So first off, I love this holiday. I enjoy food immensely; I love to cook it and consume it. —While we’re on this subject, I am a BITCHIN’ pie crust maker. Seriously. First try, no holes, perfectly even. It was the best apple pie in the history of the world. Holy crap. Anyway. Thanksgiving rocks. I love my family more and more the older I get. One of the best things about this year was actually being home this time. Last year the only two times I was really homesick for Colorado were at Thanksgiving and Christmas. 

So this year, I’m going to make a list of things I’ve come to be really incredibly thankful for since last year especially. 

1. My family. I would have died of starvation years ago without their help, and lost faith in myself as a person way before that without their constant support and love. They are the best people I know. 

2. My friends. You all rock so hard. Sometimes I can’t really grasp that people choose to be friends with me and like to be around me. 

3. My home. Colorado is such a beautiful state. Even though I fell in love with a different country last year, Colorado will always be my first love and a place I look forward to coming back to. 

4. My Thomas. He is so funny, dedicated, handsome…I could make this list go on for hours. I’m so blessed to have a relationship that’s going as well as it is. 

5. My school. Say what you will about UNC, I feel pretty well-prepared to be going out into the world as a real adult next year. I like the program I’m in, and all of the faculty I’ve encountered so far truly cares about me and my ambitions. 

6. My talents. I love to do the things I’m good at, and I feel like I have a bright future ahead of me doing something I find worthwhile. 

7. My opportunities. This past year opened my eyes to how much freedom and prosperity I have. I wonder what percentage of 20-something women in the world could manage to up and move to a different country for 10 months? Probably a pretty low percentage. 

Essentially, my life is lovely. I hope to never lose the feeling of optimism I have right now and have been able to have a grasp on for the past few months. Even though this semester kicked my ass, and I realized I have a lot of learning to do in the world out there, I feel like I’m ready. 

(I feel like I ought to add something like ‘Bring it on, world!’ or ‘Come and get me, life!’ but frankly, I really, really don’t want the world to bring it on. And if life ever does decide it’s out to get me I’ll run away screaming like a little girl.)

Hi internet. I’m still alive. (Yep, I’m writing a post for all, what, 3? of the people who read this. Whoop, go me!) 

Whew, glad to get that fear banished from everyone’s mind…I am absolutely not dead! And I’m even back in the country I come from, which is probably a desirable circumstance for you guys. I would say I’m glad to be back, but truthfully…I miss Karlsruhe. I’ll probably dedicate a whole post to this homesickness at some point. See there? I even called it ‘homesickness’ and totally didn’t realize. Basically, I loved my time in Germany. I’ve honestly never had a better year in my life, overall. 

I know that’s a pretty bold claim. But BAM! There it is. I found a new home and liked it so much I didn’t really want to come back to my actual home. Not to say I didn’t want to see my family and awesome friends, because I definitely did. I love Colorado, and I love all of the fantastic people here. But really, I liked the person I was in KA. (It is way too much effort to type out Karlsruhe every time, you guys.) I was confident, I was sexy, I was responsible, I didn’t stay in my room all the time because I was lazy, I met new people and enjoyed it. I even found the most awesome person ever to enter my life. More about him later…seriously. Lots more. He’s pretty much my favorite thing to talk about. 

Now that I’m not actually in the middle of all the new experiences and amazing things I did abroad, I’m going to try to record some of them here retroactively. (Does it count as recording if it’s retroactive? Who knows.) I will type some stuff about stuff I did while in Germany. I’ll even upload pictures and maybe videos sometimes! Trust me, it’ll be fun!

And once again, we see how utterly terrible I am at keeping a steady blog. I got pretty good at LiveJournal last year, but apparently that couldn’t last while I was abroad. I promise, to all one or so of my readers, that I will try to do better in future. 

So anyway, it’s been an eventful three months. I left for Germany on the 1st of September and arrived around 12 or so the next day in Frankfurt. I then got on a train and sped to Karlsruhe, where a really awkward German man gave me keys to a dorm room, and flat pillow, two of the oddest sheets I’ve ever seen in my life, and a way too big pillowcase. I dragged my exhausted ass plus baggage up four flights of stairs and walked into a white, smallish room with a lovely window and a sink in the corner. I threw myself into the shower with gusto and somehow stayed awake long enough to eat before collapsing into bed. I also stopped off in the communal kitchen on my floor to blearily introduce myself to the five or so people sitting there. I remembered absolutely none of their names the next day. Ever since I woke up the day after I’ve been having adventure after another, and each one is better than the last. 

First I should talk about the actual place I live in. Karlsruhe is a city with roughly the same population as Greeley, but in a much smaller area. There are three universities here at least, one of which is a major technology school, another a school for things like engineering, and the one that I attend, a teacher’s college. The dorm I live in has seven stories, six of which house students from all of the universities in Karlsruhe. Our hallways are stacked with crates of various beverages, and a significant percent of those beverages are alcoholic. We can buy them straight from the fridge basically whenever we want. The kitchen that the 18 people on my floor share has two fridges separated into compartments for our food. We each have a cupboard or drawer for non-perishables, and all of the contents of the communal cupboards are available for our use. We also have a double-sided sink and two ovens with stovetops. There are two freezers where we all stick our food (labeled with our room numbers) and one more fridge with drinks in it. Essentially, best dorm ever. 

The people I’ve met here are indescribably cool. Everyone on my floor is incredibly welcoming, and not at all annoyed at having to repeat questions or statements if I don’t get it the first time (which happens more often that I wish it would…but I’m getting better!). On my first day in Karlsruhe, Austin and I met a student from England named Yannick, and directly after him most of the other exchange students. Three of them also come from England, one from Switzerland, one from Slovakia, and four also from the US. Even though we all have a different collection of classes now, we hang out in a group most of the time. We go forth unto the clubs, restaurants, Christmas markets, swimming pools, tourist attractions, and bars, and we conquer. With laughter and companionship and really awful jokes. 

Two of the other international students live in my dorm, Sinead and Austin. Austin comes from UNC with me; in fact we traveled here together. Sinead comes from Maigho, Ireland (I’m pretty positive that isn’t spelled correctly, sorry…) and she’s literally one of the coolest people I know. The three of us bonded almost instantly and the ridiculousness of our friendship grows by the day. We’ve also befriended a few people in particular from our dorm: Danny and Irene from Indonesia, David from Poland, Nikola from Bulgaria, and Markus from Germany to name just a few. 

Dorm life is a lot like one big social event. There is usually at least one dorm party a week where we go to dance, drink a little (but not too much; it’s amazing how much self-control people here as a general rule seem to have), and practice speaking German with new people. Every Tuesday night is Bea Bar night, when the bar in the bottom of ABH, our sister dorm, stays open till about 4 or 5 am for our dancing and socializing needs. One night I worked part of a shift behind the bar with Sinead and Danny and had a blast. It was sort of stressful, but also pretty fun. 

My actual classes are a whole different experience. We only have every class once a week, and they last for an hour and a half. I’m taking a history class, a lit class, a sociology class, three German classes, big band, and choir. I also have an internship on Tuesday mornings at the most awesome school I’ve ever been in. I’ll be dedicating a whole entry to that school later. It took me a while to get used to the system here, and it still throws me off every once in a while, but I’m pretty accustomed to it now. 

Man, there’s a lot of substance in this post. I should update more often. In closing, Germany rocks! I’m looking forward to all the time I still get to spend here and all the experiences I still get to have. 

p.s. I’ll write about some of the adventures I’ve already had next time!

I’m starting a new blog, in light of traveling out of the country. I feel like this will be a better site for uploading pictures and whatnot. I may share this blog with my traveling buddy, Austin Hinkle.

So look for travel posts, coming soon to a blog near you!