January activities so far

First, a few things I've noticed. In list form

• Fog in Brandenburg is like nothing I've ever seen. It could easily give London a run for its money
• Sanding the sidewalks create a mess everywhere cause it gets stuck to your shoes
• German opinions on personal space are MUCH closer than American. especially with strangers
• I do not enjoy being stared at for the entire duration of my train ride

I start working today on a REAL play in Berlin called "The Extremists" with English Theatre Berlin
I hope it will be interesting and fun. I'll keep you updated.

The snow here is melting and has turned into a kind of dingy slush. It's really rather disgusting, but it does mean it's warming up a bit which is great for my poorly insulated and poorly heated apartment! Also makes bike riding a lot more pleasant. We have lost the sunny skies though and the constant greyness has resumed. When I landed in Berlin after Christmas, you couldn't see the ground until we were about 1 minute from actually landing on it. Crazy serious clouds.

I've been enjoying time with friends as we've done several nights of making dinner all together. It's a nice change from eating alone and we all enjoy each others company and doing silly things. Tonight, I am going to see "Twilight" in Berlin. I made a German friend and we are going to go see it together (in English!). I'm super excited about having a new friend, and especially one who comes from Germany! Last night we were going to go to free museum night in Berlin but got so caught up with talking at Chrissy's apartment that we completely missed it. Before Christmas there was an utterly ridiculous game of bilingual charades at Erica's Christmas party. Things like "Weimar Republic" "Hans and Sophie Scholl" "Auslaenderbehoerde", "mushy peas", "Nunavut", and "Trig Palin" were all clues. Essentially we just tried to make it as utterly hard for the other team as possible. One round was "Deutschland" with clues in English or German and the other round was "Countries represented at this party" which was England, the US, and Canada. Quite fun and quite silly. For all the complaining, it IS nice to have a group of people to hang out with even if it is a lot harder for me to get there than I would like.

I'm off to Berlin for my grand theatrical adventures today. More updates soon