This Magic Moment

Free drinks are awesome. Like, ridiculously awesome. It just doesn’t get much better than that.

Still alive here! I think I always say this like it should be a surprise… but I do worry occasionally that my stay here hasn’t been accident-plagued enough. I mean, considerably the worst thing that has happened is perhaps leaving my phone charger and having to go get it. Really, that’s been it; it’s been absolutely fantastic so far. This worries me greatly. I’m sure enough chaos and stress will come as soon as we dip into classes and I realize that I have no idea what’s going on, either with classes themselves or with registration. I’m going to die. I will never again take organization in the States for granted… Our classes start tomorrow, and we still don’t have hours for classes, merely class descriptions, for the psychology classes. Lets hope to god that I don’t have anything in the morning…

Me and my posse here moved into our new studio apartments on Friday. It’s three studio apartments, one small one with one student and two larger ones with two in it. It’s been an adventure so far, for sure… my roommate is great, but we’re having an exciting time discovering all the little quirks. Like how there wasn’t hot water for the first day because we had to flip the switch and take the time to heat it up, or how the laundry machine’s door is broken and Danita, my roommate, had her clothes stuck in there for several days before prying it open with a knife. So laundry now consists of soaking clothes in a trash bin full of soapy water, then hang-drying them. I’m not sure how my clothes are going to last this… hopefully they won’t stretch out too much. Any advice from anyone? Other fun things: our fridge (and kitchen in general) is kind of disgusting, covered in mold because the girl living here before seems to have been a bit of a slob, and left food everywhere. Did most of the cleaning up to now, lets see how this works out. But we’ve been having garden parties and potluck dinners, and been playing the Sims and having people come and visit… it’s been good fun.

My night-life is still rather booming and it still frightens me just a bit. Thursday we had our end of ILP dinner, which involved my first eating of duck. It was extremely good, as long as I ignored the constant complaining of several around me. After that, me and Danita wandered by the river (which is just beautiful at night) before heading to a party there. Everyone had gone there after the party, so there were far too many Americans and not enough drinks for my taste, but hopefully next time will be better. Friday night I was exhausted after move-in, and I drank a large amount of wine at dinner, so I was good with that. Saturday night we were going to go clubbing, but we left fairly late and stopped at a bar for drinks. It was right as the football game was ending (I had wanted to go, but everyone wanted to go out instead… so I ended up going to that. Sigh) so the atmosphere was very joyous… The bartender saw that we were Californians, and all we could really hear over the music was “Motherfucking Westcoasters!” as he joyously slammed down a bottle of champagne and five glasses for us, claiming that it was on him. We did not argue. It got more exciting as I went to get a cocktail and he gave it to me for free (though after a couple of people he started charging, though at a lesser rate), and then he gave us all free shots of Jagen later. Good stuff. Clubbing then didn’t happen as the person in charge of finding the club forgot where it was, and people were just standing around so a few of us decided to hop on the last tram and go home rather than walking (though it’s no more than a kilometer or so outside of downtown).

Today I was planning on going out, just riding the tram and walking all over the city, having a tourist day… But then the hours went by, and I did laundry, and my feet were hurting from walking in heels… that didn’t happen. We did, however, start making tentative plans to go to Paris in two weeks. That will be SUPER fun if it doesn’t fall through. We’ll make it happen. *cross fingers*

Interesting little things… I got a very slinky purple dress for ten Euros at the (rather shady, one friend had some little gypsy girl search through her bag) marché, though Danita and I have not yet gone boot/jacket shopping. That will happen at some point, as will a football match! It’s part of the experience, yo! Elsewhere, I got Skype… I’m michiness42, I believe, so add me and we can chat. If you don’t, get it so we can talk. Also, I (for the time being) have internet at the apartment. The French student already living here has it, and he’s letting us pay him to use it… though we haven’t paid anything yet. Odd. And with that, I am going to listen to the Angels game. I’m excited. Wish me luck with the first classes! *gulp*