Big Disco Ball

Ah, Wednesday. My day of full classes. (Further investigation has revealed I have no Spanish on Fridays, so Wednesday is my only crazy day.) Woke up early-ish, chilled until I met Sara and Katelyn to walk over to our tutorials, found out that Jack has Acting before WWWII, which he didn't bother to tell me, enjoy having a history class where I understand what is going on again yay for English. Wandered to Post Office, Central Records, ate lunch before Sara had to go to her next class, headed back to Dakin, where I discovered that my ethernet cable reaches my doorway, meaning I can sit in my door and yell at Jack while we each check our e-mail. Went to Phonetics class, taught by an awesome bioacoustician named Mark Feinstein, and I'm excited about this class. Went to Spanish, taught by an awesome Columbian lady named Nubia, who promises weekly parties where we will eat food (such as Columbian food and Argentinian food) and dance and sing songs. Also there are waaaay too many people in my class who have already had Spanish, which angers me because they should probably be in some higher class to allow true beginners the option to truly begin. Grrr. Laughed a lot in that class cause Nubia is a funny lady who makes us laugh. Ran to dinner while on the phone with a neurotic Jack who always thinks we will be late, ate quickly, still got to showing of Modern Times early, gave Jack a hard time. Watched Modern Times and laughed at Charlie Chaplain for being a funny, funny man. Came back to Dakin, retreated to Katelyn's room to read Charles Lindbergh biography, apparently written by out-of-work trashy romance novelist, since half was about Charles's escapades in Florida with his wife (using thinly veiled metaphors about mangroves and ibises) and the other half was about Lindy being some sort of anti-Semite isolationist who maybe hated Jews but maybe just didn't really care about Jews but certainly singled the Jews out many times and there's this one picture where it looks like he's Sieg Heiling, but he's really doing the Pledge of Allegiance and gosh he was friends with lots of idealistic young college men. Also people in the 1940s had really, really funny names, and also Katelyn kept having to say "ovation," Jack and I had an argument about my ability to pronounce "tribune" affecting his ability to pronounce "tribune," and by the end of the night half of Jack's clothes were scattered across Katelyn's bed and we have no idea why. We have a 3-page Lindberg speech to read still, and also a play, and Jack's off-campus for Spanish tomorrow, and it's Convocation and various other early-evening activities. While reading aloud may be a whole lot more fun (and it really is), it also takes a whole lot longer. Le sigh.

Fun fact: Katelyn lives on an all-female hall (although, unlike sub-free, males are allowed to come on the halls (sub-free means no substances on the hall ever even in your body) and also apparently chill in a girl's dorm and sit on the bed with a girl and randomly peel articles of clothing off while reading Jack is really strange and I adore run-ons) and they have a cutesy sign on the bathroom that you have to turn when there's a boy in there.



Addendum: and then the fire alarm went off at 1 o'clock in the totally friggin' morning. The rumor I heard was that it was our detested lounge dwellers, who probably are chuckle-headed enough to do such a thing. Sleep now angry grrrr.

I've Got You Under My Skin

Silly blog, I feel compelled to tell you my every move when I really want to sleep. It's only 11:31, but I had to get up early. I can sleep much later tomorrow.

Tonight was wonderfully chill. After heading over to Jackson's mod to hang out and watch Margaret Cho and also watch Jackson's modmates stock their fridge, I came back and grabbed Jack and Sara for dinner, and then Jack and I decided it was time to do our homework. Earlier in the afternoon, Jack was chilling in my room, unsure what to do with himself, and I suggested he read the assignment while I knit. Then I suggested that he read it outloud so we could both benefit, and he laughed and took it as the joke I intended it. Only at dinner did we realize the genius of this concept, and we locked ourselves in Jack's room shortly thereafter and proceeded to read the entire 45 pages aloud to each other (I took even pages and he took odd. We stopped mid-sentence when the page stopped mid-sentence), having far more fun than we should have as our ability to pronounce the big silly words the author loves broke down (your word of the day is "desiderata." Jack's is "proferred" and mine is "indefatigable," cause we each had to say those words frequently and never could) and Sara occasionally stopped by and told us we were very cute. I also learned that Jack can't say numbers when he is reading out loud, for which I teased him mercilessly. And he teased me mercilessly for always changing the pronounciation of place names when I read them aloud. I am pretty sure all future readings for this class will be accomplished this way. Our reading was interrupted by the all-important hall meeting, in which Phil shared his 7 pound bag of candy (I love Phil) and talked about hall stuff and confirmed our queer status and we decided that we need to get together and make a big sparkly gay sign to make the other halls jealous. And we set quiet hours on weekends until 11 in the morning, which makes me happy. Then Jack and I kept reading, then we finished our reading and sat on his bed and talked until Sara came back from hanging out with her Mt Holyoke friend Karina, and then the three of us talked a bit but realized we are all super-tired, and it is sleep time.

I am so happy about my schedule, and happy that classes start tomorrow.

My Schedule

Just got back from meeting with Aaron, my advisor (also Dean of Faculty), and we got my schedule all fixed up and pretty. Just look at it:

Yep, no classes on Tuesday, just Spanish on Monday evenings, a little busier Wednesday and Friday, but overall lots of nice sleeping in and free time. Free time which I suppose I will be using for doing a lot of reading and writing for my tutorial. Got the syllabus today and bought my books (3 big thick huge things and a play for this one class) and the first essay is due the 13th. I'm gonna read for a bit now until Jack gets back from meeting with Will (our other prof and his advisor), and then I might bother him until we go and grab Sara from the library to get some lunch. I've got a meeting about work-study at 1, and a hall meeting at 8 (where we will hopefully deal with the loudness and find out once and for all if we are in fact the queer hall), and Sara's friend from Smith (or is it Mt Holyoke?) is coming by this evening. Classes start tomorrow! 

Black Hole Sun

(Yes, I am just clicking on iTunes and making it pick a random song to name my posts. I am feeling uninspired).


Woke up with a sore throat this morning, which is definitely Jack's fault. Glad he made me take my kettle last night cause I needed tea. Two cups in the hour before I left my room, during which I read e-mail and then talked to Jack and Jackson who wandered by, and then realized at 9:33 that I had to meet my orientation group at 9:30, and so I threw clothes on and threw the boys out and went off to find that the group had not left me, and we took a nice big walking tour of campus to figure out where stuff is. Then we took a nice long walk to Flavors, the awesome ice cream place where the cows that produce the milk are literally in the field behind the ice cream stand. It was wonderful. Came back, knitted for a while, met the dean who leads the knitting circle, talked about knitting circle, generally hung out with fingers covered in yarn. Now I am going to go grab Sara and we are going to venture to the post office cause I haven't checked my box yet. As a reminder, here is where you should send me stuff:
Kari Collins
Hampshire College Box 354
Amherst, MA 01002
USA
Please send me things I like mail.

We are pretty sure that we have confirmed the rumors that F2 is the queer hall.

After post office adventures came dinner and then wandering around and some plant-related harassing of Alex by Jack and then Jack by me and then all of us by Alex and probably some other combinations maybe, and then we played cards until it was time for Kate Bornstein's lecture. She was AMAZING. I won't go into details since this is a family blog, but she talked about gender and sex and identity and desire and power and God and gave us all "get out of hell free" cards and was generally one of the most awesome ladies I have ever met, inasmuch as she is a lady. Then we went to watch Velvet Goldmine cause Jack's packages arrived today and that means all his movies are here and we only just finished and I have class at 9 tomorrow, so I think I will sleep.

My Lady's House

I don't actually have a lady, but if I did, her house would be Dakin, because Dakin is the best house. Today, in bullet-list form (I love bullet lists- if you don't, I don't care)
-meant to sleep in, but everyone else on the hall got up and was opening and closing our dorm's loud doors, and I got up at 8:30 anyway. Ate my chocolate crossaint while talking to Jack (and making him jealous of my crossaint), wandered through the rain to meet orientation group at 10. (by the way, Kace, we don't call it o-week. your school is weird.)
-drew a picture and painted a flowerpot
-went back to room, met Sara for lunch, ran into Jack, found pudding, had much happiness
-met up with orientation group again to walk to Eric Carle museum of picture book art. Love this museum. Looked at all the pretty pictures (they have a Wizard of Oz exhibit right now!!), bought giant rubber duckie for $4, saw more kids in an art museum than ever before.
-toured dorms with orientation group in effort to discover where we all live. still think dakin is awesome and merrill is twisted and confusing and hopeless.
-went to explore the basement of dakin with Sara, found laundry room and rec room, went back to Sara's room and chilled until dinner
-ran into Alex in dinner line, determined that we must stick together so I could trade my short ethernet cable for his super-long ethernet cable (as agreed yesterday but then we lost each other), ate dinner with Sara and Alex and Morgan, decided to have a big Queer as Folk party with Sara's dvds after dinner. Called Jack to come to QaF party. Had popsicle battle with Alex (that I won no matter what he says), presaging continued attempts of Alex and I to prove that one of us was in some way superior to the other. I am superior.
-went back to Dakin while Alex went to grab his ethernet cable, made the trade, grabbed supplies for QaF party, put Sara's pudding in Jack's fridge
-went to basement, watched wonderful beautiful beloved cheesy funny Queer as Folk (also fought with the dvd player for a bit cause not a single remote had batteries)
-returned upstairs, ambivilated between my room and Jack's, settled on his, listened to music and talked and ate pudding and drank tea
-Alex and Morgan decided to return to Merrill, claiming "lateness." the three remaining settled in to chill, complain about the bass down the hall
-at 11:03 (quiet hours start at 11 on weeknights), wonderful beloved awesome beloved intern Phil came up and told the bass party people to shut up, we told Phil we loved him
-at 11:23, the bass started again
-at 11:30, Phil returned, party people claimed they forgot, bass stopped for good. tonight at least.
-talked, learned to play hearts, did semi-okay at hearts, taught Jack to play capitalism, remained in 2nd throughout capitalism
-decided we were tired and broke off, asked Jack if I could just retrieve my mugs later meaning all stuff I had in his room, he said sure meaning just the mugs, drug my kettle and tea bags back across the hall and teased Jack about being silly
-wrote blog from bed using power of new super-long ethernet cable for which Alex gets much love
-sleep

The Way Things Work

To give you a sense of Hampshire life, or at least the sense that I have of it, I am going to list the things I have done the past few days in general order, without excess commentary. Assume that there is much meeting of awesome people and making of friends going on during all of this. (Not listing all of the awesome people, much as I love you all, 'cause I'll leave someone out and feel bad. Also I keep forgetting names.)

Friday
-sat in some assembly about hampshire academics that I honestly do not remember
-broke off into tutorials, met my awesome two profs of said tutorial (which is just one of my four classes that has a different name because the prof is my advisor so QUIT ASKING ME) and discussed that book that we were all supposed to read and most people at least skimmed parts of and determined that none of us, including the profs, understands it but had a really cool discussion anyway that was really a discussion and not those high school things where the teacher tries to drag any sort of comment out of anyone while looking at the answers in front of her.
-stood in a long line to get lunch
-went to take a "student survey" for which I will be paid $50 and which consisted of me evaluating social dilemmas or something but it was multiple choice and I knew I was at Hampshire when the faculty dude giving us the survey was reading the required instructions and said "remain inside the ovals. I know this is Hampshire and that goes against our 'it's okay to go outside the lines' policy, but this is the last time you have to stay inside the lines. After this, you can go wherever you want."
-went to a program about sexual assualt that actually had really powerful amazing speakers and included actual discussion within an auditorium of over 400 students. got fodder for many future jokes about the word "consent"
-stood in a very long line for dinner then sat with some random folks to meet new people
-thought about going to the 80s dance being offered, until Jack from across the hall came by with a cold and I made him tea, and then Dulcey from next door said something about watching Harold and Maude, and the next thing I knew I was in some dude's room (still not sure who it was) watching Harold and Maude with a bunch of people, of whom I knew about half their names, and laughing and laughing. We were in the dude's room cause he had a double and we all had singles, so he had space for all of us.
-slept until my alarm went off and then it was
SATURDAY
-avoided the breakfast line by being late and sat with some random folks to meet new people
-met up with the orientation group to go watch PSAs made by the house interns to tell us about the rules and issues that might come up living in the dorms and whatnot. People who know what the DYC Rules Video at Blackstone was will have an idea of what was going on. Dakin House had the best video, I must say, but perhaps I'm biased.
-listened to "high on hampshire" presentation, which was about the use of substances at Hampshire
-sat in a circle on some sort of platform in the middle of a field with a random group of first years and older students to discuss something that happened last night that upset us in an angry fashion, not a scared or sad fashion, although there was a bit of sadness. Noticed how amazingly the older students discussed these things, had one of those "wow I am at Hampshire things are so different here" moments
-stood in the longest line yet for lunch
-decided not to go to the talk by the author of the book we had to read that we all at least skimmed but none of us liked, instead went to Jackson's mod with Jack and Sarah to watch queer movies and hang out and laugh a lot
-went to dinner early, circumventing most of the line and discovering the dual joys of having a wide selection of tables and discovering that there are sometimes pies for dessert. mourned lack of pudding, which was at lunch yesterday and we have failed to find again, although Jack and I make relgious pudding runs. laughed and laughed at truly offensive jokes.
-met some of orientation group to walk across cornfield and buy half-off pastries. not sure which part of that activity was better. plan to eat pastries for breakfast and thus avoid the long line and waking up before 9 associated with SAGA (the dining hall)
-went to hear Elaine Brown lecture. fell in love with Elaine Brown, figuratively. knew I was at Hampshire when things that would be considered incredibly liberal at home were the conservative things here, felt inspired for activism but totally overwhelmed. love my school more than you can imagine.
-returned to room, checked facebook, realized that a girl I had not yet met said she had a present for me. wandered over to merrill, discovered merrill is really twisted and confusing and impossible to navigate, found her room anyway, she gave me tea and we talked about kettles for a bit. love this school so very much.
-am now sitting in my own room, glad that the bass-blaring folks down the hall are quiet, cause I'm exhausted and might sleep when I finish typing this. ADORE my school.
-update 1:14 am: the bass-blarers didn't exactly stay quiet, but they were at least intermittent. Jack showed up for tea, and we talked for what I guess was 3 hours. Tea and talking is good, even when it's late at night and you're braindead.

Caring Is Creepy

Moved in to my beloved Hampshire yesterday, am in the process of meeting many fine and awesome people, doing all these orientation things, some sillier than others. Impatient cause I want classes to start, hungry. Going to correct that last one by getting some breakfast now.

Winding Road

Boston is a pretty great city, but it's raining, so I'm in the hotel room looking outside, wishing it were prettier. Got in yesterday (after grueling terrible terrible car ride that made me miserable), ate food, knit (all that's left on my first mitten is the thumb... still have to make the second mitten, of course), slept. Woke up today, went and looked at Tufts for Travis, got superiority complex when they talked about "majors" and "requirements," went into downtown Boston, walked in rain, looked at gravestones, looked at buildings, decided it was too wet, came back to hotel, went to lunch, returned to hotel, internet.

A List of Books I Read This Summer, Just Because:
The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende
Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
The Gangster We Are All Looking for by le thi diem thuy
That last one's my summer reading assignment and in progress, the 3 before it rank among the best things I have read. Ever. Up there with the Color Purple and Dorian Gray and the Talented Mr Ripley. I wanted to read more, but I got distracted by other things.

A Good Flying Bird

I'm now in New Jersey, I hate cars more with each passing day, I'm sleepy. Lexi's developed a strange love for repeating songs, I have nothing interesting to say.

A Hundred Miles of Bad Road

Guess what? The Maryland Welcome Center has wi-fi! So you get a very very exciting update to say "I'm in Maryland now, on my way to New Jersey, which is a stop along the week-long expedition to Hampshire-land."


Trains are still way better than cars. I'd rather be having a cup of Earl Grey and some chocolate cake than mineral water and a granola bar right now, let me tell you.

I Cut All My Hair Off

Pictures forthcoming.

Leave it to Pro 7

To give me a solid laugh today. So Piff and I were baking some cookies and had the tv on in the background. Know what today's mid-afternoon docudrama theme was? Airports. So first some silly thing where some reporter went to Frankfurt and watched people cry as other people came and went and we rolled our eyes and laughed. Then, oh THEN came "We're a Happy Family," the docudrama that looks at some family's life. And you know what today's family was preparing for? Their daughter's return after 10 months in America as an exchange student. Oh, Piff and I laughed and laughed and laughed at these silly people, all setting up a brand-new television and cleverly hiding it under a flag, and making a big banner, and counting down the hours ("oh she's in Washington with her 7 hour layover now") and putting a frickin red carpet outside their door. And the little brother who saved his allowance for "weeks" to get €14 together to buy flowers. And how they went to the airport and rolled out their giant banner and put a bow on the dog and stood. And stood. And waited. And Piff and I laughed at them, and they waited, and then their daughter came home and looked sort of scared and then acted all excited. Her luggage got sent to Denmark, ha-ha. Then she came back to her house and was all "oh wow red carpet" and walked up to the door but she had no house key, so she had to wait for someone else to come let her in. Then she walked in and was all "Oh WOW it all looks so. . . same. Like it always did. Huh." And then she was too dumb to figure out the tv was under the flag and gosh this thing was funny.

Our cookies turned out okay, too, even if Piff breaks half of them in the process of getting them off the cookie sheet and on to the wire rack.



Don't you dare go getting ideas about a red carpet.

Introducing the Amazing Rockethead

For comparison purposes, a picture of me from last August, and a picture of me from May:




I spent Monday packing. Packing. Lots of packing, totally all packed up now. And I did my Abmeldung from Augsburg and I cleaned a bit and that was Monday. Yesterday, I got out of bed early and went with my host mom and Anja and Nadja to look at pretty castles and prettier mountains. We were kind of bad about taking pictures, but that's why I have the joy of hyperlinks. We went to Neuschwanstein and chose to just look at the outside cause the website has better pictures of the inside than is worth paying money to see for real. Then we went off driving through the mountains and stopped at the Plannsee for a swim and there was a weird guy there who talked to us and we decided later that he must have been a mailman but it was good swimming and we built towers from the rocks. Then back in the car and we drove to Linderhof, which is a very very pretty baroque castle that is mini-Versailles because Ludwig II really really hearted Louis XIV really. Totally pretty pretty place that doesn't let you take pictures inside but you should check it out sometime. Then we had dinner at the little restaurant there and I had real German Käsespätzle for the last time for a while, I guess, but I can totally make my own Käsespätzle. Then we drove home and stopped to stand on a mountain for a bit and then kept driving home. Somehow, a day in the Alps was what I needed right now- a day to go sit in this giant dramatic landscape and have my giant dramatic thoughts, or be able to finally ignore them, because these mountains have been here for so long and will stay here for so long and we can build our castles and highways and ski slopes, but even our tallest towers barely change that horizon, great beasts poking jaggedly into the sky.


I have a lot of things to do today, I guess, which is why I am awake early, I suppose (it is probably just nerves, really, and maybe the heat a bit).


And since I was asked, no, I am not going to be in any shape to play a mandolin this Sunday (hopefully those skills will come back soon, though!) but if the Sparrows want to change their program to include Lord I Lift Your Name on High somewhere, I will totally teach you guys how to sing it in German. Cause my German church is getting pretty good at singing it in English, and it is only fair. I promised.

Herr dein Name sei erhöht
Herr ich singe dir zu Ehre
Danke, dass du in mir lebst
Danke für deine Erlösung
Du kamst vom Himmel hierher
Zeigst uns den Weg
Und du hast am Kreuz bezahlt
Für meine Schuld
Und sie legten dich ins Grab
Doch du stiegst zum Himmel auf
Herr dein Name sei erhöht

Put Your Records On

Goodness I <3 Jesus Christ Superstar. I mean really. Last night's performance suffered a teensy tiny bit from accent issues (Judas especially) but only a little bit really. Otherwise, it was beautifully done and the director added some nice little sub-sub-themes via costuming: Herod showed up in a bathrobe, hooked to an IV, surrounded by nurse-themed background dancers. Naturally, I assumed he had AIDS, which is equally morbid and hilarious. When Judas did his zombie bit at the end and danced around the cross, his backup dancers were dressed in American flag vests, leading me to the assumption that some sort of blame was being laid on the US, with which I am not at all okay. I guess Americans are the new Jews? Another detail of the crucifixtion scene involved a dude with a video camera all up in Jesus's face, and Anja told me she interpreted that as Mel Gibson, which made me laugh. The Sanhedrin lacked the crazy onion dome hats they have in the movie, but they had some major bling going on and I guess that's cool too. Pilate OWNED his role, and was apparently some sort of understudy cause the guy that was cast as Pilate died 2 weeks ago eeep!? Also I realized that I basically have JCSS memorized, which I am sure will come in handy one day.

So today was my last Sunday at church, and the Official end of Nadja's work, although she's spending another month in Augsburg to do an internship, but this means there were many sad goodbyes. I have a wonderful big photo collage and all these memories floating around now, and I'm really going to miss my German church. So many amazing people who took me right in to their midst this year and were all a huge part of making me feel so at home here in Germany. By the last song, Nadja and I were both crying, and neither of us is sure we really want to leave. After church came Sommerfest, where we migrated to the yard of St Max (since theirs is green) across the street and grilled and ate and hung out and played around and painted giant musical notes and there was water and then there was rain at exactly the time things were breaking up anyway but it was short-lived and did nothing to stop the heat. Sommerfest was probably the best way to end my Augsburg EMK experience, and as much as I look forward to being back at Trinity, I really do love my church here and saying good-bye is very difficult. And since the Germans were always wonderful and worked their way through songs in English, I promised to teach you guys some songs in German, even if it's just translations of the songs you already know. It's only fair, really.

I plan to spend tomorrow packing, and probably also remember to de-register from the city of Augsburg. Tuesday is a trip with Eva and Anja and Nadja to Neuschwannstein and maybe some other things, Wednesday is when my host parents head up to Berlin for a meeting and Piff has his choir concert, and Thursday is when I fly. Nowhere near enough time. Sigh.

Oh, Right

I meant to update this thing, didn't I?

So first things first, I'll start with July 10th. I got up super-early and went to school and got on a bus and went to Nuremberg, where there is a museum about Nazis. The bus driver was an entertaining old man who told us that we are legally obligated to buckle our seatbelts, and that the police sometimes control this, and that they run into problems in that they stop the bus to control, only to realize that no one is legally obligated to have their seatbelt buckled while the bus is not moving. At the museum about the Nazis, we saw various exhibits about Nazis, and they had super-neat eyewitness interview things that made it much cooler- hearing old ladies talk about how they competed with their friends to see who could see the Führer the most in one summer when they were young is much more interesting than looking at some sign about the Führerkult. Also they had those fun anti-semite children's books like "How to Tell a Jewish Nose" and little children's anti-semite artwork and those make me giggle and also a little sad. Best quote of the museum (from an interview): "We didn't know where they were taking the Jews. I figured it was somewhere like Israel- somewhere for them to all live together, which would be better for them. Instead of just being bankers and captains of industry, they might have to sweep a street sometime, too." After looking at the depressing past all day, it was back on the bus, where our driver told us he never brings movies cause having to listen to a movie is the most boring terrible thing ever and then he told us to look for sheep in the clouds. I found no sheep, although I found some other things.

Then I guess I did less interesting things for a while? The Monday after that (the 17th), I went to Munich with my history class! Another day of getting up super-early to ride a train to meet Andre to drive to a place to get on another train except oops we got on the wrong train and then got off and had to wait for the next one and hahahaha. Then we walked around Munich and saw such important things as Where Kurt Eisner Died (there is a plaque with the outline of his body) and various important buildings, pictures of which live somewhere in the depths of Butterfly Paper. Then we had a quick Burger King lunch and then off to the Residence, where they had shiny shiny crown jewels of the Bavarian Royalty, and a few shoddily reconstructed rooms (here you see an artist's interpretation of what this room used to look like, and this original chair that we found in the attic I guess!). Then I took a more sensible train that took me straight home because that was sensible.

Tuesday was Let's-Go-Out-For-Dinner night with the host family (minus Piff plus Steffi and Nadja), and we realized we had a whole big pile of reasons to celebrate: Anja had finished her thesis, Philipp was back from America, Basti and Steffi were back from Egypt, Nadja and I are each leaving soon (okay this is not a celebratory reason) and Piff wasn't home (that one's celebratory though). It was a fancy Italian place in a courtyard and the appetizer involved recognizably whole squids, which grossed me and Nadja out, although playing with them was fun. Then I had a veal cordon bleu dealie that was really delicious, so thumbs up for Italian place in the courtyard!

Thursday Roo from Canada was in Munich so I went to Munich and hung out with him and his awesome mom! We looked at really really awesome art at the Pinakothek der Moderne (I am a little bit in love with and very scared of Hans Bellmer now) and walked around Munich (I pointed out important locations and only needed the map sometimes) and chilled at the Hofbräuhaus, which is a neat biergarten, and in general had a fun time. Roo took pictures, and he's flying back the day after me, so I'll hook you up some time in early August, I imagine.

Today is Jesus Christ Superstar at the open-air theatre in Augsburg, and tomorrow is Sommerfest at church, so I guess I'll have more Things To Tell You.


I know, I know, I said that I would quit
All right, I promise, no more after this
You don't know how I've tried
To forget what it was like
I remember now
Why they called it Thunderbird
Before you fall, you have to learn to crawl
You can't see heaven when you're standing tall
To get the whole sky
On the ground you have to lie
I know, I know, I said that I'd desist
All right, I promise, no more after this
Not to be what I was like
Not to soar across the sky
Spread my thunder wings and fly

My Current Project

 

Well, the wrongside of it at least (it looks pretty on the other side, I swear). Arthritis here I come.


(This and walking and drawing pictures is pretty much all I've been doing recently. Well, there was that trip to Nuremberg that was interesting. Wanna hear about it?) 

xkcd

dPain over dt

Things like this make me wonder if it's too late to major in math.

Wearing a Raincoat

 

Wearing a raincoat is flying around in a yellow rubber airplane made out of a raincoat. But if you think of that, you'll hurt your mind, and you'll need your mind for later on. 

LEONARD BERNSTEIN!

5 July
Went to school for history and art. Picked up various studies and things from the year in art. Painted really cute picture. Promise to digitize it if somebody asks. Please ask. Portugal v. France, of course France wins. Alliteration.

6 July
Went to school to do Sozi Referat. Talked about immigrants and races and America. Went well. Came home, went to Gerhard's work to help the interns translate a thing about coating the emission material on some part of a lamp or something, discover special Osram words that nobody else in the whole world knows, discover that this sort of translating is hard, but boys are nice and not too bad. Get super sweet Osram swag. Really sweet.

7 July
Skip school, sleep a lot. A lot. Rain, gray, do nothing of interest. Miss pretty weather for going outside.

8 July
Today. Philipp home. Germany to play Portugal. Hope Germany wins. Can't write complete sentences. Update.

I Think I'd Rather Spend the Day In Bed

"Kari, why don't you update with some sort of regularity anymore?" "Because I hate you all. Also my life is not that interesting, I swear."

26 June
Skip school, go to park and draw pictures instead.
27 June
Go to school, bored out of mind.
28 June
Skip school, visit Nordlingen, Heidenheim, Steiff museum, take pictures of churches.
29 June
Go to school, see duckies. Duckies are really really cute.
30 June
Skip school, Germany plays Argentina. 1-1 after overtime, Germany wins in the penalty shots, country explodes in joy, I cry a little. Get in car, go to cabin in the middle of nowhere with youth group (Piff "knew the way" so we of course got lost), roast sausages over fire, run around in the woods in the middle of the night in the pitchdark without a flashlight (but I did have those little glowstick thingies), watch boys build really big big fire, take lots of pictures, stare at stars, fall asleep.
1 July
Canada Day. Hang out in the sunshine, run around in the woods chasing Anja and Nadja and Jan except Jan hid himself somewhere and none of us could find him forever. Have water balloon fight that turned into water bucket fight because nobody likes waiting for water balloons to get filled. Dry out. Roast sausages over open fire. Roast marshmallows. Germans don't like marshmallows, sources say only Americans truly understand the wonders of a freshly roasted, gooey marshmallow. Play Wetten Das! with all sorts of crazy bets (including pajamas, cross-dressing, and hanging the clothes on our backs on a clothesline), win big. Make losing team run across big field to other house while singing songs about Germany becoming Weltmeister. Watch Truman Show. Watch boys build really really big big big fire (taller than Piff). Sleep.
2 July
Make paper boats, make storm to try to sink them. Hang out. Clean up. Hang out. Come home. Discover Hampshire orientation group is "Crafty Goodness and Exploration." Happy. Sleep.
3 July
Intend to go to school, oversleep, skip school. Go to park, draw pictures.
4 July
America Day. Skip school, make hot dogs. Think about going to park, drawing pictures.

Meta-note: I've gone and added Life Phases to my blog. Certain old entries now display a note "BEGIN LIFE PHASE ____" or "END LIFE PHASE ____." This stuff is probably more significant to me than you, but if you're curious how I sort my life (and it sorts into perfect periods of exactly 8 weeks), maybe you want to check this stuff out. Also you will probably see these sorts of notes popping up in future entries as phases begin and end.