Back from Weimar!

Hey, all!

This weekend was a lot of fun! The four Middlebury exchange students who are studying in Mainz (I'm an honorary Middlebury student now) met up with the fifteen or so exchange students who are studying in Berlin on Friday night in Weimar, and we all had way too much food and stayed up way too late and had a blast. On Saturday, our group leader Heike gave us a tour of the city (for those of you who don't know much about Weimar, among other things, it's the city in which both Goethe and Schiller lived for a time) and in the afternoon we could do whatever we liked in the city (there are a plethora of museums and parks there). That afternoon, though, I hopped on a train for fifteen minutes and went to Jena where Claudia was already waiting with Josi, who lives there! We had a lovely afternoon drinking coffee and eating cake and walking through the botanical garden there where not only do they have massive impressive trees outside and lovely flowers, but also greenhouses with banana trees and cacti (obviously not in the same greenhouse!) and things, and I found that incredible! We sat under a banana tree for a while and I just looked up and remembered Thailand. It was awesome. :)

Then next day, I got together with the two of them again and we walked for a long time through the park in Weimar that follows the Ilm River, where they say you can walk for three hours without taking the same path twice. It was so peaceful and meditative to walk through the crunchy leaves and hear the trickling of the small river and watch the birds overhead. After the stress of the first week, it was purely sublime to walk and just talk with two good friends and let the afternoon drift lazily by. I'm so glad I went!

Josi was again an angel and took lots of pictures of Claudia and I in the park - I won't bore all of you readers by constantly posting pictures of just my girlfriend and me instead of the nice things that we see on our travels, but this time I really was a dork and forgot my camera at home! You'll definitely see some of the pictures (thank you SO much, Josi!) and tomorrow during our day off (hooray for Catholic holidays!), I will put the last touches on the (by now) ancient video about Mainz and get that up on youtube!

(Below is just a picture of me with my new BahnCard that finally came in the mail - this will make future trips with the Deutsche Bahn much nicer! :) )

Minor Breakthrough - Major Happiness

Hey!

Right now, I'm sitting at a table with a bottle of Apfelschorle (friends in the states -- you know how I always mix apple juice and Seltzer water when I get the chance? Here, they do that for you and sell it to you in bottles! Also, they have vanilla coke in almost every vending machine. How cool is that??), a tomato-mozzarella sandwich, and a bag of walnuts. I just had another Analysis class and it went FANTASTICALLY. I mean, there were even moments when I knew what the professor was going to say (in German, mind you!) before she said it. Yes, there were moments where my main thought was just "huh??", but those are things I can look up. I'm just so thrilled right now.

Last night, I also went to the juggling class, and MAN was that fun! Next time, I'll take a camera so you all can see the huge gymnasium area with thirty people standing at various places in side it throwing balls, rings, or pins into the air and all sorts of other craziness! It was fantastic. I'm going to buy myself some juggling materials tomorrow. :)

I actually ought to get to doing some of my homework, but I wanted to just write this little bit. This weekend, I'll be going with the other Middlebury students staying in Mainz and also the ones from Berlin to Weimar. As far as I know, Friday night is mostly just the train ride and then dinner at a restaurant that is so good Middlebury brings the folks there every year, and on Saturday we have a tour of the city and then in the afternoon, I'll be hanging out with Claudia and the lovely Josi, who lives not too far away from Weimar. On the Middlebury group will be going to Buchenwald, and I'm not sure if I'll be going with them. I was there before with my German class from high school, and I'm not sure if I want to go back again. I do think it's an important thing for anyone to do at least once in their life, but - like I said, I'm not sure what I'll be doing.

Right now, I think I'll use some of the AMAZING marker pens from Claudia to write down some translations of my math homework and then maybe get started on that. This day is turning out to be so much better than I expected. And the actual rock climbing class is tonight (I had the date wrong - did I mention that?). And then, Friday!

About Yesterday and Today

Hey.

So, I first wanted to apologize for parts of yesterday's entry. I was quite grumpy when I wrote it, and I don't want any of you reading this to think that I'm having a horrible time! Yesterday I was just hoping and hoping that my second day wasn't going to be like my first one, and it wasn't! After I wrote that entry, I had a fantastic time in class. All the things that were written on the board seemed familiar enough not to be scary but also weren't things that I can do without thinking. It'll be the perfect difficulty level, I think. And I'm really glad.

The other reason I wanted to apologize for yesterday's entry was because I know I have a few people reading whose mother tongue is not English, and quite honestly, yesterday's post was just all over the place grammatically. I'm sorry for any difficulty that caused!

Right now, it's 9:43 and I'm in the classroom that I had such trouble finding on Monday. True, I clearly still have to work on understanding the bus schedule and getting an idea of how long it takes me to walk from the bus stop to the classroom so I don't end up in every classroom half an hour early.

This will be my second Stochastics class. Tomorrow I have Differential Equations and Analysis again (again at 8 - oy. :P), and I'm kind of looking forward to it! But this afternoon, I also have my first Ancient Egypt History course. Right now, I'm more concerned with getting to the classroom on time (my Stochastic professor teaches to the very last minute of the hour, and the next class isn't in this building -- but don't worry, I DO know where the Egypt class is. :) ) than about what will actually happen in the course. If I do like it and decide to take that course, then I'll get the opportunity to write a 10-12 page research paper in German. Oh my goodness. I'll let you know how that goes once it starts!

Tonight, I also have my first JUGGLING CLASS! Yes, they offer Juggling as a sport thing here, and I think at least one of the other Middlebury students (and possibly Claudia, if I can drag her along) will be coming with me to the class tonight. We tried to go to a rock climbing class last night, but I had read the date wrong on the schedule, and it's actually on Thursdays, so tomorrow I'll try again.

I think I'll leave this entry here and go and put my schedule into my new fancy planner that I bought yesterday... Yes, these 'Moleskine' notebooks are incredibly expensive, but they're SO nice... If you didn't know it about me already, I have a real attachment to office supplies. I could spend hours in a stationary store, and you won't believe how much fun I am about to have writing in where my classes are and when in this planner. Oh, and I can't WAIT until tonight when I can go and color code them with the lovely marker-pens that Claudia said she would get for me today!

I'm such a geek, and I love it!

Give Me Something to Sing About

(For those of you who have never watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer, insert a meaningful line from some music that you like as the title for this post instead. :P)

So, the first week of classes has begun. I'm sitting right now at 7:42 a.m. in a room on the fifth floor of the math building here, waiting for 'Differential Equations and Analysis' to start. Yesterday I had Intro to Stochastic, and Number Theory. Last night, I really just had to align my hopes for this week with the actual events that occurred. It's not that I hoped for good things and no good things happened -- rather I hoped for specific good things (finding the classroom, maybe chatting with some other students, feeling like I fit in the class) and not all of those happened, but there were some good things I hadn't been expecting that did happen (like the lovely CS major who walked me from the building I was in to the proper building for my class even though he had a class starting at the same time - something that would not have happened if I had gone to the correct classroom in the first place!).

In general, the day was good. Stochastic was not particularly thrilling nor was it particularly terrifying, and I will put a check mark in the 'good' column for that. Number Theory was indeed terrifying, but I was expecting not being able to take that course - I'm not quite advanced enough yet. For any of my math friends who are reading this, I really needed to have an Abstract Algebra class behind me to be able to understand that course, and the professor wanted proof (haha) that we'd had that by this Friday, so - yeah. Not quite for me yet, but I look forward to when I will actually be prepared to take a Number Theory course.

Oddly enough, this class that I'm waiting for right now is at the same time as two other potential classes for me, but I decided this would be my best bet. I certainly hope it turns out to be a manageable difficulty level, because - well, I'm counting on it, really. It turns out that even Mills, the college that I do hold very dear, can be a real ass about having courses that weren't taken at Mills count for "a Mills credit" (something I experienced last year - I took an upper-division German course at UC Berkeley ((quite the reputable school!)) and only got .67 of a Mills credit for it because it didn't meet enough hours in the week to count for a Mills credit. HOURS IN THE WEEK that the class meets?? What kind of way is that to judge the worth of a course? I could sleep during every hour of the week that a Mills course meets and it would still count for "a Mills credit"! If you couldn't tell, this business has miffed me just a little.).

In other news, the weather is still nice in Mainz - not actual winter yet by any means. This morning at the bus stop it was cool enough for me to stuff my hands in my pockets and shiver just a bit, but the air still tasted like fall. Last week, I also went out with Claudia and we finally bought me a proper winter coat (which I wasn't wearing this morning - I still feel like I have to "save" it, like if I wear it each day, it'll go away!) and I'm SO happy with it. I'm sure it'll appear in pictures soon.

The classroom is starting to fill up now - yeah, 7:55 is a much more normal time for students to show up than 7:30! I guess we will have class soon. This entry was a bit all over the place, but I wanted to give you a brief update. Now I'm going to dive back into math - wish me luck!

Triumphant at the top of the hill!



Just some crazy whirling birds in the air on our way to get a well-deserved hot chocolate after the climbing excursion. Edinburgh is just an amazingly photogenic place.

Arthur's Seat Pictures!

So, if you've watched my video by now, you know that Erin, Claudia and I had a fun time hiking up Arthur's Seat, the main peak in Holyrood Park in Edinburgh. It's more of a hill than a mountain, but we still had an exciting time climbing up the many steps and slopes in the seriously intense Scottish wind!

It was probably the most beautiful day of our trip when we did that walk, and that made for some lovely pictures. I hope you like them! This is the first installment. :)

Catching Up

Hello!

So, there've been a few hectic days here. I'm not quite sure how far back I need to go to explain!

I suppose I'll start with right after we got back from Scotland. During the days after Edinburgh, I began my Orientation Week with the Middlebury people here at the university. It all started rather sheepishly at a bus stop last Monday morning (the bus stop is called Friedrich-von-Pfeiffer-Weg, and for all my German readers, I now think "Pfeiffer mit 3 F!" each time I'm there thanks to Claudia! Finally saw Feuerzangenbowle. Fun film! :) ) with all of the students from Middlebury (and me from Mills) milling around sheepishly at the bus stop, not knowing who within the bustling crowd of students was actually ALSO with Middlebury and who was just on their way to the university. Eventually, we found each other, though, and then everything went well.

As it turns out, there are only three other students here for the Middlebury program. THREE! I thought it was going to be a massive group! But actually, I'm starting to like it being just the four of us in all. I'm also the only girl, which happens to be fun sometimes. Two of the boys are in my year at Middlebury, and the other one is already done with his BA and is now in the program to get his MA at the university. They are all charming and fun to hang out with, as are our tutors. This program is very well designed for incoming foreign students, especially those who are going to have to write lots of papers (Hausarbeiten) while they are here.

We spent the week working together through lots of activities that either helped us understand some of the main cultural differences that might cause us some heartache if we weren't prepared for them this year OR helped us to prepare for our classes. There were role plays (an essential to any Orientation Week), games, cookies, laughter, note-taking, and lots of listening, but it was also a really great experience linguistically. As many of you know, I'm fairly proficient at German, but when I'm hanging out with my lovely girlfriend here, we don't always make a point to speak solely in German. We mostly speak in the language that comes to us, and while I've been here, it's been almost totally 50-50. However, at these 6-hour per day Orientation things, it was solely German, and I haven't had that in -- well, ever. It's just a different experience to only be in a classroom with 7 other people (3 students, 3 tutors, 1 professor) for 6 hours a day and be having discussions the entire time in the new language. It's hard to get that in Germany since almost everyone speaks English! Anyways, I noticed an improvement already in my speech, which was pretty exciting, not to mention learning several interesting things about German culture and American culture that I hadn't thought about before!

In addition to getting to know the Middlebury folks, Claudia and I also went up to Ostfriesland (East Frisia - look it up on a map if you don't know where it is!) for this past weekend to visit her friends and family. While we were there, the Gallimarkt was going on - a fair that happens annually and has been happening annually for over 500 years! We went with a big group of friends one night, saw some fireworks, ate fried food, and rode a HUGE ferris wheel and several other crazy rides. Then we went back the next day with Claudia's two younger brothers (ages 8 and 11) and watched them do all those things, which was almost just as fun. Claudia and I also managed to get some work done while we were at her house during the day (she's doing research about Scotland for a professor, I'm working on a "Cultural Presentation" to present to the Middlebury folks this week) and had a lovely dinner out together on the last night. We also had tea with her grandparents (a favorite tradition of mine in Ostfriesland) and talked about all sorts of things, from our studies to Erin in Scotland to the intricacies of language and to some stories both from my father and those that Claudia's grandparents had about growing up. It was a lovely afternoon!

Now we're back in Mainz and I've done some good work on my presentation, Claudia's helping the first year students in Germersheim get all sorted out, and we're both awaiting real classes starting next Monday. Ah!

As I mentioned before, the Scotland video is on youtube, and the next video about Mainz is almost complete. It'll be up soon!

I hope you enjoy both of them, and when I get the time over the next few days, I'll post some more pictures of Scotland, and (I've recently decided) of my dog Abby and some other pictures from home, because it has recently occurred to me that not everyone reading this blog has necessarily ever seen my home!

Alright. I'm off to watch a bit of Love Actually before bed. :-) See you soon!

Finally, a video about Scotland!

Hey!!

So, the Scotland video is done and ready to be watched! For those of you who are youtube-savvy, do not turn off the comments on the video, please. For those of you who are not as up to speed, no worries. Just play the video and everything will be fine!

I'll be writing later tonight about the beginnings of my studies here, and I hope the video keeps you entertained until then!

Here!

Second Day in Scotland (part 2)

Here is another one of the dramatic churches in Edinburgh with the also dark foreboding sky in the background - the rain followed us on the second day, but we did have

Later in the second day we walked around a lot before we went with Erin to her Scottish Studies class, where we learned that the idea of tartan representing specific clans in Scotland isn't necessarily historically correct. In general, we talked about traditions: what makes a tradition, how quickly can something become a tradition, and when is something actually a tradition versus a "bricolage" (the taking of pieces of various traditions and giving them new meaning and different context) versus something completely fabricated. It was quite an interesting discussion!

Below is a lovely square near a bakery and coffee shop where we sat for a bit and had our lunch in the brief break from the rain.
Here Claudia models the traditional (haha) Scottish soft drink, Irn Bru (pronounced Iron Brew). This drink is SO sickeningly sweet that I have no idea how anyone can drink more than one sip in a sitting, yet they do! It smells and tastes almost exactly like liquid sugary bubble gum, though you get a bit of the manufactured orange color taste as well somehow! Definitely an experience. I barely managed one sip!

(Wikipedia says: "Irn Bru was first produced in 1901...Irn-Bru is known for its bright orange colour. As of 1999 it contained 0.002% of ammonium ferric citrate, sugar, 32 flavouring agents (including caffeine...) and two controversial colourings.")Here is Erin peeking out from behind a tree in the park when I was trying to get a picture of her, and then below are Claudia and I also in the park. We had a lovely afternoon together that day and then we went to Erin's flat and Claudia and I cooked dinner for her - she requested Searle-White spaghetti, which we then made and had with delicious garlic bread. :)

Second Day in Scotland (part 1)

Here we get a lovely view of the Edinburgh campus! I caught the young man there in mid-step, which I found cool. The rain that day made our feet cold and our hair wet, but it also made everything glisten in a wonderfully photogenic way. I miss the campus already.

Here you can see the sign for the campus library, which looked amazing but which we couldn't go into without student IDs. Oh, well!
Then later we went to the National Museum, and saw several amazing things, including this statue of a bird that is actually a lectern (which is hard to see from the front). There were SO many other parts of this museum, from natural history to Scottish history (did you know the Scots were the first to use a guillotine??) to exhibits about space and everything, and we could have stayed in there a week and not seen everything. As it was, we were there for maybe two hours and had a fantastic time, though I did have to drag Claudia out of the Scottish history section so that we could see a bit of the other stuff, too!
They also had a model Formula 1 car that we could sit in! In front of the car there was a screen, and you could take the car through a test run on this screen, seeing how it was to try and control a car going at nearly 200 mph (320 km/h)! There's a short video of Claudia attempting this, and just attempting to get into the car. That'll be up soon! :)
Here's our little room in the hostel, just so you have an idea of where we stayed! It was a lovely youth hostel and quite affordable, as well as very near Erin's flat, so everything worked out perfectly! It was called Argyle Backpackers and the staff were very charming, and they have amazing kitchens available for guests staying there. If you ever go to Edinburgh, I would recommend them!

First Day in Scotland Recounted (Part 2)

This was the last gorgeous view of the cemetery that we saw as we were leaving. I really felt like autumn had started when I heard the crunching of the leaves under my feet. It was a very neat transition of seasons while we were there. When we left Mainz, it was still very summery - 26 Degrees for my Celsius readers, definitely the 70s for my Fahrenheit ones. Absolutely lovely. But the wind and rain and leaves littering the ground in Scotland made me feel that summer really was leaving, and now that we're back in Germany, the change has caught on here, too.
This is a fantastically imposing church on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh into which we did not venture, but I still found it cool!

Above here we see Claudia in her 'model-pose', keeping the hair out of her eyes in the strong Edinburgh wind. I really like it! :)

And this last photo is of the remains of our dessert the first night - we ate at a Sudanese restaurant and it was DELICIOUS, and the dessert was coconut ice cream, served inside the coconut shell. I thought about taking a picture before I had eaten it, but then I couldn't resist, so all you can see here is the aftermath!
And that was our first day, for the most part. When the video about Scotland is up on youtube, you'll see a bit more about the cemetery and the city, but for now, I'll move on to day two!

First Day in Scotland Recounted (part 1)

On our first day (as I mentioned in my last post) we visited the Grey Friar's Graveyard. This first picture is of a grave I found particularly beautiful, and then you can see also the skull-and-crossbones emblem that was popular on lots of the gravestones there.
Here are my fellow travelers - Claudia on the left (for the few of you who do not know her) and Erin on the right -- fantastic people to hang out with, both of them. Their laughter in this picture was directed at me, and my inability to get a picture of them where they were both smiling and neither of them blinking. I still like this one!
This gravestone is the reason we were in this cemetery to begin with. Though the name is spelled a little differently, I still find it FANTASTIC. My fellow nerds can rejoice!
This was just a shot of me in the sunlight which my friends thought would look nice! :)
Part two of the day is coming soon!

A Scotland teaser!

Here are just a few shots! The one of me is on a train in Germany, actually, not Scotland - but you'll see a bit more of that train trip in a video soon. The other pictures are 1) Claudia exhibiting her talent as an up-and-coming-photographer and catching the Edinburgh skyline, 2) a lovely and picturesque cemetery that we visited the first day (and found an exciting grave - more on that later!), 3) The entrance to that cemetery, and 4) A statue of Greyfriars Bobby, the dog who is said to have sat on his master's grave in the Greyfriars cemetery until the dog himself died. (We actually learned the story was not true - sorry to disappoint anyone! -- the dog statue still seemed quite charming to me.)

Alright - that's the first small sample of pictures. Now it's really bedtime!

Return from Scotland!

Hello!

Oh, it's been ages. I'm writing to you now while printing out all the materials I will need for my first meeting with the Middlebury folks tomorrow (exciting!) and I am happy to say that today is the first day we've needed to turn on the heat in our flat, and it WORKS! The radiators are radiating heat... how lovely!

We got back this evening from our trip to Scotland, and it was honestly fantastic. Yes, I tried black pudding (curious what that is? Look it up! :D), though I did not get around to eating haggis, and I walked down the streets of Edinburgh and learned what wind really was.

I saw a castle and climbed an almost mountain and walked down cobblestone streets where you could almost swear you heard bagpipes playing, and then you realize that you ARE hearing bagpipes since every tourist-dedicated shop that sells tartan has the bagpipes blaring from their speakers. But it still added to the ambiance. I had fish and chips in a pub where I could barely understand the bartender when he asked me if I wanted ice in my Pepsi, and spent several minutes throughout the week thinking I was hearing a foreign language and then realizing it was just English! I fumbled with the many pence coins at registers and found the prices in cafés totally reasonable until I remembered it was pounds, not dollars. And I sat in a pub and had a pint with Erin and Claudia late one night and thought I didn't want to be anywhere else.

Sorry for the rambling. It was just a damn fantastic trip.

There are pictures that I am very excited about, and clips to be put together into a video that I am even MORE excited about, and you will be seeing those soon!

I'm off to prepare the last things for tomorrow and get some sleep. Look forward to hearing from any of you readers soon!

Showcasing our new couch, washing machine, dresser...

New Pictures!

Hey!

Above you'll see a few pictures that I took while out walking with Claudia yesterday around Mainz. A video of that walk will be coming soon! That first picture is just of our screwdriver which took a bit of shavings from one of the IKEA screws with it, and I thought it looked awesome!

Video's up!

Go check it out, folks!

http://www.youtube.com/user/ThaiAmL?feature=mhsn

Care Package!

Video Soon - I promise!

Hey! So, I just wanted to share a few things this morning.

1) Yesterday, we managed to get our washing machine -- yahoo! So, we got the washing machine from a nice American girl who lives on the second floor of this building, and she had her boyfriend (German) and another friend (English) helping her move, and Claudia and I were there, so ----> Basically, we had the perfect setup for a joke. Two Germans, two Americans, and an Englishman are moving a washing machine up four flights of stairs....

It went swimmingly, though. The English guy was fantastic at maintaining morale, Claudia had good ideas about how to go about the tricky corners, and the other German guy and I just held on for dear life and tried not to let anybody drop the damn thing. Fun!

2) I got almost the entire IKEA wardrobe set up by myself! Now all that's left is to attach the doors, and it's already up against the wall, on the most even bit of floor I could find in our bedroom. Also, after a lovely breakfast (Courtesy of one fantastic Josi Laqua!! -- see picture! :D ) , we got our final shipment of IKEA stuff -- OUR COUCH! Hooray!

3) I made tacos last night, including guacamole and it was delicious!

4) A lovely guy from the nearby appliance store is coming over in an hour or two to help us connect the washing machine, so we won't flood the kitchen when we use it. Yes, the washing machine is in the kitchen. Yes, along with the oven. And the fridge. And the shower. :P Luckily, we got a new breaker and have a bit more power running to our appliances now, so we hopefully won't blow a fuse if we try to wash clothes and shower in the same day.

5) I really am trying to get that video finished! I will try try TRY to get it done today. I hope you like it!

6) My new favorite song is 'Enter Sandman' by Metallica. I'm putting a link in the playlist box. Go listen to it, people!

And see the next post for a picture of the lovely LOVELY care package that Ms. Laqua sent us! Danke, Josi!!!!!