cabbages and rejection letters

There comes a dark time in all our lives when we've hit subterranean low and must venture through the deepest corners of ourselves in search of something, anything to remind us that we're still human and living and deserving of the air we breathe. Whether it be the end of a relationship, a prom dress that just doesn't quite zip up, or a stinging email from one's dream school, rejection claws at our heart and makes us feel worthless and dejected.

As I sit here and cry into my McFlurry with "sad jazz" playing on Spotify, I can't help but think of the cabbage merchant from Avatar: The Last Airbender. Our hero goes out everyday with his little green, Vitamin-A packed dreams only to have some bald kid and his friends come and knock them into cobblestone salad. That's where I saw my dreams and aspirations land after reading the typical "it's not you it's us" bullshit: lying in pieces along Ba Sing Se's other filth. 

But what I keep trying to tell myself and what you, my friend, must also remember, is that although the cabbage man may feel frustrated and throw a couple curses at the universe for completely disregarding his high GPA and impressive extracurriculars, he'll get up in the morning and carry on with the next episode, the next bald-kid-disruption, the next rejection.  Three seasons of wasted cabbages hinder him not. Instead, he keeps faith in his cart of dreams and eventually establishes his own company, even having a metal statue made in his honor.

People often say that rejection does not define us. Well it may not define us, but it sure as hell defines which paths we're taking and which paths have locked gates and barking Rottweilers. What we must remember is that we're all cabbage merchants, drifting along the streets of life with our carts of dreams and hoping that someday we'll have a statue made after us.

My friend Carly says that character defines success and she's damn right. Success doesn't care about the the lover who just didn't love you, the prom dress you didn't wear, the school you didn't go to, the cabbages you didn't sell. Success cares about how beautiful and intelligent you feel and how you've paved your own path, regardless of the obstacles in the way. 

We are our achievements and failures. We are our heartaches and joy and we are the stars for which we reach. Remember this the next time you face rejection. Remember to laugh in its face and keep fighting because life is more than a couple of heartbreaks and spilled produce.

fried rice and fractions

I read something recently that summarized everything I've always freaked out about; it explained that the reason as to why we feel time goes by much quicker as we grow older is due to the fact that each measurement of time is smaller in relation to how long we've lived. For example: a year to someone who's 5 seems much longer than it is to one who's 20 because it's a bigger fraction of their life. 1/5 is much more significant than 1/20. 

It made more sense to me when I thought about how this relates not only to time, but to one's perception of the world. When we were younger, this was limited to what our parents allowed us to see: school, home, some friends, maybe Disneyland if we were lucky. And everything was so important. We knew every detail of the path to elementary school and what made Grandma's fried rice special. The world was ours, because we hadn't yet seen just how big it is.

Now that we've broadened our horizons, it's much harder to pinpoint what makes things so significant. Details blur over and we realize how short and uneventful the path was and that her secret was extra cooking oil and garlic. The precious hours we have outside of our busy schedules are neglected because we're so exhausted and just need to catch up on sleep. 

I slip deeper into routine and pattern as senior year literally passes by. School work, extracurricular activities, and trying to keep up a social life give no leeway for smelling any roses or sitting by the water and sipping on some leisure and contemplation. One of the things I miss most about my exchange year was having the time to step back and appreciate things. As I race through this last year of high school, I hope more desperately that the privilege of having this precious time is waiting for me sometime in the future.

Despite the impatience to begin my life of independence and achieve my dreams and aspirations, a part of me has planted herself on the ground and cries out for childhood and Grandma's fried rice and walking to school with Mommy. She sees the future coming at exponential speed and knows that as soon as she steps on the ride, that there's no going back.

 But she also hopes that later on, she takes the time to step back to look back at herself and sees that life hasn't become a mere jumble of small fractions and tired eyes, rather that she's retained the childish appreciation of every fine detail that would seem insignificant to any other. The world is huge and she's so tiny in comparison, but she's found a way to make it her own.

midnight musings of a former exchange student

I didn't expect to continue this blog in America because I felt that the "adventures" of a 12th grader in the middle of California wouldn't be that interesting than of those of an exchange student in Germany. But I've decided to come back for a moment and muse about the experience of coming home. After all, coming home is part of the exchange year.

In all honesty, my journey home was one of melancholy and reluctance. I didn't want to leave Germany. Whilst preparing my luggage and brain for the long trip back to California, I thought ahead to the responsibilities waiting for me. There were relationships to mend, homework to ignore, news and gossip to catch up with, etc. etc. This was a coping mechanism I used to block out the inevitable pain I knew was coming in the form of reverse culture shock.

Our guardians discussed this in our end-of-the-year seminar. We were taught methods on how to re-enter our former lives and still keep with us the new person we've become. These tips were helpful, but they couldn't even begin to prepare me for what was to happen when I stepped off the plane and ran into the arms of this former life.

The thing about reverse culture shock that hits one hardest is the confusion. On one hand, we are once again surrounded by family and friends and taco trucks, and everyone is happy to see you. On the other, we find ourselves yearning for the people we found during our journey, to be wrapped in the arms of that person who's no longer just a train ride away, and Döner. We're torn between these conflicting emotions. We want to sit down for a while with no company other than maybe that of a bottle of magic and weep about the transiency of it all but we also realize that the drinking age is 21 and that we're expected (even by ourselves) to be happy about being back.

Going back to school intensified my reverse culture shock. When I first came home I was able to sometimes forget it by keeping myself preoccupied: hanging out with best friends and making guacamole and just enjoying the summer's freedom. But at the end I was thrown back into high school, where the first couple of weeks were extremely comparable to how Bella Swan felt when she was curled up in a ball in the middle of the forest after being abandoned by her vampire boyfriend. Of course, I couldn't just do that because A) there is no forest near me and B) I'm not the heroine in a YA Romance novel. So I gave myself some time to wallow but then pushed to keep busy in order to forget the waves of loneliness and panic beating against my skull.

It's gotten better now that I'm 3 weeks in and have come to realize that a lot of my classes aren't really that devastating to be in. So I did plow through. I complained a lot, but I plowed through.

Many think that the experience is finished as soon as one boards the plane, no matter how melancholic and reluctant one is. But in truth, the experience continues. One may think that there's not possibly anything else left to learn after coming back from a year in a foreign country, but one must remember that there always is.

 I made a mistake and assumed that saying Goodbye to Germany would be the hardest obstacle to overcome but I later learned that coming home is a million obstacles in itself. There's joy and pain and bliss and discontent and tears and beer cravings, but that's the most beautiful part of becoming an exchange student. We learn that everything is an adventure, and ignite a fire in ourselves to take on whatever it is in front of us, fearless of the inevitability of the day we come home.

in which a giant hangover looms in the near future

The year is coming to an end and I'm leaving in 3 days. I'm going back to the life I had left and will have to find some sort of way to bring with me the life I've built for myself here. 

I hate goodbyes of any sort. I hate goodbyes at the end of bad nights, when one could feel the remnants of the party churning in their stomach and the way home is longer and more twisted than usual. I hate goodbyes at the end of good nights, when one laughs and hugs their friends with the acceptance that such a night could never be repeated. But my year taught me to appreciate every night and take from it a lesson. Whether the lesson be that Fanta doesn't actually go with everything or that trains will not turn around even if you weep at the platform, I've come to accept what each night has to teach me.

My time in Germany was one long night, not bad or good or in-between, rather a midnight train ride into the Unbekannte and beyond. I've met the most amazing people here and I don't even want to imagine what it will be like without them just a train ride away. In getting to know my new country and culture, I've gotten to know myself a little better. I know my limits. I know that I walk about 60% slower than most people. And although I still have no idea what exactly I want out of life I know how I could get it and what I need to push myself. 

Every night is followed with a morning when whatever one is feeling correlates to just how magical their experiences were. Sometimes (most times when discussing a really heftig night) one had had a little too much magic or even mixed their magics and could feel it in their stomach, transformed now into a strong force that demands gallons of water and perhaps some fatty foods. Luckily, German food was probably scientifically engineered to counter the aftermath of magic. It only takes sausage, bread, and maybe some potatoes to make sure one's magic doesn't turn on them in the morning.

Because my year was about 11 months of pure magic, I know all the potatoes in the world couldn't counter the giant hangover that is next year. I'm gonna hug my new friends goodbye knowing we had the experiences of a lifetime and that such a year could never be repeated. The ride home will be long and twisted but I know I still have old friends waiting for me.

Being an exchange student is learning not only how to say goodbye, but also how to come back and face whatever is waiting there. Just as in the morning after each long night when one is left with an empty room once filled with dancers and singers, and the responsibility to clean up the empty bottles of magic and trying to make it look normal again, the end of an exchange is coming back to one's old life with the responsibility of bringing back packed up memories and picking up where they left off. But just as the room will never look the same after being stained with memories and magic, an exchange student's life could never go back to how it was before. All we could do is try to present our new selves to the old world and work to bring our two lives together. 

So grab another bottle of magic and get up and dance, because the night's almost over and you're probably gonna get a hangover anyway. 

experiencing one's chocolates

"My momma always said, 'Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get.'"

-Forrest Gump

Forrest Gump is easily one of my favorite movies, but I never really understood why until this year when I really opened up my box of chocolates and dug in. This exchange year has been an adventure through which I discovered so many new things about myself and the world around me.

"But Dina, you're a Filipino immigrant. You definitely had a change of chocolates when you moved to California!"

Of course I've tasted some chocolate before coming to Germany, but I was much too young to appreciate the change in flavor. I was at the undeveloped age of 4 when we moved, so the adjustment was fairly simple and other than speaking in an English-like gibberish for the first couple of months, I had no problems with integrating myself into the new country.

But experiencing such a change when one is 16-17 years old is a whole other story. I was so confident that I already knew everything about myself because I thought 16 years was enough to shape a human being. Dealing with the first two years of high school made me create a semipermeable mental armor that only allowed certain things to effect me. I'd passed Bio (proved by the reference to the cell membrane) and AP World History, so what else was there to learn?

Little did I know, there was everything else to learn. And there's so much more to come. This exchange year not only opened my eyes to much more than I had previously dismissed as irrelevant to my life, but it also taught me that I will never stop learning or changing. I've developed a thirst to uncover every secret in the word. And while I know that I will never achieve this goal, I've come to realize that it's the journey that matters.

One should look at life like their own box of chocolates. No one looks forward to the inevitable end, where the box is empty and all one is left with is a couple of stained wrappers and the aftertaste of memory, rather one focuses on the present and appreciates every piece of chocolate as its own delicious experience.

cheap wine and sunshine

As if being a teenager isn't enough of an emotional roller coaster, going on an exchange is having one's heartstrings plucked like a beginner's violin lesson, then tossed into a car with a drunk driver on a lonely autobahn.

I've recycled this topic over and over and you're probably sick of reading metaphors about the mean ol' Time going too fast, but it's all I ever think about anymore. One of the biggest lessons I learned this year is to be grateful for every day, every rain drop, every glass of beer. Joni Mitchell (and the Counting Crows featuring Vanessa Carlton) warn us that we don't know we've got 'til it's gone - it doesn't even matter that she was referring to some trees in the song because we should genießen whatever it is we have while we still have it.

German weather is a great inspiration to follow this advice, especially the weather we've been dealing with this year. For some reason the winter decided to stick around a little while longer: we had to celebrate Easter in the snow and even now we're running around in down jackets and 4 pairs of socks. Now I won't be a hypocrite and outright playa hate on the cold. I'd only seen snow about 2 times before coming to Germany and experiencing real cold (under 40 degrees) for the first time was pretty great, but one gets easily sick of slipping on ice and falling on their ass every time they walk to the bus. Sometime in March and in the last couple of days, however, the sun showed us some sympathy and made appearances. We all treated the sunshine like the precious gift it is and crawled out of hibernation for a few hours.

In March the temperature even rose up to a whopping 12 degrees Celsius (about 54 Fahrenheit) and my family and I rushed jacketless out to the garten, letting the Spring-like weather tease us. Unfortunately later that week came snow, and we were once again shut indoors. But alas, this week has been quite gracious and Hamburg enjoyed some really nice weather. It's still pretty windy, but at least the sky has stopped spewing out frozen chunks.

We had no school on Monday so a couple of exchange students and I hung out on the Alster with some €4 wine. It was lovely just using the beautiful day as an excuse to be outside. Coming from California and before that the Philippines, I never realized how precious the sunshine is. There's something about blue sky after a long winter that just makes one want to prance around town and smell flowers and drink €4 wine with friends, and it's something beautiful.

As much as I'm looking forward to Spring (which technically started 2 weeks ago), I feel like the warmer the weather gets, the closer I am to going home. I've been fighting myself to stop but a subconscious countdown has begun in my head and refuses to be shaken out. I have 78 days left here. 78 days is definitely not a lot and no amount of weeping will make it last longer than it naturally does, so I'm going to make the best of the tragedy that is Time and enjoy what I have before the Big Yellow Taxi comes and whips it away.

stumbling through german history

From February 13th-17th the other ASSE-CBYXers and I attended our mid-year seminar in Weimar. It was a great time, but I regret not taking out my camera at all during the trip. With everyone taking pictures of everyone else I guess I just had no bock to lug mine around.

We stayed in a lovely hostel at the edge of the city that made me feel incredibly European and exchange student-ey. Our chaperons (I don't really enjoy this word because it makes me feel like a 2nd grader on a field trip instead of a grown up lady-person in Europe but whatevs) consisted of a educator named Wolfgang (who claimed to also be a mayor but I have my doubts), a very intellectual Berliner who wore turtle-necks and knew things, and an American artist who has lived in Germany for quite some time and also knew many things. 

Our days would go something like this:

• 7:00-8:00 stumbled out of bed and woke up the other 2 roommates so we could get to the cafeteria while the brötchen were still warm
• 9:00-12:30 went somewhere really interesting in Weimar and learned things 
• on the 14th we had a not-so-romantic Valentine's Day and visited the Buchenwald Concentration camp, just a couple of bus stops away from the city center. Visiting concentration camps is an incredibly surreal experience. I think it's even more complex to an exchange student because we have both the German and non-German cultural mindset to affect how we see everything. The German education system are brutal in making sure their students understand their history. My English teacher told me that when she was in 5th grade, they would be forced to watch videos the American troops made when they liberated the camps. Although those videos are no longer shown to children, the same sentiment is felt when learning about the Holocaust. Meanwhile, history lessons and textbooks in America are 1984-esque propaganda when compared to those in Germany. We are pretty much taught that Andrew Jackson gently tugged the Native Americans through the Trail of Tears and that racism and prejudice were minor oopsies and will never happen again so we have nothing to worry about. It is a requirement for a German student to visit a concentration camp at least once and I definitely know why. One could always read books and watch movies but it's a different feeling when you're actually there. Even then it's impossible to completely grasp what was going on. We stood in our down jackets and mützen and tried to understand what the cold must have felt like to the prisoners there. I can't say if I really enjoyed it, but the experience was definitely eye-opening and humbling.
• On the 15th we got down with Schiller and Goethe, two very big deals in German culture. Friedrich Schiller was one of those historical guys who did pretty much everything. He wrote William Tell and had a really cute house in the middle of the city. He was also bros with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who did even more things and is arguably more well known. Having written Faust, Goethe is the name that comes up when one thinks of German literature. He's the guy cursed by German teenagers in school. We visited his even cuter (and bigger) house and hung out in a museum which featured everything he's done. I found a really cute mechanical pencil that he used and bought a really cool puppet which I later used in a very interesting video. It will be inserted somewhere at the end of this post.
• On the 16th we learned about Bauhaus architecture and found where Ikea got pretty much all of its ideas. The idea of Bauhaus is epitomized in the saying "Form folgt Funktion", or "Form follows function" and highlights the beauty in practicality. The museum, although as minimalist as its exhibitions, was very interesting and I found a chess set that costs about $1000.
• 12:30-2:30 lunch and free time. For me and my friends this time was spent either hanging out in someone's room and sharing our stash of candy and junk food, or napping to regain our energy for later cultural integration.
• 2:30-3:00 coffee and cake time! One of my favorite German traditions.
• 3:00- approx. 5:30 actual sit-down seminar with the adults. We discussed our end-of-the-year seminar in Berlin and a presentation we will have to do, and had talking circles where we discussed our experiences so far. I have to say, speaking German with other Americans is even more unnerving than with Germans. There's a certain unmentioned competitiveness when you notice how much everyone else's speaking has improved while you still have to mentally sing the Preposition Song from German 1.
• 6:30-7:30 dinner! I happened to fall in love with the chicken wing guy but said love was not reciprocated. 
• 7:30-11:00 we pretty much had free time until curfew (12 on the last day). In this time we were welcome to tour Weimar by ourselves and do some of our own "cultural integration". Much of this "cultural integration" was spent in bars or on the streets, looking for bars. We found an Irish Pub not too far from our hostel and enjoyed the chill atmosphere. The Milchbar was my personal favorite. It was a somewhat hip hangout with billiards (at which I suck) and a wonderful beverage called the White Russian. Having nights off with my friends was a great feeling because it's something you really can't have as a teenager in America. Mainstream society in the states doesn't acknowledge the nightlife for anyone under 18 or 21, which is bullshit because it encourages adolescents to be even more rebellious than puberty calls for. It's not just the legally bought beer talking when I say that Germany is definitely raising its teenagers in a more logical fashion.

Although a big chunk of the trip was completed with no sleep and a lot of "cultural integration", I thoroughly enjoyed the city. Weimar is not a big place and one does not need a lot of time to stumble over uneven cobbled streets to get back to their hostel before curfew. I also loved seeing everyone again! My fellow exchange students are some of the greatest people I've met, and I feel so close to them although we've all known each other for less than a year. I really can't imagine how my year would be, had I not befriended the same people. You guys are amazing and I can't wait to see you again in Berlin.

just some stuff

I realized I haven't updated my situation in a while.

So for the first couple of months, I stayed with a Welcome Family in Seevetal, Niedersachsen (Lower Saxony). There are different reasons as to why one stays with a Welcome Family. Some families don't know if they can commit a whole year to hosting so they want to try it out for a couple months, and in my case, the organization just needed a little more time to find me a permanent host family. As much as I loved living with Brigitte, I had no problem with switching because I knew it just meant a new adventure for me.

Ok, packing all my shit was a bit of a nuisance, but I managed to get everything together. I moved in with Family Storbeck on December 5th. We live in the "marshlands", in a part of Hamburg called Bergedorf. If you look on a map, I'm pretty much directly across the river Elbe from where I lived before.

My new family consists of my host parents: Aurelia and Rainer, and my 2 little host sisters: Kaja and Scharija. We also have a lovely cat named Emmi, who enjoys sweets and scratching on the furniture when no one's around. Kaja and Scharija are 12 and 10, respectively. As the youngest child and only girl of my family, suddenly having two younger sisters was definitely different for me.

It's really weird being the older sister and the exchange student simultaneously. At times I feel I have a responsibility with my sisters. I help Kaja with homework and let her vent about school and normal pre-teen problems. I play with Scharija and teach her how to put on makeup. At other times, I need them to explain things to me multiple times and follow them around the house because I have no idea what to do with myself. But I've been here almost 2 months and really feel at home. My family taught me how to build a snowman, brought me to see Rocky: The Musical, and take the time to make sure I understand important concepts such as the proper way to cook Spaghetti Tacos or gently kick a cat when she's filing her claws on the sofa.

I also switched schools, which was a little bit heartbreaking. I loved Gymnasium Hittfeld and my friends there. The school was situated on a hill in the middle of Kuhdorf and one of my favorite things to do in class (besides paying attention and being on task, of course) was looking out the window and seeing miles and miles of trees and little cottage-esque houses.

My new school is Gymnasium Lohbrügge and resembles my high school in California a lot more. The kids in Hamburg are a lot more "street", for lack of a better word. As tradition on the last day of school before Winter Break, a majority of the school crammed themselves into the main hallway and sang Christmas Carols. It was all incredibly wholesome, there were many a drunk and we moshed to Jingle Bells and Gloria. Afterwards there was a small "Parking Lot Party".

List of Other Cool Stuff I Did

• went to Italy with my uncle and his friend, saw the Statue of David (from every angle possible) and almost had a heart attack climbing the Duomo
• stayed in Copenhagen on a 2 hour layover and ate a 15 dollar chicken sandwich
• visited Hannah Montana and acquired several bruises from a round of tractor sledding
• spontaneously met other students from Argentina and Australia at the train station
• watched Pitch Perfect in German and understand things
• joined a 5th grade German class
• THIS

In which I freak out about time and try to express how flabbergasted I am

I am halfway done with the year. I've been here 161 days and have only 161 days left.

Everyone talks about it. "Oh, where has the time gone? It was just yesterday..." I've heard those lines and variations of those lines over a million times in my 16 years. I began to understand what they meant sometime in middle school, when I realized I could still close my eyes and bring myself back to different episodes of my life.

I'm a pack-rat, a gigantic sentimental clusterfuck. I collect anything you could possibly think of: books, bottle caps, magazines, anything. But my most cherished collection is those of my memories, as painfully hipster as it sounds. And as well as the other things I keep, a lot of my memories seem useless or boring when they actually mean the world to look back at.

Walking around my neighborhood in the Philippines, my hands sticky from mangoes and my flip flops scraping against the pavement. My mom pulls me to the shade and warns me that walking in the sun would make me darker. 

When my family and I first arrived in America. The plane ride was a little fuzzy but I remember stepping out into the crisp NorCal night and feeling the real cold for the first time in my life. Eating pizza on my aunt's carpeted floor and relishing how soft the ground was.

Going to 6th grade orientation with my friends. We walk through the gym full of screaming 8th graders with pom poms and find ourselves a spot in the middle. Trying to ignore how nervous we were, we discuss our haircuts and new clothes and where we should sit during lunch. 

It's almost painful looking back because I never realized how quickly my life was passing by. And today I realized it's still moving quickly, perhaps at a faster pace.

To think that the time between now and the moment we arrived in Frankfurt is equal to when we have to back home is completely heartbreaking. As much as I miss my friends and family in San Jose, I love it here. I've done so much in these past 161 days. I've gotten lost and didn't care because Hamburg is beautiful to a wanderer. I've made new friends from all over the world. I've made up with friends from back home. I ate a subway station panini in front of the Colosseum and drank wine in Florence. How much could 161 days possibly do to a person? Everything.

To my fellow exchange students, you're the only ones who could possibly understand how I feel. I'm so proud of how much I've done and grown. I've fallen in love with Germany and could see myself wandering around here forever. But I'm so scared of what the future holds. And it feels like it's coming and going right before my eyes and all I could do is sit back and appreciate everything while I still can. We've been through so much and we still have a ways to go. So sit back and hold on tight, kids.

Halfway points are such great places to stop and look back at how far you've come. But don't forget to get on your tip-toes and see how much you've still got to go. 

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.

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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.

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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?