The Long Goodbye

Today I had my last day at my internship, where I've been working three afternoons a week for 10 weeks, since mid-May. We cracked open a bottle of white wine (only in Europe!), had some cherries, the FairTrade chocolate that I had bought as a present for the office (with some FT coffee and tea) and sat outside and celebrated, since the other interns are ending their Praktikum soon as well.

So I walked out today and took a last look around at Milbertshofen, knowing it was the first of many goodbyes I'll be making. In exactly two weeks from now (and maybe 2 hours), I'll be at the Houston airport again, stepping foot on American soil for the first time in five months and probably being culture-shocked out the wazoo. I'm hardly fluent in German, but today a lady stopped by the office to discuss a planned radio program with the other interns and I understood the entire discussion without translating in my head. Even above, when I wrote "Fair Trade chocolate, tea, coffee," I have to stop myself from writing "Schokolade, Tee, Kaffee." I have the hardest time discussing some German things with my mother without sounding like an idiot. My discussions with JYM students, mostly auf Englisch (see? not intended), have become a weird Mischung of English and German. I wrote my friend once on Skype: "Oh, it's egal to you?" The expression: "Mir egal," or "Es ist mir egal," means something like, "It's the same to me/I don't have a preference/I don't care." I heard another JYMer say, "I would have Lust auf that," from the "haben Lust auf" (would like to do, have a desire to do/have etc). I shared this with my German professor at JYM and she nearly died laughing.

Your Jackson Browne quote of the day:
I have prayed for America

I was made for America

Her shining dream plays in my mind

--Jackson Browne, For America (Please note this is one of JB's "I'm being patriotic by dissenting, because I love America so much" songs. It isn't traditionally patriotic, so if you are offended by that, please save your blood pressure.) Interestingly enough, this was performed at the Rockpalast in Berlin in the 80s. I love what he says: "This song is called 'For America', and it's for you, too."

Photo: Beautiful flowers in a lovely Englischer Garten sunset---just a stone's throw away from my apartment in StuSta, taken a couple of months ago.