Say What You Want

Today's song wins just for having a banjo and being played on German radio. I miss songs with banjos. It is called "Powerless" and it is by someone named Nelly Furtado, who is apparently of Portugese origins and grew up in Canada, and it turns out that the song has awesome lyrics, too, in addition to sounding like a bluegrass band backing a pop singer, which is fun.

Oh, Wednesdays. Went to school for second period only to find out (along with everybody else) that Religion isn't happening today and we all could have slept in (for some reason almost no one in K12 has a first period on Wednesdays). And then it was time for Bio, where I went to a different class because my unofficial schedule works that way, and it turns out that this class is so much more fascinating than the other, although the teacher is maybe not as cool. But we're talking about gender determination and all the things that can go wrong chromosomally in that process, and gender is one of my intellectual passions, so I was totally happy. Then it was history (in a part of the school I never knew existed) and it's also the most interesting stuff ever, although I have no context for this information. And then two periods of art, which consisted of the longest presentation ever on Kandinsky (and I like Kandinsky) and then one on Rembrandt, who is cooler than I thought, although now I forget why. And then something like 10 minutes of actual art-making time, even though it was a double period. Then I went to the Berufschule for lunch with Noiby and Gellie and had delicious Pommes (french fries) and then it was time for German, where Schiller is still the most boring writer ever- there is a reason German lit doesn't get read outside of Germany. And then Math, where I went to the Grundkurs, and they are doing exactly what I didn't understand in the LK, and I understand what is going on in the LK now! Math must hate me, but at least the GK is slow and maybe I'll get it this time around. Then it was English, which consisted mostly of some tangent about various school systems (meaning mostly hearing horror stories about teaching sixth graders) and also the teacher offended me deeply by talking of media and communications classes as slack classes that people take instead of learning foreign languages. I've spent five years trying to convince people that just because I'm on a computer instead of listening to a lecture it doesn't mean that I'm slacking off- try editing a video sometime! And it's not like the Germans write papers about everything, so they should appreciate a class that watches the news and then discusses it analytically. Grrrrr. Anyway, then it was on to Chemistry, where the teacher is a half-deaf old lady named Frau Collin (I can remember this name) and the boys are terrible to her but it was so funny and she spent half an hour trying to get David and Tobias to tell her what the last lesson was about (every German teacher asks one student about the last lesson at the beginning of each class. I don't know why, but the Germans stress about this a lot- it is apparently a big portion of their grade) and they did not do well, and I don't know what it was about either, but there was lots of laughter as the sky got increasingly dark and then we spent the final 15 minutes of class sort of taking notes and also laughing while Chubie played music using his cell phone that the poor old lady could not hear. Really, there's not much else you can do in 10th period- it was literally dark and all foggy when I left school (Andy, who also lives in Obergriesbach and has a car, drove me home) and Rosi made some sort of German dish featuring cherries and a heavy dough and I have no idea how to describe it to you- it was yummy, but way too filling and I don't want to eat again for days. And Miri came by to eat, too, and to hang out, and I shared with her my fear of the phone and she decided that we must teach me to get over that, but I don't want to because phones are really scary. Like cars, except that I don't have nightmares about them, and they scare me more. Anyway, I'm missing CSI, and I'm happy that I only have 3 periods at school tomorrow (German schedules are so terrible) and so I'm going to end with my joy that Kaine won in Virginia yesterday. Yay!