Love is a Battlefield

You know it is. Unless, of course, your love is German radio, in which case it's pretty much all sunshine and lollipops and Pat Benatar.

Yesterday afternoon, we ended up heading back into Aichach to pick up Rosi's ring from the jeweler, and of course we couldn't leave without stopping by the shoe store and then the cute little café for hot chocolate and Schwarzwälderkirschtorte (I think Donauwelle is still my favorite German cake, though). And we finally wandered home to hang out and read and watch tv (I've become addicted to Numb3rs here, so you know where you'll find me every Monday at 9:10 pm- do you know that German tv stations start programs whenever they want, not just on the hour or half-hour? Prime-time actually begins at 8:15 here) and I went to bed relatively early so I could get up for school. It was so cold this morning- 1.5 degrees! We had to scrape ice off the windshield! In Rocktober! But I made it to school and found Berni in the K12 hangout room (we get a hangout room? With couches? Yes!) and she introduced me to everyone and it turns out that Bavarians are pretty much the nicest people in the world- everyone was super-friendly and asked me about home and how things are going here and made sure I was comfortable and happy. And the teachers are great, too- every one of them asked me about where I'm from and what I'm doing here and the like- something that only my English teacher did back in Köln. And they kept checking to see if I was understanding, even though I'm not really even in any classes yet because I don't actually have a schedule at the moment. I had a period of German first, and we read a really fascinating Goethe piece that I want to tie into some Shaw stuff I've read, and some Wilde too, and maybe a few other things- there are wheels turning, to say the least, and I won't bore you too much with my half-developed essay ideas. That's for the college admissions people to worry about. And then two periods of math- I can confidently say that I understood approximately 15% of what we did, and I am not going to be picking math as an LK (which Berni has). The teacher was really awesome, though, too, and I would have enjoyed the class if I had a clue what was going on (man do Germans have some weird ways of notating things in math). After that came Berni's Latin class, in which I sort of sat and listened and was bored because I know zero Latin and have no interest in knowing Latin. It's Berni's other LK, and it most certainly won't be in my real schedule. There were some Pauses in there, during which I hung out with the awesome K12 people- seriously every single one of them came up to introduce themselves almost immediately, and all of them are sort of watching out for me and making sure I'm feeling okay and getting integrated and it makes me feel good. After Latin came Sozi, which is Bavaria's name for SoWi, as far as I can tell, except that this class was more Government than Econ. And I love Government, so that is one class that I totally need to keep in my schedule- I must admit that Germany has a strange and confusing governmental system, and I want to learn all of its ins and outs. Did you know that Merckel's cabinet is pretty much decided? All the pictures of the new cabinet are in the paper today, and I cannot give you much more insight than that there are 6 women (including Angie, of course) out of 16 positions, which I guess is good. And then school was over, so I called Rosi and waited for her and felt all happy when a couple of the guys double-checked to make sure that I was going to get home and have lunch and the like- everyone here is so sweet and I know I'm going to make such good friends here and I'm so happy. Lunch was delicious, too (chicken, proving that we are not overly terrified about the bird flu, and potatoes with cheese- yummy) and I don't even have homework, since I don't actually have classes. I hope someone works that out shortly- I've been informed that the English teacher is sort of in charge of me (another nice detail they didn't think about in Köln) and I'll ask a bit tomorrow- since I'm still basically shadowing Berni, though, I don't have a first period tomorrow- maybe it'll be warmer when I wake up.

I just got a phone call from the Methodist church in Augsburg- I'm going to probably go check out their service on Sunday and they're sending me some info and the girl I talked to was totally nice and I'm excited- I've missed church.