safety pins are none too strong, katie

This is my blog and consequently I can talk about whatever I want. I’ve decided. So, if anyone is actually looking for deep, quality thought today (which, as clearly evidenced by my prior posts, runs rampant), you can scramble off.

Jeans

I can’t do justice to the frustration of trousers. I hate them. With a fiery, burning passion. This is just the first post about them. So prepare yourself.

Recycling

My German teacher took my recycling today. It was very nice. We were reading (it was the strike, so there weren’t a lot of kids) and he was like “katie, come with me.” so, he took me to the recycling bins and told me about where they went. He was very pleased that our school recycled paper.

Essays

I have a love hate relationship with the written word. Mostly it is love, sometimes it is hate. But I write a lot, and I’m writing a lot now, although it’s mostly just summaries of what I did today and what I ate for breakfast and other fascinating things.

I used to write a lot of poetry. Now I’m writing a lot of essays. They are angry essays, silly essays, essays that have way too much ‘voice’—aka the way that I think.

So I decided to put together a portfolio think for college and I’m just so pleased with the corrections that I would like to document them. (Apologies if it offends, mr. l—honestly, it’s the first time I’ve been utterly pleased over something in English in a few days)



My name

Last night on the strassenbahn, I was pretty pleased when ‘what katie did’ and ‘what katie did next’ came up back to back on my shuffle (this is almost as pleasing as the time I got three bouts of “I love the valley, oh!” in a row because I apparently have that song at least three times on my iPod.)

Now, I really like the name Katie. When I introduce myself, I normally give people two options: Katie or Kathryn, if the nick-name offends you. But I hate it (and HATE IT) when people use Kate in some attempt to be ‘chummier’ or because… I don’t know why. Someone explain it to me. If I wanted you to call me Kate, I would have told you my name was Kate.

But I’m not Kate. My name has two syllables. Get used to it, please.
Here, the name Katie is really novel. A lot of teachers have trouble with it. Kaddie. Kartie. Kayyydei. (with a hard eye). It’s kind of funny. And spelling is like a game—is it a C? A K? (my favorite) Two K’s with an umlaut over the a? I think I'm going to keep it

German

German is leaving me this days with largely dude wtf? moments. but whenever I’m really confused, I like to look at the things I make to clarify (I have a chalkboard that I draw the topic of the moment on). Then I don’t feel so bad.


(this is supposed to explain prepositions. i hate german prepositions)

Also, my German class if filled with lols. Like last night an Indian man spent 35 minutes trying to convince me that andefault is a word (in English). Then, we were pretending to have phone conversations. Someone turned down a party invitation. The proper response is the german equivalent of “shame”—instead, the scruffy Spaniard ii said “oh”. the teacher suggested the right word and he said “ich bin schade”.
I don’t know if that’s how you spell it. it was hysterical then, but I guess you had to be there. anyways, language class is ironically when I speak the most English. but it’s nice. talking about the weather gets really old.

School

I’m sort of starting to feel like I fit in. I get smattered with hugs and kisses every morning. I got attacked (a sign of affection) today by one of the boys. The school dynamic is extremely different here; my class is like a tiny family and I find it extremely reassuring.

So, Gym. Unlike in the US, gym here actually requires skill. Like… real skill. We were supposed to test on gymnastics today, which meant doing twisty things around parallel bars and round-offs.

Gym Teacher: What are we going to do about you?
Me: Shrugs
Gym Teacher: Oh, right. You can’t do anything. (She’s serious)
Me: Shrugs
Then I played some basketball.

Well, tonight I'm going to my first German birthday party. I just baked a cake for tomorrow's work day and have to go try and pry it out of the pan (it has some sort of braid decoration on top and i get the feeling it isn't going to stay).

love
katie