Two months

And all of a sudden I've been here for two months, one-fifth of my time here in Hamburg. "Die Zeit läuft," as they say around here. One of the great things about this whole experience is that every day and week changes so much so quickly. Back in the so called normal world the extraordinary or unusual always punctuates the regularity of the everyday--shines a little light into the tedium of a unchanging schedule--but even after two months of living here there are still so many new things that happen from day to day that my life still seems fluid. The concrete still isn't dry, so to speak. There is, of course, a fixed schedule to my week, and a system of roots that's holding me down to the ground, but there's no way I could tell you what exactly I'll be doing a week or a month from now.

The newness is fantastic, of course, but there's nothing like feeling at home. There's a difference between something being new and something being foreign and confusing--a difference between that little flutter in your chest when you miss a step walking down the stairs versus the soreness in your ass after you fall down the whole flight. Finally having a permanent place to stretch out in, a group of friends I'm getting close to, and a close bond with the teachers I'm working at in the school has been absolutely wonderful. Up until now I've sort of been coasting along the surface of the city, but now it's becoming familiar, and I'm starting to get deeper into it. I know all the schedules for the trains in and out of Wilhelmsburg, and I've got a good sense of where all the subway lines take you and where they intersect. I've got an extensive list of landmarks that I recognize each day as I pass them by (Kamps bakery, the blue bridge over the Elbe, the TV tower, the bike rack at the Krupunder station in front of the buses), and an even bigger list of Pascals, Sonjas, Alis, Antonys, Kevins, Ochans, Kristophs, Patricks, Vanessas, and hundreds of other little faces that I see every day in class and around school.

I think I'm getting in so deep that I barely even recognize the changes in my personality and the way I behave anymore. Sometimes the changes are obvious--like waiting patiently at a crosswalk with the other Germans for the crossing signal and not feeling weird or impatient versus letting my American instincts take over and just crossing anyway--but it's going to be so damn interesting coming back to my homeland after this whole experience and finally being able to view a year of living in Germany through the lens of American life. After just six weeks in Berlin and a month of backpacking things like seeing and hearing English everywhere on the street, driving instead of taking the S Bahn, even the American sense of humor (especially the American sense of humor) seemed bizarre and uncomfortable. That whole trip lasted 77 days, and we're only a week and a half away from reaching that. It's going to be an exceptionally odd experience returning home to this strange, foreign land called Amerika at the end of this journey. I wonder if it will ever seem like the United States of America, or just Die Vereinigte Staaten von Amerika. Mal sehen. Ich kann mir nicht vorstellen, wie viel Zeit es brauchen wird, für alles noch mal normal zu scheinen.

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Anyway, we've got a few more blog posts coming up. Quite a bit has happened in the past week/week and a half (bought a new guitar! started doing my own lessons, taking a German as a foreign language class at the university, etc.), but haven't been in the writing mood for a while. Too much grayness and wind and rain outside. But I did actually get to see blue sky and the sun for like a half hour today, and there's nothing like vitamin D for creativity.