verbinden - to connect

some of my school friends: (left to right) maria from sudan, nana from ghana, sandi from denmark, enyelina from the dominican republic and me
(laura from venezuela is, unfortunately, behind the camera)

there's nothing like leaving the country to fill your social calendar.

last night we went to a great surprise party for my friend nina. i was amazed to see that there were only about 2 people i didn't know attending the small dinner party. it was very comfortable and fun - and they all spoke english in honor of nina (she's australian) so dan could understand everything!

tomorrow night we are going to the adidas arena (the 10,000 seat replica of olympic stadium outside of the reichstag) to watch the USA/Italy match with some of dan's coworkers. (we don't plan on making too big of a fuss over the US soccer team.)

next week we have dinners planned every night.

part of me is still amazed that we managed to connect with people here given the short time of our stay and the language barrier. it has made me realize that this making friends thing isn't as hard for me as i thought. i plan on putting myself out there a little more in san jose, because it's really nice to just pop over to a friend's house and have coffee. i thought, for me, all that had ended with college.

now that i have made these friends, i am really hoping to continue these relationships from abroad. i'm fairly bad at keeping in touch with friends. though i think about them often, in the past i have been lazy about telling my friends that i value their friendship. the necessity of using email and skype to keep in touch with our new friends in berlin has inspired me to put new energy into corresponding with old friends.

perhaps you all should consider this a warning. you'll probably be getting more emails from me in the future. and if someone from san jose is reading - beware, i might just ask you to be my friend.