Mehr

Today I visited a couple of 11^th-grade classes and the boys are really rowdy! Really no different than the boys in my own high school, although you’d think that since they are in 11^th grade and in a Gymnasium they’d be a little better-behaved. I was asked a few times if I was single (one boy asked if I was married and then what his chances with me would be). They also love that I am from “near LA”—that’s what I tell them, and maybe it’s too misleading. I was asked if I’ve seen Brad Pitt and Paris Hilton, and I tried to explain that no one famous comes near where I live, but they just kept thinking of more celebrities to ask me about. The students misbehave, but none of them seems to be malicious, which is a good thing. Right now I’m just observing the courses, but sometimes I really want to yell at the kids to be quiet and stop passing notes and throwing wads of paper at each other. I thought German teachers would be disciplinarians, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. I have to remind myself also that when I was in high school I was basically just in honors classes with a bunch of goody-two-shoes, so for all I know these kids could be angels compared to the average American high school student.

Last night I looked at my first apartment and it was a good enough place. My two potential roommates and I talked for two hours, which I hadn’t expected but I assume is a good sign. The downsides are that the place is a little far from my school, and one of the roommates is a 40-something-year-old cleaning lady from China who has been in Germany for 20 years but whose German I swear is just about the same as mine. The other roommate is a German girl about 25 years old who needs a lot of peace and quiet to study, which I guess is ok. I just want roommates who are willing to hang out with me since I have no real friends here and want to experience what life in Berlin is really like. The two women are both really nice though and I think I would get along well with them. I haven’t been offered the place yet, but if I am, I don’t know whether to accept it. Another problem is I haven’t looked at any other apartments because no one is replying to my inquiries, except when the room has already been taken. This is not a fun experience!

Wow, this is really weird, but just as I finished writing the above, one of the roommates called me and offered me the room in the apartment. Now I really have to think hard about this . . . which means I have to ask my mother for her opinion!

I really need to find a good library here because I am getting sick of watching the two English-language channels I have—MTV and CNN. I can’t believe I ever watched MTV when I was younger. I keep turning it on hoping to find some music videos for German or at the very least European singers, but all that I find are really trashy American shows with German subtitles. At least I am learning how to say disgusting things in German. And CNN really sucks because it plays the same news over and over again and it is extremely anti-American. I don’t care if that’s a point belabored by conservatives—every time I watch it, they have someone talking about how bad America is, especially after the Petraeus and Crocker testimonies before Congress. All that I have besides TV are my LSAT books. I’ve been doing some work every day, but it’s getting so boring. I swear that every other question is about global warming or some other scientific topic and for some reason all the reading comp passages are about Native Americans. Can’t they find a wider variety of topics?