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Hi everyone,

I'm on a high right now and therefore, I need to share: I just got a place to stay in Chicago! YAY!
I'll stay in Lincoln Park at a place of a girl who is from Berlin. What sort of a (this time funny) cosmic joke is that? I am so happy about this.
So I acutally know where I'll end up in two weeks time. And: I don't have to leave the house to surf the net. ;-)

Apart from that, things are good right now. I've managed to sort myself out and I am a lot more relaxed than I was last week. No people sleeping in my bed or any other messy things. None acutally.
The past week has been really busy, but it was a good sort of busy.
Tuesday was funny, I went to a meeting at my medical school. I acutally managed to get along with our ass. dean for research who normally tries to eat me alive. But he was nice this time and we actually agreed on something, which happens rarely enough. I met up with some friends during the entire week which was nice. We updated a lot of gossip and I really enjoyed this. On Wednesday I went to Jonna's place with Markus and Meike. We originally planed to watch "Coupling" but sorta ended up drinking lots of wine and having a blast that night. It was really really good.
On Thursday I went to Andi's place for brunch, having a lot of fun bitching about German people and strange habits of people inhabiting this town. It does strike me now how unfriendly people are over here. So bitter and cynical. I acutally got a compliment from one of the secretaries working at Charité today who said I was really civil and relaxed compared to the rest of the people she had spoken to today.
At night I took Jonna and "Aggro-Peter" to the RSM Xmas party. That was, well, interesting. Quite bizarre but interesting. And really really cold.

On Friday I had my school reunion. What can I say... I enjoyed talking to about five people in general, three of them being teachers. One guy I used to be in all sorts of plays with was so, well, messed up, it was acutally quite scary. He was so pissed and so, well, embarrasing.
Two guys I've hated my entire life wanted to talk to me, but I just refused to do that. My time is acutally too precious for those two wankers. Sorry about the expression, but that's the awful truth.
The entire venue was a bit dreadful, so I went to see my friends at Charité Mitte, that was much better and more welcoming.

I went to work at MLK (the hospital I will go back to once I'm done in Chicago) at Trauma and Plastics on Saturday and Sunday.
Trauma was really demanding because they gave me all private patients. I essentially replaced the doctor doing all bloods and dressings, doing the consultant ward round and doing five discharges. It was really nuts and I got out of the place at 4pm (scheduled: 3pm...) and arrived late for my dad's concert (Christmas oratory by JS Bach). I was so tired I just dozed off, I really couldn't bother.
Our annual christmas dinner, which was at night, was sorta infested by everyone being really tired. Markus suggested to staple me into the floor because I was lying on the ground dozing off. Really nice, isn't he?

Sunday was less busy work wise because they enlisted me to do the ward round with the doctor on call, who was not too bad to look at and quite good craig, so this was good. After work I went to Schlachtensee with Thomas and walked along the lake and back to Mexikoplatz station, where we had some mulled wine and laughed about all the silly people buying really ugly knitted clothes at the christmas market. There is only one place in Berlin where you could sell this and we apparantly found it...
We boarded the train a bit sloshed but had some coffee at Rathaus Steglitz afterwards.
I went back home and took a bath and going to bed early. That was good and I was ok to have breakfast with my old friend Daniel at a really nice café down at Rathaus Schöneberg.

But the definite highlight was that I have a place to stay in Chicago! I will stay at Lincoln Park for 450 Dollars per month, which is really cheap and I can easily go down to Northwestern Memorial by train.
I am so excited about this!

So, I hope you are all doing fine! Drop me a line if you can, thinking about you guys a lot and missing you all,

Andrea.