Sunday, June 25, 2006

Swimming Around in a Lake of the Undead

I gots busy. Good thing I keep notes! Run-down of my life the past few weeks according to my planner:

6 June
Nothing.
7 June
Nothing.
8 June
Extend visa, catch fever, sleep and drink lots of fluids.
9 June
Pick up train tickets to Rome.
WELTMEISTERSCHAFT BEGINS!!!! GERMANY V. COSTA RICA 4-2 WHOOO!!!
10 June
Train to Rome: leave Augsburg 20:06, switch in Munich 21:03
11 June
Little brother's birthday.
Arrive in Rome 8:09. Meet Camilla at train station, breakfast at cute bakery, little tour of Rome (Piazza Navona, which has an awesome fountain, Campo di Fiori, Piazza Venezia), lunch with grandparents, Italian food is awesome, meet friend Adriana and go to Osservatoria di Monte and San Pietro, get pizza, go to concert, have trouble finding club for concert, get mini-pizzas to become a Real Roman, sleeeeeep.
12 June
Colosseum and ruins, Circo Massimo, Mouth of Truth, relax in park, gelato, WM FUSSBALL ITALY V GHANA ITALY WINS
13 June
San Luigi de Francese (awesome Carravaggio paintings), Pantheon, hang out in park, meet up with Dario and go to Gianicolo to see an awesome view, go to Olympic Stadium which is weird because of facism, dinner, watch Brazil v. Croatia, I hate Brazil, meet Camilla's uncle who was visiting
14 June
sightseeing: Piazza del Popolo, Via del Baubino (monkey street heehee), Piazza di Spagna, Trinita del Monti, Via Condotti, Fontana di Trevi, Quirinale, hang out with Camilla's friend Chicca who has access to tv in English!, giant dinner with 9 Italians who talk fast while Germany and Poland play a terrible game except then Germany got a goal in the 91st minute and won yay.
15 June
Meet another of Camilla's friends at Villa Borghese, hang out in pretty park, shop a little, it is HOT HOT HOT, come home to chill because of heat, make Adam give me play-by-play on England v. Trinidad and Tobago since I can't watch it, notice that Adam hates England, dinner with Camilla's grandparents delicious, watch last half of Paraguay v. Sweden which is yet another of those games where no one decided to score until the final minute (Sweden did), hang out with Camilla and her parents and talk about American history
16 June
Supposed to meet another Hampster (current student one year ahead of us) but can't find him on his cell phone, lazy lazy, see some churches and the river and stuff, go to party at Camilla's friend's house, thankful for the few people who can manage English conversations while drunk, want to speak German when drunk, go home and crash
17 June
Buy postcards and the like, be lazy, get train 21:55, Italy plays US, Italy sucks, final score 1-1 because US doesn't suck as badly as anticipated
18 June
Supposed to get into Augsburg 9:20, train is later than late, finally get back at 11 or so, come home, instead of dying, watch football. Croatia v. Japan is the worst game ever that ends 0-0 because Croatia and Japan are both terrible even though I had such hopes for Croatia after they held their own against Brazil. Brazil v. Australia, hate Brazil but Australia can't get a ball into an empty goal so no idea what to begin with this game. Father's day in US but not in Germany.
19 June
Forgot that my alarm clock lives in another time zone, overslept and missed German, not tragic. Discover I have no Reli, decide waiting nearly 2 hours for Bio is not worth it, so only a double-period of English. Read some sweet little story about an old-timey British boy's first girlfriend, doodle TMBG lyrics all over it. Realize that Germans don't quite get the meanings of deserve, impress. Decide to let it go. Spend newfound freetime planning Hampshire courses for next year, make lots of lists and point systems, have trouble committing, anyone who wants to help please e-mail me.
20 June
Arrive at school to find it covered in white curtains, loud music playing, people in Scrubs standing on roof talking into loudspeaker. Realize this is the famed Abistreik, something like a senior prank. Dance party without actual dancing instead of first 4 periods of school. Have to go to history, nobody pays attention. Have to go to Sozi, Herr Lang doesn't want to work either, discuss Abistreik, look at picture, have argument about whether "park bench" implies simply a certain type of bench, which may or may not be in a park, or a bench of any type that is in a park. Hitzefrei declared on a day we have no afternoon classes (Hitzefrei is when school is cancelled due to heat), go home, play around with courses more, do things on my to-do list but not actually able to check any of them off.
21 June
Too hot for anything, got a good grade on my painting in art, too hot to fall asleep in math even, trying hard not to work, just so so hot, mail postcards, Argie v. Holland, 0-0 because Argentina just played with all their substitutes and neither team really cared because they knew they were moving on to the eighth-finals. First day of summer.
22 June
Alarm didn't go off because I forgot to turn it on, skip school that was just Sozi Schulaufgabe, discover crazy racist ice cream that is delicious, have long discussion with host mom about racism
23 June
Train ran late, kind of paid attention in school but nothing interesting happend, decide to never go to German or Math again and so go home early, do nothing of terrible interest.
24 June
Start uploading pictures of Mary's visit to Butterfly Paper, Jugendrestaurant, in charge of dessert, make best darn mousse from the package ever, watch Germany v. Sweden, great game, 2 goals for Germany in first half, Sweden sucked. Back to kitchen, remain there for next few hours as Jugendrestaurant happens, clean up forever, watch Argie v. Mexico- tensest game ever, 1-1 after 10 minutes, then no more score for the rest of the game and then it had to go into overtime and I bit all of my fingernails off but then Argie scored at 98' and then life was good and the game ended and Argie won and now Argie's going up against Germany this Friday and Piff and I are probably going to kill each other.
25 June
Officially no longer under Experiment's control, which makes me happy. Still want money from them, will get some. Still uploading pictures, go look at them and enjoy and ask questions if you are confused. You can finally see what my amazing city looks like, and also what Munich looks like, and also what my hair has looked like since Berlin since I dyed it but after all the Berlin pictures were taken.

Monday, June 05, 2006

Alibis

Yes, winter has refused to release Germany from its bony clutch- it is still cold and gray here, making me pretty unhappy for a few days, but now I'm used to it.

Yes, you are whining because I haven't updated. Deal.

Hmm. . . went to the theatre Monday, saw Woyzeck, which is a classic German play about men peeing where they shouldn't, apparently. It was interesting. Spent the night at Berni's house, which mostly meant crashing in her brother's room, then waking up and eating breakfast and not having to walk to school for once, which is nice! History was pretty cool on Tuesday- we talked about Marxism and I stayed awake for the entirety of that topic, which is quite an accomplishment for me. It also marked the second day in a row that one of my teachers was all "Communism and Christianity are basically the same idea," which everyone knows already because duh and Shaw. (Confused? Grab a copy of Androcles and the Lion from your local library and read the prologue.) We spent Sozi whining about how the Berlin trip planned for next September has to be either moved or cancelled due to some teachers whining. At some point, Herr Lang said "Well, the sex change process takes longer than 6 months, so you're out of luck," which I wrote down. Don't remember the context on that one. Wednesday was art exam- went to school, had Reli, remembered that there are parts of Job (bibical) that are actually cool, went to Art, painted awesome awesome picture of girls swimming in bottle cap- a hope for the summer that will one day come. Even if I have to move to the Southern Hemisphere come November, I am getting summer this year. English was pretty enterating on Wednesday- I have the quote "An increasing number of officers who are out have had a very good experience in the navy." written down, and a note that we played Homos through History by speculating about Alexander the Great and Shakespeare. Not exactly revolutionary, but I got a chuckle out of the fact that no one else seemed to know these things. Thursday. I don't remember much about Thursday. I have the folowing quote written down from Sozi: "Anyone know they'll be busy 14-15 December? Mom's birthday? Grandma's? Someone's funeral?" Also, I apparently stayed awake in history, although I did not absorb a single fact. I had all of 2 periods on Friday- there was a chemistry exam that meant I had no Bio, there was no math, and I skipped German because there is no reason to wait 3 hours to go to one of my more pointless classes. So got up, went to history, where we apparently listed every single labor union in the history of Germany for the whole class. I slept. English was more time-wasting- we discussed some literary text, and by "we" I mean "people that are not me" and by discuss I mean "half-answer boring questions while reading the text line-for-line while Kari doodles They Might Be Giants lyrics all over her paper instead of paying attention." After that, I went home and uploaded pictures for a while- Picasa's being all flickery, so it's taking forever, but Berlin pictures are slowly filling Butterfly Paper. That night was lock-in at church, where we built rockets and watched Spiderman and played games and did not sleep. Got up next morning, drove to field in the middle of nowhere (Piff got almost lost on the way), sent our rockets into the sky all fizzzzzzzzzz boooom whooooooooosh booooooom fall down chase through long grass and wildflowers. I just like hanging out in fields full of wildflowers, really. Was half-asleep the rest of that day, stayed up kinda late anyway, went to church Sunday, turns out wearing red isn't a Pentecost requirement in Germany, had Communion and it was the very same service of word and table as in America, just in German, which made me super-super happy. I really wish the Germans would do Communion with some sort of frequency, because I miss it. Went to the go-kart place that afternoon with the bros and go-karts sure are fun because zzzzzzoooooooooooooooom fast. I am stil sore but that's okay. Ummmm, not a whole lot more going on. Today is Ferien, and I'm off for two weeks! Woo Pentecost. Heading out bowling shortly, incredibly lazy today, need to do a bunch of things that I am happily ignoring.

I slept in today and woke up to a really great conversation, and I'm using the power of the internet to hook me up with a bunch of country music cause I'm in that sort of mood. A mood for bittersweet country love songs about people being far away.

UPDATE: Guess who won at bowling? Steffi's little sister Simone. We played 3 games and in the first two, Basti beat me by about 2 or 3 points each time- so just barely. Piff was farther ahead, in competition with Simone, Steffi fell in various places. Then Game Three. Final Scores: Simone: 125. Kari: 124. Piff: 121. Basti: 102. Steffi: something less. I BEAT THE BOYS. WHOOOOOOOOO. This is possibly the first time in my life I have beaten my brothers at bowling. Ha.