My Goyim Friends

Have I told you how wonderful this Hannukah song iTunes gave me is? I probably should have told you about it back when you could get it, too (I mean for free, you can still buy it, which I totally recommend), but it is really nice, and there is just a hint of that Jewish accent that gives me those butterflies in my belly. . . is it okay if I am this into Jewish accents? (A newspaper article I read a few days ago said that philosemitism is bad because it is an unhealthy obsession with Jews just like antisemitism, except that you don't kill anyone. So I am a little worried.)

Thursdays are sleep-in days. So I slept until seven and left at 7:35 and thought about taking the bus but decided against it. So of course I got to the train two minutes late instead of the ten minutes early I could have been with the bus. First time I missed the train. I rode the bus home and my host mom drove me to school (I didn't have to leave the house until 9, however, to get to school on time, thanks to not having to walk anywhere) and I went to Sozi and had to explain that, no, the pursuit of happiness is not in the Constitution and thus not a legally guaranteed right. This does not mean that we do not believe in protecting the pursuit of happiness, but you cannot use it as an argument against Guantanamo, other than envoking a general sense of respect for the founding fathers. Now, there are a lot of much better arguments against Guantanamo anyway, but Germans really love the 20 articles (I am not kidding) of their constitution that guarantee human dignity, and like to think that other countries have them, too. Sorry, guys. It is still only 7 articles long, and was written by dudes who were not guilty about watching a lunatic kill 7 million innocents. I also learned that Reagan's politics are literally unconstitutional in Germany, because they declare themselves a social state right there in the first line of Article 20 (the first one that really deals with government at all, the first 19 needing to clear up important things like marriage and required religious education and copying America's bill of rights but with 20000 extra words and a socialization clause). I found this funny, and figure that Mr Cox (for more reasons than this) would hate Germany. I was actually really interested in the debate inspired by a group translation effort in English- I am coming to love hearing Germans debate their language in terms of English (meaning I understand it), and I am smelling a half-formed Div III project before I have even been accepted to Hampshire. Then came my free period, the one where all the really awesome people are around and we discussed giant outdoor rock concert festivals, and then we discussed time- from strange clocks to the fact that they apparently have to add a second every 10 years or so to why on earth leap day is February 29 (one member of our group insists that December 32 would make more sense). I also explained that there is no quark in America, and also no döner, much to everyone's shock and dismay (döner is that delicious, quark is just a strange dairy product that I do not understand and cannot explain. . . I mean, how do you explain cottage cheese?) My motivation for history died pretty much as soon as I realized that Germany had about 10 parties with seats in the Bundestag between 1928 and 1933, and I can only keep track of two of them (NSDAP and SDP), and that makes understanding things hard. On the way to the train station, I realized that I should actually be working my butt off to try to get (check in German- how awesome is that?) history so I can be a German history genius when I get to college. Somehow, I would rather be a German slang genius, because that is easier. I am working on a giant list of words that I didn't know 6 months ago and use all the time now to prove that a 5 on the AP German exam proves nothing about my German abilities. I use the awesome ScratchPad in GoogleDesktop because it is always on my desktop and it saves automatically and everything. There was an autistic man on the train who looked at his watch every 5 seconds or so. Thursday is not only the day that I get to sleep in until the same time as Piff gets up, but also the day that I get to come home from school earlier than Piff because he has Sport and I don't (wheee). My host mom and I made fun of the Experiment Host Parent Questionnaire for a while. . . "How does the exchange student get along with your children?" "It is terrible. They always want the bathroom at the same time in the morning, and then there is this drag-out, knock-down brawl and it disturbs our neighbors' sleep." "What difficulties are there involved with being a host parent?" "Well, I am always so tired in the morning because I have to get up an hour earlier now." It was fun.