Sprache, Technical Difficulties, My Beautiful Life

I am getting pretty weary of speaking only English.  Still, I see my progress.  I travel at a snail's pace, put I travel nonetheless.  Language is a giant, a mountain I must climb.  I am finally to the point where I realize that nobody minds speaking English with me, but my life will be much easier if I start to speak Deutsch a little better.  Last night I was in a room with Robert and three of his friends.  Two of them spoke very good Englisch.  One was French and fluent in German but spoke very little Englisch.  She started speaking to me in Deutsch, very slowly and simply and nobody helped me.  It was fabulous!  I spoke with her!  I tongue stumbled.  I was not eloquent.  But I spoke and she understood me.  A small triumph.
I begin Deutschsprache kurs on Montag at 8:30 am and I am SO EXCITED about this!  I feel that a little formal coursework will help me a lot!
I have been dogwalking, working as a life model, and even working as an overnight nanny in order to machen das Geld und die Miete zahlen! The overnight nanny gig was intense but somewhat rewarding.  The child, a very sweet 2 year old, was still 2.  Heard of the phrase "the terrible twos?"  The little girl's favorite words were "No," and "Mine."  Mostly "No!"  But we had a great time, full of face paint, the spielplatz (playground), eis, und storybooks. 
I am almost done gathering all of my paperwork for my visit to the Auslanderbehörde.  I have been using this page as a guide and it has been really helpful.  All that's left at this point is to print out a few pages and buy some health insurance.  I don't think I can technically buy the insurance until I have a Visa, but I have paperwork from an insurance company saying that they will insure me when I have my Visa.  We will see if this is enough. 
I have begun work on a new performance piece, not sure what it will be like, except that I will use some text and movement.  But that's all I know so far!  Beginnings are exciting!

My external hard drive with all my media and back ups on it stopped working yesterday.  It still shows up in my disk utility but refuses to be repaired.  It's not the end of the world, just the end of my itunes until I figure out how to transfer the music from my ipod back onto my computer.  Luckily it's Western Digital, which they have in Deutschland, so I can most likely get a replacement drive.  I still have the HE documentation from Berlin on a mini-dv tape.  And I have most of my important documents in google docs as well as on a hard drive in America.  So it's annoying, not tragic.  Still, this disruption of my fragile world is distressing.  Robert thinks he may be able to recover my files for me.  Everything will be okay.

I guess I have been here for a while, because I don't take my camera with me everywhere anymore.  Still, I am due for a photo expedition sometime soon.  All of you who read this deserve some photos, right?  

Asia is on her way over for some theatre work, so I guess that's all for now.  I'm glad to have a new collaborator.  Still, I really miss Eve and the way she would snap at me, "Harvey!"  and then everyone would laugh...

Eve, Me, Robert, outside Sandmann on Reuterstraße