Everything's coming up

I'm in an exceptionally good mood as I write this because things are going well and there's loads to look forward to, so I wanted to write a short post just to document it a bit!

Yesterday I went to my first Orientalischer Tanz class at the Volkshochschule. It was really fun, and I don't think it would be overly optimistic or premature to confidently say that I was born to belly-dance. However I think I will need the couple of weeks between now and the next class in order to work out how these dancers manage to move their hips up and down. I don't know how that is anatomically possible, but yet I have seen people do it...? So that's the next challenge.

Today is the first German conversation class, which will hopefully be good practice and not too demoralising. Beth is coming too, which is nice but also means there will be a witness to my shame. Fortunately she's very tactful, and won't mention it if I do manage to destroy the German language and my dignity simultaneously. After that, we are finally going to see Gone Girl! I am very excited because the book was amazing - it really messed me up, and was incredibly clever, and I can't wait to see how the film lives up to that. Also I love Rosamund Pike.

Tomorrow I don't need to go into school because of the international film festival, Schlingel, for which they didn't manage to get me a ticket. I'm not really upset by this, because while English-language films are good practice for the German schoolkids, it's obviously much more useful for me to see German-language ones; and of the other films they are going to see, some are in Spanish, which I can barely speak, and some are in French, which I cannot speak at all.

The more important news about tomorrow is that I'm going home!!! (My Herbstferien - Autumn holiday - starts on Friday and I have two weeks off!) It's a late flight which leaves at 11 and gets to Stansted at 11.45, so it doesn't really feel like I'm going home on Thursday, more like Friday, but still. I'll no doubt spend the whole of tomorrow being too excited to do anything useful, including packing, and then at the last minute I'll be rushing around in a panic, having finally realised that it's actually happening. I'm planning on spending a significant amount of time at home binge-eating humous and cheddar, two things I have sorely missed in the last few weeks.

After I come back to Germany on Tuesday, I have a day in Chemnitz so I can go to the second German class on Wednesday, and then on Thursday I'm going to Vienna/Wien/Ween to visit Zeynep! I finally booked the train tickets today after faffing around for ages, trying to decide between train, bus, plane and Mitfahrgelegenheit. Needless to say, I am incredibly excited to see my teeny Wiener friend.

After that I have another couple of days in Chemnitz to attend my various classes, and then I am hoping to go to Heidelberg/Mannheim to visit Abbie! Train tickets are proving difficult again, so I might wait until I have recharged from the mental exhaustion of booking tickets to Wien before I try again.

Anyway, there are loads of exciting things happening, as well as the smaller but still lovely things that all add up to put you in an excellent mood, for example this video, which I will leave you with: Chemnitzers dancing to Pharrell's 'Happy'. There are some greats shots of the head of Karl Marx (Nischel), as you can see from the thumbnail, and also lots of small, cute children attempting to keep in time with the music. Enjoy!


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