A New Record!

In the past five days, I have spent more time at parties than I did during my entire five years at Miami.

Granted, this wasn't a difficult record to break; I only went to three legitimate parties at Miami, and I was an extremely reluctant guest at two of them. (For the record, party #1 was my freshman year after a gymnastics meet. I got pretty tired of dealing with drunk guys, so within a half hour of arriving, I was standing by the door with my arms crossed. Party #2 was a friend's 21st birthday party during my 1st senior year. (I spent my 21st birthday with my parents, which was actually perfectly fine: no pressure to get ridonkulously drunk!) Party #3 was also during my senior year, part 1, and it was also after a gymnastics meet. I agreed to accompany a teammate who had never been to an American party (she was a graduate student from France). She decided that the American house party scene was pretty sketchy and asked to leave after about 15 minutes.)

I'd argue that one of the best things about being in Berlin is that I live near quite a few other Fulbrighters. I probably depend on the other Americans a little too much for social outings, but it's really wonderful to have a group of friends in a new city, especially when the holidays roll around.

Two of the parties this week weren't *real* parties, but come on, I had to have a good title and lede. :)

Anyway, party #1 was the Fulbright Thanksgiving, which was hosted at the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy on Tuesday. I was less than thrilled with its organization, but it was nice to run into some people whom I hadn't seen since orientation. We showed up at 6 with food in hand, and the panel discussion began around 6:30. It lasted until somewhere around 7:15-7:30. Needless to say, I had a very lukewarm (and very small!) Thanksgiving dinner. I tried not to complain about Fulbright's tendency toward excessive speechmaking because I'm sure that Fulbright probably made a deal with the ICD in order to host it in their building and because as far as I'm concerned, I can trade a few hours of my time for 9 months in Germany, but come on: serving dinner an hour and a half after people get there was a horrible idea to begin with, and the panel discussion itself was a very shallow examination of intercultural issues in Germany. All in all, the people were very nice (I really like the researchers), but the meal was not so great.

Party #2 was on Thursday at another ETA's house, and about 20 Americans and Brits showed up. There were a few minor issues, such as the host putting the oven on the wrong setting and the turkey needing to roast for an extra two hours, but the food and people were great, and snarks about the Fulbright Thanksgiving abounded. :) I ate green bean casserole, two types of mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, a meringue, and a little apple cobbler. (As a side note, several of the ETAs got Thanksgiving off because it's a national holiday in the US. I went to school like always, and the only person who wished me a happy Thanksgiving was an 8th grader! And this was after I paraded my little handprint turkey around the staff room for the two days leading up to Thanksgiving! (In the event that anyone from My Gymnasium ever finds my blog, Thanksgiving is very widely celebrated in the US. In fact, some of the ETAs argued that Thanksgiving is more important to Americans than Christmas! I'm from the edge of the Bible Belt, so that doesn't quite align with my experience, but I fully support calling a non-religious holiday the main national holiday!)

I just got back from party #3-- the first Christmas party of the year! My Gymnasium celebrates early, I guess (and no, they did not call it a winter party-- it was very explicitly a Christmas party!). It was also an incredibly LONG party-- I got there at 6:30 and didn't get home until midnight! I admit that the first hour or so was a little meh because it was so hard to hear conversations over the music, but things picked up from there. The food was very good (I had egg noodles, three types of salads, and chocolate pudding with berries for dessert), and I had a pretty long conversation with a German/French teacher. (The best part of the conversation? She spoke in English, I spoke in German, and neither of us made any attempt to switch languages.) Around 9, they broke out the karaoke, and I thought it was fascinating to hear what songs the Germans pick when they sing karaoke. Most of the songs they selected were in English, but they definitely weren't the typical things that you'd hear in the US... For example, the second song they chose was "Ring of Fire" by Johnny Cash. I also distinctly remember them requesting "Dancing Queen" by ABBA and "Another Brick in the Wall" by Pink Floyd. On the other hand, I tried to get other people to sing "Don't Stop Believing" with me, and no one knew it! They didn't even know Journey! What the heck, Germans? You sing "Ring of Fire" but not "Don't Stop Believing?" You can't even use age as an excuse; Journey is from the same era as Pink Floyd!

Okay, end of karaoke rant, and I'm almost to the end of today's blog. I only have one more mini-party left this week; my WG is celebrating the first Sunday of Advent by finishing the decorations in the living room and eating lots of sugary food!

Funny story of the day: the hotel that hosted My Gymnasium's Christmas party is located one U-Bahn stop away from school. It should not have been difficult to get there. However, yours truly was spacing out to an extreme degree when getting on and off trains (I nearly wrote "einsteiging and umsteiging"-- thanks, Denglish) and caught the wrong train not once, but twice! Instead of switching lines after one stop, I plopped myself down and daydreamed... until I looked up and discovered that I was heading in the direction of Korean class. Oops. I ran off the train and went back two stations, where I got on a train that was going south. The hotel was 12 stations north. I got there... eventually.

Hope all of the American readers had a lovely Thanksgiving! :)