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?)