Birthday Panda Just Can't Catch a Break

He's about to drive into a lake
Birthday Panda just can't understand
Why it's so hard to find in all the land
A birthday party

Of course, the party's not until Saturday, so Birthday Panda has some time. He has nearly missed some delicious cake (and a vocabulary-learning opportunity, d.h. I finally figured out that Johannesbeeren are cranberries because they were in my cake!) that greeted me at breakfast this morning. Those of you worried for my health should know that my actual breakfast, post-candle-blowing-out, was toast with eggs and bacon, open-face sammich style. And then it was off to school where everyone was full of hugs and good wishes because Germans are awesome people. Also, maybe related to being older, I have finally figured out what a categorial imperative is and how it is different from a hypothetical imperative AND I can explain both in not one but TWO languages (guess which ones)! So Philo was pretty good, and I should note that there is this strange stuffed wooly mammoth in Frau Zimmerman's room that is our Philo class mascot and that it makes early mornings with Kant a little easier to deal with. Still no Econ, which makes me sad because I really want to turn in this essay, if only because I want to find out if Germans actually turn in essays or not- I've worked on 5 or 6 short little 3/4 page essays since I've been here and the German teacher method of checking these homework assignments is having 4 or 5 people read theirs aloud, and I'd really rather turn something in because then I could prove better that I am following the class, just with a pause for translation (this pause is shortening, by the way). I could of course give the teacher my paper anyway, but I'm waiting to figure out normal German school protocol, and how we get grades if we never turn anything in (I know this answer, and I don't like it at all). What was I talking about? Oh! I had art and we talked about some painting that claimed to be Dada but wasn't at all and then I realized that it was Berlin Dada and I'm a Zurich purist and the painting was still pretty cool, and I'm definitely not yet able to analyze art in any language, in addition to being morally against it (although Kant tells me that this is not a moral situation, but I don't agree with his work either, although I understand it now). 2 periods of Italian is always too long, but I managed and I am starting to retain some Italian vocabulary but German is really not the language to learn Italian in at all, I must admit. Easy Italian words like "funghi" are really hard to remember when presented with the German word "Pilz" (I'm not 100% certain I even picked the right German word there). I'm still really good at counting, though.
Birthdays are nice because the neighbors come over with sweets and presents and you listen to birthday music and the weather is beautiful and you start knitting a belt and it's weird because Germans don't sing the happy birthday song but I can deal. And you don't have homework on your birthday and you go to the big huge Sam's Club style German supermarket and you run all through the food section trying to find the ingredients for an American cookout, and explain to your host mom what goes on a hamburger, and the concept of pickles, and that there are good reasons why German supermarkets don't have American beer, and I haven't yet told you that there is a Statue of Liberty in my backyard, but there is. And I have to go to the pharmacy to buy baking soda and Allyson is coming tomorrow and then Casey is coming and then all the Germans (okay, more like 10 or 11) are coming over and I have to make them little maps so they can find my house even though Uckendorf is about as big as a large neighborhood, maybe smaller.

Anyone who wants to call me and sing the happy birthday song is more than welcome to. Angela is ahead of the game because she sent me a singing card with a really awesome song. I only listened to birthday-themed music today. Somehow this blog is focusing more and more on what kind of music I'm listening to.

Maybe I shouldn't write blogs at 11 at night.