Laura (Germany)

This is not my first blog post for Janine. I already did one on a very exciting trip we had together to find Janine’s father’s (a/k/a Poppy) former house in Egmond aan Zee.

In the short time we actually spent together here, I feel like we’ve already shared half our family in a certain way: Janine knows my sister, her boyfriend, my parents, my house in Black Forest and more than half my friends who visited me here (she bonded with some of them). 

Logic sequel to that:  Janine’s (Bean’s) Birthday Bash, being held in my University town, lovely Erfurt, 23^rd of July. Another example of this weird girl invading my world, with a big smile and cats in her head. It also works the other way round: I already know so much about Janine’s brothers, her beloved poppy and mom, all those cats (Show a cat picture to Janine and she will get insane. Cute and scary at the same time...), her friends from home. I am happy to be able to take part in her life at least a bit in November, when I will visit her in Canada. As she is already doing crazy researches on all the activities we might do there, I am sure it will be an amazing time, but this would also be the case if we just hung around in pyjama pants, watched embarrassing movies and sang out-of-tune versions (at least for my part) of HOME (Edward Shape & The Magnetic Zeros) or danced to Vampire Weekend. Just the usually stuff happening with Janine.

There is a lot to tell about Janine. Let’s start with her amazing kitchen skills. Those have improved a lot since she came here. This is because they practically did not exist before. It still takes Janine 20 minutes to cut half a mango before she drops the knife and starts to stir whatever the rest has prepared so far. Janine’s way of making it look like she is helping in the kitchen is very sophisticated, but as it is nice to have her around we all love to feed her through. Still, I hope she will starting to cook nice food to her Canadian flatmate and maybe bake some cat cake for Charlie the cat.

Another fact: Janine confessed that she DECIDED that we would become besties on the first evening we had dinner together. I still don’t know if this is very creepy or a very lucky coincidence.

Remember that night? Of course! During Top Week, we walked to Happy Italy (with other lovely people like Andrea) and started to talk about Canadian music and how we are scared of party people and sometimes just like to eat and watch a movie. We immediately fell for each other and Janine added the cuddling part (so cuddly, this girl!). We created a Facebook group called “Boring people who sometimes prefer cooking and watching movies to PARTYING” which sadly kind of died. Because actually we partied sometimes and had lots of dinners with our evergrowing social network of friends and fans. Never will I forget the night that I was very sad and confused and was cuddled to death by Janine and Jessica. We watched Matilda, then we switched off down the light, cuddled under the covers and told each other creepy stories. What a bonding experience and definitely the best thing that could have happened to me that night.

More things to know about Yanine (no spelling mistake here!): She has a lovely way of describing things (if it is not mushy fries, among all...) and a very energetic and adorable way of telling stories. This does not prevent her from becoming hyper, being a parrot and dancing like the drunkest person on earth (and we all know she is not).

This behaviour has actually driven me insane several times but Janine took my critics with pride, a big smile (as always) and pure bestie love. She had to endure a lot of my spleens as well: My passion for travelling the Netherlands and BELGIUM which didn’t quite match with her passion for travelling the whole of Europe, me making fun of her liking Taylor Swift and her Dutch language skills. Finally we will do some out-of-Benelux travelling this summer together with Jessica, to Venice, and I am very much looking forward to this and to making her creep more into my world by having her in Erfurt for one week afterwards. All join us there end of July!

During the semester, some people might have been scared or confused by our weird pseudo-telepathic way of talking without words and only with looks and maybe -hopefully!- this way of communicating will still work in July, when Janine will hop on an aeroplane over the sea. But when we meet on a cloud we’ll be laughing out loud!