9.1.09 (dated this way until I catch up)

09.01.09 One of our first ‘visits’ was to the underground bunker system in Berlin. It was really cool we were each allowed one photo, which I included above, but the real adventure began a good bit earlier that day. We had a tour of the school, for which I had to leave the apartment at 8:30. Too bad I got back from the Gator game at 7:30 that morning…Ridiculous. Meticulous. Defibrillous? When we were riding back from Upper Berlin, people were riding the S-Bahn to work, and when we were nearing CelciusstraBe, shops were opening up for the day. I set my alarm for one half hour later, but had not had the ‘it may not be a good thing to have my alarm clock right next to my bed’ epiphany yet, and so woke up at noon with a vague memory of waking up and pressing some button on the clock, and an anything but vague sinking feeling in my stomach that I was very late for our first tour. The night prior I had asked God to help me accomplish my goal of getting a handle on the public transportation system, as the prior days I had just been following the lead of others. Well here was my golden opportunity. I hurriedly dressed and rushed to the bus stop. I had to catch a bus, make one bus change, and figure out how to get to Freie Universitaat. I had noticed that the Germans had been, without exception, very nice to me when I stopped and did my best to strike up a small conversation. Even the times that I initiated for a silly reason, like “what does that word on that sign mean to you?” in German. This morning I was so rushed and in a panic that my brain was not in translation mode. To give background information, we’d just been given a talk on attendance, and how crucial it is to be there, how detrimental it is to be absent. I did NOT want to burn one of my absences already the second day. When I stopped off for my bus change, I was not so sure what bus I needed to take, and my brain was a tad fuzzy still, and so I wasn’t able to fill in the gaps in my understanding as I usually do. I saw both a girl my age and an elderly man who looked sort of like a washed up Ron Jeremy. As to not look like I was merely asking her to get the chance to talk to her (wouldn’t really be ALL that untrue but whatever), I turned and went to go talk to Ron Jeremy. First fail: waking up late. Second fail: choosing Ron Jeremy. As I struggled to ask him which specific bus I needed to board to get to a specific place, I debated on just walking away. It went THAT bad. He had this way of just staring at me in a way that dripped of “Are you natural or are you trying to be this dense?” which he gave me every time I asked for clarification. He continued to try to help me, but not without many scowls. In the back of my head I was thinking, “so long to my perfect record!” and then he says it. He looks at me as if pondering some great complexity, and says, in English, “Do you have an education?” I answer that I do. He responds with, “We call it ‘Abitur’ here…It makes you special”

I am 4 hours late for a program that just had its talk on prompt attendance.

I am running off of little sleep.

I have just been insulted by a guy who makes scowling Simon from American Idol look like Mister Rogers putting on his coat and asking you to be his neighbor.

What’s my fitting retort? The first thing that comes to my mind, “Danke.”