Berlin, Pseudo Spring, Sweets and Soccer

Pictures to come they dont feel like working now


I do a very bad job at updating as it has been nearly 3 weeks since I last updated-I like to blame the lack of internet that I get but, I suppose there are ways around that.

To spare you all a bunch of unnecessary details about my life I'll try to be as concise as possible- but if you know me you know that brevity is all but my forté.

I can't believe that the semester is more than halfway over, and as far as classes go its even more because come the beginning of april i have a 2 week break so I have final papers due the week after next-how crazy is that?

So the first weekend of March I met up with Kyla and Allison (and coincidentally Julie!) in Berlin. I left her early Friday morning around 8am and got to berlin around 5pm, granted I had to take a 3 hour train to paris and then wait 3 hours in CDG airport which explains the crazy amount of time. At any rate I made it to the hostel and checked in and did a little exploration of the surrounding area while i killed time waiting for the girls AND when I got back the receptionist offered me free dinner, which was pretty exciting-I got a good impression of Berlin-haha.
Kyla and Al arrived :) and we planned out our day, thinking that we might go out to a pub or something but it was clear that we were all super tired.
The next day we did some exploring, saw the reichstag, parliment random street performers and some other touristy things that Im too ignorant to remember and too lazy to look up. We found Julie and her friends and went to a museum, Kyla and I unsuccessfully looked for food (because we are the worst decision makers in the world). Also my diet for the day consisted of chocolate, and pain au chocolates, which would come back to haunt me later.
From there we returned to the hostel given that the weather was a bit crappy and went to find some dinner. The little area we were in was super cute and we found an indian restaurant where I had some yummy chicken but alas the greasy bread plus all the other chocolate and buttery products began to catch up with me, but all was well.
From there we headed to a pub hung out for a bit and went back to the hostel.
The next morning we saw the Berlin wall, the view from the reichstag(unfortunately rainy and foggy) and I headed back, having consumed my currywurst (delicious) and very afraid of missing my flight. I made it, security and printing my ticket took all of 5 minutes total.
After arriving in Paris and waiting 5 hours at the train station I finally made it home around 1am with no desire to do any work. All in all, a pretty good trip, and I was quite happy to see some friendly faces.


Lately the weather has been agreeable more often than not, rendering a feeling of pseudo spring which is great except my already low desire to do work continues to diminish. Yesterday I had two midterms-which couldve been worse but I realized that I have effectively forgotten how to study.

Friday I went to the apartment of a former IES student who is now a teaching assistant, with some other friends and we had a delicious apple pie and a uber delicious chocolate brownie-esque thing with raspberries as well as strawberries, kiwis and chocolate. We sat there talking for quite a bit just sitting and eating, the only thing that mightve made it better was if we had been outside, but yet quite enjoyable. From there we went to the supermarket to buy groceries for dinner which we would be enjoying at Michelles with her host mom- it was delicious and her host mom is super nice! We watched comme t'y est belle-this film that michelle and I had watched already at the French Film Festival with Scuzzo! It was good the second time as well.
Saturday was unfortunately not as nice as I had first thought but I went to a soccer game with some friends Nantes vs La Lorraine, it was a tie, but apparently we were the underdog and its the highest league we can be in, so not so bad. I*d never been to a match before so it was cool, they had balloons for us to wave to show spirit and whatnot-Elen Im sure you wouldve loved it. I also had part of my first kebab-this sandwhich type thing with some questionnable type of meat on the inside, it was actually left over from a friend, and since throwing out food is a no-no I ate it.

This Sunday most of my host family was gone doing their own thing so I went to church in the morning with my host dad and found an adorable 5 year old who talked to me after church. After about 5 minutes of talking to me she was like, hmm you talk a little funny, and I was like yeh, French isnt my first language, and she reponded-oh well thats odd because your dad (host dad) talks very well- I tried to explain the concept to her and for the most part I think she got it and then decided we should go hide from our 'parents' in the confessionary-it was adorable, she also explained to me how she wanted to give the begger some money but was afraid her mom would be mad. From there she decided to quiz me on the name of everything in sight-pretty great.
I had lunch just with my host dad which was nice because it was a lot calmer and I felt like I could talk for once instead of sitting their mute and awkward. As for the rest of the day I spent three hours studying in a park and noticing far more PDA than I would've liked but so goes the french.

In other news Im such a chocoholic all I do is eat chocolate and chocolate cookies and its probably really bad, and ironic because I usually give up chocolate for lent-buts its france haha.




Until next time Im now going to enjoy the 65 degree weather while I can. I walked to the center this morning it was a good 40 mins but enjoyable with the sunshine.