One day!!

One of these was supposed to be my trailer....

Guess not. For now we'll be squishing three into one trailer. It'll all work out.

Ah... the night before departure. The Focus is filled to the gills yet again. I would like to complain about how much I hate packing, but I realized while going through and trying to tag my old posts that I already have numerous posts about how much I hate packing, so you can just look back on those if you've forgotten. Man oh man. Moving again. Am I crazy? Yep, pretty sure that I am.

So, what have I been doing the last couple weeks at home? About the same thing I usually do when I'm home. Sleeping late, bumming around with friends and family. I've also been collecting massive amounts of books books and more books. My bumper is going to be scraping the asphalt there are so many books in my trunk right now. Most of them are for my future classroom library. Some of them are teacher books for me that I've been browsing through trying to figure out how to teach English, or rather how I want to teach English. I've got lots of ideas that will hopefully solidify over the next few weeks.

Oh, also a bridge collapsed which you probably all heard about. It's pretty crazy. I wasn't anywhere near it nor did I know anyone on it. I did see it last week when we went downtown to see a play. It's totally unreal.

Samantha Brown is on TV right now showing me around Madrid and I remember two years ago when I was sitting here watching her holding a beer in Munich just a few days before I moved there. So exciting! I miss Europe a little bit.

But- I couldn't be more ready for South Dakota! Ok, that's a little bit of a lie. I could be a lot more ready, but I think I'm ready enough. I don't think I could be totally ready. And really that would be pretty dull anyway, right? I'm excited and confident that I can do this and that it's going to be a great two years. Extremely challenging, but all the greater for every challenge to overcome.

Timing goes something like this- driving to St. Francis tomorrow to hopefully unload stuff into our trailer. Saturday morning- leave with 2o something other SoDak TFAers for a fun filled camping trip somewhere in the Black Hills I think. Monday starts four long weeks of teacher in-services at my school. Thankfully that will give me some time to settle in and to do lots and lots more planning for my classes.

Nervous? anxious? stressing out a little bit? Ummm, yeah.

This is scattered and has been written in chunks over the course of the day- forgive me. It's time to go to bed, not that I can ever sleep the night be for traveling, but I'll give it a shot. Call me tomorrow if you're bored because I sure will be (if you've ever driven though southern MN you'll understand)!

eine kleine Pause

I spent all day today sleeping, watching tv with my little brother and pretending to pack, and yet my body and brain still feel like mush after the crazy crazy week of NAFSA conference madness. It was fun it was hard it was overwhelming. I'm so glad I stuck around long enough to actually go, but I'm not at all sad about not sticking out for the next one, it's a lot of work! It's HUGE. I don't think I could ever have wrapped my mind around the hugeness without seeing it, I still don't think I can. Seeing Colin Powel was cool, though I'd have to say some of the other speakers were more focused and inspiring. All in all everything seemed to go pretty smoothly and I'll be ok if this is the last time I ever see that NAFSA logo ;)

Tomorrow I finish packing up and leave for South Dakota. What???!! Oh how I wish I could take a week off and hang out with my friends and family here... it's always so hard for me to leave MN. I was a little sad to be leaving DC, but ready to go, it was a great experience but not my city. I've only been home in Minneapolis for a week and I already don't want to leave. Sigh. There's always 2009! Teach for America is going to be amazing I know. I'm so glad I got in and I'm doing it, I just still can't really believe it! I'm leaving tomorrow! I'm so scattered, I hope it all works out. I have definitely not finished all the pre-institute work that they sent me. Oh well. I don't think they'll kick me out at this point. I'll catch up, or maybe have some time to finish it next week in SD before we drive down to Houston. Could my life be a little more insane and exciting right now? Never a dull moment... I'm too distracted to be writing this right now, but stay tuned!!

Minnesota style

Hi. I am currently alone in what now seems to me to be an enormous house. A few hours ago it felt so cramped and tiny. Then everyone left (Thank goodness) and now I think I hear the echo of a tapping keyboard in the other room. The family madness continues this week. Aunt Nancy and her husband and three boys got here Saturday, my cousin Tommy is still here, plus I have two brothers of my own. That adds up to a heckuvalot of boys. I'm totally whiped out. All these crazy California visitors seem to think that there should be tons of exciting Minnesota touristy things to see and do, and while I guess there are, that's not really what we do. I mean, there's a lake. Can't you just sit and look at it for a while? It's pretty. Slow down. and for heaven's sake, be quiet! I elected to once again stay at the house house tonight where I get to actually sleep in a room with no one else in it. Bliss. I had a lovely evening watching pay per view movies and eating the best ice cream in teh world (from Graters). I finally saw Brokeback Mountain, which was really good, great characters, but horribly sad and depressing. Really, pretty much nothing good happens. But the scenery looked awfully nice on that big wide screen tv.

I'm going to Wicked on Friday!!! yay! AND.... next Thursday I'm going to Virginia and I'm finally FINALLY going to see my sweetheart again. YAY YAY YAY YAY! I may or may not actually explode before then. We'll see.

Meanwhile... unpacking? job applications? being lazy and doing nothing because it's July and it's flipping HOT out here? stay tuned to find out.

PS. Germany got third! woo! Which totally means I get to leave the flag on my car for at least a few more weeks in celebration :)

Berlin! Berlin! Wir fahren nach Berlin!

So, plans for when I return: Get into airport at 7:30pm. Home by 9pm or so. In bed by 10 or so. Sleep 12 hours and then.... Watch FOOTBALL!!!!!!!

Ha ha, that's right, for those of you completely in the dark, Germany just won and will be playing in Berlin on Friday against either Mexico or Argentina, we'll see in a few hours. Everyone is invited to my house, 10 am June 30th, to watch on the big screen from the comfort of large leather couches.... ahhh, home sweet home. Just to warn you, I'll be waving a german flag and wearing a german lai and belt, and possibly switching intermitently between cheering and crying because I'm not in Germany to watch it anymore.

Nah, I'm not really that sad to leave it behind. I wen't into the city today just to experience a bit of the atmosphere, but Katie had to work at 5 and I have failed miserably at making any other good friends in Munich, so I wandered around by myself during the game. I'm glad I did though, it certainly is a once in a lifetime thing. It was actually a great day for shopping, all the stores were empty, in fact most of the streets in the city were empty because everyone was huddled around every availible television set. But no matter where I was I could hear the game and roaring crowds when they scored. I din't make it to the fan park, but most of the action downtown was on Leopoldstr. where they blocked off traffic for about five blocks and all the bars and cafe's lining the street overflowed with football fans standing on their tip toes to see the screen inside. The beer garden at the Chinese tower was a hot spot as well, I was at least able to sit down there, just not in view of a screen. At the end of the game I walked back to Leopoldstr. which had turned into a massive throng of german flag waving yelling screaming horn and wistle blowing fans. Literally so packed you could barely move. The Germans might have been a little excited. By that point I had had enough and managed to squash myself into an u-bahn to get home and crash. Whew.

My living room is sounding pretty nice right now.

I sold my TV today, which means I have one less distraction from cleaning and packing...blah.

Aufwieeeeeedersehen.........

So goes the chant, goodbye US. And I didn't even get to watch the game because it wasn't broadcast on regular tv here and I was too tired and lazy to go downtown. Stupid Europeans. So, I don't have my birth country to cheer for anymore, Germany will have to do. You better believe I'm going to buy one of the those stupid little german flags for my car and drive around with it when I get home. Although it's tempting to cheer for Ghana as well, it would make a great underdog story if they went on to win. But they're up against Brazil next, so good luck to them with that.

I had my last discussion group with my girls today :( they bought me flowers. They are so sweet, we had a lot of fun hanging out speaking English this year. I'm going to miss teaching. I made them and the teachers Rice Krispy bars today, they were a big hit. Everyone is impressed by rice krispy bars.

So, now it's officially my last weekend in Germany. ah!! My room is a disaster, still. I'll probably get on that at some point. After sleeping a lot. Katie has Sunday off of work, I want to go to the Fan Park again, but England is playing and they are somewhat notorious for their hooligans... I think we can brave it though. Sorry, I'm talking about football again, someone stop me.

One week until home!