Unexpected fun

Since writing last time we hosted a moving in (again) party – Wiedereinweihungsparty – which I wasn’t dreading, but wasn’t hugely looking forward to as last time all the randomers ended up in my room and left spilt beer everywhere. This time, however, the party room was my room and the guests even took it upon themselves to put paper plates in the bin, so it wasn’t too stressful to clear up the next day. Although it was a late finish: 5am – I’m over it now, but it took a few days.

I love the day after the party: yes, being super tired means skype conversations end up weird and rambling...but once I’d got out of bed, swept and mopped and taken the rubbish down I felt better; then Tine and I went for a walk around the area with 43 empty beer bottles on our backs. We took the bottles to a local drinks supermarket where they pay you to bring back your bottles. Those 43 yielded a princely sum of 6.83€ which we said we would spend on fruit (as we haven’t been hugely healthy recently) ... and on our way to where we’d planned to get fruit we stumbled upon a Turkish market, in a back street in Wedding. It felt like midday but was in fact 5.30 and so they were packing up, meaning we bought our body weight in fruit and veg plus some free pears and carried it back, via a sunny park stop which, naturally, involved icecream.

Sunday involved going to Mauerpark after church where we watched live karaoke run by a random Irish man. The first two acts (you have to sign up a few minutes beforehand) were both over 70 years old. The first was fine, the second was hilariously dressed in bow tie and suit and claimed at the beginning that we mustn’t judge him as a Profi as he was simply an amateur. And he most definitely was. After listening to a few more acts we got up to the north and walked round Tegeler See, eating icecream (again). Once we found a particularly schön spot we sat there and threw stones at leaves in the lake. The sun went down pretty quickly (or we were there for ages) and the sunset was stunning, making the very few clouds in the sky stand out like scars. As soon as the sun went down it was freezing, so we hurried off back home.

I have gone through a bit of a language gear change. I no longer feel as hugely embarrassed as I used to about not being perfect at German. I can see (or hear) I am getting better and somehow I am beginning to lose my perfectionism at the whole thing. Yes, I get tired really quickly (still), but I feel in a better place with the whole having in-depth conversations and leading Bible studies in German thing. At least to a certain extent I do not balk as quickly at talking to strangers in German, as proved by our Kaffee Aktion yesterday where we were giving out free coffee and advertising the SMD on the FU (Freie Universität) campus: I had quite a few good chats with people and didn’t care that they realised I wasn’t German. As long as they feel that they can babble away at me as much as they can to their German friends, I’m okay.