- Passer une semaine merveilleuse à Paris avec Frank! Wow, my first impulse was actually to start writing in French, this is how far I've already come in little more than a week of intense training... Which brings me to me first good thing this month, even before writing about the great things that happened in Paris:
- Being extremely motivated to brush up my French! It was so much fun to notice how my language skills improved every day even though I only spent five days in Paris. On my last day, I bought one of the Harry Potter books in French (I figured reading a book I already know more or less by heart will make it less hard when I have to guess every other word). I read seven chapters on the train to Munich and have since scored thousands of experience points on Duolingo. Gosh, I even started filling a notebook with vocabulary and grammar rules. I wonder how long I can keep up this pace... But it's so amazing, I catch myself talking to myself in French (in my thoughts at least). Immersing myself in the language definitely made an impression on me.
- Ok, so, Paris. The train ride was great because I started AND finished reading a whole book. / I was so happy whenever I managed to have a successful conversation in French. / I really liked Ombeline, especially roaming around her apartment (with more than 17 chairs in the living room alone). Going through all her books and bandes dessinées (she even had one by Margaux Motin!), making breakfast in her kitchen, opening some of the cupboards and marvelling at the sheer amount of stuff and back-ups she owns, looking at her souvenirs from Africa and the beautiful crescent moon mask. / The SOHN concert at La Maroquinerie (which was by chance only a few hundred metres away from Ombeline's flat). "I can feel it coming, we can never go back." / Finding a statue of a gorgeous bearded man in marble; surrounded by baby angels with severed heads. A man after my fancy. / Sitting in Sacré-Coeur, taking cover from the rain, having a profane conversation. / Taking a walk from Montmartre to Faubourg; a good hour of sunshine, glitter on the streets in Pigalle, noticing that gay Frenchmen have a very distinct style. Sharing a passion fruit éclair. Decadent bulky waste (a pink satin canapé). / Spending time at Centre Pompidou, rediscovering Twombly, Brancusi and Klee. / Sitting outside a café with a strong drink and a cigarette (I had to think about Franzi's idea of the ideal way to spend time in Paris - sitting around in cafés all day, wearing red lipstick and smoking way too much). / Watching the swing dancers at Balajo. / Le jardin des plantes! The palaeontology and geology museum were fantastic. I've always wanted to go there but somehow I never managed even though I've been to Paris three times before. / Sitting at the Seine, next to each other, taking in the scenery.
- Minimalism input: reading Escape Everything by Robert Wringham in Ombelines overly full apartment made me consider doing something drastic with my life. Sell all my stuff, become a digital nomad. So many ideas!
- Overhearing a little girl one afternoon addressing the red, white and blue balloons she had just gotten in a bakery: "Ja ich weiß, ihr Luftballons ihr wollt weg!"
- I've basically stopped watching TV? What's going on? I only saw one movie in February, and that was at the cinema! Awesome! More time for books!
- Buying books is so satisfying. I loved spending time in French book stores (Les Mots à la Bouche!), going through the used-book section at the Bouquinistes and Shakespeare and Company. I bought so many books during the last few weeks. It's gonna take the rest of the year to read all of them.
- My colleague asked me whether I'd like to start a sustainability exchange programme with a school in South America! Exciting!
- The Grossstadtgeflüster concert at Feierwerk was awesome. I even got a sticker with a street sign for Fickt-Euch-Allee (I kinda wanna put it over the real street sign here in my street).
- Oat cookies with dark chocolate. Baking my favourite lemon cake with poppy seeds and blueberries.
- A weird weekend - I neither left the house nor talked to anyone - but I was in the mood to clean all my windows! My productivity high is getting scary...
- How sadly true this article on jealousy is. The first paragraph actually triggered me to shout out "ha" because I felt caught. Oh well. After all "you have to keep breaking your heart before it opens." (Rumi)
- ALMOST booking a flight to Cancún over Christmas and New Year's Eve. It might still happen. So far I'm afraid I'm spending too much money as it is... we'll see how much unreason my bank account can take. But just imagining lying on a white, sandy beach on the first day of 2018 while Germany vanishes in a cloud of dust and smoke after the annual fireworks... nice thought.
- Making poached eggs for the first time. You have to make a swirl with an egg whisk in a pot of vinegar water and crack the eggs while the water is still moving.
- The nice feeling of the dust cover of Zeige deine Wunde by Rüdiger Sünner.
- Talking to Inge on the tram.
- Watching Wilde Maus at Rio Filmpalast. Pia Hierzegger is such an interesting actress and I just found out that she's been dating Josef Hader for years now! Ha. Best quote: "Bist du angrennt irgendwo?"
- Drawing some figures for my sixth-graders and colouring them in Photoshop (I haven't done that in a while but it's so much fun). And in general - being more creative. Drawing a treasure map with black ink. Getting the watercolours out. Sitting down with my students to make clay and stone sculptures. It's so nice to create something, free from pressure.
- A fantastic room tour.
- The handsome dude from the French textbook publishing company. Can he come over more often, please?
- Watching old Art Attack videos.
- A very stormy morning. 6am, the sky still dark blue, the trees bending and bowing as black silhouettes against it. What an energetic start into the day.
- Pressed flowers. I'm thinking about making my own, just like I used to as a kid.
- This article: On drowning goats.
- I just had a wonderful idea: I'd like to make a book for my friends. I'm not quite sure what should go inside but I was thinking of stories and memories, recipes, photographs and of course some of my drawings. I'd have so much fun layouting it and I'd also have a full round of really good Christmas presents. Projects! Whee!
- It sounds counter-intuitive but: Running from a situation instead of suffering through it. I often try to do "the right/decent thing" to put a good face on the matter and sit it out when I'm actually dying on the inside. It felt good to say "no, not that shit again" and walk away.
- An unexpected support squad at school (thanks, Selina, Osna, Katarina!)
- Liberté, Egalité, Beyoncé
- My tiny new portrait drawing class.
- Successful adulting: taking care of boring insurance policies, contracts, applying for a visa, having my bike repaired, refilling my car's water tank. But I did all the things!!
- Milchschnitte Himbeer and mango panna cotta.
- Liebertext / exchanging daily mails with a stranger.
- Getting the invitation for Franzi's and Ralf's wedding in the mail! I was so happy I was hardly even mad about all the confetti in the envelope, I mean, on my bathroom floor. And I was so relieved that my return flight from Helsinki is going to be on the day before; for I second I thought I wasn't going to make it.
- "Komm mal her!" - "Aber ich hab dich gar nicht lieb." - "Ich dich aber trotzdem."
- Sexy schmexy (I love saying this at the moment)
- Bibiana Beglau as Mephisto in the Faust production at the Residenztheater.
- Hitting the jackpot when opening a pint of ice-cream just to find a huge pool of liquid caramel right under the lid.
- Seeing how creative some of my students are (I mean, hello, Frenchman, hunter, Santa Claus, rockstar and superhero minions made out of clay? Such great ideas!)
- Little pink tulips with round heads and yellow edges. So cute.
- Dinner with the Educational Lady Warriors. I mean, Franzi, Elsa and Martina. Finding out that Elsa is pregnant! She showed us her ultrasound picture and you can actually see a tiny human already, with the spine, brain hemispheres, the heart, the limbs... Fascinating.
- Receiving a 50€ gift voucher for a book shop after completing a random survey on school questions. AND winning two theatre tickets for Liebesblind at the Pathos. Sweet.
- Unsweetened almond milk. It tastes like marzipan!
- I noticed that I really like the sinew over my right big toe. I don't have many body parts that aren't soft, which is why I appreciate this one sinew standing out.
- I won two tickets to Liebesblind at Pathos and took Franzi with me. The location was pretty great, very Berlin-esque. Afterwards we had some drinks at her place, Ralf and a few of their friends were also there. A pretty nice evening!
- My trusted old 2-minute-recipe: couscous with some feta and tomato puree.
- I went to a drive-in cinema for the first time and I don't know why I'd never been before, it's AWESOME. You're in your cosy little box, get the audio via radio frequency (since my new car has a BOSE sound system the quality is excellent) AND you can talk throughout the movie!!
- This incredible weather. Getting the first pistachio ice-cream of the year at my favourite ice-cream parlour in Schwabing. Seeing everyone sitting in the sun in front of the Glypthothek. And the blossoms on the trees. Munich is so nice in the sunshine.
- Having pizza and ice-cream with Lexi, driving on the highway with open windows and extremely amusing German songs blasting (Schnipo Schranke, Von Wegen Lisbeth, Sookee). Drinking beer at the Bilderbuch concert, singing along, mock-arguments with Frank.
- Hugging Doris just as long as she can bear it.
- The other day my pupils told a colleague that she was beautiful, then they saw me and quickly added: "Oh, you are beautiful, too!" And then they group-hugged me. Adorable, bootlicking little gangsters...
- How much fun I can have when I'm layouting tests and worksheets.
mar 4 2017 ∞
apr 1 2017 +