ode

dear Bastian,

it's fascinating that every single picture that exists of us between june 1-november 30 portrays us as happy, thrilled, positive and smiling when we were anything except. we needed to convince each other and ourselves. i still have not gotten over lübeck (see how i refer to our habitation in different cities as "lübeck" when it wasn't the city's fault at all) and still have dreams where it's june 1, 2010 and there starts 6 months of being 500 km away from me, even though you're IN THE SAME BED AS ME and probably SNORING.

(sigh. you are really attractive. yes, i'm staring at this picture of you, even though you are in the kitchen, standing right in front of me.) 

ALL THE BEST!

nikki

en

i didn't know the rapture was supposed to happen until my brother wrote something like "tomorrow's the rapture. btw, happy birthday lol" on my facebook page and i turned to the only source i really trust for information (outside of bastian of course; some days i trail after him, asking question after question, ranging from "does my lipstick look crooked?" to "how much salt do i put in this?"), which just so happens to be google. it used to be my mom, but international calls aren't cheap. so i googled "end of the world" and by "en" i had many possibilities. i read all the corresponding wikipedia pages and told bastian about it and got good and excited for the rapture.

me: what are you going to do without me?
bastian: i don't know.

i've had a headache pretty much the whole day today.

but i secretly hoped for something to happen so maybe i'd get a couple days to just sleep and i even hoped for a zombie apocalypse, even though it's my second fear after spiders.

i really think it's a shame that the world might end next year though. bastian and i will have only been married a few months.

speaking of which, i hate how long/lame our engagement is/is going to be and wish we'd be able to get it done without everyone we knew around us but we're both too sentimental i think. i've gotten bastian hooked, incidentally, on youtube reruns of "whose line is it anyway" and any kind of "shark week" video we can find online. i FINALLY got him to watch a scary movie, that being "poltergeist" because i figured i'd start with the classics.

revision

bastian: i read your last entry. how can you say that you conned me? it's fricken nice being with you, ok?

milestones

also, i kind of feel like i'm missing out on my milestones. like, i graduated college and no one in germany cared because i didn't know anyone and it was just that a month later my parents emailed me to tell me they'd gotten my diploma in the mail. so maybe i'm going to just wear a black bathrobe and crash the kent state graduation all like, "oh hai."

also i got engaged. doesn't anyone realize what a big deal that is? like, i conned someone into seriously dealing with me all the time?

may 13

every year on may 13 (at least in the past 3 years) i think about how in 2008, i'd landed in dresden without a clue. like, literally, no idea about anything. so friday, may 13, was different because i was so busy and preoccupied that i failed to think much about it. so i guess really it's just may 13 for the past three years except this year. regardless, this year was different.


on may 13, 2008, i was jet-lagged, dehydrated, tired, hungry and lost (mentally, not physically) and so nervous that i didn't know how to remedy aforementioned ailments. i went to a netto close by our dorm and bought four apples, bread, eggs, soy milk, margarine, olive oil and strawberry jam because i had no idea what to buy. the apples would prove invaluable because i would eat them while walking to class for breakfast, then take one out of my bag for lunch, and maybe even one for dinner. i stayed awake late, to 3 or sometimes 4, then wake up at 6 or 8 for classes or observations. the only substantial dinner i ever ate was after teaching in bärnsdorf. i missed everyone from ohio, i missed how things were, and had absolutely no one who was willing to listen for a couple minutes without interrupting about something much more terrible in their lives. in small doses i would've been able to handle it. but then, i was really unhappy. i wish i would have known that then but i was only 22 and had never been out of ohio for more than 6 days.


on may 13, 2009 i had recently met the absolute love of my life and felt a little happier, you know, because those things tend to make you happier unless you're Young Werther, which i kind of was, actually. but not really. i was teaching my first semester at the university and thought my life was "coming together" but i was really unhappy. but i was 23 and had been away from my family for a year, so what did i know. bastian and i, we met often and i complained quite often about everything. and poor bastian listened to me complaining about work, about how people never made space for you on the sidewalk, how much i missed my family, how i could never find clothes i liked, how i didn't have enough money, everything that mattered and everything that didn't. we spent nights sitting at the elbe, watching the lights of the buildings on the river, talking about everything. bastian wished that things could be different for me. at that time, i didn't know anything. 


on may 13, 2010 Bastian and i celebrated our 2 month anniversary by
1. eating in an asian restaurant on alaunstraße and/or
2. taking a walk on the elbe and/or
3. taking a walk around neustadt and/or
4. getting hot ciok at the schokoladebar
(it's just that we always do this on anniversaries and i can't remember exactly what we did).
bastian was about to move to lübeck. i met it with the ignorant way that i had no idea how things were going to be. and as it turns out, things were pretty awful and to this day if bastian says something like "maybe you should have asked me how to do X," then i'm all "YOU WERE IN LÜBECK, WHAT WAS I SUPPOSED TO DO" because seriously, i'm like that. 


so yesterday, may 13, 2011. what did we do?
we ate dinner and played a couple rounds of speed. we discussed things in great length and laughed a lot. i don't think about stupid things anymore. well. let me rephrase that. i don't get overly concerned about stupid things regarding homesickness. i used to always think about how i'm doing things wrong. like, oh most of my friends are american, i'm not embracing some german way of doing things, etc. and i used to get really upset if my students seemed unhappy. actually i still do, and i'm overly concerned about my students in general. but i try not to let things bother me too much. they still do but at least i know they're not supposed to.


i'm of course terribly excited about our trip to the US in august because i can finally be around my family and not worry so damn much. i always feel like i'm about to have about five heart attacks a day. that crap takes a toll on you after a while.



here are some unrelated pictures.

it's may

shit!

i always get depressed about may for various reasons, but