Pictures from the past few weeks.

I've taken a couple pictures over the past few weeks but never enough to upload as an entry in itself, so here is a collection!

A hot air balloon outside of our window - taken by C during my week in America.

Lovely and creative birthday wishes to Miri, the girl who lives across from us on this sixth floor. I don't know how long it took her friends to write it on the sidewalk, but it was such a sweet gesture. From the ground, it was almost too big to read - but perfect from our top floor windows.

A bus ticket from the tiny airport that Ryanair flew us to to Milan Central Station.

The intrepid travelers - at this point having waited about two hours for Mr. Springsteen. :)

Us again, C happening to be in the same shirt! This was from inside our tent on that first gloriously dry morning, just before cribbage.

The view during the day from the inside of the tent out on to the campsite - as you can see by the fence, our tent was very near the end of the Green Camping section, with the woods right on the other side, beckoning!

A romantic evening of blog writing!

That crazy To-Do list from the first Monday back after Southside. I'm exhausted just looking at it!

Part Two!

Okay! I made it through my day. My to-do list was of an impressive length today, but as soon as this entry is posted, that will leave only one more thing to do, which is something I can accomplish before bed. :)

So, where was I? The end of the Mumford & Sons concert. After that, C and I decided to skip the headlining band "Die Ärzte" to keep the beautiful mood we had from Mumford & Sons. We went back to the campsite and went to bed DRY - a big difference from the first night!

Each of the morning's there, C and I happened to be up earlier than the rest of the folks we were with, probably because we went to bed a bit earlier. Each morning, we went and sat around the tiny camping-cooker that a friend of her's brought and we boiled some water and made instant coffee. We had individual sealed packets of coffee cream that we poured in and feasted on a breakfast of apples and bread with peanut butter, the provisions we brought for ourselves.  (True, we did bring other food, but it didn't usually end up being eaten with breakfast) And honestly, one of my favorite parts of the trip were those mornings. Still slightly goosebumpy from the fresh and crisp morning air, watching steam hiss out of the kettle while we sat on our picnic blanket and played a round of Cribbage and felt the sun becoming warmer and warmer.

On the second day, the first band we were interested in played later in the day, so we decided to go for a walk in the woods in the morning. This also turned out to be one of the best parts of the weekend. If you've ever been camping, you know that if it's unbearably hot out in the sun, the LAST thing you should do is seek respite in your tent. Since we were in desperate need of shade, the woods were heavenly. And, after hours of thousands of people and loud music and garbage and chaos, it was perfect serenity between the trees. I haven't spent that much time in southern Germany, but I am looking forward to doing so in the future. The rolling hills and vegetation so different to Mainz and to my hometown combined with the sweet air and silence made it hard to leave the woods. We walked for about an hour and took another walk later in the day, unable to keep ourselves from the trees! On the path we saw not only a black slug easily the length and thickness of my middle finger (apparently this is normal in Germany - I'm used to slugs being little and yellow and maybe the size of the last-knuckle-to-my-fingernail on my middle finger!) but also a massive snail who had staunchly set itself in the middle of the path and was eating a leaf. We watched it for a good minute and a half and a miniscule section of the leaf passed into its mouth. We walked on for fifteen minutes, turned around and found it in the same place on the way back, not visibly any further in its meal. It was so adorable and I don't know why!

After the visit to the complete opposite of a music festival, we returned to the festival itself. That afternoon, I went with a group of people to hear a newly popular German band called Kraftklub. C was going to join us momentarily, but she first went with another person to catch the last ten minutes of a concert by a guy named Frank Turner. I unfortunately missed the end of his show but have since then heard a bunch of his songs on youtube and they will definitely make it to the next radio broadcast. Kraftklub was fun to dance to, and we certainly did do some of that - but outside the tent that surrounded the stage, because they actually had to stop people from going in since it was getting way too crowded inside!

After that, we heard the beginning of the concert given by The Shins, a rather well-known group. They were enjoyable and clearly tight as a musical group, but not that entertaining from a concert standpoint. I wasn't dissapointed or anything - I just know that I like The Shins for background music while drinking a glass of wine or while cleaning off my desk, but they aren't entertaining enough for me to have listening to them as a single activity.

After that, we went and found Bat for Lashes. I knew two songs from this band. They were on the same stage in the tent that had been overfilled earlier in the day, but five minutes before the concert started, we walked in and were able to stroll up into the fourth row of listeners standing there. They are not well known, as this may indicate, but my goodness, they should be! The tent filled up quite a bit after they started and as soon as the first song began, I was addicted to the music. The band is made up of a lead singer, a bassist, a drummer, and an everything-else guy, who does things like piano, harpsichord and many electronic sounds, etc. You notice in this description that there is no guitar player, almost unheard of in most of today's popular music. But the space between the ethereal vocals of the lead singer and the heart-pounding bass that is left with the absence of the guitar is intoxicating. I found the performance so much more powerful live than on the cd songs that I have, which is hard to pull off. This band will, of course, be on my next radio broadcast. I still get goosebumps when I think about their performance.

After that, we strolled around, saw a bit of the Spain-France football game (Someone needs to just beat Spain already. I'm sick of their winning everything!) and then briefly attended The Cure, a very well known band. I was at that time reaching the end of my rope when it came to loud music and crowds. It's not like I never like loud music and crowds. It's like french fries -- yes, you want them. In fact, you want them often. But after you have them, after a while, you just want to stop eating. It's very suddenly just too much.  Exactly that was happening to me at that time, but everyone I was with was very kind and in similar moods, so we turned in a bit earlier.

Then, the next morning, C and I did a fantastically quick and professional dismantling of our tent and got on the road early -- too early, in fact. Our schedule had us leaving two hours before the first scheduled shuttle bus was to run, which we didn't know. But that led to more games of Cribbage and fun conversations about the weekend, so no harm done overall.

We made it home and enjoyed the warmth of the bed, the stove, the real coffee. And the week has started and I made it through my Monday. Whew!  Ultimately: the Southside experience was a success!

Back!

What a weekend!

Okay, if I were to tell you about every single part of my weekend, you'd be reading this until next weekend, so I will try to abbreviate in a helpful way as I write this. :)

First of all, SouthSide takes place in a tiny corner of nowhere near Tuttlingen, Germany. I say near Tuttlingen not because I think that that will say anything to you, but because that was the last stop of our journey that we reached by train - after that, it was with a shuttle bus and then with our own feet. Here you can find Tuttlingen (in the rectangle) on the map:

I have to note that Tuttingen, a town of 34,000 people, is on this map whereas Mainz is not.

I put a circle around that egregious mistake.

The journey took us about five and a half hours on trains on the way down to the festival, plus about two hours just standing in lines after that. On the way back, due to trying to plan trips without the aid of the internet and relying on overfilled shuttle buses to get to the train station, the journey took us more than eight hours. But so much happened in between!

Okay, so we arrived at this place in the middle of nowhere on a packed shuttle bus filled to the brim with massive backpacks, tiny carts full of food to have while camping, sleeping bags, tents poking out of their bags, and tons of sweaty people trying not to suffocate and not to knock anybody else out with the massive backpacks on their backs. We tumbled out of the bus on to a field just as rain was starting to pour from the sky. We had no idea what we were in for.

I just have to say from the get-go: I loved being at this festival. I had a fantastic time. But it was TERRIBLY organized from a camping point of view! We arrived on Thursday night, and the music was going to start on Friday afternoon. We wanted to be there eary with some friends of C and I and we knew they were going a day early, so we thought we'd join them. We probably arrived at the festival gates and got our official wristbands and everything by about nine o'clock, but certainly didn't find the camp site or our friends until at least ten. During that time, we were wandering the unmarked "streets" between the different camping zones, trying to find the "Green Camping" place where we were to be sleeping - our friends are very eco-friendly, so we agreed to stay in the Green place. I am so glad we did, too!

Lots of soggy footsteps and unhelpful answers from officials later, we arrived at the camping place, soaked and chilled to the bone with what felt like a million pounds of luggage on our shoulders. And it was dark. And we still needed to set up our tent. It's fair to say that after seven hours of travel and an hour and a half of standing in the rain in wet shoes, when C and I finally crawled into our tent, trying not to drip rainwater from our hair on to the sleeping bag we had brought, we rather wished to be home. But the next morning, we woke up with the sunrise and saw no clouds in the sky and decided we were going to have fun anyway!

A quick last word about the weather: it was easily 27 degrees celsius (80 degrees fahrenheit) during the days when we were there and 10 degrees celsius (50 degrees fahrenheit) during the night. That means that during the day, my fair skin was turning to a crisp even if I put on sunscreen five times a day (which I did) and at night, C and I were shivering while being covered with a sleeping bag, our picnic blanket, our rain jackets, and all the towels we had brought with us. They were not relaxing nights, I must say, but I really do appreciate solid walls now that we're back!

And now: the music. The festival was set up with four stages - two massive open-air ones and two smaller ones inside large tents. In between was a vast expanse of grass covered with food and drink stands, places to buy festival merchandise, places to get tattoos, or piercings, or to go bungee jumping, to watch the Euro Cup soccer games (YES!) or to just hang out. Here's a picture of what a small part of the place looked like:

What you see in the center there is only one of the four stages. And yes,

it was always that full.

The area where the stages were was fenced off from the camping areas and from our tent, it was a good twenty minute walk to get all the way into the concert area. When we left, I was really excited for mostly one thing: seeing Florence and the Machine, a group whose music I can only describe as being the intersection of Enya and U2, and that's not even quite accurate. I was SO excited and they were playing early in the evening on Saturday. And it was SO disappointing. From the fact that the backup-singer looked like she was doing most of the singing to the strange and unauthentic performance of Florence herself, to the fact that the band looked like they'd rather be doing anything else - we left after about fifteen minutes, and even those fifteen stretched my nerves. However, for that one disappointment (which I had half been expecting after having seen one youtube video of a different concert), there were SO many unexpected gems during the weekend.

To hear an example of all of these things that blew my mind, keep an eye out for the Southside Mix that will be coming onto my radio station soon: http://www.mixcloud.com/emilysw5/

I'll post here when it's up.

I'm not sure if anyone who is reading is familiar with any of these groups, but I have to tell you just a little bit. The first really fun group was called the Mad Caddies. C and I were walking across the massive concert area and heard a fantastic horn section playing from the second of the two massive stages and we stopped to listen. And didn't want to leave!  The Mad Caddies play a mix of punk, reggae, and jazz with a little bit of ska and the occasional sea shanty. Screaming trombones and trumpets, total hippy lead singer and an audience that couldn't keep from dancing. It was a blast!

Later that night after having watched the first half of the Germany vs. Greece football game (Schlaaand!), I took C's advice and went with her to the Mumford & Sons concert. I knew maybe two of their songs that C had played for me before. And I've never been more moved by songs I've never heard before. It usually takes me a while to warm up to music enough for it to really affect me. But I was brought to tears by them within the first ten minutes. There was such a feeling of love coming from the audience (which was comprised of everyone from 15 year old girls to 40 year old men, all dancing and occasionally having tears in their eyes). Mumford & Sons play folk rock and man, do they play it well. The harmonies, the driving upright bass, the passion of the singers and the camaraderie between the band members made it something that I didn't want to end. 

----

OH my goodness. I just looked at the clock. I've been writing for a bit over an hour now, and if I don't stop immediately, the wet laundry will just sit in the washing machine, I won't get any lunch and I'll be late for class! 

Part two will come later! :) Bye! 

Where am I going this weekend?

I am going to SOUTHSIDE - a music festival near Lake Constance. For the whole weekend. Leaving today. And this is a proper festival - tents, mud, beer, music, friends. I am SO excited!

I'm not sure if you know any of these bands, but just a few of the ones that are going to be there are: Florence and the Machine (I'M SO EXCITED!!), Blink-182, Die Ärzte, Mumford & Sons, The XX, The Kooks, The Shins, Garbage, Rise Against and TONS more. :)  I'm not going to have my computer with me this weekend, so you'll have to take my word for it that I'm still around and doing well.

We're just packing right now and the living room looks a total mess. Picnic blanket, tent, sleeping bag, Cribbage board and cards, water bottle, tiny bottles of shampoo and shower gel- we haven't even started to get the clothes ready. They'll have to be clothes that are fine with being covered in mud for the whole weekend (it's been pretty rainy where the festival is being held, and it's in a valley with thousands of people in tents...).  We have quite a bit to do to get ready, so I'll head out and I'll tell you all about it next week!

New Broadcast

Hey. So, it was a rainy morning this morning, and it turned out to be perfect for flopping on a bed and cutting together different iTunes songs into another broadcast. This one isn't themed like the Classical Music one or the Non-English Music one. It's good songs, but please do go listen to it here.

I'm up to my knees in papers about intercultural communication right now, so I won't say much more, but you will be hearing from he soon. Promise.

Went to a party yesterday, came back with a sheep!

C and I were invited to a party yesterday. It was the Irish Quiz Night hosted by a singing group in the area. One of the other Middlebury exchange students has been singing in that group since she got there, and she invited us to this party last night.  We arrived, took part in the potluck meal and the five rounds of questions - not all about Ireland, but quite a few of them. We met lots of people, had some wine, ate traditional Irish food and not-so-traditional Irish food and had a blast.

Two really exceptional things happened there. One of them requires a bit of back story. Last year, a friend of mine from good ol' Meadville, PA was in Germany with her family. This friend was in my German and dance classes in high school, we grew up in the same group of kids. When they were in Germany, they happened to be in the train station in Boppard and were rather lost while they were there. At that time, my friend decided to ask a girl there for help - that person was very nice and helped them to get wherever they were going. Now, zoom forward  a year to the party last night. We walked in and another one of the singers (a friend of my Middlebury friend) came up to me and said, "So, I saw that you had responded to the Facebook-Event for tonight and I looked at your profile page. I know somebody you know!"

I must have had a very confused look on my face. But can you guess? She was the one who had helped out my friend in the train station last year. It's cliché to say "what a small world", but MAN. It really is sometimes!

The other amazing thing was the new friend I made last night. In keeping with the theme, there were sheep of all kinds all around the room- two dimensional drawings or posters, calendars with sheep, stuffed animals, you name it. This little guy happened to be sitting on our table and as one of the hosts saw me admiring him, she immediately went to ask the person who had brought him if I could keep him, and they said yes! :)

His name is Carson. :)

Also, as you can see from the jersey I'm wearing, Germany is playing again tonight! I hope you all will be watching! :D  

That was the update for today - Carson's gonna keep me company while I write about Thai culture for a while. Wish me luck!

Sore but proud!

So, I was just having one of those days today. It started in the morning with simple physical uncoordinated-ness - ran into the shower with my coffee cup (not AS strange as it sounds if you remember that our shower is in the kitchen), knocked over the entire full water boiler over a counter that had (among other things) food on it, forgot my wallet when I went to the university - I'm sure you know those days.

Anyways, I made it through my four hours of linear algebra (my schedule is so relaxed, I guess I should work at least once a week, huh?) and had a nice lunch with C at home and then went into the city for a while. I was planning on going for a run with a friend of mine, but she ended up changing her plans so we couldn't go, and C was going to be in Frankfurt for the evening with another friend of ours. And all of a sudden I had nothing to do.  But I decided that seeing as I hadn't exercised the last two days, why not go for it tonight.

So, I got myself into a bus and drove out to these woods that are kind of nearby and supposedly had good running trails, but I'd never been there before. I got there more or less in one piece, though the evening sun through the window and the warmth on the bus nearly put me to sleep.  I wandered from the bus stop and followed people in jogging clothes until I found the start of all the trails. There were signs pointing that showed the directions of three trails - a 6 kilometer one, 10k, and 15k. My normal-but-still-rather-difficult-run (The 3 Bridges Run) is just under 8k.  I decided I'd run the six until I got to the 4k mark and then turn around and have a good, round 8k. All of the trails start together and then branch off after a few kilometers, so I ran into the woods following the signs.

The woods are beautiful there and unlike the 3 Bridges Run, you don't see people that often. True, there are lots of runners and a few bikers, but you don't have to maneuver around families with strollers or the occaisional car that hasn't yet realized it's hopeless to drive there. The trees make you feel surrounded in a friendly, sheltering way and because of all the twists and turns of the path, you always feel like you're moving quickly, heading somewhere new.

As usual, around 3k, I just wanted to stop. I was done, had a stitch in my side, had a new mosquito bite - just wanted it to be done. But thank goodness, when it comes to exercise, I'm stubborn, so I kept going. And again, as usual, after that brief hiccup, things got better. So much better that when I got to the point where I saw the 4k sign, I went a bit crazy. At that sign, not only had I been planning on turning around and doing the same 4k all over again, but that was also the point that the 10k trail curved off to the right with the 15k one, whereas the 6k went to the left, making a loop back to where it had started. What did I do? Follow the other ones.

I don't want you to get too excited - I didn't do the 15 one, but I did manage the 10. And I say "manage" because it was a good deal more up-and-down than I'm used to on my 3-Bridges-Run. I ran about twenty minutes longer than I usually do - close to an hour and fifteen minutes. For me, that's not a great time, considering how I usually do for the 8k, but still - I never thought I'd be able to run that much. Ever. EVER!  And I loved it.

Huck Finn was talking to me the whole time. I would have been laughing if I hadn't needed all my breath to keep running. I do recommend that book. There's a reason it's famous!

Okay. I'm gonna stretch a bit now and go to bed, or I won't be able to unfurl my muscles in the morning. I hope at least a few of you listened to my newest radio broadcast. Any other ideas for another one? Just let me know.

Should be out the door already!

I just wanted to give you the link to my newest broadcast - intro to classical music! :)

Here it is!

Beautiful Monday!

Alright! I am in a GREAT mood this morning. I've got the soundtrack from the new Star Trek film blaring from my computer, have already washed the dishes from breakfast, started the laundry, and cleaned the windows - and it's only 8:20. Seems like a fantastic start to the day!

My plan today is to be as productive as possible - but don't I think that every morning? Well, not really, actually. Sometimes I start the day planning on being productive in general, but that general-ness doesn't translate well to reality. Then I sit at my desk and think "Productive... so, math? Or paper writing? Or practicing juggling? Or writing a really good blog entry? What direction should my productivity take me!?!?" But today, I won't have any of that silliness. Today is math and blog writing and general apartment tidyness. :) I can handle that. Look at that, I'm getting two done already.

So, what I really wanted to write to you about was this weekend. Guess where I was?
MILAN.

Why was I all of a sudden in Milan? Well, it's a rather simple story, actually. A few weeks ago, C went with her mother to a Bruce Springsteen concert in Cologne. Before that as well as after, C has been rather excited about Mr. Bruce and his music, which (besides the few obvious classics - Born in the USA, Born to Run, Dancing in the Dark) I was not at all familiar with. The week before and the week after her concert, C had been playing for me her favorites of his music and explaining the dynamics of the band and how awesome the concert was. Then, just on a whim, she looked online to see where else he was playing on this tour. Oh, it was only Sunday morning and the following Thursday, he was going to be in Milan. And there were still tickets. And the flight on Ryanair was cheap. And, look at that, there's a youth hostel near the stadium where the concert is. And Thursday's a holiday this week anyway, so C didn't have to work, and I didn't have class.  And ---- there we went!

We left our apartment at 3:15 a.m. to catch the bus to the tiny airport that Ryanair flies from. We got into Milan at about 9 in the morning (bus to airport in Germany, airport to another tiny airport an hour away from Milan in Italy, bus to Milan, subway to hostel) and got to the hostel around 10:30. Outside our hostel, we ran into a rather nice guy. He grew up in Australia but had been living in Italy for a good while and he was just getting ready to head over to the stadium for the concert. The concert started at 8.  The doors opened at 2.

These fans are so intense!  Eventually, we decided to walk over with this guy and another older Italian gentleman who happens to live next to the hostel and know his way around and was spending his day helping tourists get from that hostel to the stadium (since the way wasn't completely intuitive).  He couldn't speak any English and C and I couldn't speak any Italian, but with our new Australian friend, we communicated quite well. We got to the stadium at 1 in the afternoon and got in the already VERY long line to get in. C and I, you understand, had tickets for here:

The big orange rectangle is where the band was and the small one is where we were - -but this picture is from some game, and for us? There was NOT A SEAT FREE. And the entire field that you see down there? Just a sea of people. 60,000 people were there. It was incredible. Of course, when we arrived inside the stadium at 2, there weren't 60,000 people there. The people who had actual reserved seats didn't need to come until 7:30. But we had to stay there for six hours to make sure that our seats wouldn't be taken away! The waiting got pretty tedious after a while (sort of like a long plane ride - you're excited at first, then you realize you'll be there forever and ever and you hate it, and then all of a sudden, there's only an hour left to go and you get excited again) but we kept each other company, each took a few power naps (as well as you could in those plastic chairs) and we watched the stadium fill up.

Our seats turned out to be incredible. At first I thought we were way to far away and high up, but from there, we could see every instrument on stage, had a view of all the screens that displayed close-ups of the band members AND we could see the entire crowd that was right in front of the stage - we watched them all moving in unison, all take out their lighters during the ballads, all jump up and down at the same time, all reach their hands forward to touch Bruce's guitar as he walked out into the crowd. Watching them was amazing! (Plus, I think where we were, we had a better view - neither C or I is very tall, so standing in that crowd down there instead of up on raised seats, I definitely think we saw more this way!)

I don't know if I can explain how amazing the concert was. I just have to say that I have never seen or felt so much joy in one place before. The fans were SO excited to be there, the energy of the band was incredible and infectious, and the time just few by. There were at least three different generations of people there, I heard English, Italian, German, and French around us - it felt like the whole audience just wanted to embrace the band the whole time. There's so much understanding between the fans and the band after all the years that they've been playing. I know, I sound like a total convert now, but man - I don't think you can go to a concert of his without coming out one of that crowd! (I think this sign explains just how excited some of the fans were! :D)

The other thing? The man is over sixty years old, as are most of the band members. And the concert was 3 hours and 45 minutes long. WITHOUT A BREAK. I was exhausted by the end and I wasn't even running around the stage and singing my heart out, either!

Okay, I can actually talk about something other than the concert now, but WOW. Incredible. :)

--

Milan was also nice. :P We did see the amazing cathedral in the center of the city, one of the many gorgeous city parks, and the mini-Venice in the Naviglio area of the city. Yes, we had pasta, we had gelato, we had the coffee.... oh my goodness, the coffee. The gelato. I get kind of sad thinking about how I can't get it here. It was SO delicious and the people were SO nice and - it was wonderful. It was also kind of funny because C mentioned when we got there "It's funny, I really feel like I'm in a foreign country for the first time in years." What does she mean by this? Well, think about it. In the last two years, she's been in France, the UK, the US, the Netherlands, and Germany. And in each of those places, she can speak the language (or at least understand them, in the case of the Netherlands). But in Italy? It was amazing how stupid I felt on the first day. It's been a while since that has happened to me, too. But eventually I remembered that I'm not stupid, that we actually have quite a few languages that they could have used with us - it just so happens that we didn't have Italian in our arsenal.  But maybe soon. I liked it! :)

Yesterday, C's mother came to stay with us for the night. She happened to be in the area at a chess tournament and with train connections and whatnot, it made more sense to stay with us for the night and then head back today than to try and get the trains back to the north yesterday. And that was great for us! We had some delicious carrot cake with coffee in the afternoon, took a walk through the city and then tried out another Thai restaurant in Mainz that we had never been to before - and it was fantastic. I spent a lot of the time eavesdropping on the waitresses' conversations (my normal pastime in Thai restaurants) and giggling as I remembered more and more words, but then still being too shy to talk to them in Thai! But I'm absolutely certain I'll go back to Thailand. Preferably soon. I miss it.

And now we're back. Normal week starting again. Papers and math homework and going grocery shopping and doing laundry. But it's not so bad. I just love it here. I don't love the fact that it's June already. I mean, I miss California and my friends and family, but - everything's finally in order! The apartment, the language skills, I have friends and places to go - why would I leave now?

At least I still have another month and a half. And I know I'll be back. It's in my heart now. :)

Stranger Communication

I love the way we interact with strangers sometimes. Especially here in Germany, where people tend not to smile at each other on the street unless you they know each other, it's always a neat experience when circumstances force you to interact.

Yes, sometimes there's the unpleasant interactions, like when you can feel everyone as a group getting angry in the check-out line when the cashier couldn't possibly scan the items any slower, but sometimes, there's fun moments.

Two of them happened to me today - one of them was when I got out of the grocery store and knew that when I had gone in, there were supposedly five minutes until my bus left from the nearest stop. I had dashed through that supermarket pretty quickly, so I thought I had a chance at catching the bus. I rounded the corner and saw it waiting about twenty yards away and could see the busdriver inside reaching to pull the lever that makes the doors close. At the exact same second, I and a woman about three feet in front of me, also lugging awkward shopping bags, burst into a run. We ran in unison and caused enough commotion that the driver stopped and waited for us. When we clambered on to the bus and the door snapped shut behind us, the other lady turned back to me and gave me the smallest of half-smiles, which I returned. This is the stranger equivalent of a high-five. Fantastic!

The other moment today was also in a bus. I was on my way back from the university at one of the most popular times in the day and was in enough of a rush to get back into town that I did force my way into one of the overcroweded buses instead of waiting for a later one. What with backpacks, huge purses and the occasional musical instrument, those buses are really full. A person behind me was loudly telling a story and apparently gesticulating just as much as the limited space would allow when an enormously tall and scary looking guy stood up from his seat behind the student and bellowed at the student who had apparently tapped this man's shoulder with his backpack during the telling of this story. (Keep in mind that I couldn't breathe without touching somebody who was standing next to me - this bus was FULL.) The man went on and on about how rude that student was being and how careless and how he shouldn't go around treating people on buses like that - it went on and on even though the student had apologized more than once. Eventually, the student stopped trying and I couldn't blame him. Three minutes later, the bus stopped and the tall man, still grumbling, shoved his way out of the bus, saying exactly like a pissed-off five-year-old "Well, fine, now YOU can have the seat." I looked forward at the strangers that I was standing nose-to-nose with and we shared the tiniest of smiles - this wasn't a high-five like the last time. This was a "if-we-weren't-convinced-the-crazy-guy-would-come-right-back-in-we'd-all-start-laughing-like-a-bunch-of-schoolgirls"-look. And that was just the lightness I needed to endure the rest of that bus ride to the train station.

A quick break from the paper to say hello.

So, I'm back at my office - that's what I call it when I clear off the dining room table and pile books, a laptop, a notebook, a water bottle, and a coffee mug on it. Today I was especially hardcore- I plugged in speakers to my laptop so I could blast my motivational music.

I really wanted to write in case anyone else is having trouble writing something right now, because I've figured out some things that motivate me!

1) Coffee or tea - SPARINGLY. I think tea or coffee is a great muse to have with you if you only have it once in the day (once each, you understand). I have a cup of coffee in the morning and a cup of tea in the early afternoon. I look forward to it and then when I have it, it gives me a little push because I'm so happy to have my hot beverage. It also seems like I come up with my best ideas while I'm leaning back in the chair and thoughtfully picking up the mug to take a sip. :)

2) Music without words. Right now, it's been alternating between the Pirates of the Caribbean soundtracks and the Lord of the Rings soundtracks. I tried Debussy and Dvorak, but they were a bit too calm and long winded for this situation. Movie soundtracks are snappy and quick, even when it's a slow piece, and somehow the changing up of the background music keeps my head up and running, too. Usually I can listen to music that has words if it's not words that are in the language that I'm writing in, but with this paper, that doesn't work. I've got German, English and Thai. Seriously narrows down my music options! But Pirates has been great so far.

3) Sounds weird, but I love having a candle on my desk while I'm working. It makes me feel like some cool author or playwright back in Shakespeare's time, not just another student writing just another paper. I like it. :)

Okay - and sometimes, quick blog entries help me think, too. I'll go and see if this worked! :)

Current reading list.

I realized the other day that I am reading 5 books right now and they are all so good that I thought I'd want to mention them!

1) How To Be Good by Nick Hornby:
This book is light, funny, and a quick read. This was my plane reading on the way over to the states (before I got swept up in another book while I was there, therefore changing my reading for the way back!) and is about a woman who has almost decided to leave her husband, so far hasn't done it, but is going through a hilarious chain of events and change in the character of her husband. Summaries are hard. This doesn't make the book sound all that exciting, but it made me laugh out loud even in an airplane, so I can really recommend it.

2) Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear:
Oh my goodness, is this book fun. This is the one that distracted me from the one about. It's about a female detective in the 1920s. I want to read this book all the time. It is fantastic. Also light, also funny, and just very intriguing. If you readers also have enjoyed any of Downton Abbey, I would recommend this book. I thank both my Aunt who kept talking to me about this book when I was in the states a few weeks ago and my Grandmother, who bought the book because my Aunt talked to her about it, but then we were sitting in the café attached to the bookstore where she bought the book and she made the mistake of letting me read it over my cappucino, and then I couldn't put it down and she was kind enough to give it to me!

3) The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain:
This is the book I ended up buying on audiobook for my jogging and gym adventures. I now know why it's a classic. I look forward to my runs so that I get to hear more - this book has such a sweet, gentle way of endearing itself to you. I think I am enjoying it in audio form far more than I would if I had a physical copy because I think the dialects would be a bit hard to decipher at times. The recording I have is from Elijah Wood (Frodo in Lord of the Rings, for those of you who don't know him) and I'm really, really enjoying it.

4) Cellophane by Marie Arana:
I don't quite know what to say about this book. Intriguing, that's what it is. It's about an engineer who has dreamed about opening a paper factory and moves to the middle of the jungle in South America to do this and ends up inventing cellophane. Yes, there's a lot more to the story, but -- I have no idea what to say. I've been "reading" this book for several months - it's the one next to my bed and at least once a week I read a few pages and it makes me smile just a bit and wonder just a bit, but then I put it down for a while. I have no idea where it's going, but I like it. Pick it up if you want something intriguing!

5) The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes:
I'm sure more of you have heard of this one. It was recently on the New York Times Bestseller list and for good reason. This book is so beautiful that most explanations fall short. It's the story of a man and the things that happen to him, but as is usually the case, it is how it is told that makes it incredible. If you only pick one book to read out of all the ones here, let it be this one!

Okay! That was more fun than comparing the phonetics of English and Thai, but that is actually what I should be doing right now! See you later. :)

It's a rainy day and I love it.

That's right. Today, it's been raining nonstop in Mainz. That means after a long week and busy Friday night, C and I have gotten to enjoy a lovely, lazy day - tea, paper editing, watching a fun series from the early 2000s and looking forward to a fun week!

Let me do a bit of filling in of details. Why was Friday busy? We'll start with that. Well, Friday was busy because we were invited to the Fachschaftsfrühling in Germersheim, basically a sort of Spring Fling for the college in Germersheim, which, as most of you know, is the Translation and Interpretation department of the University of Mainz.  Now, this is more than just a party. During most of the day, there's a really fun fair going on - students from each language department there put together some food specialties from the countries where their language is spoken and make fun signs and decorations and set up a booth on the campus and people can come by and wander through all the booths to try the fun foods.  Last year, I was there for this as well and actually worked with the students in the English department to get everything set up. I think we made 300 cupcakes. Anyways, I've realized that it's more fun when you don't have to be part of the actual work, but then again, someone's got to do it!

What with C's internship in Mainz, we couldn't leave until around 6 from Mainz so we didn't get to Germersheim in time for the actual fair part, but rather for the second part of the day, which is, in fact, just a spring fest dance. However, it's a very well-attended dance since everyone has been milling around the campus all day long anyway for the rest of the festivities. We went and stayed the night with a few friends of C's and mine and had a fantastic time. There was some chilling on their balcony before we went to the dance with punch and a bit of guitar playing and classic song singing. A great night!

However, we were up rather late as one might imagine and were pretty exhausted when we rolled back out of the train and into our apartment in Mainz. But we woke up happy and refreshed early this morning and have proceeded to clean up not only my paper today but also our apartment. True, as soon as I decided to write some more of my paper, the living room started slipping down on the tidiness scale (all the books got scattered around, notebook papers, sticky notes, etc.), but it's still better than it was!

My paper, incidentally, is now 12 pages long. :) True, the conclusion isn't done and that which has not been written yet has also not been edited yet, but the end is near. Then I just have to write the second one! But it feels good.

The week ahead of me looks to be rather relaxed - for strange reasons I actually have no math lectures this week, but still a workshop and still some homework. I hope to be uploading another radio show as well - I've really been enjoying that process. I somehow find that work more natural than when I've tried to make videos. I'm not sure how you guys feel - I'm not even sure how many people listen to or even care about the radio broadcasts- but also unlike videos, right now, I don't even care because it's fun for me.

Alright - I should probably get back to my paper. Thanks once again for reading!