hey hey hey

its 1029 am on wednesday. not too much is new ... the weather is beautiful here in Berlin and I have been enjoying it. Jesse and I saw some movies 2 nights ago....one of which was a movie featured in the Berlinale. It was a Forum film, the forum meaning a forum for young new film makers, and I saw a lot of forum films during the festival. Basically a lot of them are super artsy .. with no words and jsut picture collages with wierd sounds. So this film was called Ice/Sea and it was 37 minutes of footage of peopel at the beach w/o words and with weird music....... it wasn't very enjoyable. Just sort of boring I guess. And then after that we saw "The Jazz Singer"....a 1927 film with Al Jolson. It was very entertaining ... about a jewish family, the father of which is a cantor. He is the 5th generation of cantors, and is upset when his son wants to be a jazz singer and sing ragtime songs instead of prayers. The crazy thing about the film is that Al Jolson black faces at the end (to see a picture go here http://www.musicals101.com/News/jolson.jpg). Obviously its very racist, and I dont agree with black facing, but I think its historically significant and Im glad I saw it.

Some things I plan to do: go on a walking tour with a Stanford class, meet some old Lexia people and an old teacher to have coffee, meet with an old language school friend, and have brunch with a lexia pal. There is a globalization conference going on with Stanford starting tonight and going until saturday noon .... all of the other sites (beijing, santiago de chile, kyoto) are flying here to Berlin, getting put up in nice hotels, basicalyl getthing the treatment. So to be nice they are also putting the Berlin students in a hotel, so Jesse will be staying there at least tonight...maybe tommorow, maybe even the day after that. I'm jealous! It should be nice for him, though. It will definitely be luxurious ... and the entire conference is sponsored by lufthansa and siemens so they are allowed to order tons of room service!

Well ok, this has been a boring blog. Sorry!

Oh ... I am taking a trip soon, between the 1st and 7th of June to Aix-en-Provence ..Southern France .. to see my great Wellesley friend Caitlin. Im super excited!!!! From what I know Aix is pretty small and quaint and beautiful, so I think it will be a lot of relaxing/quality time spending/good food eating fun (as opposed to the fast paced, hop on the subway, see a million things fun). I have never been to France, let along Southern France, so it should be good and great.

Ok =)

Until next time,
Deb