International Faith Day

International Faith Day is a greatly anticipated event celebrated worldwide by approximately 10- 20 people (up to 40 on good years) on July 21st. It was founded on July 21, 1951 when Saint Robert of Cleveland and Saint Virginia of Cornwall herded the faithless geese to the holiest of holy Bethesda, where the geese were cleansed of their avian sins with the help of the glorious purple sponge.

Every year since this glorious date 10s and 20s of people have celebrated this day with much pomp and circumstance. The Parade of Violets with floats of geese made of purple flowers and other purple vegetation is held in Pittsburgh where the holiday is most heavily celebrated.

The traditional garb of the day is a leisure suit in any shade of purple, E.g. Violet, Lavender, Lilac, Amethyst, Aubergine, Royal, Eggplant, Wisteria, Mauve, Biloba, Lotus, Cabbage, Heliotrope and many more! Combining patterns which are made of these shades on a silk shirt with the holy leisure suit has become a popular addition for its most dedicated of celebrators.

In 2011 the chairwoman of the event (AKA the Glaube) moved the main celebration to San Francisco, where revelers have congregated for the past week in order to prepare for the celebration.

This will be the first time San Francisco will have hosted the event and the organizers say they will wow the Berkley and Haight-Ashbury crowds.

This year's event will cost upwards of 100 million MDN , half paid through taxes (at national, regional and local level) and half by private entities, mainly K.Andrews Bank, Yoj of America (based in Arlington, VA, however it is currently starting up a new West Coast branch in the San Francisco Area) and Bobbykins National.

Ups!

So until just now I have not thought about the possiblilty of a Blogger app. I'm going to try to post some shorter blogs using this before I leave. Which by the way is 10 days... As much as I miss all of you back home, I don't want to leave. It will be super depressing when I have to drive everywhere vs. walking to the closest S-,U-Bahn or Bus to get where I need to go. I have not missed driving in traffic.

The first pic is me waiting on my class to start lol. Lol I'm a little bored... The second picture is of my classroom that is empty except for this kid named Johannes.

Montag, Montag, Alle warten auf den Montag!

SOOO Last night I had a lot of fun with Heather again. My plan had been to walk home, but then she said she was going get dinner at the best döner place in the city (which is Mustafa's Gemüse Döner off the Mehringdamm U6 &U and I had to join. The döner was AMAZING! I have never liked the chicken döner as much as the dönerfleisch (lamb and other meats) döners, but this was AMAZING. The chicken was really well seasoned and they not only gave me the shaved meat, but Heather said I also got a full grilled chicken breast!!! I was just devouring it so I didn't even notice. The salat (<--- german spelling) was good lettuce with carrots and chives, red onions and and other veggies, The onions had some sort of great sauce on them, and CILANTRO! The sauces were the best sauces I've ever tasted on a döner and the FETA... OMG the feta had DILL in it! It was AWESOME! The cucumbers and tomatoes were also fantastic quality. THEN they put grilled peppers, onions and potato slices on it! BEST DÖNER EVER!!!!

Since heather had never seen Prenzlauerberg and I have been dying to go back ever since our excursion there in my second week, we headed in that direction after eat our döners. It took me a while to get my bearings though. The last time I had been in Prenzlauerberg I was doing a scavenger hunt type of excursion in a down pour, so I had spent most of that walk looking at my feet and not learning my surroundings. HOWEVER we did find Anna Blume, which is where I wanted to bring Heather. We got some amazing crepe and had another very long conversation. Anna Blume is a really cool cafe' in Prenzlauerberg, which my professor had sent my group to on our scavenger hunt. We were to go and ask the people inside what Anna Blume meant, and it was a poem. I think I have the poem somewhere in my facebook album. They have amazing crepes there and during the downpour we were in during our scavenger hunt, it was a fantastic stop out of the rain.

Unfortunately we had forgotten we had gotten out of class at 6 so our sense of time was off. I still am not used to the sun going down so late, So it felt more like 9 when we realized it was 20 to midnight and the U & S-bahns would be closing soon. We sped walked to the U-bahn we had taken there, and it was closed. So we were freaking out a little bit, because our homes were VERY far from where we were and walking that wasn't really an option. So we decided to try the S-bahn at Alexanderplatz. However on the way, we saw the Rosa-Luxembourg U was still open and we took that to the S1 and went home.

It was a crazy night and I had a lot of fun, but I def need to spend the rest of the week in studying. Heather and I have completely different schedules EXCEPT on Mondays and Fridays. We have decided we will be putting alarms on our phones from now on, so that we get home at a reasonable hour lol.


btw the title was inpspired by Rebecca Black's having a new song out... (seriously???? why does she have ANOTHER song???)

Kathleen ♥

Auf Wiedersehen und Hallo!

Last Friday everyone left as I told you it was the end of the program last week, and most of my good friends are now back home in their respective home countries. We had a Creative Project and Farewell day with FubiS that day as well. This is why I have had that video posted all over my FB profile. It took us a week to put together (quite an intense week of editing for me) and SOOO worth it! All of the groups had really great projects. Ours (Anna Band, Hillary, Rory and I) was of course the video which is meant to be a day in the life in each of the types of accommodations offered, but with a humorous twist. Rory really put the humor into it lol. Nicole, Autumn and Ham did a really cute children’s book of a bear wandering through Berlin (the bear is the city “mascot”). Holly and Chris did short movies showing what things were important to them and how they had spent the past 6 weeks. And last but not least, Arly, Davis, Derek, Matt and Jacob did Bahnopoly which was a trivia game for Berlin where we had to answer questions about Berlin and German vocab in order move forward spaces toward the Hauptbahnhof to win. All were really nice projects.

OUR project however was however shown to the entire FUBiS program at the Farewell ceremony (It was the only student project shown from ALL of the classes in the program!!!) where Rory performed it live! Not only did our class LOVE our video and Rory’s performance, but the program and its directors and CEO’s loved it! It was an absolute hit!

Rory's Performance

The final scene in the video is my personal favorite. After the exam on the last day of class, I stayed in the classroom to work on our video. Claudia our Professor also stayed. It was a really nice day though and Claudia decided she wanted to go out onto the Balcony outside our window. Our classroom doesn’t have a door that lead out to it, but just our window. SO Claudia decided to climb out the window! I thought this was hysterical and as she was preparing and putting her things out there, I prepared Anna’s flip cam and got the wonderful shot of her climbing out the window. SO at the end of our film as the students are walking in it looks like Claudia is trying to escape! She had NO idea I had taken this video and nearly collapsed she was laughing so hard, when she saw it! It was great! After the presentation, we had a free luncheon and I said SOO many goodbyes. I did NOT like that at all! I am going to miss all of them so much! I already do!

After the lunch I went with Nicole out to Friedrichshain and got a few drinks. Watermelon man cocktails are REALLY good btw! Nicole had never been to this area and so I showed her the graffiti and Simon-Dach-Straße. We then went and walked the East-Side-Gallery and took lots of pictures and signed the wall! It was a REALLY great way to end my time with her here in Berlin. We took the train back and she had to leave. That was the first time I REALLY felt upset about everyone leaving. I know I whined the week before, but that is when it really hit me. When she walked off the train, I was SOO upset! Thankfully she lives in Pittsburgh and I’m going to go visit her when I get home! After leaving Nicole, I went back to my dorm and saw people still around and felt a little better. I cleaned my room packed up my things and said a few more goodbyes. The next day I moved into my new place.

This week felt a little weird. Through Monday I had FUBiS friends still kicking around and my friend Rory even stayed with me 2 nights. I’m pretty glad he did, because it would have been a bit lonely and pretty awkward those first few nights had I been alone with my crazy landlady. He and I spent last Sunday walking around Mitte. We started at Friedrichsstraße and then made a big circle to the Museen Insel (museum island) ran into a flohmarkt (which because it was on the Museen Insel was super expensive), wandered through the Insel, down to Gendarmenmarkt and saw the German and French Churches there. We then headed toward the Tiergarten and walked through it on a path parallel to Straße des 17. Juni . It was a super hot day, so the shade on the path was MUCH appreciated. It was a really nice walk though, because the Tiergarten is just beautiful. Then we got to the Siegessäule and paid our €2,50 student fee and climbed to the top. It was super hot and in the stairway it was super stuffy, but at the top it was totally worth it! You can see the whole city from up there! Absolutely Gorgeous! The top was pretty crowded and the side with the shade was even more crowded lol. We stayed in the shaded are for a while and then headed back down.

We then headed through the Tiergarten to my favorite place in all of Berlin, Café am Neuen See! I have visited this café EVERY time I have been to Berlin. The first time was with my cousin Julia, when we met the very flirtatious eastern European men and had fun learning how to row a boat. The second time was with Marybeth and Anna. It took us FOREVER to find the café again! I remember us walking by the zoo thinking we had run into a Jurassic park type park; because the sounds we were hearing were not anything any of us had ever heard before. We finally found it and had beer and pizza and took a rowboat out as well. We got stuck again as I had with Julia in the low hanging vines and tree roots. It was awesome. We went there several times actually and got Pizza and bier, except I always got fresh peppermint tea. With Rory I had a new experience; we ate at the cafeteria style portion of the café and got pizza there. We sat at the long picnic style tables and sat with an old German couple. They were very nice! Possibly the funniest moment with them was when the man was trying to explain to us the type of people that live in Neu Köln. We had just been on an excursion there the week before and knew it has a high Turkish population, and the immigration issue is a big deal in Germany as well. SO when the man told us that Juppys lived there Rory and I just looked at one another thinking, “OMG what have we gotten ourselves into here!?!?!” We thought that this was some sort of derogatory term for the Turkish in the area. Thankfully the man was trying to explain the term to us and then we realized he meant YUPPIES!!!! I guess there is a part of NeuKöln (which is a Bezirk aka borough in Berlin) that is filled with young rich yuppies. We were SOOO relieved when we realized what he meant. He and his wife were very nice. His wife and I teased Rory and the man about the amount of smoking they do.

After a wonderful chat in German with this couple we headed off toward Ku-damm to see the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtnis-Kirche. It normally looks like this:

However they are renovating it right now and it looks more like this a big aluminum box... lame. I had seen it a few times before with Julia and on an excursion last time with FUBiS, but Rory had not. We did get to look inside though. Then after that we headed back to my apartment. I asked my landlady if Rory could stay another night, because his plans changed suddenly. Once I had the OK from her (we had a backup plan of him sleeping on the floor of another friend in our Goerzallee dorm, but my couch was far comfier), he and I headed out to see the House of 100 beers restaurant in Charlottenburg (another Bezirk). OMG it was SOOO good! I got a Wahrsteiner and potato salad and both were delicious. Rory got himself a Guinness (something from home lol) and knackers, which are long skinny sausages. We went back to my apartment again and then went straight to sleep. I had class in the morning and we wanted to get him out early so he could start planning a new trip for himself. I saw him again that night and met a new friend, whom he had met in his hostel, named Alleigh! She is super sweet and was spending just a few nights in Berlin. She headed to Amsterdam and Rory ended up following her there. I’m excited we met her, because I now have another new friend in Cali and she has a beach house I am welcome to visit!!! YAY BEACH!!!

It was sad when Rory left because he was one of my closest friends here. He and Nicole were probably the hardest to say goodbye to. I love you all, but I spent most of my time with them.

Once Rory left and Matt dropped off his things (Matt also was headed to Amsterdam with his brother and dropped off his huge luggage since he is staying for term 3. He didn’t want to carry that around Amsterdam, so I let him leave his things in my room under my bed), just about all of my friends had left the city. I had my classes during the day and I wandered around the city a bit after my classes, but for the most part this week I have been in my beautiful new apartment reading or studying. I watched several movies on my TV in German and OF COURSE watched the World Cup games. My landlady found me fairly hysterical. She and my roommate hadn’t been around the apartment when Rory and I watched the US beat Brazil so they were not prepared for my sport hysterics, Lol. For those of you who have seen me during a game I really care about, you know what I’m talking about. I curse the opposing team to the netherworld, and rejoice like a child given an insane amount of sugar and do everything short of a cartwheel when my team does something good! In between these fits of anger and joy, I pace the room, bite my cheeks, and play with my hands (Lacrosse girls remember the pacing room I needed on the sideline? I need that for every sport! lol).

Outside of the soccer games I have met, just a few new friends at my new school D.I.D. Their names are Heather and Callie. Heather is a PHD candidate at Vanderbilt and got her undergrad at GW, SO ANOTHER DC LOVER!!!! She is from Chicago, but looooves DC. She is getting her PhD in German history (early modern). Her thesis is pretty cool, but a little difficult to explain. Callie just moved here from Dallas, TX to live with her Berliner BF and will be working as a pre-school teacher at the Berlin Metropolitan School. She told me they are looking for another teacher for the pre-school. I’m considering this possibility, although since I don’t have my certification yet, it would be a long shot. I met her on Friday and then after class Heather and I went out to Friedrichshain, one of my favorite parts of Berlin. We went to a café/bar on Simon-Dach- Straße (this is the 3^rd week in a row I have brought someone who had never been to Simon-Dach- Straße to this street/area after my Friday classes!) It was just supposed to be for a drink, but we ended up sitting at the café from 4pm until 1am! I don’t know that I have ever sat for 8 hours and talked with someone I just met before! It was a great conversation. We talked about German history and the ridiculous things that happened in our classes this week, we reminisced about DC, talked about our families, our past and current relationships, PhD programs that are good for German History, and SOOO much more. I don’t remember most of the details of our conversation, but it was really fun!

This Weekend I have basically been a lump on a log. I have sat and studied and read. I did have one annoying thing happen though. I need to buy groceries yesterday (Saturday), because all of the grocery stores are closed on Sunday. I also needed to pull out money at the bank, because I was down to my last €2. I took the train ride down to Rathaus Steglitz, because that was the closest grocery area and ATM I know of. It is about 4 stops on the S-bahn from my apartment. I got to the bank and then realized I had left my wallet with my public transportation pass and my debit card back in my room! I was FREAKING OUT! Had I had my pass with me it would have just been frustrating, but I since I didn’t that meant I would have to ride the train without a pass back to my apartment! The way the metro system works here is based on the honor system. They expect you to have your pass on you. On the busses you must show it, but the trains no one checks. HOWEVER there is control. It is super rare, but they are plain clothes officers who periodically check the trains, and if you are checked and don’t have a pass it is €50 on the spot or a trip to the police station! I not only didn’t have the pass, but no little amount of money to even buy a one way ticket to be safe. My only hope was that I didn’t have the awful luck that my first time seeing the control this Berlin trip would be on this short ride home. Thankfully it wasn’t and I went back got my wallet. I Went BACK to Rathaus Steglitz, got myself some more quarkcreme and jam and headed home. I bought some strawberries at the stand by my apartment and made the best dessert EVER! A small spoonful of jam, quarkcreme and 5 large strawberries cut up. It was divine. If I can’t find the quarkcreme I need to make this when I get home I will be SERIOUSLY sad. Quark btw is a fresh cheese that has the consistency of sour cream and cream cheese mixed together. The flavor is kind of like that as well. That may sound awful to some of you, but I swear it is awesome! Quark is also naturally SUPER low in fat, so it as an awesome lowfat healthy dessert!

Ok well I am having a hard time paying attention to the US vs Japan game while writing this and I have been looking forward to this all week so I’m going to end this here. I don’t know why I can’t make these things shorter! I ramble too much lol. 4 ½ to 5 pages per post is a little crazy. OK well Love you all! See you soon!

Kathleen ♥

OK people I have read through this several times and every time I find awful grammar errors. It sounds almost as if i can't make proper sentences! But I'm going to chalk this up to being here.... It happened last time I was here too. AND I was writing this during the US vs Japan game! SO don't judge me too harshly ;)

Hoppla!

So I’ve missed telling you about 4 weeks of my program and have once again only made 2 posts to my blog during that 6 week period. My class with Fubis is ending in the morning (I’m writing this at midnight Wednesday night/Thursday morning). I have my final exam in the morning and then my creative project is due Friday. Then I am done with FUBiS... as an enrolled student this summer anyway. I am moving out of my prisoner-like living conditions at Goerzalle Student Wohnheim (this is a running joke with those at our dorm, we visited an actual Stasi/Nazi/Russian torture prison and in the Stasi portion of the prison it actually seemed as nice if not a tiny bit nicer than our dorms. The main difference being we were not forced there, we can sleep on a mattress and in any position we choose, and have quite a bit more fun and human contact… Although, our communication outside of school prior to people getting handys (cell phones) was almost as bad as the prisoner’s knocking communication system.) on Saturday at around 1ish and into my knew and unknown apartment in Shöneberg. The new apartment is on the same street Marlene Dietrich was born and Albert Einstein lived in Shöneberg when he lived in Berlin.

It has quite an awesome history, which you all know is my favorite part of Berlin. I’m not far from a lot of really amazing historical sites in my new apartment and as my prof. Claudia showed us on one of our excursions (which I will blog about later I swear) there are tons of signs all over Shöneberg that depicted laws against the Jewish community, which was quite a large part of the population in Shöneberg. The signs are absolutely ridiculous and truly horrifying when you think of how many there are and all the small things that were prohibited that added up to a horrendous life in the ghettos and then deportation. People just let these laws occur to their neighbors and friends. It is really hard to comprehend that thought process. Anyway there is a LOT of history in this area and well in Berlin in general.

I love this city so much, because it has such a deep and fascinating history. Although I’m already just a bit homesick and DESPERATELY wish to see my friends, family and MY RUBY, I don’t know how I’m going to get myself to leave this city. I really love it. It works like it should, it makes sense, it has a ridiculous counter culture attitude that fits perfectly within the main culture. That sounds like it doesn’t make sense, but I promise you here it does. The main culture of the city is so open and accepting that counter culture becomes a celebrated norm. Of course even with this open attitude, a good deal of these Germans have a stick up their butt. I was actually told to shut up on the bus ride home last week, and I was VERY cognizant of the fact that the bus was quite quiet and kept my tone low. The crazy man who sat in front of me just was ridiculous. Others on the bus were on my side and told me he was an idiot, but he still is not alone in his curmudgeoniness (btw this man was in his late 30s not an old dude!). My friend Hillary has been accosted by 2 older Germans while trying to get off the bus. The first of which stood in front of her as her stop came up and told her she wasn’t going anywhere “Sheißkind”! What you should know about Hillary is that she is possibly the shiest, quietest and most polite girl you could ever meet. She is small and blond and wears almost exclusively black. There could be nothing that she had done to offend this man except for existing. HA I started this paragraph looking to praise the wonders of Berlin and all the things I love about it, but instead I talk about the curmudgeons! Alles in Ordnung!!! Typisch Deutsch! They say Germans don’t have normal small talk they just complain and talk about their wars. I don’t think this is really accurate since I don’t believe I have ever heard my uncle Marco talk about the wars, but it’s kind of funny.

I really do love the city. It’s kind of dirty and backwards, but it is truly amazing to behold. When you think of what the city was less than a century ago, it really is quite amazing to see what is here now. There are literally 2 mountains of left over rubble from the war in the city limits! I think what I love most about this city is that everything has a purpose and meaning. I feel like that is something missing in my life. There is no “meaning” in sterling and as much as I say it to anyone outside the city I’m not actually from DC so any meaning that city has prior to my birth doesn’t quite feel like it belongs to me. My parents aren’t from the city. My dad grew up around it just like I did, but his family was in the city quite a bit more than ours is. Still I don’t feel like there are parts of the city that are mine and what belongs to me in sterling I have quite literally outgrown, my schools in particular. My friends have mostly moved away, (minus the awesome new ones I have acquired through Justin & Katie J) and I pretty desperately want to move out of my parents house and begin my life. I really would like to hang with my rubes (poppy I don’t care what that word means, I am going to call her that anyway!) forever and ever, but unfortunately as a new to the adult world and an entry level position worker, I don’t think a dog would work well in that environment. Anyway I love that this city has so much that means something! There is just about nothing here that isn’t the ghost or relic of something from their past. I’m living in this dorm and I’m quite sure this must have been US army barracks during our Berlin occupation. If I was offered a job here tomorrow I would take it and just not come back. That is how much I love this city and its history and color, and nature, and art!

Schöner Tag!

Wow that ended up being a little sad.... I'm not depressed I swear. I was a bit delirious, because I had spent the entire night editing video... but other than that I am ok. Today was a bit of an odd day. It was the the last day of real class and we took our final. I'm going to miss everyone in my class so much! We just are getting to know one another and there is no real drama, which is refreshing to say the least. B2 Class kicked major butt! Hopefully I will see some of you again! Ok well I must go work on my creative project again! Tchüssi!!