I mean, yesterday's post was all super long? Reading it multiple times helps you savor its fullness? Reminds you to google image search Marc and Kandinsky? (As a bonus, Certain People who Google Talk with me got the privelege of me GISing these artists for them. You really should join this club. Yes, you too, Athens.)
Um, mostly I spent today finding out what happened in the Inter Webs while I was mostly ignoring it for months. Turns out that a special Ryan alliance was formed, there were many moments of Funny, and something about a flying spaghetti monster happened- I don't want to know on that one.
Also, I learned today that watching MTV, where they take the American shows that are in English and put German subtitles on them instead of dubbing them, is not a good way to learn cool German slang, because they always translate the awesome, useful English slang words into really boring, normal German adjectives. I can't give you an example because this is a Mom-friendly blog, so you'll have to trust me on this one. I am also mildly ashamed that I am finding MTV shows quite enjoyable, but I blame this entirely on the lack of Bravo and VH1 clip shows. Also a general lack of makeover shows.
You know what? This blog was pretty bad. It is best if you pretend I didn't write it, okay? Readership drops on Fridays, right?
Friday, December 30, 2005
Thursday, December 29, 2005
Munich's Not Very Exciting
Good thing Art is!
Yeah, I'm late today. I was busy and will make up for it with a blog that is actually interesting, okay?
So I got up at the ungodly hour of 8 am, and was unhappy to admit that Piff was right, this is about 12 hours too early for me. Oh! There was a moment of realizing what a keen sense of irony Lexi has- I drug her up to bed with me last night to play calming music to make me fall asleep somewhat earlier. So she picked cheery songs about circuses and lots of Garbage and other things with bass guitars and loud drums and crazy metal solos. Not that these things are bad, but I have all this great mellow music, and it was late, you know? Anyway, I already kinda figured out that Lexi is all about the kind of music that is good for dancing to, so I popped her on again this morning to get me awake, figuring that since I have at least 5 songs about waking up (matter of fact, one of them is playing right now), Lexi would Know and play one of them. What did I get? Slow little ballads about how a boy loves his mechanical dog toy, and other mellowness that made me want to roll over and cuddle deeper into my pile of blankets and sleep. She's making up for it right now by playing lots of sweet songs so I can't be mad at her. Plus she's all pretty. Cheeky, but pretty.
Wait, this was supposed to be about my adventures in Germany, not my strange relationship with my iPod. Sorry. So anyway, I did drag myself out of bed, and I even felt cute enough for pigtails (yes! and dinosaurs on my lapel!) and got some breakfast in me and then the host parents and Anja and I (the boys being doof, even though Piff and Basti were already awake because they are Insane) got in the car and drove off through the 8 or 9 cm of snow that's accumulated (weatherman says every other part of Germany is getting something like 40 cm. We are jealous beyond belief.) to Munich, which Philipp warned me was "a really ugly city. I have no idea why anyone would want to live there." As it turns out, Munich is ugly in the way Barnes and Noble is ugly, which is not, but at the same time, there are many prettier places to be, right? As an American, I have seen ugly cities. (Philipp has also spent lots of time in America, but apparently he missed the ugly parts.) In any case, Germany has this tendency to be really pretty though, and there are all these gorgeous cities that you could spend your time in. Like Augsburg. Or Bonn, which is literally a postcard come to life, but not one of those ugly ones with a fat lady on a horse or something. (My brain is so full of culture at the moment that I am just sort of spitting it out in ways that make no sense. I apologize.) Anyway, our goal was the Franz Marc exhibit at some art museum because Art is Awesome, and we left all early because it is apparently super-popular. I figured out that Munich is a Major City because the U-Bahn announcer-lady spoke German and English, and also because there were lots of people in the U-Bahn. We got to the art museum and stood outside in a super-long line Forever and Froze and Froze and there were two Americans behind us speaking English like it was totally normal, and it freaked me out a bit. I mean, who speaks English? It is sort of like Latin, it is a language that you write in and read and maybe you say the words when you are having a Linguistical discussion, but you do not stand on the street corner and have a conversation in it unless you are Crazy Pretentious. That is what my brain says, at least. We finally got through the long line of icey death, and bought some tickets (using Anja's student id for both me and Anja in a feat of fooling the overworked admission-ticket lady) and then it was back out into the Frigid and across the street and underground to find the actual exhibit (this was pretty weird). And then it was a whole bunch of people in a big huge room full of colorful pictures of horses and sheep and dogs and cats and the occasional naked lady (but very occasional) and I liked it best because you could see the development of Marc as a thinkin' person who makes pictures, meaning I could see how he went from kinda boring pictures of a blue deer in some trees to crazy crazy abstract things that he claimed were cows. You kinda have to see the pictures to understand. We finished up with that exhibit and went back aboveground and around the corner to the actual art museum building, where they had lots of stuff from Marc's early career, which was basically more sheep and horses and stuff except that they were normal colors and not at all abstracted, so it was pretty boring. There were lots of sketchbook pages, though, and I love sketchbook pages and studies and things- I love art class when we do studies, and I like to consider studies finished artwork because, somehow, the finished composition isn't as cool- I like seeing the whole thought process on the page. We wandered from early, boring Marc to a big huge Blaue Reiter exhibit, which started out equally boring except that it was vaguely colorful landscapes, and then came that point when Kandinsky hit brilliance and drug most of his friends with him (a couple BR guys remained boring) and I spent forever wandering around reminding myself that Kandinsky is awesome, and also has one of the most recognizable faces ever- those glasses, that pointy beard- he just sticks out, and that makes me feel like I know things, too, because I can always find him in photos or portraits or whatever. I was disappointed to find no Dada as the museum went from the Reiter to pop art to lots of modern stuff, but then I got distracted by an installation that was a couple of mortuary carts and boxes of congealed fat and some other things, and I started to explain to my host mom why it was art, and she decided I was crazy and left me there contemplating it to go look at the disco ball installation (I have no awesome meaning for that one). Man, I love art. There were other crazy awesome things in the museum including a room full of pink 3x5s, some photos, some drawings, that I could have stared at forever, but we were hungry. We went wandering through Munich looking for food, and came upon a bunch of lion statues (Munich is doing that thing that cities do where a bunch of businesses or whatever decorate some animal statue and stick it on the street- Richmond did it with fish, some city in Massachusetts did it with sheep) and a giant manger scene from Spain with animatronic figures and lights and a working waterfall and everything. My host dad is all about manger scenes, so we spent forever looking at the thing (it had a guy roasting a pig on a spit! Not kosher!) and starving. We finally drug him away and found some nourishment (I had bratwurst) and made our way through the cold back to the U-Bahn station where Anja figured out how to get us back to our car (it was complex because Munich has like 59 different U and S Bahn lines, not to mention all the normal trains) and we drove home, where the boys were doing nothing and not freezing (so doof). We had tea to warm up and watched the Germans lose at the ski jumping thing and I have been internetting a bit and the boys made up for being doof about art by having a nice huge debate about action movies at dinner (also proving why Indiana Jones is better than British Romance-Novel-Based-Made-for-TV-Movies-That-Are-Super-Popular-Here) and card games were abandoned for Tomb Raider 2 on TV. I might go to bed earlier tonight, especially if Lexi doesn't get over this thing for Fiona Apple.
Also, I have to agree with Philipp about Munich. I have no clue why anyone would want to live there.
Yeah, I'm late today. I was busy and will make up for it with a blog that is actually interesting, okay?
So I got up at the ungodly hour of 8 am, and was unhappy to admit that Piff was right, this is about 12 hours too early for me. Oh! There was a moment of realizing what a keen sense of irony Lexi has- I drug her up to bed with me last night to play calming music to make me fall asleep somewhat earlier. So she picked cheery songs about circuses and lots of Garbage and other things with bass guitars and loud drums and crazy metal solos. Not that these things are bad, but I have all this great mellow music, and it was late, you know? Anyway, I already kinda figured out that Lexi is all about the kind of music that is good for dancing to, so I popped her on again this morning to get me awake, figuring that since I have at least 5 songs about waking up (matter of fact, one of them is playing right now), Lexi would Know and play one of them. What did I get? Slow little ballads about how a boy loves his mechanical dog toy, and other mellowness that made me want to roll over and cuddle deeper into my pile of blankets and sleep. She's making up for it right now by playing lots of sweet songs so I can't be mad at her. Plus she's all pretty. Cheeky, but pretty.
Wait, this was supposed to be about my adventures in Germany, not my strange relationship with my iPod. Sorry. So anyway, I did drag myself out of bed, and I even felt cute enough for pigtails (yes! and dinosaurs on my lapel!) and got some breakfast in me and then the host parents and Anja and I (the boys being doof, even though Piff and Basti were already awake because they are Insane) got in the car and drove off through the 8 or 9 cm of snow that's accumulated (weatherman says every other part of Germany is getting something like 40 cm. We are jealous beyond belief.) to Munich, which Philipp warned me was "a really ugly city. I have no idea why anyone would want to live there." As it turns out, Munich is ugly in the way Barnes and Noble is ugly, which is not, but at the same time, there are many prettier places to be, right? As an American, I have seen ugly cities. (Philipp has also spent lots of time in America, but apparently he missed the ugly parts.) In any case, Germany has this tendency to be really pretty though, and there are all these gorgeous cities that you could spend your time in. Like Augsburg. Or Bonn, which is literally a postcard come to life, but not one of those ugly ones with a fat lady on a horse or something. (My brain is so full of culture at the moment that I am just sort of spitting it out in ways that make no sense. I apologize.) Anyway, our goal was the Franz Marc exhibit at some art museum because Art is Awesome, and we left all early because it is apparently super-popular. I figured out that Munich is a Major City because the U-Bahn announcer-lady spoke German and English, and also because there were lots of people in the U-Bahn. We got to the art museum and stood outside in a super-long line Forever and Froze and Froze and there were two Americans behind us speaking English like it was totally normal, and it freaked me out a bit. I mean, who speaks English? It is sort of like Latin, it is a language that you write in and read and maybe you say the words when you are having a Linguistical discussion, but you do not stand on the street corner and have a conversation in it unless you are Crazy Pretentious. That is what my brain says, at least. We finally got through the long line of icey death, and bought some tickets (using Anja's student id for both me and Anja in a feat of fooling the overworked admission-ticket lady) and then it was back out into the Frigid and across the street and underground to find the actual exhibit (this was pretty weird). And then it was a whole bunch of people in a big huge room full of colorful pictures of horses and sheep and dogs and cats and the occasional naked lady (but very occasional) and I liked it best because you could see the development of Marc as a thinkin' person who makes pictures, meaning I could see how he went from kinda boring pictures of a blue deer in some trees to crazy crazy abstract things that he claimed were cows. You kinda have to see the pictures to understand. We finished up with that exhibit and went back aboveground and around the corner to the actual art museum building, where they had lots of stuff from Marc's early career, which was basically more sheep and horses and stuff except that they were normal colors and not at all abstracted, so it was pretty boring. There were lots of sketchbook pages, though, and I love sketchbook pages and studies and things- I love art class when we do studies, and I like to consider studies finished artwork because, somehow, the finished composition isn't as cool- I like seeing the whole thought process on the page. We wandered from early, boring Marc to a big huge Blaue Reiter exhibit, which started out equally boring except that it was vaguely colorful landscapes, and then came that point when Kandinsky hit brilliance and drug most of his friends with him (a couple BR guys remained boring) and I spent forever wandering around reminding myself that Kandinsky is awesome, and also has one of the most recognizable faces ever- those glasses, that pointy beard- he just sticks out, and that makes me feel like I know things, too, because I can always find him in photos or portraits or whatever. I was disappointed to find no Dada as the museum went from the Reiter to pop art to lots of modern stuff, but then I got distracted by an installation that was a couple of mortuary carts and boxes of congealed fat and some other things, and I started to explain to my host mom why it was art, and she decided I was crazy and left me there contemplating it to go look at the disco ball installation (I have no awesome meaning for that one). Man, I love art. There were other crazy awesome things in the museum including a room full of pink 3x5s, some photos, some drawings, that I could have stared at forever, but we were hungry. We went wandering through Munich looking for food, and came upon a bunch of lion statues (Munich is doing that thing that cities do where a bunch of businesses or whatever decorate some animal statue and stick it on the street- Richmond did it with fish, some city in Massachusetts did it with sheep) and a giant manger scene from Spain with animatronic figures and lights and a working waterfall and everything. My host dad is all about manger scenes, so we spent forever looking at the thing (it had a guy roasting a pig on a spit! Not kosher!) and starving. We finally drug him away and found some nourishment (I had bratwurst) and made our way through the cold back to the U-Bahn station where Anja figured out how to get us back to our car (it was complex because Munich has like 59 different U and S Bahn lines, not to mention all the normal trains) and we drove home, where the boys were doing nothing and not freezing (so doof). We had tea to warm up and watched the Germans lose at the ski jumping thing and I have been internetting a bit and the boys made up for being doof about art by having a nice huge debate about action movies at dinner (also proving why Indiana Jones is better than British Romance-Novel-Based-Made-for-TV-Movies-That-Are-Super-Popular-Here) and card games were abandoned for Tomb Raider 2 on TV. I might go to bed earlier tonight, especially if Lexi doesn't get over this thing for Fiona Apple.
Also, I have to agree with Philipp about Munich. I have no clue why anyone would want to live there.
Wednesday, December 28, 2005
CD-Laufwerk Adventures
So I was going through iTunes Music Store this morning, trying to decide what to do with this Christmas money of mine, and mostly coming to the conclusion that there is way more awesome music in this world than I have money to buy. This had me a little bit down, and then I remembered that there are starving children to be depressed about, and I worried about the dying people in Africa for a while. Then I took a shower, and thought "you know, I've actually spent a good deal of money on awesome music already. Moreover, my dad has spent a lot of money on awesome music for me, even when he doesn't know that it is awesome. It is really a shame that I am not enjoying any of this music because my computer's CD drive is dead." So I started to come up with complex plans involving gmail's endless supply of storage space to try to get my music on my computer. Then, after lunch, I had a better idea. I would ask Philipp.
The conversation went something like this, except in German:
M: Philipp, my CD drive is dead. Do you know why?
P: No. It probably hates you. (pause) Piff, you and Basti don't really need a CD drive and a DVD drive down here, do you?
Piff: Yes we do.
Philipp: Um. . . hey! There is an old CD drive randomly sitting here! Does it work?
Piff: I don't know. . . probably.
Philipp: (calling out through the house) Basti, does this random old CD drive work?
B: Probably not! I think it burned but wouldn't read anymore!
Philipp: Didn't we have another one around somewhere?
Piff: Just use that one, it probably magically works again, you know how those things are.
Philipp: Yeah, you're probably right.
So we brought the new-old CD drive up and pulled my computer apart and moved some wires around, and, sure enough, it works! So Philipp has saved the day again and now I get to spend the rest of my Ferien importing my entire music collection into my computer. Yay! (There was a moment of fear when my computer got upset about importing ABBA, but I think I have made it better with Radiohead. I knew Lexi had a distinct musical taste, but I wasn't expecting it from my computer, too.)
Super Current iTunes Stats (me being a music nerd):
279 songs
First Song Alpha: 0x0000007b by Josh Woodward
Last Song Alpha: Zero to Phantom by Josh Woodward (I swear I have lots of other artists represented, really!)
Shortest Song: Hooker Pumps by Donut Disturb
Longest Song: Quay Cur by The Fiery Furnaces
First Album: A Traditional Christmas Carol Collection from the Sixteen
Last Album: Woman King by Iron and Wine
Random Song: Sad Life by Dirk Shanson
Search for:
-sex: 1 song (coffee, however, brings up 2)
-death: 1 song (dead brings up another)
-love: 3 songs
-you: 16 songs
In other news, it has been snowing pretty constantly for two or three days now. We have maybe 5 cm in the deepest drifts. Crazy snow.
The conversation went something like this, except in German:
M: Philipp, my CD drive is dead. Do you know why?
P: No. It probably hates you. (pause) Piff, you and Basti don't really need a CD drive and a DVD drive down here, do you?
Piff: Yes we do.
Philipp: Um. . . hey! There is an old CD drive randomly sitting here! Does it work?
Piff: I don't know. . . probably.
Philipp: (calling out through the house) Basti, does this random old CD drive work?
B: Probably not! I think it burned but wouldn't read anymore!
Philipp: Didn't we have another one around somewhere?
Piff: Just use that one, it probably magically works again, you know how those things are.
Philipp: Yeah, you're probably right.
So we brought the new-old CD drive up and pulled my computer apart and moved some wires around, and, sure enough, it works! So Philipp has saved the day again and now I get to spend the rest of my Ferien importing my entire music collection into my computer. Yay! (There was a moment of fear when my computer got upset about importing ABBA, but I think I have made it better with Radiohead. I knew Lexi had a distinct musical taste, but I wasn't expecting it from my computer, too.)
Super Current iTunes Stats (me being a music nerd):
279 songs
First Song Alpha: 0x0000007b by Josh Woodward
Last Song Alpha: Zero to Phantom by Josh Woodward (I swear I have lots of other artists represented, really!)
Shortest Song: Hooker Pumps by Donut Disturb
Longest Song: Quay Cur by The Fiery Furnaces
First Album: A Traditional Christmas Carol Collection from the Sixteen
Last Album: Woman King by Iron and Wine
Random Song: Sad Life by Dirk Shanson
Search for:
-sex: 1 song (coffee, however, brings up 2)
-death: 1 song (dead brings up another)
-love: 3 songs
-you: 16 songs
In other news, it has been snowing pretty constantly for two or three days now. We have maybe 5 cm in the deepest drifts. Crazy snow.
Tuesday, December 27, 2005
I Swear They're Watching Me
So I've been spending a good deal of time the past few days trying to figure out how to explain Silly Putty, and/or simply having fun with Silly Putty.
So what does Google go and do?
Check out the Google Blog.
I'm really starting to be concerned that they're watching me.
(What am I watching? Made-for-tv movies. I am starting to recognize the German made-for-tv movie actors! Question: what is up with the childhood fascination with boarding schools, hmm?)
So what does Google go and do?
Check out the Google Blog.
I'm really starting to be concerned that they're watching me.
(What am I watching? Made-for-tv movies. I am starting to recognize the German made-for-tv movie actors! Question: what is up with the childhood fascination with boarding schools, hmm?)
Monday, December 26, 2005
Always Look on the Bright Side of Life
You know what's awesome? Grabbing a screen and hooking the beamer up to the DVD player for Movie Night! We started off with last year's indie favorite Whale Rider, which, as it turns out, was a New Zealand-Germany co-production. Then, of course, we went on to Life of Brian because Monty Python is awesome.
It is snowing, as is tradition on the day after Christmas, just too late for Bing.
Reading old blogs is surreal. I'd thought that I changed so much in the last six months, but it just isn't true. Somehow, that's comforting, because it means I have a core that I haven't lost, simply refined. It means I have an identity.
Don't believe me? Try May on for size. The English is better (I wish the word dichotomy were still in my active vocabulary), but the ideas are the same. Some of them eerily so, but you'd only know that if you were actually in my head, which, fortunately, you aren't.
My mom sent me pictures of Christmas, and I discovered that the house I grew up in is now unfamiliar- the carpet, the curtains, the pictures on the wall seem like those of a neighbor, or a friend- things that are familiar, but aren't home. That's a weird feeling, knowing that the house you grew up in isn't home anymore. What's weirder is that, unlike in Garden State, I'm not stuck in this terrible nostalgia, either. I'm not happier than I was then, but I'm pretty damn happy. I'm associating new things with the words home and family, and they're good things.
It is snowing, as is tradition on the day after Christmas, just too late for Bing.
Reading old blogs is surreal. I'd thought that I changed so much in the last six months, but it just isn't true. Somehow, that's comforting, because it means I have a core that I haven't lost, simply refined. It means I have an identity.
Don't believe me? Try May on for size. The English is better (I wish the word dichotomy were still in my active vocabulary), but the ideas are the same. Some of them eerily so, but you'd only know that if you were actually in my head, which, fortunately, you aren't.
My mom sent me pictures of Christmas, and I discovered that the house I grew up in is now unfamiliar- the carpet, the curtains, the pictures on the wall seem like those of a neighbor, or a friend- things that are familiar, but aren't home. That's a weird feeling, knowing that the house you grew up in isn't home anymore. What's weirder is that, unlike in Garden State, I'm not stuck in this terrible nostalgia, either. I'm not happier than I was then, but I'm pretty damn happy. I'm associating new things with the words home and family, and they're good things.
Happy Hanukkah!
Why didn't anyone tell me before that Hanukkah is starting at sundown, 25 Dec this year? Hmmm? This is one of those once-in-a-lifetime exciting events! Hanukkah and Christmas on the same day!
I woke up at 10:30 this morning because the sun was kinda bright. Brightness is since gone, or maybe not- in any case, it was too light to sleep, but now I consider it way dim in here. I've never slept until 10:30 on Christmas before- this is very weird to me. I smelled food and decided to head down and seek out some breakfast, but it turned out I was smelling the turkey cooking (we were going to be übercool and have a goose, but we apparently came up with this idea too late and there were no more geese left- it's a nice big turkey, though). . . had some marzipan-based pastry thing for breakfast (yum) and made hot chocolate and confused the family by adding mini marshmallows (thanks Mom)- it was so delicious. I promise to teach these Germans about proper drinking of sugar-based warm liquids. Hung around watching Piff's Green Day DVD (I promise to make up for this by spending my Christmas money on delicious indie rock) and watching Philipp trying to figure out his new cell phone (a fancy one that will also work in America) and eating Plätzchen.
Christmas: good.
We ate our turkey and knödel and rotkraut and other yummies and we played a Nurenberg-based trivia game and it turns out that I know nothing about Nurenberg but Piff either knows even less than me or is worse at guessing (it's the second one) so I didn't even lose- I ended up with 2 more streets and one more house than him. Granted, everyone else who played (Anja, Eva, Philipp) managed to get the big center castle and at least 2 of the Sehenswürdigkeiten (I forget the English word for these) and a whole bunch of houses and streets, but still. Little victories. I've also put together a three-page list of things I want to buy from iTunes and I've gotten excited about box sets because they tend to be super-cheap (do you know that I can get 71 They Might Be Giants songs for $19.99? That is 28 cents a song, when they still cost 99 cents individually!) So now I'm just trying to figure out what proportion of my Christmas money can go to iTunes and which bit to H&M and also if it is worth buying speakers, because I don't know if my computer will let me use them or not (headphones don't work for reasons I don't understand, but the cd drive doesn't work, either, so this is part of my computer's special personality).
I woke up at 10:30 this morning because the sun was kinda bright. Brightness is since gone, or maybe not- in any case, it was too light to sleep, but now I consider it way dim in here. I've never slept until 10:30 on Christmas before- this is very weird to me. I smelled food and decided to head down and seek out some breakfast, but it turned out I was smelling the turkey cooking (we were going to be übercool and have a goose, but we apparently came up with this idea too late and there were no more geese left- it's a nice big turkey, though). . . had some marzipan-based pastry thing for breakfast (yum) and made hot chocolate and confused the family by adding mini marshmallows (thanks Mom)- it was so delicious. I promise to teach these Germans about proper drinking of sugar-based warm liquids. Hung around watching Piff's Green Day DVD (I promise to make up for this by spending my Christmas money on delicious indie rock) and watching Philipp trying to figure out his new cell phone (a fancy one that will also work in America) and eating Plätzchen.
Christmas: good.
We ate our turkey and knödel and rotkraut and other yummies and we played a Nurenberg-based trivia game and it turns out that I know nothing about Nurenberg but Piff either knows even less than me or is worse at guessing (it's the second one) so I didn't even lose- I ended up with 2 more streets and one more house than him. Granted, everyone else who played (Anja, Eva, Philipp) managed to get the big center castle and at least 2 of the Sehenswürdigkeiten (I forget the English word for these) and a whole bunch of houses and streets, but still. Little victories. I've also put together a three-page list of things I want to buy from iTunes and I've gotten excited about box sets because they tend to be super-cheap (do you know that I can get 71 They Might Be Giants songs for $19.99? That is 28 cents a song, when they still cost 99 cents individually!) So now I'm just trying to figure out what proportion of my Christmas money can go to iTunes and which bit to H&M and also if it is worth buying speakers, because I don't know if my computer will let me use them or not (headphones don't work for reasons I don't understand, but the cd drive doesn't work, either, so this is part of my computer's special personality).
Sunday, December 25, 2005
Frohe Weihnachten
You know what?
The whole opening of presents on Christmas Eve is a much better idea.
Went to church at 4, showed video (had trouble getting it started, but then it played just fine and people seemed to even enjoy it), sang songs, some brilliant person decided to have Kirchen Kaffee afterwards so that no one would go home, finally managed to get out of church, and came home to do the Christmas thing. There was incredibly half-hearted singing of German songs, there was reading of strange German Christmas stories and poems that no one paid attention to, and then there were presents. We are all old enough that this was very orderly, and somehow lots of fun- thanks for sending awesome toys, Mom. I am still trying to explain the concept of Silly Putty, and it is pretty much impossible. We laughed a lot and I didn't think about taking pictures- it wouldn't have captured any of the fun, anyway. Christmas is so much better when you're awake. We spent a couple of hours going through the presents and then got everything off to the side enough for the traditional Steeger Christmas Eve dinner of fondue (yum). . . once again, you just had to be there in this great community to understand why I am in such a good mood right now and why it was such a nice dinner- impossible to explain. We'd saved various packages for after dinner, and then there was lots of sitting around and talking and laughing and enjoying each other's company, basically the same as we'd been doing all along. At some point, Phillipp decided we should watch Basti's new copy of And Now for Something Completely Different (yay Monty Python!) but Basti disappeared because he wants to watch it tomorrow morning (I don't know why) and Monty Python is still awesome in German- one of the few dubbed things where you still get a sense of accents, or maybe I'm just so far into German culture that I no longer have a concept of accented English. In any case, I love Monty Python, and it is now 1 and technically actual Christmas Day, and I am going to sleep really, really well. No need to be up before the sun tomorrow- why hasn't America thought of this idea before? If Germany only had Rudolph, Christmas would be so perfect here. Who said it was bad to be away from home for the holidays?
(Apropos snow: so it snowed on Thursday, and there was still a ton of snow around yesterday. By the time we got out of church today, there was basically none to be seen. They are calling for snow again on Monday or Tuesday. So much for white Christmases.)
(Apropos Frohe Weihnachten: thanks to our video, this phrase will forever exist in my head attached to the voices of Piff and Ferdi coming from two computer animated UFOs. Apropos apropos: Germans say this all the time. Along with quasi, it falls under the category of fancy-sounding words that are going to be part of my normal vocabulary thanks to German.)
The whole opening of presents on Christmas Eve is a much better idea.
Went to church at 4, showed video (had trouble getting it started, but then it played just fine and people seemed to even enjoy it), sang songs, some brilliant person decided to have Kirchen Kaffee afterwards so that no one would go home, finally managed to get out of church, and came home to do the Christmas thing. There was incredibly half-hearted singing of German songs, there was reading of strange German Christmas stories and poems that no one paid attention to, and then there were presents. We are all old enough that this was very orderly, and somehow lots of fun- thanks for sending awesome toys, Mom. I am still trying to explain the concept of Silly Putty, and it is pretty much impossible. We laughed a lot and I didn't think about taking pictures- it wouldn't have captured any of the fun, anyway. Christmas is so much better when you're awake. We spent a couple of hours going through the presents and then got everything off to the side enough for the traditional Steeger Christmas Eve dinner of fondue (yum). . . once again, you just had to be there in this great community to understand why I am in such a good mood right now and why it was such a nice dinner- impossible to explain. We'd saved various packages for after dinner, and then there was lots of sitting around and talking and laughing and enjoying each other's company, basically the same as we'd been doing all along. At some point, Phillipp decided we should watch Basti's new copy of And Now for Something Completely Different (yay Monty Python!) but Basti disappeared because he wants to watch it tomorrow morning (I don't know why) and Monty Python is still awesome in German- one of the few dubbed things where you still get a sense of accents, or maybe I'm just so far into German culture that I no longer have a concept of accented English. In any case, I love Monty Python, and it is now 1 and technically actual Christmas Day, and I am going to sleep really, really well. No need to be up before the sun tomorrow- why hasn't America thought of this idea before? If Germany only had Rudolph, Christmas would be so perfect here. Who said it was bad to be away from home for the holidays?
(Apropos snow: so it snowed on Thursday, and there was still a ton of snow around yesterday. By the time we got out of church today, there was basically none to be seen. They are calling for snow again on Monday or Tuesday. So much for white Christmases.)
(Apropos Frohe Weihnachten: thanks to our video, this phrase will forever exist in my head attached to the voices of Piff and Ferdi coming from two computer animated UFOs. Apropos apropos: Germans say this all the time. Along with quasi, it falls under the category of fancy-sounding words that are going to be part of my normal vocabulary thanks to German.)
Saturday, December 24, 2005
This is Pretty Cool
I've added a site meter so I can find out just how many of you actually read this, and the information is fascinating.
Yesterday (Day 1 of Keeping Track of this stuff, and really only half a day), my visitors represented 5 countries and 6 US states and territories. Up-to-the-date maps are available for the whole world to see, and it looks pretty spiffy.
In more festive news, the presents are all wrapped (something like 59 per person because I am doing stockings, which basically don't exist here) for tonight (yes, we open on Christmas Eve- be jealous) and it will be time to go to church and pray that we have taken care of all the flaws in the video so that it will go off without a hitch. This was supposed to be the less stressful alternative to a live pageant. Hahaha. I promise to work on getting it on the internet, but not today, and probably not tomorrow. I have a whole Ferien- things will happen. (A still from the video ended up in the local paper, transvestite Joseph and all)
Yesterday (Day 1 of Keeping Track of this stuff, and really only half a day), my visitors represented 5 countries and 6 US states and territories. Up-to-the-date maps are available for the whole world to see, and it looks pretty spiffy.
In more festive news, the presents are all wrapped (something like 59 per person because I am doing stockings, which basically don't exist here) for tonight (yes, we open on Christmas Eve- be jealous) and it will be time to go to church and pray that we have taken care of all the flaws in the video so that it will go off without a hitch. This was supposed to be the less stressful alternative to a live pageant. Hahaha. I promise to work on getting it on the internet, but not today, and probably not tomorrow. I have a whole Ferien- things will happen. (A still from the video ended up in the local paper, transvestite Joseph and all)
Friday, December 23, 2005
Guess What?
I'm awesome.
No, really. Less than 3 weeks after I sent my application, Wells College decided they already wanted me. Granted, this is choice 5 of 6 and a safety, but still. Safety net number 1 is in place and the feeling of accomplishment has led me to ship off Swarthmore's and Wellesley's (much more difficult schools, mind you) applications, 9 days before the deadline. Now there's just supplements to Mt Holyoke (due Jan 15) and Sweet Briar (due Feb 1) left. I feel so accomplished.
So we had the video all done yesterday and left it exporting when we went to bed. Guess what we found today? The sound is strangely verschieben in certain bits- I am blaming Piff's insistence on having 59 Spurs of audio, even though I told him to put it all in 2 to make things easier. We have no Bock at the moment to deal with it, so we are not.
Yes, I went to school today, because I am brav, unlike you. I even went to school for all 6 periods, although Bio didn't happen because my teacher was giving his Chemie LK a Schulaufgabe, and Deutsch didn't happen because of some holiday assembly, but I was there. I did last-minute Christmas shopping on the way home, and rode the train with Annette, and we had waffles for lunch! No syrup, though, or butter for that matter. Waffles are different here.
There was a lot of German in that. I apologize, but I can't think of a good way to übersetzt it.
Frohe Weihnachten.
No, really. Less than 3 weeks after I sent my application, Wells College decided they already wanted me. Granted, this is choice 5 of 6 and a safety, but still. Safety net number 1 is in place and the feeling of accomplishment has led me to ship off Swarthmore's and Wellesley's (much more difficult schools, mind you) applications, 9 days before the deadline. Now there's just supplements to Mt Holyoke (due Jan 15) and Sweet Briar (due Feb 1) left. I feel so accomplished.
So we had the video all done yesterday and left it exporting when we went to bed. Guess what we found today? The sound is strangely verschieben in certain bits- I am blaming Piff's insistence on having 59 Spurs of audio, even though I told him to put it all in 2 to make things easier. We have no Bock at the moment to deal with it, so we are not.
Yes, I went to school today, because I am brav, unlike you. I even went to school for all 6 periods, although Bio didn't happen because my teacher was giving his Chemie LK a Schulaufgabe, and Deutsch didn't happen because of some holiday assembly, but I was there. I did last-minute Christmas shopping on the way home, and rode the train with Annette, and we had waffles for lunch! No syrup, though, or butter for that matter. Waffles are different here.
There was a lot of German in that. I apologize, but I can't think of a good way to übersetzt it.
Frohe Weihnachten.
Thursday, December 22, 2005
It Smells Like Snow
Which makes sense, because it snowed again today. My window is wide open. It smells so good, and it is so fresh and invigorating. It is also so cold. I am tempted to go grab my gloves.
I have a week's worth of school stories because I have been disinclined to blog them before!
Mostly they are from Reli, which went and turned into the coolest class. On Monday, we were talking about theologist/philosopher Frankl (who has some cool ideas), and at some point there was a diagram on the board that Robbie didn't get, and this was Viktor's explanation:
V: You're you.
R: No, I'm-
V: No, listen. I am I, and you are you.
R: Oooooh.
Wednesday was Last Reli Class Before the Ferien, meaning we goofed off and talked about an out-of-class get-together. Surreal moment: Herr Rothmann is suggesting things and says "Well, we could go see a movie and get a beer afterward." Before you worry that I am going drinking with my teachers, we decided to go bowling instead. Then we played Mafia, which is a pretty fun game. Maybe I'll teach it to you one day.
Art on Wednesday included an awesome German pun courtesy Matthias, who is not actually in our class, but in Music. He came in asking for colored paper. Now, in German, the word for color is Farbe, and the word for colorful is farbig. As it happens, the word for paint is also Farbe, because German is cool like that. So Matthias went on to ask if we had paint, and it came out "farbige Farbe," which had us all laughing for reasons that should be obvious. Fortunately, this remains funny in translation as "colorful paint," especially when whoever commented thereafter "no, sorry, we only have black and white- no color!" (A similar occurence, also from Matthias but in history today, doesn't translate as well- he said "ausländische Länder," which sounds so funny in German but just means "foreign countries" in English)
Sozi had me all thoughtful today- we were discussing America of all things, and the whole torture scandal, and how much we should allow people to do in interrogations to get information. The death penalty got pulled in a bit as a similar and equally current theme (Schwarzeneggar's recent act was HUGE news over here), and I daydreamed a bit and remembered my Frankenstein essay from last year in English, in which I wrote about how good cannot eliminate evil (the core of our discussion arising from the idea that, in a pluralist system, every majority must protect the minority it disagrees with, and our effort to define why that is). Quote from my essay (yes, I have it on hand, yes, I am a dork):
I go on to talk about how civilized society is all injust and the barbarian has to come use violence to restore the rightful order, but that doesn't necessarily apply here, where we are discussing terrorists and the American government. Here, it is even harder to decide who is civilized, the world leaders who produce Lynndie England, or the religious zealots who blow up buses full of children. It's harder to know who will restore justice, because neither side seems to have much respect for the other. The important thing is that both sides continue to exist, and all the other sides, because our society is truly pluralistic- nothing is a simply toss of a coin. I was thinking about Narnia, too, specifically the scene where Aslan kills the White Witch. I still hate this scene- yes, the White Witch is evil, but if Aslan is supposed to be the perfect good, how can he eat her face? In the movie, there is this little moment of fear in her eyes just before he tears into her. It ruins Aslan for me. I don't care that he goes back and resurrects every one of her minions, that he forgives them all- he killed her just for opposing him, when you pull all the morals out of it. Morals are relative, you see. They are defined by the ones in power- in the mind of terrorists, blowing up a church filled with innocents is the most moral thing they can do- it is serving this cause, this god they've created- people don't just die for things, not like that. I read a fascinating editorial (was it Richard Cohen? It might have been. . .) stating that all the finger-pointing about the Iraq war, all the stories about oil and power and revenge and whatever don't hit Bush's actual reasoning- in his head, he was getting rid of Saddam, a true Evil. Other causes were secondary- the number one was democracy, no matter the cost. It makes sense to me, looking at the man's actions. I can never agree with it, but I see exactly what he was trying to do- he has made his own morals, and he judges good and evil by his scale. The thing is, it is a Universal Truth that good doesn't destroy. Generally good people and causes destroy, but that is because the good is bound up with the evil. As long as it's still in some sort of balance, as long as both forces are still struggling with each other, we are okay. We fight to keep good over evil, but the moment good becomes so powerful that it can destroy the evil, it becomes evil, through that very act of destruction. It achieves nothing. And should evil become powerful enough to destroy good, it takes over power and sets a new standard of good. It becomes the new moral authority and starts seeking an evil to eradicate. These are the things I've worked out in my brain. I am trying to find out if there is a way to end the struggle, if in accepting the balance, things become easier, but I am still unsure. If you find all of this boring or incredibly silly, let me know, and I'll learn to write on paper again.
I had English today, too, and Herr Kütz reminded me of warm-ups, which don't exist in Germany! It was kind of exciting. I had to explain the Chipmunk Christmas Song, and the class laughed at some point when Herr Kütz read something (from America) that mentioned Hannukah and Kwanzaa, too, and I was confused. Hannukah's not funny, it's just another holiday. I really wanted to explain it to prove my multicultural abilities, but mostly I only got the chance to tell them the Festival of Lights is Hannukah, not a strange name for a Christmas tree. They knew what a menorah is, but I get the feeling that they have no idea what Hannukah actually is all about. I forgive them for having no clue on Kwanzaa (although I see far more black people than Jews here), but, if this were America, there would be a Jewish History Month out of guilt or something. I swear there's not anti-Semitism (you'd hear about it if there were- I have an unexplainable soft spot for Jews), just a sort of ignorance. Kind of like pre-anime-craze America with regards to Japan. We knew it existed and we had done horrible things to it, and maybe we'd met a Japanese person once, but that was about it. It's sort of sad, because the Jews have an amazing culture and oral tradition, and Yiddish is the sexiest language ever.
History was exciting because I finally knew what we were talking about- the Great Depression! I even got to remind my teacher of the difference between Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt. I think my history teacher tends to kind of forget I'm there, which is strange because the class is small, and everyone knows me because we always have free periods together (LKs tend to be like that), but normally I have nothing to contribute anyway because it is way out of my depth. Not today! Also, another moment of Matthias showing his ability to say really funny things:
Herr: Does anyone know what it's called when the stocks are going up?
M: Rising?
(class laughs)
H: No. . . do the terms bull and bear mean anything to you?
I have a week's worth of school stories because I have been disinclined to blog them before!
Mostly they are from Reli, which went and turned into the coolest class. On Monday, we were talking about theologist/philosopher Frankl (who has some cool ideas), and at some point there was a diagram on the board that Robbie didn't get, and this was Viktor's explanation:
V: You're you.
R: No, I'm-
V: No, listen. I am I, and you are you.
R: Oooooh.
Wednesday was Last Reli Class Before the Ferien, meaning we goofed off and talked about an out-of-class get-together. Surreal moment: Herr Rothmann is suggesting things and says "Well, we could go see a movie and get a beer afterward." Before you worry that I am going drinking with my teachers, we decided to go bowling instead. Then we played Mafia, which is a pretty fun game. Maybe I'll teach it to you one day.
Art on Wednesday included an awesome German pun courtesy Matthias, who is not actually in our class, but in Music. He came in asking for colored paper. Now, in German, the word for color is Farbe, and the word for colorful is farbig. As it happens, the word for paint is also Farbe, because German is cool like that. So Matthias went on to ask if we had paint, and it came out "farbige Farbe," which had us all laughing for reasons that should be obvious. Fortunately, this remains funny in translation as "colorful paint," especially when whoever commented thereafter "no, sorry, we only have black and white- no color!" (A similar occurence, also from Matthias but in history today, doesn't translate as well- he said "ausländische Länder," which sounds so funny in German but just means "foreign countries" in English)
Sozi had me all thoughtful today- we were discussing America of all things, and the whole torture scandal, and how much we should allow people to do in interrogations to get information. The death penalty got pulled in a bit as a similar and equally current theme (Schwarzeneggar's recent act was HUGE news over here), and I daydreamed a bit and remembered my Frankenstein essay from last year in English, in which I wrote about how good cannot eliminate evil (the core of our discussion arising from the idea that, in a pluralist system, every majority must protect the minority it disagrees with, and our effort to define why that is). Quote from my essay (yes, I have it on hand, yes, I am a dork):
Frankenstein is a novel in which opposites find unity. "Almost every critic of Frankenstein has noted that Victor and his monster are doubles," (302) [George] Levine notes, going on to explain that "the civilized man or woman contains within the self a monstrous, destructive, and self-destructive energy." He fails to notice, however, that these two, in addition to being so entwined, are necessary parts of each other, unable to exist seperately. The two must balance each other, lest either become too powerful and destroy the other, only to find that in this destruction, it becomes the evil it sought to eradicate.
I go on to talk about how civilized society is all injust and the barbarian has to come use violence to restore the rightful order, but that doesn't necessarily apply here, where we are discussing terrorists and the American government. Here, it is even harder to decide who is civilized, the world leaders who produce Lynndie England, or the religious zealots who blow up buses full of children. It's harder to know who will restore justice, because neither side seems to have much respect for the other. The important thing is that both sides continue to exist, and all the other sides, because our society is truly pluralistic- nothing is a simply toss of a coin. I was thinking about Narnia, too, specifically the scene where Aslan kills the White Witch. I still hate this scene- yes, the White Witch is evil, but if Aslan is supposed to be the perfect good, how can he eat her face? In the movie, there is this little moment of fear in her eyes just before he tears into her. It ruins Aslan for me. I don't care that he goes back and resurrects every one of her minions, that he forgives them all- he killed her just for opposing him, when you pull all the morals out of it. Morals are relative, you see. They are defined by the ones in power- in the mind of terrorists, blowing up a church filled with innocents is the most moral thing they can do- it is serving this cause, this god they've created- people don't just die for things, not like that. I read a fascinating editorial (was it Richard Cohen? It might have been. . .) stating that all the finger-pointing about the Iraq war, all the stories about oil and power and revenge and whatever don't hit Bush's actual reasoning- in his head, he was getting rid of Saddam, a true Evil. Other causes were secondary- the number one was democracy, no matter the cost. It makes sense to me, looking at the man's actions. I can never agree with it, but I see exactly what he was trying to do- he has made his own morals, and he judges good and evil by his scale. The thing is, it is a Universal Truth that good doesn't destroy. Generally good people and causes destroy, but that is because the good is bound up with the evil. As long as it's still in some sort of balance, as long as both forces are still struggling with each other, we are okay. We fight to keep good over evil, but the moment good becomes so powerful that it can destroy the evil, it becomes evil, through that very act of destruction. It achieves nothing. And should evil become powerful enough to destroy good, it takes over power and sets a new standard of good. It becomes the new moral authority and starts seeking an evil to eradicate. These are the things I've worked out in my brain. I am trying to find out if there is a way to end the struggle, if in accepting the balance, things become easier, but I am still unsure. If you find all of this boring or incredibly silly, let me know, and I'll learn to write on paper again.
I had English today, too, and Herr Kütz reminded me of warm-ups, which don't exist in Germany! It was kind of exciting. I had to explain the Chipmunk Christmas Song, and the class laughed at some point when Herr Kütz read something (from America) that mentioned Hannukah and Kwanzaa, too, and I was confused. Hannukah's not funny, it's just another holiday. I really wanted to explain it to prove my multicultural abilities, but mostly I only got the chance to tell them the Festival of Lights is Hannukah, not a strange name for a Christmas tree. They knew what a menorah is, but I get the feeling that they have no idea what Hannukah actually is all about. I forgive them for having no clue on Kwanzaa (although I see far more black people than Jews here), but, if this were America, there would be a Jewish History Month out of guilt or something. I swear there's not anti-Semitism (you'd hear about it if there were- I have an unexplainable soft spot for Jews), just a sort of ignorance. Kind of like pre-anime-craze America with regards to Japan. We knew it existed and we had done horrible things to it, and maybe we'd met a Japanese person once, but that was about it. It's sort of sad, because the Jews have an amazing culture and oral tradition, and Yiddish is the sexiest language ever.
History was exciting because I finally knew what we were talking about- the Great Depression! I even got to remind my teacher of the difference between Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt. I think my history teacher tends to kind of forget I'm there, which is strange because the class is small, and everyone knows me because we always have free periods together (LKs tend to be like that), but normally I have nothing to contribute anyway because it is way out of my depth. Not today! Also, another moment of Matthias showing his ability to say really funny things:
Herr: Does anyone know what it's called when the stocks are going up?
M: Rising?
(class laughs)
H: No. . . do the terms bull and bear mean anything to you?
Wednesday, December 21, 2005
Happy Birthday Daddy
You should call my Dad and leave a singing birthday message on the machine. If someone picks up the phone, hang up and try again. I promise people don't like answering the phone at that house (I don't know if I can call it my house anymore, because people always answer the phone here, and it is often for me).
I wanted to send you a Christmas present, but it didn't fit nicely in a box. Is it okay if I tell you what it was instead? You can come and pick it up anytime you'd like.
I want to give you a sidewalk covered in freshly fallen snow that crunches when you walk on it. I want you to smell the way a bakery smells in the morning when you walk past its open door. I will buy you a cup of Glühwein to warm you up because it is so cold outside. I am saving a place on the couch for you, where we will watch all the movies that mean Christmas, one after the other. And we will sing along to all the songs we know by heart. When we run out of movies, we can stay up late, talking, and lose track of time, and then the sun will rise and bathe the snow in a soft pink glow and we won't ever go to bed so that Christmas never has to end.
I wanted to send you a Christmas present, but it didn't fit nicely in a box. Is it okay if I tell you what it was instead? You can come and pick it up anytime you'd like.
I want to give you a sidewalk covered in freshly fallen snow that crunches when you walk on it. I want you to smell the way a bakery smells in the morning when you walk past its open door. I will buy you a cup of Glühwein to warm you up because it is so cold outside. I am saving a place on the couch for you, where we will watch all the movies that mean Christmas, one after the other. And we will sing along to all the songs we know by heart. When we run out of movies, we can stay up late, talking, and lose track of time, and then the sun will rise and bathe the snow in a soft pink glow and we won't ever go to bed so that Christmas never has to end.
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
Short, Pointless School Day
I've been home since 11:20, and that only due to wondering if I should stick around or not and the train being inconvenient. . . .
So I've been bad at blogging recently. Let me think. . . I skipped out on the party because I realized that Saturday is Christmas Eve and we weren't done filming and I probably needed to be there because I don't trust Piff to realize there is a car parked in the back of his shot, or a person standing there in modern clothes, or whatever. So we froze to death filming the final, written-on-the-fly-to-explain-why-Mary-disappears-in-half-of-the-movie scene in the snow, a scene meant to be in the same place as the scene we filmed two weeks ago in the rain. We have given up on continuity entirely. Then it was editing fun time. . . we also got a song recorded for the credits. . . edited until about 10:15 or so Sunday night, and Maya is super-slow about rendering all the CGI for the UFOs and getting the CGI and the audio synched up was terrible because of course Anja and Phillip just guessed how long the lines would take to say and pretty much always left waaaay too little space (in perfect irony, the final UFO scene, which Phillip finished and sent today, the space for the lines was waaaay too long. . . we are not pleased). Eventually, we (Anja) figured out to slow the clips down a bit and things work now, but that was pretty annoying for a while. Eventually, we went to bed Sunday, Anja staying here in Phillip's room (Phillip having gone back to Munich, and me being in Anja's room), meaning she spent Monday morning editing, too, while Piff and I were at school. Apparently, in the course of the night, the video decided to shuffle all the scenes because that would be more fun. Anja got it all sorted out and we got things nearly done last night- there's one CGI scene that's still not rendered (well, it might be by now, I haven't checked in), and there are a few typos we caught later that we have to fix, and a couple audio issues (there will always be audio issues). We got it exported to Quicktime and onto Anja's laptop and stole Basti's speakers to drive up to church to see if we could get laptop, beamer (projector), and speakers all hooked up and working, because we know it won't work the first time, and this way we have until Saturday to troubleshoot. Well, the beamer wouldn't pick up the laptop at all and there were phone calls to Phillip and attempted downloads of drivers that were going to take over an hour, and at some point we gave up and unplugged everything and wrapped it all back up and came home, where Casablanca was on to save my evening.
Then today- I didn't want to get out of bed, and it really wasn't worth going to school- I had about 59 free periods and so I came home- got home at 11:20, which is pretty nice (also way before Piff, which is always a triumph), but I also did nothing in school (my only classes being German and math) so I feel that I could have stayed in bed, which is not a nice feeling. I've got music, though, and it makes things better. My iPod has apparently fallen in love with Frontalittle Squad's "Jalopy," as it has played it about 4 times today, but it is the most ultimate nerdcore song ever, so I don't mind. I am starting to play with rating songs and I like that it uses my ratings to pick certain songs more often- I just wish I had a greater scale than 1-5 stars, because I have trouble committing to a 3 or a 4 on certain songs.
I have decided to call my iPod Lexi, unless you have a better idea. It was just terrible that she didn't have a name, and Emily just reminded me of this.
The Google Blog gives me a new reason to love them pretty much every time they update. If I were technologically inclined, I would be looking into a career. As it is, I look to Google as a sort of prophet, ushering in an age of true democracy, in which every voice literally has a chance to fight against all the other voices. You know, the way the internet already works. The Top 10 searches of 2005 should teach me better, but I am still a stark Internet Idealist.
I hate to be turning this into a link list, but I have no homework and gmail has rss feeders now. With my head so wrapped in the Christmas story at the moment, I am fascinated by Time's The Art of Joseph (I can no longer pronounce this like an American-it is Yosef) photo essay. . . considering what a marginal role Joseph plays historically, our film can be considered rather progressive- it is pretty much a Joseph-fest, with Mary getting left outside the city gates while Joseph goes off to find a room, and then Mary showing back up in the stall to hold the baby and smile while Joseph does all the talking. Before you complain that this is totally anti-feminist, keep in mind that our Joseph is a girl with a beard and a wig, and that these decisions came more from our Mary actresses's schedule than anything else. In addition, I consider a nice attempt to be fair after centuries of Joseph being pushed aside to focus on Madonna and child, which is nicely captured in the photo essay. Bibical accuracy, like just about every other accuracy, is somewhat low on our list of concerns.
So I've been bad at blogging recently. Let me think. . . I skipped out on the party because I realized that Saturday is Christmas Eve and we weren't done filming and I probably needed to be there because I don't trust Piff to realize there is a car parked in the back of his shot, or a person standing there in modern clothes, or whatever. So we froze to death filming the final, written-on-the-fly-to-explain-why-Mary-disappears-in-half-of-the-movie scene in the snow, a scene meant to be in the same place as the scene we filmed two weeks ago in the rain. We have given up on continuity entirely. Then it was editing fun time. . . we also got a song recorded for the credits. . . edited until about 10:15 or so Sunday night, and Maya is super-slow about rendering all the CGI for the UFOs and getting the CGI and the audio synched up was terrible because of course Anja and Phillip just guessed how long the lines would take to say and pretty much always left waaaay too little space (in perfect irony, the final UFO scene, which Phillip finished and sent today, the space for the lines was waaaay too long. . . we are not pleased). Eventually, we (Anja) figured out to slow the clips down a bit and things work now, but that was pretty annoying for a while. Eventually, we went to bed Sunday, Anja staying here in Phillip's room (Phillip having gone back to Munich, and me being in Anja's room), meaning she spent Monday morning editing, too, while Piff and I were at school. Apparently, in the course of the night, the video decided to shuffle all the scenes because that would be more fun. Anja got it all sorted out and we got things nearly done last night- there's one CGI scene that's still not rendered (well, it might be by now, I haven't checked in), and there are a few typos we caught later that we have to fix, and a couple audio issues (there will always be audio issues). We got it exported to Quicktime and onto Anja's laptop and stole Basti's speakers to drive up to church to see if we could get laptop, beamer (projector), and speakers all hooked up and working, because we know it won't work the first time, and this way we have until Saturday to troubleshoot. Well, the beamer wouldn't pick up the laptop at all and there were phone calls to Phillip and attempted downloads of drivers that were going to take over an hour, and at some point we gave up and unplugged everything and wrapped it all back up and came home, where Casablanca was on to save my evening.
Then today- I didn't want to get out of bed, and it really wasn't worth going to school- I had about 59 free periods and so I came home- got home at 11:20, which is pretty nice (also way before Piff, which is always a triumph), but I also did nothing in school (my only classes being German and math) so I feel that I could have stayed in bed, which is not a nice feeling. I've got music, though, and it makes things better. My iPod has apparently fallen in love with Frontalittle Squad's "Jalopy," as it has played it about 4 times today, but it is the most ultimate nerdcore song ever, so I don't mind. I am starting to play with rating songs and I like that it uses my ratings to pick certain songs more often- I just wish I had a greater scale than 1-5 stars, because I have trouble committing to a 3 or a 4 on certain songs.
I have decided to call my iPod Lexi, unless you have a better idea. It was just terrible that she didn't have a name, and Emily just reminded me of this.
The Google Blog gives me a new reason to love them pretty much every time they update. If I were technologically inclined, I would be looking into a career. As it is, I look to Google as a sort of prophet, ushering in an age of true democracy, in which every voice literally has a chance to fight against all the other voices. You know, the way the internet already works. The Top 10 searches of 2005 should teach me better, but I am still a stark Internet Idealist.
I hate to be turning this into a link list, but I have no homework and gmail has rss feeders now. With my head so wrapped in the Christmas story at the moment, I am fascinated by Time's The Art of Joseph (I can no longer pronounce this like an American-it is Yosef) photo essay. . . considering what a marginal role Joseph plays historically, our film can be considered rather progressive- it is pretty much a Joseph-fest, with Mary getting left outside the city gates while Joseph goes off to find a room, and then Mary showing back up in the stall to hold the baby and smile while Joseph does all the talking. Before you complain that this is totally anti-feminist, keep in mind that our Joseph is a girl with a beard and a wig, and that these decisions came more from our Mary actresses's schedule than anything else. In addition, I consider a nice attempt to be fair after centuries of Joseph being pushed aside to focus on Madonna and child, which is nicely captured in the photo essay. Bibical accuracy, like just about every other accuracy, is somewhat low on our list of concerns.
Monday, December 19, 2005
This is the Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship
Casablanca seriously loses something in translation, but it is still the best movie ever. The old German couple is so much funnier in a German context, though (they still speak English when they are "practicing" their English- it is so exciting and wonderful!)
The video is trying to eat me. . . one of these days I will fill you in. . . does anyone know how to make the beamer and the laptop be friends?
When am I going to go to bed at a decent hour?
The video is trying to eat me. . . one of these days I will fill you in. . . does anyone know how to make the beamer and the laptop be friends?
When am I going to go to bed at a decent hour?
Sunday, December 18, 2005
I Want To Blog
But I can't because it is late and I have school tomorrow and I really don't want to go. . . .
Mary and I should call each other more often. Mary's phone calls are almost as awesome as hanging out with Mary for real.
(I skipped a party this weekend to go to church on Sunday morning, because I figured sleeping occasionally was good and hangovers and church don't mix. So now I'm not going to tell you about the rest of my weekend because sleeping occasionally is still good.)
Mary and I should call each other more often. Mary's phone calls are almost as awesome as hanging out with Mary for real.
(I skipped a party this weekend to go to church on Sunday morning, because I figured sleeping occasionally was good and hangovers and church don't mix. So now I'm not going to tell you about the rest of my weekend because sleeping occasionally is still good.)
Saturday, December 17, 2005
I Found a Nice Story
via Joey.
http://www.lcrw.net/fictionplus/link-handbag.htm
It is sort of long for a short story on the internet. If you have a half-hour or so, though, you should read it. It is really nice.
I got a phone call and a letter today. I am going to be mysterious about both, but they made me happy and nostalgic and astonished and sad, all at the same time. The letter had a raindrop on it, and a whole big section is blurry, but I can still read it.
It is time for dinner.
http://www.lcrw.net/fictionplus/link-handbag.htm
It is sort of long for a short story on the internet. If you have a half-hour or so, though, you should read it. It is really nice.
I got a phone call and a letter today. I am going to be mysterious about both, but they made me happy and nostalgic and astonished and sad, all at the same time. The letter had a raindrop on it, and a whole big section is blurry, but I can still read it.
It is time for dinner.
Friday, December 16, 2005
Don't Tell The Wind Not to Blow
It won't listen anyway. Guy on the radio says the storm of the century, or at least the year, is upon us. There are crews out covering the crazy winds. Having lived through multiple hurricanes, I don't find it all that exciting. Walking through the wind is really awesome when you are pretending that you are walking in a music video, the way the wind blows your scarf back and makes you feel all artistic. It is raining pretty hard right now. I am glad that I am inside and not outside, in the rain. I hope it lets up before dinner.
Josh Woodward is my new musical hero. He's a dude and he's got a guitar and he sings songs that are available for free on the internet. Beyond that, he has great lyrics like "I painted her from memory with flowers in her hair. I captured every freckle on this bumpy canvas square. But we all know what this picture is worth. But it's a thousand words she never heard 'cause I threw it away. It's a thousand words she never heard." (1000 Words) There's this folksy-bluesy-country vibe that I love and all the mellow but snarky of good indie. If you're equally interested (and you should be if you like things that are good to listen to), check out Josh Woodward's page on Songfight. His website has lots of other songs that I haven't checked out yet, but I am fairly certain they will also be awesome.
I swear I did go to school, too. English class has finally given up on British religion and switched to Religion in America, meaning I get to (if all goes as planned) spend lots of class time Monday trying to explain the complexities of church and church life and seperation church and state and all the other things that affect religion in the US. It should be lots of fun! Chemistry is still extra-extra boring. . . got my Bio Schulaufgabe back! I got a 10, which is a lot like an 89 in America, or what an 89 would be if it were basically impossible to get over a 95. I am super-proud of myself, and my teacher was all impressed. Got the Math Schulaufgabe back, and I actually managed to get 3 of the possible 38 points. This is pretty amazing, considering that I had no idea what I was doing and just sort of wrote some numbers down. The math teacher enjoyed my Nikolaus. We are reading poems now in German. Goethe is a pretty boring poet, and Schiller is, well, Schiller. My Bio teacher was like "you should major in German in college and be a Diplomat or Ambassador to Germany or something!" My exposure to Goethe and Schiller makes me certain that I will never major in German- I cannot possibly make myself read this stuff anymore than I have to. I tried really hard to find entertaining undertones in the poems, and there are none. This is not Shakespeare. This is not Chaucer. This is not even Hardy. It's still better than Fitzgerald, though. My new literary theory is to simply ignore all 18th century fiction in favor of political essays, which nicely gets rid of pretty much all boring literature. (We will of course make a special exception for Jonathan Swift, because he was before his time anyway.) Anyone who wants to argue with me, feel free. You will lose, crushed by the power of Bernard Shaw and the century that was 1850-1949 (here you also reach my conclusion that the centuries should be divided along the middle for better thematic grouping, but that is only vaguely related to complaints about classic literature). The other option is to pretend the Romantic movement never existed, which is also just fine by me (will probably irritate Germans, since it is pretty much their greatest cultural achievement according to people who are not me).
Tonight is Dinner with Phillip and Friends. Tomorrow is K12-K13 Party. Then I will probably miss most of Sunday because of sleeping. Blogs may be erratic (publishing schedule, as the content is always erratic).
Josh Woodward is my new musical hero. He's a dude and he's got a guitar and he sings songs that are available for free on the internet. Beyond that, he has great lyrics like "I painted her from memory with flowers in her hair. I captured every freckle on this bumpy canvas square. But we all know what this picture is worth. But it's a thousand words she never heard 'cause I threw it away. It's a thousand words she never heard." (1000 Words) There's this folksy-bluesy-country vibe that I love and all the mellow but snarky of good indie. If you're equally interested (and you should be if you like things that are good to listen to), check out Josh Woodward's page on Songfight. His website has lots of other songs that I haven't checked out yet, but I am fairly certain they will also be awesome.
I swear I did go to school, too. English class has finally given up on British religion and switched to Religion in America, meaning I get to (if all goes as planned) spend lots of class time Monday trying to explain the complexities of church and church life and seperation church and state and all the other things that affect religion in the US. It should be lots of fun! Chemistry is still extra-extra boring. . . got my Bio Schulaufgabe back! I got a 10, which is a lot like an 89 in America, or what an 89 would be if it were basically impossible to get over a 95. I am super-proud of myself, and my teacher was all impressed. Got the Math Schulaufgabe back, and I actually managed to get 3 of the possible 38 points. This is pretty amazing, considering that I had no idea what I was doing and just sort of wrote some numbers down. The math teacher enjoyed my Nikolaus. We are reading poems now in German. Goethe is a pretty boring poet, and Schiller is, well, Schiller. My Bio teacher was like "you should major in German in college and be a Diplomat or Ambassador to Germany or something!" My exposure to Goethe and Schiller makes me certain that I will never major in German- I cannot possibly make myself read this stuff anymore than I have to. I tried really hard to find entertaining undertones in the poems, and there are none. This is not Shakespeare. This is not Chaucer. This is not even Hardy. It's still better than Fitzgerald, though. My new literary theory is to simply ignore all 18th century fiction in favor of political essays, which nicely gets rid of pretty much all boring literature. (We will of course make a special exception for Jonathan Swift, because he was before his time anyway.) Anyone who wants to argue with me, feel free. You will lose, crushed by the power of Bernard Shaw and the century that was 1850-1949 (here you also reach my conclusion that the centuries should be divided along the middle for better thematic grouping, but that is only vaguely related to complaints about classic literature). The other option is to pretend the Romantic movement never existed, which is also just fine by me (will probably irritate Germans, since it is pretty much their greatest cultural achievement according to people who are not me).
Tonight is Dinner with Phillip and Friends. Tomorrow is K12-K13 Party. Then I will probably miss most of Sunday because of sleeping. Blogs may be erratic (publishing schedule, as the content is always erratic).
Thursday, December 15, 2005
You Don't Deserve a Blog Today
Not at all.
My CD drive doesn't work again. This means that it is now even days that it works and odd days that it does not. Shame, because I have much more free time today than tomorrow. Fortunately, there is enough Garbage on my iPod that I should be able to survive and not give all my money to iTunes. (Did you know that I signed up for US iTunes instead of Germany? This is not just because I have a US credit card, but also because it is cheaper to pay 99 cents American than 99 cents European. See how smart I am?)
All 3 of my classes today took place (fand statt), with Sozi being the only one interesting enough to post about, mainly due to Noiby being totally On today.
Herr Lang: So what's unusual about this page?
Noiby and Zimmy don't miss a beat: It's yellow.
HL: Falsch.
Herr Lang: Michael, he's too far away. You should only be talking to Daniel at the farthest.
This is funny because Noiby (real name Michael, I have now ruined everything by sharing this secret) sits in the very back row. Chubie (real name Daniel, I just mess everything up today) sits in the very front row. He of course turned around immediately to see about having a conversation with Noiby.
HL: No! Not Daniel! I meant Max! (Max sits beside Noiby.)
I am really not in the mood to share funny stories with you. I feel that these two have ruined everything. I wish I could write something poignant and implausible instead.
So far, I have 146 songs in iTunes.
First Song Alpha: 1000 Words (Josh Woodward)
Last Song Alpha: You and Me and the Moon (The Magnetic Fields)
Shortest Song: Hooker Pumps (Donut Disturb)
Longest Song: Other Places I Have Lived (Thanalogue)
First song that comes up on Shuffle: Lushington Hall (Soda Stream)
My CD drive doesn't work again. This means that it is now even days that it works and odd days that it does not. Shame, because I have much more free time today than tomorrow. Fortunately, there is enough Garbage on my iPod that I should be able to survive and not give all my money to iTunes. (Did you know that I signed up for US iTunes instead of Germany? This is not just because I have a US credit card, but also because it is cheaper to pay 99 cents American than 99 cents European. See how smart I am?)
All 3 of my classes today took place (fand statt), with Sozi being the only one interesting enough to post about, mainly due to Noiby being totally On today.
Herr Lang: So what's unusual about this page?
Noiby and Zimmy don't miss a beat: It's yellow.
HL: Falsch.
Herr Lang: Michael, he's too far away. You should only be talking to Daniel at the farthest.
This is funny because Noiby (real name Michael, I have now ruined everything by sharing this secret) sits in the very back row. Chubie (real name Daniel, I just mess everything up today) sits in the very front row. He of course turned around immediately to see about having a conversation with Noiby.
HL: No! Not Daniel! I meant Max! (Max sits beside Noiby.)
I am really not in the mood to share funny stories with you. I feel that these two have ruined everything. I wish I could write something poignant and implausible instead.
So far, I have 146 songs in iTunes.
First Song Alpha: 1000 Words (Josh Woodward)
Last Song Alpha: You and Me and the Moon (The Magnetic Fields)
Shortest Song: Hooker Pumps (Donut Disturb)
Longest Song: Other Places I Have Lived (Thanalogue)
First song that comes up on Shuffle: Lushington Hall (Soda Stream)
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
That's When I Reach For My Revolver
Don't worry, I'm not going violent or anything. Instead, you get a song of the day because I pulled out my cd player (which weighs so much, I have discovered- my shoulders ache so bad) and one of my collections of Indie-Geek music and today you get a song of the day via Moby! (Okay, Moby's not really indie or geek, but this cd also has a song mourning the death of Optimus Prime, so it evens out)
There was a lovely little coat of frost on the sidewalks this morning- fortunately, I have no first period Wednesdays, so I took my time getting to school (I was no later than normal). First, though, I have to tell you about how awesome trains are for people-watching. I've been riding the train long enough to get used to the regulars, and there is this group of teenage boys I have named the Toughs and Rowdies because they dress all Designer Gangsta and say "Alder" (German dude) all the time. Also, they had a pretty rowdy snowball fight once. In any case, there are two apparent leaders of this group, and I have named them Frankie and Johnny because they just look like they should be named Frankie and Johnny. Johnny is the true leader, and he is Brooklyn all by himself. He's all big and vaguely Italian looking and wears a pinstriped Yankees hat every day and is clearly the top of the pecking order. In my head, he is the grandson of a mob boss, preparing his little gang for when the old man dies so he can take over and get in on the real action. Frankie is probably about 15 or 16, and all young-looking in that 15- or 16-year-old boy way. He always wears this muted red and blue jacket with cream accents that probably cost a ton of money and is supposed to look like a retro racing jacket. This makes Frankie one of those guys from 70s movies about the 50s who go racing their cars- he is the guy who always wins, even though he is still too young to drive (my head ignores this detail). Frankie has become a sort of apprentice of Johnny, although he's not quite in on the mob connections, and he is learning to lead his own little group of slightly younger boys. Sometimes I see Frankie and Johnny walking together a bit behind the rest of the group- this is proof that Johnny is giving Frankie advice as leader of a group of young hooligans.
I swear I also went to school today! Religion (the class) still sort of freaks me out- somehow, the Protestant class also includes all the people who are protesting religion in general (but the German word for Protestant is Evangelisch, so this makes less sense), and we end up with someone halfway arguing (not in an angry way or anything, just in an "this makes no sense" way) that one cannot legitimately argue that a human needs God (this point makes a lot more sense in the greater context), and then I'm sitting there with a teacher saying "People do need God. We can say this from the experience that a person adds God to their life, and their life goes better." As much as I agree with this statement, my American brain wants to explode in protest when I hear a teacher say it in the context of school. Other cultures can be so confusing.
Biology brought Herr Wittmeier's witty moment of the day (I in no way intended a pun from his name): "When it's cold out, you have to make sure to drink plenty of gas." "Why?" "So you can heat yourself!"
History was pretty exciting- we are talking about 1920s Germany, which, if you know anything about German history, you will know to be a period that included galloping inflation. To prove this point to us, my teacher brought it old money. We started with nice, normal things- 10 mark bills from 1905, 1911, the occasional 50 from 1915 or so, got up to the 100 mark point, but it was pretty normal. Then he broke out the bills from 1922-1923. First came 1000 mark. Then 100000. Then we were introduced to the million mark bill from June of 1923, at which point it was worth about $3. That sounds like pretty bad inflation, right? It got worse. Next came the 100 million bill, from a time when it was worth about 3 kg of bread. How high did we go? 10 billion marks. When your currency requires that you have 10 billion in a single bill, you are in a pretty bad place. That was crazy. (Here is a good time for a fun language lesson! The German word "billion" is not the same as the English word! Germans count thousand, million, milliarde, billion, billiarde, trillion, etc. Americans go thousand, million, billion, trillion, quadrillion, etc.)
Art was awesome because my art teacher thinks my art is really good- I did a study of a screw today, which was actually fun! It's awesome to grab a random object and make it seem all important by filling a whole big page with its tiny details. I made a 2 cm thick stripe just to show how the light hit the edge of the top of the screw! My art teacher was pretty impressed, too- he was all "How long are you staying here? Are you going to take the Schularbeit? You have to take the Schularbeit! At least the practical part! You are so good!" And I was like *beam!* It was wonderful. Got Döner for lunch (mmmm) and had the fun of watching Zimmy and Chubie try to convince a whole row of people they were working cash register from 10-12 at the K12-K13 party. They were unsuccessful for so long, and then Matthias totally bought it and started getting all upset because he wants to party, not sit at cash register for the busiest two hours. It was quite funny. German. . . oh, German. I've figured out the the LKs are the only classes that are really like American honors classes- GKs are totally Z-level. You'd think this wouldn't bother me, what with the foreign language and all, but I am actually pretty offended when the German teacher assigns two essay questions and requests partial outlines and like 3 paragraphs, and gives the class a whole month to do it, and they all act like it's this huge and difficult thing. I mean, we wrote 5-page essays on a relatively regular basis starting in the tenth grade! And the level of analysis expected from us was much higher than here. . . it's not a whole lot more than plot summary and mentioning of similies and rhyme. Yes, I'm weird for not being happy about getting to slack off here (of course, doing it in German means not slacking). I like writing essays! I want to write an essay! I want to compare Schiller to Shakespeare and Shaw and use fancy turns of phrase and be snobby and intellectual and quote Dadaists and online comics! Of course, I haven't even really read Maria Stuart, so I guess this also saves me that worry. But still.
I'm not sure to give up on being good at math again or not- the people in my class (and I love them dearly) are sometimes so slow on getting things (well, Tassilo tends to get it right away, and David's usually there) but then I still have this big hole in my knowledge that is keeping me from being quite on the right page. Grrr. I don't have a calculator, either.
No Chemistry! For the third time this week, I got to come home an hour early. Granted, that still meant 5:20 today, but an hour is an hour. I am fairly certain that all 3 of my classes will take place tomorrow, but one never knows.
Nadja feels that it is important to explain her reasons for thinking the boys are doof, and I agree because they are entertaining reasons (but maybe only to me): (translated by me) "the boys are doof because they don't talk to me, bully me, and are mean to me!"- Nadja. Poor, poor Nadja. Nobody loves her (except for me!).
A combination of Kacey's good advice and Mary's positive thoughts has got my iPod and my computer being friends! I have music again!
There was a lovely little coat of frost on the sidewalks this morning- fortunately, I have no first period Wednesdays, so I took my time getting to school (I was no later than normal). First, though, I have to tell you about how awesome trains are for people-watching. I've been riding the train long enough to get used to the regulars, and there is this group of teenage boys I have named the Toughs and Rowdies because they dress all Designer Gangsta and say "Alder" (German dude) all the time. Also, they had a pretty rowdy snowball fight once. In any case, there are two apparent leaders of this group, and I have named them Frankie and Johnny because they just look like they should be named Frankie and Johnny. Johnny is the true leader, and he is Brooklyn all by himself. He's all big and vaguely Italian looking and wears a pinstriped Yankees hat every day and is clearly the top of the pecking order. In my head, he is the grandson of a mob boss, preparing his little gang for when the old man dies so he can take over and get in on the real action. Frankie is probably about 15 or 16, and all young-looking in that 15- or 16-year-old boy way. He always wears this muted red and blue jacket with cream accents that probably cost a ton of money and is supposed to look like a retro racing jacket. This makes Frankie one of those guys from 70s movies about the 50s who go racing their cars- he is the guy who always wins, even though he is still too young to drive (my head ignores this detail). Frankie has become a sort of apprentice of Johnny, although he's not quite in on the mob connections, and he is learning to lead his own little group of slightly younger boys. Sometimes I see Frankie and Johnny walking together a bit behind the rest of the group- this is proof that Johnny is giving Frankie advice as leader of a group of young hooligans.
I swear I also went to school today! Religion (the class) still sort of freaks me out- somehow, the Protestant class also includes all the people who are protesting religion in general (but the German word for Protestant is Evangelisch, so this makes less sense), and we end up with someone halfway arguing (not in an angry way or anything, just in an "this makes no sense" way) that one cannot legitimately argue that a human needs God (this point makes a lot more sense in the greater context), and then I'm sitting there with a teacher saying "People do need God. We can say this from the experience that a person adds God to their life, and their life goes better." As much as I agree with this statement, my American brain wants to explode in protest when I hear a teacher say it in the context of school. Other cultures can be so confusing.
Biology brought Herr Wittmeier's witty moment of the day (I in no way intended a pun from his name): "When it's cold out, you have to make sure to drink plenty of gas." "Why?" "So you can heat yourself!"
History was pretty exciting- we are talking about 1920s Germany, which, if you know anything about German history, you will know to be a period that included galloping inflation. To prove this point to us, my teacher brought it old money. We started with nice, normal things- 10 mark bills from 1905, 1911, the occasional 50 from 1915 or so, got up to the 100 mark point, but it was pretty normal. Then he broke out the bills from 1922-1923. First came 1000 mark. Then 100000. Then we were introduced to the million mark bill from June of 1923, at which point it was worth about $3. That sounds like pretty bad inflation, right? It got worse. Next came the 100 million bill, from a time when it was worth about 3 kg of bread. How high did we go? 10 billion marks. When your currency requires that you have 10 billion in a single bill, you are in a pretty bad place. That was crazy. (Here is a good time for a fun language lesson! The German word "billion" is not the same as the English word! Germans count thousand, million, milliarde, billion, billiarde, trillion, etc. Americans go thousand, million, billion, trillion, quadrillion, etc.)
Art was awesome because my art teacher thinks my art is really good- I did a study of a screw today, which was actually fun! It's awesome to grab a random object and make it seem all important by filling a whole big page with its tiny details. I made a 2 cm thick stripe just to show how the light hit the edge of the top of the screw! My art teacher was pretty impressed, too- he was all "How long are you staying here? Are you going to take the Schularbeit? You have to take the Schularbeit! At least the practical part! You are so good!" And I was like *beam!* It was wonderful. Got Döner for lunch (mmmm) and had the fun of watching Zimmy and Chubie try to convince a whole row of people they were working cash register from 10-12 at the K12-K13 party. They were unsuccessful for so long, and then Matthias totally bought it and started getting all upset because he wants to party, not sit at cash register for the busiest two hours. It was quite funny. German. . . oh, German. I've figured out the the LKs are the only classes that are really like American honors classes- GKs are totally Z-level. You'd think this wouldn't bother me, what with the foreign language and all, but I am actually pretty offended when the German teacher assigns two essay questions and requests partial outlines and like 3 paragraphs, and gives the class a whole month to do it, and they all act like it's this huge and difficult thing. I mean, we wrote 5-page essays on a relatively regular basis starting in the tenth grade! And the level of analysis expected from us was much higher than here. . . it's not a whole lot more than plot summary and mentioning of similies and rhyme. Yes, I'm weird for not being happy about getting to slack off here (of course, doing it in German means not slacking). I like writing essays! I want to write an essay! I want to compare Schiller to Shakespeare and Shaw and use fancy turns of phrase and be snobby and intellectual and quote Dadaists and online comics! Of course, I haven't even really read Maria Stuart, so I guess this also saves me that worry. But still.
I'm not sure to give up on being good at math again or not- the people in my class (and I love them dearly) are sometimes so slow on getting things (well, Tassilo tends to get it right away, and David's usually there) but then I still have this big hole in my knowledge that is keeping me from being quite on the right page. Grrr. I don't have a calculator, either.
No Chemistry! For the third time this week, I got to come home an hour early. Granted, that still meant 5:20 today, but an hour is an hour. I am fairly certain that all 3 of my classes will take place tomorrow, but one never knows.
Nadja feels that it is important to explain her reasons for thinking the boys are doof, and I agree because they are entertaining reasons (but maybe only to me): (translated by me) "the boys are doof because they don't talk to me, bully me, and are mean to me!"- Nadja. Poor, poor Nadja. Nobody loves her (except for me!).
A combination of Kacey's good advice and Mary's positive thoughts has got my iPod and my computer being friends! I have music again!
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
I'm Calling the Weather Contest a Draw
No, Richmond, your "winter" is still not in contest. Köln? You might as well be northern Africa for all I care- how is it 5 up there today? Portland has too many weather personalities for me to begin to understand it.
No, in competition for having the most miserable winter ever, it is a tie between Amherst and Augsburg. Amherst, you see, is currently experiencing temperatures of about -14. In Augsburg at the moment, we're looking at -1. Amherst, however, has beautiful, high snow drifts, deep enough that Hampshire got a snow day on Friday (that is pretty deep, I would imagine). Now, I'm sure you're going to tell me that -14 and -1 are in completely different leagues, and, normally you would be right. But you have never tried to walk to school in that -1 in weather that isn't so much rain or snow as the air simply turning into water and condensing and then halfway freezing on any available surface. See, when it's -14, you know what you're dealing with. Moreover, Amherst has sun today. In -1, you don't know if that shiny spot of pavement in front of you is just wet or a frozen death trap. It took me 35 minutes to walk from the train station to school this morning. Cobblestones are particularly nasty in this weather. And you think there's sun today? Nope, just gray. Everything is gray. Sky, houses, grass, trees, snow, whatever. It is all gray. I clearly did not pick a bright enough sweater this morning to cheer myself up.
I did, however, get bright green envelopes in the mail full of pictures! No, you did not send them to me. I sent them to myself, but some of them may have been stolen from e-mails you sent me with pictures, or places where you put pictures on the Internets or other such things!
No Sozi today, so I got home early. Didn't quite succeed in the goal of being home sooner than Piff, but being home at 1:20 is still really nice.
School is actually rather boring when there's no Sozi on a Tuesday. . . no classes full of people like Noiby making silly comments. There were certainly funny Friedl moments, but I don't remember them.
Nadja came over! We spent a very long time talking about TUMC (yes, you are all famous now) for an article for the church newsletter. . . they are going to be so overwhelmed by our crazy long list of activities. . . and there will be pictures! Nadja and I also watched the church video as it stands and Nadja decided "boys are doof" (I find this so funny for reasons I can't begin to explain) and now I'm all giggly in that really annoying girly way, so be glad you don't have to live with me.
No, in competition for having the most miserable winter ever, it is a tie between Amherst and Augsburg. Amherst, you see, is currently experiencing temperatures of about -14. In Augsburg at the moment, we're looking at -1. Amherst, however, has beautiful, high snow drifts, deep enough that Hampshire got a snow day on Friday (that is pretty deep, I would imagine). Now, I'm sure you're going to tell me that -14 and -1 are in completely different leagues, and, normally you would be right. But you have never tried to walk to school in that -1 in weather that isn't so much rain or snow as the air simply turning into water and condensing and then halfway freezing on any available surface. See, when it's -14, you know what you're dealing with. Moreover, Amherst has sun today. In -1, you don't know if that shiny spot of pavement in front of you is just wet or a frozen death trap. It took me 35 minutes to walk from the train station to school this morning. Cobblestones are particularly nasty in this weather. And you think there's sun today? Nope, just gray. Everything is gray. Sky, houses, grass, trees, snow, whatever. It is all gray. I clearly did not pick a bright enough sweater this morning to cheer myself up.
I did, however, get bright green envelopes in the mail full of pictures! No, you did not send them to me. I sent them to myself, but some of them may have been stolen from e-mails you sent me with pictures, or places where you put pictures on the Internets or other such things!
No Sozi today, so I got home early. Didn't quite succeed in the goal of being home sooner than Piff, but being home at 1:20 is still really nice.
School is actually rather boring when there's no Sozi on a Tuesday. . . no classes full of people like Noiby making silly comments. There were certainly funny Friedl moments, but I don't remember them.
Nadja came over! We spent a very long time talking about TUMC (yes, you are all famous now) for an article for the church newsletter. . . they are going to be so overwhelmed by our crazy long list of activities. . . and there will be pictures! Nadja and I also watched the church video as it stands and Nadja decided "boys are doof" (I find this so funny for reasons I can't begin to explain) and now I'm all giggly in that really annoying girly way, so be glad you don't have to live with me.
Monday, December 12, 2005
Shaw!
My beloved Bernard got the quote of the day on my google page, so I am going to share it with you, even though it is not at all cynical.
People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them.
- George Bernard Shaw
I am still trying to figure out how to alter my circumstances so that I can marry this man. (Before you go telling me this is too weird, remember that he is the only person EVER to win a Nobel prize AND an Oscar. That pretty much makes him the smartest and most talented person to ever live. Plus, he had an awesome beard, and there's a whole alphabet named after him.)
And now for the weather:
Augsburg, 13:30: -3, clear (google says "mostly cloudy," my window begs to differ), high 0
Cologne, 13:30: 2, mostly cloudy, high 7
Richmond, 7:30: 2, overcast, high 6
Amherst, 7:30: -3, overcast, high 1
Portland, 4:30: -2, partly cloudy, high 6
So I still win the competition for coldest place ever, although our low for today was only supposed to be -2 (Amherst says -10).
No afternoon school today! Yippee! Otherwise, a pretty boring day. . . we're discussing religion and sort of discussing church-state relations in English. . . I'm getting used to thinking of exciting things and never saying them because my English teacher likes to spend 35 minutes trying to find out if the class has memorized every detail of a half-page reading assignment. He keeps promising to have me talk about Religion in the US, which is a Giant topic, and I'm confused as to if I should discuss the church's role in society or the church-state debate, which are entirely unrelated.
I got home before Piff (by something like 3 minutes, but it is still "before"). This is a new and exciting thing. It might, however, be repeated tomorrow, but I'm not sure if my Sozi teacher is "Ln" or if I read the plan thing wrong. It's a possibility, though!
I heard via The Mom that people were wondering if I'd be "home" for Christmas. . . and now that I've actually thought about it, it would be really strange to leave Germany at this moment. I'm fairly certain I don't want to. I would be so upset, even if it were just like a week or two. No offense, Peoples of America, but this is kinda home now.
I read this thing about scent-memory and Andy Warhol in Emily's LJ recently and I found the idea really cool. I bought hand cream today (because cold is terrible for hands and I have decided that constantly biting at my cuticles is probably bad for me) and it smells like peaches. I am tempted to make this the Scent of Winter 05-06 and leave a little in the bottle when I'm done and put it in some sort of Archive of my Life so I can always smell myself back to this time.
I swear it's not as sentimental as it sounds. Andy Warhol did it!
Yesterday's Choco Cornies are pretty much proof that the "throw whatever random extra ingredients you have into a pot" cooking method means DELICIOUS. I'm sitting here eating one, and it's all "mmm. . . chocolate. . . cornflakes. . . oh my goodness! Is that cinnamon? Wow!" These sort of successful cooking experiments make me want to try fancier things like quiche. (I have made at least three successful quiches in my life, for the record.) Piff reports that the giant Cornie isn't actually better, because you end up with a much too high chocolate to cornflake ratio. That was some terrible English, but you understand.
Remember how my computer is weird? How the cd drive is all spazzy? I had Phillip come look at it yesterday, but of course it performed totally normally (I mean, ignoring the weird noise and the fact that it doesn't come out all the way), so I was like "Thanks Phillip! Your aura apparently fixes things!" So of course today, now that Phillip is back in Munich, the cd drive is dead again. Guess I'll be dealing with the cd player until the weekend, since it worked exactly long enough for iTunes to clear off my iPod shuffle and then died before I could get new music on for reloading purposes.
Today you also get a random old picture from my photobucket account. Enjoy!
People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them.
- George Bernard Shaw
I am still trying to figure out how to alter my circumstances so that I can marry this man. (Before you go telling me this is too weird, remember that he is the only person EVER to win a Nobel prize AND an Oscar. That pretty much makes him the smartest and most talented person to ever live. Plus, he had an awesome beard, and there's a whole alphabet named after him.)
And now for the weather:
Augsburg, 13:30: -3, clear (google says "mostly cloudy," my window begs to differ), high 0
Cologne, 13:30: 2, mostly cloudy, high 7
Richmond, 7:30: 2, overcast, high 6
Amherst, 7:30: -3, overcast, high 1
Portland, 4:30: -2, partly cloudy, high 6
So I still win the competition for coldest place ever, although our low for today was only supposed to be -2 (Amherst says -10).
No afternoon school today! Yippee! Otherwise, a pretty boring day. . . we're discussing religion and sort of discussing church-state relations in English. . . I'm getting used to thinking of exciting things and never saying them because my English teacher likes to spend 35 minutes trying to find out if the class has memorized every detail of a half-page reading assignment. He keeps promising to have me talk about Religion in the US, which is a Giant topic, and I'm confused as to if I should discuss the church's role in society or the church-state debate, which are entirely unrelated.
I got home before Piff (by something like 3 minutes, but it is still "before"). This is a new and exciting thing. It might, however, be repeated tomorrow, but I'm not sure if my Sozi teacher is "Ln" or if I read the plan thing wrong. It's a possibility, though!
I heard via The Mom that people were wondering if I'd be "home" for Christmas. . . and now that I've actually thought about it, it would be really strange to leave Germany at this moment. I'm fairly certain I don't want to. I would be so upset, even if it were just like a week or two. No offense, Peoples of America, but this is kinda home now.
I read this thing about scent-memory and Andy Warhol in Emily's LJ recently and I found the idea really cool. I bought hand cream today (because cold is terrible for hands and I have decided that constantly biting at my cuticles is probably bad for me) and it smells like peaches. I am tempted to make this the Scent of Winter 05-06 and leave a little in the bottle when I'm done and put it in some sort of Archive of my Life so I can always smell myself back to this time.
I swear it's not as sentimental as it sounds. Andy Warhol did it!
Yesterday's Choco Cornies are pretty much proof that the "throw whatever random extra ingredients you have into a pot" cooking method means DELICIOUS. I'm sitting here eating one, and it's all "mmm. . . chocolate. . . cornflakes. . . oh my goodness! Is that cinnamon? Wow!" These sort of successful cooking experiments make me want to try fancier things like quiche. (I have made at least three successful quiches in my life, for the record.) Piff reports that the giant Cornie isn't actually better, because you end up with a much too high chocolate to cornflake ratio. That was some terrible English, but you understand.
Remember how my computer is weird? How the cd drive is all spazzy? I had Phillip come look at it yesterday, but of course it performed totally normally (I mean, ignoring the weird noise and the fact that it doesn't come out all the way), so I was like "Thanks Phillip! Your aura apparently fixes things!" So of course today, now that Phillip is back in Munich, the cd drive is dead again. Guess I'll be dealing with the cd player until the weekend, since it worked exactly long enough for iTunes to clear off my iPod shuffle and then died before I could get new music on for reloading purposes.
Today you also get a random old picture from my photobucket account. Enjoy!
Sunday, December 11, 2005
A Little Weather Comparison
Augsburg, 12:30: -2 degrees, clear skies
21:00: -3 degrees, clear
Richmond, 6:30: 0 degrees, clear skies
15:00: 10 degrees, mostly cloudy
Portland, 3:30: 1 degree, clear skies
12:00: 3 degrees, partly cloudy
Cologne, 12:30: 1 degree, clear skies
21:00: 1 degree, mostly cloudy
Amherst, 15:00: 2 degrees, partly cloudy
Today's high here? -2.
High in Richmond? 9. High in Portland? 7. High in Cologne? 7. High in Amherst? 2.
So we've found the cities that are weather twins, and I am still living in the coldest place in Germany. It is not cool to find out that it is 3 (Celsius) degrees warmer in the middle of the night in Portland than here in the middle of the day. This is going on my list of "reasons Kacey made smarter choices than me." (Also: "reasons to run away and live in Mary's basement.")
I've added Amherst (home of Hampshire, ye uninformed) to my big, constant weather comparison. It hit the same low as Augsburg today (-7) and should be getting snow tomorrow, when it is supposed to get all the way up to 1 here.
I bet people in Richmond aren't certain if their winter coats still fit.
A quiet day- went over to Anja's this afternoon/evening to hang out with her and Nadja and we made pralines (think Ferrero, except ours had more "character." It was messy and so much fun- when was the last time you had chocolate ALL OVER your hands? You were probably at your very first birthday party, having trouble with the concept of cake.) We of course had piles of chocolate left over, so we made Chocolate Cornies (again) and that was also rather adventurous- every leftover praline ingredient ended up in these things, so there are apparently crushed-up, sort-of-melted nuts and powdered sugar and who knows what else clinging to the outside of our cornflakes. Transport of the things to the balcony to get hard (remember today's temps? It is much more efficient than the fridge.) included half a sheet getting all crammed together into one giant Cornie, which I brought to Piff because he kept trying to make them that huge anyway. After our baking adventures, we had some Cathedral fun (Cathedral is an awesome German board game that is impossible to explain) and then spent forever trying to come up with music ideas for the video, and failed miserably.
I don't wanna get up all early for school tomorrow. Can you make it go away?
So it turns out that iTunes and my computer aren't exactly super-good friends. This is really sad. What will I do for music on the train?
21:00: -3 degrees, clear
Richmond, 6:30: 0 degrees, clear skies
15:00: 10 degrees, mostly cloudy
Portland, 3:30: 1 degree, clear skies
12:00: 3 degrees, partly cloudy
Cologne, 12:30: 1 degree, clear skies
21:00: 1 degree, mostly cloudy
Amherst, 15:00: 2 degrees, partly cloudy
Today's high here? -2.
High in Richmond? 9. High in Portland? 7. High in Cologne? 7. High in Amherst? 2.
So we've found the cities that are weather twins, and I am still living in the coldest place in Germany. It is not cool to find out that it is 3 (Celsius) degrees warmer in the middle of the night in Portland than here in the middle of the day. This is going on my list of "reasons Kacey made smarter choices than me." (Also: "reasons to run away and live in Mary's basement.")
I've added Amherst (home of Hampshire, ye uninformed) to my big, constant weather comparison. It hit the same low as Augsburg today (-7) and should be getting snow tomorrow, when it is supposed to get all the way up to 1 here.
I bet people in Richmond aren't certain if their winter coats still fit.
A quiet day- went over to Anja's this afternoon/evening to hang out with her and Nadja and we made pralines (think Ferrero, except ours had more "character." It was messy and so much fun- when was the last time you had chocolate ALL OVER your hands? You were probably at your very first birthday party, having trouble with the concept of cake.) We of course had piles of chocolate left over, so we made Chocolate Cornies (again) and that was also rather adventurous- every leftover praline ingredient ended up in these things, so there are apparently crushed-up, sort-of-melted nuts and powdered sugar and who knows what else clinging to the outside of our cornflakes. Transport of the things to the balcony to get hard (remember today's temps? It is much more efficient than the fridge.) included half a sheet getting all crammed together into one giant Cornie, which I brought to Piff because he kept trying to make them that huge anyway. After our baking adventures, we had some Cathedral fun (Cathedral is an awesome German board game that is impossible to explain) and then spent forever trying to come up with music ideas for the video, and failed miserably.
I don't wanna get up all early for school tomorrow. Can you make it go away?
So it turns out that iTunes and my computer aren't exactly super-good friends. This is really sad. What will I do for music on the train?
Saturday, December 10, 2005
Not Down with the Google Empire?
Well, that's a shame, because I personally love Google and all of its colonies.
But I have good friends who are Xanga fans, others who prefer LiveJournal, and I understand. Different people, different tastes.
Maybe you're a Yahoo fan. Maybe you like to make lists of your friends on the internet for other people to see. If both of these apply to you (they apply to my buddy James), you can now add me to your list of electronic friends. You can find the page at http://360.yahoo.com/augsburg_utahraptor - it is pretty blank because this is my blog, but it works if you are into that sort of thing!
Me yesterday: Hey! I can send these gmail invites to just about everyone, and then I will feel like a better person because I only have 57 instead of 100!
Me today: I have 102 gmail invites. I guess that idea of your love getting bigger the more you give it away is true, except it's about gmail invites.
Moral of the story: anyone want gmail?
(The remainder of this post is the modular, disconnected collection of my thoughts at various times throughout the day. In a better organized world, each would be its own post. I don't like posting more than once a day, though.)
Scary, I-am-turning-into-a-German moment of the day:
I walked into my room and thought "I could use some fresh air in here." Now, I have never had such a thought before in my life, but there it was. And you know what I did? I opened a window. It is about 1 degree outside, and my room's the coldest in the house, but I am letting all my carefully stored-up heat fly right out the window, all for "fresh air."
I am wearing two pairs of socks and wish I had some gloves. I am tempted to put another sweater on. The air is super-fresh.
In other news, my cd drive is randomly dead and Phillip is out buying Christmas presents with Anja (which I also need to do but am not) and Travis is probably not awake yet, or awake and busy playing Civ4 or who knows what. I clearly need more trouble-shooting-enabled people. (Basti and Piff not being much use, either, as they will more than likely go through the steps I've already gone through and then declare it "dead.")
And then, just to prove that Google is probably the best ever, they launch Google Transit. A whole fancy website just for helping people plan their public transportation routes, which is about the most useful thing ever! I got really excited until I saw that it only applies to Portland, Oregon at the moment. So Kacey Deane gets all the fun technology for the transport she never uses, and I still have to go to great efforts to try to get train and streetcar and bus and whatever schedules so I can get places. Life is very unfair sometimes.
But I have good friends who are Xanga fans, others who prefer LiveJournal, and I understand. Different people, different tastes.
Maybe you're a Yahoo fan. Maybe you like to make lists of your friends on the internet for other people to see. If both of these apply to you (they apply to my buddy James), you can now add me to your list of electronic friends. You can find the page at http://360.yahoo.com/augsburg_utahraptor - it is pretty blank because this is my blog, but it works if you are into that sort of thing!
Me yesterday: Hey! I can send these gmail invites to just about everyone, and then I will feel like a better person because I only have 57 instead of 100!
Me today: I have 102 gmail invites. I guess that idea of your love getting bigger the more you give it away is true, except it's about gmail invites.
Moral of the story: anyone want gmail?
(The remainder of this post is the modular, disconnected collection of my thoughts at various times throughout the day. In a better organized world, each would be its own post. I don't like posting more than once a day, though.)
Scary, I-am-turning-into-a-German moment of the day:
I walked into my room and thought "I could use some fresh air in here." Now, I have never had such a thought before in my life, but there it was. And you know what I did? I opened a window. It is about 1 degree outside, and my room's the coldest in the house, but I am letting all my carefully stored-up heat fly right out the window, all for "fresh air."
I am wearing two pairs of socks and wish I had some gloves. I am tempted to put another sweater on. The air is super-fresh.
In other news, my cd drive is randomly dead and Phillip is out buying Christmas presents with Anja (which I also need to do but am not) and Travis is probably not awake yet, or awake and busy playing Civ4 or who knows what. I clearly need more trouble-shooting-enabled people. (Basti and Piff not being much use, either, as they will more than likely go through the steps I've already gone through and then declare it "dead.")
And then, just to prove that Google is probably the best ever, they launch Google Transit. A whole fancy website just for helping people plan their public transportation routes, which is about the most useful thing ever! I got really excited until I saw that it only applies to Portland, Oregon at the moment. So Kacey Deane gets all the fun technology for the transport she never uses, and I still have to go to great efforts to try to get train and streetcar and bus and whatever schedules so I can get places. Life is very unfair sometimes.
Friday, December 09, 2005
Sparkly
There's this point where moisture, pavement, dark, and light all combine to make walking down the street some sort of magical trip through a land of glitter. Maybe you have to be kind of tired from Audrey-Hepburn-related-staying-up-to-late-ness, but in any case it was really pretty this morning. Also, the word sparkly is so nice to look at. SPARKLY.
Yesterday, I discovered a new and fascinating sport: the Cross-Country Skiing/Shooting Biathalon. Sort of a random combination, I know, but apparently a big deal in Europe, and I was so upset that some terrible Frenchman defeated our German king. There was an American in like 12th place, too, which is pretty amazing! Today was the women's sprint version of the same thing, and the German women dominated in their beastly way, taking places 1, 3, 4, and 8 (some Slovak got 2nd) because they are awesome. It was very exciting. We tried to determine if there were Americans involved, and did briefly spot one or two around place 80, but mostly this is clearly not our/their sport. Also, the host parents and Anja and I went to the Uni last evening to check out a super-old Spanish illuminated Bible that was pretty cool to see, and also incredibly graphic in its Middle Ages-style. And then there was an awesome Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn movie on last night- Charade or something like that, and it made me all happy.
So I'm sort of upset that I didn't read the Vertretungsplan closer yesterday, because I got to school knowing history (first period) wasn't happening, only to discover that English (second period) also "fell out." Now, when it's just first, I have to go to school at normal time because the train is infrequent. But when it's first AND second, I get to take the train that comes an hour later, and thus sleep in an hour later. My only comfort is that I got to see the sparkly sidewalk. This is very slight.
First Pause brought Christmas Punch, though, because Fridays in December are Christmas Punch days! Yay!
Chemistry is awesome because we never take notes anymore, just get 5 handouts a class. This means that class is super-super-long, though, because I have nothing to occupy myself (like writing things down) and get very bored. I miss Hoof writing me passes to skip half of Chemistry. There aren't even passes in this country.
Bio seriously went five times faster than Chemie, which is sad because Bio is actually interesting. Yes, I understand relativity. No, I don't want to accept it.
Second Pause was hilarious because Konnie spilled water all over Maria's lap and of course Maria had quite a large and embarassing wet spot and we spent the remainder of the Pause making fun of her and making sure to point it out to everyone who came in. Max took at least one picture, because Max takes pictures of everything.
Math was sort of exciting because I understand it totally, but it is SO boring.
German was also boring, but fun moment of the day:
Herr Friedl: Were you there Wednesday, David?
David: Yes.
HF: What a shame.
(Explanation: lots of people disappeared on Wednesday because of Thursday's big test. Friedl went through the roll to figure out who was and wasn't there, and was upset when people were there for whatever reason.)
Tonight is Youth Group Cookie Baking Night! We are forcing the boys to come along, and they aren't exactly excited. Obviously they have forgotten or are not aware that one gets to eat cookie dough when one bakes cookies.
In Other Exciting News, Phillip is Awesome and has made my computer work (Christoph is totally jealous that I have a computer and he doesn't, but I am still older than him- we worked it out to be something like 10 hours, which is enough). This means that I have gotten myself Google Talk equipped, and you should, too, if you want to have Fun with Time Zones and try to talk to me- there are multiple invitations winging their way toward you, and if you don't get one, then I have somehow misplaced your e-mail address- drop me a line (oneseventy@gmail.com, as always) because I have at least 57 more invites to send to whomever I please.
Post-Cookie-Baking-Night Report (22:03 pm): of course we also dealt with the video (tonight was laying voice tracks for the UFOs and narrator and whatnot) and baked. Piff, Anja, and I chose the easiest recipe with the most opportunity for snacking along the way: chocolate-covered cornflakes (yea, not exactly cookies. get over it.) And of course they were awesome, because I am awesome, and had to expend all sorts of energy protecting my pot of chocolate from testing fingers because Nadja is a very, very bad example. We had extra chocolate and corn flakes, but in totally wrong proportions to be useful to us, so I made a batch of barely-coated flakes for our snacking purposes (the others being for selling at church) and Christoph made a mess, of course.
Yes, I am updating more frequently now that I have my own computer. Enjoy the luxury.
Yesterday, I discovered a new and fascinating sport: the Cross-Country Skiing/Shooting Biathalon. Sort of a random combination, I know, but apparently a big deal in Europe, and I was so upset that some terrible Frenchman defeated our German king. There was an American in like 12th place, too, which is pretty amazing! Today was the women's sprint version of the same thing, and the German women dominated in their beastly way, taking places 1, 3, 4, and 8 (some Slovak got 2nd) because they are awesome. It was very exciting. We tried to determine if there were Americans involved, and did briefly spot one or two around place 80, but mostly this is clearly not our/their sport. Also, the host parents and Anja and I went to the Uni last evening to check out a super-old Spanish illuminated Bible that was pretty cool to see, and also incredibly graphic in its Middle Ages-style. And then there was an awesome Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn movie on last night- Charade or something like that, and it made me all happy.
So I'm sort of upset that I didn't read the Vertretungsplan closer yesterday, because I got to school knowing history (first period) wasn't happening, only to discover that English (second period) also "fell out." Now, when it's just first, I have to go to school at normal time because the train is infrequent. But when it's first AND second, I get to take the train that comes an hour later, and thus sleep in an hour later. My only comfort is that I got to see the sparkly sidewalk. This is very slight.
First Pause brought Christmas Punch, though, because Fridays in December are Christmas Punch days! Yay!
Chemistry is awesome because we never take notes anymore, just get 5 handouts a class. This means that class is super-super-long, though, because I have nothing to occupy myself (like writing things down) and get very bored. I miss Hoof writing me passes to skip half of Chemistry. There aren't even passes in this country.
Bio seriously went five times faster than Chemie, which is sad because Bio is actually interesting. Yes, I understand relativity. No, I don't want to accept it.
Second Pause was hilarious because Konnie spilled water all over Maria's lap and of course Maria had quite a large and embarassing wet spot and we spent the remainder of the Pause making fun of her and making sure to point it out to everyone who came in. Max took at least one picture, because Max takes pictures of everything.
Math was sort of exciting because I understand it totally, but it is SO boring.
German was also boring, but fun moment of the day:
Herr Friedl: Were you there Wednesday, David?
David: Yes.
HF: What a shame.
(Explanation: lots of people disappeared on Wednesday because of Thursday's big test. Friedl went through the roll to figure out who was and wasn't there, and was upset when people were there for whatever reason.)
Tonight is Youth Group Cookie Baking Night! We are forcing the boys to come along, and they aren't exactly excited. Obviously they have forgotten or are not aware that one gets to eat cookie dough when one bakes cookies.
In Other Exciting News, Phillip is Awesome and has made my computer work (Christoph is totally jealous that I have a computer and he doesn't, but I am still older than him- we worked it out to be something like 10 hours, which is enough). This means that I have gotten myself Google Talk equipped, and you should, too, if you want to have Fun with Time Zones and try to talk to me- there are multiple invitations winging their way toward you, and if you don't get one, then I have somehow misplaced your e-mail address- drop me a line (oneseventy@gmail.com, as always) because I have at least 57 more invites to send to whomever I please.
Post-Cookie-Baking-Night Report (22:03 pm): of course we also dealt with the video (tonight was laying voice tracks for the UFOs and narrator and whatnot) and baked. Piff, Anja, and I chose the easiest recipe with the most opportunity for snacking along the way: chocolate-covered cornflakes (yea, not exactly cookies. get over it.) And of course they were awesome, because I am awesome, and had to expend all sorts of energy protecting my pot of chocolate from testing fingers because Nadja is a very, very bad example. We had extra chocolate and corn flakes, but in totally wrong proportions to be useful to us, so I made a batch of barely-coated flakes for our snacking purposes (the others being for selling at church) and Christoph made a mess, of course.
Yes, I am updating more frequently now that I have my own computer. Enjoy the luxury.
Thursday, December 08, 2005
Thank You, Mr. Cox
For making your government class so hard, because it made today's Sozi test seem so easy. 4 essay questions (and that's quite a bit in 45 minutes), and I was able to do 3 (having been on the other side of the country when they learned about the first one, and it having no American equivalent to let me guess things) and it took me the whole time, but I think I did well. A little run-down: first came (that's question 2) "What is the purpose of the Bundestag bzw. Representatives?" Totally easy, one of those things you just memorize and write down. Germans like these sorts of questions. Then came a text and "Summarize the text's position on the "Oxen Tour" and its causes and effects IN YOUR OWN WORDS." I haven't had a question like that since about 6th grade, but it was nice because my German skills are probably on the sixth grade level, so summarizing is something I can do. Plus, it let me gather my thoughts in writing. I feel like I wrote way too little, though, because time was getting tight and I needed to get to question 4. (For the curious, the Oxen Tour is the process whereby German politicians must work their way up party ranks before they have a hope of getting elected- there's a similar process in America, but it's not as necessary or official.) Question 4 was the only one vaguely resembling an actual American Essay Question, and it was "Define different possibilities for recruiting candidates without using the Oxen Tour, and evaluate each possibility." I was running short on time, but I wrote a really pretty evaluation of primaries (they don't exist in Germany!) and then used my final five minutes to throw down some vague, terrible ideas because I had no idea what other real options I could offer. In discussing the test with my classmates, almost none of them came up with primaries for question 4, which made them declare me some sort of genius, because it was apparently the best option. I had been praying for a Primary Essay, because as an American I can totally discuss the concept in ways Germans never will be able to. Still, we would have celebrated such a test from Cox last year. If I'd known anything about the first question (there were even graphs to go with it, but they looked like some sort of Fuzzy Math and I still don't know what they were about), I'd say that I did well. I am still pretty proud of my efforts, but glad that it's done.
The test ran over and we dawdled on the way to English because we are slackers, so we only had about 15 minutes of listening to some radio program about a Muslim Girl's School. In a fun relation to this quote via Kacey, I have an article from English class about the Anti-Christmas Gift Shop. Now, I'm a Christian, but I find this pretty funny and my atheist readers may consider this a token of Winterval-Solstice-Holiday Season Goodwill (which I promise is not limited to Yuletide). They even have religion-free Holiday Cards from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Unfortunately, the website says "Our products are for sale to residents of the UK, Channel Islands and Isle of Man only," so I guess I won't be getting any Festivus presents from them, unless I have particularly generous British readers. (any takers?)
The test ran over and we dawdled on the way to English because we are slackers, so we only had about 15 minutes of listening to some radio program about a Muslim Girl's School. In a fun relation to this quote via Kacey, I have an article from English class about the Anti-Christmas Gift Shop. Now, I'm a Christian, but I find this pretty funny and my atheist readers may consider this a token of Winterval-Solstice-Holiday Season Goodwill (which I promise is not limited to Yuletide). They even have religion-free Holiday Cards from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Unfortunately, the website says "Our products are for sale to residents of the UK, Channel Islands and Isle of Man only," so I guess I won't be getting any Festivus presents from them, unless I have particularly generous British readers. (any takers?)
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
So Apparently We're on the Rain Side of the Line
At least it held off until I got home from school, so that only the bottom 10 cm or so of my pants are soaked (from puddles), not all of me.
Eva and I went out to the Ausländeramt nice and early this morning because I had a 7 am appointment to get myself regsitered with the city of Augsburg- it took like 10 minutes, but apparently requires an appointment, and meant I wasn't quite so early to school (no first period on Wednesdays anyway).
Today was the day of teachers being late to class, starting with my Reli teacher. Reli is still really good at being vaguely interesting but still putting my to sleep. I got asked about last class's lesson in Bio (this is a major part of German grades) and I did relatively well, so I am all proud of myself. I like that Bio is easy!
Fourth period free because there was no history today. . . some other history class was free, too, so there were tons of people and I spent most of the time watching Chubie, Noiby, and Zimmy fight over one chair to put their feet on because they were all too lazy to go get another. Chubie ended up kicking the chair across the room, so Zimmy got another and tried to keep it to himself (the original chair having been Noiby and Chubie's anyway), but of course this did not work. It was one of those physical comedy things where you had to see it to find it funny.
Fifth and sixth period art, and the teacher continues to compliment my work and I continue to find it mediocre. We are finally done drawing folds in cloth with chalk, though, which is good, because I was reaching my limit.
Lunch: went to the little cafe-convenience store place with Gellie and Noiby and got some chicken legs. I'm not a chicken skin fan, but Noiby is, so he ate my skin, and then I gave him the second piece, which he decided to share with Jakob, but Jakob didn't want to share and simply ate the whole thing. I did a really bad job relating that story. It was funnier in person, with actual chicken skin.
Noiby was also reading (in between stealing Gellie's geography book and being fascinated by it even though she needed it to study for geography) some article about the people making tape out of the stuff on Gecko feet, which I've known about forever, and I amazed everyone with my knowledge of the process. I then went on to try to explain the concept of National Geographic to Noiby, who thought it was some sort of class at school.
Gellie lost her pencil case about a week ago and is still looking desperately for it. This is pretty funny because it is apparently decorated with a picture of Tupac and she has to tell everyone this when she asks them if they've seen her pencil case.
So the excitement of lunch got me all awake, and German put me promptly back to sleep. Sorry, Friedl, but you were boring today.
Guess what we did in math! A WORD PROBLEM! I was so excited that I worked ahead of the class, because I also knew what we were supposed to be doing. It was totally easy math, too, so I felt all smart!
English consisted of the start of a class effort to translate some article about the Church's decline in Europe or something. You know how awesome I am at translations (that would be very, very bad), but at least I got to read the whole thing in my CNN voice.
8 people were missing from Chemie, but we couldn't convince Frau Collin to let us go home early to study for tomorrow's Sozi test. Even Chubie wasn't saying entertaining things (granted, Petzi, Pocher, and Viktor were all Elsewhere, meaning he had no one to bounce his entertaining things off of), such was our wish to finish and go home. Frau Collin did manage to let us out something like 7 minutes early, and I got to the train station in record time, only to have to wait 20 minutes for the train anyway.
Wednesday's schedule is the worst ever.
Eva and I went out to the Ausländeramt nice and early this morning because I had a 7 am appointment to get myself regsitered with the city of Augsburg- it took like 10 minutes, but apparently requires an appointment, and meant I wasn't quite so early to school (no first period on Wednesdays anyway).
Today was the day of teachers being late to class, starting with my Reli teacher. Reli is still really good at being vaguely interesting but still putting my to sleep. I got asked about last class's lesson in Bio (this is a major part of German grades) and I did relatively well, so I am all proud of myself. I like that Bio is easy!
Fourth period free because there was no history today. . . some other history class was free, too, so there were tons of people and I spent most of the time watching Chubie, Noiby, and Zimmy fight over one chair to put their feet on because they were all too lazy to go get another. Chubie ended up kicking the chair across the room, so Zimmy got another and tried to keep it to himself (the original chair having been Noiby and Chubie's anyway), but of course this did not work. It was one of those physical comedy things where you had to see it to find it funny.
Fifth and sixth period art, and the teacher continues to compliment my work and I continue to find it mediocre. We are finally done drawing folds in cloth with chalk, though, which is good, because I was reaching my limit.
Lunch: went to the little cafe-convenience store place with Gellie and Noiby and got some chicken legs. I'm not a chicken skin fan, but Noiby is, so he ate my skin, and then I gave him the second piece, which he decided to share with Jakob, but Jakob didn't want to share and simply ate the whole thing. I did a really bad job relating that story. It was funnier in person, with actual chicken skin.
Noiby was also reading (in between stealing Gellie's geography book and being fascinated by it even though she needed it to study for geography) some article about the people making tape out of the stuff on Gecko feet, which I've known about forever, and I amazed everyone with my knowledge of the process. I then went on to try to explain the concept of National Geographic to Noiby, who thought it was some sort of class at school.
Gellie lost her pencil case about a week ago and is still looking desperately for it. This is pretty funny because it is apparently decorated with a picture of Tupac and she has to tell everyone this when she asks them if they've seen her pencil case.
So the excitement of lunch got me all awake, and German put me promptly back to sleep. Sorry, Friedl, but you were boring today.
Guess what we did in math! A WORD PROBLEM! I was so excited that I worked ahead of the class, because I also knew what we were supposed to be doing. It was totally easy math, too, so I felt all smart!
English consisted of the start of a class effort to translate some article about the Church's decline in Europe or something. You know how awesome I am at translations (that would be very, very bad), but at least I got to read the whole thing in my CNN voice.
8 people were missing from Chemie, but we couldn't convince Frau Collin to let us go home early to study for tomorrow's Sozi test. Even Chubie wasn't saying entertaining things (granted, Petzi, Pocher, and Viktor were all Elsewhere, meaning he had no one to bounce his entertaining things off of), such was our wish to finish and go home. Frau Collin did manage to let us out something like 7 minutes early, and I got to the train station in record time, only to have to wait 20 minutes for the train anyway.
Wednesday's schedule is the worst ever.
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
Numb3rs is Not a Legitimate Way to Study for a Math Test
Lesson of the day.
Good thing my grades don't count, because at least two of my answers (on a test that had all of 9 questions) were "I have no clue what you are asking. I am going to write some numbers down so that you can see that I have basic math skills, but I am fairly certain they have nothing to do with the assigned problem (auf Deutsch)." And then I drew a cheerful Santa at the bottom of the page.
At least the math test had free chocolate.
I kept a diary during the final twenty minutes of the math test so you could see my thought process as I struggled through having no clue what to do, and also so it would look like I was working, since I was in the front row.
10 am
I have sort of tried to do 2 and a half problems and I am so ready to stop and draw pictures of bunnies. I have a terrible headache and my throat is kind of sore- I feel like I'm getting sick, which doesn't help.
10:03 am
You know what was awesome? Word problems. Man, I miss those. The complicated ones where you had to draw a picture of a guy flying a kite between a tower and a tree and figure out all the angles or whatever. . . those always made me feel like math had a purpose.
10:07 am
It's not cool to be the only person in the room not trying to do math. . . but I seriously don't know how to start, and I wrote that down. May I have a cup of tea now?
10:15 am
With 5 minutes to go, I have written "something" for every question, even if it is just "I have no clue what I am doing." I have tried very hard to do something with numbers as well. Now I will draw a picture to make it seem better!
So I was always planning on publishing this diary, and it was supposed to get really desperate and crazy at the end, but it turns out that I'm better at starting out desperate and then learning to deal with the situation and do something productive. That's probably a nice moral, but it's terrible literature. I apologize. (Speaking of diaries where people slowly go crazy, "Edith's Diary" is actually a really boring book, which disappoints me because Patricia Highsmith is otherwise about as awesome as it gets. I don't know if I should read the final 100 pages or not. Anyone know better than me?) (Oh, in case you're worried, my headache went away.)
It is St Nikolaus Day, in case you were unaware (how could you be? I mean, if you're Jewish or something, I guess you could be unaware.) and that means the Noiby and Co (Maria, Berni, Max, etc) dress up like important Christmas characters and wander through the school during first period, giving chocolate to everyone. It is a very good tradition, especially because even cheap mass-produced German chocolate is amazing and delicious. It also means that Max and Gellie wore Santa hats the rest of the day, and that our math teacher gave us chocolate Santas to make us feel better about taking a math test.
Otherwise, a pretty normal school day and it is vaguely sunny out one window at the moment, and gray and menacing out another. The weather was vague- we are somewhere between the 0 and 4 degree section of Germany for tomorrow, and may or may not get something resembling either snow or rain. It's hard to tell with these crazy maps.
Fun trivia of the day: Bernard, Head Elf in the Santa Clause (which was today's lunchtime viewing for festive reasons), is played by the same actor who plays Charlie in Numb3rs! That was a pretty exciting find, although Christoph didn't want to believe us because "the guy from Numb3rs is too old- he's gotta be like 35 at least." Well, just because I want to gloat in being right publicly, imdb assures me that David Krumholtz (that is his name, people who live under a rock and never watch Numb3rs, which is multiple kinds of sacrilege) is 27, meaning he was 16 in 1994 when the Santa Clause came out, which is, in fact, exactly the age I guessed for him. I am always right.
More fun trivia: I have a copy of the German Constitution (hereforth referred to as "Grundgesetz") in English. It is 90 pages long, consists of 146 articles (and a 5-article appendix), and, as of 2000, has been ammended 49 times (at which point it was all of 51 years old). I found a copy of the American Constitution on the internet. The printer-friendly version (without ammendments, the text of which is also not exactly included in my Grundgesetz) is 9 pages long and the document has 7 articles. It has been ammended 27 times in 218 years. I don't know what this says about our comparative countries, but learning about the American Constitution is a whole lot easier.
Good thing my grades don't count, because at least two of my answers (on a test that had all of 9 questions) were "I have no clue what you are asking. I am going to write some numbers down so that you can see that I have basic math skills, but I am fairly certain they have nothing to do with the assigned problem (auf Deutsch)." And then I drew a cheerful Santa at the bottom of the page.
At least the math test had free chocolate.
I kept a diary during the final twenty minutes of the math test so you could see my thought process as I struggled through having no clue what to do, and also so it would look like I was working, since I was in the front row.
10 am
I have sort of tried to do 2 and a half problems and I am so ready to stop and draw pictures of bunnies. I have a terrible headache and my throat is kind of sore- I feel like I'm getting sick, which doesn't help.
10:03 am
You know what was awesome? Word problems. Man, I miss those. The complicated ones where you had to draw a picture of a guy flying a kite between a tower and a tree and figure out all the angles or whatever. . . those always made me feel like math had a purpose.
10:07 am
It's not cool to be the only person in the room not trying to do math. . . but I seriously don't know how to start, and I wrote that down. May I have a cup of tea now?
10:15 am
With 5 minutes to go, I have written "something" for every question, even if it is just "I have no clue what I am doing." I have tried very hard to do something with numbers as well. Now I will draw a picture to make it seem better!
So I was always planning on publishing this diary, and it was supposed to get really desperate and crazy at the end, but it turns out that I'm better at starting out desperate and then learning to deal with the situation and do something productive. That's probably a nice moral, but it's terrible literature. I apologize. (Speaking of diaries where people slowly go crazy, "Edith's Diary" is actually a really boring book, which disappoints me because Patricia Highsmith is otherwise about as awesome as it gets. I don't know if I should read the final 100 pages or not. Anyone know better than me?) (Oh, in case you're worried, my headache went away.)
It is St Nikolaus Day, in case you were unaware (how could you be? I mean, if you're Jewish or something, I guess you could be unaware.) and that means the Noiby and Co (Maria, Berni, Max, etc) dress up like important Christmas characters and wander through the school during first period, giving chocolate to everyone. It is a very good tradition, especially because even cheap mass-produced German chocolate is amazing and delicious. It also means that Max and Gellie wore Santa hats the rest of the day, and that our math teacher gave us chocolate Santas to make us feel better about taking a math test.
Otherwise, a pretty normal school day and it is vaguely sunny out one window at the moment, and gray and menacing out another. The weather was vague- we are somewhere between the 0 and 4 degree section of Germany for tomorrow, and may or may not get something resembling either snow or rain. It's hard to tell with these crazy maps.
Fun trivia of the day: Bernard, Head Elf in the Santa Clause (which was today's lunchtime viewing for festive reasons), is played by the same actor who plays Charlie in Numb3rs! That was a pretty exciting find, although Christoph didn't want to believe us because "the guy from Numb3rs is too old- he's gotta be like 35 at least." Well, just because I want to gloat in being right publicly, imdb assures me that David Krumholtz (that is his name, people who live under a rock and never watch Numb3rs, which is multiple kinds of sacrilege) is 27, meaning he was 16 in 1994 when the Santa Clause came out, which is, in fact, exactly the age I guessed for him. I am always right.
More fun trivia: I have a copy of the German Constitution (hereforth referred to as "Grundgesetz") in English. It is 90 pages long, consists of 146 articles (and a 5-article appendix), and, as of 2000, has been ammended 49 times (at which point it was all of 51 years old). I found a copy of the American Constitution on the internet. The printer-friendly version (without ammendments, the text of which is also not exactly included in my Grundgesetz) is 9 pages long and the document has 7 articles. It has been ammended 27 times in 218 years. I don't know what this says about our comparative countries, but learning about the American Constitution is a whole lot easier.
Monday, December 05, 2005
Monday
Absolute worst-planned schedule ever today: go to school, have 4 periods, have 2 free periods because there was no Reli, have lunch Pause, have 1 period of class. So that means I had nearly 3 hours of free time in the middle of my day and didn't get home until almost 4. It was seriously annoying.
My school has finally been hit by at least one of the apparent thousands of Australians that migrate to Germany as exchange students every winter (leaving their amazing summer, mind you)! She is going to be chilling in my English LK every Monday for the next 8 weeks, and it's exciting because hey! Australian!
Strage English Teacher Sayings of the Day:
"Does that mean you are no longer allowed to hate them [other religions]? I mean, if you want to. You don't have to hate them."
"A fully-thinking individual doesn't necessarily mean a fully-smoking individual." (not even going to try to explain this one)
And my super-long free time was super-boring in spite of the many people also hanging around. I mean, there was the short-lived fun of Maria in a pink bunny costume, and Viktor's story about the group of squirrels who attacked and ate a dog in Russia, but otherwise it was just long. Döner became involved around lunchtime, though, and I was pretty upset that I left my money at home and didn't get to enjoy the goodness. I had food and all, so it's not like I was starving, but Döner! I wanted to work the phrase "null bling" into that Döner story, but I have failed you. Sorry.
My fingers have been really cold recently, which is strange because the rest of me is usually warm due to smart bundling. I can't, however, walk around with gloves on all the time, because that would be weird. I mean, I wear gloves outside, but we are talking about the inside of buildings. The only thing I have found is that my iPod produces a rather comfortable heat when it is on and I clench it in my fist, so the inside of a few of my fingers get warm. Otherwise, they are cold and it makes me feel cold all over. Ideas? (Sitting on fingers or otherwise trying to use personal body heat only results in rest of body becoming cold like fingers)
My school has finally been hit by at least one of the apparent thousands of Australians that migrate to Germany as exchange students every winter (leaving their amazing summer, mind you)! She is going to be chilling in my English LK every Monday for the next 8 weeks, and it's exciting because hey! Australian!
Strage English Teacher Sayings of the Day:
"Does that mean you are no longer allowed to hate them [other religions]? I mean, if you want to. You don't have to hate them."
"A fully-thinking individual doesn't necessarily mean a fully-smoking individual." (not even going to try to explain this one)
And my super-long free time was super-boring in spite of the many people also hanging around. I mean, there was the short-lived fun of Maria in a pink bunny costume, and Viktor's story about the group of squirrels who attacked and ate a dog in Russia, but otherwise it was just long. Döner became involved around lunchtime, though, and I was pretty upset that I left my money at home and didn't get to enjoy the goodness. I had food and all, so it's not like I was starving, but Döner! I wanted to work the phrase "null bling" into that Döner story, but I have failed you. Sorry.
My fingers have been really cold recently, which is strange because the rest of me is usually warm due to smart bundling. I can't, however, walk around with gloves on all the time, because that would be weird. I mean, I wear gloves outside, but we are talking about the inside of buildings. The only thing I have found is that my iPod produces a rather comfortable heat when it is on and I clench it in my fist, so the inside of a few of my fingers get warm. Otherwise, they are cold and it makes me feel cold all over. Ideas? (Sitting on fingers or otherwise trying to use personal body heat only results in rest of body becoming cold like fingers)
Sunday, December 04, 2005
It's So Stressful to Come Up With a Witty Title Every Day
And Sunday is the day of rest, you know.
In case you haven't noticed, yesterday's post was edited about 53 times, so you might have missed things like pictures and whatnot, so read through it again.
Today:
Went to church, filmed the all-important Big Crowd By the City Gate scene (I personally filmed this one, Christoph finally being forced to let me touch the camera because we made him be in the scene), hung around church long enough to be the last to leave (it would be a shame if I stopped being the last one there just because I am in Germany), came home and made quiche (it sounds so wonderfully snobby, and is yet so simple), am relaxing because there is school again tomorrow.
And the "essay" (as I am calling it) promised at the very end of yesterday's post, if you bothered to read that far (keep in mind that it was about midnight when I wrote this):
It seemed like a silly, sentimental thing, the kind of thing people write in the front of books when they give them to people. The kind of thing, I, too, am learning to write- a sweet exaggeration, if not a bold lie, about how you feel this book will touch a person. "Kari, hoe you enjoy this. I think you are the reincarnation of Sylvia [Plath]. Love, Dad." I laughed a little when I read it- my silly father. Then I started into the book, and it drew me. . . this collection of journal entries was so fascination, she captured daily life so beautifully. . . the back cover says she went to Smith- that's one of the 5, a Pioneer Valley school. Sylvia was dead before Hampshire existed, but she got so clsoe. And the individual works: I found "Motheres" a bit boring, actually, too long-winded, and more an introduction, the first chapter to a book I'm not sure I want to read. But Plath was a poet. Narrative wasn't her strong point. Essay, though- fact- that's so amazing. the thigns she writes about her childhood ("Ocean 1212-W", "America! America!") or her adult life in England ("Snow Blitz," the raw journal entries) are gripping and fascinating and everything I wish I could write. I feel like Sylvia, sometimes, journaling easily but feeling it a lesser art, fiction being the higher calling. I gave up on poetry long ago- such a gift is not mine. Lately, though, I've been coveting it- this ability to say everything and yet nothing in a few words, to pull one detail out and use it to fill in the picture. I'm a pretty bad reader of poetry, too. I haven't found a poet whose secrets I understand, but, then again, I haven't read Plath's poetry yet. Prose is fine- I love the layers behind layers in the words, but I still call it poetry, those lines that make me stop and that stay with me for days. The word poetry is full of beauty and mystery- an unfulfilled promise, the kidn you'll wait for forever, the kind you'd trade your whole life for, even if it's just a moment. And that's the point of poetry- it's short, quick- that one breath where everything is different, and then the hours afterward when you try to understand the feeling, vainly hoping that understanding will bring it back and make it last.
Plath's essay is called "A Comparison." Two and a half pages, poetically short, she tells me why she wishes she could write novels. She wants to capture every detail, every emotion, to follow growth and fill pages. I'm the opposite- I fill pages with ease, but I long to control my mind enough to grab people in two lines and change their lives, at least for a bit. I want to capture the moment and seal it in a box, then put a tiny hole in the top so you can peep in.
I've found my inspiration.
So I want to thank everyone who's told me how much they like my writing, how my blog makes their day or something, because it gives me hope. I applaud those of you who make it through my verbosity, because I don't always tolerate it from others. I mean, I don't want to write professionally or anything, but there's this artistic yearning in me to express myself in some way that makes people quiet inside and then makes them reexamine their lives for a while, and maybe, ultimately, try to produce something themselves. It's this sentimental, artistic circle that's secretly fueling all of us, and I'm a little more sensitive to it at the moment.
Posts like these, posts that have just about nothing to do with my life in Germany, make me feel a little guilty, like I'm goofing off and philosophizing instead of doing my real job, the news.
In case you haven't noticed, yesterday's post was edited about 53 times, so you might have missed things like pictures and whatnot, so read through it again.
Today:
Went to church, filmed the all-important Big Crowd By the City Gate scene (I personally filmed this one, Christoph finally being forced to let me touch the camera because we made him be in the scene), hung around church long enough to be the last to leave (it would be a shame if I stopped being the last one there just because I am in Germany), came home and made quiche (it sounds so wonderfully snobby, and is yet so simple), am relaxing because there is school again tomorrow.
And the "essay" (as I am calling it) promised at the very end of yesterday's post, if you bothered to read that far (keep in mind that it was about midnight when I wrote this):
It seemed like a silly, sentimental thing, the kind of thing people write in the front of books when they give them to people. The kind of thing, I, too, am learning to write- a sweet exaggeration, if not a bold lie, about how you feel this book will touch a person. "Kari, hoe you enjoy this. I think you are the reincarnation of Sylvia [Plath]. Love, Dad." I laughed a little when I read it- my silly father. Then I started into the book, and it drew me. . . this collection of journal entries was so fascination, she captured daily life so beautifully. . . the back cover says she went to Smith- that's one of the 5, a Pioneer Valley school. Sylvia was dead before Hampshire existed, but she got so clsoe. And the individual works: I found "Motheres" a bit boring, actually, too long-winded, and more an introduction, the first chapter to a book I'm not sure I want to read. But Plath was a poet. Narrative wasn't her strong point. Essay, though- fact- that's so amazing. the thigns she writes about her childhood ("Ocean 1212-W", "America! America!") or her adult life in England ("Snow Blitz," the raw journal entries) are gripping and fascinating and everything I wish I could write. I feel like Sylvia, sometimes, journaling easily but feeling it a lesser art, fiction being the higher calling. I gave up on poetry long ago- such a gift is not mine. Lately, though, I've been coveting it- this ability to say everything and yet nothing in a few words, to pull one detail out and use it to fill in the picture. I'm a pretty bad reader of poetry, too. I haven't found a poet whose secrets I understand, but, then again, I haven't read Plath's poetry yet. Prose is fine- I love the layers behind layers in the words, but I still call it poetry, those lines that make me stop and that stay with me for days. The word poetry is full of beauty and mystery- an unfulfilled promise, the kidn you'll wait for forever, the kind you'd trade your whole life for, even if it's just a moment. And that's the point of poetry- it's short, quick- that one breath where everything is different, and then the hours afterward when you try to understand the feeling, vainly hoping that understanding will bring it back and make it last.
Plath's essay is called "A Comparison." Two and a half pages, poetically short, she tells me why she wishes she could write novels. She wants to capture every detail, every emotion, to follow growth and fill pages. I'm the opposite- I fill pages with ease, but I long to control my mind enough to grab people in two lines and change their lives, at least for a bit. I want to capture the moment and seal it in a box, then put a tiny hole in the top so you can peep in.
I've found my inspiration.
So I want to thank everyone who's told me how much they like my writing, how my blog makes their day or something, because it gives me hope. I applaud those of you who make it through my verbosity, because I don't always tolerate it from others. I mean, I don't want to write professionally or anything, but there's this artistic yearning in me to express myself in some way that makes people quiet inside and then makes them reexamine their lives for a while, and maybe, ultimately, try to produce something themselves. It's this sentimental, artistic circle that's secretly fueling all of us, and I'm a little more sensitive to it at the moment.
Posts like these, posts that have just about nothing to do with my life in Germany, make me feel a little guilty, like I'm goofing off and philosophizing instead of doing my real job, the news.
Saturday, December 03, 2005
Rain
I haven't seen rain in forever. So guess what it was doing when I woke up?
Things should be nice and icey tomorrow. I hope it warms enough to melt it, because I have no interest in walking to school in the ice on Monday. I mean, it's not too bad here, but Aichach is the end of the earth and is always frozen over.
Filmed 2 (well, sort of- scenes 5.1 and 5.2) scenes today in the rain because we are hard core- even managed without our Mary, which is pretty interesting when you're doing the Christmas Story (the one from the Bible, not the one with the bb gun and the leg lamp). . . I made my cameo as Friendly Farmer Woman (no, I didn't know there was one of those in the story, either- apparently it's a bit different over here) and we tried not to stand in the rain too long. . . I'm very worried that we actually got terrible footage because we simply didn't want to be outside anymore.
Church bells here ring at the weirdest times. . . quarter-til, quarter-after, just about any time but on the hour. Craziness.
You know what else I did this afternoon? I took pictures!
Look! It is Phillip, in the classic "Hey Phillip! My mom said I should take a picture of you!" pose.
Then I made Christoph do the same thing. Basti was Elsewhere, but maybe my Ninja Photo skills will capture him for you yet.
This is actually a pretty good picture of my host dad Gerhard, eating a kiwi.
Host mom Eva, knitting.
You can tell a lot about a person by their desk. Contents: computer (still doesn't work, but I haven't bugged Phillip to try to fix it yet, either), Advent calendar (Milka), fake flowers Mom sent for birthday in mug Nina gave me for birthday, Chemistry homework, wallet, planner, empty Mezzo Mix bottle, nearly-empty Limo bottle, passport, latest read (Patricia Highsmith's Edith's Diary), Stabilos (awesomest pens ever), collection of college literature, pile of books: diary, photo albums, German-English dictionary, crossword puzzles.
My bulletin board presumably also tells you about me. . . note the shooting schedule for the Video, and the invitation to the K12/K13 Party. Also, pictures of people.
Planner. This is what the blog looks like before I type it up- close examination will reveal to you that just about every anecdote that appears on here gets written down there first, color-coded, of course. See how organized I am?
I made this picture back in September or something, and I still think it is very pretty. I figured you might, too.
More pictures of People I Like on the wall, beside a large map of Germany.
I am apparently fascinated with my own walls (note the artist-signed orignial Wondermark print! That is how great of a webcomic geek I am!)
Astute readers will realize that it took me overnight to get all the pictures to you. . . see, I started, then it was dinnertime. Dinner is important. After that, Phillip, Christoph, and I went to pick up the pre-ordered Harry Potter tickets for Family Movie Night. The drive to the movie theater included the fun of Frozen Cars and Christoph and Phillip playing Tic-Tac-Toe on the windshield, especially interesting because Phillip was also driving at the time. Anyway, we got there safe, picked up tickets, and headed to wander the mall while we waited for the rest of the family. Malls are kind of big deals in Germany, and this one was all decorated for Christmas, complete with the Animatronic About-To-Maul-You Bear. I am sure it has a long tradition in Germany, but I simply found it creepy. Otherwise, we spent as much time in Saturn as in the rest of the mall, because, you know, boys. (For the clueless, Saturn is Germany's version of Best Buy.) The movie was awesome, of course, and we also got home in one piece, where Christoph found ABBA Mania on tv, which is always an entertaining way to end one's day.
Also, I wrote something last night that I will sometime share with you, unless, on reading it when I am fully awake, I decide that it is silly. In any case, thank you, Dad, for the book- it is the most awesome thing this side of Shaw. Nice choice.
Things should be nice and icey tomorrow. I hope it warms enough to melt it, because I have no interest in walking to school in the ice on Monday. I mean, it's not too bad here, but Aichach is the end of the earth and is always frozen over.
Filmed 2 (well, sort of- scenes 5.1 and 5.2) scenes today in the rain because we are hard core- even managed without our Mary, which is pretty interesting when you're doing the Christmas Story (the one from the Bible, not the one with the bb gun and the leg lamp). . . I made my cameo as Friendly Farmer Woman (no, I didn't know there was one of those in the story, either- apparently it's a bit different over here) and we tried not to stand in the rain too long. . . I'm very worried that we actually got terrible footage because we simply didn't want to be outside anymore.
Church bells here ring at the weirdest times. . . quarter-til, quarter-after, just about any time but on the hour. Craziness.
You know what else I did this afternoon? I took pictures!
Look! It is Phillip, in the classic "Hey Phillip! My mom said I should take a picture of you!" pose.
Then I made Christoph do the same thing. Basti was Elsewhere, but maybe my Ninja Photo skills will capture him for you yet.
This is actually a pretty good picture of my host dad Gerhard, eating a kiwi.
Host mom Eva, knitting.
You can tell a lot about a person by their desk. Contents: computer (still doesn't work, but I haven't bugged Phillip to try to fix it yet, either), Advent calendar (Milka), fake flowers Mom sent for birthday in mug Nina gave me for birthday, Chemistry homework, wallet, planner, empty Mezzo Mix bottle, nearly-empty Limo bottle, passport, latest read (Patricia Highsmith's Edith's Diary), Stabilos (awesomest pens ever), collection of college literature, pile of books: diary, photo albums, German-English dictionary, crossword puzzles.
My bulletin board presumably also tells you about me. . . note the shooting schedule for the Video, and the invitation to the K12/K13 Party. Also, pictures of people.
Planner. This is what the blog looks like before I type it up- close examination will reveal to you that just about every anecdote that appears on here gets written down there first, color-coded, of course. See how organized I am?
I made this picture back in September or something, and I still think it is very pretty. I figured you might, too.
More pictures of People I Like on the wall, beside a large map of Germany.
I am apparently fascinated with my own walls (note the artist-signed orignial Wondermark print! That is how great of a webcomic geek I am!)
Astute readers will realize that it took me overnight to get all the pictures to you. . . see, I started, then it was dinnertime. Dinner is important. After that, Phillip, Christoph, and I went to pick up the pre-ordered Harry Potter tickets for Family Movie Night. The drive to the movie theater included the fun of Frozen Cars and Christoph and Phillip playing Tic-Tac-Toe on the windshield, especially interesting because Phillip was also driving at the time. Anyway, we got there safe, picked up tickets, and headed to wander the mall while we waited for the rest of the family. Malls are kind of big deals in Germany, and this one was all decorated for Christmas, complete with the Animatronic About-To-Maul-You Bear. I am sure it has a long tradition in Germany, but I simply found it creepy. Otherwise, we spent as much time in Saturn as in the rest of the mall, because, you know, boys. (For the clueless, Saturn is Germany's version of Best Buy.) The movie was awesome, of course, and we also got home in one piece, where Christoph found ABBA Mania on tv, which is always an entertaining way to end one's day.
Also, I wrote something last night that I will sometime share with you, unless, on reading it when I am fully awake, I decide that it is silly. In any case, thank you, Dad, for the book- it is the most awesome thing this side of Shaw. Nice choice.
Friday, December 02, 2005
Everybody Smiles At You
I have a song of the day again, "Mr Blue Sky." Do you know why? The sun came out! There was BLUE SKY! And it stayed! This morning was terrible- it was so foggy and the sun seemed like it just did not want to come up- it was all twilighty-grayish all the way through second period. But THEN, in Chemistry, the sun poked up over the school building and started shining in my eyes, which it has been continuing to do, but I don't care because SUNSHINE. It is still far colder than I would care to admit, but SUN.
Chemistry was actually very boring because we were all OMGBIOTESTAAH, but Frau Collin was wearing a very strange black vest with fake fur trim. . . .
And then the Bio test happened, and it was totally easy. 3 pages for 9 questions because he left space for answering them- so basically the shortest test I've ever seen, although it took me the whole 45-minute class due to German. . . I know I got it all right, though, so as long as he doesn't go all crazy on my grammar (assuming he can understand the German I wrote), this will be a Good Grade, and I'm proud of myself.
Math test Tuesday, and math today proved to me that I have no hope there. I am going to show up, look at the math problems and try to do something, but it is bound to be terrible and may end up being pictures of bunnies instead of math.
German! Oh, man, German class! Today was Herr Friedl's 60th birthday, so someone wrote "Happy Birthday" on the board and then Viktor drew a nice little Weißbier to go with it, and we spontaneously broke out singing the birthday song (the English one) when Herr Friedl walked in. . . it was great.
Friedl: The beer's a nice touch there.
Noiby came by to drop a key off for Berni and deliver some other message and then tried to go and Friedl was all "You're forgetting something," and finally Noiby remembered that it was Friedl's birthday and congratulated him and it was quite funny, but you have to know Noiby and Friedl to get it.
Friedl then told us about the teacher's lounge birthday celebration.
HF: I had a glass or two of Sekt.
Student: You're allowed to do that at school?
HF: Nobody smoked!
Now, I sit in the front row, and Friedl had the familiar, oddly comforting smell of alcohol on his breath, and I'd say it was beer, so I think he edited his story a bit for us. Only in Germany, my friends.
Later, someone asked the in-a-particulary-good-mood Friedl what kind of test we'd be taking when it comes in January. Friedl's reply? "A German test."
Also, Friedl and I discussed Monticello for a while, just because.
I feel mildly guilty about not really telling you about much yesterday. . . I had adventures trying to get myself registered with this crazy city of Augsburg- turns out you need an appointment for that sort of thing, so I get to go in at 7 on Wednesday morning. Bureaucracy. I also got my month card for the train so I don't have to keep giving them €7.50 a day- seriously, I spent €37.50 getting to and from school in one week. Crazy!
We also played a random board game last night because Anja decided to randomly visit (not only that, but she ended up sleeping here because she didn't feel like dealing with the streetcar to get home). . . some sort of Game of the Year involving the building of towers and putting knights on the towers and some such thing. . . I was greatly confused for about 2/3 of it, although I still managed to do better than Christoph, who had some sort of complex strategy (or at least acted as if he did), and still lost. German board games are crazy, though- they seem to always involve building something complex and scoring based on what you built or something. . . fun, but crazy.
Guess What! Pictures!
Anja is clearly deep in thought in this special Behind-the-Scenes Church Video shot, where you also see Franzi doing Janine's hair.
Manu rehearsing his role as Augustus, full of emotion.
Snow. Train tracks. Must be Germany.
I'm not sure the Sacred Rules of Foosball allow three people on a team, but Vivi, Anja, and Nadja did it anyway. I don't remember if they won or not.
Christoph. Little Tennis. I give up on witty captions (do you know how many times I have tried to get these pictures uploaded and then had to type something about them?) .
Helmut. Ping-Pong.
We are so hard-core that we also play Table Tennis in Blacklight. That means we are more hardcore than you.
Chemistry was actually very boring because we were all OMGBIOTESTAAH, but Frau Collin was wearing a very strange black vest with fake fur trim. . . .
And then the Bio test happened, and it was totally easy. 3 pages for 9 questions because he left space for answering them- so basically the shortest test I've ever seen, although it took me the whole 45-minute class due to German. . . I know I got it all right, though, so as long as he doesn't go all crazy on my grammar (assuming he can understand the German I wrote), this will be a Good Grade, and I'm proud of myself.
Math test Tuesday, and math today proved to me that I have no hope there. I am going to show up, look at the math problems and try to do something, but it is bound to be terrible and may end up being pictures of bunnies instead of math.
German! Oh, man, German class! Today was Herr Friedl's 60th birthday, so someone wrote "Happy Birthday" on the board and then Viktor drew a nice little Weißbier to go with it, and we spontaneously broke out singing the birthday song (the English one) when Herr Friedl walked in. . . it was great.
Friedl: The beer's a nice touch there.
Noiby came by to drop a key off for Berni and deliver some other message and then tried to go and Friedl was all "You're forgetting something," and finally Noiby remembered that it was Friedl's birthday and congratulated him and it was quite funny, but you have to know Noiby and Friedl to get it.
Friedl then told us about the teacher's lounge birthday celebration.
HF: I had a glass or two of Sekt.
Student: You're allowed to do that at school?
HF: Nobody smoked!
Now, I sit in the front row, and Friedl had the familiar, oddly comforting smell of alcohol on his breath, and I'd say it was beer, so I think he edited his story a bit for us. Only in Germany, my friends.
Later, someone asked the in-a-particulary-good-mood Friedl what kind of test we'd be taking when it comes in January. Friedl's reply? "A German test."
Also, Friedl and I discussed Monticello for a while, just because.
I feel mildly guilty about not really telling you about much yesterday. . . I had adventures trying to get myself registered with this crazy city of Augsburg- turns out you need an appointment for that sort of thing, so I get to go in at 7 on Wednesday morning. Bureaucracy. I also got my month card for the train so I don't have to keep giving them €7.50 a day- seriously, I spent €37.50 getting to and from school in one week. Crazy!
We also played a random board game last night because Anja decided to randomly visit (not only that, but she ended up sleeping here because she didn't feel like dealing with the streetcar to get home). . . some sort of Game of the Year involving the building of towers and putting knights on the towers and some such thing. . . I was greatly confused for about 2/3 of it, although I still managed to do better than Christoph, who had some sort of complex strategy (or at least acted as if he did), and still lost. German board games are crazy, though- they seem to always involve building something complex and scoring based on what you built or something. . . fun, but crazy.
Guess What! Pictures!
Anja is clearly deep in thought in this special Behind-the-Scenes Church Video shot, where you also see Franzi doing Janine's hair.
Manu rehearsing his role as Augustus, full of emotion.
Snow. Train tracks. Must be Germany.
I'm not sure the Sacred Rules of Foosball allow three people on a team, but Vivi, Anja, and Nadja did it anyway. I don't remember if they won or not.
Christoph. Little Tennis. I give up on witty captions (do you know how many times I have tried to get these pictures uploaded and then had to type something about them?) .
Helmut. Ping-Pong.
We are so hard-core that we also play Table Tennis in Blacklight. That means we are more hardcore than you.
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