I have been under a lot of stress lately, and I don’t handle stress very well. I internalize it and eat lots of things I shouldn’t. Nothing crazy like what is on that addicts show on TLC, but sweets, chocolate, basically anything with sugar and bread. BREAD. That is the real kicker. When I don’t care that I am allergic to wheat, you can be pretty sure I am stressed. I know I shouldn’t eat it, but it is soooo yummy, and my #1 comfort food. Anyways, before I tangent on to a rant about how yummy bread is…
Stress = bad news for me
Knowing that when the stress gets to be too much things start to breakdown, I try and avoid getting myself into stressful situations. I try not to take on too many tasks at one time. I make sure I have time for relaxation every day, but enviably the day comes when things I can’t control collide and I get majorly stressed out. This particular time happened to be a deadline for my Fulbright and the end of the semester.
One of the things I have had to do with the Fulbright is to compile a number of documents and apply for a residency permit in Austria. A Residence Permit in Austria is much harder to get than the one I got here, but maybe that is because I will be working there. I didn’t think gathering all those documents was going to be a big deal and they weren’t for me, but that is mostly because I didn’t do the work.
A big giant thank you to my mom! :)
However the gathering and shipping took a little longer than I thought not fault to my wonderful mother. I wasn’t too stressed about the documents, because I had delegated the task to a person I trusted. One of the techniques have had to learn to limit some of the stress in my life, but there was something else that I needed to do, but kept putting off… a physical exam.I put it off for a couple of reasons. The physical form needed to be filled out in English, by the physician, but there are not a whole lot of English speaking doctors here, seeing as they speak German in Germany. It is true I was having some difficulty in finding an English speaking doctor, but to be honest the real reason why I kept putting it off was because I was scared. Plain and simple.
I am not scared of the doctor, or of the examination, that wasn’t the problem. I was scared my German wasn’t good enough. Even though the form needed to be filled out in English, I wanted to talk to be able to talk to the doctor just in case they didn’t know enough English. I know my German has improved a lot since I have been here, but I am not very confident in my skills in a more formal setting. And it was the first time I have been to the doctor here, and there was a little bit of the unknown. That and I am always afraid when I go to the doctor for a physical and I feel healthy that the doctor is going to find something terribly wrong with me. A little irrational I know, but nonetheless I was scared.
Because I was scared I procrastinated,
Because I procrastinated I added more stress,
Because I was stressed I procrastinated some more.
I went to the doctor today and I spoke German. There really weren’t any mishaps—I understood everything and I was able to communicate what I needed. It was successful! And now I have all of my documents in hand waiting to go to Berlin. It is a great relief.
There was another source of stress. Finding out that I have to go to Berlin, and I can’t use the honorary consulate here in Saarbrücken. It wouldn’t be a big deal, where Berlin was on our list of places to visit, if the deadline to turn in my documents, which must be personally delivered, was not July 1st, a mere 4 days before my final exam. Oh and Berlin is at least 6 hours away.
Luckily with a quick email to the AAEC (Austrian- American Education Commision) I was able to get the deadline extended to the 11th. That means practically right after my exam, it is off to Berlin. I am so grateful the AAEC has understood my slightly different circumstances. They have extended more deadlines than I would have guessed they would to help meet my needs. It is a confirmation that I am where I need to be now, and Austria is where I need to be going.
For the amount of stress these past couple weeks have been I really hope Berlin is going to be amazing because I am going to need a good vacation! The first stressor for just Berlin was trying to figure out how we were going to get there. The cheapest way is on regional trains, they are slow, but it would only be about 40 Euros to get there and back. But the slow trains would take about 13 hours for us to get there. 13 hours was longer than I wanted to spend on a train. But hey it is better than the fast trains at 150 for the trip and still sitting in the train for 6 hours. The last option was to fly: only 1.5 hours to get there, but 250 Euros. While were we looking at the different options Chris found a ticket that would allow us to travel all over Germany on the fast trains (ICE, or IC) for an entire month! The only catch is that we have to use an ICE or IC at least once per trip and they don’t go to smaller towns. However most of the places we want to go are bigger so we shouldn’t have any problems, or need to buy another ticket for a while. The ticket is quite expensive, but the trip to Berlin is worth half of what the ticket costs and so as long as we take more than one other trip, which we already have partially planned, not to mention the others, we will get our money’s worth. :)
All we had left to do today is find a place to stay. July is Berlin’s peak tourist season, and so many of the places we looked at were already booked or almost booked, driving up prices. We have finally found a place, it is a little ways for the downtown area, but we will have a train pass for inside Berlin. The hotel isn’t expensive, about 30 a night for the both of us!
The only thing left to do now is figure out what we are going to see and do in Berlin (the fun part) and pass my final exam. The one thing that may stand in my way of going to Austria! Wish me luck!
