Eagles fly, Lenin falls

GO EAGLES!!! Man, I was nervous there for a while. I really don't remember being that stressed out ever in my college career. I thought that they were going to take a perfect season and ruin it in a game against a team from Ohio. Thank God. (I really do pray very hard for Eagles victories. I know that people pray for their opponents too, so I am not sure how that works. I am glad I'm not God).

I watched this movie last night called "Goodbye Lenin." It was a German film (with English subtitles). The idea is that this woman who lives in communist East Germany is extremely patriotic and committed to "the state." She is basically married to it and her whole life's purpose is to serve her country. Anyhow, she goes into a coma and while she is sleeping, the Berlin Wall comes down. When she awakes the doctor instructs her grown children to never let her get surprised or excited, so her son and daughter decide to keep the political change secret from their mother. The country had become virtually unrecognizable over the months she slept and her kids thought that she might suffer another heart attack if she found out that all she prized was gone.

At first the kids don't let on that anything has changed at all. They keep their mother in her old room that is decorated exactly as it was before the wall fell (she is bedridden). As time goes on, she hears bits of news or sees things that tip her off. Her son explains everything away by making in one way or another. Eventually, she discovers that the wall came down and EVERYTHING is different. Her son tells her that East Germany, in an extravagant show of hospitality, took in thousands of west Germans who admired the socialist values of their neighbors. Everything was different only because East Germany was trying to make the westerners feel at home. The mother never finds out what really happened, but she is thrilled by what she sees all around her and is filled with pride for a government that (unbeknownst to her) had fallen.

It was a pretty cool movie because it really caused to you think about reality and what that is. She lived in a very different country than everyone else because of the way that change was explained. While everyone else despised the former life, the mother was able to see beauty and harmony that she cherished in her socialist values being expressed in this new life and appreciate them both. (the movie is worth watching and I only said what is on the back of the box basically. There is a lot more to the movie that I won't give away).