Manifest Destiny.

For those of you I spoke with on the phone yesterday this may come as a shock, but I need to get some things out in the open. My readers number somewhere between three and four, and I spoke with two of you on the phone yesterday. Despite all of that ranting and raving, I still need to release some. I need to type. When I was younger, in junior high, I always needed to write. I NEEDED to see a blank page in front of me, NEEDED to feel a pen against paper, NEEDED to feel the squeak and run of a ball point, NEEDED to see the ink bleed. It didn't matter what came out onto the page, what it meant, if it was legible, if it was English, I just needed it to get out of me. As long as I could take the mess that I was thinking and make a clean, crisp piece of loose-leaf paper messy with it, I usually felt better. There something to be said about taking something messy and making it clean again. One of the greatest feelings ever. Life's little pleasures, you know? The same can be said about taking something clean and making it dirty. Maybe it's changing something completely that is so enjoyable. Whatever it is, I am feeling the urge. I'm in Austria, I'm pissed off, and I'm going to fill some pages.

We’ll start with yesterday. But by starting with yesterday, we’ll have to go back to last fall. Well, further back maybe.

I study German. People always ask me, “Why German?” My response is always the same. At my high school it was and still is required that every student take two years of a foreign language. Great requirement, in my opinion, I think it should start earlier, maybe fourth or fifth grade. My high school offered Spanish, French and German. Spanish? Sure, I could have picked it up and in my part of the world, I may have used a lot of it. But in high school, you want to be different, you want to do things nobody else does. That's an unspoken requirement. Everybody takes Spanish, everybody's parents sit them down and tell them how invaluable Spanish would be when combined with a business degree, etc. And I think it's boring. I mean, it sounds lovely, of course, but would I want to speak it? No. French? Absolutely not. I'm not one of those people. Not one of those people who takes French, speaks French, talks about France, has any desire at all to see France. It's not for me. Besides, it's hard. What letters am I supposed to pronounce? Where are the rules? So, German. It fit all of my requirements. It's the mother of English. Well, one of its mothers. It's really similar. It's logical. It has plenty of rules. “Make sure you stay between the lines!” sort of rules, but rules that are always there, rules that follow a certain pattern, help you create a sentence, those sort of rules. There are no silent letters. Unless you are using a French word that German has borrowed, then there are silent letters.

At my university it is required that all Arts and Sciences students take two years of a foreign language. Good requirement I think, a different sort of brain exercise. I'd already taken five years of German in high school (I started in eighth grade). My high school German teacher made quite an impression on me. She was and is exactly the type of teacher you hope you'll get when you go to high school. She has had a lot to do with the type of person I am now (which is a good thing, right?), I respect her very much, we're good friends now, and in a lot of ways I have wanted to be just like her. In any case, suffice it to say I have learned a lot about a lot of things from her. So I decided to stick with German for my language requirement in college. This is the only part of the story I will try to shorten. I skipped the first three semesters, took the fourth semester, thereby fulfilling my requirement, but I had a crappy teacher and decided not to continue. I changed my major from Psychology to History, talked things over with the aforementioned high school German teacher and the faculty at my university and got back into the German department. So, that makes two majors, German and History.

In an effort to finish my undergraduate studies sooner, I applied for an exchange program to study at Karl-Franzens University in Graz, Austria. The plan was to take a handful of history classes, taught in the German language, which would count twice! Both as a German course for the German requirements and as a history course for my history requirements. Sounds great, right? Most fantasies do. Ok, this part I will shorten too. Classes here in Austria are worth two credits, at my home university, they are worth three. In order for my credits to transfer home, I needed to find to similar classes, to combine to cover the three hours. If you did the math, you realized that extra, fourth hour, would be lost, wasted, useless. You're right. AND those classes would have to be similar to something at my home university. This proved impossible. My hopes of finishing school this semester, also impossible. So I am here, studying German literature. But wait! I'm not studying just German Literature. I'm not reading Gunter Grass. No. I'm studying Medieval German Literature. Why? Those are the literature classes offered in the spring. Medieval. German. I can't read Medieval English Literature. Can you? My guess is no. So. We'll see if I pass these literature classes. If I do, and if they transfer, I should be finished with German. Then I will take care of the rest of the history courses next fall. Then I will be finished. Hopefully.

Where is this going? It has to do with me going home. Eventually, sooner rather than later, I want to go home. The study abroad office at my home university suggested June 3 as a good date to fly home. I bought a ticket with a return date of June 3. As it turns out, the semester here in Austria is over at the end of June. Head spinning? Yes. At this point, I was pretty disappointed in our study abroad office. Then I came here and met their Austrian counterparts, the most worthless bunch of people I have ever met. And they are only available to us two hours a day, between ten and noon. When are my Medieval Literature classes? Between ten and noon. And listen, I could spend the next three months telling you all about how worthless they are, how they have screwed me up every chance I have given them, how they have repeatedly given me information that was flat-out wrong and nearly jeopardized my entire semester. I could spend a long time telling you all about it. In fact, I probably will. Let's assume I actually stick this out or don't get arrested for murder or don't throw myself into the icy Mur. That gives me three months here. With regular internet access and no sleep, I might just be able to keep up with their never-ending bad advice and general worthlessness and be able to give you the play by play. Maybe. Right now, the point is, I want to go home. Eventually.

So I had the wrong return date. Not the end of the world. I came to Austria to talk with the foreign exchange office and find out when exactly would be a good time to go home. I don’t think I need to tell you how productive that conversation was. I thought I would come here, talk to some people in the know, and then find out when I should plan to fly home. The thing is, I have to go around to all of my professors personally and pick up my grades, which they will have filled out onto a particular form, and take all of these forms to the dreaded study abroad office and get them to compile them into a transcript which I can take home to my university.

Brief intermission. One of the things that made yesterday so incredibly infuriating is that it totally and unapologetically wiped away the post-trip-with-Jamie-glow I still had. Yes, I was a wreck when I had to watch her go, and I still am. It was a wonderful trip though and it left me feeling really positive about her, and us and my future and our future. I had something to feel good about. I would still feel really good if it weren’t for yet another impossibly aggravating, huge, lurking….thing. Now it is all I can think about. And I went to buy a cinnamon roll this morning and the woman behind the counter was really rude. All I want is to be able to think about Jamie, feel like the days are passing quickly, and eat cinnamon rolls. But if Austria keeps kicking me in the face then I can't enjoy anything.

It’s not like I can’t hack it either. I mean, I lived in Switzerland last summer, spoke their crazy German, and worked with crazy people in a grocery store. I lived with two weird parents, their weird little children, their three weird dogs, and the mother smoked constantly. That was bad too but it wasn’t nearly as frustrating. It certainly wasn’t like being kicked in the face all day. I keep thinking I am going to come back to the U.S. this 95 pound, bitter, second-hand smoke addicted, angry, bike-riding jerk. Then Jamie will leave me. Landon will think I am tense. My sister will be not yet married but still pregnant. My nephew will be completely and irreversibly corrupted by riding the bus to school. He'll be smoking. You know what I’m saying. “We’re dealing with a lot of shit here.”

So. Transcript. In the narrow window between the end of finals, whenever that is, and my preferred date of return, July 3, my tests have to be graded, final grade calculated, Zeugnisse collected, turned in, translated, compiled and made available to me. I'd like to fly home on July 3. I called the airline to change my flight. It turns out it is impossible. For an impressive number of reasons, I can't exchange my ticket for a month later. There are lots and lots of criteria my new return flight would have to meet in order for it to be exchangeable. Those criteria are apparently hard to meet. So I called the company I bought the ticket from and they told me the same thing, more apologetically, in English. My options are: cancel the return portion of my ticket and buy a new one-way ticket. Which would require me to sell a kidney or a testicle. Or lots and lots of plasma. Or I could twiddle my thumbs for the next two or three weeks and hope that somebody who already has a ticket decides they'd rather stay home. Maybe I should find their sister and arrange for her to get pregnant, thereby necessitating a quick marriage, for which they would need to be present, for which they would need to cancel their flights. It's so crazy it just might work. The worst part of it, or one of the parts of it that are tied for "The Worst Part of It," was the music I had to listen to while I was on hold. And you have to listen to it. How else would you know they were back on the line, ready and waiting to solve your problem? If, of course, they could solve your problem. It was the Lufthansa theme song. "A Better Way to Fly." “The horror. The horror.” "I shiver. I quake."

So I did what I hope any 22-year old man would do. I called Mommy. I soon realized I hadn’t told her about any of my struggles. She was the victim of a deluge of sad, sad, frustrating experiences. She took it well, obviously surprised and concerned, but well. It's probably a good thing I didn't tell her that I am also sick. She said she was going to call the airline and the travel agent and shake things up. I hope she's successful. I'd like to come home eventually and I'd like it to not cost a fortune. Or a part of my body.

So that was yesterday.