went to see skyfall with a couple friends today

In German cinemas there are assigned seats and intermissions and you can buy beer at the concession stand. Also the one I went to today has a giant tubular slide going through 3 floors. That is all.

Hannah Montana, Evolution, and the Pointlessness of Beauty

Disclaimer: This has nothing to do with Germany or being a foreigner, but if you read this anyway, congrats! You win a free iPod Nano!

I had a really deep conversation with my friend and fellow exchange student the other day. Maybe it was just the delicious glass(es) of Weißbier that made it sound so, but we pretty much found the meaning of life. Of course our findings were lost as our voices gradually stopped slurring and we could walk in a straight line, but little fragments just stuck to my brain like annoying pieces of last night's steak between your back teeth.

So this recap is probably not 100% accurate, but I will try my best to hit the important points and just fill in the rest. Think of it as the computer generated battles on Deadliest Warrior minus the fake doctor and BS calculations.

It began when my friend, whom for the time being I will dub Hannah Montana, asked me if I knew the meaning of life. This was a question I haven't mulled over in a while so I really didn't know how to answer.

"That's a complicated answer," I said, sipping my drink, "because there are actually 2 separate meanings of life for us humans."

"Oh?" Hannah Montana asked.

"You see, as animals our meaning of life is basically to survive and reproduce. That's what evolution is based on. Everything about us and other organisms is based on our need to live and carry on our species."

"Yeah, I took Biology," the popstar was dissatisfied with my answer. I could tell she wanted something more than a lecture on evolution. Charles Darwin pretty much figured that out for us. "We don't need to do anything but eat, sleep, and copulate. But we're humans. Why do we find the need to fall in love or paint pictures or put on makeup? What's the point of it all?"

I smiled because she pretty much answered her own question. I was trying to find the words to explain it but she had already done so.

"Exactly, Hannah Montana. That's exactly the point. We as humans are the only animals who can appreciate beauty. All art, literature, and music are homage to the unique ability given to us by nature.

Beavers don't make dams to show off their artistic talent, they make dams because they need them for shelter. Songbirds don't sing because it sounds pretty, they use it as communication and to find mates."

Hannah Montana nodded slowly in agreement as she downed the last of her second or third Weißbier. We sat in silence and pondered this for a few moments. The bar was empty, as it normally is on Sunday nights. No one spoke. The bartender, Hannah Montana, and I listened quietly to the sounds of the Top 40.

"So all art is pointless." The singer finally broke the silence, lifting her new glass and offering a toast. "Does that mean everything we do besides eating and having babies is pointless? Money is pointless? The government? Jesus?"

I shrugged and clinked my glass with hers. "Pretty much. But pointlessness isn't necessarily a bad thing. The way I see it, we're lucky to appreciate beauty."

"But how did we get here? How did we get from being naked and climbing trees to Van Gogh and Jersey Shore?"

"Well, what set us apart as humans was being able to manipulate tools and our environment to our advantage. With that, man's mind began to grow exponentially. When he got to a certain point, man kinda looked around and asked himself the same question we're discussing."

Twirling her blonde wig, Hannah Montana thought about this for a moment and nodded. "Yeah, and that's when he decided that he was put there by god. And then it just took from there."

"The end."

She shook her head, still dissatisfied. "But the first semester of World History has nothing to do with my question. Do we just make stuff up about destiny and the meaning of life because we can? Are we really running around in the dark, pretending that we have a purpose when all we were really meant to do was to survive make more of ourselves? What is our purpose as humans, with free thought and aesthetics and stuff like that?"

Again I shrugged. "In my opinion, we owe it to nature and the miraculous genetic mutation that kicked off the growing of our minds to appreciate our human abilities and use them to their full extent. It could have easily been cows that received the ability to manipulate, and we'd be all running around getting put into human burgers."

"So art and beauty are pointless, and our meaning of life is to appreciate them because we are lucky to be able to."

"Pretty much, Hannah Montana. Now let's pay the bill and get home."

being sad and stuff

I was actually in the middle of typing "An Introduction to Dina Juan, about 83 days late" when suddenly I just felt sad. I'm not upset about anything in particular. In fact, I had a really nice day today. I helped my host mother rake leaves, learned how our compost is made into fertilizer, and ate ice cream in a church that's older than the USA. It was unusually sunny despite the chilly weather and I felt really nice after a day of activity.

But I just feel sad.

I guess a lot of things have been building up. My high school had homecoming week a while back and it made me really miss everything in San Jose. Juniors did an amazing job with airband and my friends looked amazing all dolled up for the dance. I saw my grandpa for a couple seconds on Skype and could pretty much smell his familiar scent of Marlboro and manufactured airplane parts. I found myself comparing everything to California, which made me susceptible to cravings: the mild San Jose climate, my entire family sleeping in to about 1 PM,  pupusas, and singing spontaneous duets with my brother when we have nothing else to do.

They told us to expect homesickness and that crying would help us feel better, but I can't even bring myself up to that. I feel the tension you usually get in your chest when you're about to burst into to tears but I can't burst for some reason. I guess writing this and spitting out some thoughts made me feel better, with some help from my host mom's homemade apple sauce. But I'm still waiting for that huge, refreshing exchange student cry.

In which I don't really do anything or have anything to say but say stuff anyway

So I woke up today with a massive headache and decided to take a day off from school. It was nice to be able to sleep in - I normally wake up at 6:03 (an extra 3 minutes courtesy of the Snooze button) and have to rush to catch the 7:00 bus. I didn't really do much today except watch movies and drink tea, but I feel a lot better now. The weather was also unusually nice today, I went out for a short walk and was able to enjoy the scarce German sunshine. I'm looking out the window now and see a merciless-looking band of clouds but hopefully they enjoy the fluidity of traveling in Europe and bug France or the Netherlands or Bayern or something.

Currently my class is doing Praktikum - two weeks of work experience and no school - and I'm staying in school with the 9th grade. The past week has been very interesting and homework-less, and I've met some pretty cool people. When I ignore the fact that pretty much everyone is 2 years younger than I am and yet I still manage to be one of the shortest in the class, I've been enjoying my temporary situation.

It's definitely a different story with the 9th grade here than it is back in the US. There's none of that freshman/sophomore/junior/senior stuff because Gymnasium starts at the 5th grade, so the 9th graders don't seem as immature or different compared to the others. They're a little smaller than the 10th graders and still have traces of baby face, but since they've been going to the same school for 4 years there's not much of that awkward tension that comes with age-difference. Or maybe I just bend in at a whopping 1.58 meters. 

I don't really have a life-changing philosophical conclusion today, I just felt like updating whoever has the time/lust to read up on whatever it is I'm doing.

Also yes, I realized I used lust in that sentence. That was meant to represent how shit my English has gotten in the past few weeks. Keep in mind that I'm also currently taking Spanish in school, which means my poor little foreign brain has to take on 2 foreign languages. Pero no problemo, ich kann alles! At dito pa yung Tagalog ko. Maybe by the time I'm 20 I can learn Latin and befriend the Pope.

The Tragedy of the American Exchange Student Who is Actually Pretty Cool But Just Can't Speak German

Today marks the second month I've been in Germany and holy shit has the time rushed right before my eyes.

I started school 4 weeks ago. At first it was tragically pants-shitting difficult. I felt like the school pet, following everyone around with widened eyes and not really saying anything. It was like I was trapped behind the cemented language barrier, trying desperately to let everyone know how amazing I can be. "I promise I can be smart! Just not auf Deutsch!" I would scream in my head as I looked dumbly at the teacher while a classmate would explain that I'm a tragic American who has tragically found herself across the ocean and then some.

The Tragedy of the American Exchange Student Who is Actually Pretty Cool But Just Can't Speak German lasted about 5 days. Of course meeting everyone and testing the waters was pretty awkward, but that's normal. It would have been the same if I was a new student in a school in Montana or England; teenagers need a little while to get to know each other. Naturally it was easier for the others who have mostly known each other since they were towing around Schultüten, but by the second week I felt pretty comfortable around everyone. In Gymnasium, you pretty much stick to a certain class for most of the school day. The 10th grade is split up into 4 classes: 10a, 10b, 10c, and 10d. I'm in 10b, and the kids in my class are pretty great. We all talk to each other and there really aren't any strictly exclusive cliques. They group up like any other teenagers would, but it's completely normal to hang out with different people during breaks. A great icebreaker was when we were all sitting around, waiting for our Chemistry teacher, and a guy busted out his phone and read out funny porn names. It wasn't exactly the most elegant activity, but who wouldn't become friends after laughing together at Analdin und die wunde Schlampe?

I think my greatest accomplishment so far is how good my German has gotten in the past couple of months. I'm still no Goethe but I can hold actual conversations with only a few American oopsies here and there. And hell, I've still got 8 months to contemplate why it's das Mädchen.

8 months can be a long or short time, it depends on you look at it and whether or not there's a glass of beer in front of you. Everything is difficult at first but if you toughen up and plow through then things can be pretty amazing.

socrates meets valley girl

Last weekend we drove to Schleswig to visit my host dad's vacation home and beloved sailboat. I could write a novel about how beautiful the city was with its historic buildings and fascinating fisherman community, but that's on a completely different train of thought than the one I'm riding now (I probably took the wrong U-Bahn).

On Saturday my host parents and I sailed around a fjord of the Baltic Sea in my host dad's boat, named C'est La Vie. Such is Life. This boat is about 36 years old and very precious to him. Carlo is your typical eccentric European intellect, except not that typical. A retired schoolteacher, he's had incredible journeys throughout his life and maintains friendships throughout all of Europe. He's gone on countless journeys with his friends and has inside jokes that include the Italian phrase for going to the bar and eagles in bathrooms. I love talking to him because he's got such a good perspective on life; he follows C'est La Vie very well.

Something that really blew my mind was that he lived on C'est La Vie for 12 years in the south of Sicily. 12 years. That's about 3/4 of my life. 12 years is probably incredibly different to an adult than it is to a teenager, but nonetheless, his stories make everything I've done feel so insignificant.

I really like Carlo and Brigitte because they enjoy life. Not money or luxuries, but life itself. Today we visited their good friends (Carlo's sailing pal and his Finnish wife) and we had coffee and cake together. Afterward we took a short walk through a nature reserve. One of the things I enjoy the most about Germans is that they love to walk. I once read a book called Socrates Meets Jesus and in one part Socrates questions the excessive use of cars in modern (especially American) society. He describes cars as cages and claims that walking is one of the greatest pleasures in life. I never really understood that until today, when I found myself actually enjoying something that didn't involve spending money or killing virtual people.

Now I'm not gonna pull a McCandless anytime soon but I realized how trapped I felt in America's fast-moving atmosphere. Even as a teenager I felt so much pressure to get things done and to do it quickly. I constantly worried about my future and how what I was doing at the exact moment would affect it. Over the past 3 weeks I haven't even thought about the future because I was too busy enjoying the present. C'est La Vie, my host father says where most people would start freaking out and trying to get everything back in control. We worry so much about directing out life to the perfect path that we forget to look out the window once in a while and enjoy the view.

Can you imagine spending 12 years on a boat in Italy? Going out and walking to the bakery every morning to get fresh bread instead of rushing through the drive-thru for a McMuffin? One of my new goals for this year is to get back in touch with the present. I'm going to quit worrying about the future and I'm going to stop regretting the past. I'm going to stop hating people that are in my way and instead take the longer route around them. I'm going to take longer breaths and enjoy the free pleasures of life.

not exactly an epiphany

I've been reading Tina Fey's Bossypants lately and in one part of the book she discusses the first time women felt they had entered into womanhood. In summary, most "knew they were women" when they heard their first cat call. Now normal people would assume that womanhood starts exactly when a preteen girl finds that horrifying red dot that has mysteriously found its way to the front of her brand new white capris just before she has to go on stage for a dance recital. No? I guess I was just unfortunate.

Well the first time I felt like a real woman of the world was yesterday, when I faced the first real obstacle that endangered my well-being and sanity:

taking public transit home alone.

I was pretty spoiled in San Jose with 3 older brothers to chauffeur my ass around. I was never really grateful of this privilege until I made my way home from language school yesterday for the first time.

-

If you've ever been in any station with the word "central" attached to it, then you'd understand me when I say that I was literally shitting my pants looking for the right train from Hamburg Central Station to my part of town. There were people with luggage, students, businessmen, little old ladies - I think the whole of Germany had gone to Hamburg just to confuse me.

Tip for CBYX students: in language camp, the teacher will hand out a metro map that applies to your region that you should A) keep in your pocket at all times or B) tattoo it to your forearm. If they don't, get one. I would probably be in Istanbul right now if it weren't for that sacred paper.

After 30 minutes of shoving through mobs of extremely hard shoulders I finally made it to the train to Harburg station. Just to make sure, I ask a group of girls sharing a bucket of KFC (idk Europe's weird) and they assure me I'm on the right track.

I took my lovely 14 bus to the very last stop in hopes of a blissful nap when I realized I never asked my host mother the way home from the bus stop. "C'mon, kid, you won a scholarship to get to Germany," I told myself, weaving through the streets of Fleedstedt, "you can handle a 10 minute walk home." I must have passed the same Rewe twice until I decided to test my luck and follow a path that was somewhat similar to our route when we got home.

To those who have to take more than 2 trains/buses to get to and from language camp, I salute you.

-

As to why I felt so mature just because I rode a couple buses by myself, I'm not exactly sure. It's just not the same as when you're in your hometown and you pass by the same Targets and McDonald's that have been there your entire life. The fact that I was by myself for a couple hours in a foreign country and managed not to get kidnapped or deported is amazing to me. I was sheltered and pampered growing up: being the only girl and the youngest of 4 didn't exactly give me that many freedoms, nor did it give me much responsibilities.

Being in this country for just little less than a week helped me realize how freedom and privilege are not excuses for carelessness. I still have the rest of my year to go, and I know I'm going to fuck up more times than I can count. But I'm not scared of making those mistakes because I know there is no better way to learn or grow.

Diving into Germany

Today was my 3rd day in Germany. It is now 23:17 and I should be in bed because I have to head to language class tomorrow at about 7:40. But oh well. Carpe diem, YOLO, Man lebt nur einmal, and so on and so forth. 

My first couple of days in Germany can be compared to diving from the "badass" diving board during my school's swimming unit in freshman year.

As I sat around in the shallow pool and watched the brave souls plunge into the 30 ft. deep diving pool, I was thinking to myself "Pfft, those bitches gon' drown".

Ok, I didn't think any of the other CBYX applicants would drown in a mixture of chlorine, water and teenage sweat nor do I think they are bitches but the comparison will make sense eventually. I promise

Part 1: Doubt

As much as I loved the movie starring the lovely Meryl Streep I think my story is a better fit for the title. I doggy paddled around the 5 ft. deep pool with my fellow "beginners" and occasionally swam by the ladder, teasing myself with thoughts of jumping out and running frantically to the base of the diving board. My courage faltered as soon as I stuck my foot on the first rung, and I would hang my head in shame and carry on practicing the Dead Man's Float. 

This is exactly how I felt while thinking about applying. I talked to alumni and classmates who were applying, mulling over the idea of me actually going abroad, but it took a lot of arguing with myself to actually start the application process.

Part 2: Getting My Ass Out of the Shallow Pool

"Ok, Dina," I thought to myself, climbing the ladder and walking steadily to the diving board, "This is it. Now or never. Once you start climbing the next ladder, you either jump or lay down until they call a fireman to come save you."

 And maybe I wasn't thinking the exact same thing as I applied for the CBYX scholarship, but as the time for our pre-departure orientation in Washington DC approached I knew I had to build up all of my courage for the big dive. Climbing the ladder of the diving board was perhaps the scariest thing I've ever done. I've eaten fertilized duck eggs, shot guns, and have been shoved around by an elderly lady in a China Town bakery, but this was the top shit. I had so much anxiety as I counted down the days before my departure, because I knew that as soon as I jumped off that diving board, as soon as I kissed my mother goodbye and boarded the plane, there was no turning back.

Part 3: Freefall

Here is the part where nothing really seemed real. Once I jumped off of the diving board and once I was in DC, everything seemed like some really bad imitation of a Dali painting. The orientation in DC was a dream: it seemed so long as my fellow CBYXers and I drudged through monuments in the humid east coast heat, but in hindsight it's as if the whole thing was just one day.

Part 4: The Plunge

My first days in Germany was like hitting the water and sinking down a few feet, wondering why I ever decided to dive in the first place and thinking I would never see the surface again. My host family greeted me with warm welcome: they brought me to a small tourist resort called Heiligenhafen at the Baltic Sea. As much as I enjoyed the trip and smiling dumbly at strangers who acted as if they had never seen an ethnic person before, I felt as if all ties to my former life had been cut off and I was stuck in a chlorinated German abyss. 

Part 5: Buoyancy

I didn't actually pay attention to this unit in freshman Science but I remember something about floating and surfaces and such. After a few days of wandering about with nothing to do, I gathered the courage to ask my incredibly shy host brother about internet and discovered, very happily, that I have WiFi.

So I have floated to the surface and see all my fellow classmates dunking each other in hopes of forgetting their Geometry test next period. My first day of language school is tomorrow and I'll finally tackle the mystery that is the German language.

But just as I thought to myself wading around the diving pool after my big dive, I sit here ready for bed, thinking:

What the hell happens now?