My year 2005

Since 2005 has been one of the best years of my life, I want to make my own personal yearly review now. Firstly, to remind myself of all the good times I had and secondly, to share the memories with all of you, with those who were part of them and of course, with everybody else who is interested, too. Come with me and look back…


January
The year began as usual but the final exams were constantly on everyone’s mind in school. In your free time you began to learn, to gather everything together you need, to try to find out what exactly the exams will be about and then the last week of January came. All you did was learning or worrying when you stopped learning for having a break. All the time you asked yourself “why am I not learning?” and even if there wasn’t anything left to learn, when you knew every single word or mathematic task by heart, you still learned and repeated everything just to make the bad feeling of “Oh my god, I am not learning, I HAVE to, it’s the final exams…” go away.
Me personally, I used this last week to learn, together with my friend Julia, for the maths exam, since my other exams were later in february, so all I could think about on the last days of this month was maths…
And then February came and with it, the exams.

February
For me, February 2005 represents learning together with a grey sky. This mixture made me so depressive that I began putting up postcards from Fuerteventura, shell-bracelets and coloured scarfs everywhere in my room to cheer me up a little. The thought of going on vacation to Gran Canaria in March also helped a little^^
So at the beginning of this month, I learned for English: Second Generation Asians in Britain (I can still say that really fast) and Shakespeare (Love and Comedy); and Spanish: Niños de la calle (how often did I say this line this year…) and, surprise surprise, inmigración (I so hate this subject now…). To sum up, I can say that I learned way much but always felt like I wasn’t learning enough. But well, that’s the way things are. Oh and did I mention we were the first in Hamburg who had “Zentralabitur”? (it means everybody in the whole city gets the same tasks and nobody, not even the teachers know exactly how these will look like). Yep, lovely, I know. So on February 15th, after the last 5 hours spent in a room thinking about niños de la calle, I was FREE. Matthias, Jamie, Denis and I drove back in Matthias’ car, as always, and we were so happy we let the windows down and shouted out loud. I’ll never forget that!! In the evening we celebrated and some of my friends and I went to a bar where Jamie got all red in the face because of one sip of cocktail haha^^

This is how we felt after the last exam...

March
March was relaxing and fun. On Nina’s birthday we went to the movie’s to watch “Constantine” which was…well, let’s change the subject here. The next morning (it was f***ing early) my parents and I went, as I just mentioned, to Gran Canaria for 14 days and it was SO nice. The first thing I did when coming out of the airport-building was crying out loud: “SUN” since I hadn’t seen the sun for what seemed like MONTHS. I was yearning for sun as never before. The vacation was fun, I met a girl from my spanish class there and, together with her, her sister and a group of boys from Bavaria we met, we had a lot of fun. Of course I had a lot of fun with my parents, too, we made some trips, hung around at pool and beach and enjoyed the warm weather and the fact of having nothing to do. I think I never needed holidays that much in my life.
When we departed, we had to get up at three in the morning. Oh. My. God. You don’t wanna know how that feels, really.

April
Somehow I have not too much to tell for April. The only thing I remember about this month is the “Wir Sind Helden” concert I went to with Nina on April 24th. It was really good!! At the end I nearly catched something they threw in the audience. Well, nearly…

May
May. I remember May with a big sigh because May is the month my class and I went to Lloret de Mar (Spain) for our final trip, the “Abireise”. But first, we got the marks for our written exams on May 9th. I was so happy about them!!! But others were also pretty sad, so that made me a little sad, too.
But then our vacation. The bus-trip was so horrible, I will not tell you anything about it here. I could write pages about this vacation but since this is supposed to be only a short review, I try to keep it short. It’s not what we did on our trip, it’s the time we spent together that still makes me wanna cry with emotion when looking at the pictures I took, because we are never going to be together like that again. And we had so much fun, some friendships got a lot closer than before and although we had some fights and broken hearts, Lloret de Mar is still a memory I take out from time to time, to look at it, smile at it, hug it and then put it away again.
*wiping a tear from her eye*
Did you ever imagine me being that emotional? haha^^


June
The weather was sweet, we had no exams to learn for (except the oral one, but there was still one week without classes for that) and we had our “Mottotage”, where we dressed up in funny ways and went to school like that (like everybody in Hawaiian style etc), where we sometimes just sat around on our little hill, singing Hippie-songs while Denis played the guitar and everybody except us had to go to classes…
June 13th was the date of our oral exams. Mine was in geography, two subjects I liked (Desertification and China’s economy). So the learning was ok. Before, I calculated that I needed 10 points (which is a B-) to get 1,3 in the end, so I really hoped for it. I was anxious as everybody but I was pretty good and afterwards, when I went back to the room I had had my exam in, my teacher went like “Yasmine, we are satisfied, you were pretty good and so we decided to give you 14 points”. 14 points!!! I hadn’t even dared to think what it would mean getting something higher than 10 points ( I really wanted to have 1,3, but that’s a different story). But then I calculated again and I got 1,2!!!!! I promptly called my parents to tell them the news and they were delighted, too. That was one of the happiest days this year!
It also was the last day of my school-life and Matthias, Milana, Jamie, Denis, Milan and me were about to cry when we drove back in Matthias’ car from school for the LAST TIME ever.

On June 24th it was our final party, the “Abiball”. Everybody dressed up, the girls in fancy dresses, the boys in suits. Wow, everybody looked just so nice!! We talked, we ate and drank, we remembered 13 years of school, we got our final report cards, we danced (it was so hot, you could hardly move without melting), we (the girls) took our shoes off because our feet hurt in them haha^^ and we celebrated until 5 in the morning in a Hotel that fitted all the 250 guests. It was a night you’ll always remember.

And on June 27th…*drums* …(pause)…Milana, Jamie and I started off for our long planned trip to Taiwan!!!!! Again, I could write pages about this but that would be too much. This trip is another thing I will always remember. The flight was long and exhausting, the city (Taipei) big and exciting and again we had so much fun. To see a part of it, just go to http://www.jazziespictures.blogspot.com/
Sitting in the train to Frankfurt Airport we just couldn’t believe that this dream really was about to come true.

July
Again, Taiwan. The vacation lasted until July 10th. I will definitely return to this wonderful country, I promise!!! (getting emotional again…)
Afterwards I had a nice summer holiday with my parents at our holiday house in Otterstedt. Sitting in the garden, enjoying the (rarely showing) sun and still thinking about my trips and my friends from school and how much I’m gonna miss not seeing them every day. Jamie was still in Taiwan, Milana in Bosnia and the others were away, too, so I couldn’t even call them…
But then August came.

August
Another month, another trip, haha^^ I really saw a lot of the world this year. In August, I visited my friend Sarah in the USA. It was the first time I traveled alone, so I was pretty scared, but it was ok, I met many nice people along the way I could talk to. But then the passport control…just read the post about it I wrote somewhere in september and you’ll know what I mean.
Arriving, I found Sarah and her family greeting me with a big teddybear and some balloons and then the real vacation began. Again, I could write pages here…(me, repeating? Nah, never…^^)
We went to Long Beach Island (Beach! Sun! Sea!), New York (I had always wanted to go there), Philadelphia and some other nice places and I learned how weird it feels talking german after two weeks of constantly talking english. It feels like your tongue is tying up in knots…really weird. Oh and I tried the grossest thing I ever drank in my life – Bubblegum soda. You should never, I literally mean NEVER try it. Really. Believe me, you will regret it.

I always think of this trip when I listen to the first notes of the Jack Johnson CD I bought in “The biggest mall on the eastcoast”…

September
And still no school to go to. I began missing it. In fact, I began missing it the day it ended. Not actually SCHOOL, you know, but the fact of hanging around with your friends every day, the nice last few days, coffee before GMK to stay alive, ergh, awake (“Coffee?” “YES”), the funny words in biology (I guess I wouldn’t have survived biology without Denis’ stupid jokes), all these things. I began worrying about university, if I did everything right and at the end of this month, I began getting SO bored because I SO had nothing to do…

And, September also was the month this blog came to life.

October
I figured out that university wouldn’t start until the end of October, so the boredom went on. But not long: My parents and I went to Otterstedt to restore our shed-roof which was so much work (again, there’s a post about it somewhere here). And now the rain still comes in…
And then – finally – university started!! Yay! Luckily, all of my fellow students are really really nice and the teachers as well, so I felt good with Sinology from the first day on and I still love it.


November
I had a lot to do with all of the new vocabulary and learning chinese became one of the most important things in my daily routine (I guess I am still annoying the people around me with chinese characters…). I also had to begin to think about christmas gifts, who gets what, who gets nothing (lol, just kidding ;-)) and so on. And the cold, rainy days began to become more…
I also met a few friends sometimes but most of them were too busy with university or jobs or whatever.

December
Christmas. Buying gifts, getting gifts, christmas markets, candy. Ohhh how I love it!! And it was nice again this year, I sat around the christmas-tree with my parents and grandma, we had potato-salad and sausage (it’s a traditional meal on christmas eve here in Hamburg), everybody liked the gifts I bought/made for them and I got very nice gifts, too, as every year. On 25th we had goose (it is always just so GOOD, I usually eat so much I am neither able to talk nor to get up) at my grandma’s house and on 26th I visited Jamie who I hadn’t seen for a month or something. Matthias and Denis came along, too and we throw snowballs at each other in her garden. It was fun^^

And now these are the last days of the year, a time to remember, a time to make plans for the next year, a time to tell your friends how much you love them and a time to make a big party!

Happy New Year everybody and I love you!!!