Oh hey, internet! (Or, Things a Black Hawk helicopter would not survive a fight with)

Hello, internet!  I am back in Germany and back to blogging in my little awkward corner of the net that very few people are interested in.  YAY!

Let me begin this story by saying I have five boxes of Kraft Mac and Cheese (Phineas and Ferb shaped) that I am saving for emergencies, like when my day is sad and I hate more things than usual.  Because everyone knows Kraft Mac and Cheese (with shapes) is the ultimate comfort food.

Moving on.  So, America was amazing.  I saw 95% of the people I wanted to see (although not nearly often enough), did 95% of the things I wanted to do (dammit, I forgot to get Amish pretzels!), and enjoyed myself thoroughly.  Here are some fun things Al and I did over the break:

--No school work.
--Saw Phantom of the Opera on Broadway.
--Went to the Hershey's store multiple times to keep getting the free samples that they give you when you walk in.
--hung out in Lancaster county, where the Amish live.
--discovered they understand every word if you speak German.  You, however, barely understand anything when they speak Pennsylvania Dutch.
--won three games of Trivial Pursuit (just me).
--made fun of my sister mercilessly for thinking that "The Iron Lady's" real name was "The Statue of Liberty."
--challenged Sam to a pretty epic game of Iron Chef Breakfast in which the secret ingredient was...cranberry sauce.
--got my nails painted polka dots by my sister.
--sat on a lot of horses, only a few of which tried to kill me.
--successfully acted out "Michelle Obama's Mom's Favorite Dress" in Claire's version of Death Charades.
--ate a LOT of awesome American/Portuguese food.
--finally found boots that fit my Asian-drag-queen-sized calves.
--laughed our way to hernias watching Twilight
--cried over Les Mis and marveled at Eddie Redmayne's sheer hotness.
--spent a hilarious New Year's in Morristown and got a comedian to rag on Al for being German.

There were a lot of other things but they've all sort of jumbled together in my mind into one long string of awesomeness.

In short, I had the greatest greatest greatest Christmas ever.  It was approximately nine bazillion times better than last Christmas, when I was trapped in a house for five days with my au pair family who at that point I knew hated me, but I wasn't sure why. Although to be fair, I could have spent this Christmas buried alive with only Jesus, Mitt Romney, and a squirrel carcass for company, and it still would have been a more enjoyable experience.

And now I'm back.  I was super sad to come back and was a horrible miserable bitch on the plane.  My poor boyfriend had to sit next to me the whole way (although in all fairness, I did warn him I would be a horrible miserable bitch),  and then I was a horrible miserable bitch all through our nine-hour layover.  My misery was further compounded by sheer exhaustion, but at that point we had already decided to spend a few hours running around London proper and I was not backing out.  This meant I spent a solid portion of our 5 hour sightseeing tour passing out sprawled across my boyfriend's lap in front of various famous buildings and drooling all over his jacket. When I woke up in front of Buckingham Palace, his response was "Good morning, starshine!  Everyone who has passed by us in the last twenty minutes thought you were giving me a blow job."

Fail.

Today was my first day back to class.  I meant to go yesterday, but then I slept until two-thirty in the afternoon (yay, jetlag!) so that didn't quite work out.  After my first class, I decided to go get some work done in the student center, so I sat down at a table,  plugged my computer in, and got started.  At one point a wonderfully polite German girl knelt down next to my chair and minus a "Could you please, " or "would you please," or "would it be alright if," bodily lifted my chair, shoved me two feet over, plugged her phone into the outlet, and then set her phone down to charge on top of my books.  Ah, German politeness.  Didn't miss you in the least.

Half an hour later in class, I got to listen to what was probably the most fucked-up discussion of American foreign policy I've ever heard in my life, including one kid who blabbered on for ten minutes about how American soldiers didn't grasp that Black Hawk Down was actually a disaster until said Black Hawk got shot down.  According to this guy's logic, our soldiers were under the impression that a Black Hawk helicopter was the nineties version of the Titanic (i.e., unsinkable).  Newsflash asshole, not even Americans are dumb enough to think that a helicopter can win against a rocket propelled grenade.  In fact, I don't even think it would survive a head-on collision with an iceberg.  But to help you out, I made you a short list of things I'm pretty sure a Black Hawk would survive a fight with:

--a pedestrian
--an Ipad
--a lamp
--a small garden shed
--a desk chair from Ikea
--a television
--a corgi

Please note that neither RPGs nor icebergs are on that list.

To make a long story short, I'm happy to be back to my Göttingen friends and fun times on one hand, sad to be back to my life and writing papers on the other.  To make a long blog post short, I declare today an emergency worthy of Phineas and Ferb Mac and Cheese.  I call it, "gently weaning myself off American food."