-addled mess, curled up in the hallway of the hospital to give my "roommate" some peace, frantically trying to skype anyone else from back home. It felt like my worst nightmare. I wanted nothing to do but to go home, but there was absolutely no way for that to happen. Even if money and airplane tickets wouldn't have been issues, my hospital stay would have still kept me here. So here I am, in my hospital bed, doing nothing, helping no one, separated and useless.

This is the first, but it most surely won't be the last.

I have made so many new connections while living abroad, but how many of those will I fail in exactly the same way? It makes this whole undertaking seem selfish. I am travelling and seeing the world because I want to, and if I keep doing this I am a more useless friend than anyone who stays put. There is no loyalty in this lifestyle; in it, everything is transient, half-baked, friendships are coincidences of location rather than life-long connections. It ignores the importance of the life of every single person around me, or makes it so that this importance only applies to the time period we're together.  And for what? Stamps on a passport? Photos of exotic locations to show off over social media? Those don't matter. Being worldly means absolutely nothing in times like this.

Waxing Romantic about Michigan

There are a lot of times, while living abroad, where I have just felt super American. Most of them revolve around the patriotic holidays we have- 4th of July and Thanksgiving are two that stick out. But there is never a time where I feel a stronger tug to Michigan than Fat Tuesday, which is weird because, on the surface, this day seems to have nothing to do with the Great Lakes or cars. It has everything to do with pązcki, which my family actually hates (or claimed to hate whenever we were at the bakery) but I adore.

Pązcki, for those of us who are neither Polish nor come from Detroit/Chicago, are donuts filled with some sort of fruit compote (typically plum) and covered in powdered sugar. They sound like typical jelly donuts, but these things are huge and come in at about 400-500 calories. They are a big deal up North, and everyone goes crazy for them for Fat Tuesday. Since moving from Michigan, it has been a struggle trying to find these things. In North Carolina, I made my own (there was a lot of lard involved, the kitchen stank for 2 days after). A&M had them, but you'd never know it if you asked around, considering everyone called them pack-zees (it's actually poon-chski, but you can't blame people for assuming that pronunciation should make sense). And here in Germany, they have Berliner/Pfannkuchen, but they're smaller and healthier and those are two qualities I never look for on that day. I do my best, but without fail, these pastries make me start to miss Michigan with its terrible highways and skiing and Vernors and accent a lá Great White North (minus the "eh", more to come on that later).

So, in this year's missing Michigan phase, I tried making pastys. These can be seen as either poor white-people empanadas or more northern Cornish pies. I found a recipe that didn't call them "hand pies" (come on, hipsters), and did my best. But in trying my hand at the crust, I couldn't find anything even close to Crisco and had to use these strange refrigerated blocks of coconut oil. They ended up cooking properly, but definitely didn't taste like what I was hoping. But this is a problem with living abroad. Regardless of how well you adjust, sometimes there are just days where you want some comfort food, and the whole ordeal of converting ingredients and measures and Fahrenheit to Celsius makes obtaining said comfort food a struggle. It's difficult to find metric recipes that are both authentic and within the limits of what you can buy at the supermarket. You can always order stuff online, but that is so expensive and probably also unnecessary. There's got to be another way, and so for the next year I plan on finding out what that is! I have a list of (easily) 50 foods that are either difficult/impossible to find or germanized (or maybe just not americanized) at the supermarkets. It ranges from tortillas and chocolate chip cookies to jambalaya and corndogs. I figure, with a year remaining, I can get through these at about one a week and see how the conversion goes. It'll be a fun project :D Expensive, sure, but definitely fun.

In other, accent-related news, I have come to the realization that living in Germany has caused my accent to go deeper South. What?!? I don't understand it, especially since I lived in Texas for, what, 30 months total. It's an impostor accent! North Carolina doesn't even count because of all the people migrating from the Rust Belt. But maybe, since I'm talking to fewer and fewer native speakers, it's just become unhinged. It's the weirdest thing, seeing how your language changes as you move around. There are still some words that I have kept from Adelaide, and I sometimes still revert to that (according to my sister, annoying) inflection that makes questions sound not like questions. And I'm sure my pronunciation of German things, while not German, is not as American as it would be if I had never moved. It's a slow change, but when it hits you, it hits hard. So, if you are American, please skype me. Please. I need to get this pronunciation settled down.

Baby it's cold outside

Well, it's been a while since I've last done this. Whoops.

Yesterday I was on the phone with my mom. As per usual, the topic turned to the weather.

Mother: Has it snowed up there yet?

Me: (just a little bit indignant) Uh, no, it's still pretty warm here, It's not going to snow for a while.

Mother: Well, Detroit got a lot of snow lately.

Me: Yeah, well, it's not as cold here as it is on the other side of the Atlantic.

Well, either God had enlightened the woman or she had checked the weather report for tomorrow, because I woke up to a dusting of snow.

Sorry, mom. I was wrong.

Now it's 2 inches, and it's still falling. In Kiel. In November. What?!? At least it's better than rain. And now I have an excuse to binge on hot chocolate and read in bed for hours.

The strange thing about Kiel is that it is very far north but does not seem to be prepared in any way, shape, or form for actual winter weather. Case in point: the roads here are white. Not plowed, and definitely not salted. The one perk of not having salted roads is that my leather boots did not get ruined on my way to the library, but I think that perk is largely outweighed by the fact that I was skidding/falling the entire time on my bike. Even Texas, which is arguably the worst state in the continental US when it comes to winter (if it might snow the next day, good luck finding milk and bread at the stores), has plows out there. So this...indifference, we'll call it...strikes me as super odd.

And, dear Germany: Don't argue that you're all out of salt. I know you have extra.  I taste it in your soups. Maybe you could put it on your roads instead every once in a while. Less hypertension and fewer car accidents. Everyone wins!

Living with Germans

This week has been my first in the new WG. I have finally moved from the student accommodation into a real apartment! This is something I have been looking forward to since about October 10th. The move-in was pretty hectic: lots of bus rides with obnoxious amounts of baggage, trips to IKEA, and carrying heavy compressed-sawdust IKEA furniture. But I have a bed, a desk, a kitchen with a plethora of spices and a microwave, and wifi. I am a happy girl.

The two girls I am living with are both German. Thus, when I'm here, I speak German. It has been an adjustment to go from speaking barely any German during the day to only speaking that in the apartment (that is, outside of phone calls). Before, the German conversations I'd typically have would go as such:

A: "Hallo"
B: "Moin"
...
A: "Kassenbon?"
B: "Nein, danke"
A: "Schönen Tag noch"
B: "Gleichfalls, tschüss"

And now? Well, today, I tried to explain how Federal Pell grants work, did my best to describe what a townhouse is because I forgot the word (I didn't do very well), and talked about the terms of my lease. These are obviously not things that we learn when we're trying to get our language credit in college. I'm also trying to figure out what a suitable response is to "Naaaah?"when I see someone. So basically these first few weeks or months are going to involve a steep learning curve. But I really think it'll be worth it. Thankfully my roommates are super patient with my terrible speaking ability.

In other news, studying for exams is not going as well as I'd hope, the weather is still cold (we had snow here today! Feels like Michigan.), and two weeks ago I made some Texas chili that was able to make (almost) everyone either 1. sweat or 2. cry. There are also some other Aggies in the country! At least for a while. So I've got to get back to studying so that I can actually see them a bit over the weekend! Tschüüsssssss

New year, new post, same old same old

Well, it's been a while since I last wrote, so maybe it's time for a quick little update. Weather continues to be cold and dreary. We've finally gotten some snow, which is nice. Fun fact: when I first got back to NC for the holidays, I couldn't open my eyes entirely while outside. It was either because I was sick or because my eyes were too well adjusted to 100% cloud cover. I tend to believe the latter, but that's just because it's the more dramatic option.

The master's program is still going. Exams are coming up. German universities have made exam time one sick joke. They claim that you get a "break" but then cram all your exams in during said break. Which is nice, I guess, if you need time to study, but it is absolutely awful if you plan on doing some serious travelling. Needless to say, my travel will be short and not serious. Sometimes I need to remember that I am not actually on a study abroad program, but that I am here and need to get a real degree at the end of 2 years.

Also, fun fact, my English is now horrible. Horrible and slow. My turns of phrase have become foreign. I completely blame all the people I've met here for getting me to say "we were four" when I mean to say "there were four of us" and, the bane of my existence, "that is how it looks like." UGH. I wish I could say that my English is getting worse so that my German can improve, but I really don't think it has. I don't know if it's just because I have to use it a lot more often, so learning little phrases doesn't seem as big of a step as it did in Texas, or if I've actually stagnated in the language. Luckily, though, at the end of next month I'll be moving to a new apartment where the lingua franca will be German. Not easy, but hopefully helpful. And then there'll be that whole boat trip with like a bazillion other researchers, all German. They'll all be fluent in English, but if there ends up not being a lot to do on the ship, who knows? Maybe learning the language could kill time.

But I'm getting ahead of myself! First I need to pass these classes and quit procrastinating on reading this barrier layer paper. Tschüsssssssssss


But, before I go, my culture shock, part 4:

1. Germans would rather wait for you to notice their presence and act accordingly than say "Entschuldigung"/"Darf ich bitte mal durch" to let you know that you are in the way. They seriously do nothing- no coughs, no friendly shoulder taps, no tapping of their feet- if anything, they just judge you for not realizing that they need to get through (and I'm so sure they do this). The only explanation I have is that Germans can secretly read each other's minds and they just have no idea about how to interact mit Ausländern. 
2. ^^^But seriously guys, this happens every friggen day. Getting on the bus. Getting off the bus. Picking out bread at the grocery store. Looking at books at uni. I know your mothers taught you not to talk to strangers, but this is a bit ridiculous.
3. ^^^But if you're not going to change, at least don't whoosh by the person and sigh like they've caused you this huge inconvenience. No. You've done this to yourself. 
4. I cannot and will never be able to pronounce the ch sound this language has. Please stop trying to make me say "tschechische Streichholzschächtelchen," kthx.

Notes from a war zone

The kitchen on my floor has become a battle zone. I don't know who the two forces are, but they've made the room a casualty.

The trash hasn't been taken out in weeks. The raw meat juices are starting to leak onto the floor. The hallway reeks of old frying oil and detritus.

The cleaning lady refuses to disinfect the counters because people won't put their stuff away.

There has been so much food stuffed down the drains that the sinks are now kaput.

Next to go should be the stovetops. Sometimes they are left on for hours or even an entire night. I hope this place doesn't catch on fire.

The freezers are full of raw meat without coverings, and the refrigerators hold mostly rotting food.

I'm waiting this out with a stockpile of food and dishes in my room and Febreze for whenever I have to enter the kitchen.

I love shared living.