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Lost in Translation


I never put much thought into what I carry with me in my bag. Sometimes I literally dump a pile of books in the first bag I see, without even looking which books I've picked up. Calling me chaotic would be an understatement.
It wasn't until Kanra from The Lunar Descent did her What's in my Bag? post that I started looking at all the stuff I carry around all day. So let's see: what's in my bag?

In case you don't know me: Hi there, I'm Envy! I study German so I can become a high school teacher. Oh, and like most college students, I'm far from rich. That's about 50% of the reason why my bag is ancient. I'm also overly attached to it now, since it's been with me for ages.


My mom bought me this bag at the local thrift store when I was 16. At first, I refused to use it. I was taking my place in the Harry Potter fandom very serious at the time and as a true Ravenclaw I did not want to be seen with a bag that had a Slytherin pattern on it. But after a week or two I gave in. A little over three years later, it's my favorite bag. It might look small, but this is everything I store in it on an average Thursday like today.


 Yes, that's a lunch box in the lower left corner. Some might say it's childish to take a lunchbox to college when you're 19, but the alternative, putting my lunch in a plastic bag, is a no-go for me. I carry quite a few books with me. Those books won't hesitate to squish the life out of my sandwiches. If there's one thing I hate, it's a flattened sandwich. As if all the deliciousness gets pushed out of it...

Those big bad books are the most important items in this bag. Apart from my cell phone of course, but that's quite obvious. I don't like the books, but I need them. The blue book is for my adolescence psychology course. The other one... I haven't figured that one out yet. It's supposedly for my didactics class, but we never use it. Instead, I should have printed some document and use that as a book, which I didn't do because I love trees too much. Sometimes I just bring this book so I feel like I've got my life together.


The third book, this green one, is for a class called 'Spracherwerb', where we work on vocabulary and pronunciation. We never really know when we'll need it, so I take it with me every other Thursday. I might be the only one who does that, but better safe than sorry, right? Besides, it's a great book for when I get bored, because it's full of short stories and interesting statistics. It's also the book that brought you Envy the Adventurous Earthworm.


What's more? My overly flowery notepad, which is not as unimportant as you might expect. I take notes for all my classes on this notepad, because using separate notebooks for each class would be a recipe for disaster. Its most important task, however, is storing my sarcasm sign. If it wasn't for this thing, my sarcasm sign wouldn't have survived its first month.


Apart from my notepad I always have these three notebooks with me. I don't really need them for college, but I just like having them with me. The one with all the letters on it is my second memory. All my To Do lists are in there. Without it, I'd be completely lost.
The one with the big flower on it is my blogging notebook. All my ideas and drafts are in there. It's great to have it with me in boring classes, on the bus, at internship or in long breaks between classes.
I seem to have a bit of a floral theme going on here. The pink flowery notebook you see there is my Urdu notebook. Absolutely no reason for me to take it with me to college, but as you might have noticed I spend a lot of my time there being bored. I love learning new languages, so this one saves me from hours upon hours of boredom.


My cell phone is in my bag too, always. It's too big to fit in my pocket. I'm not sure if that's because my phone is big or because all my jeans have small pockets. Either way, I have to keep it in my bag. Its case is where I store small notes, like this pink one. I couldn't remember in which classroom my Spanish classes would take place and since I check my phone very often, this seemed to be the best place to keep this note.
The yellow card above the note is one of my prize possessions: my discount card for the local comic book store. It's actually my dad's, but I'm the one who always goes there to pick up comics for all of us.


Now what's left? My pencil case. Not very interesting: it's filled with five pens, three pencils, and one bright orange marker. Only two pens and one pencil ever get used...
That leaves my emergency kit. Yes, I have an emergency kit. 'Cause you never know when you might need a pad. Or aspirin. Or a hair band. I'm prepared for every scenario. Always expect the unexpected, my dad would say. Maybe not the most exciting item in my bag, but the mirror on the inside has proven itself as a true lifesaver.


That's everything I'll carry around today. Plus some cookies. Cookies are the love of my life. There's not in any of the pictures because, well, I can't see cookies without eating them... Anyway, I'm off to college with my ancient Slytherin bag.

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From the life of a 19-year-old intern, I present you: the battle with the copy machine. It's a ruthless battle, both sides fight for their lives. Yet only one can win...

November 11th, 2015
It has begun. I am now officially an intern: I was asked to run to the copy room and quickly copy a document. Part of me is excited, 'cause I'm finally getting some responsibility here. On the other hand I'm terrified: I've been here for three months now and no one has taken the time to explain to me how the copy machine works. You'd think that's one of the first things they teach you when you start an internship, even if the main focus of the internship is teaching high school kids German. I would have liked a step-by-step tutorial to be honest, but hey, how hard can it be?

Okay, as it turns out, this can be pretty hard... This copy machine is huge. It probably outweighs me by at least 50 kilos, it's twice my size and has more buttons than the average space ship! Oh, and there's a touch screen. With a million options on it.
Let's see... A4 sized paper, printed front and back, have to make 30 of those... There's a scanner on this things somewhere... But that won't do 'cause it'll only scan one side. I don't want to split the document into two pages, that would be a waste of paper. No, I love the rain forest too much to do that.
What's this thing here for? Wait, that's where the paper comes out. But there must be a way to duplicate the freaking document without wasting so much paper. Where does it scan the whole thing? Here?
BEEEEEEP
Oh no, oh no, oh no, don't start beeping!
BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP
I need help. I need help now.
'Mr. De Jong? Could you help me out with the copy machine?'
'Sure. Are you logged in?'
Logged in? Do I have to log in on this thing? So that's what they gave me the key card for! Okay, logged in and now I just have to watch as Mr. De Jong copies my document. Aha, there's the scanner, then there's a thingy on the touch screen... Easy! I totally could've done that! Thirty pages, printed front and back, just they way they should be. Awesome.

'Envy?'
'Yes.'
My internship coach looks at the copied pages. 'Only half of the document is on these pages. You copied it sideways.'
Oh no...

December 14th, 2015
The dreaded question was asked again. 'Envy, can you copy this page 30 times?'
And of course I said 'yes'. Why couldn't I just say: 'No, I don't know how that stupid machine works!'
Deep breaths. Deep breaths. The machine isn't that intimidating... I think... I mean, you're already logged in and -
BEEP BEEP BEEP
Okay, I take it back. This thing is the most intimidating thing in the history of intimidating things!
I'll just start over. Use my key card to log in. SO far so good. Now, A4 sized paper, print on one side, scan it, print it 30 times. Go.
Printing... No, no, don't do that! Don't print sideways! STOP!
BEEP BEEP BEEP
Oh great... Maybe if I turn the page 90 degrees, then scan and print. Oh yeah! Thirty copies, all 100% perfect! But what do I do with the ten failed ones?
I'll just stuff them in my bag when no one is watching. Recycle them at home. No one needs to know about that fail. I'm the best intern ever.

January 27th, 2016
Can I make five copies of that super important document for you? Why, of course I can! It totally got this. Remember how well I copied that last document? I've got that big bastard of a copy machine totally under control. Log in, scan document, print and don - wait a minute, why doesn't it do both sides of the original document?
Shit, that's right, I was supposed to hit some button on the touch screen before scanning. I just don't remember which one... This one?
BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP
Okay, not that one. Maybe this one then?
Click... Click... BEEEEEP
So not that one either... Let me try the big one over here.
BEEP BEEP BEEP
'Need some help?'
'Yes please...'
You win this time, you stupid machine, but I swear I'll be back!


February 17th, 2016
My hands are shaking. I'll have to face the copy machine again in three, two, one...
There it is. The Big Bulky Bastard. Scaring interns since 2015.
BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP
Hey, I didn't even touch you yet! Oh, wait, I'm not alone here today. There's some other guy in the copy room too.
BEEEEEEEEEEEEEP
'Do you know how to log out? It just keeps beeping at me.'
'Don't ask me, I know nothing about this thing.'
We look at the touch screen, then push all the buttons at random.
BEEP BEEP BE - LOGGED OUT
'That wasn't that bad... Good luck!'
'Thanks, I'll need it.'
Four pages, A3 size and an already aggravated copy machine. How am I ever going to survive this? Okay, log in, scan pages, select paper size... print? Print, please print. Oh my god, perfect at first shot!
Au revoir, mon ami! Until next time, until my next victory!

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We did it: we survived the first week of school of 2016! But maybe not the way we planned it...
Let me tell you, when my Christmas vacation started I thought I was going to be well-rested and extremely motivated by the time January 4th would come around. Last Monday I was pretty well-rested. I'd even managed to find a spark of motivation. It wasn't a big spark, but still. I had some energy and motivation, and that's what counted.
By Wednesday morning I was back to my pre-Christmas vaction state: sleep-deprived and utterly motivationless. Suddenly I found myself doing all those things stereotypical college students in the movies do. You know you've become a true college student when you've experienced these things first-hand.

#1: Washing your hair feels like a privilege
So I wake up at 7am, have breakfast, catch the bas at 7.35, attend classes till 4.40pm, arrive back home at 5.15 (in the very best case, if traffic's bad 5.30 is totally normal), have dinner and start my homework marathon at 6 and work until I fall asleep at 10pm. But wait, if I don't study chapter 1 to 4 and only do 5 to 12 for Thursday's test, I might have ten minutes to wash my hair on Wednesday and pass the test with a 55% score. Yay for me!

#2: Eating ramen all by yourself in the middle of the night surrounded by text books has become totally acceptable
Yeah, I know how to make lasagne. My spaghetti with shrimps is delicious and I can even make a Caesar salad without blowing the house up. But do I have time for all that? Don't make me laugh, of course I don't. If I did, I wouldn't be here, stuch in a fort made of text books that I all still have to read, eating cheap ramen at 11pm

#3: Zombie mode has become your default mode
Sleep deprivation my old friend, what are you doing to me? There's always this moment when I look into the mirror and see that you turned me into a zombie. No, I don't crave brains, but I do look just like I'm dead and very mindless. Yet I keep on going. I have no other choice. So there I go, dragging my feet, moving along at a snail's pace, physically present but with my mind back home in bed. Once finals come around, this way of surviving is the only way of 'living' I seem to know...

#4: Procrastinating has become an art form
A quick look inside my mind on an average Saturday: "Time to get to work. But first I'll check Blogger, so it can't distract me later on. Might as well check Twitter too then. And Instagram. Blgolovin'. Facebook. Oh, someone liked an article on some dead actor from the 50's, interesting! Or not. Actually this is even more boring than my homework.
Focus. Educational sociology. Deadline is next week...
I think I heard my phone. Was it my phone? Let me check real quick before I start working. Oooooh, my friend sent me a cat video! Better watch that first!
Morning is almost over now... Might as well start working after lunch."
Seriously, the minute I have to get to work, everything suddenly becomes so freaking interesting. Everything except my homework, that is...

#5: Skype sessions with your study group end in chaos
'Envy, you there?'
'Yeah, I'm here. I can see you.'
'I can see you too. Where's Debbie?'
'I don't know, I only see her profile picture. Where's Alex?'
'I'm here!'
'Oh, now I see you!'
'Guys? I can't see you!'
'Debbie? Why are you only a profile picture?'
'I don't know!'
A full hour later only one question regarding college has been answered, yet the biggest mystery is why Debbie is only a picture... The funny thing about my study group: no matter how chaotic our skype sessions are, we always end up top of the class.

#6: Words like 'sleep' and 'vacation' are the only things that spark your interest
'Envy, have you read that book?'
No reaction.
'Envy, can you pass the ketchup?'
No reaction.
'Envy, did you get good grades last semester?'
No reaction.
'Envy, are you going to do something fun in your vacation? Besides sleeping?'
'Vacation? God, I love vacation. I'm going to sleep 12 hours a night all vacation long.'

#7: Finally have time? Well, now you have no idea what to do with it
All the items on the To Do List are done. All the exams were written, all the books read, all the essays already graded... You've found the thing that's even more mythical than unicorns: time to yourself. You could do whatever you wanted... But what?
One hour pass
Another one passes.
And another one.
Half a day later you still don't know what to do with all the time you suddenly have, so you end up doing nothing...

Let me tell you this: there are days when I'm nothing but grateful to get an education like this. But on other days, when my hair is dirty, I can't sleep and my food is cheap and disgusting, I'd like nothing more than becoming a drop-out. Or a full-time blogger. Sounds like a plan, don't you think?

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As summer vacation ended, panic started. My college is big on team building and trust in sophomore year. One of the things we had to do to 'strenghten and stimulate the group's cohesion' is a pecha kucha presentation.
Apparently 'pecha kucha' is Japanese for small talk. The presentation had to have 15 slides filled with pictures and I had 20 seconds per slide to tell something about it. The catch: I had to tell my life story in those 15 slides. Enter panicking Envy: I don't like talking about myself. Sure, I like to tweet pointless information about my opinion on mangoes to stangers, but actual talking to actual people? No thank you.

I spent weeks figuring out what I was going to tell and how I was going to tell it. It sounds easy to fill 15 slides with pictures of your life, but I got stuck after 8 slides.
A whole lot of complaining and brainstorming with friends later, I managed to fill the slides. I used a few to tell how I see myself, I told about my passion and my blog, my friends and my goals in life. When the big day finally came, I was still freaking nervous, but I was so proud of my presentation that I'm going to share it with all of you here today.

Envy's Pecha Kucha
"I wanted to start my pecha kucha with this picture, because I think this is how most of you see me. I'm calm, I'm quiet, reserved... I don't have to be the centre of attention, that's not me. This is who I am to others"

At this point I was awkwardly looking at the picture on the screen. What more was there to tell? I was pretty sure that this was how everyone saw me. Now they'd get to see how I see myself. I wasn't sure if I was ready for my classmates' reactions to the next picture.

"But this picture shows how I am on the inside. This is how I feel about myself: insecure, not good enough. I was bullied in elementary school, which is why I push people away from me. I'm not easy to get to know, I haven't let you come close to me yet. Because of that, it might seem like I don't have many friends."

It wasn't fun to tell this to a group of people who already thought of me as a bit of a pessimistic weirdo, but I was glad to finally say these things out loud. It was also the last negative part of my pecha kucha and I was so excited for the next slide.
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I was a nervously shaking awkward little Envy when I started my first year in college. Everything was big and scary. All the people were mature or at least looked like the were adults. I spent hours staring at assignments, afraid my work wasn't good enough. It was the year of 'Is this good enough?', the year of not being able to find your classroom and fear for teachers...
Sophomore year is different. Sophomore year is the year of 'Dude, I got this'. It's the year of making fun of freshmen who got lost in the basement, the year of desperately trying to remember what you learnt before that endless summer vacation.
When I started sophomore year a few weeks ago, I felt invincible. I was no longer one of the youngest people in college, I knew my way around and I knew what my teachers expected. And when it came to assignments and book reports, I started a new habit of quoting Disney movies in German at least once in a report. I am making the most out of every annoying assignment now.
Sophomore year is fun and relaxed, the year I will be teaching at my old high school and the year of the Berlin Trip. But that's not the end of it: sophomore year is also the year of my first college graduation ceremony.

In the Netherlands people like handing out diplomas. It makes us feel smart. To make everything extra complicated, we make college students everywhere work hard for 60 credits; If they pass all their tests and receive all 60 points, they get a propaedeutic diploma. It's not very valuable, but if a student doesn't have the 60 points from freshman year at the end of sophomore year, they can't finish the course and will have to get their education elsewhere.
I never really had to worry about those 60 points - which doesn't mean I never worried. Oh no, I worried about it a lot. Total waste of time, because Thursday morning at 9am I was called onto the small stage of my college's "symposium room" along with 10 classmates to receive our propaedeutical diplomas.

At 9am no one of my friends and family was able to come to my graduation ceremony, which made me very sad. That sadness lasted until I entered the symposium room, which looks like a miniature movie theatre. One of the chairs had a pretty, official-looking sign with my name on it. I felt so important, I forgot all about my sadness. 
The ceremony itself was brief but great. I was called onto the stage with two of my classmates and our mentor told a little something about all of us. Those moments were almost as awkward as the moments you spent awkwardly staring at your cake while people sing 'Happy Birthday'. For me it was extra awkward. My mentor told a little bit about how I was always working hard, then said: "The quality of your work is always extremely high... Is that true, Envy?"
I had no idea how to respong to that. As my head was slowly turning bright red, I just blurted out: "Sure, if you say so!" Never before have I made my classmates laugh out loud for as long as they did yesterday morning.

After signing the documents, everyone went up on the stage for group pictures. Everyone started hugging everyone, cameras were flashing from all directions. It was great.
Me (left) with a friend and our diplomas
I know loads of people who don't make a big deal out of this diploma, but to me it meant a lot. When I was still in elementary school, my teachers said I'd never achieve anything. I proved them all wrong on Thursday. It was totally worth the embarrassment of walking around college all day long with a rose in my hand. I am well on my way to become a teacher, but for now I'm going to sit back, relax and enjoy the calm first few weeks of sophomore year.

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'Excited?'
I didn't even answer my mom's question. It was Monday morning, I had two weeks of summer vacation left, but here I was, getting ready for my first internship assignment of my sophomore year. It was going to be one big surprise, because the email with instructions only said: 'Be there at 9'
With my experiences from last year's internship still fresh in my mind, I couldn't help but be nervous and excited. I couldn't understand how my mother hadn't noticed that yet: I had packed my bag three days before and even laid out my clothes for that day so I wouldn't panick about them in the morning.
'Envy? Excited?' My mom doesn't give up easily. 'Nervous?'
'Yeah,' I said, 'both.'

When I decided to become a teacher, I started dreaming about teaching at my old high school. This year that dream will come true - more or less. I landed an internship and soon I will start teaching German on Monday's while going to classes for the rest of the week.
I doubted a little about doing this internship. My previous internship coach basically told me I sucked, but she was the kind of person that went to a strip club with the other intern and stalked us on Facebook. So I set my doubts aside and on the morning of the 24th, I left my Batman shirt at home and went to my internship school dressed up as a responsible adult. One problem: as I arrived at the school, I still had no idea what I was supposed to do there. Heck, I didn't even know where the front door was!
My old high school had moved to a new building and lucky for me, one of my old teachers saw me stare at the walls like that would make a door appear out of nowhere. She showed me the door, then disappeared. I was pretty much on my own - and that's why I ended up ruining the principal's speech and photobombing the anual staff picture.

There's one things you need to know about my internship school: it has a garage, but for bicycles. It looks creepy and it's even worse when you don't know where the exit is. By the time I found it, I quickly walked through the doors and found myself right in front of every teacher of the school, who were all listening to the principal's "Welcome Back!!!" speech, which I'd unknowingly interrupted by showing up right next to the principal. I was off to a great start.
The principal decided to ignore me and one of my old teachers made room for me to sit. No one seemed to mind, a lot of the teachers were only looking at me because they still recognized me (mostly because I was "that girl who's always reading Harry Potter" and in one case because I was "the girl who almost set the science lab on fire with a clothes peg"). For a while I thought I was out of trouble. Then a photographer showed up. No matter how I tried not to be part of the staff picture, I ended up being clearly visible on front row. Never in my whole life have I been so happy to have left my Batman shirt at home.

I spent the rest of the day talking to my soon-to-be coaches, who only thought it was great that I was part of the staff picture. They even went a step further and brought me back to the photographer to get another picture taken. I tried to protest, but "you're part of the team now!"
And in that moment, when I heard them call me a part of their team, I could've cried tears of happiness. All those men and women that I respected when I was still an annoying fangirl with a loud shrill voice now wanted me to be part of their team, they wanted me to be successful in this career path. Words can't explain how great that feels. So when they offered me to start internship earlier and go on a fieldtrip to Germany with them, I could only say 'yes'.
I'm excited to start sophomore year, even more excited to start my second internship. I'll hope to see you stop by along the road, just like last year with The College Experience Posts!

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It's official: my first year of college is over. I've passed all the exams, handed all my reports in before the final deadline, received the remaining credits. All the Is are dotted and all the Ts are crossed. I've been looking forward to this day for weeks, but now I feel a little lost...


A lot has happened over the course of the year. I remember how nervous I was on the first day: I almost threw up on the bus on my way to college. I did not enjoy that day: I hadn't met my best friend yet, so he couldn't calm me down, and one of my old friends just said: 'Stop whining, you're awesome.'
In the end there was no reason to be nervous and before I knew it I'd made a bunch of new friends.
It was a funny year, in which I almost got stuck in a revolving door, learnt a little Mandarin and went to Vienna.
Even though it wasn't all fun, I can look back on my freshman year with a big smile. I'm not that nervous little girl who didn't want to go to college anymore. I think I grew up - but only a little.

When I take a look around my room I see the traces of freshman year. My backpack looks a little more battered than it did last summer. My wall is now covered in postcards from Vienna. There's a pile of pictures and drawings on my desk from the time I had to tell about my hometown in German. There are cinema tickets for German movies, lists with verbs and even some animal stickers I picked up in a museum for a friend of mine, before I came to my senses and remembered he lives on the other side of the world. There are tons of group selfies with my classmates on my phone, a couple of posts on this blog about all the awesome things I did this year. All those little things tell the story of my freshman year. When I put them all together, the story they tell is a good one :)

In September I'll start my sophomore year, with new subjects, new teachers, a new internship (at my old high school) and the power to boss freshmen around. I'm looking forward to it, but for now I'm just going to sit back, relax and enjoy the summer.

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During the rough days of my internship, I had one thing to look forward to: the obligatory trip to Vienna.
According to our official looking 'curriculum manual', this trip is all about discovering the beautiful Austrian culture. Main goals are learning about the school system, language, food and culture. Sounds great (and a little pretentious to be honest), doesn't it?
But if you put a group of 36 college freshmen and sophomores in a hostel in Vienna, you know things will be slightly different than the curriculum manual promises...

I went to Vienna on April 16th. After that date, everything becomes a blur. You see, we ran from one side of Vienna to the other, then back to the almost exact point where we started. And that for five days. We lost people on the Tube, we lost people on the streets, we even lost people on the toilets! It was chaos, but an organized and fun chaos.
We visited Prater, a luna park right in the middle of the city. The entire freshman class went go-karting, which meant full-on craziness. The roller coasters were constantly filled with screaming freshmen and I even went 117 meters up into the air in the world's highest swing ride: the Prater Turm!
The next day we toured the city in a bus and visited Austria's national television studios. I saw a lot of gigantic buildings that day, a ton of expensive cameras and a rehearsal for the Eurovision Song Festival.
Day 3 began with a tour of the Stephansdom and its catacombs (which are filled with bones). While most of my (hungover) classmates fled the catacombs as soon as the first skull came into vies, I enjoyed the peaceful cilence and the creepy vibe. I was even a bit disappointed when I had to leave the catacombs and head for Schloss Schönbrunn. Schloss Schönbrunn was a bit 'meh...' to be honest.

Me accidentally being in a picture of Schloss Schönbrunn
Next day we went to Schloss Belvedere, which has an inflatable Hulk. We spent the morning there, then left for the museum of natural history. In between I ate frozen yoghurt for the first time in my life and got overexcited about the prospect of seeing fossils. Needless to say, I spent the rest of my day in the museum.
On the last day I did absolutely nothing. We visited a school in the morning and claimed a gigantice lounge-bed-thingy in the hostel for the rest of the day.

Let's take a moment to appreciate this fine
piece of art, shall we?
So that sounded pretty nice and calm, didn't it? Well, it wasn't. In between the cultural activities, there was a lot going on.
I drank wine for the first time in my life. When my roommates realized I wasn't going to puke or have a hangover, they gave me a round of applause and pronounced me a 'grown-up'. As if :P
One of older roommates, however, got so drunk that she puked all over herself and one of the guys. She had to spend the night in the guys' room, where she was at the moment of puking. When she came back she brought a sour stench of wine puke with her. Upon entering the room she wrinkled her nose and said: 'You guys, you make the room stink.'
It wasn't all about drinking though. When people weren't getting wasted, they were taking pictures, lots and LOTS of pictures. In one of them my friend and I were photobombed by an old fat man. After getting back to the hostel and talking to our roommates, we discovered that this man had photobombed almost all our pictures that morning!

I also became the center of attention for the first time in my life, as my roommates decided to straighten my hair and showed me to the guys - who didn't even recognize me ar first, Probably because they had been drinking since noon that day.
Not everyone wanted to drink all day long, so at one point two of my roommates and I hid in our room with Chinese take-out and acted like we were on the Big Bang Theory. We discussed the most awkward thing of all: sharing a toilet with six people. This brought us to the great idea of impersonating the guys and their war over the toilets. We also decided our bathroom smelled disgusting (the drunk girl left her puke-stained clothes there) and one of the girls used her deodorant to mask the smell. We almost suffocated because of all the gasses and everything smelled like mango for hours. When one of our roommates came back and asked what had happened in the bathroom, the three of us yelled: "Mango poop!" and laughed for a solid five minutes.

So yes, things got crazy. A bottle of wine exploded in my hands. I bumped into a guy in a Superman suit (he even said 'hi' to me!). Batman chocolate eggs were eaten all day long. It was simply awesome. Next year we'll go to Berlin, hopefully with less drunk people and more Big Bang Theory style take-out!

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If there was one thing these kids DIDN'T do, it was keeping calm and
learning German
If you've been following this blog for a while, you might have noticed that I didn't do my monthly College Experience post last month. If you're new here: Hi! Hope you find something interesting to read!
Anyway, I didn't post last month because I didn't have time to write a post. I was also in a state of shock near the end of February. You see, I study German, so I can become a high school teacher. As part of my education, I have to do an eight-week internship during my freshman year, teaching German at a high school. But the school and kids I ended up with...

Before I continue this post, I have to give a short lesson in Dutch history.
When Dutch laborers became spoilt back in the 60s and didn't want to work in factories anymore, my country needed other people to do the crappy jobs. We found these people in Marocco and Turkey. Those people cam to our country, but stuck together. A lot of them didn't become part of the Dutch society and their cultures clashed with ours. They felt safe among their own people and thus certain parts of cities turned Turkish and Maroccan. Flash forward fifty years and we still see this pattern.
My internship school is in the south of Rotterdam, a place where a lot of immigrants from Arabic countries ended up. Most of the kids in my classes had names my western tongue couldn't pronounce, like Kaoutar and Anouar and Berkehan. They had a very particular attitude towards me: I'm a milky white Dutch polder girl. Very definitely not one of them and thus not worthy of respect.
My first day was traumatizing. I came home in a state of shock. All the glares and disrespectful gestures from high school kids had taken their toll on me.
My mom listened to my stories and said: 'Think of it as teaching in a ghetto.' From then on I went to my internship school while humming Elvis Presley's 'In the Ghetto'.

I came across some huge problems. I am fairly short for a Dutch girl. I am also on the skinny side and look a bit breakable. I am kind and have confidence in my students. All those things worked in my disadvantage at this school.
I wasn't able to do anything creative during my classes. I couldn't make the class more fun, because fun led to hyperactivity and fights. I couldn't turn my back for a second. The kids went crazy as soon as I stopped talking and sometimes just laughed at me, straight in my face, when I said they had to do some homework for out next class.
I knew fairly quickly that I loved teaching, but not in the ghetto. The kind, quite patient Envy had to make place for a teacher from Hell. I honestly didn't like myself anymore. It did have some effect: the kids were a little more like kids instead of little monsters when I showed up in killer heels and with a death stare on my face.

It doesn't sound like I had fun teaching, but there were moments when I absolutely loved it. The 8th graders were terrible, but I fell in love with the 10th graders. I couldn't stop laughing when a Maroccan and a Dutch boy in 10th grade ended up having a discussion about the importance of gravy. An girl in 8th grade stole my heart when she had to describe someone in German and said: 'The girl has hair and eyes.' There were some great kids and teaching them was awesome, but even older teachers with tons of experience have a hard time teaching at this school.

As I am typing this, I have four more days of internship to go. I will get through it and one day I'll be a good teacher, but right now I'm very disappointed with my college experience. I'm a confused freshman who's lost a bit of faith in humanity. Next year's internship will be better though. I'm sure of it.

Stay Awesome!
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My whole college experience was turned upside down a few weeks ago: besides credits from the actual curriculum, we also have to receive six credits through a chosen activity. That activity can be tutoring, going to events at the local Goethe Institut or taking extra classes. Most people chose the latter. There's a whole bunch of simple classes to choose from: funshopping, casino strategies, first aid classes. But I was stubborn and decided to go for one of the most difficult languages in the world: Mandarin.


I had my first class back in November. My dad had already laughed at me for days before I'd even started this class. 'You're tone deaf, you'll never be able to learn Chinese!'
Thanks for having faith in me, dad...
Tone deaf as I may be, I had no other choice than to follow these classes. After the first class, I was totally in love with Mandarin. I'd learned ten words and how to write their characters. If that was what these classes were going to be like for the next eight weeks, I'd be fine.

I wasn't fine when I came back the next week. I was having more and more trouble understanding my teacher, a tiny Chinese woman with a gigantic accent. She was funny, sweet and racist at the same time. Just a few things she liked to say:

  • Maybe Chinese people yellow because they drink water from Yellow River?
  • China look like chicken
  • You Dutch people all have big noses!
Seriously, if I said something like that with my white skin, I would've been a racist. However, this woman made such comments every ten minutes with a big smile on her face. I couldn't help but smile too.
Her Dutch wasn't very good, but she tried everything she could to make the course easier for us. When we had to learn a new character, she told us a story to make it easier to remember the character. For example nü (forgive me for not adding the right tone to the vowel), which means woman.
Source
It lookes like this and our teacher explained: 'Your mother is a woman, right? And she has back and legs, right? That vertical line is back and legs. And horizontal line is arms. The last line, when your mom is pregnant with you, she het ugly and round.'
I'm still not sure if this was the Chinese version of a 'yo momma' joke, but I laughed way too hard. It was the last time in weeks that I would leave during Mandarin class.

Things escalated quickly in week three. We went from saying 'Hello, how are you?' straight to 'I am studying Chinese at the university of Rotterdam'. I could not write it in characters, I could not pronounce it without breaking my tongue and I was seriously confused by the grammar (or lack thereof). It got only worse when I learned to say: 'May I ask where the bathroom is?'.
In Chinese (without most of the tones since I can't type half of them), you say that like this: 'Qing wèn, wishoujian zài nàr?'. It was total suicide for my Western tongue to pronounce it. When I finally worked up the courage to try, my tonedeafness kicked in. Instead of saying 'May I ask...', I said 'Qìng wĕn', which apparently means 'Kiss me please'...
I came very close to giving up on Mandarin that day.

Three weeks before I had to take my final in Mandarin, things changed. I don't know what happened, but I experienced this magical moment in which everything just clicked. Suddenly I understood everything my teacher said to me in Mandarin.
In the last two weeks I studied the language more thorough than ever before and found myself making up sentences of my own and leaving series of characters in the corners of my notepad.

On the 22nd of January I wrote my test. If you follow me on Twitter, you already know that I scored 100%. When those three digits appeared on my computer screen, I was overwhelmed with joy. I'd worked so hard for this course, but still I couldn't believe I had aced it.
The funny thing is that I made a few mistakes in the  multiple choice part. I'd focused on sentences and characters, not on facts such as the number of native Mandarin speakers. I scored 100% because of the bonus question. Remember how I told you I was making up my own chracters? That's what saved me. The bonus question was: write this question down in characters: 'Do you study Chinese at the university in Holland too?
That looks kinda like this:


Looking back on it, I'm a bit sad that the course is over. Maybe, just maybe, I'll take anotehr class sometimes. For the next eight weeks I'll be taking another extra class: Spanish. I can't wait for it to start.

Stay Awesome!
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It's an early edition of the College Experience this Christmas Eve. However, it wouldn't make any sense to post after Christmas. You see, Germans love Christmas. And since I not only study the German language, but also the German culture, this month was crowded with Christmas activities. Here's a short and sweet picture-filled post on my fourth month in college.

Part of the College Experience is getting your head stuffed with almost useless information. For me, this means I don't just learn German, I also have to learn about the culture and experience it. It's the experiencing part that's fun. 
My class organised an excursion to Münster for a measly two college credits. The point of this excursion? See Münster and enjoy the Weihnachtsmarkt (Christmas market). To be honest, I didn't love the city. But I loved the hot chocolate they sold at the Weihnachtsmarkt. Besides, who wouldn't trade a day of school for a day of Christmas shopping?
We saw more Dutch school kids than Germans in Münster, but the Germans we saw at the train station were awesome: they were handing out free advent calenders :) Studying German has its advantages.

A few days after the Christmas excursion we had a Weihnachtsfeier (Christmas celebration) at college with all the freshmen and sophomore (plus one junior and a nine-months old baby from one of my classmates). Everyone had brought food, we played silly games and ate way to much (at least I did). Most of the peoplewere dressed in red and black, some people were wearing Christmassy hats and even the teachers were in an extremely good mood. For once, no one talked about grades and papers :)

So you see, college isn't all about hard work all the time. Sometimes it's about having fun with your friends around. Have yourself an awesome Christmas ;)
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As the rest of the blogosphere did what it usually does, I had serious trouble juggling my blogging career, my college career, social life (okay, maybe not that one, I quit being social the minute I discovered the internet) and athletics. College was all fun and games until the dreaded midterms/finals came up...

This year is divided in four parts. Each part is called a 'block'. There's eight weeks to a block. And a week full of tests and exams at the end of each block. It's actually a lot like my senior year in high school. However, I had no idea what to expect this time. Probably 20 German sentences for Syntax. A mere 1500 German words for Sprachtraining. A letter about my every day life for the same course. Oral examination for Spracherwerb. The theory behind teaching kids to read German texts for Fachdidaktik. And the worst one: Oh yes, 40 multiple choice questions on adolescent psychology and its effect on education for Preparing For Internship. I was very sure this week would mark the end of my college career.

Everyone, yes everyone, was totally freaking out. People stayed up all night to study. Then picked up their phones, neglected their books and complained that they had to study all night. People were telling eachother horror stories about how difficult it all was. About how they had no idea how to learn for every course at the same time.
Well, turning your phone of would help
I started to panick. It didn't help that G. had told me that I had to pass Preparing For Internship (PFI as we call it). Didn't pass PFI? Bad luck, not internship for you!
I went crazy. I dropped everything. I neglected my blog, I had tons of posts in mind that I couldn't write, I couldn't promote my blog or contest as much as I would've liked... It's was a rough month. The college experience became one big torture...

Now, two weeks later, I've got most results back. I passed PFI with 8.8 out of 10 points. Syntax with 9 out of 10. Fachdidaktik with 10 out of 10!
I passed all my exams with outstanding results. But I'm still not very happy. I've done too much this month. I have to slow down, reconsider my schedule and probably take a step back. College has my highest priority at the moment and I'm simply doing too much in my scarce free minutes.
What does that mean for Picking up the Pieces? Probably not very much. I'll find a way to keep posting as much as possible. I'm announcing the winner of my contest this Wednesday and I have two very Dutch posts prepared for you!

My sense of humor has more or less disappeared since I started thinking about what to write for this months College Experience post. Alas, I can't make it any more beautiful than it is at the moment. I'll do whatever it takes to keep on blogging! But if I disappear for a while, send a rescue team this way: I'll probably be buried under land slide of homework!
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Yup, got some of these in my class again
Two months have gone bysince I first set foot in my college building. It looked like a gigantic maze, a muggle Hogwarts with all its corridors and classrooms in the cellar. By now, I know my way around, which stairs to take and which revolving doors to avoid.
It's been two months since I first met my classmates. I've reached the point where I know which people I like a lot and which people I like a little less. I know which teachers I like, I know which teachers like me and I know which teachers I'll be seeing in my nightmares for years.
But maybe more important: I know which classes I love.

In the next four years I'll learn two things: fluent German and how to be a good teacher.
Learning German is relatively easy. We speak German all day long and over the past four weeks we've done written vocabulary tests. Those aren't very awesome, but I aced them all which is totally awesome. So I'm pretty confident that I'll be fine when it comes to the actual speaking part of my college education.
And then there's the part in which we learn teaching skills. It consists of three classes: practical didactics, theoretical didactics and drama. Drama? Yes, drama!
In drama class, my favorite class of this semester, we learn to stand up straight to indicate a high status, we learn to use our emotions to get a message through, we learn to control our motions. It's really helpful and super funny. I had my last lesson on Friday and I'm going to miss these classes.

That's what I looked like all day. Muderous lunatic enough for you?
The test for drama was on Friday. I had to perform a solo to get my credits. I could do anything I want, as long as I didn't bring any fake weapons to school. I planned to act like a murderous lunatic, so instead of something real-looking I brought a bright green water gun!
I was super nervous for my solo, but my teacher was really excited about mine. She had read the piece I'd written and loved it. So on Friday I performed my solo, even though I was scared.
I threw the door shut, pretended to kill a teacher with a water gun and then held a monologue on why I'd killed him. Then, after realizing my life was over too (I would get caught after all) I pretended to commit suicide with the water gun.
My class was in shock. They hadn't expected anything like that, since I'm usually quiet and calm. Suddenly there I was, with make up all over my face, yelling and screaming and threatening to use the water gun again, this time on my classmates.
I passed the test with flying colors and impressed my classmates by showing them a different side of me. Which they immediately accepted.

So after two months of college, can I tell you what the College Experience is? No, I still can't. But it's something like this.
The College Experience is:

  • Running through the halls with a water gun
  • Pretending to be a lunatic
  • Making bad jokes about Germans
  • Wearing a Batman sweater to school and being called awesome for doing that
  • Having the freedom to be who you've always wanted to be.
And that's not all. The college experience is so much more than that. How much more? I'll have to find out, but you'll hear from me soon!
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Life is a weird roller coaster full of craziness, I think we all agree to that. The silliest little things can change everything and our friends can make our lives revolve around the most ridiculous things.
I, for one, am still called 'the drowning otter' because of a little accident I had over two years ago. I'm also greeted with a simple 'HODOR' and my oldest friends know me as the half-American. After that, I thought I'd be prepared for whatever kinds of craziness college would throw at me.
Fandoms, travelling and writing had been the centre of my world, piece of cake to handle. But then something unexpected happened, something I didn't know how to handle, and I suddenly found myself in a situation where my whole life revolved around... a revolving door.

Not if your name is Envy...
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What's life like when you're in college? Until a month ago, I had no idea. I wasn't looking forward to finding out either. I had to force myself to get on the bus the very first day. And when I arrived in Rotterdam, I panicked: college life was not going to be the way I'd imagined.

On my very first day I was squashed into a church with about 500 other college freshmen. It would be an understatement to say that it was uncomfortable. We listened to speeches, speeches and more speeches. When it was over, the uncomfotableness continued, but with less people around.
First week was dedicated to introducing ourselves to our classmates. So we had to do teambuilding activities in a park. And that's when It started to go wrong for me. First of all: I was a little spastic. Second: I called a guy 'Orkaan' (Dutch for hurricane) while his name is 'Borkán'. I was totally convinced the guy had sadistic parents who'd called their kid Hurricane, but no... Socially awkward Envy didn't score much points with her classmates that day.
As the week progressed I got to know my classmates better. I talked to everyone and tried to make new friends. Soon an aura of awesomeness started to surround us during our Rotterdam Tour.
Awesome, right?
Now, three weeks later, I've found my place in the class, which is basically just one big group of make-believe Germans. Wait, I haven't explained the German thing yet, have I?
Long story short: I'm studying German to become a teacher. Not many people want to do that, so we're all together in one class, have all our classes together and have no contact whatsoever with the other language students, because 'WE ARE THE GERMANS'. Yes, German is a great language for yelling :)

Classes are great. I haven't had that many, so I can't tell much about it yet. 
The teachers are sometimes a bit overexcited and intimidating. And sometimes I just don't understand them. I recently said during Grammatik: 'I think I need new glasses.' My teacher responded: 'You're always such a sweet girl.' 
Huh?!Okay, if you say so...
Nonetheless, I'm enjoying college to the fullest. I still finding my way and place there, but I'll give you an update once a month. I need to schedule my posts now and monthly recurring things are easy to remember :) It's not that I have little time, it's more that I am swept away by a tsunami of information. I haven't learned that much yet, but now I do know that
  • the German word for 'mind map' is 'Wortigel', which translates back to 'word hedgehog'.
  • revolving doors are not my friends.
  • 'wo ai ni' is Chinese for 'I love you'.
  • my real name is Turkish for 'mom'.
  • waving a German flag in front of a WW II museum is not a good idea...
So what's life in college like? I still don't really know yet. But I'm determined to find out. Next month I'll be back with another College Experience post. Until then: follow my Low Battery Challenge, read my other posts, do a dance, sing a song, read a book, but most important: stay awesome!
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