strategies when the weather just isn't enough.

After blatantly stalking the blogs of some of my fellow Hamiltonians, I've decided my life in Germany is about as cushy as they come and that I need to MAN UP and GET AMPED and all those other HARDCORE PHRASES that mean BUCK UP SPORT since there's no reason to be moping. I mean - I sleep in an actual bed, in a room that has a little refrigerator that I keep stocked with beers, and the most dangerous thing that's happened so far has not been pick-pocketing or "auslander" slurs, but a bus nearly killing Rob and I because it was too polite to honk. After that same incident, I fell into hysterics on the bridge and frightened away all the ducks in the river.

I am, however, in the midst of my semi-annual "Rachel Smokes Too Much" sickness, which is good for my wallet and bad for my lungs. See also: coughing like an old man all the time, and skipping school today because the lining of my esophagus is trying to escape and no one wants to see that, or probably read about it, so I'm sorry for the details. But this could be a permanent change, and the only souvenir I get for anyone else considering I'm penniless, if that makes sense.

It was a combination of circumstances that pushed me down, and a lot of it was myself pushing myself down, as I am invariably wont to do. The boys go hide in their rooms to Skype their girlfriends, I sit up and read Steinbeck alone. I slept through the Goethe Party on Friday night, missing out on all sorts of shenanigans. I tried to buy some new jeans in town only to find out, the hard way, that I'm pretty much built like a pioneer and better start darning the holes in my American jeans. My Tandem Partner, a native I meet with once a week to practice my German, is pretty much the Anti-Rachel - doesn't drink, hates smoke, is pretty and petite and perfectly put-together. Things that could be funny in the right light, but were just lame in reality.

But there are counters to all of those, too - I bought myself a red plaid cashmere scarf because Tommy kept stealing his back, and now I feel like a little British boy ALL the time. We all went collectively, primevally insane with ennui and malaise one evening (that sentence probably makes you want to gag, whoever you are out there), so we booked it to a bar and were hollering and falling on each other the whole way. We ate a lot of cake baked by Schwaebian Fraus.
Rob and I went on a long wander yesterday, and then I went on an even longer wander afterwards, walking right out of Schwaebisch Hall. I think it was Chutney who told me the sky would just be bluer in Europe, and that's true. We've had uninterrupted sunshine for a week, now, no snow on the ground, hardly any rain. It's Minor Field weather.

And I'm going to Frankfurt on Sunday to see Jens Lekman, and, after doing some research, I am obviously going to go see THE HIVES in VIENNA because some 15-year old version of me will have a conniption at seeing PELLE. PELLE!

Also, everyone should shout "TOR!" much more often. Even when there is no goal to be had.