in Germany

ahhh...finally, after all those months of waiting, planning and what not, i'm finally here! My gosh, everyone speaks German here. Gah. And mein Deutsch is so bad!

Well, its Wed afternoon now and i arrived yesterday. It was super beautiful as the plane was landing at Berlin Tegel Flughafen. The snow covering the buildings, streets and the trees. Hah, and there was this moment when i saw this section of snow-covered buildings (or so i thought) all lined up so perfectly and the snow so white and untouched, simply beautiful really, but it turned out to be a cemetery and all the little rectangular buildings were actually tombstones. haha.

ok, enough about snow. its actually bitterly cold when walking about. can die. wind in your face and ears numb from the cold. gah, enough about the weather already. my buddy met me at the airport and we took a bus and train to the hostel. my room is tiny! its practically a hamster cage or something. and the bed is too long for my sheets. but its nice and clean and warm. i look like an eskimo in my coat and more so if i wear my hood.

still have tons of things to do like getting my medical insurance and settling the mess of my residence permit and getting internet. manage so far, however, to accomplish various other tasks. like registering myself with the police- the person at the office absolutely refused to speak in english as she said she didn't understand english - though she did tell me that in perfect non-accented english. hiya. so i had to speak in a weird mixture of germanenglish and i got myself registered. also i met some other exchange students, though most of them are not from my hostel. in fact, most people in my hostel are full time students and they sort of click together. and i set up a local bank account - hah the cleverness of me.

on the subject of the internet, i still have no internet in my room, will have to settle it over the weekend i hope. i really really really want to msn!!! i can't use it in the library as they block the web messenger and its kinda hard to unblock it as all the commands on the computer are in german. however, somehow i succeded in the msn thingy for a while until in got cut off so mysteriously. die my german is really bad.

have been really fun so far. i guess its the newness of it all. strange though coz its just me all the time now, i mean except for the time when i'm with the other students that is, its just me. i'm so used to all the noise and people and everything and everyone in each other's faces. the sudden quietness of it all. especially at night. like last night, to prevent myself from sleeping (still a little jetlagged la), i went for a walk. saw the Kaiser-Wilhelm Kirche, or chuch. it was so brilliantly lit up. hee and found zara too. strange that zara reminds me of singapore. ahh, so i know. whenever i feel especially far away from home, i'll just go to zara! stange isn't it - that i have to resort to a spanish brand to remind me of singapore. have been really tired coz i have only been here for like 1.5 days and caught up in doing so many things that i have to settle and do. i'll probably do something touristy tmr evening, like visit a museum, coz they open late on thursdays and are free! yay, looking forward to that.

i thought i'd be really sad or something when i arrive in berlin coz i'll suddenly be all alone, and i've never like really lived in a hostel and having to do things for myself, but it has been a pleasant experience so far and really fun! ga, have to go make dinner soon. one of these days, i'll have to stop making the sandwiches and instant mee and get down to cooking.

rigght, like that's gonna happen.
but it will.
soon.
i think.