Monday, May 29, 2006

The World Ain't Slowing Down

Sorry, I've kinda ignored you guys recently, but I've been busy. I have an hour and a half before I need to run out the door again, so I think I can give you a run-down of the past two weeks.

Wednesday, very very nearly missed my train (as in, if it hadn't been 5 minutes late, I would have missed it) but did make it to Wittenberg to see Mary and Casey and also that church that Martin Luther nailed some theses on or something. It was Casey's birthday yay Casey! We took millions of pictures of that and other things, and then got ourselves on a train and went to Berlin, where we found every single other American person who was with us in Tübigen and also in Cologne (well, Jesh wasn't there that day but he came later) which makes our group awesome for not getting anyone sent home. Um, lots of talking and whining that night? The next day, we went to the Amerika Haus, where a Jew from England told us that Germans "moan" too much, among other things. We then let Allyson, whose host sister lives in Berlin, show us around the city a bit (yes, more pictures, will upload sometime) and there was shopping for silly things and we found a Mexican restaurant! You know we ate dinner there, and it was Rose's birthday, so they made it happy hour early for us. That night, we chilled at the hostel and tried to write a song for the Bundestag and gave each other massages. Friday was Bundestag day! Rose and I were handcuffed to each other the whole time because handcuffs are awesome and we wanted to make sure we would have an appropriate reputation. We met all sorts of new people who are also C-Bers in some way or another, and then they chose to not let Buster do the original song that we made but instead had some other group do a cover of some pop song translated (badly) into German. We were slightly peeved. There were many politicians doing what they do best, including a pretty awesome dude who looked like Trotsky. After Bundestagging it for a while, we hopped on a bus and went off to set foot on American soil at the Embassy! The real Ambassador was not there, but some other dude was, and we mostly enjoyed our Bratwurst and potato salad and danced around on the grass and tried to have fun, although the DJ was pretty terrible and the party got boring fast. It was nice of him to play Sweet Home Alabama, though, so us few crazy people from below the Mason-Dixon line could scream it and dance in the rain. When the sun came back out, we discovered that paper plates make really terrible frisbees, and they eventually decided we could leave because we were going on a boat tour. Proof of Experiment's amazing organizational skills: they did not buy any sort of public transportation tickets for our large group to go on this required boat ride, so we all had to shell out on our own to get there, and also no one thought about your average public bus's ability to handle a group of, oh, 120. I hear there was some illegal riding and some €40 tickets handed out, and we ended up having to take two buses (one coming half an hour after the other) and it was a fiasco. Somehow, we all made it to the boat, where Rose and I promptly went to the bottom level and fell asleep. I hear there were pretty things to see, but we were exhausted. We were left to our own devices to get home from the boat ride, and we all had a good laugh as we watched Mary and Katelynn get on the subway in the wrong direction and ride away looking scared (they got off at the next stop and caught the next train back- they hopped on before we figured out which train we needed to take). Saturday morning brought paperwork and more paperwork, and a pretty neat alum named Dillon or Dylan or some spelling of that idea who told us not to begin sentences with "Back in Germany" or "One time in Germany" or "Germany" and also not to yell at our moms for buying gross bread because America does not have good bread. Bustin Roses decided to finally get some of their many awesome Betreuer songs from the year on hard disk, and me and Mary and Emily and Christine and maybe some other people hung out and listened to them be awesome. (Bustin Roses is Buster, Dustin, Rose and Tootlez, for ye unintiated.) It was rainy and Mary and I went into the city to buy hair dye and hope to sightsee, but we ended up cowering in the mall because the weather was gross. The Betreuers had told us to meet up at 7 at a Biergarten, and Mary and I ran into the members of Bustin Roses in the train, and the 6 of us tried to find the Biergarten, and eventually asked a snarky newspaper stand man who told us where, and we arrived to find Swantje and her boyfriend and nobody else. We waited a while and then a giant Bero-led troupe of Americans showed up and it was raining and the Biergarten had no space for us, so we went and got on a train and rode somewhere and stood on a corner for half an hour until someone told us we could go to the bar across the street, where we ordered drinks and hung out and Rose and Dustin and I talked to Alum Dude Dyllan (who is from Virginia Beach and goes to William and Mary) and he eventually offered to head back to his place but Rose and Tootlez and I were tired and cold so we went back to the hostel and mooched internet and my Roomies came home and there was post-midnight wishing of Mary a happy birthday (her birthday was Sunday) and it was super-cute when the South American dudes brought her a birthday beer, which she may or may not have actually drank. Emily dyed my hair at 3 in the morning and we slept nowhere near enough. Sunday was all good-byes, which my brain doesn't even begin to understand because I have to many of them and they are rarely real, and then I hopped on a train and listened to wonderful travel music and I love the café in the train where I can get a cup of tea and sit and watch the countryside- THE way to travel. Got home, my host parents had some guests over so there were drinks and desserts with people I barely know, and also sweet sleep. I went to school on Monday, went to school on Tuesday, went to a football (soccer) game in which I saw the WM (world cup) team from Togo beat the Bayern All-Stars or something of the like. Went to school Wednesday, picked up Mary from the train station on the way home from school, Thursday was Ascension, so no school and I gave Mary the Grand Tour of Augsburg (there are pictures of this, too) even though everything but Burger King and Subway and McDonalds was closed. Took Mary to Munich on Friday in the pouring rain and Munich is a pretty nice city to hang out in, actually. Pictures pictures pictures, found the best non-used bookstore ever, had the best beer ever, got really wet. We chilled on Saturday and went shopping in my city (which is the second-oldest city in Germany, by the way, having been founded in 20 BCE) and I bought pretty things for way cheap at H&M, as usual. Yesterday was Confirmation Sunday and church was full and there was a praise team there that even played a song I knew, and we met Mary's British friend Jim that afternoon and then Mary got on a train and I came home and crashed. School today was uneventful, and I'm leaving in one hour to go see a play with my German class and stay and Berni's house because we will get back late and there is no train.

I guess it's Memorial Day, too, isn't it? Hmmm. My upcoming schedule: art Schulaufgabe Wednesday, Ambassador Project due Thursday and I still haven't written that paper, lock-in at church Friday-Saturday, then comes 2 weeks of Pentecost break and I am thinking about heading to Rome the second week of that because there is a future Hampster down there and she is willing to show me around yay! Still trying to figure out if I should go somewhere the first week- anybody want me for a few days?

Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Run Run Run

I made it to 107 of 127 in Paris picture posts, I believe- this means I have 80 pictures that are just going to have to wait. Until then, overload on visual stimulation for a while, then take a few days to recover and PREPARE.

This weekend was awesome- we had a great time at Mädelsabend making wraps and singing songs and watching a super-sweet movie that made me miss someone, and just hanging out and not getting enough sleep. Saturday morning brought losing at Sorry (which is called Mensch Ärger Dich Nicht in German) but not as bad as Nadja lost, and then driving Jaclyn home and getting to stay for delicious lunch instead of me and Nadja and Anja foraging something from our leftovers. Back home, turned leftovers into a salad for dinner, up to church, meet up with boys, drive to Conference. It rained like CRAZY. The radio was terrible and I surfed it constantly and maybe heard one decent song. My iPod isn't friends with Piff's cd-player-to-cassette-adapter, even though the speaker jack fits in the hole. We were too early and it was wet and we walked and hid from the rain and ate and hung out. The Teenie Konferenz suffered from having less energy than a similar event in America would have, but a fun band played some praise songs that I know and some praise songs that I didn't know and there was a silly dance! Ummmmm. . . slept in the Sporthalle that night, which isn't the most awesome place to sleep, but we passed out on our air mattresses and didn't wake up until people started waking up and being noisy in the morning. It was nowhere near enough sleep. Breakfast and packing and wandering for the 2 or 3 hours until stuff got started, then an overly-long ordination service where we tried really, really hard not to fall asleep with minor success, and then waiting in the longest line for lunch and they were out of schnitzel and tomato-mozzerella sammiches, so we ended up with Wurst and pea soup and a pretzel (you can play a guessing game to decide who got what!). Hanging out for a long time, Nadja ran into some people she knew, Anja saw a few people she knew, but mostly only from our church, walked around, avoided the off-and-on-rain, eventually went back for the afternoon service, which proved to be a lot of fun with an awesome xylophone-based band and a cool Baptist dude making a keynote (I know, Baptists, but this guy was neat!) and a surprise visit from the goalie from Stuttgart, who I guess is a famous Fußball player and also pretty religious! Lots and lots and lots of Fußball in general. . . end of the fun service, headed home but not without stopping by Nadja's mom's house to say hi cause it was Mother's Day and all. . . half-sleeping in the car. . . get home, "help" Piff with his English homework, sleep. . . Monday at school. . . skipping Bio in the afternoon because I had to buy birthday presents for a ton of people because I will be seeing them today (!) and then Tuesday and more school and fully intending to bake cookies, but then I fell asleep on the train and missed my stop and thus got home an hour late and then had lunch and started uploading Paris pictures and Piff had a lot of homework and cookies didn't happen. Sorry, guys.

I AM GOING TO BERLIN TODAY. WILL BE GONE UNTIL SUNDAY. WILL HANG OUT WITH CRAZY AMERICANS, TAKE MANY PICTURES, HAVE ADVENTURES, MAYBE EVEN TELL YOU ABOUT THEM.

Monday, May 15, 2006

You're A Sleepy Thought

BEGIN LIFE PHASE BERLIN

Sunday, May 14, 2006

Happy Mother's Day

END LIFE PHASE SPRING

Thursday, May 11, 2006

508

Pictures on my camera from Paris. 200 live at Butterfly Paper now, the rest will come when I get a chance.


Church was fun Sunday, and Nadja's promised me the pictures that you will love love love. Went to school with Piff Monday. . . I talked to his class about America and school and I honestly don't remember what else. . . fun people, though, and a change of scene is always lovely, especially on a nice day when Piff has a free period and we can sit on the grass and bask in the sun. Slept in super-late Tuesday (til 8!) and went to 2 classes, and was also lazy, I guess, but I did at least get to the post office with the biggest stack of postcards ever. Yesterday was Wednesday and I went to school and then I was sick and I came home after history because I really only felt obligated to go to Bio anyway and then I slept and then Adam did his best to make me smile and forget my aching stomach for a while and then I slept some more. Felt better today, went to my 3 classes, still really love Sozi even though the whole discussion of marriage in the German context is so much more boring because there is so much less controversy than in America. Mostly they are all "would somebody please get married before they are 35 and also maybe have some kids because our population is shrinking so much and we are going to die out according to people who exaggerate things." And in America we're all "gays sanctity of marriage divorce rates church state children aaaaaaaah" and it is emotional and controversial and you can have a debate. Oh well. The sun came back out after being gone for two days, and that was nice, but I spent a good portion of my afternoon uploading pictures for you fine folks. Mary is a very bad photographer no matter how dearly I love her and I apologize because my camera is also pretty bad and that makes certain pictures, like of the pretties in Versailles, less pretty, but there is nothing I can do about it. The pictures of the statues in the Louvre are some of my favorites. The 5 pictures of the parking lot at Versailles are not my favorites at all, why did Mary take them? The pictures of me making silly silly faces are also not my favorites, but Someone likes them and up they go.

I am really tired and I have not studied for my Bio Schulaufgabe that is tomorrow and that I guess I have to take cause Fosse kind of expects it of me. Ugh. Good thing I have a free period, I guess.

Tomorrow night is Mädelsabend at Anja's, and it's General Conference Saturday-Sunday, so I'll be scarce this weekend, but I'll try to get all the pictures up before I go to Berlin, which I do on Wednesday.


BUSYBUSYAAAHBUSYEEEEEEP

Thursday, May 04, 2006

Goodness

I am exhausted.

I went to Paris, I had fun, I arrived home safely. There are millions of photos, and I will upload mine sometime in the next weeks- the pictures are better than any words I could produce. Mary has a bunch of photos- click on the link to her blog down there and you can figure out how to get in touch with her to see hers if you are impatient. I also stole a few from her and have put them on the Butterfly Paper, so you know what to do.

I am going to finish the Zwickau post one of these days, too, I swear.

I have been going to school while I wasn't traveling, and it is still school. The weather is warming up, the sun is shining more frequently, and that makes me pretty happy. I wore shorts today, even.

Life is really busy and yet pretty quiet. It's a nice pace and I'm very happy and that happiness translates into less blogging, I guess. Sorry guys.


I've got my Hampshire e-mail address now: kmec06@hampshire.edu. If you have something against gmail for some strange reason, I guess you can reach me there. Also, that means I now have Facebook, which is strangely addicting.


Hampshire housing forms are now available and I am trying to figure out if I prefer "very quiet" "quiet" or "semi-quiet" housing, or if I would be deeply offended by having a roommate or not, or if I go to bed before 11, between 11 and 12, between 12 and 1, or after 1 on weekdays. I went to bed at 2 last night. I plan on going to bed at about 9:30 tonight. I have no idea how to interpret those sort of discrepencies, which are entirely normal for me. Hmmmmm.



Tuesday marked 1 year of Beige Space existing. I want presents.