I once was a writer...

In case you're not in the loop, I live in Kiel, Germany. I've been here for a little under six months, and I am still not used to typing on a German keyboard. So, although I will of course proof-read this before posting it, gimme a break on the typos, please. So, yes, as I was saying, I live in Kiel. Northen Germany (or Southern Denmark, depending on perspectives...). It has plenty of nice things, abundant awesome things, and quite a few simply awe-inspiring things. One of the latter, is that during the II World War, Kiel was a much desired target for complete destruction, since the vast majority (and the best) U-Boot (submarines) were built here. By the time Germany signed the peace treaty (I am mildly paraphrasing what really happened... I can imagine Joe and Julie, the History majors, frowing and rolling their eyes at me), Kiel was only the shadow of what one could call a city. It was destroyed. Torn apart. It was no longer a city. But the Germans, being the first-worlder...

It's been 6 months here. Six months of winter. That's all the Germans have--winter. Don't let them fool you: they will speak of myths and legends, fairy tales if you ask me, of some weird thing called spring , and then comes the completely unfathomable tall-tale of summer , which makes unicorns seem like normal, everyday boring stuff. But there are other things they Germans say. Things so cute, or so weird, or so plain interesting, that make me pleased to have enjoyed their winter, with sunrise at 9 a.m. and sunset at 4 p.m., and during this "daylight" time, no sun. How can you have a sun rise when no sun rises? Anyway. That is totally not the point. Not today. Not now. When I met with my German friends, Isa and Chrissy, in Barranquilla in May of last year, I think what they were most surprised with was our waking-up attitude. I used to sing them the song my mom used to sing to me (we sing it to each other every once in a while, still), which loosely translat...

I have a couple of friends--Kathi & David--who have a very particular sense of humor. Toilets, for instance, make them pee their pants with laughter. It has something to do with a you-just-had-to-be-there story about Kat and Dave going to a hotel, and Kat not finding the bathroom in the hotel room. I didn't get it then, and I don't get it now. But every time they need or want to do something funny--which is quite often--, they use toilet humor. Like, the day I met Dave (mind you, at this moment, back in 200...1? 2? I did not like Kathi very much. And she did not like me much either. We had aweful nicknames for each other. I was "Miss All-That-And-A-Bag-Of-Chips" --code name for my arrogance and my need to do everything I could possibly do on campus, on my own--, and she was the "Conservative Frigid Bitch" --code name for her being conservative, frigid, and well, a not-so-nice-person. Well, it was late afternoon one day, we were both in The Bell Ringer of...

The Germans think they can do everything on their own. I'm not referring to the country in general. Germany, we all know, can in fact do everything on its own. Or, how many countries do you know of that can lose a war, and less than 50 years later be a world power? As in awe as I am of the country and its leaders and its people, I did not refer to them. I meant the normal, everyday, average German. They think they can do everything on their own. And what sucks--or what is amazing, really--is that they can do everything on their own. You see, we're moving into a new apartment in a couple of weeks. When we looked at the apartment back in November and decided that that was to be our new home in the new year, it looked perfect to us. But the owners said they would have the apartment renovated before we moved in. Excellent, I thought. I get a brand new life in a brand new year in a brand new apartment in a brand new country--with the same old boyfriend. Something old, something ne...

Another year. Why are we always amazed at this? It's not like time has moved faster or slower. It's not like it hasn't happened before. 365 days have gone by, and so we have a reason to party. That seems really random. Who thought that up? "Hey, whatcha say, that every 365 days we make a huge party?" And then some other dude (high on who-knows-what) said, "Dude, yeah... but let's make an even BIGGER party on the 366th day every four years--yeah!" Like the whole one year, twelve months, 52 weeks, 365 days thingy was not complicated enough. A friend of mine recently said that she finds it just a tad absurd--but fascinatingly interesting--that more than half of the world celebrates the "new year" on December 31st, when every year begins at a different time for all of us. Our first year begins on the first anniversary of our birthday--or do you really mean to say that my little cousin Alejandro's life, born on the 18 of December two yea...