Well, I'm going to be heading off to the airport in about 2 hours. Still don't have everything packed/cleaned, but I think I can get everything done. Am really tempted not to vacuum/dust . . . JUST LIKE SHE DID. Hopefully I'll be the better person and still do it.

It feels weird. It hasn't set in yet that I'm leaving. Logically I know I am, but mentally/emotionally I feel like I'm just going to be going on a plane for a couple of hours and somehow be back in Leipzig afterwards. Weird it is. Just plain weird.

See you all in the US of A!

I don't know if I mentioned this yet, but I got my flight rescheduled to 1:00 pm. This is actually good, because it will be really hard for me to miss my flight. Before my flight was leaving at 8:00 am, and I was a bit uneasy as to whether or not I would pull a Laura (love you Laura!!!) and accidentally sleep through it. So I have 2 1/2 days to go.

I got a bunch of stuff done today . . . well, not a bunch, but some stuff at least. I finally printed out and handed in my second Hausarbeit. I also closed my bank account and got all the stuff copied from the library that I need to finish my 3rd Hausarbeit. I also bought a pair of capri-ish things to wear on the plane. Relatively productive, I was!

I'm attempting to pack, so my room is a disaster zone. Hopefully I'll be able to fit all this stuff in the suitcase, backpack, carry-on bag, and purse I'm going to use. Anything that doesn't fit I'm probably going to just end up throwing away. I don't want to have to deal with shipping things, and I don't think I could physically carry another bag.

I can't believe I'm leaving. On the one hand, I'm glad to be going home. I don't regret coming here at all, but Germany wasn't what I hoped it would be. It could be partially my fault I didn't have the time of my life here, I don't know. But I learned a lot of German and I met a few good friends that I hope to stay in contact with. All in all, it was a good thing to come here. I'll probably miss it a lot once I'm back in the States. God, that's going to feel weird.

My Hausarbeit is . . . there. I have 2/5 of it done. Whoo-hoo! Hopefully I'll work a bit more diligently at home. I'll have to, right?

So I haven't really posted in a while. We have to change that, :D

I don't know if I mentioned this, but I got a 1,7 on my Hausarbeit.  For those of  you who are unfamiliar with the German grading system (including me, hehe), I'm told it's a pretty good grade. Somewhere in the A-/B+ range. I'm pretty sure the professor didn't read it, seeing as he didn't even have the paper in front of him when he gave me said grade. But I'm happy with it. Although my Mt. Holyoke-ness is trying to spoil this happiness by telling me that it's not good enough. Man, I have changed so much from the slacker I was in high school!

I had to say goodbye to Kai, his wife, and his baby last Friday. They (Kai, Yu, and baby) took me out to lunch at this AMAZING Vietnamese place. Since it was a public place, I managed not to cry. That didn't come until about a day or so later, when I randomly started bawling. It's weird, I don't think I've ever been this upset to leave someone before. I really hope I'll get to see them again. I've been thinking of seeing if I can swing back here to Leipzig next summer somehow. I might steal Ryan and/or other friends and make them do a small tour of Germany to all the places I've been and didn't get around to seeing. We'll see.

Anywho, back to Kai and them. They got me presents, which made me feel really bad. Nothing horribly expensive (otherwise I would be freaking out right now), but it was sooooo sweet of them. They got me this really cute picture book of Leipzig, two pictures of their daughter (which I will promptly scan into my computer and post, once I get back), and these amazing green tea gummy things, which I have managed to finish already out of depression. It was really really sweet of them to do. I feel bad because I didn't get them anything. I kept worrying about whether or not they'd get me anything, and I didn't want a repeat of Christmas.

You see, Kai got me some chocolate for my birthday (super, super sweet of him) and so I got them a Christmas present thinking that they were getting something for me for Christmas as well. But they didn't, so it was a bit awkward for them, because I'm the young kid with no money and they're the "old" married couple. But damn, I still should have got them something to thank them. I think I'll trick them into giving me their mailing address and I'll send them a small package from the US, :D !

Anywho, more on life. I still haven't handed in that second paper. Not that it really matters, because it doesn't really have a real due date. I'm just too lazy to go print it out and walk all the way to Beethovenstrasse. God, it's getting really bad. I have no desire to do anything. I have my 3rd paper still to do. I have 2 1/2 out of 15 pages done, and I really really really should get it done before I leave for home so that I can have two weeks of relative peace at home. Key word, relative, because I never have true peace at home. Anywho, so today's supposed to be paper day. Let's see how that works out, lol.

Yesterday I went to Weimar. It was really pretty and quaint, just like I expected. I didn't stay very long, because there's not really much to actually DO there. It's mostly just a cute little city with random cute little European stuff. I walked in the park for a long time, and got a little teeny bit sunburned. I have some decent pictures, I think, and when I stop being lazy I'll scan them in and post them.

It would have been a nice trip if I hadn't gone and broken part of my foot. At least, I'm pretty sure it's broken. I can walk, just not very quickly, and if I put weight on a certain part of my foot it hurts. I'm not going to bother seeing a doctor about it and wasting money. It should heal up soon .. . hopefully. It might not even be really broken. I mean, if it were really broken, wouldn't I not be able to walk on it at all?

So my flight has been changed due to the crazy strikes here in Germany. Damn Germans are always striking about something. I have to call Lufthansa today to reschedule it. I'm going to call the US version, seeing as I can't really understand people that well in German on the phone, particularly if they have some weird accent from some part of the country I've never been to . . . which, of course, is bound to happen. However, my microphone has long been out of commision and I haven't bothered to get it replaced. So, I am going to have to take the tram to the train station / mall and buy a new one, seeing as I can't really walk because of said foot problems. Grrrrrrrrrr . . . sometimes I think flying home is just not worth it.

Still, I am rather looking forward to being home. Although leaving is kind of making me a little sad. I mean, despite how I complain a lot, I do like some aspects of Germany. And I am going to miss these things. I like the cafes, and the chocolate, and the relatively cheap groceries, and the transportation system, and how almost everything is in walking distance. I like trains and how you can have a glass of champagne/wine on the train and people won't kill you. I like, and will miss, certain people too (in addition to Kai and them).

It's just there are a lot of other things that I definitely will NOT miss. Like, how I never again will have to smell the smell of cigarette butts in the kitchen while I'm trying to eat. I will definitely not miss how my clothes smell like smoke, even though I don't smoke at all. I also won't miss the sound of dump trucks waking me up at 7:00 in the morning. And I definitely won't miss the drunken gangs screaming and singing outside my window at 3 am. It's a wonder I ever got sleep here, lol.

And I also won't miss my bunkbed with my piece of crap mattress, which the whore who rented me my room "rescued" form a garbage can so that hers wouldn't be ruined by me somehow. I have to rant about this girl a bit, sorry. This is the same girl who didn't even bother to dust or vacuum the room after she moved all her stuff out. If it weren't for Marie's mother cleaning the place before I got there, I would have come here on my first day in Germany to a disgusting disease-infested room. She didn't leave me a chair for my desk, but she left all her crap all over the door and random pieces of cardboard paper. God, this girl is something else. And now she won't give me my deposit back until October so that she personally can inspect the room. And I need this money, I really do. I don't understand why she just can't ask some of the girls here how the room looks and then send me the money. I just don't understand. There's one bit of damage to the wall, but that wasn't my doing. That happened when they took the bunk bed down to put in the laminated flooring. That would have happened if she had been there too. The only thing of hers that I "kind of" broke is her bike, but only the seat. And it is an old piece of shit that is falling apart anywho. She didn't even have the tires pumped up properly on it.

Anywho, back to more positive news, I've been talking to Ryan a lot lately. We got close over the internet back in February and March, but then I kind of abandoned him for schoolwork. But now we're good friends again. I think it's good for me to have a guy friend. I need to start learning how not to be awkward around men. And we have fun talking to each other, so I think this is good for everyone. We'll see.

So, that's life. I'm going home in a week .. . hopefully . . . AHHH!!!!!!

I officially have 3 weeks left here. Germany has been interesting, to say the least. I have mixed feelings about leaving here though. On the one hand, I'm excited to be going back to MHC. I'm also excited to see some people I haven't seen in a long time, such as my Connecticut and Mt. Holyoke friends. Well, those that are still there, at least. I'm looking forward to the Drive-In, to deli sandwiches, and real thick delicious American ice cream. Oh, and Mexican food. Chips and dip too!

But at the same time I am going to miss certain things about Germany. I'm going to miss trains and trams (streetcars, for you Americans without the European experience, :D ), bakeries and chocolate. I'm going to miss the nice parks with the pretty fountains. And I'm going to miss the churches and the European-ness of the city/Innenstadt. I'm going to miss the cafes too, which were always rather nice. I mean, we have cafes in America too, but not as many as they have here. That was a nice part about Germany,

Sadly to say, I really won't miss very many people. I can't imagine staying in contact with most of the people I know here. I didn't really make very many good and lasting friendships here, which is kind of my fault. Last fall I was so worried about being liked by Germans that I became friends with people who were just not suited to me. Then after January I got so depressed at my inability to fit in with these people that I isolated myself from almost everyone. I got really depressed, spent days inside my room, and didn't do anything.

Then my solution to that became throwing myself into my schoolwork, which did help me. I've learned SOOOOOOO much about modern China in this semester it's unbelievable. My academic German has improved a LOT too. I have Kai to thank for all of it. I don't know what I would have done this semester if it wasn't for him.  But at the same time this crazy focus on schoolwork has cost me in the way of personal relationships. I think Clare and I could have become really good friends if I had actually had time to go out and do stuff with her. I guess in the sense of the long term I made the better choice to study hard and learn. But maybe I should have payed more attention to friendships too.

At any rate, going back home is going to be hard, because I'm going to miss certain things and even some people. But at the same time I'm rather glad to be going home. Hopefully next year I'll be able to have a happy and productive senior year!

And, an update on my life this week:

This week has been a bit better. No more crying, no more screaming, no more frustration. Yes, I still have 2 Hausarbeiten to finish up, but I'm almost done with one of them, and Kai's letting me turn in the other one by e-mail at the end of the month, so I'm not dying anymore. No more depression for Larissa! YAY!!

Tomorrow I'm going to find out my grade on my propaganda paper, so I'm a bit nervous. I know that I passed it, because Professor von Franz mentioned in class that I don't have to worry about failing. Kai looked over it quickly too and said "I think it's OK!", which translates into American as "This is pretty good!" So I think I might actually get a decent grade on it. I'm hoping for a 1,3 or so (A-/B+), but I'd settle for a 2 (B). Hopefully I don't get anything lower than that! Wish me luck!!!!

So I finally handed in my Hausarbeit today, after the night and morning of HELL. I didn't end up getting to sleep until 4:00, mostly because I was going through pages of corrections and reorganizing my citations. So then after 4 1/2 hours of what one could call "sleep", I went to the copy shop (I almost wrote "coffee shop" . . . wow, I am way too tired) and printed it out. But then I realized since the copy shop's computer doesn't like Chinese, the whole thing was messed up. All the pages were incorrectly numbered and the Chinese characters looked bad. So then I had to run to this place in the Innenstadt where I can print stuff from an actual computer. But before I could do that I had to change the format AGAIN, because the program they used was different. I eventually got it printed and the guy charged me 5 fucking Euros for it . . . grrrrrrrrr..

My professor was actually really nice about the whole thing. I forgot that he likes me a lot, mostly because I'm American. He's going to correct my Hausarbeit for me by next Friday, which I was not expecting at all. I hope this doesn't mean that he's just not going to read my paper at all, because that would make me mad. But then again, maybe I'll get a better grade if he doesn't read it.

Was this all worth it, one might ask? Here is a summary of my paper:

Title: Between City and Countryside, Intelligentia and Peasantry: Conflicts in the Establishment of the Chinese Propaganda System

Thesis: (see entry from June 12th)

Total # of Pages:     25 (1 title page, 1 table of contents, 21 pages of text, and 2 pages of pictures)

Total # of Citations: 53 (from 21 different sources . .. that's right, 21 different fucking sources)

Total Amount of Time Spent: WAY too much. I have literally been writing every day for the past 3 weeks or so, and before that I worked on it off and on.  I haven't really slept very well in about 2 weeks.


I'm actually kind of sad. For the first time in my life I can actually say that I worked really hard on something. Usually when I do something that's not that good I can say "Well, that's what you get for being lazy! If you had worked harder, you would have done a great job!" But this time I can't say that. I can honestly say that I worked as hard as I could on this paper. I read so much and wrote for so long. I went over sentences over and over and over again. I don't really do anything but work. I woke up early and I wrote. I went to bed late, because I was still writing. Yeah sure I occasionally went to class or watched some TV or took a walk as a break, but for the most part I wrote my paper.

I'm sad, because I worked so hard and I'm still not happy with my paper. I'm angry, because my topic was really hard compared to the other kids' topics. Anh had fucking "Buddhism in China". All she had to do was pick up 2 or 3 books and copy them down. And, sine she's a native speaker, she didn't have to have her paper corrected, so it took a lot less time.

I'm frustrated, because I know I couldn't really have done anything differently. I did all that I could, and I still failed. This is horrible.

The rest of today is devoted to resting. Tomorrow I have to start working . . . again

Ok, so my Hausarbeit is making me want to die right now. It's officially due in a week (well, now that it's 2:30 AM, it's due in 6 days), but I'm still not really done. I still don't have a real thesis and everything's just kind of durcheinander. I'm just going to summarize my paper, mostly for myself. But if ANYONE has comments and suggestions they would be GREATLY appreciated, because I don't know what to do anymore.

1. Introduction: Blah blah blah introduction shit.
   
2. What is Propaganda?: I go into the development of the western concept of propaganda and how it differs from the Chinese concept. Western view: propaganda = political coersion (i.e. BAD!!!!!I). Chinese view: propaganda = education / a relay of information (i.e. neither good or bad)
3. From the First United Front to Yan'an: the Development of a Peasant Style of Propaganda:
   
1. Communists in the GMD-Administration: I talk about the First United Front between the CCP (Commies) and the GMD (nationalists) and how the communists managed to basically take over the propaganda system, even though they were BY FAR the minority.
   
2. Agitation, Propaganda, and the Peasant Question:  Here I talk about why the communists were so successful in the field of propaganda; because they actually cared about trying to communicate with the masses. Then I talk about how their methods were ineffective. 80% of the Chinese population were peasants, so they had to start trying to appeal to them. But they were using agitation, which appealed to workers, but peasants didn't like because it created a feeling of insecurity. Peng Pai created this method which involved persuading the peasants by becoming a part of their community, which was very effective.
   
3. Propaganda in the Jiangxi Soviet: Mao Zedong basically took over Peng Pai's methods and used folk songs and spoken theater to encourage people to start liking the Party. The army was both the target of this political propaganda, as well as the means of propagation. The peasants started to feel loved by the communists, which was good for all.
   
4. The Yan'an Period: the Development of a State Propaganda System:
1. The Mass Line: the Final Victory of the Peasant Ideology: Here I talk about how in Yan'an this "peasant ideology" was transformed into a real philosophy called the "Mass Line." This "Mass Line" meant that the party and the masses were supposed to be able to directly communicate. The Party learns from the masses, the masses learn from the Party. Propaganda is therefore the means the Party uses to communicate with the masses. Because it is so important, they took it over from the army.
2. The Intellectuals and their Influence in the Building of the Propaganda System: Lots of intellectuals came to Yan'an because they hated the way the GMD treated them. The communists used their professional knowledge to set up a radio station (that wouldn't be operational until 3 years later) and schools to educate the largely illiterate masses. They also used artists to change traditional "New Years Paintings" to include communist imagery, educating the masses without overwhelming them with too much new stuff.
3. The Zheng-Feng Campaign: the Fight Against the Intellectuals: The intellectuals didn't always just sit there and do what the Party wanted them to do. They complained a lot about bureacracy and hypocracy, etc. The Party then starts a "thought rectification campaign" and basically uses systematic public humiliation to force people to love the party and be its loyal servants. This created an intellectual base that the Party was supposed to be able to rely on

Yeah, that's as much as I got. I guess the overarching theme would be the Party tries to focus more and more on the peasants using "feudal" methods to get the peasants to love them. The Party needs the intellectuals to run things and teach people and shit, but they don't like that the intellectuals complain a lot, so they try to remold them through this campaign.

I think this trend continues in the 50s . . . I think. The Party takes over the old GMD stuff and uses, for the most part, the personell who were there under GMD rule. In order to not make them mad, they allowed them to "do what they want", but slowly removed all the people they didn't need and replaced them with people they did. They had lots of conflict with intellectuals, even the ones who were actually communist. The communist intellectuals wanted to use a lot of Soviet and Western methods to propagate their ideology, but the CCP said NO!!!!! That's too foreign and it will make the peasants not love us anymore!! So they slowly but surely destroyed this trend too.

Wow . . . maybe I do have a thesis . . . the history of Propaganda from the 1924 - 1958 basically involves more and more forms and policies that would instill ideological conformity and a love of the peasantry. Intellectuals tried to resist these movements and foreign or western ideas in propaganda or just not use propaganda at all, but the CCP kicked their asses through the 100 Flowers Campaign in 1956-7 and silenced them for . . . a while.

Hooray for me!!! I have a thesis!!! Thanks guys!

As I was reading through my Hausarbeit just now I noticed something strange, but I couldn't quite place it. Then I realized, "OMG!!!! I'VE BEEN WRITING IN TIMES NEW ROMAN THIS WHOLE TIME!!!!!!" I immediately changed it to Arial, which, in addition to having great advantage in width and height, is rather attractive, and lo and behold, I magically had an extra page!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I now officially have 13 1/2 pages!!!!!!!!!! Only 1 1/2 more to go!!!!!! Well, theoretically at least. In reality I'm probably going to have to shorten one of my bullshit buffer sections to make way for real information, lol. But still, I have 13 1/2 pages!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! *dances around*

Had a near mental breakdown today (and by "mental breakdown" I mean I was so tired I couldn't sum up the mental energy to clean the apartment with my roommates), so I decided to take a bit of a break and watch some movies. I watched the new Indiana Jones movie, which was soooooo horrible that it was awesome, and Kung Fu Panda, which was actually kind of funny. I now, once again, have energy and can work some more . . . or not . ..

I've been relatively productive though. I have 10 pages on one paper, and 4 pages on another. I don't think I'm going to end up doing the one for my religion class, simply because I don't think I'll have the time to do it. I feel kind of bad though, because he was so excited to have me in his class and he was so nice about me and my paper . . . goddamn asshole of a Germanistik professor, screwing up my perfectly planned schedule!!

Reading, writing, screaming, frustration, reading, writing, screaming, frustration. I'm being a bitch to people I actually like, I can't do anything fun, I'm pissed. But I have to get this shit done  . . . and it's taking me fucking forever. I've worked on this Hausarbeit for forever, and I only have 8 pages done. Fucking Germany! Every time I actually start to not hate it here something horrible happens and I hate it again. I can't wait to get back to MHC where at least people don't treat me like I'm an idiot, use me for my money, or treat me like I don't even fucking exist just because I don't speak fluent Hochdeutsch.

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ko-JElGEvls

Omg, this is the best Disney short ever!!!!!! You have to watch this, you will die! Not like I'm dying from schoolwork, die from laughter!