Facebook is effing creepy!

Sometimes facebook really creeps me out. Today it suggested that I might know a person, which I do know but I have NO idea how facebook could possibly know that. She worked at the kindergarten where one of kids I took care of when I was Au-pair went to and I talked to her a couple of times while I was there. But I have never been in contact with her since that time (2007), I'm not friends with anyone she is friends with on facebook and it looks like she doesn't even live and work where she used to live and work. The only person I'm friends with at all from Sweden is the mother of the family I stayed with and there is no connection at all between them. How can this possibly happen? And it gets even creepier: just yesterday I was thinking about people from Sweden that I could add as friends on facebook and briefly thought about her. But neither could I remember her exact name, nor did I really want to look for her as we weren't friends back then or anything. I literally just had one quick thought about her. HOW CAN FACEBOOK READ MY MIND???!!?

Concert fail

So yesterday this girl and I wanted to go and see Cut Copy in Berlin. Let me tell you how that went: It started (unknown to me) when she wanted to buy the tickets. For some reason she couldn't find them anywhere except on a very dodgy website - which she realized only later when doing some research and finding out that a lot of people had never received their tickets nor their money back. Anyway, the next day (yesterday) she got a call from the people of said website that they didn't have any tickets anymore but (and that was very nice) that they weren't sold out at some other website, where the girl bought them eventually. Alright, so she picks me up at about half past 6 and we're still in Dresden, when this old guy decides that it's not really necessary to stop at a red traffic light, even though the car before you is stopping, and - BOOM! - rear end collision. Nothing serious had happened, we were just a bit shocked. Luckily the police had been there anyway and had seen the whole thing, but still... we had to wait for some other cops and then talk to them etc, which took about an hour. We decided to go to Berlin nevertheless, even though we will probably be about an hour late. Neither of us had any idea where we were supposed to go in Berlin, but we had a google maps description of where to go. Unfortunately, once we got off the highway and took the first few turns we were somewhere completely different. None of the street names around us where the ones shown on the google map thingy. Of course we didn't have a map of Berlin either so - what where we supposed to do - just drove around trying to get to some place that was shown on the little map-thingy of our description. We did that for about half an hour, when suddenly I saw the name of a street that seemed familiar and YES, it was on the map - weirdly enough it was the first street we should have been in after leaving the highway. Anyway we got to the place way too late and were only able to see the last three songs that the band played, but I'm still amazed that we got there at all.

Vacation

So I just came back from my annual trip to Austria with my family and god, I needed that vacation. I had this horrible, horrible exam just before I left. I literally studied 12-14 hours each day for it and I'm not happy with the result at all. It still bothers me.
Nevertheless it was great to get away from Dresden and everything for about a week and spend some time with my Mom and my sister - well, I live with my sister, so I spend time with her every day, but usually we're both busy with the stuff that we do so a vacation is different. We went skiing in Schattwald, which is a little village in Austria. We've been going to the same bed and breakfast place there since I was 11 and my Mom used to go there with her parents until my sister was born. I just love it there. The whole house always smells like coffee and the woman who runs the place is such a sweetheart. My sister and I gave her the name "Igelfrau" (which could be translated to "Lady hedgehog") when we were kids because her face kind of looks like the face of a hedgehog - a nice hedgehog!
We were extremely lucky with the weather, too. It started snowing the day we got there, kept snowing for the next two days followed by two days of beautiful sunshine. It was perfect. We went skiing all day and played a lot of settlers in the evenings.
The other guests there are worth mentioning, too. They've been coming there forever as well so we already knew them. They are an interesting mixture of annoyingly loud, sweet and annoyingly ignorant. It's a group of three couples from different places in North Rhine Westphalia and some of them have the worst accent! They're all pretty old, narrow minded and read the BILD. The women like to discuss church and housekeeping while the men discuss soccer and play Skat (a very traditional German card game). On the other hand the women are very caring and the men let me play Skat with them, which I love, but which hardly anyone ever plays with me - it's a great game but somehow the only people who realize that except for me are men older than 60. Well, but of course they couldn't play with me without making remarks about how we should play for clothes. All of them are such a cliché (and one that I don't particularly fancy) but nevertheless I'm kind of sad that they probably won't be there the next time we go there. I had just gotten used to them!
Anyway, I had a great time and feel now at least kind of ready for the probably stressful march that awaits me. But a lot of it is good stress. Just also work. But no studying till 12 at night. Yay! :)

Feeling particularly well today!

Things have taken a very nice turn lately.
The most important one for me right now is that I will be doing the internship required for my graduation this fall in freaking Boulder, Colorado!!!!!!111oneeleven
I'm really, really, really excited about this. And again it shows how often things just.. happen. Without really planning it. It so just happened that a professor from that university gave a talk at my university because he knows someone there and was on his way to finland (which is so very close to Germany... ... if you are from the US). Anyway, the person he knows happens to know the guy who is the supervisor of my thesis and invited him to come and he in turn invited me to come. First I didn't even wanna go because it wasn't a public talk and I thought it would be weird to go, but I went anyway and the talk was really interesting. Also, I felt that the comments I made and questions I asked where intelligent enough to make a good first impression so I was daredevil enough to ask him for an intership - and it worked! Wow. I'm so glad I did it even though I was nervous and felt quite bold.
We still have to sign a contract and I have to get a visa and find somewhere to stay and so on, so there are plenty of things that could go wrong, but please keep your fingers crossed that it won't, because I really, really, really wanna do this!

Moreover, someone asked me whether I wanted to be part of a group of young artists who run a gallery in the baroque part of Dresden, or at least show some of my pictures there. Unfortunately I haven't really been painting or drawing since I moved to Dresden, so I don't have any new artworks. But as I don't want to waste this opportunity, I'm going to work on that - but that has to wait until march/april. It also gives me a reason to paint again, which is something I've been wanting to do for a while now but which never was important enough, so I always ended up doing other things instead. But I'm full of ideas!


Other than than I'm still really busy with university related things, but the events of the last weeks make me happy which in turn gives me more energy for the tasks ahead. So I'm not gonna complain. Everything looks very peachy right now.

Not feeling particularly well today...

Sometimes I have this overwhelming feeling of not being able to cope with my life - or more specific: with my studies - at all. I feel that there is so much to do and there is just no way that I will be able to do all of it in a way that I'm satisfied with. Right now there are to exams ahead, one of which is super-important and the other one, that is just 3 days before that one, is also really important because both of them will partly determine my final grade - the one first mentioned will actually be 1/8 of my final grade. This is usually enough to freak me out anyway, but then there is also my thesis, which I am kind of starting, or not, I don't know, because everything isn't very organized and I don't really get what the guy wants from me or where he wants to go with the whole project. He's a great guy and he basically treats me like an equal, which I think is a good thing, but which is also kind of overwhelming and stressing me out. I don't feel competent enough for that. And then we agree on things I should do and when I get home I realize that I don't have any idea what exactly those things mean and I'm scared that everything I do is wrong. Moreover there are like five million other things I have to do for university - well, not five million obviously but I have a presentation next week which has to be finished on friday (today is wednesday) and I have literally not even read through the papers and stuff we are supposed to use. Plus, one of the people who is doing the presentation with me isn't even in town right now and will come back, like, one day before the actual presentation or something. Also, I have to present an interview I had to do next week and also hand in a 4-8 pages final report for another class, which I still have to write completely. And somehow I have to find time in between to study for those two exams in february. I already started to study for one of them in november or something and I haven't even worked through 1/3 of the content. How am I supposed to do the rest in 1 1/2 super stressfull months???

You don't wanna go to Prohlis... and Pizza!

Somehow I have the feeling that documenting my dreams makes me remember more of them. Here is another, relatively short one:

Joe Lee... very young indeed.

I was talking to Jitka, a friend from university and because we had to prepare a presentation together, her and I took the tram to Prohlis, where she lived. It turned out that Prohlis was pretty much of a slum/trailer park kind of place. While we were walking through it, I said something like "this isn't exactly the nicest part of Dresden", to which she agreed. Then she added that on top of that only old people lived there except for her and the guy who was living right next to her. A guy, who looked like Joe Lee from the series "True Blood" overheard that and said "no, no, I'm young, too".

Also I made the best pizza ever today. I never used to be a huge fan of home-made pizza because it never tasted anything near the pizza at italian restaurants. I've been trying new recipes for the dough and different ways of baking it and finally I developed a recipe I really, really like. If any of you would like to try it out, just leave a comment and I will post it.

Yet another dream

This time less coherent (and in English because people asked me to).
It started out with me and my sister (I think) being at our old school and trying to find the room, where all the computers are, even though I don't remember why. One of the guys who was in the same classes as me (In Germany you have basically all classes except for religion classes with the same people until 11th/12th grade), called Christopher, was there, too. For some reason the room wasn't where it used to be but in a different room, whichs purpose I don't remember right now. But I don't think it was a classroom. I think it was some kind of science room... physics or chemistry. Anyway, we were looking for that room but somehow always got blocked by people, students and teachers alike.  When we finally got there, a class was in it so we had to wait. When the students got out, my sister looked inside and said, all surprised "oh, they have new computers".
Cut.
I'm at my room, which is the room that I used to live in when I was a kid (like 3-8 or something) and I'm playing an online roleplaying game - but not with the people I usually play with, but with my biology teacher from school, Mr. Secker, when I suddenly realize that I had won a trip to japan (how can you forget something like that?!) and the flight leaves in an hour so we should have left half an hour ago (somehow in my dream it only took half an hour to an airport). I said "brb" to Mr. Secker and ran into the kitchen to tell my parents. My dad, who was still alive in my dream obviously, said he'd call the airport and ask if it makes sense at all to get there that late. I ran into my room and started packing my things quite hectically and without any plan what to take with me. I didn't even know how warm/cold it was in Japan, so I just packed all kinds of clothes, including a bright green skirt, that I had gotten from my sister, a very wide pair of jeans and other things that I don't remember right now. I also remember thinking "damn it, why did I wash my favourite pair of jeans _today_?! Now I can't take it with me", which is funny, because I actually did wash my favourite pair of jeans yesterday. Somehow my brain still new that.
I also resented not having bought new earplugs, which I had wanted to do for weeks (also true in real life). Why I was putting things in my bag, which was on my bed, my mom tried to help me by bringing stuff from the bathroom and my dad came back in , saying something like "no problem at all. A plane will wait for you at the airport, which will take you to Sydney, where you can catch your flight to Japan" - which of course doesn't make any sense, because Sydney is about as furthest away from here as possible. It wouldn't make any sense to fly there first. However, that didn't concern me in my dream. My only concern was, that I didn't have time to tell the online-people and especially Mr. Secker where I was going and just suddenly being gone, which seemed rather rude to me.


I think it's interesting and weird how dreams change. I mean - my dreams are still just as weird as they used to be, but I used to dream a lot about lakes and swimming pools. Now I seem to dream a lot about packing my bags. I have no idea why and I don't think I will ever find out, because the brain and dreams are just too complex and not well enough understood at all, but I'm sure that there is some reason. Maybe the associative network of my brain changed and while in the past somehow water-swimming-things were closely linked to a lot of things for some reason, now packing my bags is linked with a lot of things. But even if that's true I have no idea why.