(mis)Guidance 2.0: The Reporter.

Can you find out about yourself by question asking by using the classic reporter questions: Who, What, Where, When, Why? It's worth a shot....

What am I?

If there were ever a question that I could answer it could be this one. Homo sapien.

Who am I?

Now that is all together a different can of worms.

Where am I?

Again: easy. At least for my physical body. My mental body is usually wandering around and back again trying to figure out the second question which I have just written. So rather than sit here and ponder the location of my mental body I will firmly state that I am physically sitting in my living room which is in an apartment building which is in the city of Nuremberg.

Why am I?

...what? Is this even a logical question. Look, I took philosophy in college. And again for my Master's degree. Well, sort of. It was a class that dealt with the anthropology of relgion. Probably one of the most useless classes I ever took, but apparently taught at one of the forerunners in the world of academic learning. But I don't think those stints of philosophic study allow me to make a judgement on whether or not this question can be answered.

When am I [going to get things rolling]?

I will take this question like this. It's funny that I am putting it in this blog which I started, as it seems, a VERY long long time ago. Even from the beginning I was asking myself this question. I am still asking myself this question. The positive me that is yearning to burst out will say it's because you don't quite know what you want and you are stalling things. However, the negative person in me just chalks it up to me being a loser.

Now, in a new city with new people and new words to learn, I am also on the mission to find a new lifestyle. I don't know how many more twist or turns I can handle right now. I suppose I'll find out one way or another. Whether it leaves me cracked or in the right place.

Argh. Uncertainty. You are the pits.

(mis)Guidance 1.02

For what amounts to almost the whole time I've spent living in Germany, I have been taking German language lessons. What this amounts to is a lot of headaches/time/money/'Hausaufgabe'(homework).

When I started out, I was in a beginners class at the local VHS(Volkshochschule), which can best be described as career center...kind of. I entered my first German class and although was behind for a bit, I started to excell and soon pushed my way to the 'most awesome person in the class' status (status given to me, by me). Naturally, I enrolled in another class. Then another. Then another.

I soon found out that the participants in the local VHS weren't really up to the academicness/snootiness/socially-awareness/logical-ness/themes that I felt were necessary. Therefore, I switched to a school/business/money-grubbing-staff/foreign students' playground that was more situated towards my likings. It wasn't bad at first, but I soon realized that my teacher liked to give out homework like the Catholic Church likes to give out Hail Mary’s. Doing this homework not gave me an understanding for how much I actually suck at learning German, but it also gave me a lot of headaches/tantrums/fights with my boyfriends/nights of feeling helplessly suck in a country where this impossible language was possible.

And now, almost two years later, here I am in the situation. Doing my homework, which totals to what seems like one-million pages, I have learned, yet again how utterly incapable at writing in German I am. When this is realized, you can smell the breaking apart of my frontal lobe as it is yet again being lobotomized by my homework.

And this is all because I want/need to/must learn German. So here I am in a situation where I need to learn German to make, what I think is, a life/incomprehensible the comprehendible/home, but it turns out I'm doing the complete opposite: making a impossible/tantrum-filled/complicated/mind-splitting/homesick feeling.

Whoever said learning is fun has never learnt German. And if they HAVE...then they're just queer.

(mis)Guidance 1.01

600 days and more into this 'adventure' I like to call Germany, and I can't help but not think I'm crazy for agreeing to live in the 'Queen's' land of Hanover, Germany.

A complicated/short/long/unnecesary background into the reasons/madness/problems of coming to Hanover.

The short story: I came for love.

The elaborated short story on love: I came to Hanover to live because my boyfriend/dear-heart/partner-in-crime lives here. We met in London where I was getting my masters and where he was doing an exchange program between the University College of London and University of Hanover. He was only there for three months. I guess that was enough time to hook, line, and sinker my sorry heart and three years later, and to my surprise, I'm still hooked. I was finished with my masters and the time came to make a decision: break up and go back to my native Ohio/USA/any state that didn't have an unemployment rate the size of a small country, OR I could take/push/deceive myself into moving to Hanover. Needless to say, I took the choice of the latter. And here I am, almost two years later half fluent/jobless/sane BUT however, in a new, better, and prettier apartment.

I think I should be something of a negotiator, because the way I'm able to talk myself into really, truly, and honestly believing something seems to amaze me. To me, moving to another country for love is NOT in any case a good excuse. For all purposes, and all logical reasons, and after thinking about it for almost 2 years, coming to a country for love is actually a very good reason. People do it all the time...after saying that...I still can't admit that it IS a good idea. I can only admit that it's a good idea in theory. Naturally, I have to come up with some other reason to move to Germany. 'I'll LEARN a new language.' - Surely this is a quality that will be invaluable to me! 'I'll make some money by freelance teaching using my native language.' - Ah yes, what a great idea! I don't think there's any better way to make your life MORE tormenting, than to have the most irregular hours/horrid pay/unappreciated profession. What a wonderful choice.

But, looking up, as my good friend always does, I can defiantly say this: trying to scrape your way through doing what you need to do in order to get a step further to your goal isn't a bad thing.

But now, looking down, as I always do: It sure is fucking hard.