Which is better:

-Squirming around in bed while thinking things along the lines of "OK, if you go to sleep right now you can still get 6 hours of sleep...so, OK, right now....go to sleep....OK..."

or

-Browsing the internet, illuminated only by the light of your computer screen, accomplishing nothing?

See mostly this blog has been all abstract and about ideas and stuff. Well, you know, kind of. But now this is serious, this is real, this is particular and mildly embarrassing. I can't fall asleep because my brain is too busy trying to figure out where I should go to graduate school. I've already planned out prospective schedules at the two top contenders and I've already looked at craigslist postings for jobs....jobs for this summer and jobs for next year. It is too early to be doing any of these things and it is too late to still be awake. And yet.

I'll probably ask you for advice about this. I probably already know what I'm going to do. It'll probably be fine either way. But as with all decisions, knowing that all your options are good ones doesn't help.

Oh and I went to Germany and Austria last week. Berlin: a great city, a city to live in, a city of street art, cafes and history. It was punky. It was comfortable. Vienna: a city of ballets, fancy cakes and tiny pots of jam. It was like a fairytale, complete with those funny Austrian hats. You know the green ones? Sometimes they have feathers. Yeah. I had songs from Cabaret and The Sound of Music stuck in my head for the ENTIRE trip.

The only bad thing was not being able to speak German. Living in Spain has me completely spoiled. Everyone knows that I am not a native Spanish speaker, but by God, they can understand me and I them...with a few exceptions. I can get around without feeling the guilty weight of my English, without feeling like quite such an obvious tourist. And oh it is a glory this level of competent proficiency.

There are limits of course: in Barcelona, forgetting the word for "band aids" and for "cut/scratch" I had to ask if they had "something for small wounds." Luckily, they did.