You're just, just, just wasting time

It's a very good thing I can't find my scissors right now. If I had any idea where they are, my hair would most likely be the victim of my boredom. I should either get some real hair scissors or... just pay someone to do it.
Stupid triangle hair.
Meh.

If you're looking to kill time as well, you should watch the Eurovision contest. Especially Romania's contestant. You know what, it was so... interesting... that I'll put it right here.

Because we all need countertenor vampires.

Today I spent my free time moping around in an annoyed boredom. Nothing to do... No reason to go out, since that would only lead to spending of money. And I need all the money for my mission. I had not the faintest desire to inconvenience Maria by asking her to move her car so I could ride my bike. I'll refrain from complaining about working for and living with a pregnant lady. Let's just say I'm looking forward to moving on with life.

Yesterday I watched Studio C on YouTube. It's completely clean humor. I would post some favorites, but I think I would run out of room and I'd most likely get sucked into watching them all again. On the bright side, watching those clips got me out of a bad mood.

I even made a catalog of all the clothes I have for my mission so far. I'm pretty sure they could all fit in a carry-on suitcase. Maybe if I get bored enough, I'll try... And I thought I had a lot already. 

I've also wasted  spent a lot of time looking at potential mission clothes and shoes on the internet. Nothing better to do... I've decided that if I had any money, I'd have the coolest clothes and shoes ever. For now, I'll stick to sales racks and thrift stores. Oh wait, thrift stores and Germany don't mix... Sales racks it is. 

I ought to move on to something more productive or at least useful. Mission Prep, reading Les Mis to work on my Deutsch skills, finish composing that one song... 

The less we say about it the better

I can't say this post has any set topic or adventure. It's just the leftover snippets that are running around in my head but haven't made it onto a post lately.

Song of the day: 

I really like the Talking Heads.

My sister got her first boyfriend a couple weeks ago. Captain Norrington aptly summed up my feelings on the matter in the first Pirates movie:

"I apologize if I seem forward, but I must speak my mind. This promotion throws into sharp relief that which I have not yet achieved."
Of course, I'm happy for her. And I can't wait to meet the guy when I get home in July.

I'm not the only one who has a friend that as good as ignores my presence when other people are around, right?

I really want to buy all the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. There's a box set  on Blu-ray for thirty euros and I'm just dying to get it, but... I should save my money for my mission. Meh. This mission thing is turning out to be more expensive that planned. Or maybe the problem is that I wasn't planning on going until last October and just focused on getting through college without debt and then to Germany and therefore have practically no money. No debt, but not much else either.

On the note of mission funding, I'm going to have to sell my beloved bike that I left in the care of one of my best friends in Utah. I love my bike. My lovely fixie from the seventies, my Made-in-Austria jewel. We had such lovely times together. And so many fun trips to the repair shop. Let's not discuss the matter further.

I finished the wall I was working on. But I've realized lately that I shouldn't use the money for the trip I was planning on with my friends. Good thing nothing was set in concrete. Heck, nothing was set even in Jello, other than that we wanted to go. I hate money. At least my sacrifice will be for a good cause. And Switzerland is in my mission, so maybe I'll even get to serve there. But because I'm American, the chances aren't super high, since the Swiss aren't handing out visas to us right now. At least that's what everybody tells me.

I'm having a hard time refraining from cutting my own hair. Layering can't be that hard, right? My haircut could hardly get worse. ...Ok, it could. Which is why I haven't done it, although there have been some VERY close calls. We're talking standing in front of my mirror with scissors in hand. And I wish I could do bangs. Oh the joys of somewhat curly hair.

I have a love-hate relationship with chocolate covered rice cakes.

Everybody's really excited about Eintracht Braunschweig getting into the first league. I mean, I spotted Aufstieg 2013 beer cans and even Aufstieg Bratwurst at the grocery store this weekend. I love Germany...

Less than two months left in Braunschweig. We're not talking about that either.

And the weather had better pull it's act together and start acting more May-like.

Climbed aboard the dream weaver train

It's not often that I remember my dreams, but when I do, they're craaaaaaazy. I remember two from last night, or rather this morning, since I possess the excellent skill of being able to go back to sleep for a while instead of going jogging. Loser. At least they were entertaining...

I dreamed that I was in a medieval battle of sorts. We were in some sort of fortification up on a cliff or mountain. Apparently even in my dreams I am not a skilled archer... I specifically remember trying to get this one guy, who was a really easy target and not even that far away, and missing three times. There was also a guy with a huge hammer. I don't mean Thor. Thor is much better looking than this guy. He was some insane old guy in robes swinging a hammer around quite ineffectively (unless his intent was to just keep people from touching him). It was like having a movie in my head, but I was in it. There were all sorts of cool effects and lighting and such. Pretty cool, if I do say so myself. Maybe it was based off something from LOTR or the Hobbit. 

I don't remember now all of the second dream. I walked around a very modified, but no less confusing version of the Fine Arts building at BYU, which then turned into my high school cafeteria, where I met my sister and her new boyfriend. He was rather distraught, as my brother had just been giving him a very hard time about something, probably just about being Kenzie's boyfriend. The weirdest thing about him was that he didn't look like the pictures I've seen of him. He took on the appearance of this little dorky kid from back home and was wearing some sort of strange denim shirt with black leather epaulets that was at least three sizes too big. It was bad enough for me to remember the horrid details. And then I decided to wake up for real.

Here's one from earlier this week: I think it was supposed to be a tour of typical German homes through the centuries. But even in my dream, I recognized that the homes weren't even German at all, but more like the pictures I've seen of British homes. Thank you, brain, for trying to entertain me with a fake documentary with false information.

Some of my dreams from the more distant past:

Traveling with my choir by car to Ireland...?! 

Trying to buy cheddar cheese... I guess I miss sharp cheddar or something.

My Grandma telling me to chop off my sister's head with a huge battle ax for refusing to vacuum. Right...

Reading books with friends in a castle library only to have the castle set on fire by a dragon.

Road trips that end at super weird destinations. For example, some place that was supposed to be a camp that I went to once upon a time, but didn't resemble it at all. There may have been dinosaurs involved.

A spotless and very modern airport- everything was white and smooth with clean lines. I don't know about y'all, but I have yet to see such a place in real life. And then a very very long road trip. 

Going back to (a quite modified) high school and seeing several friends that I haven't talked to in three years and a super huge truck.

Some sort of chase on an old-school train. By that I mean, on top of the train. 

Being out somewhere with my dad when suddenly a guy I used to like showed up out of nowhere and gave me a really long hug. That was the weirdest thing... Symbolic of never understanding the kid?

There may or may not have been one about being a rock star...

I will return again

Hello, World!
I finally got my mission call Tuesday. I'm going to (drum roll, please) the Alpine German-Speaking Mission! I report to the England Missionary Training Center on 5. September. My mission covers Southern Germany, Austria, and most of Switzerland.
Leaving Germany this July will be much easier now that I know I'll be coming back in two months time. I'll probably get homesick for Germany anyways. Last time, after being here only three weeks, I pretty much had withdrawals. I mean, I broke into tears at a grocery store just because it wasn't Germany. Luckily it was night, so nobody was around, and they had bubbly water, which made things a little bit better.
I'm amazed they're sending me to the England MTC. That's where they send German-speaking people who are going to German-speaking missions. I think they think my German is better than I think it is. I must say, though, that the beginner classes in the Provo MTC would be way too easy. It's still unusual to send an American to the England MTC for Deutsch. I wish I could see more of England than just the MTC, though. Someday...
Interesting fact: I have ancestors from just barely inside my mission boundaries. How cool is that? And just after I got my call, we started looking at more genealogy stuff about the people . We were able to find several more people!
If I could have picked my mission out from the 300-something missions all over the world, I would have picked this one.

It's absolutely perfect.

Well, let the good times roll

Ever have one of those days when you're just happy for no apparent reason? I did today, my friends. I woke up before my alarm clock and was actually happy. Alarm clocks and feelings of happiness shouldn't even belong in the same sentence. I even had a good song in my head! I managed to go jogging too, due to not having to work until noon. Well, I've never enjoyed jogging in the slightest, but it's good for me... right? Luckily I had good music to keep my spirits up.

My first assignment of the day was to make lunch- chicken nuggets, mashed potatoes, and frozen spinach. Not exactly my first choice (especially the spinach), but it was good nevertheless. Not to brag, but I make some good mashed potatoes. A bit chunky, with butter, buttermilk, salt, copious pepper, garlic, and a bit of green things- like oregano or whatever. Mmm delicious :) And today they were super good, most likely because I haven't made any in months. Not even Dana's complaints about them being too spicy could bring me down. They weren't even spicy. Stinker.

We then went on our usual Friday swimming excursion. I don't like swimming. But this time wasn't that bad, since I mainly went on the big slide with the girls. It's pretty big for an indoor swimming pool. Nothing for Hurricane Harbor, but it's still the biggest slide I've seen at a swimming pool. Jilli got such joy from going down the slide with me that it was impossible to have a bad attitude about climbing that spiral staircase.

I got home and started immediately on the wall. The paint stripper looks like, well, some sort of cross between snail slime and snot, with a very chemical smell. It has to work for 1-3 hours before you chip off the paint, so I took a trip to Real,- while waiting. They are having a sale on Ritter Sport chocolate. Who on earth would do that? They sell well enough at 89 cents... but 69 cents?!? I had to buy six bars. And the cute cashier was there too. And then my iPod decided to play awesome songs. The weather was great, I had chocolate, a nice bicycle ride, good music... Ok, back to the wall. Removing paint is a much more enjoyable experience when you use the proper materials. I would've worked for longer, but I had to go inside at 9:00 when it started getting too dark to see properly. There is something extremely satisfying about hard work. Maybe we Americans have forgotten that as we've gotten pulled into more "'intellectual" work.

Anyways, it was a nice day. Nothing extraordinary (except the random chocolate sale...), but I had a good mood all day. It's all in the attitude, people :)

People say I'm crazy doing what I'm doing

Once upon a time, somebody, namely some previous owners of this house, painted an exterior wall in our backyard with the worst paint ever. Parts of it are chipping off, and my host dad/boss/whatever offered me a nice little chunk of change to take it off and repaint it. It's finally warm and dry enough to take care of that. So guess what I spent my Labor Day doing! Hard labor! Turns out this horrid paint does a great job sticking to the wall in the places where it wants to.The kids helped out for a while, even though they aren't getting paid for it.
First we attacked it with putty knives, picking off what we could.
After a good hour or two, that got a bit ridiculous. The easy part was done, and the real work began and the kids left for lighter work or play. I sat there  forever, chiseling away at whatever would come off. I still had a good attitude about the work. I have this vision of visiting Switzerland with some friends later on this summer, and this wall is going to send me there. Then Jared came out and gave me some Turpentine stuff, which smells... fantastic. A couple of layers of that somewhat helped in the effort. There wasn't much in the can, and I had to resort to the other can of paint brush cleaner. Dr. Jared said that's the same stuff. As the daughter of a man who has done his share of hard work, I couldn't help but think "nuh-uh! read the freakin label." And it really didn't work as well. Not that the turpentine worked especially well, but at least it helped. I mean, the stuff is for thinning wet paint. Still-in-the-bucket paint. Whatever. We also had a drill bit that looked like a bit of scraggly metal things that was supposed to help blast the paint off. It worked better with the turpentine. Jared went at the wall with the drill and complained almost incessantly about how horrible it was. It's all in the attitude. Seriously. I was grateful for the miserable task because it's funding a trip that I really want to go on, but have been concerned about how to pay for. Jared offered to hire some pros anyways, since it is such nasty work, but I really just want to see Switzerland, so I'm sticking to it.
Since we ran out of turpentine, I was rode my bike to the store today to get that and some other things for the project. Praktiker is basically a small Home Depot in blue and yellow. And it was there that I met my first rude German. Perhaps I was not the first person to ask a relatively dumb question today. They were having a sale and the store was packed. My German isn't perfect, especially when it comes to home improvement terms. I just wanted to make sure the paint stripper was ok for concrete, since some wording on the container made me doubt for a minute. I asked, and the employee wasn't exactly nice in her response. All I needed was a simple yes or no. People like that make it hard for foreigners to have the courage to ask questions, especially when it's hard in the first place. At least the old man next to me offered his advice: wear gloves; that stuff eats hands. Looking forward to tomorrow when the work recommences. Wait, let me rephrase that. I'm looking forward to being paid when all's said and done.

So good like we never parted

This song = good stuff. I also took this post's title from one of the lines.

***Warning: 80's rock*** (did you expect much else?)

When you live abroad, nothing's like having a visit from home. 

Erin was one of my first friends when I moved to Georgia one semester into high school. She conveniently was able to visit me last week between school and her summer job. Yay for Delta benefits! By the way, Erin doesn't know German and managed to battle her way to me on five hours worth of regional trains. You go girl.

We had lots of adventures together. Soooo... Highlights!

Discovering German Chocolate. I already knew how fabulous it is. According to Erin, you can get everything here in chocolate flavor. Chocolate cream cheese, chocolate in your cookies, chocolate granola, chocolate covered rice cakes, heck, even chocolate pieces in chocolate mousse in your chocolate. What can I say? I love Germany.

Paying Darion two Euros to eat a spicy pepper. It was pretty funny. Enjoy the sequence of facial expressions :

Shopping at H&M. We've decided the mirrors in the dressing rooms are skewed to make even the skinniest of people feel too big. And they have cute stuff, despite the facts that their models can't possibly be real people.

Being engulfed by a bazillion very happy fans. Sometimes I wish my host family would like Fussball like the rest of Germany. Then I would've known about the game. Apparently Eintracht Braunschweig gets to be in the Bundesliga now, which is super awesome, especially since soccer was first played in Germany here. It's been 28 years since the last time Eintracht was this good. My presence in Germany seems to be correlated with the success of certain teams...
Whatever. It's way easier to follow than American football. I just wish I knew more about it. 

Going to a castle, which was conveniently hosting a medieval market. Super cool. I finally found a leather bracelet! I've wanted one since, oh, August. Not just any one, no. One from a legit Markt. No mass-produced retail rubbish. (oh dear, my half-hipster side is coming out...)

They even had knights!

I couldn't resist getting a pretzel. Erin's not a fan, but I told her she had to try a real German one. And she wanted this one. It's covered in Gouda and Emmentaler and pumpkin seeds. DIVINE! She still didn't like it though. I just don't understand.

 Just takin a bike ride and pictures at the same time. Like a pro. 

We won't mention the other pictures that didn't turn out at all.

Pictures can't capture everything. They may be worth a thousand words each, but whoever said that didn't think about the quality of the words. Thank you, Erin, for saying things I needed to hear :)

And the worst part about her leaving is that there is a possibility that we won't see each other for three years, since we're both going on missions.