This week seems so long. Probably because I am spending most of my time putting off doing work, and I am flying home on Friday for Christmas. At night I can see half the windows on my street lit up, a smattering of yellow on dark gray; and during the day I can see some of my neighbors smoking in their sun rooms (as if they really function as sun rooms in Berlin). I always wonder what their lives are like.

My cousin Travis, who lives in Paris, said that after moving from Texas to Paris he started to feel more comfortable around strangers and closer to the vortex of humanity. It's the opposite of the stereotypical cold city person. I feel the same way about big cities though—I don’t want to live anywhere but a big city for this part of my life. I do feel closer to humanity in a city, and I want to stay that way.

It occurs to me that if I were doing a semester abroad, my time here would be ending about now. What a short time that is, and what a weird concept--move for 3.5 months to another country. I’m so glad that I’m here on an open-ended schedule, so if I do want to stay, I can. I’m not trapped at all, in any way. Today I applied for a job translating German to English. I'll be applying to more in the near future--these are the few applications where an MA in German might help!

Lately I've been waking up before dawn a lot more often, to make breakfast for an early-morning traincatcher. I'll do it again Friday, but this time it's me catching a plane.