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?