My 2008 was eventful. There were lots of ups and downs. There were many goodbyes and many firsts. In these last few hours of a year that didn’t only mean a lot to me personally and the life I live which suddenly became much more precise and colorful over the course of just one summer, I had known from the beginning that a number as beautiful as 2008 just had to be a lucky one.

I did a post just like this last year, and I think I’m going to start off with the same main topics I covered in that post and then add more if necessary.

First things first; the obvious in this case:

Internet:
I officially opened the new domain highwaybynight.com on January 1, although I actually bought it on December 15, 2007. With the name came the continuous use of Wordpress, and I made different WP themes myself for the first time. By adding plugins and purchasing graphics instead of half-heartedly making them myself, I ironically enough finally found my own personal style. 2008 marks the first year I ever blogged seamlessly for 356 days in the same spot online which added up to a total of approximately 160,000 words in 300 posts – a development only possible because I finally found out how to make backups which obviously took all fears of all entries being deleted randomly as it had happened countless times before.

Just like last year, I also found a few great new blogs and made some lovely friends online: Emmy, Rachie, Anneli, and Holly. Their writings have inspired and entertained me endlessly and for that I’ll be forever grateful! Thank you, my darlings.

Computer:
My beloved baby, the white Sony Vaio I only bought last year, went dead because I spilled tea on it. Because things were tight financially but I did need a new computer, I went for a Toshiba special offer, and I can’t say that I regret that decision. Of course it’s far from being as pretty as the Viao or the new Sonys or a Macbook but it runs perfectly. Luckily, all data could be saved onto a separate hard disk which means that I do now have 300 GB of disk space on my laptop and an additional 120 GB on an exterior hard drive. Should be enough for all future photography adventures and music downloads, no?

Movies/Shows/TV:
Still not watching any television, except maybe once a month when something so special is on that any sane person cannot want to miss it. With my moving to a new apartment, that chance was killed off altogether because I simply don’t have television hooked up here in Aachen. It’s not a problem at all but people tend to stare at me in disbelief when I tell them I can function without it.

I discovered Gilmore Girls! Talk about late-in-life! My friend Nadine had been telling me about the show for years but I was so obsessed with Friends that I didn’t give a flying rat’s ass. Gilmore Girls saved my life this year a time or two because it was the only thing keeping me sane and occupied when I moved away from home. Don’t know what I would have done without it.

This goes without saying but I of course continued to watch Gossip Girl, one of the most thrilling television shows that is over-using sex and poetical metaphors at the same time.

However, the focus this year lay definitely on the movies. I began to watch the old classics in the summer and have been hooked to them ever since. It’s sad that I hadn’t seen such masterpieces like Casablanca, Gone with the Wind, It’s a Wonderful Life, Funny Face, or A Star is Born until I was almost twenty years of age. It’s safe to say that I will continue to catch up on the classics in 2009.

Friends/Family:
A lot has happened this year. I had to say goodbye to many people that I will likely never see again, I had to say goodbye-hope-to-see-you-soon to many close friends from high school, I had to leave my family behind, the strength of the friendship between my best friend and myself was tested, and I made new friends.

I’m happy to report that although I’ve moved away from my home town, I am still in contact with the people that really matter to me. In the beginning I suffered from the thought of not seeing people from high school anymore and I still do think of them sometimes but it’s all good now.

I’ve made new friends here in Aachen and Maastricht, most notably Josephine and Sandra. With both of them it feels as though we’d have known each other for years and I am glad to have found them. I was surprised how easy it was to talk to new people when uni started and suddenly find myself all on my own in a foreign place in a new situation. I have always been shy and seriously negatively affected by having to commit to social standards for the sake of belonging to but everyone (more or less) was so grown-up at uni as opposed to high school which was a completely new experience.

Moving away from home left me missing my little brother almost unbearingly at times, and then sometimes I was glad not to have to see the family all the time. I also missed my parents a lot, especially in the beginning.

My uncle announced that he and his girlfriend would finally move into a house together (he had been living with his mom so far, he turned 40 this year! – don’t ask), and my cousin and her boyfriend moved into their own place in late December. My cousin’s dad sort of went with them to the new town which is much farther away from my home town.

I didn’t get to visit my friends and family in Kentucky this year, nor my friend Linn in Norway or my friend Viktoria in Southern Germany or my amazing friend Julia (also in the South) – which sucked tremendously. I miss my KY gang like no one’s business. Hopefully, in 2009, things will change a bit in this department.

School:
Oh, high school. I bitched about you in the 2007 retrospective post, I bitched a lot about you on this blog in any case. I wish I could say that now that you’re gone I miss you, but that is not the case whatsoever. My problems with depression flew out the door the minute I was done with you and haven’t returned since.

The last day of regular school was April 4. I officially graduated on May 26. This year, the P.E. fiasco, the preparation for the Senior Night and the making of the Senior Book as well as the final oral examination in Biology (and all three other final exams) all took a toll on me and certainly were enough to fill the last months of high school.

Au revoir, farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, goodbye! No more physics, no more math, no more P.E., no more biology. No more getting up at six o’clock five days a week for thirteen years with only minor breaks here and there. I barely made it to the finish line, one more year and I would have broken down. But I came out of it with a 2.6 GPA (which is a decent average graduation GPA in Germany) and I’m proud and happy that I didn’t quit when it was particularly rough.

I don’t think anything has ever made be experience the sweet taste of freedom the way my high school graduation did.

Photography:
I managed not to wreck my Canon SLR. Yet. Sadly, I still don’t know how to properly use it manually either. I have it set to automatic at all times and just snap away. And snap away, I did. More and more blog posts were filled with random pictures to illustrate my life. However, a plan for 2009 should be to really learn everything about the SLR. It was expensive and I’ve had it for over a year but I’ve never put its magic to good use.

Books:
I continued my quest to read books in their original language only, meaning I mostly read English books and a German one here and there. When uni started on September 1, any recreational reading was put to a sudden halt because I had so many academic books to read that there simply wasn’t time.

I finally read some classics like Jane Eyre and To Kill a Mockingbird, and I’d like to read more of the kind in 2009 although it seems impossible with uni literature always looming over my head.

Traveling:
Compared to 2007 – when I went to Paris, Kentucky, Southern Germany, Strasbourg, and two other small cities in France, as well as on my first no-guardians vacation to a small German island called Fehmarn with my friend Nadine – this year nothing happened as far as real traveling goes. This was mainly because all summer was spent finding an apartment in Aachen and registering at Maastricht University. That and high school graduation kept me busy the first half of the year, it involved a lot of going back and forth to Aachen and Maastricht which at the time almost seemed like traveling but looking back are of course only things that needed to be taken care of.

Especially Maastricht has a very tourist-y atmosphere so my parents came to stay there again and again to visit me and the city itself.

In the second half of the year, when uni had started, extensive traveling was no longer an option because the necessary financial support was lacking. Everything I have and more is spent on rent and paying for uni fees, books and so on.

Right before I moved away from home, my family and I spent a handful of days up at the German coast in a city called Bremerhaven (documented in part 1, 2, and 3) – a crazy idea because it made the separation after so much harder. But it was the only actual vacation I took this year.

Health:
I have gained more weight this year than ever before. It started in 2007 after I came back from Kentucky but only truly became a problem in the weeks right after high school graduation and then when I lived by myself and never had the time to fix healthy meals. Not that I had eaten healthy before at my parents’ but my weight has become more of an issue than it used to be. I know this and I kept talking about it and yet, so far, I haven’t changed anything. I am not one of those people who feel comfortable in their body in spite of being fat and now that I have definitely reached the FAT category and clothes won’t fit me anymore etc., I don’t even want to leave the house on some days. It’s a problem that won’t solve itself. Ever.

In the fall I had a problem with my foot which in late December is still not gone entirely. I wore thin boots in which I sort of moved back and forth in with every step and, just like when you’re wearing flipflops, I sort of constantly clung to them with my toes. Add the uneven cobblestone streets to that, my gaining weight and the fact that I am walking everywhere every single day, first my right and then my left foot were completely messed up. I’m hoping this will solve itself.

University:
Uhm – I started university! It seems weird to just type that and be done with it. It always bothers me that things like this take less than a complete sentence to mention when really it’s a long process of pondering, evaluating, decision making, and so on. I guess I definitely decided to attend Maastricht University, and consequently move to Aachen, 274 kilometers (170 miles) away from my home town, all the way back in January. I applied as soon as I had all the necessary paperwork (meaning my high school graduation certificate) and the uni was amazing from that point onward, guiding me through the whole process.

I simply had to jump.

The first course, which dealt with ancient philosophy, was sort of a heavy topic to start with and I only barely passed the exam. The second course, Knowledge and Criticism, dealt with the entire history of all sciences and was much more interesting. The jury’s still out on the exam results.

Four months after starting university it feels like the most natural thing in the world.

My own home:
Finding in apartment in Maastricht or Aachen proved more difficult than applying to university. But in late June I found a perfect place for rent until March 2009 (when the girl who actually lives here returns from a 6-months trip to Chile). One of the pros was that it came furnished and thus made the first move away from home that much easier.

I moved on July 29. In the very beginning, I did however doubt that I was going to be able to make it on my own. Those first weeks all by myself were really tough but it only got better from there.

I began to love Aachen and Maastricht, and I began to love living in the city. I also love my tiny, darling place right next to the centuries old Aachen cathedral and cannot imagine what it will be like to move again next year.

Money matters:
I had to take up a student loan in order to be able to move to Aachen and attend university. That student loan provides me with 500 euros ($695) every single month for the three-year bachelor program which means in turn that every single month 500 euros plus interest are added to my debt. It’s the first time I ever used my signature for something truly terrifying and binding.

My having to travel to Maastricht and back every day as well as needing to get used to the uni workload and living by myself and everything didn’t allow me to take up a job on the side. Moving to Maastricht, thus saving the travel time, and starting to work is definitely planned for 2009.

Politics:
Barack Obama was elected president of the United States and I cried the morning I found out. I had followed this seemingly endless election process much more closely than ever before and from the very beginning, and I was inspired by the Illinois senator. Let’s hope he will be able to keep (some of) his promises in 2009! If nothing else, he motivated me to be more interested in politics again, also on the German national level.

A critical region of Georgia was fought over by the Russians, and Mumbai came under attack by some idiotic bullshit fuckers. Issues in African countries such as Zimbabwe and the Congo drastically worsened. Homosexuals were denied their rights once again. America proved once more that anyone can be anything in the land of endless possibilities.

Much other shit did go down, and generally speaking most of the headlines made me loose faith.

Other:
The Euro 2008! You didn’t already forget about it, did you? Europe’s most important soccer tournament captivated me all summer which was also when visitor numbers here at hbn.com were at their lowest. Coincidence? I think not. All I could talk about was the Euro! Germany did make it to the final after all. I generally don’t have any interest in regular national soccer leagues but these international events are always amazing.

That was all I can remember off the top of my head. It certainly was a good year, 2008. I hope yours was as satisfying as mine.

To all my lovely readers: Have an amazing 2009! And an unforgettable New Year’s Eve! Happy New Year!