Signed, Sealed, Delivered

The future is officially out of my hands. Well, at least, for now...

Today, Jack brought all our documents to school with him so that the program's coordinator could submit them for our visa extensions. For those of you who hadn't heard, this lovely woman was willing to group my application in with VLB's participants so that she could personally explain our situation to the Ausländeramt (foreigner's office? Best translation I could come up with). Yeah, not being married and trying to live together abroad is kind of a situation. As in, the government could decide for some reason that they believe I'm more likely to stay here illegally after Jack goes back to the states and predicts that I'll apply for German welfare...I mean, COME ON. Just let me stay here, you punks! I will HAPPILY leave when Jack completes his certification. I'm not sure you could pay me to stay here--well, okay. How about a trillion, gazillion, bajillion dollars?


In other (unrelated) news, one might notice that if one lives in or around Mitte (the center of Berlin), the only available dwellings to inhabit are apartment buildings that vary in size, shape, and color, although not much in style. Since much of Berlin's center was squashed to smithereens during WWII, the city has been in a state of continuous construction ever since. Okay, I take that back. I don't know if parts of the former East have been touched since 1965...my point? Ahh, yes. Well, the other day, my new aforementioned friend Monica (yay!!) and I ventured down to Steglitz-Zehlendorf, one of Berlin's 12 "boroughs," you might say, on the southwestern edge of Berlin. We visited a girl who lives with her husband down there, in a building (and subdivision) that was converted from U.S. Army barracks into luxury lofts. But on the third leg of our trip (U-Bahn, S-Bahn, then bus), I FINALLY saw houses! Single-family homes! Beautiful, grand homes with fences and yards, gardens and driveways! Oh, the suburban-like glory! No buildings haphazardly stacked up against one another! No graffiti covering entire faces of buildings! Boring, perhaps, but glorious, for certain.


Can you tell I'm not quite a fan of the ultra-urban environment that makes up much of the Berlin I know? Don't worry, Mom, it's not like we're living in the "bad" neighborhood, but Mitte and its surrounding areas, like Tiergarten, Wedding, Kreuzberg, and Prenzlauer Berg (where we are) are a bit more rough around the edges. It was just nice to see that green space does exist here within the city limits. Also, it will help when Spring decides to show its face around here, because there are some lovely landscaped parks here in the city--like Treptower Park--that I'm sure are gorgeous when they're green. 

So I wait. Hey, at least the sun is out today! Happy Weekend, everyone!