...Exhausted...

Staying up until 1 last night was an awful idea. It actually wouldn't have been so bad had the cleaning lady not arrived at 5:45 AM. I know, I know. Boohoo. Someone comes to clean our apartment in the morning. But no. She may be in our bathroom, living room, etc., but she does not clean. As I've mentioned before, she mops and stuff, but you really can't tell that she was there. So after she finished being obnoxiously loud around 6:30, Matthias wakes up, showers and eats breakfast. Last night Julia warned me that he was loud in the mornings, but I figured I could sleep through it. Oh no. I have my own room but I swear these walls are SOOOO thin! You really can hear everything. So then when I thought everyone was done and I could finally get back to sleep (it's now 7:30 at this point in my story). But ohhh no! Why would I think that I should be able to sleep at 7:30? I hear some random dudes come into our apartment and they're talking loudly and doing who knows what. We're supposed to get our kitchen remodeled on Monday...but that's MONDAY, not Thursday. I know it's them because I can hear the Hausmeister (guy who's in charge of our apartment place) talking. His German is really muttered and I can never understand what he's saying! And THEN! Someone starts pounding on something metal and it's sooo loud. So I figure that I'm not going to be able to sleep so I get up and star unpacking some of my things. And then someone starts DRILLING. Like really insanely loud drilling. So I can't help but laugh. I tried unpacking for awhile, but I was just sooo tired I had to lay down. Because of this, I don't think I'll be able to kick this jet lag as fast as I had wanted. Ughhh!! Luckily I have a fan in my room so I plugged that in and put it on high. It drowned out the noise quite a bit and I think I'll just have to use it every night to make sure I don't wake up to all this nonsense!

After the loud noises left my apartment, I got back into bed and tried to fall asleep, only for them to begin working on the apartment above mine! At this point, sleeping was a lost cause. So I showered and got ready. I was going to have some lunch, because by now it was 11 and was hungry from being up for so long. But they had taken out the electrical plugs in the kitchen so none of our appliances worked. Cool. So I got my stuff together and headed over to AJY to check my mail. Then I went around the corner to Heidi's. I cooked two baguette pizzas for us and we looked over my mail and chatted some more. A little while later Maressa came. We had planned on going to Bismarckplatz to get our Semester Tickets so we can ride the busses and trains around without paying. But she wanted to use Skype on Heidi's computer first so I chose which classes I wanted to take and Heidi read her book. Maressa is Brazilian and talked to her mom and sister in Portuguese. A very interesting little language I must say. Sounds like a combination of French, Italian, Spanish and just a hint of Chinese. Seriously. So since I was so tired and because she talked for a really long time, I fell asleep. I think I was out for about an hour.

A little after I woke up we headed for Bismarckplatz. On the way we ran into Anna who goes to Elon. We were really excited to see each other. I told her that I always think I see people from Elon when I walk around, but then realize that of course it's not who I think it is. But this time it was! She told us that Becca (also from Elon) has the flu and might not go to Berlin with us. That really stinks! After a little bit we headed on to Bismarckplatz and had to go to the travel agency place, but payed our 100 Euros and got our tickets! Woohoo! Heidi didn't have one last semester and rode illegally all over the place. Though she never got caught, we were always worried that someone would be checking for passes. Now we can go more places together and get good use out of them!

Heidi and I went back to AJY after that and Maressa went on to meet with a family she met last semester. She is going to be teaching a little girl English. How cute! Heidi and I went back to AJY and had a little coffee date. We couldn't decide between going for coffee or getting ice cream, so we made coffee for free and then decided to get ice cream later. Great plan. As we waited for it to brew, I met with Dr. Tracy about my classes. Hopefully I'll like them and I can just keep the ones that I originally had chosen. He had me write a few others down, but I'm just not sure if they're ones that I want to take. I saw a few of the new students, but they weren't very talkative. I had to add quite a bit of milk to my coffee, but it tasted pretty good! We talked for a long time and then headed out for some ice cream at our favorite shop. Gotta love 70 Cent ice cream! There were two Americans there who couldn't decide what they wanted because they didn't know what the different flavors were so we helped them out a little. We talked to them for awhile after getting our ice cream and found out they are from Ohio, like Heidi. They were on a 7-Country European trip and were very friendly.

We just went back to my apartment after that and I unpacked. Heidi read her book and then we just talked and listened to music for awhile. Maressa came over around 9:30 and talked to a friend on Skype. Heidi left about an hour later and then Maressa and I had some bread with Nutella after she got off the "phone." I really do feel like we just picked up right where we left off and that I wasn't gone for so long. I absolutely love the friendships I've made here and can't wait to make a few more!!!

Berlin this weekend! Be back on Sunday evening!