Time has gone by fast! -Kurz vor der Abreise

Time goes by faster than I thought. The first day I arrived (exhausted from the flight, forgot to eat in 20hrs and very frustrated trying to jumpstart my german language) still doesn’t feel that long ago, and I am already at the end of my Austauchjahr, ready to leave.

Three days before I have to check out of my room, I finally made the effort to sort my messy room out and started to pack. As I went through all the bits of stuffs I stacked around here and there in the corners, I found the process very therapeutic and even somehow inspiring. Anyone who is used to travel back and forth in different periodic settle-downs (z.B., college students who study away from home) might be familiar with this: you always have a little handful of things that are only useful in one of your “home places”, and they are somehow essential to your survival there. But as you travel around, they are totally useless in other places. Even so, you have to carry them around. Things like local currency cash, local IDs, electricity adapters and converters, an old phone with local handy number, or that pile of “only acceptable within CC campus radius” style hippie clothes you accidentally brought to Europe. They are kind of like first-aid kits of different places, and when you settle down in another place long enough, you might completely forget about them— until you have to go back again.

You sometimes forget about how if feels like to live in those places faraway too. I was surprised to see my “China first-aid kit” contains a large amount of cash (wow, brand new 100RMB bills!), while in my kit for the U.S., I was down to only 5 dollars cash. I got so worried for myself and started to recall the ATM machine location in Denver airport. Then I remember: huh, you don’t really need cash back there if you have your cards. The German way of living apparently spoiled me to be less dependent on modern technologies, how interesting. As for the cash in Chinese RMB, I then realised that the last time I was back in China, it was the traditional new year and I received my lucky money from the elders… well, I don’t remember anyone ever handed me cash in 100 Euro bills here, not even the ATM Geldmaschine…

The last two weeks has been kind of chaotic here. All the final papers, Klausuren, and Referate all happening at once, the Babylon Theater’s performance was every night the last week, alongside with the bureaucratic (man I retyped this word for 7453578 times to get the spelling right, why doesn’t english just adopt the umlaut büro!) Abmeldungen I have to do for my student status, student card, radio tax, bank account, insurance, rental status… Sorry, no intent to bore you, the list goes on. Now this is the point where you really miss block plan. At least they come one at a time monthly, not all in this one crazy wave at the end like a Durchfall.

I know my nagging has been very interesting, glad that you enjoyed it, I will get back to my packing and paper and panicking and everything in between.

Oh and here’s some photos from Babylon Theater (ft. Frankie, Jack, u. me)