Student Life!

Hello everybody, welcome to my blog number something. . . 15 or so maybe? If you don’t count the one that got censored. Wow. . . that means it’s been about 17 or 18 weeks or something since I’ve been here. I’ve now transitioned from internship stage to university stage, which made me feel a little uneasy at first, because I didn’t have a ID that said I was allowed to visit the classes, and because I still didn’t know anybody at all that I would enjoy hanging out with. But, after the first couple weeks a few surprises have come my way, and I feel much better about the whole thing, even though I’m still waiting on my stupid ID, and I still hardly know anybody in my classes. . . So without further introduction, I present to you the rest of my blog #15 (or #16 for all you hardcore collectors out there).

Grrr. . . Gasthörerschein

So as I mentioned before, I started going to lectures before I had my ID that said that I was an auditor and would be visiting the classes. Well, I’m still doing that now, but at least I know why I haven’t received an ID yet. At the beginning of October, I sent my money over via money transfer from my account in the Sparkasse to the account of the university. Well, I did this at the Klinikum, because it was nearby my work and I wanted to do it as soon as possible. Well, I had though that everything went smoothly. I even got a carbon copy of the money transfer with all the information on it. It was handwritten, copied by the employee there in the Sparkasse. So I left all happy and feeling accomplished. Little did I know that the number she wrote down was wrong! (Duh duh duuuuuuhhh!). So when I started classes, I wondered “Huh. . . I should really have received some sort of confirmation from the university by now. . .” I then proceeded to look into my account to see if I had received my refund from my bus ticket that I sent into our program’s headquarters last month. Not only was the refund from the program there, but somehow the 150 Euros that it cost to apply as an auditor was also still there. What? The money transfer didn’t work? I then proceeded to go to my Sparkasse in Ebergötzen. When I explained to them what I did they rolled their eyes at me when I mentioned that I went to the Klinikum bank to do this. Turns out the people there are just mostly students and not nearly as awesome as the people working in the small town bank. I eventually confirmed that nothing had happened to the 150 Euros that I meant to have transferred, so I was sent to an electronic terminal in order to try again. When I went to type in the bank account number from the carbon copy I still had, it immediately notified me that there was no such account. Great. So I found the number that was given to me by the university in order to check it again, and discovered that the number was incorrectly copied down by the girl in the Klinikum. That’s not an uncommon mistake, because she was hand writing it, but let me just mention that there were four zeroes at the end of the number, and she decided to write down three zeroes and a one. Where she got the one from? No idea. Kind of odd if you ask me. But wait, there’s more. Remember when I mentioned that the computer immediately notified me of the false number? Well the girl should have also been notified when she tried to process the request, so why didn’t I get a heads up that the money transfer didn’t work. They have all my contact information, and they could’ve just sent me an email and all this wouldn’t have been an issue. But no, she was probably just too lazy to say something. Now I’m awkwardly trying to contact the university, but I can’t ever manage to get their attention and am pretty fed up with that. Sigh. . .

More exciting stuff, like . . . Orchestra!

So Tuesdays I now have Orchestra practice. I auditioned my first week of classes and played something that I might have called music, and yet somehow still got in because they are desperate for horns. Yeah. . . it didn’t go so well. I picked out a modern piece to perform, and it turns out, when I got into the audition, that’d I’d have to be standing. I absolutely cannot stand playing while standing. I chip a lot more, I sound a lot harsher, it’s just a bad idea. Not to mention, it does wonders on the confidence. So after a really bad attempt at Hindemith, I eventutally had to sightread some stuff. In the key of C. I have no practice reading in the key of C while it’s in treble clef. In bass clef it’s really not that big of an issue, nor is it with E of Eb, because I sometimes practiced reading my trombone parts from jazz band, read Dvorak in E last year, and read Eb alto sax parts this year in Blasmusik, but this was in C and in treble clef. . . sigh, it was terrible. So they basically said I need to practice a lot to be able to stay in this ensemble. Well, I have the time for it, so I don’t really see that as that big of a problem. I made it in, yay! Not only that but I met a lot of new people, and we share interests, which is fantastic. We had a lot of time to get to know each other considering our music isn’t in yet and the brass has just been kinda sight-reading silly stuff. Unfortunately they are all students. The parties start late and end later, which is a problem when there is one night bus at 11:15, but at this point, I don’t really mind. Gives me an excuse to get some sleep, haha. I went to an international party Friday that was lots of fun. I met tons of interesting people from all over the world, here in Germany for some reason or another.

Oh and our orchestra is going to be traveling to Bremen later this month. Cool, right? I’m so excited.

Well, while I was auditioning I also met this horn player who was auditioning at the same time who was from England. It was pretty weird, because we both started out speaking German to each other and then realized that we both were totally not German. Well, he invited me to take part in another concert happening on the first of December. It will be put on only by international students. We have a few asians playing piano/other instruments, me and the Englishman playing a duet, a solo from him is also going to be played, another american is playing a solo, and Irishwoman playing something and a pop rock band playing quite a few songs. This band consists of a Spaniard, a Brazilian, Me, the Englishman, and a Frenchman. I think our bassist was originally German, but he didn’t show up to enough practices apparently, so that is going to change. I’m pretty excited about the whole thing. I got to meet some really cool people and am finally getting connected to the university. I also have learned a whole bunch already. For instance the way that Germans say sharp keys is by adding “is” on the end, for example Fis or Dis, and likewise for flats it would be Des or Ges. And then there is the whole “H” thing where it is really Bb, or maybe B is Bb and H is B natural. I’m still confused about the whole thing. Also the Englishman was taught totally different fingerings on his horn. He uses the Bb side a lot more, which I find interesting and worth writing, because when I use his fingerings, I play out of tune. It makes me wonder whether our horns were build differently to accommodate for that or not. I haven’t actually spent enough time playing horn with other German horn players to note a difference in fingerings yet, but I’ll get back to you on that one.

Classes

I’ve decided on a distinct schedule, and I am taking 12 credit hours (although I don’t dare get credit for any of them, or else I’ll lose my scholarship back home because I will no longer be considered a first year student) Mondays and Tuesdays I have a General Biology lecture that is right now about zoology, evolution, and anatomy. Wednesday I have a Genetics and Biotechnology course in which I am currently learning about DNA being duplicated and also transcribed, and then translated into proteins. That class is quite difficult to understand in German, but I don’t get a grade, so I just understand what I can. Wednesday is also a Music science class, in which everybody has to give a speech on a specific piece or symphony. I am doing a speech about Tchaikovsky’s 6th Symphony with the Englishman again. I’m pretty excited/nervous about it. It is in January, so we have plenty of time. Thursday and Friday is General Biology again, but this one goes more into Cell biology, organic chemistry and such. The two classes seem to be coming from opposite directions. The first one is going from big picture evolution, and whole organisms, whereas the second one has started about elements and atoms and is going from small to big. So that’s it for classes, my schedule is right now just busy enough for me not to be bored, but still relaxed. The classes are only an hour and a half, but they are rather complicated and go deeply into the material, so I really have to concentrate hard the whole time, which is rather tiring.

OMGoodness! I hate buses. I think when I get back to the states I will never ride a bus again. I’m sick of waiting for them, riding in them, getting frustrated because of the occasionally obscure alternate schedules. Did you know there is one bus that just randomly doesn’t go through Ebergötzen like it does every hour? It just goes right past. Why? I have no idea.

Ende

Well, to end on a more serious note, I’m sitting here writing my blog without internet access to waste my brain away, and have been looking though pictures that I have in my collection from high school. It made me look at those years and smile on them. I’m not wanting to still be in high school, but there were sure a lot of great memories from it. This experience has really made me appreciate my family and friends back home. I love you guys so much and I honestly don’t think anyone else could have done so great of a job of getting me though high school and into life with a great mindset and drive to get something accomplished. I miss you guys so much right now. I can hardly think about all the great experiences we had together, or even the not so special ones, like going up to Grandpa’s farm on some weekend just to spend some time with him, because it make me homesick (random note: I have also never appreciated Indiana weather so much). As much as I miss hanging out with my brothers right now and just annoying my mom by having meaningless silly conversation, I can’t and it’s still a long way off, so I’m not going to think about it. But I wanted to give you all a big blog hug, because you are awesome and I’m excited for the future that you have made possible for me.

So, kinda homesick, but at the same time, when I walk into town and see the beautiful city when it’s full of people going one way or another, I think “Wow, this is awesome!” and then I grab a cheap pastry and feel much better, haha.

Skez

Finally got this blog up. No good exuse really. . .

Well, I figured since I’ll be starting at the university on Monday, I should probably update my blog. I’m going to go ahead and blame the long gap on the fact that we lost our internet for a week. Well, it’s been three weeks now, I believe, since I last wrote and a lot of things have happened. I ended my internship in Grasslandwissenschaft and started and ended another one that was in Plant/crop quality, and now, like I said, I will be auditing lectures at the Uni. In between there someplace I went to Hungary and did some other cool stuff. I’ll just write it as it comes to me.

Internship

So, my last week with the grassland science people was fairly uneventful. I basically got to work outside one day, and that was it. I had to make the final measurement of the grass heights. Other than that it was counting grass, entering data, and so on. It was kind of frustrating since I wanted to start in plant quality that week, but it got pushed back, even though they didn’t need me.  Oh well. I got a nice little going away card from them; it was quite pleasant. I still go back to visit every once and a while.

The next internship was in plant quality. Basically, it’s more like what I wanted to do in the first place. There’s different experiments going on with strawberries, potatoes, tomatoes, and even potato chips. My first day I titrated a solution that consisted of dissolved, freeze dried strawberry powder. What that means is I measured how much acid was in the strawberry by adding a base to the solution (a base is basically the opposite of an acid. When mixed they form water and a salt). When I write down how much base I needed to neutralize the acid in the solution, I can determine the amount of acid that was originally there. The process is quite slow and the work was extremely boring after a while, but that’s why iPods were invented.

After that day it went a little better, or at least it was more interesting. When I was working in Grassland science I got to see one of the projects that involved different types of tomatoes and different ways of growing them. There was wild ones, ones you see in a store, big ones, and tiny ones, grown either hanging or left on the ground. Well after they grew them they were subject to a few taste tests earlier in the year. The participants were asked to grade taste, juiciness, sweetness, ect. Then what I did is take the remaining tomatoes and test them in the lab. I measured juiciness, sugar content, and acidity, which involved using all sorts of cool machines and stuff. A blender to liquify it, a giant refrigerated centrifuge to separate the solid from the liquid, and a refractometer (or something like that) to measure the sugar content for example.

Other then those two things I also worked once more with the strawberries. I did this whole big process involving different chemical reactions in order to measure the Phenol content. Phenol is a common antioxidant found it red stuff or blue stuff and sometimes yellow stuff, such as strawberries, blueberries, and other brightly colored fruits and vegetables. That was pretty cool. I got to use a photo-spectrometer hooked up to computer. I felt like a pro. After that internship I got a nice little coffee mug, pen, and bag from the university as a thank you. It was quite lovely.

Excuse me while I rant (actually a lot smaller than my original rant)

 I’ve been devouring podcasts like crazy: “Radio Lab”, “This American Life”, “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me”, “All Songs Considered”, and I’ve even started with BBC and NBC daily news podcasts. As a result, I’ve been quite up on things such as the election coming up in the states. I apologize if you agree with them, but some of the interviews that I hear of Tea Party members makes me a little bit embarrassed to be an American. And being American, I often get questions about what the heck their goal is. I still have no idea. In fact in one interview I even heard a man use the Bible and Christianity to support using fossil fuels. No joke. “God created the earth for us to utilize. . . I read my Bible,” he said. Really? God created the earth for us to utilize, and not to preserve? That’s not the way I interpret it. I don’t think I ever read “You have heard that it was said ‘Be fruitful and increase in number,’ but I tell you ‘DRILL BABY DRILL!!!!’” but maybe I missed that part. I just want to see some people suggesting constructive ideas instead of just being anti-whatever they need to to get them in office. I’m afraid this movement is making  our conservatives more conservative and our liberals more liberal and inhibiting our ability to compromise. If the Republicans do win the majority in both the Senate and the House, I want to see them work with the president instead of against him. By the way, I know the Tea Party does not even represent a significant percentage of the American people, but it’s the only thing that gets covered here, which bothers me a lot. Sigh. . . rant over.

Ungarn

Thats German for Hungary. They didn’t like the “H” I guess. I went to Hungary last weekend, from Thursday night until 1 in the morning on Tuesday. Our little town’s soccer team has a partnership with another little town’s in Hungary called Aba. No, not ABBA, Aba. They’re actually about 4000 in population, double the size of Ebergötzen, but a small town nonetheless. It’s about 80 km south of Budapest, but at the same time a world apart. Aba is very old-fashioned, poor looking town in my opinion. It’s still very agriculture based, with plots of crops mixed in between the houses. I’m talking about good old family farms, that you don’t really see in developed countries anymore. It was something that I’d never really seen. The houses are not so well maintained and there probably hasn’t been a new one built since forever. The streets look dusty and worn out, although there isn’t really any pot holes. They do, however, look more like dirt roads than paved ones. Budapest is completely different. It’s a big city with beautiful architecture and even a gigantic modern shopping mall that reminded me of the Circle City in Indianapolis. Next to it Aba looks rather pathetic.

But anyway, we were there because of this partnership. We did play soccer at 11am on saturday as a friendship game type thing, but other than that it was just a bunch of eating and drinking. I ate soooo much food. This one night we basically got a huge platter per 4 people with a bunch of goodies on it, and we weren’t limited to just one. Schnitzel, deep-fried mushrooms, chicken breast, flank steak, fried eggs, rice, vegetable mix, and onions. . . ‘nuff said. It was delicious. Then, after we were all stuffed full of food, they were like “dessert?” and we were like “Heck yes!” and they gave us crepes stuffed with nutella-like chocolate deliciousness and topped with whipped cream. Oh and there were sprinkles on top, just for kicks. I was so full. And then this drunk guy bought me a Weizen beer even though I insisted that I didn’t want it because I was stuffed to the brim and Weizen takes up quite a bit of room. Yeah, I had to pretty much stay put for an hour before I could actually move.

But not all of the food was that well appreciated. Ok, I’m jumping forward in time a bit now to our last dinner in Hungary: the notorious fish soup. They served us this traditional Hungarian soup in which they tood a huge fish, chopped it up perpendicular to the spine, and dropped it in. Every bowl had a chunk of fish in it shaped like a U (part of the spine and ribs with the meat being around the ribs). I honestly did not think it was that bad, but you just had to get past the way the soggy, overcooked fish looked and not be grossed out by taking out the spine and ribs. But, yeah . . . It made this one guy puke even though he hadn’t even drank anything. Other people were puking for the very opposite reason. They drank a bunch without eating anything, because the fish soup looked gross.

So, back to Saturday, we went to a big festival after the soccer game. What we did was get into the back of a horse drawn wagon and ride around the town in a parade, stopping only to drink wine, eat food, and dance some traditional Hungarian dances. I mean, we didn’t dance, rather the other people participating in the parade. Some other carts carried the dancers, who were kids dressed in traditional clothing. There was even one dance where the girls danced around with big flasks of wine on they’re heads. It was pretty cool. The wine was the focus of the festival, so I got to try all sorts of different wines that were all made right there. Actually, not all of them. That stuff take a toll on the system after three hours of parading, so I eventually stopped and switched to the tea.

And that was that. Afterwards we went to the pathetically tiny disco there and danced it up. It was a good time, especially for the sober people. Some of the people that were not so sober started relationships that they largely regretted the next morning. So it goes. I found it amusing, considering they couldn’t really communicate to each other. Oh and at the end of the night, like 3am, this guy decided to push a little too hard on the door, broke the glass, and then proceeded to run away. My host dad, being the good policeman he is, chased after him in vain before returning and instructing us to be very careful going home. It was kind of frightening, but ended up not being a big deal because there were so many witnesses and they new that we didn’t do it.

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. Budapest was on Sunday. Like I said, we visited the big, beautiful, touristy buildings and statues. There’s a really nice area that’s on top of a mountain looking over the Danube (I think that’s the translation for “Donau” right?”), which had a beautiful view of the whole city, including the really cool looking parliament building. There was also this gigantic church. Because no great European city is complete without a gigantic church.

Yeah, so that was it. I explained Sunday night already. Nothing else really to say there, besides that these kids drink like crazy. Sunday these two guys had drunken 13.5 liters of beer, starting at 8 in the morning. While drunk they challenged me that if they could reach 15, I would have to drink a bunch of shots or something, but I convinced them that I should just have to sing instead. So I promised to belt our National Anthem if they made it, as long as they promised to sing the German Anthem if they lost. Well, they lost and I’m still waiting on the German Anthem to be sung to me. How disappointing.

Last Week

So, last week, like I said, was my last internship week before starting at the University. This weekend was pretty fun. It was relaxing at least. It’s starting to get super cold here. It feels a lot colder than it is, too, because it’s moist and windy as well. I watched our soccer team lose on Saturday and froze my butt off while doing it. I opted to stay inside most of the rest of the weekend. On Friday night my host parents had friends over to make some Gluhwein, which was pretty cool. What you do is get a big cauldron and put it on a propane stove, and then fill it with the bottled wine. After heating it up, they took a chunk of sugar, doused it with rum, and then burned it, letting the liquid sugar drip into the wine. What resulted was a sweet, hot, delicious drink. It’s normally for Christmas time, but seeing as it was really cold, they decided to officially start the celebrating. So that was a cultural experience.

Ende
That’s about it. As I’m now well adjusted here in Ebergötzen, I’m starting to get a little homesick. It’s always a little bit depressing watching my friends facebook statuses roll by saying stuff like “Going home for fall break, woo!” or “Heading back to Carmel this weekend, anyone wanna hang out?” while I sit there thinking “Yeah. . . how about in 8 months or so?” I would also like to point out that living in a small town with only a bus that comes every hour to access the city, plus being a university student, equals awful. The bus times are terrible for getting to the lectures on time, resulting in me just having an hour to burn in the cold mornings. And afternoon classes? Forget it, it’s so pointless because they are timed perfectly so that I would either have to wait two hours or go home only to immediately take the bus back again. Grrr. . . It makes for a terrible combination and it’s really hard to get to know people only going to morning classes, not to mention the fact that they already know each other from department orientation stuff that I wasn’t invited too, because the University apparently thinks it’s ok to let me turn in my form and then ignore me. . . sigh.

I promise I’m having a good time, though. It’s just turning into a rather frustrating transition right now that I don’t really want to deal with at all. Classes are looking to be decently interesting, and at least I’ll be learning a lot.

Skez

Two Weeks for the Price of One!

Okay, It’s about time I get to writing this blog. I really didn’t have time last sunday to write it because I was hanging out with Zac, one of the two other Americans in Göttingen, which involved playing ultimate frisbee, so I was super tired that evening. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday I was really just too lazy, plus I was not in the greatest of moods. But before I get to that, I should really tell you what I should have written in last week’s blog.

Birthday! Woo!

My birthday was indeed two Wednesdays ago, although really the celebration was the previous weekend with the half of my family that could visit. I was having an excellent week so far at work and I was in a really good mood by the time my birthday rolled around. I baked some cookies to bring to work like a good German would, and they were thoroughly enjoyed by my co-workers, although I really ate a lot of them, because the weather was nice that day, which meant that almost everybody was out working rather than in the actual institute (we have about three different locations where projects are going on outside of Göttingen). I also was out that day, but was back early so it was all good. That evening I visited a birthday party that someone else threw, because it so happened to be that he had his birthday that day too, less work for me. Not only did he have his birthday on the same day as me, but he also was turning nineteen, which was a funny coincidence, considering the chances that something like that would happen in such a small town. We had great weather that day, so they grilled some sausages and chicken breast. It was tasty to say the least. Yeah, so that was pretty much it, I got a card from my work and a little breakfast personal cutting board thing (if you know what I’m talking about than you’ve lived in Germany), and from my host parents I got a bonsai  plant. Pretty cool little thing.

Week 1

I’m just going to call the week that I missed week 1 for simplicity. I got to work on a different project that week. It’s located in a field that’s a little farther away than the farm that I normally work at. What they’re doing there is experiments with different ways of mowing the fields, and seeing how that affects biodiversity which in turn affects food quality. There are 72 small squares with different grasses in each one as well as different intensities of mowing. That means a but load of sample taking. Tuesday and Wednesday we mowed with this machine that has two wheels and a these teeth in the front that move back and forth, cutting the grass all the way to the ground. We would have finished it all Tuesday but the darn thing broke (Technology, psh!), plus there was a ton of traffic that day, so we had to continue on Wednesday. Oh and by the way there is this 800 year old wall that is just kinda there like it’s no big deal. It’s pretty cool looking. Monday I was counting grasshoppers, but I think I talked a bit about that in my last blog already. All three of those days had absolutely beautiful weather, so I really enjoyed myself outside. Next week is looking pretty good too, so I’m excited for my last week working with Graslandwissenshaft.

The rest of the days were really just small tasks. I did some data entering, sample drying, weighing, and sorting, and other similar things. It was relaxing; I got to listen to music or podcasts while doing the tedious work. Which was good because my weekend was rather full.

Weekend 1

On Saturday I had planned to hang out with Zac for the afternoon/evening, but since my host brother and host dad were already going to a concert that evening, they invited us to go along. It made my host dad happy because he got to speak a little English again. The band was called “Swagger,” a band that played pretty much everything. They’re a cover band and covered everything from Peter Maffay to Rammstein to Black Eyed Peas. And they played A LOT from about 10:30 to 3 am, in fact. So, since we got back late, Zac just stayed overnight in the extra bed in my room and we hung out at my place the next morning too, until it was time for frisbee. I finally managed to work it out with the frisbee thing, and it was lots of fun. It was the first time that I really got to play on a serious team, as in they had legit drills and strategies, so I was pretty darn exausted. Not to mention I didn’t really know what I was doing, considering the instructions were always in German or broken English. I wasn’t really familiar with the sport vocabulary in both languages, so I was just screwed overall. Then I missed my bus, which made me mad because the busses come only every two hours on Sundays, so my host dad came and picked me up.

But that was just the beginning of the series of unfortunate things that happened to me over the next few days.

Last Week. . . oh joy.

So, where to start, where to start. . . On Monday the weather turned into a rainy cloudy cold mess. Fall is starting up and good days are becoming scarcer and scarcer. But of course the show must go on. We had things to do before winter shows up. We needed to move the animals to the third group of fields, which involves taking grass samples from both the field that they are moving off of and the field that they are moving onto (kind of like a before/after type of deal). So despite the rain I had to work outside, sitting in tall grass cutting the sample from the ground with my bare hands and then somehow managing to label the samples with a wet piece of paper. I did this 16 times before I could go home a cold and wet mess. Luckily I didn’t get sick, it was just a miserable experience. I especially don’t like the fact that it’s so quite since I’m by myself in the middle of a field and I end of thinking about things, which soon becomes non-productive thinking. It was just not the best of circumstances. Oh well, it happens.

Tuesday I went back out to the farm. The weather was still crappy and cold, but it was only misting, so a little bit better. I got through the work at least without having to worry about writing on wet paper, although it was still really wet outside. First we moved the sheep down to the barn where they got there hooves trimmed. That was pretty funny, because they basically put them in this sheep holding rack thing and then tighten it on their bodies in order to turn them upside down and cut the hooves. Just something about a device specifically designed to flip a sheep upside down amuses me. Well, we did that with every group of sheep (four times I herded them down to the barn and then back up to their new place to graze) and then also moved the cows to their respective fields, but they didn’t need trimming. After that I got to sit in a field covered with crap in order to take the samples. Again 16 samples, didn’t take but a couple of hours, but at the end I was displeased to discover that my iPod had fallen out of my jacket pocket. So I spent about forty minutes searching the three fields that it could have been in, and I found it again. Of course it was in the very last field. Eventually I managed to get home, although a bit late.

But that’s not the worst of it. I needed this whole time to talk to Professor Isselstein, the head of the Grasslandwissenshaften section of the Agrarwissenshaften department, about my auditor form which I gave to him on Monday to sign. So I was planning to do that on Wednesday, since I came back late (the due date was Thursday) With that little teaser I’ll move on to what happened on Wednesday.

I though I was going to be staying in the institute on Wednesday, but of course the other field (the one I worked on the week before, with the 800 year old wall) needed some help. I really didn’t have the right clothing so I needed to grab my rubber boots and my rain pants. Oh and I had to buy my lunch on the way there. Luckily I had my rain jacket though. So we soon left to the field, on the way putting a hole on the back of the pickup truck. We almost got stuck in the mud driving through the pasture to get to the research fields and ended up getting stuck in the mud on the way back. After shoving it out of the mud and getting the car all dirty we had to take it somewhere nearby to get it washed. Well, when we washed it we discovered a really big oil leak coming from the underside of the car and found that we were no longer able to drive it. So I then had to wait on someone else to pick us up from Göttingen which is about a 40 minute trip one way. When I finally got back, after hitting a fox I might add, I had already missed my bus so I went up to Prof. Isselstein to talk about my registration form and was not pleased to discover that I needed the signatures and stamps from all the departments that I signed up to take classes in. Lovely considering the due date was the next day.

The cool thing was that I got to work on this giant tractor thing that day though. It was awesome. Basically this thing was a giant mower that mowed the grass onto a conveyor belt that dropped it onto a conveyor belt that wasn’t moving so it could weigh the grass and then it shot the grass out the side with the second belt. I sat in the back of the machine waiting as the part of the mowed grass was blown through a tube to me (part of the grass is separated and comes to me, while the other part drops down to be weighed). I then bagged and labeled the grass and but it in a big sack. I really had to work fast, because by the time I stapled and labeled the bag, the machine was already on the next one. It was really lots of fun. The machine looks like a mix between something you’d see in a Doctor Seuss book and a horror film.

So like I said, the beginning of this week was not so good. In fact it was pretty awful in general, but things turned up. On Thursday I got to work inside and I went into town to talk to the student secretary about my auditor form. I got the deadline extended, so everything’s good with that. Then I got to go home early. Friday was basically the same, except I collected all of the signatures and prepared them, since the office closes early on Fridays.

I found an international church that I’m going to go to, which I’m really looking forward to because I’d be nice to meet and share fellowship with some new people. It’s been really hard trying to find people that I can actually connect with and relate to since I’m in this small town with a bunch of people that are younger than me and that I just wouldn’t be able to be friends with. Not because they’re not nice or anything, but just because they’re not really my type. Hopefully at this church I’ll be able to meet some cool people, because they are all basically in a similar situation as me. They’re mostly foreigners who have come to Germany for different reasons, but want to still meet some people, which is hard to do because of the language barrier. Plus they give a bible study in German for people that are trying to learn German, like me. So I’m going to go to that if I enjoy the regular service. I haven’t been able to go yet, though, because this weekend. . .

Relaxing, fun weekend. . . aahh. . .

Friday night my host sister came. She’s really nice and I enjoyed spending time with her and my host parents this weekend. My host brother is starting to get on my nerves a little bit. The twins were okay, but they didn’t really interact at all, just were on the computer or TV all the time. Marcel is much different, but he has lately been really getting on my host mom’s nerves (and I think my dad too). I really don’t understand it, because he clearly got thrown out of his mom’s house for some reason, and now he’s living by us with his dad, and annoying the heck out of them. He’s always complaining about small things, just digging and digging until someone blows up (my host mom usually, which just makes things really awkward for me), or blows up himself. I’ll give you an example: Just the other day my host dad made a home made pizza. It was awesome. It had cheese and tuna and pineapple and spicy peppers, just amazing. In fact he always cooks really good food. Well there happened to also be a little bit of ham on it as well, a good choice if you ask me, but apparently Marcel really doesn’t like ham on pizza and specifically asked for him to leave it off. Well he complained and whined and then finally just ate bread instead of this delicious pizza, just because it had a little bit of ham on it. Now this child (actually he’s twenty which makes it worse) is living at his dad’s house for free, and getting fed delicious food every single day, and he has the nerve to complain about it. Not just about that, but a bunch of different stuff. For instance, he complains that he wants to go into town to sit in the sauna but my host dad doesn’t want to pay for it. I mean really? His life is not hard, if I were in his position I would be sucking up to my family in order to not get kicked out a second time, but he’s borderline if you ask me. Of course, I don’t really have any say in the matter, and it’s something that I will leave for them to discuss. I just wanted to vent because it’s really frustrating sometimes, the things he says.

Anyway, back to the main point of this section. Friday night we played a German game similar to “Trouble” called “Mensch ärgert mich nicht.” and then I taught them Euchre since we had four people (me, my host parents, and my host sister). It was tons of fun even though I epic failed at the first game.

Saturday I hung out a bit with Zac and Trinitie, both Americans on this program in my area, and we talked for a while. Then I went home and chilled, which was nice. I got Starcraft 2 in German, which I’m pretty excited about, although the vocab is a lot different so I’m learning a lot of new words. It’s actually kinda frustrating sometimes when I don’t understand the hints that they give me on the mission. Eventually I figure that out, but as far as the plot line goes, it’s really hard to follow. Sunday we took my host sister back to the Bahnhof in Kassel and said goodbye, but before that we walked around a park in Kassel where a giant Castle was. There’s one castle on a hill with the statue of Hercules that has a huge fountain at the bottom of the hill. It only runs for about 15 minutes every couple hours or so I think, but when it starts it really goes. It’s just one huge fountain that forces water up above the trees, which are impressively tall themselves. With the sun in the mix as well they fountain was really pretty, with a huge rainbow forming on the side. It was really cool looking, just because it was sooo much water.

Ende

So, that’s the end of that. I don’t think I’m going to proof read so if there’s any errors, just deal with it, I don’t feel like going back. Oh, I must say that Blasmusik is going really well. I have my Trombone now and we’re actually improving quite a bit. I guess all the music was new before, but now we can play it much better. It’s tons of fun! Thanks for reading, peace out.

Skez

A Lot of Writing for a Low Price!

Man, I keep on thinking things are going to slow down, but they never do. I’m always just sort of busy. Not too busy that I don’t have a little extra time to myself, but busy enough. To the point where I don’t really get much sleep during the week, but that’s normal. Reminds me a little of high school, in fact. Getting up at 5:30, going to work, coming back at about 5 or so, and then having something else in the evening to do. So is life.

Band

In high school, however, I was usually busy because of band. So, now that my brain is currently dwelling on the subject I’m going to explain to you just how much my thoughts have turned to high school music in the past few months. Maybe it’s music withdrawal, but I find myself really missing practice. For me, band practice was a time where I could unwind. No matter how awful I felt after school, going to practice and focusing on relatively insignificant matters such as keeping a good tone, matching my color, and playing in tune. It gave my brain a break from all the stressful thinking that I would be doing otherwise. On Monday I found myself really getting stressed out. As silly as it sounds I spent the whole day watching the sheep eat. I needed to count their bites and their steps as they grazed, timing each activity. Not exactly the most intensive activity, so I started thinking about things, worrying mostly. On top of that I was getting frustrated because the sheep were so darn lazy in the morning, and the ones that I needed to be observing were always standing around chewing cud, or just stared at me until the end of time. To make matters worse, I discovered when I came back to the office that I shouldn’t be leaving before 4:30 because of insurance reasons. I had a half hour to kill, so I asked to be put to work collecting root samples. But the problem was that my bus leaves at 4:37, and 7 minutes is not enough time to walk to the bus station. So I missed my bus, and had to wait another hour before I could get home. By the time I got home, I was so upset, stressed, and frustrated that I didn’t know what to do with myself besides hole up in my room. I wanted so bad to just be able to head on over to orchestra practice and get lost in someone else’s emotions for a while, play someone else’s music. Music to me was like a drug free way to escape. It was a means to escape whatever I was feeling earlier that day or escape whatever homework that I had hanging over my head that evening (haha). It forced me to get into the head of whatever the composer was thinking and out of my own personal mind, and every time practice was over my mind was no longer stressing out about the problems that arose during the day and I could think about them more clearly.

So if your reading this now and you’re still in high school, then I’ll say this to you: really enjoy the performing arts program we have there, because it’s something special. You’re never going to have the same experiences again, because they don’t exist anywhere else. I can tell you right now that I want to play music for the rest of my life, but I don’t want a career with music. I don’t think it’s ever going to be so fun and relaxed, but so good at the same time, like in high school. I might get to play in fun bands or orchestras still, but they will not be as good as our band or orchestra programs. And if I would want to be in bands or orchestras that are better, and get paid for it, then I don’t think I would have as fun. When I played along side the Indianapolis Symphony in the Side-by-Side program, I decided that that was not what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, and I’m going to stick with it. Every practice was really so stressful, and if I didn’t play something right I got pointed out and the director demanded perfection to the point where it really wasn’t fun anymore. Plus they practice a piece very few times and didn’t really get to know it like we did in high school band or orchestra, which was the best part. If I were to become a teacher I don’t know if I would enjoy myself either. I don’t think I’m very good with kids and don’t think I would teach unless I knew that I could teach well. Since I can’t, what’s the point? Would I really be making an impact in the world or even on these hypothetical kids for that matter? I don’t think so. But it does cross my mind a lot whether I’m making the right decision.

Career?

 Right now, or at least before I came to Germany it seemed that everything was working out well for the path in Biotech/food science or something similar. I got this scholarship where I can test the waters a bit, plus I’ll be able to go to IU on a scholarship afterwards to do research (what I believe I want to do as a career). I honestly think it’s the right choice for me. The work kinda seems boring in the field of Graslandwissenshaft, and I like to make fun of it, but somehow I’m not really unhappy doing the work. Sometimes it’s just not engaging enough, but I have a lot of time to think, for better or for worse. Plus, for days like today (I’m typing this now on the Monday that I posted it), that are sunny and beautiful, I really enjoy my time outside. I really should be thankful that I work outside. There’s not a better place I could call my office than the beautiful Solling region, and I’m going to miss it, but I think I want to still do something more chemistry related or with food products. Honestly that interests me a lot more, although I found that identifying grasshoppers was actually really interesting. The rest, however, is not as good. I don’t think it could keep me going as a career. So basically I still have no idea what I want to do, but I'm a little closer. I start in a couple weeks doing more lab work, so we’ll see how that goes, but I had a long time to think about the meaning of life, the universe, and everything while counting grass, so I felt the need to get this little rant out of me. It’s over now.




Back to the stuff that may or may not interest you. . .

Yeah, so this past week was mostly about counting grass sprouts that are from a water stress experiment. Our department deals a lot with water stress (aka how plants react to a lack of water) and the resulting environment caused by a lack of water. This test asked the question: When grasses undergo stressed caused by dehydration is it possible for it to grow back to where it would be had it not been lacking water? In other words there was a control group and a variable group. The control group was watered normally and the variable group was not watered enough for a period of time, and then they were both watered properly for another set amount of days. It looked like the variable group was mostly able to grow back to where the control group had been, but in some types of grass the difference was greater than in others. I think they need to repeat the experiment though, because there was a great difference in temperature and light as the summer turned to fall.

As I said, I also observed the animals on two different days during the week, and today I counted and identified grasshoppers, or what was left of them. Some species had already died off for the year, which made for a smaller population of specifically a few species that would normally be there. Those assignments were a part of the bio diversity project with the cows and sheep that I talked about earlier.

Stuff that hopefully interests you if the previous sections did not. . .

Last Monday I also went to the movies with my host mom and her friends (it was ladies night, haha. No really, the kino provides cheaper movies and complimentary sekt when you go on ladies night, so why not?) We watched the American with George Clooney. Quite the odd movie, I expected it to be a little more actiony, but it was interesting enough without it. It was all in German, so I was just glad that I understood what was going on. Funny, it said that it was for people 13 years of age and up, so I thought “ok, that’s like a PG-13 movie right?” Yeah, I should have known better. (face palm) I mean it was no big deal, it’s just that I for some reason thought that the rating systems would be the same, and I was really wrong. That was definitely rated R in the states, and I felt really stupid when I realized the mistake in my thinking during the movie. Anyway, good movie if you’re into artsy ones. In my opinion it was artsy, meaning the ending was depressing and made you think a little bit as to why they ended it that way. But then again, I watched it in German.

Tuesday was Blasmusik Probe. We played a lot of jazz that day, and that’s when it hit me that I missed playing in high school. They really are not very good at playing jazz and need a few tips. I think if I mention just a few things they could sound a lot better, like playing the style correctly, or this one goes for any type of music, but just thinking about playing in tune maybe once or twice in the piece (actually not terrible, it’s just sometimes) or balancing voices. Anyway, I was less than impressed, but to be fair they were just sight reading. I didn’t want to say anything because I was afraid of offending someone, but I say something next time.

The next few days were fairly uneventful. . .

Weekend visit!

My brother, as you may or may not know, lives in Bonn with his wife, and my dad works for a German company, and therefore is often in Berlin for a couple weeks at a time. So, since it was the weekend between my and my brother’s birthday, we met in the middle here in Ebergötzen and I got to hang out with them for the weekend. We had a great time. My brother had his camera with, so he took some good pictures of the area that I just can’t take. We talked and I showed them my little town and we walked through the Fußgängerzone in Göttingen. It was quite lovely, I had a good time. Plus I got all sorts of goodies from the states, like Peanut Butter M&Ms and soft caramel chews for making cookies. Mmm . . . Oh and we went to see the Seeburger See nearby. It was a perfect day for doing that and I saw this cool looking diving bird that I didn’t see on the other visit. Its a bird that dives down in the water for quite some time and then resurfaces some random other place. It’s rather fun to watch.

I don’t think I mentioned this, but occasionally there is a guy or gal walking his or her goat around the town. I’ve seen it quite often and have gotten used to it by now, but when I was showing my family Ebergötzen, I realized “hey, that is kinda strange isn’t it. . . the goat doesn’t have a leash.” Well, if you ever visit the place don’t be startled, goats are harmless and can, when properly trained, behave properly in public without the need of a leash. Although I would walk my goat around with a leash despite that fact, just because it’s a little annoying when the goat wanders off to munch on somebody’s flower garden and I would have to keep it from doing so.

Ende

So, yeah. Not much new, just a lot of thinking, made me very stressed out during the week, but I had such a wonderful day at work today, that I feel ten thousand times better. I feel refreshed and ready to take the worst that life can give me at this point. Although if life is listening, I would rather it stay the way it is if you don’t mind.

Shout out do my fam. Thanks for the birthday cards and gifts and the visit by Dad, Matt and Talina, I love you guys and miss you, but not enough to come back home ;)

Always a New Experience. . .

Wow, what a week. It’s about 9:30 and I finally have time to start my blog, so bear with me if it gets a little weird. Well, it’s going to be weird nevertheless, because I had a very interesting, but strange week. I’m just going to start and we’ll see how it goes.

Seeburger See

So, as I said, Monday was my first day of my internship. I thought that was the case, but unfortunately there was a little bit of miscommunication and it ended up that Monday was only a day to come in, say hi, take a little tour of the place, and talk about what I would be doing. Then he asked when I could start and I said “Umm. . . Morgen?” and then I explained that I thought I’d be starting right away. But anyway, my internship didn’t start until Tuesday, so instead I went home at about 1 (we picked up my monthly bus pass too), ate lunch and thought to myself “great, another day with nothing to do.” So I took initiative and decided to take a bike ride to Seeburg, a neighboring town, not terribly far away. There’s a big lake there with a bike path that goes around it, so I rode around the path than came back to the point where I started (because that’s how circles work), grabbed a snack and sat on the dock for a while (now that I think about it that sounds like a very lonely and emo thing to do. . .). Then I rode back. It was great weather and I had a lovely time. The path is really quite picturesque, but sadly my camera just can’t do it justice. I rode through the small roads in the pastures and fields (which were actually paved). There were also lots of fields, which made it fun. . . when I was going downhill.

Finally. My Internship.

So, after two weeks of waiting I finally started my internship. And what a first day it was. I work in the Graslandwissenschaft part of the Agrarwissenshaft Facultät, or the Pasture/Grazing animal department of the School of Agricultural Science. So that means we work with farm animals, grass, fields, and stuff like that. My first day they had to do some field work, so I got to go with.

There’s three or for different projects going on in our department. I have worked with two of them so far, so I’ll explain them a bit before I go into detail. The first one is located on a farm about thirty minutes away from Göttingen near a small town called Dassel in the Solling region. There we are working with three different groups of fields, each with six small fields. Each field has either cows, sheep, or both on them. So in the A fields, the ones that we working on this week, we have 1000 kg of cows on one field, 1500kg one the second, 1000kg of sheep on the third, etc. We weigh them so that they eat consistently the same amount of grass, since the project has been going on for years, and we haven't always had the same cows or sheep. What we do then is monitor the biodiversity of the fields and the behavior of the animals. For instance, how has the types of grasses changed, the height of the grasses, or the amount of bugs? How does the behavior of the cows or sheep change when they are placed with the other species? There’s three people that are working on this project, one older lady and two people that are working on their doctorate. One of them is Mexican, which is pretty sweet, although he also can’t speak German well (or English), so it’s a little difficult to communicate, but we manage.

So, I worked on that project on Tuesday and Thursday. Both days we had to get the animals and sort them. Tuesday was the cows. We herded them into a little holding area and then forced them into a small walkway so that we could weigh them one by one and separate them into different groups based on which fields they needed to go on. That way we could get the weights correct. Cows. . . are always less than cooperative, so it was work. The Germans naturally had a very organized way of doing it, with every person having a different job that was important. For instance while moving it we always planned ahead to put people in the gaps so that the cows didn’t run off in different directions, and while sorting my job was to move the gate back and forth to direct the cows coming out into the correct spots. So that took the entire morning and then the afternoon I spent cutting grass samples and measuring the height of them, which was very tedious, but somehow relaxing despite my aching legs for the next two days afterwards.

Thursday I did basically the same thing, except with sheep. The sheep were actually a little more frustrating to work with. They were really easy to herd, but to separate into groups was hard. What I thought was cool was when the farmer called all the sheep from the giant pasture by yelling “Gei Komm!” or something like that and they actually all came. Then we weighed and separated them into five different parts of the barn. I had to open and close the corresponding doors. Sheep are really stupid, by the way, and for some reason they freak out when they are isolated like that. So they come out of the scale and run around trying to find the door that I am holding wide open, and then they finally run in side after a couple moments of panic, which may involve falling over a few times or running into the barn door. Pretty funny, actually, when that happens. That took the whole day, though, because there are more sheep. Afterwards we herded them to their pastures, which was fun and I finally got a bit of exercise. I had to run past the herd a couple times to block the way that they were not supposed to go.

Wednesday was a lot different. There was a Betriebs Ausflug that day, which is a thing that the whole Faculty does every year. We went to Kassel and did some random stuff. First we visited our sister faculty from the Kassel Uni at a farm where they are doing research. That was pretty boring, because the talks were very technical and it made it hard to pay attention (naturally I don’t have much of a farming vocab in German). Then we ate lunch with everybody; I had some very typical German stew and potatoes with Rotkohl. Then we visited a corn maze and got lost in there for a while. That’s when I got to talk with a lot of different people, which was great, because otherwise I wouldn’t have really gotten to meet everybody as quickly. Most of them work in a different building, so I don’t see them that often. Of course they are all much older than me so it’s not like I really hit it off with a few people, but I at least got to make some contacts. After that we visited a planetarium and were given a show about the stars, which was cool because he spoke very clearly and I could actually understand everything he said and learned some new words. Then we went home, finally.

Friday, oh boy, was that fun. I spent the whole day (half day actually, work ends at 2 on fridays) counting grass. Yes, it’s exactly as it sounds. I took some frozen grass samples (from a different project) and rinsed them to defrost them and get most of the earth out. Then I counted every single piece of grass in this 10X10cm sample that was still green. The project deals with a group of about fifteen types of grass. Chickens are put on the grass in cages for a certain amount of time so that they pick and scratch at the ground, then samples are taken later and we can see how much damage the chickens did and how well the different grasses grew back. Were going to have to figure out something else with the finer grasses though, because it took so long to count all those (up to an hour per sample), and we have at least fifty samples per repetition and they repeated the experiment three times. Yeah, talk about tedious work. My fingers also looked like prunes at the end of the day, which I really don’t like.

Yeah, so that’s it with the Praktikum. The people are really cool and now I have someone to consult about where I can find mexican ingredients. I’m gonna get my burrito if I have to make it myself! By the way we went on thursday to move some stuff into my host dad’s new office in East Germany and on the way back I had the most delicious Döner I have ever had. It had a special sauce on it (and lots of it) plus I requested some chili sauce too, so it had some spice. Soooo good! Afterwards my host brother didn’t hitch the trailer onto the back of the car properly, so the trailer broke off and hit someone else’s car. It didn’t do much damage, but it was pretty funny, since my dad is a policeman and deals with accidents like that all the time.

Nordsee!

Friday afternoon I went up just south of Hamburg to a small town where a friend of my host dad’s lives. His name is Ralf. We stayed at his parents place in this town for the night. That night I had possibly the most food I have ever had (that I’ve been able to keep down, I mean. Big Ugly, you’re going down after I get back!). There’s a random Brazilian restaurant in this town not big enough to even have a proper grocery store. They do this thing that they call Rodizio or Rodizo or something similar. Basically they cook meat on a grill with a rotisserie thing, then they come out with it still on the rotisserie and ask you if you want some of the meat. Naturally you say yes and the waiter slices/scrapes off a small piece. They do this all night with people walking around giving you more food until you say stop. The food was just so good I kept on eating and eating (there was veggies too, but the meats were the best part). They served everything from Kassler to steak wrapped in bacon. Truly one of the best meals I have ever had. I ate so much that I couldn’t even eat breakfast the next morning. Later that night I got into a political discussion with a German that was slightly under the influence. That actually went pretty well, I was proud of myself. Given he really didn’t know much. . .

Saturday morning early we drove the rest of the way to the Nordsee to pick up my host grandmother there. She has a leg problem and was there to vacation. I got to walk a little bit on the low tide beach, which was fun because there were spots that were like quicksand there, something I’ve never seen on a beach. Pictures are online, and it was fun despite the weather. We then picked up some fish and drove home, stopping in Hamburg to eat lunch. We couldn’t really go walking anywhere because of my host grandma’s leg, which was unfortunate. I did show them one of the houses where we lived there though.

Bus problems. . .

So basically, Germany is really good at making me feel stupid. I got this Monatskarte for the bus finally, which I had to apply for to get this big ID card that shows that I bought his student ticket, and a smaller actual ticket. Well I didn’t really get that I needed to show the ID thing along with the card, so when I got on the bus for the first time he asked where the rest of the pass is and I had to rummage through my folders to find it. The next time I showed him both and he said something about me not needing to do that, quite contrary to what the first driver said. I took his suggestion of putting the Monatskarte in the little slip of plastic that my ID was in, then the driver can see both. Of course I put it on the wrong side of the ID, so I got yelled at again. Plus I had trouble finding my bus stop in the afternoon and getting of at the right stop in the morning. Finally at the end of the week when I got everything right, I got off of work an hour earlier than normal (on thursday) so I wanted to take the 3:50 Bus. Little did I know that at that time there are two busses that go because of the school children. So when the bussed just kind of passed the stop because it was very full, I was surprised and very angry. I thought I’d have to wait for another hour. The little kids then explained to me that there was a second bus coming. Yeah, I felt dumb.

Kirmes

It’s Schutzenfest season. Many small towns have a shooting festival this time of year. It involves a wooden bird with which they try to shoot the head, wings, legs, tail and heart off in that order. Whoever breaks the heart on their shot becomes schutzen king then. Last years Schutzenkönig is always woken up on the festival day, mostly saturday, with a cannon! I contributed to the fest by playing in the Blasmusik band again. Lots of fun, got to wear the cool blue blazer again, which is always funny. The choir and the Fanfarenzug were also there. The Fanfarenzug consists of 1 bass drum, 1 sweet looking marching bell kit, 7 snares, and 9, yes 9, piccolos. These guys actually tune pretty well though so it didn’t sound as bad as it would seem. They wake you up at 6 in the morning by marching though the town screeching their piccolos and continue to march around town for four hours.

Ende

Well, I actually have more to say, but I’ll save it for a later date. It’s already 1:30 here and I have to get up at 5 thirty or earlier. (I did some other stuff in between me starting and finishing this blog, it doesn’t actually take me four hours) I’m already falling asleep, so good night, until next week.

Skez

Thesis on the Meaning of Life

Ok . . . where to start. . . . well, I suppose I’ll start where I left off. Last Sunday my internet went out. It was tragic. I had written my blog already when I found out about this and found myself not being able to post it. The wifi showed up, but the router was not actually connected to the internet, so I couldn’t go anywhere. Anyway, so not only did I have nothing important to do this week, but I also couldn’t even waste time on the haven from boredom that we like to call the world wide web. It was terrible. I pretty much spent half the week reading book five of the Dark Tower in German, and still only got through sixty pages or so.

How to Impress Your Host Mom

On Tuesday or Wednesday or something like that I did something apparently super amazing. I was home alone; my host mom had an appointment that morning and said that she’d be back by one o’clock or so. By the time two rolled around I was hungry, and she wasn’t back yet, so I assumed it’d be just fine if I warmed up the leftovers from yesterday that was still sitting on the stove. There was only one portion left so I simply turned on the stove, warmed it up for a few minutes and then ate it (we have no microwave). While I was eating I watched some cartoons on the TV and afterwards I put the dishes away and started washing the three or four pans that were holding the food I had just ate. Well, right about then my host mom came in, thinking I was starving myself the whole time and was surprised to see me washing dishes. I explained that I simply ate the food that was sitting there on the stove and that I assumed that was okay. She was all impressed that I was able to feed myself without her. I am so “selbständig” according to her. Not only that but I was able to figure out how to turn on the TV all by myself, too! Sure, that involves turning on the power strip, the TV, and then the digital box, but come on, is that really that impressive? Apparently so.

Umpah, Umpah, Umpahpah!

So, as I’ve explained before, I joined this Blasmusik band that plays cheesy German polka music and such. You know, like the ones with the warbley male singers that you know of, but don’t really believe they exist. Well they do. And we have a warbley singer, as I just discovered today.

I have a heck of a time communicating with our director. Not only is he half deaf, so I have to yell in German, which is just uncomfortable, but I also don’t even know much music terminology in German, so it’s hard to explain to him what the problem is with me reading bari sax music. Apparently most in most Blasmusik the horn is played in the key of Es, (or Eb, whatever you like to call it). My horn is in F, and he knew that, but I had to explain to him that I can read Es if there’s not a choice, after all it’s not all that uncommon for a horn player to have to transpose, especially in orchestra. In fact I had to do that in high school quite a few times. The problem is that there are actually only a few parts that are written for horn at all, so the majority of my music is for bari sax. Why the bari sax and not the alto? I’m not sure, so I’d thought I’d ask. That’s where I went wrong. I tried to explain to him that if I read the bari sax music that I would have to transpose not only one note down from F to Es but also another entire octave for me to be playing the correct part. Let me remind you again that German is not my first language and the man was half deaf. I’m sure you can imagine the confusion that ensued thereafter. He thought that I was having trouble transposing into Es and I was trying to ask him whether or not I should be playing the part like it’s supposed to sound, an octave lower, except he couldn’t hear me and I had to yell words that I’m not even sure were German. Yeah. . . eventually the communication happened and he said that he doesn’t care what octave I play in, just play.

Anyway, that was an interesting rehearsal. Today I travelled with them to a small town about a half an hour away in Hessen. There was a small Fire Station fest going on with demonstrations and stands with currywurst, pommes, and such. We provided the backup polka. I even got to wear a fashionable blue blazer that says Ebergötzer Blasmusik on it. I’ve got some pictures that I’ll put up on facebook later, they’re pretty funny. Oh and a video, but the file is in a weird format, so I’m going to have to figure that out first. The video’s even better, because you can definitely see me being completely lost and faking it. It’s hard to sight read while transposing, ok? Especially with all the repeats, D.C. al codas, D.S. al codas, and alternate endings that are always present in such music.

Real American Food, Giant Hamburgers!

I decided to cook some hamburgers yesterday for my host family. Pretty American dish, if you ask me. So I used my family’s secret hamburger recipe and cooked them up some ginormous hamburgers. It was a beautiful day too, so I thought I’d be able to grill them, but of course some random clouds decided to roll in and rain on my parade - I mean the grill. So instead I decided to fry them. They were huge. I could barely cook three of them at a time in the biggest pan they had. Luckily I was able to pull it off and they were cooked all the way through with just the slightest bit of pink in the middle. Mmm. They were delish! Bonus: It was hilarious watching my host family (Marcel was also there) try to eat this monster on two buns while they (the buns were inevitably not very sturdy) fell apart slowly. It was great, I thoroughly enjoyed it, and they said that I could definitely do it again sometime. Today, then, they cooked me a very typical German meal: Schweinshaxe with sauerkraut and potatoes. That was delicious as well. I mean, that’s why I’m here right? The sauerkraut.

My parents showed me this giant grocery store in the outskirts of Göttingen called Real. You won’t believe it, but they sell maple syrup, Bisquick, and Pop-Tarts in the American section. And by american section I mean the one tiny shelf that houses American food. I’m so excited. Do you know what this means? I can now make Bisquick pancakes and strawberry shortcake! And they have Pop-Tarts. I always sent my brother Pop-Tarts when he was in Germany, but they have them here! Actually I’ll admit it’s not as good as it sounds. They are expensive and they only have strawberry unfrosted and hot fudge sundae. No cinnamon brown sugar, go figure. That is kind of a let down. Actually now that I think about it, I don’t even know if I have a toaster to use here. . .

Fußballverrückt

Oh my goodness, I have watched so much soccer lately. The young men played on Wednesday and Saturday, the old men (40s and up I think) played on Friday, and Germany’s national team played Belgium on Friday night as well. That’s quite a lot of soccer. It’s always interesting though, I think. Saturday’s game was especially intense. I believe it was a team we were suppose to beat, and we did, but not before the referee gave out about ten yellow cards or so. For some reason the other team was almost entirely Turkish, and I don’t know if it was because of racial tension or what, but the game was full of trash talk and a little too much pushing and shoving. The other team was really getting frustrated because we were winning or for some other reason and my host brother said something along the lines of “provoke him!” which caused him, who was only watching the game, to get kicked out by the ref. Overall, it was a pretty funny situation, but only because I was not playing, I think. The ref was a little crazy though. I probably would be able to play with them but I’m not really good at soccer, plus every time I play my right toe reminds me of how close it is to getting an ingrown toenail. So, the one sport I would not be able to play would be soccer, and that’s all there is to do ‘round these parts.

Ende

So, yeah. That’s about how my week went. Tomorrow I start my internship at the Uni. I’m really quite nervous. I don’t know exactly what I will be doing, but I just hope he makes me do some easy stuff to start out, because I don’t want to bother him all the time trying to clear up the terminology in German and such. I am excited about the notion of me having a month long bus ticket and there being a bus that comes in the middle of the night. Now, I might be able to do stuff like play ultimate frisbee in the afternoons in Göttingen. I hope all goes well, I’ll let you know next week.

Skez

Small Town Livin'

My internet went out as I wrote this, so it’s a bit late. I hope you don’t hate me. I still don’t have any, so I’m using my neighbors right now. Just pretend it’s Sunday, because that’s when I wrote it.

Well, I’ve had one week of my full on immersion here in Germany, and I’d have to say, I kinda like it. Speaking German all the time every day is a little bit stressful, but once you get past the fact that what’s coming out of your mouth is going to be a mess grammatically, it becomes easier and easier to just talk in order to get your point across. As far as understanding goes, I think I can feel myself actually getting better. Of course, it depends on who’s speaking to me. My host parents speak very clearly (or to me, it’s clear), as does my older host brother and his friends. The twins (my twin host brothers will from now on be referred to as “the twins”) not so much. Other people that go on my list of not being able to understand would be teenagers and people that are drunk. Both of those combined . . . yeah that’s just a mess.

Host Family

So, as I may or not mentioned before, I live primarily with a husband and wife who have kids, but they usually are living somewhere else. My host dad, Birger, is turning 50 in January and is a policeman. He works during the day most days because he has tenure and gets priority on what shifts he wants to work. His hours do vary greatly, however. Sometimes he works from early until the afternoon, other times from the afternoon until night, and occasionally he gets a day off. He loves to cook, so usually the food is good. Still never spicy enough for my tastes, but he always cooks something interesting, which I enjoy. He has a soccer team that consists of people from 16 to 18 years of age, I believe, so I’ll be ineligible once my birthday rolls around next month, but I could probably play despite that fact. They’re not exactly stringent. However, they are really good, and I. . . am awful, so I’m not sure if I want to play anyway. Germans are crazy about their soccer. He’s lived in Ebergötzen/Göttingen all his life, but loves America and wants to emigrate there some day. My host mom, Sabine, is also 48 or 49 . . . I don’t really know what she does. She does do things almost everyday, but I have yet to understand exactly what they are or if she gets paid for them. I’ll get back to you on that one. She likes to bake though. And read.

I have four host siblings in total if I’m not mistaken. I have a host brother, Marcel, who is twenty and lives in Dortmund. He’s really cool and I enjoy hanging out with him and his friends the most. He came here for the weekend to pick the twins up and drive them home (in Essen, I believe). On Friday night he came into town while I was hanging out with a small group of people (groups of people in Ebergötzen are always small), so I didn’t see him, but he apparently went immediately to a club nearby until one in the morning. Nevertheless, he slept in this loft/storage area above the kitchen and he was forced to wake up with us in the morning and ate breakfast with us, so I got to meet him then. My host dad, being German, decided to plan the whole day for us, but Marcel already had plans to grill with his friends in Ebergötzen that evening, so things didn’t really work out, which was okay with me. We went and visited his friends for a while, then headed to Göttingen, and he showed me a couple places to get good ice cream, and where one can get guys clothes the cheapest, and then we headed back to watch the soccer game that Birger was coaching. We lost, unfortunately, and it started pouring immediately after. So, although the plan was for me to go to Göttingen to visit a little festival that was going on that day, it was raining and I decided that I’d rather grill in the rain than go to a festival in the rain. Marcel and I headed over to his friend’s house (actually two of them live there in the same house) where I met three other Germans that live in Ebergötzen. One of them speaks almost perfect English, which was cool, but I still spoke German the whole time. We baked some frozen Pizza instead of grilling because of the weather and then watched some movie on TV. Afterwards it was about 11 o’clock and I was tired from watching the movie (it’s hard not to be tired after watching a movie for some reason), but Marcel still wanted to go to this club somewhere in East Germany (Dunkeldeutschland is not really that far away). I . . . was really tired so I just asked him to take me home and he went with these two other guys from town anyway. I’d have to say, I’m glad I didn’t go, because he got home at about 5 in the morning. . .

So anyway, I enjoyed meeting him and his friends this past weekend, but now he has driven home with the twins. My twin host brothers were here for the whole week, but I didn’t really do anything with them. One of them is usually on the computer and the other is watching TV. And then they switch. Not really that engaging. All of my brothers are the sons of my host dad and live (or lived) with their mother in Nordrhein-Westfalen. I have a host sister too, the daughter of my host mom, but I haven’t met her yet. I think she lives in Köln.

Cookies Apparently soft cookies are really something special here in Germany. I baked some regular chocolate chip cookies on Friday and they were all gone by Saturday night. That’s the second time I’ve baked them here, and both times I got the compliment “They taste just like the ones at Subway!” I think that’s a compliment at least. . .

Other people!

As a result, the only other Germans my age that I hung out with were the local teenagers. Some I met from coming to their soccer game and practice, and others from playing in this cheesy German band that I joined, so I suppose I’ll talk about that for a bit. On Tuesdays I play in this small ensemble that consists of a ragtag bunch of saxophones, valved trombones, a euphonium, a tuba, a trumpet, and a drum set. The director is old and can’t hear very well, and so I don’t think he can actually hear that the guy next to me is about fifty cents sharp or more all the time. But anyway, we basically just play through music from these binders, and all of it is pretty watered down. None of the parts are in F, so I’m usually playing the Bari sax part in E flat and transposing, so at least that makes it a bit more challenging. Let’s see. . . we played Pennsylvania 6-5000 (there’s nothing better than listening as all of them shout that in the middle of the piece), Puttin’ on the Ritz (something they also can’t seem to pronounce), a Johann Strauss medley, and random polka music/music that I hadn’t heard of. One piece was written by one of the valved trombone players and dedicated to the lovely town of Ebergötzen.

Anyway, it’s a small town. People my age just kind of drink on weekends, which is what I did on Friday night. I don’t really mind so much, because they never drink past their limit. One of them was visibly drunk, but he didn’t drink any more after that and he was still coherent (he just spoke so fast all the time that I couldn’t understand him). It was fun. I got to meet more people and speak more German, and it certainly beat just hanging around the house during the weekdays, because school has started and there’s nothing really for me to do yet.

Man-eating Plants and Plant-eating Cows

My internship starts next week on September the 6th. I’ll be working in a lab with a Prof. Isselstein. He works in the Graslandwissenschaft sector of the Nutzpflanzwissenschaft. So basically he works mostly with domestic animals and their diets and such. I guess I’ll be doing research under him for a while, until classes at the Uni start at the end of October. Maybe I’ll be able to work with cows. My other options were to work at the Experimental Botanical Garden or the Old Botanical Garden. In both of those internships I would simply be working as a gardner, and there wouldn’t really be much work since it’s the end of summer (coldest August I’ve ever experienced, honestly) and the plants are just kinda dying off early for the winter. So, I might still work in one of those places come spring, but I don’t really know. The Experimental Botanical Garden is really cool, they have a whole greenhouse full of carnivorous plants, which in German is fleischfressende Pflanzen and roughly translates into flesh eating plants. I think that sounds way cooler than carnivorous plants. “So, what did you do while you were in Germany?” “Oh, I worked in an experimental garden with flesh eating plants. You know, the ones that eat meat?” That would be reason enough to do the internship next spring.

Ende

Yeah, so it was a pretty slow week. Lot’s of rain, every day it rained I think, so not a lot of opportunities to go explore the Harz mountains or anything. I am going to Hungary with the soccer team in October though! I’m super excited! Later this month I’ll be able to go to the North Sea with my family for a weekend, too. Visit some friends of my host dad’s in a town near Hamburg and take a little visit of Hamburg as well. It’ll be fun, I’ll show them where my family used to live, if I can remember where it is. Which I can’t, so I’m going to look it up.

Oh, by the way, the chickens are actually our neighbors chickens. But I can still go visit them anytime I like, and talk to them or something. Y’know, to practice my German. Not that I would actually talk to chickens. . .

The First Blog of the Rest of My Life

So, I am now located at my permanent host family. It’s weird to think about, but I believe I will be able to get used to it. I woke up at 7 this morning for some reason, so I figured “hey, why don’t I just write my blog.” I was going to attempt to get it done yesterday, but I was distracted by my host family playing Wii Tennis in the living room, and then when I finally came to my room and finished my journal, I was too tired. Plus, there was a marriage party going on at my neighbors house, so its not like I can concentrate with “So ein schöner Tag” und “Das Rote Pferd” (those of you that were in my German class know what I’m talking about. Yes, they really do play those songs.) blasting in the background. Instead I went up to my bed that lies precariously on top of the wall in this weird second story of my room.

School’s out for Summer!

It was my last week in Bonn, so naturally we had to wrap up school. We had an oral final on Tuesday and our written final was on Friday. Monday we had a day of review, I suppose. We played a game where people had to leave the room and come up with an alibi, so that they are not accused of murder. Me and my partner totally owned, because our alibi was what we actually did Sunday night, which was that we went bowling with friends and her host brother (I bowled a 189, I’m so proud of myself). Wednesday we even went to a Cafe as part of our class. It was awesome. After the final on Thursday (they were really not so bad. I think I did alright.) all I had to worry about was the Abschiedsparty.

Party every day!

Or just a couple days in the week. . . Wednesday our group went out to a bar for the last time (yeah, right before finals, I know, but it was the last chance to do so). It was fun; we made a big Prost to ourselves and each other, wishing everybody luck in our permanent home. However, it was not until Friday that I started realizing how much I’m going to miss everyone. Friday was the going away party that was provided by the AIB. It was just a grill out and some of us had things to present at the end of it. I was so focused on preparing my sketch and this collage I made for the teachers and Hartwig, that when the realization hit that I was moving permanently to a town for ten months, it hit pretty hard. Everything went well though. I spent the whole day that day preparing the collage on my computer and then attempting to get it printed out, which was quite the hassle, and then I had to practice the sketch we were going to do. We did “Who’s on first” by Abbot & Costello. It went pretty well and hopefully it thoroughly confused the Germans. Shout out to all you PPP people: Good luck, I hope you're adjusting well to your host families. If not just let me know and I'll give 'em a stern talking to.

Long Train Runnin’

Here comes the interesting part. I got home at a reasonable hour Friday night, but I was tired, so I figured “Hey, why don’t I just wake up early to finish packing (I had a good amount of stuff packed but not all of it) then I can be on my way.” Well, thanks to chaos theory, things did not go nearly as planned. Of course, my alarm was set for weekdays only; I had set it that way, but the day I had to leave was a Saturday, not a weekday. You all are smart cookies; you know by now what happened, but I’ll tell you anyway. I woke up at 8:30 by myself, instead of 6:00 with the alarm. My train came at 9:21. I had not even finished packing. Quickly I woke up, finished packing by about 8:50 or so and got all my stuff out of my room. Then I thought, “where the heck is my host mom?” She was supposed to take me to the train station and she was nowhere in the house. I gave her a ring and it turned out she was already in front of the house with the car ready to load, but I can’t say my heart didn’t skip a beat there. Soon, I realized that I had no idea where my set of keys to the apartment was, and I had to start looking for those. I had taken my lego keychain off of it that very morning, but for some reason put the keys somewhere else. I concluded that I must have packed them somewhere and I would have to send them by mail, and we were on the road by 9:00. While riding in the car I had a last minute moment of inspiration and I found my keys in the pocket of my backpack where I always put my keys, go figure. By the time I get to the train station I have five minutes to spare. I’m really stressed, hungry, and sweating like a pig, but I said goodbye to my host mom, man handled my two suitcases, French horn, and backpack down the stairs and up the escalator in time to see my train rolling it. Unfortunately I assumed that the person who I would traveling with would be waiting for me at the actual platform two minutes before the train leaves, but that wasn’t the case. I got on the train and held the door, telling the train workers that I was waiting on someone. Turns out she was waiting in the McDonalds and struggling to get her bags out onto the platform. Soon, we got all of the stuff on the to the train, and we were off to Köln.

But that’s not all. We had a little bit of time on the train to get our stuff organized and figure out the best way to carry it all. The problem was that she had a big bag with a broken handle, another suitcase, a small duffel bag, two purses, and some plastic bags with shoes in them that were hung precariously on the suitcase. I believe we ended up switching some bags around and using a belt to roll the broken suitcase, but we didn’t figure that arrangement out until the train change in Hannover. In Köln we had only six minutes to get off our train and on to the next one. Fortunately, the platform was simply on the other side of the platform we got off. Unfortunately, the train car was parked about ten miles down the platform. So, I went ahead to try to find the right train car (it was of course the furthest one) and by the time I found it, I had no idea what happened to my traveling partner. She called me and explained that her shoe had ended up underneath the train somehow, and that she is on some other train car, but we both indeed made it on the train. She made two trips to get her suitcases in our car, but eventually we got settled in. By settled in I mean we just put our suitcases in the area near the door and sat there instead of finding our seats and then figuring out what to do with our huge suitcases. It was just a lot simpler this way. The ride to Hannover was two hours, so I finally had time to relax. I went to get some breakfast, and even had time to brush my teeth and shave. The transition in Hannover was a lot more successful and we had a generous twelve minutes this time around, so it was overall just less stressful. By the time we got to Göttingen, I was able to enjoy the beautiful scenery and I got moved in without any problems.

Oh Little Town of Ebergötzen?

I know there aren’t any songs about it, but Ebergötzen is really a nice little town. Well built, good looking houses with gardens everywhere, plenty of greenery accompanied by a little creek, and the Hartz mountains on either side make it quite the picturesque place. Shortly after I got there I walked with my host mom to the soccer game that my host dad was coaching that afternoon. It was a fun game to watch, and I find it so strange that she knows almost everyone. I suppose I’ll have to get used to that. The house is really nice, and quite interesting. Basically there’s a house in which we live on the top floor over two other families, and attached to it is a barn, which is now partly a jewelry shop and the rest is used for storage. There’s some chickens in our back yard too. And there are two cats.

Let’s see. . . what else. . . My family is super awesome btw. The twins are living with us as well for two weeks. They pretty cool as well, and funny. They both enjoy soccer and computer things. I don’t know what, but they are on the computer a lot doing something. Also, Ebergötzen has a sister city in Hungary, where I might be able to travel in October. I’m pretty excited for that, but it’s not one hundred percent yet, because my host dad is going there with his soccer team and is going to see if I can tag along. I hope so.

Coda

It took me a while to get internet access because the Wifi was “unsichtbar” which I now know means invisible. That was an adventure. Eventually the nephew of my host mom came and helped us out, but it was worth it, because I have Wifi now and I don’t have to plug my computer into the wall anymore (it wasn’t that big of a deal before, but now I don’t have to worry about tying up the internet). So now my gaggles of fans don’t have to worry about me not being able to post this blog.

I had a delicious German breakfast this morning. It made me happy.

Skez

Last Bonnsch Blog

It’s the beginning of my last week here in Bonn. I am sure going to miss the little city. It’s really a nice place to live. It’s not to big, not to small, in the vicinity of Cologne, but not as busy. It’s going to be exciting moving to Ebergötzen to start my schooling and internship, but at the same time it’ll be hard to say goodbye to all the good friends I just made. With that said, a had a pretty awesome second to last week here in Bonn, and I’m sure you want to hear about it. If not, then I think you entered the wrong URL into your web browser.

Köln

I spent quite a bit of time in Cologne this week actually, more than usual at least. We went there for school twice this week. On Tuesday we went there instead of the regular school day to go to an art museum called the Museum-Ludwig. It was pretty cool actually. The art was usually pretty interesting, mostly art from the late 19th century until today. The advanced class had to prepare a two minute speech about one of the paintings in the museum, and I did one called Au Rendez-vous des Amis by Max Ernst, a Dada artist who studied in Bonn. They had a lot of cool Dada and Surrealist paintings there, which I enjoy.

Train Fail!

That wasn’t the end of that day however. Oh no, not by far. I went again to the zoo that afternoon with a few friends, because it was such an awesome zoo and they hadn’t all seen it. I guess it wasn’t the best time to go though, because many of the animals were asleep, especially at the beginning. Maybe it was their afternoon siesta; I don’t know. Anyway, that evening we left Köln in the evening to get back to Bonn, so we decided to take the train that went from Köln over Bonn, Beuel, ect. to the end destination of Koblenz, which is pretty far south of Bonn. Little did we know that “Bonn-Beuel” did not mean we’d be passing through the Hauptbahnhof, but rather through the Beuel part of Bonn. So, we obliviously passed through Bonn and slowly realized that we did not recognize any of the stops we were going through. So we could have A.) stopped in some random place and most likely have to sleep at the train station for the night, or B.) waited until we got to the Koblenz Hauptbahnhof where we could take an IC back to Bonn, although that would cost money. We decided to take option B, because sleeping in a train station really didn’t sound appealing. Of course there was no train until one in the morning that could take us to Bonn and we had to chuck out twelve Euros for it, so that was pretty lame. We just chilled in McDonalds for an hour or so (I broke my vow to never eat at a McDonalds in Germany, because I didn’t have dinner and it was the only place open). The train ride back was thankfully uneventful, although we got there at 1:33 or so, and my last U-Bahn was at 1:20. We missed the first night bus that left at 1:30 and had to wait another hour for the next one. The night buses go in a very round-about route, so I didn’t get to my flat until ten past 3 AM, it was lovely. Oh, and it was raining. Getting up for school the next morning was lots of fun.

Chocolate Museum (mmm. . .)

Thursday I went to Cologne again to get a present for Hector’s (our student guide person) birthday. That was fun; we grilled by the biergarten and almost everyone in our group showed up. The next time was on Friday, when we were supposed to go somewhere and take a boat back to Bonn on the Rhein. That would have been fun, but I had to go to an appointment with the Stadtamt about my Passport and my visa that lets me intern here (which was really easy by the way they just had difficulty finding my papers in Hamburg, so I went there and got my visa and left. I am now legal). So when we discovered that the train was not running today, I was not entirely disappointed, because I couldn’t go anyway. Instead everyone went to the zoo (It would have been my third time, so I didn’t mind that I had to miss it.) After that I rejoined them in Köln for the chocolate museum in the afternoon. The chocolate museum was really cool, but I do love food science, so I’m partial. Basically there’s one section about growing cocoa and the cocoa trade, and then you move into a place where you can see all the machines used to make chocolate and it explains the process. Then you move into a place where they show the history of chocolate and information about many of the different types and brands. At the end you can visit the store of course, which has all sorts of crazy chocolate flavors (or should I say flavours). After that I chilled in Köln for a while longer, because it does look really cool at night, especially the Dom. There was some kind of fest there by the Rhein which had some good food and they were playing random music into the night. Some of it was pretty good, but initially there was a drag queen singing, which was just weird.

Euchre!

Yes, I finally got to play Euchre last week! Go figure nobody else in the group knew how to play. It made me feel like a real Hoosier. But I got my Euchre fix, and I’m happy. Plus I enjoy the look on other people’s faces when I get in the barn. Shortest section ever.

Düsseldorf

On Saturday I went to Dusseldorf (I can’t figure out if there is supposed to be an umlaut on the u or not. I think so, but only in German). It’s a pretty cool city. The best part is over by the Rhein, which seems to be ridiculously far away from the Hauptbahnhof in my opinion. It’s the Altstadt, so much of the cool architecture is there, as well as good restaurants and street cafes. I had some Thai food for lunch, green curry to be exact, and it was delicious (It was no Jasmine Thai, but I’ll take it). Not to mention it was decently spicy, which was nice.

There was also some festival going on in Dusseldorf that weekend, so I’ve come to the conclusion that German cities just always have something going on on weekends, especially during the summer. There was a two man band that we watched for a while that played some classic rock. It was funny because they were both guitar players and singers, so the background was provided via computer. Pretty much the drums and bass were invisible. One guy had a pretty good voice for classic rock in my opinion, and the other just sounded like he was singing AC/DC which was good only when he was actually singing AC/DC. It was lots of fun. Another thing was that along the Rhein there was a bunch of outdoor restaurants where you could sit and have a beer or some food if you wanted. It was a lovely day, perfect for that kind of thing. Hmm. . . let’s see, what else. . . There is a nice park in the middle of the city which is pretty much a big walking path surrounded by woods. I succeeded in getting stuck upside down on a swing at the playground there because I left my backpack on. It was really a defining moment for me. Oh, and one more thing, there was an unusually large amount of bachelor and bachelorette parties going around that day. You can identify them because of they are all dressed similarly and are usually trying to sell something or something like that. I got offered schnapps for a Euro, but I just wasn’t feeling it that night, so I had to turn it down.

Ende

Well that pretty much sums it up for this week. The only other thing is that I went to a museum for calculators, but you don’t want to hear about that (It actually was pretty interesting, but I am a nerd, so . . .). I leave for Göttingen next Saturday bright and early, so I don’t know if I will have a blog up by this time again next week. If not just hang in there; I believe in you.

Shout out to all of you that are starting college in these subsequent weeks. Good luck, have fun, don’t kill yourself with classes as I’m sure you will. I’m gonna go ahead an admit that it’s really strange reading about it all on Facebook without being in the same situation, but I don’t mind, I’m excited for you all.

Skez