Grad App Madness

I spent all day running around like a fiend putting my grad school application in the mail.  For better or for worse, it will be there on Monday, BUT!  the morning was full of small catastrophes.  Which you now get to hear about.

For starters, I got up stupidly early for a Saturday, to bike into town at 8.30.  At the local drugstore, I bought a fancy cover for the application, but they were all out of shipping envelopes, so I had to hit up the post office to buy them.  Then I had to go across town to the copy shop, so I could get the application printed on super fancy paper.  However, the girl behind the counter informed me that they don't make copies of applications on Saturdays.  I said, "Are you fucking kidding me?  I need to send this thing out today, and you're losing my business because it's Saturday, and, despite being open, you won't print this because it's an application?"  Sometimes, I want to punch this country in the face.  She told me to go up the street to the other copy shop and get it printed there.

Back on my bike, I circled all around the train station, the prison, and all the side streets in between, and did not find another copy center.  I called the host parents, and they didn't know of another one, so I went back to the girl for more exact directions. Then I realized she was telling me to print out my grad school application at a call center, and I told her she was exceptionally unhelpful, because you can say these things in Germany.  Then I slammed the door behind me on my way out.

In more or less complete panic mode, I biked back to the house, where I explained to Host Mom my predicament.  She said we could get around it like so: buying the paper myself, getting the photo printed from the pros, and then putting it all together ourselves.  But at this point it was a race against the clock, because the post office was closing in an hour and a half.

So I turned back around, biked like a fiend into town again, and hit up the photo store. While I was waiting for the guy (who looked like a serial killer) to print my pictures (or kill me serially), I went back across town to the paper store, to buy paper.  Which took forever, because I had to wait for the saleslady to successful fit a six year old for a bookbag (?), because this country refuses to print applications on Saturdays, but has zero problems spending fifteen minutes adjusting small children.

After picking up my pictures, I headed back to the house to print everything.  But then we ran into more problems, because American pages and German pages are sized differently, which meant the German printer kept FREAKING out every time an American document came up.  So I had to turn everything into PDFs and email them to Host Mom, while Host Dad did minor surgery on the printer.

Anyway, we finally got everything printed and organized, and then it was off to the post office, where I made it just in time.

To summarize:

Yes, my grad app is in the mail.
No, I did not enjoy the process.
No, I am never doing this again.
Yes, I had better get into this school or heads will roll.
Yes, I bought Host Mom and Host Dad absurdly expensive chocolates to thank them for more or less rewriting my entire essay and making me sound like an overly-educated German

Afterwards we went to the lantern parade, which is like the German equivalent of Halloween except you don't dress up or get candy.  All you do is carry a lantern and walk around.  So really, it's not anything like the German equivalent of Halloween.  But it's a big deal, I got to carry a lantern, and you can take bets on which kid will be the first to accidentally set their lantern on fire.  Also, the fire department was there guiding the paraders, looking all smug because instead of lanterns, they got to carry torches.  Bastards.

Then we all came back to our house, ordered pizza, and ate cake.  It was a good time.

And, that's it!  Now I can stop freaking out about the application, and get back to freaking out about the language test in two weeks.  Goody.

Favorite song of the day!  I like Elton John, I like Ellie Goulding, and I like when Ellie Goulding covers Elton John.  You're welcome.