What Wonderful Weather!

Most normal people don’t consider this to be great weather. Normal people don’t smile when they look out the window in the morning and see clouds and rain, and the weather forecast on their computer claims the current temperature is 63° right now. Only those of us who see sun 360 days a year get excited about rain. (We’re the same crowd who takes the day off school if it even looks like it might snow, but I digress.)

It is rainy, and dark, and gloomy, and a little cold today. And it’s wonderful. This is the kind of weather I was hoping for in coming to Berlin, not the heat we had my first 2 weeks. I’m going to be changing into a long-sleeved shirt with my jacket for this afternoon, and will carry my umbrella with me everywhere.

Of course, it also seems to keep the bees at bay, which is nice. I was sure that with the number of bees that hang around any place with food service outside (almost every restaurant and café), I was going to get stung eventually. Yesterday afternoon, I was standing outside the school waiting for some friends to decide where they wanted to go for lunch, when I was attacked. I don’t know what this irritating insect decided it suddenly had against me, but it flew directly into the side of my head, right in front of my ear. Naturally, I lifted my hand and batted the dive-bombing creature out of the way. It fell to the ground in front of me, and my friends noticed it was dying. I was a little distracted checking to make sure the thing hadn’t stung my face, and was a little confused. It hadn’t stung my face, but it was definitely dying, so it must have stung something. I slowly came to the conclusion that the pain in my hand was a little too strong to have been caused solely by an impact with a suicidal insect, and while I watched, a small part of my hand began to turn red and swell up. One of my friends apparently has the ultimate cure for bee stings, but I didn’t let her try. I wasn’t about to let her go burning my hand – I don’t care if it neutralizes the venom. Weighing the amount of pain from a bee sting versus the amount of pain from someone intentionally burning my hand…well, the bee sting pain only lasted about an hour. The visual proof of the sting is almost gone now; there’s only a very small red mark where the stinger must have lodged. Now I can tell Hattie “I told you so” – this happened about two hours after she had been telling me the bees are harmless.

So that’s my exciting bee-sting story.

I stopped at a neat little Italian restaurant today after class, and grabbed breakfast. I hadn’t eaten this morning, but even if I had, bread, fruit, a croissant, an egg, and a cappuccino would have been too good to pass up. It was excellent.

My big plans for this afternoon are to go shopping. I’m going to head over to the big department store in Schöneberg, KaDeWe, and see if I can’t spend the last of the money I took out before I left America. Good thing I have my debit card – I’m going to need it next week.

I have a few specific things I’m looking for, and one of them is a souvenir for myself – something to remind me of this trip. I have some ideas, but I keep remembering that I don’t need another backpack or purse.

I doubt that’s going to stop me if I see one I really like.

Later tonight is the pub crawl organized by the school in Kreuzberg. I expect this will be their biggest event – almost all of the students are going. All of the ones I’ve talked to are going, anyway. That’s a good thing, in my opinion, as it means I’ll have someone to hang with. Actually, I’ll have lots of people. I can group-hop. Awesome.

Time to head out and go shopping!