falling back into place

…that’s exactly what happens. i’ve not even been home a week, and i’m right back in the middle of things like i never missed a beat. i’ve jumped my car twice [it didn't like the four month sabbatical], driven about 600 miles, some windows down, music up. i’ve been fishing and fourwheeler riding and sat amidst the cows. my maroon out tshirts, basketball shorts, and flip flops are no longer lonely. i’ve watched tv, and i was there to see my sister get inducted into the national honor society. i drove to church and parked 50 feet from the door; church seemed like i’d been only the week before. the radio is still playing the same tired songs, and i went shopping on a sunday afternoon. it feels like i missed less than when i’m normally in college station for the semester.

i went to wal-mart today. it was a bit overwhelming and so unnecessary. the european grocery stores are where it’s at. at least i’ve seen a few re-usable shopping bags here.

i miss the trams, the aib crew, my host family, german food, things like “the willage people”, being able to say entschuldigung without getting weird looks, walking everywhere [and seeing people's dogs walking everywhere], leaving the windows open, hanging out in the parks and playing soccer to name a few.

i’m inspired to learn german now–it sure would have been easier while i was emerged in it, but now it’s a good goal so i can live over there again… i’d go back tomorrow if i could.

life goes on as though nothing ever happened, and i fall back into the same role i played before. only i fit a little differently because of all i’ve gained this semester, and experiences have changed my perspective on things. i miss you europe.

and life as a texan resumes

i’m slowly readjusting to life here. it’s just like sierra said–it’s like you never left. things are still the same and you just reinsert yourself in life where you used to be–only with a completely different mind and heart. i’m so in love with europe and i can’t wait to go back. i really want to live there again.

mexican food was good, but nothing i missed too much… kinda the way i feel about everything. my mom took me shopping yesterday and it was a bit overwhelming. we were looking for dresses and girly things for pageant… i’m still in the hoodie/jeans/converse mindset and it freaked me out when people kept talking to us trying to sell us things. that’s another beautiful thing about europe.

i’ve been running the last couple of days. the streets in my neighborhood are named after rivers around the world… so i was still running along the rhein only it’s spelled rhine, there’s no water, and it’s ridiculously humid/hot. it’s amazing to pass the streets and think oh, i’ve been there, i’ve walked across bridges over that real river. what i blessing this semester was. it’s all just becoming a surreal dream that’s changed my life now, though.

mad rushes discourage tears

so we get back to düs a little behind schedule, and scurry to western to shower and grab all our luggage. i threw the remainder of stuff in my bags and said good bye to the fam. sad. and then we hurry to catch the last tram/train to the airport. it’s a good six minute walk from my house to the tram stop, but when you’re carrying three times your body weight in luggage (and straps are breaking and things are falling off), it feels like FOREVER. yuck= no fun. but we made it and luckily the tram driver waited till we’d gotten all eight of our bags on the tram before he took off. when we got to the hauptbanhof, the security guards helped us load on the elevator and then we found our track (of course it was 17 at the very end) and headed up the escalator. we made it on the train, and were completely exhausted. this picture doesn’t do it justice, and you can’t even see all our huge duffels.

we made it off the train and on the last sky train and found carts at the airport woo! then we found barrett woo! and hung out till about 5 am when we checked our luggage (thank goodness for the nice girl at the counter who let me split the weight between my two bags instead of weighing them individually), went through security and did all the airport stuff.

our flight from düs to amsterdam was on a tiny plane–with PROPELLERS. i didn’t know major airlines still flew planes like that. thankfully, we made it safely.

we had a nice klm plane from amsterdam to dfw with individual screens so we could watch movies and play games. we even had icecream. yay. and flying during the day is so much easier than at night (and going back in time instead of forward).

customs was a breeze–we just wrote stuff down and that was all there was to it.

then the fams were there! yay mom and dad. it really felt like i hadn’t been that long since i left–only a week or two.

we stopped at whataburger and drove home… in a truck… weird. then i saw b, hads, and my doggies. bode didn’t even recognize me at first.

and time runs out

breakfast. náridni galerie again. ask if you want to know what any of the works are.

we saw probably the most repulsive piece of art i’ve ever seen. i’ll spare you the details, but if you want to know, ask.

altstadt square. lunch. hostel for bags. airport.

[let's just say this was an awkward pic to take]

[our last european sunset boarding the plane for düs]

they come out at night

in attempts not to completely overload the last post in photos, the night ones will be placed here.

we went to the novoměstský pivovar for dinner. it was great.

[of all the pictures we saw people taking, i'm pretty sure mine from our table was the only one without a flash--and looked almost identical to the one they used on the business cards]

we’re designers, that’s what we do…

day 03 – monday, may 05

…things like go to design stores around the world. after breakfast, we ventured out to find design stores in praha. first, we went to NAOKO. they had tons of cute little designer ducks and some funky stick man things among others. then we went to QUBUS which also had some neat stuff. we at lunch at the bio place, accidentally bought sparkling water, and headed up to prague castle. we went into the church, chapel, and main hall of course, taking lots of pictures.

[i saw this above my door every day. finally, i asked lars what it meant when we saw it in bacharach. apparently on epiphany, boys dress up like the wisemen and bless all the houses leaving their mark or something like that. sounds like a fun tradition.]

[view from the tower... of all the places we climbed in europe, this was the most claustrophobic--it was a tiny spiral staircase about two feet wide that went straight up 287 steps with no landing... and there were people coming down the same way we were going up.]

[one last circle pic... only our circle was more of an arc]

orient až k praha

day 01 – saturday, may 03

saturday morning, i got up at 3 am, showered, packed, and met jacob at the tram stop to go to the flughafen to catch our lufthansa flight to prague. we arrived at 8.15 am, withdrew czech koruna, bought a transportation ticket for 100, and headed to our hostel. we dropped off our bags and headed into our last european city to explore for a while. after some exploring, we had a lunch of salty pancakes with ham and spinach in the altstadt. it rained a bit when we sat down, but it was okay.

[st nicholas's in the old town]

[couple flipping plates alone the river vltava]

there was this guy from brazil in our hostel room. when we went back to look up some stuff online, he was in there shirtless. he proceeded to not put one on for a while, and then he finally did. and dried his hair. and then changed. and then put on a locket. and then sprayed twelve [i'm not exaggerating] sprays of cologne.

at lars’ recommendation, we went to the opera that night. lots of it was in german. we were able to translate a couple of words like “man” and “ham.” haha

we picked out a nice little restaurant and had a nice meaty meal with four kinds of meat and bread and potato dumplings.

being in europe for four months, you get used to ignoring people asking for things in the public transportation systems. so when jacob and i saw this guy holding out something gold-ish and speaking in czech, we didn’t think anything of it and casually walked by. well, then he started yelling and we noticed a bit of english resembling “tickets!” haha it was the man checking for transportation tickets. we almost got in trouble with the law in the czech republic!–an escapade i’m glad i didn’t get to add to my list of european adventures. after showing our tickets, we went back to the hostel and crashed.

day 02 – sunday, may 04

we ate a quaint little breakfast of bread in the downstairs room at the hostel. then we headed to our metro at i. p. pavlova to catch a train north. we walked to the anglican episcopal church there, st. clements. they had heated pews that my mom would have really liked. the service was almost identical to home, and we had a cute little visiting priest from ireland. then we headed back to the altstadt and grabbed a gyro for lunch. seeing as how we’ve been to museums all over the continent, we decided to scope some out for this trip. there’s tons of music and concerts, but only two art museums. so we set out to conquer.

we went to the národni galerie [national gallery] north of the river. we were a bit worried at first because we didn’t see anyone else, sans guards, in the building. it was HUGE though. nine stories tall and the picture below was only the small exhibition space on each floor. we had a great time taking pictures and indulging in the art, but knew we couldn’t finish before they closed, so we made plans to come back on tuesday.

[in the museum, they had a set design section. it was amazing.]

[this reminded me of geoff's aib housing final project... there was also a floating island poster that reminded us of evan's... that pic was dark]

[buildings behind the hostel--the whole complex was really cool looking]

we had a glass of müller, our favorite german wine, and headed to an organ/brass concert at st. nicholas’ [first pic in this post]. it was beautiful. jacob and i both drew in our moleskines, interpreting the music, and the ladies next to us looked at us like we were crazy. i don’t blame them. then we grabbed pizza on the way back to the metro and went to bed.

the final days in düs

thursday sierra, gavin, geoff, rachel, kyle, alan and i met at the rhein park for one last game of fusball in düs. then we parted our ways. it was sad to be telling people bye.

friday i took rachel to the airport. the cutest little old man said “guten tag” to us leaving her apartment. man i’m going to miss that. i felt like a mother dropping off her daughter to get on a plane and go far away… a feeling i didn’t like… nor did i like riding the train back alone. i made my last visit to the altstadt,

legitimately ordered groß pommes mit mayo and paid zwei zen for it all in german, and got some mustard and a duffel for the trip back to america. then i made the last trip to aib to burn everything to make sure i had a copy when i got back to texas. bianca was there and viola came in and talked to me for a while. i’m sure going to miss them… a lot.

it occurred to me that i never posted aib pics, so… here’s from the back computer room towards the ping pong table/classroom behind it. our desks were already put up, but they would have been to the left of the table.

[room with the beemer where we had our lectures/presentations]

[where most of our nights were spent on the computers (there was another mac pro on the left

[last sunset from my window in western]

[process of packing... a bit of a mess]

threw some crap in a bag and went to kyle’s host family’s house for his birthday. it was fun. we had traditional german dinner of sausages and homemade sauerkraut. so good. and kyle in his lederhosen:

tanz in dem mai

so yesterday we had our final studio review. i think mine went pretty well [crosses fingers]. then we had the farewell dinner [tear]. our host families came and all the aib staff was there. i almost started crying when lars was talking about how they enjoyed the semester with us…

there’s this tradition in germany called tanz in dem mai, so seeing as how we had no committals to schoolwork or anything else of the sort, we decided to act like true düsseldorfers on one of our last nights here and partake in this tradition. stefie, bianca, and cole from aib came with us.

[biance, stefie, sierra and me. thanks for the crooked pic jacob/geoff.]

it was awesome. we went crazy dancing… and jumped in the middle of the mosh pit. it was the most intense/fun dancing ever.

[our converse took quite a beating]

[and cole lost one of the lens out of his glasses ]

then we walked down the rhein. after that we went to aib and played some ping pong for old time’s sake and talked for a while waiting on the trams to start running again. it was so fun.

somehow throughout the course of the night, i managed to rip my fourth pair of jeans. my fifth pair accidentally got placed in a bag of old clothes and given away. so… i go home with one small pair of the original six [that is if they'll make it through prague].

today geoff, gavin, rachel, sierra, kyle, alan and i played our last game of soccer in germany in a park along the rhein. it was fun. my ribs will remember sierra’s knee for a while.

little park behind jacob’s apartment [the yellow ones] that i look at on the walk to and from the tram every day. gosh i’m going to miss this.

ok ball… over the net and drop

finished my presentation this morning. the rest of the day i just hung out and played ping pong. we need a table at langford. kyle, alan, geoff and i played doubles this morning and alan, tim, barrett and i played doubles this afternoon. it was a good time. i looked down at my toe and saw it was bleeding everywhere. cool. haha and i cleaned my desk off today. it’s really hitting that this is the end of my time here. judging by my socks, it’s a good thing, though:

tomorrow is our final presentation. there is a guest critic coming and then our families are all coming for dinner. it’s also the last day in april. the germans have a tanzin in mai on may first. we will partake in the festivities. hoorah.

i suppose i should start packing soon–so i’ll know how big of a second bag i need. i don’t like packing, especially when i don’t want to leave, so i’ll do it later. now i leave you with more pictures from my window: