Everything sounds better in another language...

Swenja and I have been chill´n in Hamburg for a few weeks now…It´s been fun.  I usually sleep in because the night owl in me is still very much part of my routine and really there´s not lots to keep me busy in the morning so I prefer to waste the day that way instead.  This also gives Swenja a chance to work on her honor´s thesis and some jazz for the Writing Center. 

We walk a few hours every day depending on what kind of mischief we´re getting into.  Swenja´s dad, her, and I went to this beautiful forest in the south east of Hamburg.  It´s the largest undividided forest in Germany.  I felt like I was walking in my woods at home again except some of the wooded areas in this place looked much older than in Michigan.  I kept thinking of WWII soldiers running through the woods, and wondered what kind of things this woods had seen in the last few millenia.  Crazy when you think about it that way. The same day we went to this forest, they took me to a beautiful little butterfly house and garden.  Because I like to line my the walls and ceilings of my apartment with pictures of random nature, I couldn´t help but snap about twenty pics of butterflies and foilage.  Now I can´t wait to make a scrapbook out of my four walls, wherever I find a place to live in Saginaw in the fall.  (It hit me the other day that I am practically homeless right now.  All of my stuff is sitting in two separate piles… one in West Branch, one at Camelot apartments…and as of now, Amee has claimed me somewhat, says I can crash with her and Amanda (thanks gals!), but I still feel a little homeless. Haha. Just another new experience to add to my list.  :p  )

The other day we went to this large trianual Hamburg fair that the Hamburgers call ``Dom.``  I had fun swirling on dizzy rides and eating suger coated, fried things.  Thinking back, the combination could have been disastrous but instead it was lots of fun!  The only thing with going to a Hamburg fair is that all the noise is multiplied in your head a few times when it´s in a different language.  All the shouting from the carnies and fuzz of voices from the people amplifies when you can only discern a few random words here and there.  It´s a new phenomenon I discovered because I´ve never had a problem with this kind of large event, crowd noise.  When you put it in another language, it´s enough to drive a person insane and when we finally left, I was ecstatic on our walk  home because the city of Hamburg is a million times quieter. 

Hmmm… let´s see.  We´ve hung out a lot with old high school friends of Swenja´s.  It´s fun because they speak English well and I can sit and answer all their random questions about the U.S.  We cook, chill, sit and drink some good German wine, and then bs about anything and everything.  It´s nice because I miss the banter from all my friends at home.  The only thing missing is my guitar and all of you. 

 I´ve learned a lot of German words and phrases, and test them out when we meet up with her friends or new people.  My German vocabulary, counting listening comprehension words, is probably 50 or so words strong! Haha,  it might not seem like much but it´s enough to get by, and I actually surprise people when I know words for stuff in German.  Ich spreche kein Deutsch.  Translation... i don´t speak german.  Haha.  Sehr lecker.  Translation... yummy.  Genau... exactly.   I have lots lots more but it would be very boring to list them all.  …

Eric got here a few days ago.  We´ve had a blast going out to Keets, the red light bar district in Hamburg that is absolutely huge!, and chilln during the day.   It´s good because Eric likes to sleep as much as I do and so he makes me look less lazy by sleeping later than me.  Swenja calls us `her children`` because we always have to have her wake us up and feed us and all that stuff.  But we´re not completely useless here in Germany.  We all entertain eachother very much.  Eric likes to make up his own songs and rap, I like to sing all of the 20 random songs that are going on in my head at any given time, and Swenja likes to make fun of us because of these crazy habits.  lol.   it´s very entertaining.  we banter on and on, harrassing eachother... it´s good to feel like i´m back in saginaw again!   Pretty much we like to drive each other crazy, but we´ve decided that when we turn 25, if we´re already not married or engaged, we have to move to London together for a year.  We´re going to rent the cheapest, crummiest hole in the wall apartment.  One that has small rooms and door ways so Eric has to duck his head under every time he walks from room to room.  Which won´t be too often because it´ll probably only have two rooms.  haha.  The rooms will be tiny too so he won´t be able to stretch out when he´s sleeping...he´ll be like a little curled up snail, which is even funnier when you think about how often the poor guy cramps up from being so long and lanky.  (Sorry Eric but it is funny.)   Anyways,  him and I will have a good ol time on our next two adventures.  The two of us never stop laughing or singing.  We both got the superlative ``Best Conversionalist`` in high school so I think that explains the rest of what we mostly find ourselves doing.   Fabulous. 

Funny thing, if you pronounce my name in German it would sound like ``Brii`` with a hard ``I`` sound, and when pronouncing it this way in German, my name means ``pudding.``  Haha.  I love it!  But it gets better…  the word for ``nobel`` in German translates to mean ``fancy`` soooo, yes folks it´s official… I´m fancy pudding.  What flavor?  I´ve decided I´m vanilla with cinnamon swirls!  Too funny.  This is the kind of thing I love,… going to new countries and learning quirky things about yourself that you never could learn at home. Wink wink. 

And, with that lovely extra piece of info, I´ll close this journal because I have to start packing for Amsterdam.  We leave tommorow morning and don´t come back until Friday afternoon.  It´s gonna be chaos.  Pure, fabulous chaos with Eric M. Beasley.  If you don´t hear from us, consider it a sign that we´re enjoying the Dutch and everything is right in the world.  By this I mean we´re eating brownies and staring into beautiful paintings like ``Starry Night`` while listening to the friendly people of Amsterdam teach us about the history of tulips and wooden shoes.  Haha.