Joy to the World

A new sibling is on its way. Not in the traditional sense - that would require a stalk or a heron or whatever bird it is that wraps up crying, pooing, sleeping bundles of joy and drops them at your doorstep - no, this is more the birds and the bees type of 'on its way' - it should arrive sometime around the end of April from the sounds of it.

Now in spite of the fact that I will be 20 years old by the time this baby comes along and therefore be the same age most of my family members are when they are expecting/already Mamabears (not my plan to follow in their footsteps by the way) and that little I-live-on-the-other-side-of-the-world problem - I fully plan on being an excellent half-sibling. Complete with embarrassing toilet-training pics at their 21st (when I am 41).

In case you're wondering which parent is knocked up I'll give you a hint. It's not Mamabear. She felt she'd done well the first time but Dad and Gina are giving it another crack and good for them, hopefully it (they don't want to know the gender - therefore condemning their child to being clad in neutral colours such as green and yellow for the first few months of its life) is adorable and they don't name it anything weird like Mercedes or Schappelle - not names that push the kid in the right direction.

In other news: I'm coming home in March, I'll stick around for five weeks, see if Gina pops and if not I'll meet the kid at some other point. So if you want to - you know - hang out. I'll be around for the first time in two years.

As for what I'm up to: The new semester has started so I'm quite busy at the moment. I've decided my German is good enough for now and started with a few new languages - Spanish and Russian. Mostly just so I can have the title of Polyglot. I'm pretentious that way. In my head I imagine that once I speak all three languages fluently, plus my native English - then some old hobbit-like man will come out of nowhere and present me with an oversized novelty cheque and tell me I've reached language level awesome - I really hope that's how it works...


Hope all is well.

P!nk Prüfungen

I hate P!nk. I hate her ruining a perfectly good exclamation mark, I hate her pretentious try-hard uplifting songs like Bridge of light and god knows what else, but mostly I hate that her music actually challenges the position of most hated song in my head (at the moment it's Miley's new one - We can't stop - please, for the love of god STOP). Seriously P!nk - stop wearing low cut clothes, you look like a man and quit it with the 'I will save you with my intensely meaningful song" music.

I hate it.

Ok now that is over I can admit that I have my first exam in German next week and am having mild-panic attacks. Mostly due to the fact that I have never had to write an exam in German - well except for the German as a foreign language tests - but this is real this time - I can't pull Puss-in-Boots eyes and pray for the best this time, plus my classmates aren't from Equador and Bora Bora this time - they're real Germs....like the ones you see in movies eating Bratwurst and wearing Lederhosen.

So my plan of attack is to learn all the material before the exam, then go talk to the Professor and tell him everything I know (and use Puss-in-Boots eyes) so that in the case that I epically mess up in the exam and freak out- he knows I know it and gives me an excellent mark anyway, and then if all else fails - I can always call him racist and run out crying. That'd also be an option....

Just kidding, actually it should be fine. I feel about ready to write an essay on it now really, I speak more German than English nowadays anyway - surely it can't be too hard to write what I say, just gotta get that  general habit of talking nonsense two-thirds of the time under control... That being said I had an exam in English the other day and realised how terrible my english has gotten after I couldn't remember the word for exclusion and wrote 'not allowed to join in' instead. I'm hoping that particular prof thinks I'm foreign too - racist...

Anyways study to do, snacks to eat.

Hope all is well.

P.S. New haircut

Just a little tip...

My housemate is a notorious note-leaver. I only have to start scaling the stairs to see the first helpful little post-it note sticking out the door, which if I were the hulk, would almost definitely make me go green with anger. Frankly I'm always surprised when I open the door to fnd that she hasn't gone on a rampage and simply post-it-noted the walls to oblivion - at least not yet...

Ohhhhh they're always such passive aggressive commands great little tips though - Giorgia it would be LOVELY if you would take out the rubbish, Giorgia it would MAKE MY DAY if you'd mop the floor, Can't WAIT for the microwave to be cleaned when I get home - p.s. Don't use the sink - YOU blocked it with YOUR scraps.

I hate notes. They make me want to passive aggressively set fire to her basil plant that sits on the kitchen table, that or sun-dry the those food scraps she hates so much on the kitchen bench...

Actually I really like both of my housemates though, they leave me alone when I need to study, eat their healthy salads whilst I sit there scoffing pasta and icecream for the fouth day running and only complain minimally when I start accidental parties...which happens more often than accidents really should.

They're clean which I am...well, ok maybe the post-it notes are warranted...but at least I am direct and tell my house mates when something is not up to my very low house-keeping standards - but these post-it notes have now started teaching me to be passive aggressive about these things. Last week I even did one of my housemate's dishes rather than ask her to clean up the mess that had been sitting in the sink for two days -

So I have begun collecting the post-it notes, sooner or later she'll run out and then she'll have no way of communicating except to speak directly to me. She'll come to my door and ask how my day was, we'll chat for a while before she gets to the real point - a complaint friendly suggestion, at which point I will look her in the eye and reply....in post-it notes.


Hope all is well.

Nickleback-itis

In the history of music, many artists have suffered from the terrible Nickleback fever - it starts with a hit and then turns into album upon album of the same song with slightly altered lyrics. Whilst others take a long time to develop the disease (take Greenday's awful new album(s) and Bon Jovi for example), some bands - the Prodigy for instance (the band that brought us hits such as firestarter and voodoo - a mixture of drug-fueled shouting and someone banging whatever instrument they find within arm's length), have seemingly been founded with the disease.

That being said, I still love Greenday and no amount of excessive German radio time for Bon Jovi is going to make them any less excellent....

This time last year I was preparing for my first festival ever. Actually, I think I was trying to sell my ticket in a facebook group to avoid having to go to my first festival ever. Funny that, becaue instead of selling the ticket, a girl by the name of Eva responded to my frantic "SOMEONE BUY MY TICKET FOR A FESTIVAL THAT STARTS IN THREE DAYS OMG OMG OMG" post with the suggestion that I go with her - a random - to a three day festival - and so I did.

I was useless at that first festival. I only brought bread, cheese and poptarts with me to eat, bought my sleeping bag on the day, forgot sunscreen, wore the ugliest clothing imaginable (not to mention that my hair was actually sticking to my face) and I did not know any one; but I did meet Pascal - who seems to be into greasy hair and snakeskin gumboots, because he gave me real food to eat and sunscreen so that I made it through that first festival alive.

My point in telling you this is not to get all lovey dovey, it's just to point out that he is a festival lifesaver - and he possibly saved two more people this year when we went to Rock im Park.

I'm not sure if Joe ever quite knew what was going on - the fact that the first question after buying a ticket to this festival was "where do we sleep?" followed by "how do we get there?" would suggest not...but I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. I certainly enjoyed the excitement on he and Basti's face at the suggestion of breakfast - as if Pascal had to offer first in order for them to be allowed to raid the groceries. Basti, a die-hard metal-head made the mistake of following Pascal and I to watch bands to "see something new," - I took him to Dizzee Rascal...He looked a little confused and a lot horrified. That, along with us never finding Joe again whenever he wandered off (until that night at the tents) and then on the last day after he'd left, finding a stockpile of his rubbish in the corner of his tent like a little magpie's nest, not to mention the fail BBQ that took at least an hour to get going (I have no Aussie BBQing prowess I'm sorry to say) made for an interesting festival. It was great though and  highly recommend Aussie's check out Volbeat, Royal Republic and Bastille...assuming they haven't made it to our little island home yet...

Well, that's it for the day. I have to study for upcoming exams.

Hope all is well.

P.S. Trying to get home next March for six weeks.

Krystal Clear.

It has now been over a year since I have been home and whilst I hate to admit it, I am kind of home sick some days.

Krystal, one of my oldest friends is about to turn 18 - June 10th, a date she is counting down to desperately - fair enough considering she's in her second year of uni and two years younger than everyone around her.  I'm sad I won't be there for her birthday to pinch her cheeks and taunt her about how she's the baby like I always do, nor will I be there to be a terrible influence like I was growing up - which must come as a relief to her parents - one more birthday when they don't have to worry that I'm going to hit someone in the head with a hairbrush, talk everyone into getting into their sleeping bags and sliding down the stairs or go puppy hunting with Krys in secret until they are forced to get her the dog of her dreams... 14 years and I won't be there to help her take the leap into adulthood by dragging her to the casino for her first drink, gamble and club all in one go - that makes me very sad indeed - but on the bright side; I do have a terrible Skype connection and can occasionally make it function well enough to see people in slow-mo with their mouths moving completely out of sync, that and maybe a bottle of Jaegermeister in the mail shall have to cut it...until I can talk her into a little euro-trip that is.

Apart from that I miss all the obvious things like my family and friends, mint slices, vegemite, australian slang and accents, the beach even though I avoided it like the plague for fear of turning into a lobster and having sand in places sand should never be. I miss family reunions over Easter, Flippin' Pancakes in Sassafrass, it not snowing for four months of the year forcing me to layer up until I look like the Michelin man. I miss shops being open on Sundays, bogans starting fights at the bus stops and Knox City....I miss Knox. I miss going there and always running into someone I knew, chilling in the food court and window shopping with friends after school. I miss shops like Target and Myer. I miss working at Maccas (McDonalds) so many hours in a week that I start answering my phone with "Would you like fries with that?" and baking cupcakes with Magenta on holidays instead of using the time to study. I miss Halloween at Heidi's and Wednesday night dinners with the family and countless other little things that make the place a home.

That being said I'm happy here in my new home, and there are things here I prefer to Australia - inexpensive casinos, alcohol and clubs for example Krys ;) and a million other things, but I'm going to avoid another long list and instead prepare for my job interview - sadly no fries are on offer at this particular bar, but maybe I can get them to add them

to the cocktail menu....

Hope all is well.

Doggy Dial-Up

I am in a bus. This bus has wifi. Oh the wonders of technology, soon we will just hook up little routers to our dogs so that we are connected on even the shortest of walks - or alternatively we could just not be a massive bunch of cheap skates and get an internet flat rate on our phones....but I like the doggy dial-up idea better....

I'm heading to Nuremberg  the city in Bavaria where I did an exchange two years ago. I will see my exchange family and we will merrily go and drink copious amounts of beer together at Bergkirchweih, the region's big(gest) beer fest. I will drink two litres of beer, pee like a stallion and then - under Laura's instruction - be dragged on one of those drop-towers of death that make your stomach come out your mouth and your lungs drop out your...you get the point. Maybe if I drink the beer fast enough I'll look green naturally - without needing a satanic roller-coaster or two to hit that point....we can only hope.

And in no relation to anything that I have said so far at all: Uni is excellent. No one can ever quite describe just how excellent uni is. Uni keeps you busy with everything from parties to the pile of homework you come home to at the end of the week, but I somehow like studying; yes, it offers me a range of pointless new facts to bore my family members with so that we can wonderful conversations like this:

Me: Hey, did you know that...
Mum: ...No! No I didn't.

Mamabear has learnt over the years that the best way to get me to stop talking is to never let me start - Pascal hasn't learnt that yet. Unlike Mamabear - he foolishly lets me get started and is then forced to just sit there and listen. One time he even got shiny eyes as he pretended to be interested in my discussion of the third accepted gender (males acting and dressing as females) in Native American culture, although in retrospect those could have been  tears...best not dwell on that.

Anyways that's enough for one day, I have a beer fest to hit up!

Hope all is well.

Eurovision 2013: At least they spared Switzerland the humiliation of being in the finals

And so it was that time of the year again, a beautiful time filled with white spandex and glitter - it was Eurovision time - and oh how we celebrated.

Now as I explained last year, Switzerland always loses (unless they cheat and get Celine Dion) and there is a great drinking game to go along with the song contest. The rules are simple, all one hundred of them: http://www.webtender.com/handbook/games/eurovision-song-contest.game and you'll find that the game makes the epitome of trash TV bearable, some might even say enjoyable! This year I played it with 11 others as we watched Denmark sing themselves to glory - well, we kind of played it - Mostly we just drank copious amounts of alcohol any time the horrors of Eurovision became too real for us. Each time that happened, we'd simply drink ourselves back in to the wonderland where people in morph-suits weren't doing acrobatics whilst men in tight, white spandex thrusted away to an 80's beat  - don't judge. You don't know what I've been through!

Speaking of being through things - I have decided that exactly that: "You don't know what I've been through!" will be my excuse to get out of anything and everything that I don't want to do or admit fault to - Oh I'm sitting in your chair? Well you don't know what I've been through! I forgot it was your birthday? You don't know what I've been through! I ate the last cookie? Let's just say YDKWIBT for short.

Anyways back on track: So after the votes were called and the very undeserving Denmark won (Romania had my full support), the police were called. Ok, so maybe it didn't happen exactly like that but for some reason or another; one of my friend's hater-housemates called the police rather than just knocking on her door and asking us to quieten down like the normal German night-dragons do (Koennt ihr bitte ein bisschen LEISE SEIN?!?!?!? *spoken as a death threat*) none the less that ended things and we headed off on our path of destruction to upset all of my neighbours whilst we were at it. Then nothing interesting happened for a while, there was a lot of dancing to 'Thrift shop' and then we found ourselves on an island. 

Now obviously at this point you're either thinking a) wow, this whole wonderland thing really got out of hand, or b) seriously, where is this going? Actually the little island is situated in the middle of town; there we fearfully ran away from the spawn of satan A.K.A. swans and I proved that I shouldn't be out without my glasses after incorrectly identifying a duck as a fish. We frolicked, we danced, I tried to make people swim in the refreshing river water and then after finding out that not even the 24-hour Doener place was offering food at 6:30am we settled for breakfast cake and after setting an alarm for 4pm, I finally fell into bed sometime after 9. 

The end.

P.S. Romania should have won: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV3xp5ZXSYA

Hope all is well.