A good mood doesn't come in the mail.

The other intern I work with told me today that Valentines Day without a boyfriend sucks. Well, Nina, I don't have a boyfriend and I had a wonderful day. I'll admit, that I'm normally the kind of guy who goes way over the top with things like Valentines when I have a girlfriend, so I've gotten used to the idea of the 14th being a day of surprises and giving. That being such, I woke up this morning in a good mood and decided to do something unexpected and nice.

I put on my rose red pants, my jacket and a scarlet scarf (again enjoying the duality of a scarf as a neck hole plug and outfit complement) and strolled out the door. There's a flower shop just around the corner from my apartment so I popped in and bought a handful of the cheapest roses they had. Normally in a story such as this you'd expect someone to buy the most expensive roses in the store, thereby making the story even more impressive. However, after working jobs with hourly wages that in most countries (including Germany) would be considered becoming on an indentured servant, I don't have the kind of cash laying around to shell out 50 euros on a drop of the hat decision. Either way, I walked out of the flower shop with six or seven roses surprisingly pretty for their asking price and made my way on a zig-zag line through downtown Würzburg. I tried to pick my targets carefully, namely those people who if you asked how they liked Valentines day, they'd tell you that without a boyfriend it sucks. So the rose dressed, rose bearing, smiling Californian boy meandered through the city handing out roses to those people with frowns (my hairdresser), screaming children (the woman pushing the stroller in front of the hair dresser), or in one instance, an ancient woman on crutches in a doctor's office. In this last case, my gift kind of lost all its spontaneity and flair because I had to repeat several times why exactly it was that I was giving her a rose.

Me: "Here's just a little something for a good start to Valentine's Day!" (smiling)
Frau Schmidt, born 1876: "What's this for?" (confused smile)
Me: "It's a rose just because. Happy Valentines Day!" (still smiling)
Frau Schmidt: "What was that?" (confused)
Me: "I just...Happy Valentines Day. It's a rose for you...?" (now speaking much louder and equally as confused)
Frau Schmidt: "Is this a rose?"
Me (thinking): 'Look, I know that it's a cheap flower, but it still at least resembles a rose. And I know that you know it's Valentines Day because I can almost guarantee that this doctors appointment has been circled on your calendar for the past five months and you check you calendar every couple hours for any changes that might have happened while you weren't looking. That being the case, I'm sure you're clever enough to figure out that when someone you don't know gives you a rose on Valentines Day and has a bunch of other roses in his hand, he's just trying to do something nice.'
Me (saying): "Yes."

Other than the slightly awkward experience with Grandmother Time, handing out the roses was a great little experience. One of the things that I've realized time and time again while being abroad is that there are endless opportunities to be spontaneous, interact with the people around you (even though they may be complete strangers) and perhaps even get them to crack a smile. For example, all cashiers in the grocery store wear name tags, but how often are they addressed by name? So I've taken to striking up little conversations with them will they scan my groceries and most of them, although slightly taken aback because conversing with the cashier isn't too often seen in Germany, enjoy the small talk. I've also started asking all the nurses I work with how they met their boyfriends/husbands just to hear their stories. Taking the initiative to approach people offers the "risk taker" immediate rewards. I'm looking forward to more social experiments to come. Until then, Happy Valentines Day and with or without boyfriend, I hope it doesn't suck.

Discovering the scarf

Usually when the weather comes up as a topic of conversation, it’s a signal of banality. But let’s talk about the weather. Being that most people who aren’t from California think that it’s just a gigantic beach, I often get asked how I’m faring in the coldness and snow. Now that we are in the deepest part of winter, I feel like I can make a valid judgment of what it’s like to live through an average German winter (the picture right here is a view from my bedroom window just before Christmas).

When you step outside and it’s 11 degrees Fahrenheit, you immediately begin to question your motives for leaving the house. When you go to watch biathlon, a sport that your don’t quite understand in the first place, and it’s below freezing but somehow raining, you aren’t sure if you should be upset, or marvel at the physical anomaly that is Sub-Zero Rain. Living in a place with a “real” winter is quite a change, but all in all it’s manageable. There are definitely those moments in which you wonder if it’s physiologically possible for your fingers to fall off, or when the sole of your shoe decides that it’s sick of being stepped on and drops off right before you step in a half frozen puddle and naturally you get frustrated. However, sooner or later when you thaw out in whichever protective shelter you’ve found refuge in, the mind has a way of helping you forget just how miserable it is outside. And if your refuge has windows, you might even be able to admire how beautiful a light snow can be, or how the wind can make snowflakes dance on the road, or how the kids down the street made a hermaphroditic snow(wo)man with unbelievable anatomical detail.

In my very limited experience with winter I've found that there's really only one maxim which holds true: There's no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing. If you do yourself up right, then the brutality of the weather is all but neutralized. There have been a couple pieces of clothing that have been crucial for me, which heretofore were totally foreign objects. After spending the month of November with hands frozen to my crutches, I invested in a pair of wool lined gloves. They changed my life. A nice wool jacket will also get you far, not to mention make you look stylish and metropolitan, even if you're wearing a t-shirt underneath (which I do all the time). Fur lined shoes were also a good investment because toasty toes are almost as important as toasty fingers. But far and away the best discovery I've made living in a German winter is the scarf. We'll leave out the benefits of adding color to your outfit that compliments your eyes or skin tone and just talk about the importance of plugging your neck hole. Yeah, I said your neck hole. When you wear a jacket, most of the time it doesn't fit snugly around the neck region, leaving a small, inconspicuous area for sneaky, ice-cold air to sneak in and seize grasp around your chest. This leak is called the neck hole, and there is nothing better to plug it up that a nice puffy scarf. I was skeptical at first, but I tried it and it revolutionized the whole experience of being outside. Plus I can choose scarves that match my hat.

So, all in all, winter is survivable to say the least. I think I also have the benefit of being a hot blooded person which allows me to walk down the street to the bakery in the morning in a t-shirt, sweats and Birkenstocks, but that is neither here nor there. What's important is that I don't live in between Chicago and Boston where no amount of good clothing will save you from Blizzardmaggedon 2011.

Is this gonna be forever?

At the beginning of January I flew to Chicago for a NSLC administrative summit and experienced a very strange phenomenon: Reverse Culture Shock (herein referred to as RCS). It actually quite unsettling to feel so at odds with something you've known and felt comfortable with your entire life - it's roughly equivalent to feeling like a stranger in your own parents' house. It was something that I wanted to end as quickly as possible because it seemed so unnatural, but now that I'm back and have had time to process the whole thing, it's pretty interesting and quite amusing.

I experienced RCS for the first time when I came back to California after a semester in Córdoba, Spain, but that was minor league in comparison to the cultural unease I felt in Chicago. Actually, coming back from Spain, the shock was limited entirely to UGG boots. Yup, UGGs. Let me explain: Spain is a country where getting dressed is almost as important as soccer, and that's saying something. When you leave the house, you are properly done up for the day, regardless of the length of your venture or the weather. It's 9 o'clock in the morning and I need to go to the fruit stand downtown and it's 95 degrees? Ok, let me grease my hair up, throw on a button down shirt, nice tight jeans and a pair of low profile leather shoes that click on the cobblestone as I walk the 500 yards to the fruit stand. The same trip in the United States might look something like this: I do a once over on my hair with some hot water, throw on some workout shorts and flip flops and get in the car to drive the 30 seconds to the corner store. Needless to say, while in Spain I got used to people looking chíc whenever they left the house. When I got back to Davis, it felt a little bizarre to see thousands of people shuffling around in sweat suits all day long every day, but what was even stranger to me were UGG boots. In Spain you might be lucky to see somebody wearing those as house shoes, but probably not even there. In the US girls wear them like it's their job, and even worse, as if they look good. Excuse me? You're coming to work at a customer service job wearing those huge, puffy, dumpy, dripping-wet-at-the-toes moon slippers? In my opinion, there should be a social ordinance banning UGGs in public - they're just too...UGGly.

Anyway, this post isn't supposed to be about Spain, some of my pent up anti-UGG sentiments just came bubbling up (perhaps because the all-day slippers made the jump and are now catching on in Germany). As I said before, the RCS that developed over the course of my six days in Chicago was quite a bit stronger and way more uncomfortable. There were a ton of small things that made me double take, but I think I'll just hit on the major points:

Germany is one of the most advanced countries in the world with what is undoubtedly the best standard of engineering anywhere on the globe. However, the are a little bit behind on the technology curve, and I mean that in a good way. The most striking difference is the connection that people have with their cell phones. In Germany, I can be hanging out with a bunch of students just sitting and chatting on a Saturday night and see two phones in two hours. I rode the metro a lot in Chicago, and I would say that I saw the cell phones of at least 70% of the people in the train and probably close to 40% of the metro patrons were on their phone the entire train ride. It's unbelievable and discomforting. Don't get me wrong, cell phones are a fantastic invention in my opinion and I'm glad that I have one, but the incessant need to text, check the internet or simply flip through the thousands of applications on a phone is over-the-top and overwhelming. Maybe I'm from more of an old school mentality or maybe I'm slowly turning into a German. Either way, it was unreal to me how lonely and isolated the atmosphere can be in a train that is packed full of people.

The second and more lasting RCS effect that I battled was the language. Of course it was a little startling at first to hear everybody around me speaking English when I expected German to be coming out of their mouths, but what was truly difficult was the reverse translation that I had to do in my head. It's gotten to the point where my thoughts run in German, so naturally the first words that my mouth form are German. Since German wasn't going to get me very far in Chicago, I had to really concentrate to make coherent English sentences come out. I found myself struggling to not simply translate directly from German to English, and a couple times I said things that sounded totally foreign:

"Man, me is hot." instead of "Man, I'm hot." or,
"Me it is equal." in an attempt to say "I don't really care." or,
"We will see us tomorrow, or?" as a butchered version of "See ya tomorrow, right?"

I'm starting to sound like a German immigrant who's American accent is decent, but who's grammar could use a little work. But I have to say the weirdest language incident I had was on the taxi ride to the airport. I was sitting in the front seat and started to chat with the taxi driver about nothing important, but all of a sudden I felt this really uncomfortable sense of closeness to him. Not in a physical sense given that American cars are so wonderfully spacious, rather in a linguistic sense. In many languages, German being one of them, there is a different verb conjugation for the formal and informal uses of "you." Whereas a lot of cultures, like Spanish, are kind of free flowing and loose about the use of the two, German is quite strict. People who have worked in the same office for ten years will often still use the formal version and you can pretty much bet your bottom dollar that any interaction that you have with somebody new who is over the age of 18 will use the formal version. The girl who cuts my hair is 20 years old and knows that I am 22, yet we still use the formal version with each other. Normally I would tell her that it's ok for her to use the informal (something that I am socially allowed to do as a. the customer and b. the older person), but it's a good place for me to practice using the formal conjugations. She has no idea that she is a linguistic laboratory for me, but she does know that I like my hair washed before and after my haircut. Either way, I've gotten used to a society with these linguistic barriers for how well you know a person, and as I was chatting with the taxi driver, I felt this weird sense of "I don't know you at all Mister - this 'you' business is getting a little too personal for me." Since I've been back I've mulled a lot over the whole use of formal versus informal and the pros and cons and although it is nice to be able to express formality by simply changing the conjugations, I prefer a more relaxed system where there aren't divisions and rules that you have to work around.

Those were really the two major beasts of culture that I found myself face to face with, but I do want to say something about breakfast. America: can I please get a freshly baked pretzel?

2011: Year of the Adventure/Rabbit

According to a friend, I'm "the kind of person who would make New Year's resolutions." I'm not quite sure what the means or how to interpret it, but in any case it's true. I actually made quite a few, but I'll only share the most important ones here:

I. Write the date correctly all year.
For those of you who know me, you'll take note that this is among my resolutions every year. Up to this point, last year was my best attempt. Whereas my hyperattention usually wanes in April, last year I made it to August before my brain turned itself off. I wrote on a receipt at the airport that it was 2002. Pathetic.

II. Write regularly to my Spanish family.
Not maintaining stable contact with my host family in Córdoba is an enormous regret that I have. The four months that I spent with them in 2009 was one of the most important and life changing experiences that I've ever had - not only because I was living and traveling in Spain, but because the connection that I forged with the family (especially my host sister) was very strong. However, on my last night there, my host dad, in a moment of weakness and cynicism, launched into a huge speech about how it was nice to have had me, but in the end the family only hosted for economic reasons and although the time was fun, we would lose contact like all the rest of the students they'd hosted. I assured them that that wouldn't be true, but lo and behold, the contact waned as I became overwhelmed with the obligations of college life in California. After a number of uncomfortable confrontations from my sister about how I let her and the family down, I asked for a clean start yesterday, which she granted me. I am resolute to make it work.

III. Read more news.
Being in touch with what's happening with the world of politics, economics and current events is, in my opinion, an important part of being educated. As such, I'm trying to read more news and broaden the scope of what I know. While getting news from Big Dave's and Jeremia's facebook status updates is informative, it is also about 75% of the time a link to something like a YouTube video of someone saying the word "Ho" on Jeopardy or a disgusting beast of a man trying to eat 40 pizza pockets in two minutes. For those interested, he doesn't manage to do it, but he leaves the camera on as he eats the remainder as a sort of dessert.

IV. Seek more adventure.
I'm young, healthy, have very few obligations, live in a foreign country and am curious to find out what makes the Earth spin. The way I see it, I should be doing nothing other than seeking adventure. And on top of that, finding adventure is simple - I just have to be open to any and all opportunities and people. "Hey Reid, do you want to go outside with me at midnight on New Years and set off this 20 meter Spanish firecracker that is for all intents and purposes a bunch of small bombs strung together? Oh hey Reid, do you want to go stand in the freezing cold and watch a bunch of super fit European women go cross country skiing with guns on their backs? Reid, are you interested in putting on these Lederhosen for a Christmas photo shoot? Yo Reid, would you be down to..." don't finish. The answer is yes. This year I'm going to try and accumulate experiences, because experiences lead to memories and memories are what make life rich. Along the way I'm going to see how ignoring that voice in your head that says "This may be a stupid idea" plays a role in finding adventures. My guess is that it's pretty important.

Now the only question that remains is: will you help me find adventure in 2011?

It feels like we're going in circles

I think a lot about the orbiting of planets; it's a nice representation of time. Whereas a clock can be unplugged, a watch can run out of batteries, a tree can burn down and a heart can stop beating, the planets twirl, weave and dance with one another interminably.

This year we went once round the sun. That, and the Earth did 365 pirouettes. It's beautiful, yet frighteningly inexorable. As 2010 comes to a close, I find myself overwhelmed trying to integrate everything. I could really use a moment without sound to hear my thoughts and a moment without motion to catch my breath, but the globe keeps spinning ignorant to my requests. This year has been pretty important for me, so much so that for the first time in my life I feel like I need to, much like my friend Loaf does for everything, rehash the milestones.

I took the hardest test of my life and survived.

I built my first bike from spokes to saddle.

I graduated from college as a neurobiologist (and a minor league scholar of German language and culture).

I organized a directed a conference to educate and inspire high schoolers about pursuing a career in health care.

I was told on numerous occasions, at said conference, that I was Puerto Rican.

I willingly slept in a car three nights in a row.

I learned how to be single - and that being single can be really complicated.

I went on my first business trip.

I drank a whole beer (alcohol free).

I moved to Europe with little more than a backpack, a bike and a promise of a job.

I became an Emergency Medical Technician.

I rode 400 miles in four days down the sunny California coast with two of my closest friends.

I successfully completed the Cinnamon Challenge. Twice.

There is no doubt that some achievements on this list are more momentous than others - graduating from college is without question of more life-importance than being called Puerto Rican by a 17 year old Puerto Rican girl. But in those pensive moments in which I get lost in my thoughts and try to sort and organize them to achieve some order and sense, these are the things that come to mind. It is in these moments that I try and dig my heels into the Earth in the silly hope that my resistance will make it spin just a little bit slower and give must that fraction of a second longer to understand everything that goes through my head.

In the end, I have to simply own up to the fact that the Earth spins, circles the sun and is just one of a great number of stones that are accelerating away from one another. I suppose that's the beauty of it all, that within the elegant choreography of the universe, we live, love, laugh and thrive. So, let the dance go on, let us keep going in circles and let our next go around the sun be even better than that last magnificent lap that was 2010.

Übersetzung: An open letter to the St. Martin School

Even though you all surely breezed through my letter in German, here's the translation (you know, just so that you can be sure that you understood all those 46 letter words):

To my wonderful coworkers,

It's hard to believe that my time at St. Martins is already at its end; three months couldn't have flown by any faster. My internship at the school wasn't the standard for you guys: I was the American, who was spread out between all the grades, who all of a sudden showed up on crutches, which were all of a sudden decorated, who only stayed until Christmas. As a result, I didn't have the opportunity to get to know a lot of you and I often found myself on the edge of the action without a specific task to fulfill.

However, that was ok for me, because I still learned so many things in the last three months that I can use and integrate into my daily life. I would like to share a short list of these things that I learned at St. Martins, things that are now indispensable to me:

I. When Patricia doesn't eat because she's distracted, when Süsänn asks the same question for the tenth time in the past two minutes, or when Pascal just stands in the bathroom and stares at you despite the fact he's told you four times that he needs to go, then the natural reaction is to get angry. Yet you learn quite quickly that that isn't the proper solution. You have to have patience (even when you think that you're already patient, it's almost always better to be even more patient) and always keep in mind that our students have a completely different perception of the world.

II. I have never worked with children, but in the last three months through the close contact that I've had with them, I've learned to better understand children and to regard them as human beings. Handicapp here or there, children can surprise us and they do everyday. Teaching isn't a one way street, at St. Martins is no exception to this rule - St. Martin children are complex, smart in their own way, full of potential and we can learn a lot from them as our fellow humans.

III. Children help adults to re-recognize the small beautiful things in life that are often lost in the shuffle. I wouldn't say that I had a poor imagination when I came to work at St. Martins, but through the time I spent with the children I saw that the world had in fact lost some of it's magic in my eyes. Now I appreciate again that cloud movements can be spectacular, that a carpet with streets and buildings on it can be a real city, that Tolga in a foam barrel in the gym is the funniest toy in the world. Beauty is truly everywhere, in every child, in every snowflake, natural or handmade.

IV. For me, one of the biggest challenges was that everything happened in German. Just as I thought that my German had gotten strong enough, I realized that there were a lot of people at the school who spoke no German at all. Since then, I've learned a ton of Franconian. Cool, huh?

V. The last thing that I would like to share with you guys is simple: The people who work at St. Martin School are true heroes. I want to eventually become a doctor, but I saw time and time again while working at the school that you don't need a medicine license to heal somebody. Society needs organizations like St. Martins and thereby included are people like you all who give everything for the school. Sometimes the work is exhausting, sometimes the rewards and progresses are hard to see, but be sure that what you do is invaluable and appreciated. I am so happy that I got the chance to work with you all.

I thank you all very much for the opportunity I was given. Mr. Zinsmeister took a risk when he gave me the ok to do an internship at the school. I can only hope that my time here brought you all something too and that I wasn't the only one who came away with something.

I have traveled quite a bit and along the way I have seen and experienced quite a lot. However, I am more that sure that working at the St. Martin School is one of the most important experiences that I've ever had, and that's due to you all and the kids. Again, thank you!

All the best,
Reid Haflich

Ein offener Brief an die St. Martin Schule

Meine lieben Mitarbeiterinnen und Mitarbeiter,

Ich kann es kaum fassen, dass meine Zeit an der St. Martin Schule schon zu Ende ist; drei Monate könnten nicht schneller vorbei fliegen. Mein Praktikum an der Schule war nicht so was Normales für euch: ich war der Amerikaner, der überall zugeteilt war, der plötzlich mit Krücken gekommen ist, die plötzlich geschmückt waren, der nur bis zu Weihnachten geblieben ist. Aufgrund dessen hatte ich nicht die Gelegenheit viele von Euch kennen zu lernen und oft fand ich mich am Rand ohne eine spezifische Aufgabe.

Aber das war für mich egal, weil ich trotzdem in den letzten drei Monaten so viel gelernt habe, Sachen die ich für den Rest meines Lebens nutzen und im täglichen Leben integrieren kann. Ich will euch kurz einige Dinge mitteilen, die ich an der St. Martin Schule gelernt habe und jetzt für mich unentbehrlich sind:

I. Wenn Patricia nicht isst, weil sie abgelenkt ist, oder wenn Süsänn die gleiche Frage zehn Mal in zwei Minuten stellt, oder wenn Pascal im Bad stehen bleibt und dich anstarrt, obwohl er dir vier Mal gesagt hat, dass er aufs Klo muss, dann ist die natürliche Reaktion sich zu ärgern. Aber man lernt sehr schnell, dass das nicht die richtige Lösung ist. Man muss einfach Geduld haben (auch wenn man denkt, dass man Geduld schon hat, es ist fast immer besser noch geduldiger zu sein) und man muss immer wieder daran denken, dass die Schuler eine komplete andere Wahrnehmung von der Welt haben.

II. Ich habe nie mit Kindern gearbeitet, aber durch die engen Kontakte in den letzen Monaten habe ich gelernt Kinder besser zu verstehen und als Menschen wahrzunehmen. Behinderung hin oder her, Kinder können uns überraschen und sie schaffen es jeden Tag. Unterrichten ist keine Einbahnstraße, und die St. Martin Schule ist keine Ausnahme – St. Martin Kinder sind komplex, klug in ihrer eigenen Art, voller Potenzial und wir können als Mitmenschen viel von ihnen lernen.

III. Kinder helfen Erwachsenen die kleinen, schönen Dinge im Leben, die zu oft übersehen werden, wiederzuerkennen. Ich würde nicht sagen, dass ich fantasielos war, als ich zur St. Martin Schule kam, aber durch die Zeit, die ich mit den Kindern verbracht habe, erkannte ich, dass in meinen Augen die Welt doch schon ein bisschen ihrer Zauberei verloren hatte. Nun schätze ich wieder, dass Wolkenbewegungen großartig sein können, dass ein Autoteppich eine echte Stadt sein kann, dass Tolga in einem Schaumstofffass in der Turnhalle das lustigste Spielzeug der Welt ist. Schönheit ist wirklich überall, in jedem Kind, in jeder gebastelten oder natürlichen Schneeflocke.

IV. Für mich war eine der größten Herausvorderungen, dass alles auf Deutsch ablief. Gerade als ich dachte, dass mein Deutsch stark genug wurde, bemerkte ich, dass viele Leute an der Schule gar kein Deutsch sprechen. Seitdem lernte ich ‘ne Menge Frängisch. Schön, gell?

V. Die letzte Sache, die ich euch mittteilen möchte ist einfach: Die Leute an der St. Martin Schule sind echten Helden. Ich will eventuell Arzt werden, aber ich habe an der Schule immer wieder gesehen, dass man keine Medizinlizenz braucht, um jemanden zu heilen. Die Gesellschaft braucht Organisationen wie die St. Martin Schule und damit verbunden sind Leute wie ihr, die für diese Schule alles geben. Manchmal ist die Arbeit anstrengend und manchmal sind die Belohnungen und Fortschritte schwierig zu sehen, aber seid sicher, dass das, was ihr macht, unbezahlbar und geschätzt ist. Ich freue mich, dass ich die Chance bekommen habe mit euch zu arbeiten.

Ich bedanke mich sehr für die Gelegenheit, die ihr mir gegeben habt. Herr Zinsmeister hat ein Risiko übernommen, als er gesagt hat, dass ich ein Praktikum bei euch machen darf. Ich hoffe nur, dass meine Zeit euch etwas gebracht hat und ich nicht der einzige war, der etwas daraus mitgenommen hat.

Ich bin ziemlich viel gereist und auf dem Weg, habe ich ganz viel gesehen und erfahren. Aber ich bin mir sicher, dass die St. Martin Schule eine von den wichtigsten Erfahrungen ist, die ich je gehabt habe und das liegt an euch und den Kindern. Nochmals vielen Dank!

Mit Besten Grüßen,

Reid Haflich