Things have improved slightly since my last post. I have tried to overcome my lagging heart by absorbing myself more fully into German life. That means reducing facebook face time and forcing myself into bed sooner. Last night, I finally succeeded in falling asleep before midnight. Actually, I fell asleep around 10pm and woke up at 5.30 this morning! It turns out that the promise of a skype date with Andy in the wee hours provides a strong incentive to wake up. :-) Andy and I had the chance to talk for nearly an hour, which was a nice little taste of home.
The skype date brightened my spirits for the day, but I am also celebrating little victories of embracing my German life. My lightbulb went out this morning and I had to go find the house master to figure out how to fix it. Even with my limited German, I succeeded in obtaining the needed Glühlampe (sounds like Gloompa when spoken by meine housemeisterin) and thus will actually have light tonight. My second little victory actually came from paying bills. Bill payment is rarely a pleasant activity, but I am happy that I successfully navigated my German bank website to pay my student fees for the next semester AND pay my German medical bills. (I should be reimbursed for the bills by my Fulbright health insurance). I successfully paid the bills all by myself. :-) Of course, my bank website comes in English so I cheated a little bit. ;-)
My third little victory came at the post office. I ussually went to the automatic post machines each time I needed stamps for the postcards I mail back to the US. However, the automatic machines only accept Münzen (coinage) and I never carry more than 4 Euros in coins. It became really annoying to walk all the way to the Post just to get 1-2 stamps at a time. Today I was able to ask for and recieve a packet of stamps and make sure that my reimbursement letter for health insurance was mailed. All in German of course! So day by day, my ability to navigate this country becomes easier.
Now for the last little detail...I saw Neo on the bus today! Perhaps I am in the Matrix? A very tall slender man with long black hair stepped onto the bus wearing a long black leather jacket and dark sunglasses. I seriously expected him to break into a fight with an agent at any moment. Perhaps my time in Germany is just a very complex computer simulation?
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Monday, January 26, 2009
jet lag or lagging heart
Here I am again, suffering through another night of insomnia. I've been meaning to write a post about about my stateside visit but I haven't been able to force myself to write the words. Now that sleep has escaped me yet again (despite 20 minutes of nightime yoga, relaxing music, and two sleeping pills) perhaps now is the time to compose another blog entry.
I have suffered insomnia ever since I returned from the states nearly 3 weeks ago. At first, I blamed jet lag, as my last days in the states were spent in Seattle, which is 9 hours behind Marburg. Seattlites wake up at 5pm Marburg time and go to sleep at 8am Marburg time so it was no suprise that I struggled to wake up before 2pm during the first few days. However, a few days turned into a few weeks and here I am composing a blog post when most Marburgers are fast asleep in their beds. I pull myself out of bed at 10am during the week (noon or 1pm on weekends). I wander around the office in a daze, finally becoming coherent and productive around 4pm. I hit my stride between 6 and 9pm but I have to rush out of the office by 9pm in order to catch the last bus back to the dorm. I then spend the next 3-4 hours working or trying to respond to friends and family online. I finally force myself into bed around 2am, then lay awake and think about all the exciting email and skype conversations I have to miss because I am 6-9 hours ahead of all the people in the states. After 3 weeks back in Germany, jet lag should no longer be an issue for sleeping. I think the real problem is that my heart is still in the states.
As much as I enjoy my time in Germany, it does not feel like home, which is really surprising for me to admit. Because I moved so often as a child, I have always been proud of the fact that I could make anyplace feel like home in under two months. I was always able to establish friendships and attachments to my new town. However, in all of those cases, I was able to make a clean break from my past. I rarely left loved ones behind. Until college, my family always moved with me. I still kept in contact with friends from my old locations (one girl and I kept a pen pal friendship for 5 years) but I quickly made friends in new locations and didn't worry about maintaining close ties with my old friends.
This time, I leave behind not only my family, but my fiance and many dear friends. The internet has enabled us to stay together, but it has also kept me from taking a clean break. In the past, the minutia of my friend's lives became irrelevant once I moved away. Now with facebook and skype, I know what they had for breakfast, even if their breakfast took place at the same time as my dinner. Because I am feel so involved with my friends lives, I haven't had to force my heart to break off from them. Thus, I suffer not from jet lag, but a lagging heart. My heart refuses to hop on a plane back to Germany.
Jet lag I can treat with a combination of sleeping pills and coffee, I am not sure how to treat lagging heart. Cutting myself off from my fiance is not an option (sorry sweetie, you can't get rid of me that easily ;-) Neither is avoiding my sisters when they call me at night. I have taken steps to absorb myself more fully in my German life. I spend at least two nights a week eating in the kitchen instead of in front of my computer. I try to envelope myself in work during the day, but that seems to fail to get me out of bed. (Sorry, waking up to perform calculations in lab where I can just as easily do them from my laptop on a wifi signal in tahiti is NOT a good incentive to wake up). Sadly, the strategy that seems to work best is to remember that I only have 168 mornings left until I wake up on the same continent as my loved ones. Thus, I wake up every morning in Germany counting down the days until I leave Germany. This is NOT how I pictured spending my time in Europe.
I am unsure of other ways to fix this problem, so I finish this post with a plea for advice. If you know of treatments for lagging heart, please let me know so I can get back to enjoying the precious oppurtunity I have to live here.
I have suffered insomnia ever since I returned from the states nearly 3 weeks ago. At first, I blamed jet lag, as my last days in the states were spent in Seattle, which is 9 hours behind Marburg. Seattlites wake up at 5pm Marburg time and go to sleep at 8am Marburg time so it was no suprise that I struggled to wake up before 2pm during the first few days. However, a few days turned into a few weeks and here I am composing a blog post when most Marburgers are fast asleep in their beds. I pull myself out of bed at 10am during the week (noon or 1pm on weekends). I wander around the office in a daze, finally becoming coherent and productive around 4pm. I hit my stride between 6 and 9pm but I have to rush out of the office by 9pm in order to catch the last bus back to the dorm. I then spend the next 3-4 hours working or trying to respond to friends and family online. I finally force myself into bed around 2am, then lay awake and think about all the exciting email and skype conversations I have to miss because I am 6-9 hours ahead of all the people in the states. After 3 weeks back in Germany, jet lag should no longer be an issue for sleeping. I think the real problem is that my heart is still in the states.
As much as I enjoy my time in Germany, it does not feel like home, which is really surprising for me to admit. Because I moved so often as a child, I have always been proud of the fact that I could make anyplace feel like home in under two months. I was always able to establish friendships and attachments to my new town. However, in all of those cases, I was able to make a clean break from my past. I rarely left loved ones behind. Until college, my family always moved with me. I still kept in contact with friends from my old locations (one girl and I kept a pen pal friendship for 5 years) but I quickly made friends in new locations and didn't worry about maintaining close ties with my old friends.
This time, I leave behind not only my family, but my fiance and many dear friends. The internet has enabled us to stay together, but it has also kept me from taking a clean break. In the past, the minutia of my friend's lives became irrelevant once I moved away. Now with facebook and skype, I know what they had for breakfast, even if their breakfast took place at the same time as my dinner. Because I am feel so involved with my friends lives, I haven't had to force my heart to break off from them. Thus, I suffer not from jet lag, but a lagging heart. My heart refuses to hop on a plane back to Germany.
Jet lag I can treat with a combination of sleeping pills and coffee, I am not sure how to treat lagging heart. Cutting myself off from my fiance is not an option (sorry sweetie, you can't get rid of me that easily ;-) Neither is avoiding my sisters when they call me at night. I have taken steps to absorb myself more fully in my German life. I spend at least two nights a week eating in the kitchen instead of in front of my computer. I try to envelope myself in work during the day, but that seems to fail to get me out of bed. (Sorry, waking up to perform calculations in lab where I can just as easily do them from my laptop on a wifi signal in tahiti is NOT a good incentive to wake up). Sadly, the strategy that seems to work best is to remember that I only have 168 mornings left until I wake up on the same continent as my loved ones. Thus, I wake up every morning in Germany counting down the days until I leave Germany. This is NOT how I pictured spending my time in Europe.
I am unsure of other ways to fix this problem, so I finish this post with a plea for advice. If you know of treatments for lagging heart, please let me know so I can get back to enjoying the precious oppurtunity I have to live here.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Inauguration thoughts
Its really difficult to derive complete thoughts or sentences about watching the inauguration of the 44th president. But I can begin with a bit of background.
Germans, for the most part, love Obama. In fact, most people outside the US adore Obama. But there is something to note about their love of Obama....they know who Obama is and much about the country that elected him. How many US citizens can say they know the Chancellor of Germany (hint, infamous backrub moment with #43)? How many people know the prime minister of England, which is supposedly our biggest trade partner and ally in the war on terror? Even more so, how many people can name people in Chinese leadership? (Especially important considering that China holds the loans for over 500 billion dollars in US debt) On the other hand, there are few pople in the world that can not name the 43rd and 44th presidents of the US. What is even more telling is that German citizens can often provide more information on US politics (including VP Joe Biden's home state) than German politics. In fact, most countries all over the world could debate the strength and weaknesses of the two main (and some minor) parties. The cititens knew enough to actually prefer one candidate over another. There are not many people outside of Germany that can give an opinion of the Social Democratic Party versus the Christian Democratic Union. One thing the 2008 election confirmed is that the United States of America is incredibly relevant for global politics.
But the global impact of Obama's election and inauguration have been discussed in many articles and many blogs by people much more qualified than me. (just google global reaction to Obama to find a few). I want to focus on thoughts that are unique to my situation.
Just like many expats, and quite a few Americans, I watched the inauguration proceedings online. I logged on to the cnn/facebook partnership around 1pm German time which was 6am EST so I beat the internet traffic jam that others experienced later. My initial reaction was one of annoyance. The commentators at CNN (and I believe all US stations) kept talking about the peaceful change of power that can only take place in the US. So the election of new parties in nearly every Western European nation doesn't count? Great Britain recently elected the first Scottish Prime Minister, switching the center of British power from London to the Scotts (remember Braveheart?). Nobody died in the transition. The inauguration coverage reminded me about all the reasons why Western Europeans consider Americans to be so self-centered. However, I realized that inauguration day was special so I pushed my annoyance to the side to focus on the exciting day.
I logged into the cnn/facebook interface in hopes of connecting with friends and colleagues back in the states who would share comments as the action took place. Sadly, very few of my friends could log in, so I basically had to watch the proceedings alone. Since I was at work, I had to keep up appearances, so I wrote job scripts while listening to Obama's speech. Thus I did not cry or even tear up during the speech. Keeping with the annoyance theme, I actually grew angry at Obama for making such grandiose claims about the specialness of the US. However, after the speech concluded, it hit me, Obama is really my president. I no longer have to listen to 30 minute diatribes about how President Bush's policies have ruined the world. Although I was never afraid to say, 'Ich bin Amerikanerin', I no longer have to wait for the inevietable statement, 'Your president is an idiot.' (heard many times in my travels). I finally have a president that not only understands global culture, he experiences it through his own family (See Obama's family tree). Someone who realizes that our decisions impact not only Joe the Plumber in Ohio, but Soli the seamstress in Indonesia and Chie the Car parts factory worker in China. America's role is no longer just to provide prudent leadership to American citizens, but to global citizens, because the globe impacts America as well.
Because I was unable to celebrate with friends in the US, I decided to throw a spontaneous celebration with my housemates. After a quick run to the supermarket, I returned with 4 bottles of wine and several types of cheeses and set up a spread in the shared kitchen. I grabbed the arms of every person who entered and said 'Ich habe einen neuen Präsident!' Most people smiled and moved on, but about 7 people sat down and partook of my meager feast. Between these 7 people, 7 nationalities were represented. Every one wanted to talk about the new president (see, the US is relevant!) and provided several interesting comments. The conversation lasted for 3 hours and took place in German, English, and French while we watched parade coverage in German.
The conversation that stuck most in my mind focused on the party atmosphere for the US election. One person said, 'The US is the only country where the inauguratioin of a democratic transfer of power resembles that of a dictatorship.' I stopped cold in my tracks. 'Is this guy comparing the US to North Korea?' I thought. It turns out he was not. Part of his comment meant that he was a little jealous that German people and the world would never express that much excitement of the election of a new Chancellor. I responded that I was grateful to be a citizen of a country that captivates the rest of the world. In makes it harder to become homesick and means that I will always be able to converse with people about I feel passionate about (my home country). The rest of his comment dealt with the faith that Americans put into their democratically elected leaders, which provided a very interesting criticism. In his perspective, Americans spend more time electing leaders than actually following what the leaders do. Thus, we place all the responsibility on our elected leaders and none of the responsibility on ourselves.
The US is a democracy, meaning that we have the right to elect our leaders, but we also have the responsibility to lead ourselves. By placing a large amount of trust and all the responsibilty into our leaders, we become people under a democratic dictatorship. Thus, when I went back to watch Obama's inauguration speech two days later, I started to cry. Obama's speech discussed how our leaders have sometimes failed us, but emphasized that its time for individuals to take responsibilty for their actions. We need to 'Pick OURSELVES up, dust OURSELVES up, and begin again the work of renewing America'.
Obama's speech inspired me to go from a self-absorbed student trying desperately to experience an American inaugurationto celebrating a party with people from all over the world. Although I may not agree with everything Obama does, I am overjoyed to have a president who speeches inspire me to become a better American, even a continent away.
Germans, for the most part, love Obama. In fact, most people outside the US adore Obama. But there is something to note about their love of Obama....they know who Obama is and much about the country that elected him. How many US citizens can say they know the Chancellor of Germany (hint, infamous backrub moment with #43)? How many people know the prime minister of England, which is supposedly our biggest trade partner and ally in the war on terror? Even more so, how many people can name people in Chinese leadership? (Especially important considering that China holds the loans for over 500 billion dollars in US debt) On the other hand, there are few pople in the world that can not name the 43rd and 44th presidents of the US. What is even more telling is that German citizens can often provide more information on US politics (including VP Joe Biden's home state) than German politics. In fact, most countries all over the world could debate the strength and weaknesses of the two main (and some minor) parties. The cititens knew enough to actually prefer one candidate over another. There are not many people outside of Germany that can give an opinion of the Social Democratic Party versus the Christian Democratic Union. One thing the 2008 election confirmed is that the United States of America is incredibly relevant for global politics.
But the global impact of Obama's election and inauguration have been discussed in many articles and many blogs by people much more qualified than me. (just google global reaction to Obama to find a few). I want to focus on thoughts that are unique to my situation.
Just like many expats, and quite a few Americans, I watched the inauguration proceedings online. I logged on to the cnn/facebook partnership around 1pm German time which was 6am EST so I beat the internet traffic jam that others experienced later. My initial reaction was one of annoyance. The commentators at CNN (and I believe all US stations) kept talking about the peaceful change of power that can only take place in the US. So the election of new parties in nearly every Western European nation doesn't count? Great Britain recently elected the first Scottish Prime Minister, switching the center of British power from London to the Scotts (remember Braveheart?). Nobody died in the transition. The inauguration coverage reminded me about all the reasons why Western Europeans consider Americans to be so self-centered. However, I realized that inauguration day was special so I pushed my annoyance to the side to focus on the exciting day.
I logged into the cnn/facebook interface in hopes of connecting with friends and colleagues back in the states who would share comments as the action took place. Sadly, very few of my friends could log in, so I basically had to watch the proceedings alone. Since I was at work, I had to keep up appearances, so I wrote job scripts while listening to Obama's speech. Thus I did not cry or even tear up during the speech. Keeping with the annoyance theme, I actually grew angry at Obama for making such grandiose claims about the specialness of the US. However, after the speech concluded, it hit me, Obama is really my president. I no longer have to listen to 30 minute diatribes about how President Bush's policies have ruined the world. Although I was never afraid to say, 'Ich bin Amerikanerin', I no longer have to wait for the inevietable statement, 'Your president is an idiot.' (heard many times in my travels). I finally have a president that not only understands global culture, he experiences it through his own family (See Obama's family tree). Someone who realizes that our decisions impact not only Joe the Plumber in Ohio, but Soli the seamstress in Indonesia and Chie the Car parts factory worker in China. America's role is no longer just to provide prudent leadership to American citizens, but to global citizens, because the globe impacts America as well.
Because I was unable to celebrate with friends in the US, I decided to throw a spontaneous celebration with my housemates. After a quick run to the supermarket, I returned with 4 bottles of wine and several types of cheeses and set up a spread in the shared kitchen. I grabbed the arms of every person who entered and said 'Ich habe einen neuen Präsident!' Most people smiled and moved on, but about 7 people sat down and partook of my meager feast. Between these 7 people, 7 nationalities were represented. Every one wanted to talk about the new president (see, the US is relevant!) and provided several interesting comments. The conversation lasted for 3 hours and took place in German, English, and French while we watched parade coverage in German.
The conversation that stuck most in my mind focused on the party atmosphere for the US election. One person said, 'The US is the only country where the inauguratioin of a democratic transfer of power resembles that of a dictatorship.' I stopped cold in my tracks. 'Is this guy comparing the US to North Korea?' I thought. It turns out he was not. Part of his comment meant that he was a little jealous that German people and the world would never express that much excitement of the election of a new Chancellor. I responded that I was grateful to be a citizen of a country that captivates the rest of the world. In makes it harder to become homesick and means that I will always be able to converse with people about I feel passionate about (my home country). The rest of his comment dealt with the faith that Americans put into their democratically elected leaders, which provided a very interesting criticism. In his perspective, Americans spend more time electing leaders than actually following what the leaders do. Thus, we place all the responsibility on our elected leaders and none of the responsibility on ourselves.
The US is a democracy, meaning that we have the right to elect our leaders, but we also have the responsibility to lead ourselves. By placing a large amount of trust and all the responsibilty into our leaders, we become people under a democratic dictatorship. Thus, when I went back to watch Obama's inauguration speech two days later, I started to cry. Obama's speech discussed how our leaders have sometimes failed us, but emphasized that its time for individuals to take responsibilty for their actions. We need to 'Pick OURSELVES up, dust OURSELVES up, and begin again the work of renewing America'.
Obama's speech inspired me to go from a self-absorbed student trying desperately to experience an American inaugurationto celebrating a party with people from all over the world. Although I may not agree with everything Obama does, I am overjoyed to have a president who speeches inspire me to become a better American, even a continent away.
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