CRAZY

So I started to write a summary of my Zwickau adventures, and I swear it will get done eventually, just not. right. now. Because I am going to Paris tomorrow, and school started again this week, and my weekend is summed up in the above picture [although you can't tell from the picture, Piff is wearing Lederhosen], so things are a little crazy now. Not sure when regular word-based blog postings will resume, but there are lots of pictures from Zwickau on the Butterfly Paper, and you can feel free to leave comments there asking me what stuff is and I will tell you about it, I promise. Otherwise, I have about a million things I need to take care of and very very little Lust.


Also, I set a date to fly back to the US. July 27. It is not moving. It allows me one month before I have to be at Hampshire (August 31). Feel free to write it on your calendars and plan to take me out for smoothies and kosher sandwiches or Mexican food. Or to have a party. I like parties.

Just Traveling Through

Well I can't tell you where I'm going, I'm not sure of where I've been
But I know I must keep travelin' till my road comes to an end
I'm out here on my journey, trying to make the most of it
I'm a puzzle, I must figure out where all my pieces fit

Like a poor wayfaring stranger that they speak about in song
I'm just a weary pilgrim trying to find what feels like home
Where that is no one can tell me, am I doomed to ever roam
I'm just travelin', travelin', travelin', I'm just travelin' on

Questions I have many, answers but a few
But we're here to learn, the spirit burns, to know the greater truth
We've all been crucified and they nailed Jesus to the tree
And when I'm born again, you're gonna see a change in me

God made me for a reason and nothing is in vain
Redemption comes in many shapes with many kinds of pain
Oh sweet Jesus if you're listening, keep me ever close to you
As I'm stumblin', tumblin', wonderin', as I'm travelin' thru

I'm just travelin', travelin', travelin', I'm just travelin' thru
I'm just travelin', travelin', travelin', I'm just travelin' thru

Oh sometimes the road is rugged, and it's hard to travel on
But holdin' to each other, we don't have to walk alone
When everything is broken, we can mend it if we try
We can make a world of difference, if we want to we can fly

Goodbye little children, goodnight you handsome men
Farewell to all you ladies and to all who knew me when
And I hope I'll see you down the road, you meant more than I knew
As I was travelin', travelin', travelin', travelin', travelin' thru

I'm just travelin', travelin', travelin', I'm just travelin'
Drifting like a floating boat and roaming like the wind
Oh give me some direction lord, let me lean on you
As I'm travelin', travelin', travelin', thru

I'm just travelin', travelin', travelin', I'm just travelin' thru
I'm just travelin', travelin', travelin', I'm just travelin' thru

Like the poor wayfaring stranger that they speak about in song
I'm just a weary pilgrim trying to find my own way home
Oh sweet Jesus if you're out there, keep me ever close to you
As I'm travelin', travelin', travelin', as I'm travelin' thru




Thank God for Dolly Parton. I'd like to apologize to all the people I keep leaving, but I can't help it, and I don't want to do otherwise. I'm going to spend the rest of my life leaving. Know that I cherish every moment we have together, but I can't stay, and I can't spend my time looking back or ahead. I have to focus on the road immediately before me, and I have no idea where it will go next. I know it's hard on everyone that doesn't have this need to run, but know that you can always call me or e-mail me or whatever and I will be there for you as if I had never been gone.

I've learned that space and time do not bind me, and I am so so thankful.

A Little More Unconventional

Everyone's posting about how great their Easters were. I guess it's my turn.

So I slept in until 10 or a little later, which isn't that late compared to the last few days. I got up and showred and bummed around until Basti and Steffi came over and Basti showed off his awesome grilling skills for lunch (it was yummy) and then we packed ourselves and the dog into the car and drove off to Andechs on the Ammersee, where there is a mountain called Holy Mountain with a church and a former nunnery and current brewery. You get to guess what we were there for. The beer was delicious, it rained when we first got there, but then the sun came out and it was even pretty and we sat and drank and laughed at the big Bayer dude with his lederhosen and his giant beer. The clouds were coming back up, so we left (and stole one of the beer glasses but shhh) and drove home and saw no less than 2.5 rainbows. Yay April in Germany. Steffi and Basti have headed back to Steffi's for the night, and I need to pack to go to Allyson's tomorrow and probably clean up a bit, too.


This was a good Easter. Basti is a good big brother, and I get to see Allyson TOMORROW and stay with her for a whole FIVE days and we will have an awesome time in East D-Land. I'm going to get the final group of pictures up on Butterfly Paper today, too- there are lots and lots there, and you might have missed some, so go check it out.

Whoa

I went and got all busy. Oops!

So, um, let me think. Tuesday. . . Tuesday, Piff and I got drug to the symphony. Symphonies are really long. Wednesday. . . Wednesday, I did nothing. I slept, I played on the computer, I ate, I chilled. Thursday was Nadja's birthday! I went to the train station and bought my tickets to Zwickau to see Allyson, and then I went to church for Nadja's birthday coffee! I drank tea. There was cake and I met Nadja's mom and sister and all sorts of other people were there, including baby Elizabeth, and we chatted and played with the baby and ate delicious things and it was good times. Friday was yesterday, right? The host 'rents and Piff and Anja got up early and headed off to the wedding that has them out of town this weekend, and I slept in late and was lazy. Steffi came over (her parents are out of town this weekend, too) and we had pancakes for lunch, and I played with Steffi's dog Harry. That night was Good Friday, and I had to go play James the brother of John! Basti dropped me off at church on his way to pick up movie tickets, and the service was really wonderful. I kind of made it into Good Friday and Easter all together for myself, and I had communion for the first time since I've been in Germany, which felt really, really good. I had really missed communion- I'm used to doing it once a month at least and I kind of need that, somehow. I was in a super-good mood after the service (remember how I kind of made it Easter, too?) and, as it happened, had some time because it was way shorter than expected and Basti wasn't coming for another 45 minutes. So I chilled with Nadja and sang songs like Jesus Loves Me and Shout to the Lord and Awesome God and Heart of Worship. I stole Nadja's guitar, and it is now my job to learn to play all my Ami songs on it and teach them to Iris and Nadja and Karin. Billy, that is your cue. I need songs! I need them in such a way that I can figure out how to play them! So, um, Basti came and I left and met his friend Felix and we went to the movies (we=me, Basti, Steffi, Felix). . . after adventures in the parking garage, of course. The movie theater was FULL. Steffi hypothesized that the crazy German law against playing music in the disco on Good Friday had something to do with this. Crazy Catholics. Fortunately, we had reserved our tickets on Wednesday, and Basti had picked them up after dropping me off at church, so we weaseled through the crowd and bought some snacks and ate our snacks while waiting for them to open our theater, and then went in and discovered that we had really great seats. I think it's neat that the movie tickets in Germany assign you a seat. German movies still have way way way more preshow commercials than American, including an intermission for some chicks to come in and hock ice cream. Also, no fun movie trivia, although the 10 For Two commercial hints at it. And I continue to prove that I am a sucker for things in my native tongue by getting way too happy at the Media Markt commercial where Oliver Pocher (he is famous here) sells a camera to a British couple. So cute! "I am Peter. This is Mary. We would like to buy a camera." "Take this one. It is very billig." "Thank you." "Please." "Good-bye." "Yes, it is!" And then the British guy says "ich bin doch nicht blöd" in his British accent and it's so cute. So, um, there was also the actual movie? Ice Age 2 had more serious moments than the first, what with Manny being all convinced that he is the very last wooly mammoth alive, except then he finds a girl wooly mammoth, but oh wait she thinks she is an opposum, so how the hell is he supposed to continue the species with her? Sid's voice bugged me, Diego is sexier than a cat has a right to be, and I was upset that he got only the tiniest of side-roles in the movie. One of the opposums was named Eddie, so I guess my dad would have liked that. And that crazy crazy squirrel seeking nuts. I will tell you that the only actual times I truly laughed involved the squirrel, and I always go into those scenes like "I am not going to laugh unless this is truly funny, I am not going to laugh just because everyone else is." And then it is really, really funny and I don't know why, but I laugh heartily. After the movie, we had a few less adventurous parking garage adventures, and drove to Steffi's house, where Felix picked up his car and Steffi picked up his dog, and then came back here, where we pulled out the drinks and the truth-or-dare. That game is great to play with a couple (Basti and Steffi) because you can make them admit things and it's wonderful. I went to bed with lipstick on my eyelids, and made it to bed far, far too late. I slept until, I don't know, noon and then dragged myself out of bed and put some clothes on just in time to greet Basti (who had slept at Steffi's, leaving me allllll alone), who promptly took me off to Steffi's for lunch. We had homemade döner and they were pretty darn good, but döner is so so so so filling. It was warm outside and we wanted to do something and maybe burn off some of our crazy lunch, so we pulled the bikes out and went biking! Really went biking. With Harry the dog in the basket on the back of Steffi's bike, like a certain other dog I know. So yeah, we biked. FOREVER. I think we managed at least 35 km, if not 40. That's a lot. It was fun, though! "Pretty" is not a word you can apply to the weather just yet, but people were out and it was warm, and I saw all sorts of areas around here that I did not know existed! Like lakes! Like a nude beach lake! The best part of German bike trips is that you get to make a pit stop at the Biergarten instead of the ice cream parlor. We finally made it home hours and hours later, and were immediately exhausted, so we made some food (a-and ate it), and Steffi and Basti retired to Steffi's with a movie, and I'm thinking about watching a movie, but I also really need a shower, and I'm sort of playing around with the guitar, but I don't know what to do with it, and the internet is not teaching me fun songs. So Billy (or another Sparrow), hook me up! I'm leaving Monday for a week, so you have some time, but I want stuff when I come back, so I have time to learn and then teach.

You've Got to Be Kidding Me

10 April, and it is snowing like the Apocalypse out there. Assuming the world will end in ice and not fire. Man.

I slept later than I care to remember this morning (Ferien ist wunderschön) and spent my afternoon doing nothing of particular interest. Went up to church at 6:45 with Basti (he had brass practice, I had rehearsal for Good Friday, which didn't start until 7:30, meaning Nadja and I hung out for a bit first). I am playing James the brother of John on Friday, and it is a wonderful piece with blowing out of candles and of course gave us plenty of things to argue about. Who should blow out the candles? Where should we stand? How should we move? Craziness. Karin had brought Nadja some spätzle, which we cooked, and we also read Romeo and Juliet, because the church has a balcony and Nadja and I want to take advantage of that and do the balcony scene at some point. We read it in English. Erhard called and said "hey, there is this neat show on that explains how all the magic tricks are done, come watch it," so we did, and ate our spätzle, and hung out, and then Erhard drove me home through the crazy crazy snow. What happened to springtime? Ugh.

Just Don't Say I'm Damned For All Time

It's a good thing Adam sent me all these Jesus Christ Superstar songs. . . German Palm Sunday is closer to monks than rock and roll. . . although I hear the new tradition is the Passion, not JCSS? It saddens me a little, but I guess everybody is growing up and things are changing and you guys are more serious than we were, I guess. Can I help it if I need Herod to have a white guy Afro and be surrounded by androgynous dancer/servants?

And if Caiaphas can only sound one way, and it is that essential voice, and *melt.*


I wouldn't mind hearing Stella's Sanhedrin song, though.


Also, as long as this post is going out to the TUMC, might as well link you to my future Frisbee team (I swear you guys retain a place in my heart): http://ultimate.hampshire.edu. Peruse the history page to read about the infamous alum who majored in Frisbee "at the 1,100-student experimental college where classes are optional." And be so jealous that you are not going to my school.

Alright, Alright

When was my last post? Friday?

Ugh.

Ok, um. Saturday I got up early and got on a train to Nürnberg with church and we went to a Diakonie, which is sort of like a convent for Methodists. All the old ladies there were really nice and it was actually all kinds of fun, although the meat they served us was so gross I nearly went kosher then and there. They gave us ice cream later, though, and it was delicious. The weather was pretty, we took a walk, there are pictures that are making it on to Butterfly Paper slowly. After the old ladies, we went and saw an iMax movie about a Safaria and it was 3-D, which is fun but gives you a terrible headache. And that was my Dada month.

Sunday was the guitar service, where I managed to play decently, I guess, and an awesome guest preacher dude, who showed us (after church), his recently-televised abilities to identify Asterix quotes (don't ask) and then we made lunch together. It was delicious and a good time and I have this awesome Nadja-Piff quote written down, but it doesn't translate.

Monday, there was a Deutsch X. I took it, and wrote a few things on-topic, then BSed a bunch of things that had nothing to do with our current play, but rather the novella before it. Oh well. In English, we watched the most terrible 9-11 Conspiracy Theory movie ever. There was nothing right about this movie. It was hilarious. In Reli, I learned the Apostles Creed in German! I took a nap in my free period instead of studying for Bio, and then woke up for lunch, glanced at Bio, and then napped on. Fortunately, we did not have an X in Bio, so my lack of studying went without consequence. Instead, we learned the Biology of Beer, and it was as funny as you imagine. That night, I hopped on the train and headed back up to school to watch the school play, "Romulus the Great." It was fun, and starred many members of the K12 being incredibly entertaining. Also lots of girls dressed as boys, and Chubie had entertaining facial hair, and there were chickens and 11th graders as statues and I liked it. The play ended at 9:30, and Vronni drove me to the train station since it was raining, and I had the whole place to myself while I waited until 10:30, when the train came. It's nice to have a train station to yourself late at night. You can sing along to your iPod and no one will hear, and you can dance around, and it's lovely. Then you get to your home Bahnhof and get to have this amazing walk home. I wrote about it somewhere. Let me find that. "Walking home in the dark, all alone, when the streets are all empty. I can't help but run until I can't anymore, then I stop and double over and gasp at the air that is so cold it hurts when it hits my nostrils, my throat, my lungs. Then I straighten up and shove my fists into my pockets and walk off, really fast, as if someone were watching me. But no one is, their blinds are closed and their lights are off, and I'm alone. I want to scream into the clear night air, but it will only ruin what I have. I only paused when I saw the kitten, to pet it, but it knows that nights are for prowling, too. I don't want to ever get home, I want to go on walking like that forever." So yeah. That was neat.
I was sleepy Tuesday morning, and school was school. We had some long debate about what's a fruit and what's a vegetable in the free period, I played with prime numbers instead of paying attention in math (I like prime numbers), we went to the computer lab in history to start a week of looking at internet websites about coal mining history in Germany. You know this was a snooze. I got fun mail, and I ate lunch really fast and ran to catch the bus to go to the movies with Nadja and Anja. We saw Die Wilde Hühner, which only plays at 3 in the afternoon, and it was one of those awesome movies that romanticizes being 11 but was so much fun.
No Reli on Wednesday means I got to sleep in. More falling asleep in front of German coal miners in history, and we also watched a film strip. An actual film strip. About coal mining. It made the film strip noise and everything. It was crazy. There were only 6 of us in Bio, but we marched on. Art brought painting, and my art teacher was in a bad mood, but still complimented my (totally mediocre) paintings. I had delicious pizza for lunch and we discussed drunken Friedl stories. I spent German and Math more asleep than awake, and we continued the conspiracy theory movie in English. Some dude had an Arkansas accent, which comforted me, but the movie itself was boring. I got wonderful wonderful wonderful news in the mail- my Hampshire financial aid info came, and I am now a Hampster! I am putting my deposit in the mail tomorrow. So excited!
Thursday, I was up for Ausfragen in Sozi (I looked the word up in my dictionary at long last, and it said "interrogation," which sounds scary). I got 13 points, which is a 1, which is, as Tinta said, "krass." I am terribly proud of myself. In English, we listened to some sort of accent practice. British accents. Yuck. More computer lab in history, but I figured out how to talk to certain people via gmail chat, and that made it better. I went and picked up pictures (the ones that are on Butterfly Paper) from Nadja, and we (me, Nadja, Romi) decided to make a movie night. We made some tea and cut up some apples and carrots and settled down in the frozen basement to watch the Shipping News. The directing and acting were more than solid, but the plot wasn't my cup of tea. (My actual cup of tea was delicious, thank you.) Of course, movies are sometimes long, and I didn't get home until 10:30, meaning I was more tired on. . .
Friday. More computer-rooming it in history, and then to the other lab in English, and there was a new American! She will be here for the next 3 months and she is nice and I was happy to meet here. We spent the whole Pause talking, and it was nice. In Bio, Herr Wittmeyer kept reminding us that drinking in moderate amounts is a-okay and will not cause cirrhosis or death. Those sorts of reminders don't really exist in America. We started Ecology as well, because starting a new topic the days before a 2-week Ferien is the Thing To Do. No math, but I had to stay for German, and was so bored. Home, relax, almost forget about youth group, but Erhard came by to pick something up and drove me and we hung out and played games with Jan, who Nadja and Anja are roping in to help lead, and it was fun.
I slept in today, and I have been lazy and relaxing because I have Ferien now. I chose not to go in to the city, and probably will Monday or something. Right now, I have no Lust.

Sorry Guys

I spazzed on updates this week because I've been terribly busy.

Hopefully I'll fill you in tomorrow.

I'm starting to put new-old pictures on the Butterfly Paper- they date back as far as November and are in no particular order, so ask if you want to know what is going on. How do you get in touch with me, you wonder? Simple. You can hit the button that says comments at the bottom of this very post, or any other post for that matter. Even on Butterfly Paper. If comments that the rest of the Web can see are scary, no problem. Send me an e-mail at oneseventy@gmail.com and I will reply in a timely manner. E-mail too slow for you? I am available on MSN (aka Windows Messenger) (username yerbook170@hotmail.com) and on Google Talk and Gmail Chat via my Gmail address. If you aren't familiar with these programs, type them into your favorite search engine (you know mine), and I am certain you will find all the information you need to know.

I am more than happy to explain my pictures to you and to talk to you about the weather and other pleasantries. If I ever have some time at home again, that is.