The Inside Story

(When there are little dashed lines ((like this ----)) that means some time passed between the entries. Just so you know.)

(about one hour into the flight)

Oh my goodness. Lots to tell you about, but first of all, our captain is hilarious.

„Laaadies and gentlemen, I have a bit more information for you about the flight – which I thought might interest you... like, for instance, where we’re going!“ –insert very long description of every piece of land we will go across ending with „...then we’ll snag the corner off Nebraska and have a lovely landing in Denver.“*  He’s just cracking me up.

*okay, okay, a bit loosely translated just to try to explain all of his jokes! 

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After nine hours of flying, a bit more of the captain’s wisdom:

„So, soon we’ll be starting our descent into Denver and there’s some quick winds around Denver that might blow in some Thundershowers... let’s hope we’re quicker than them.

In Denver, it is about 34 degrees Celsius.. and that’s quite something.  During our descent it might get a bit bumpy and that’s just because of the hot temperatures. And you know.. that’s what happens when you fly.“

„Thank you again for choosing Lufthansa and it was a pleasure having you on board... for such a long time. Goodbye!“

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(Two hours after that)

 

One of the things I will say about flight delays – nothing unites a troupe of travelers like adversity. Yes, I volunteered for a different non-non-stop flight to SFO today in exchange for some hefty compensation from Lufthansa – this flight was to stop in Denver. As we got closer to Denver, there started to be thunderstorms over the airport. Aaaand they closed the airport. Aaand we circled around in the air for a while, the storms didn’t clear, we didn’t have enough fuel to keep circling until the storms cleared (seeing as we’d been flying from FRANKFURT FREAKING GERMANY), so we turned around and have ended up in Oaklahoma City. We are not allowed to get out of the airplane. We are simply here to refuel, and then we have to get back up in the air and fly back to Denver, and the ideal plan would be that I still get into San Francisco and eventually Santa Cruz sometime today! I’m not sure if that will happen.

Right now, we’re in negotiations with the Oaklahoma City folks, trying to first get a parking spot big enough for our giant plane and now trying to get the amount of fuel that this beast needs. It’s like asking a family of mice to provide a meal for a grizzly bear. Still, we have the ever-amusing commentary of the pilot and I have reached a point where this is not sad anymore, just funny. I know I need some sleep and will try to do that because without it, everything seems incredibly dire.

After a certain number of hours, though, you just want to breathe real air again. I just looked at the clock on my computer, which is still on Germany time. In an hour and ten minutes, I will have gotten up to go to the airport 24 hours ago. Good effing grief!

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Also, quick note: should I be a journalist? As soon as the announcement happened and I got over my initial stupid-tears-caused-from-tiredness-that-I-couldn’t-stop reaction, the other reaction was „well, at least I’ll be able to write an interesting blog entry about this!“

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Eventually, I sprinted through the Denver airport with another person who so optimistically volunteered for this other flight, and by the time our plane landed in Denver the last flight to San Francisco for the night was already boarding. We dashed through customs, picked up our bags, checked them back in, went back through security and skidded into the gate just quickly enough for me to ask a friendly stranger for his cell phone to tell my father when I was going to arrive and two hours later, we got there. My lovely family, C included, had waited around in San Francisco for me to arrive and we got home to Santa Cruz at 1:30 in the morning. I calculated that all in all, I was paid about 50 Euros an hour to do that crazy traveling. I'm still deciding whether or not it was worth it.

So, it didn't all go as planned.

I wrote several things for this blog the day before yesterday while I was in planes and the one that I posted that day is slightly outdated. In order for my entries to make sense, let me just tell you that I was quite impulsive at the gate in Frankfurt on that tell-tale morning. As usual, the airline had overbooked the flight, thinking that some people wouldn't show up. This means that they were looking for volunteers to take another flight later in the day to free up some seats. Usually, I don't have flexible enough plans to do this. Also, when they look for volunteers, they always offer some sort of compensation - usually something like "200 Dollars to be used for the purchase of your next Lufthansa flight" - not all that tempting. But on that day? "We are looking for at least four volunteers to fly out later today, from Frankfurt to Denver, Colorado and from there to San Francisco. You'll get in about six hours later than you would with the original nonstop flight... we are offering 600 Euros, in cash, for anyone who would volunteer..." That's right. In cash. To be used on whatever the hell you want, not just for a flight.

I debated for about a minute and a half, then went up to the counter and volunteered. And that's how my day began. I'll post what happened afterwards.

In transit.

Whew.

I’m listening to a cd that I got for my birthday, staring at the big digital clock in front of me at Gate C14 – it’s 7:47. I got up at 3:00.  It’s been a long day already and the flight hasn’t even started!

Leaving Mainz was very strange. I went between thinking about all the things I would miss, from the meaningful (my friends, the apartment, my life there in general) to the extremely mundane (the recorded voice that says the names of the bus stops as you ride the bus, the machines for recycling bottles at the store, bakeries on every corner) and then I would be excited about seeing my family again – but every time I got excited, I realized that I was imagining I would go to the states for a visit, not to stay.

This is not to say that I don’t love the states anymore or my friends there or family – of course not. I am very excited for my senior year, especially just to be in California again (which I have missed more than I expected). I’m just – leaving a place is always hard. I’ve planted roots. I’ve gathered a community around me. I have a routine, a plan, a way of doing things and a system of amazing people around me. No matter where you’ve built that kind of life, it’s always hard to leave.

C’s plane took off about twenty minutes ago. I wish we could fly together, but at least I will see her soon.  We’ll be picked up by my father in the San Francisco airport in about twelve and a half hours – at least, that’s when I’ll get in. C gets in about two hours later.

In the meantime, I’ve got a few plans. Want to hear them? You’re reading this, so I’ll assume you do:

1.     Don’t fall asleep yet. Wait until you’re on the plane!

2.     Somehow convince the flight attendants (once they’re at the counter here at the gate) to let me get on the plane early to put my guitar in an overhead compartment or in some closet. Apparently the flight is hugely full and things have changed a bit since the last time I flew with my guitar... She’s packed in tight with sweaters and things just in case they need to throw her in the brig, but I hope not.

3.     On the plane, listen to Stephen Fry! I’ve held off listening to his book for the past few days so I could have a bunch to listen to on the plane and I’m so allowed!!

4.     See if there’s free internet to upload this blog entry... J

5.     Find food? We’ll see if that happens. There’s a huge supply of absolutely NOTHING near this gate. Tiny coffee shop with pretzels (not really my thing at this time of the morning) and a duty free shop. They’ll give us food on the plane for sure.

I’m gonna stop writing now just in case they do come to the counter. J Wish me luck!

P.S. Just checked my FreeCell record? Played: 4429 Games. Won: 4214. Hell, yeah.

Can you prove under pressure?

I found out today whether I could or not!
Yes, I have survived my final exam. Passed. I don't know the exact grade, because as soon as my professor found out that he didn't have to give me an actual grade, he decided not to go to all that trouble. My college at home just pays attention to whether I've passed or not, and today, I passed.

I spent two and a half nervous hours in the study room again today, running through the proofs of the most important theorems because I had been told he'd ask about them, learned the "skeleton proofs", if you will - (just the structure and the rules or theorems you mention as reasons in a proof, not messing around with the actual nitty-gritty steps, because honestly, who has time for double or triple indices inside a linearly independent set during a half hour exam anyway?) until I had at least seven of them memorized. I studied three chapers - the three we covered in the class. Well, okay, two and a half. We didn't do much of the last chapter.  You tell me the name of the theorem, I could tell you how it goes and how to prove it. You tell me one condition about an Endomorphism, I could tell you the six things it was equivalent to. I felt good.

Anyways, I started taking deep breaths about a half hour before the exam started - I had already started to shake. I don't emotionally get that nervous for things like presentations or exams, but as calm as a lake on a day with no breeze as might be inside my head, my outside is the opposite. I can't write my name without the handwriting becoming squiggly and nervous in itself. My breathing is shallow unless I absolutely concentrate on it. And my voice quavers, too. But I stood in front of the professor's office, head bursting with Cayley-Hamilton, Jordansche-Normalform, Hauptraumzerlegung, Annulators and Eigenvektoren, and managed to knock and go inside.

Just as I knew it would, the half hour exam flew by. It was not quite what I expected. First of all, he only asked about the first of the three chapters we covered in the class. ONLY THE FIRST ONE. What the hell did I learn all the rest for??? That being said, there were also no questions about any of the major theorems, whose proofs I had learned forwards and backwards. Instead, there were tiny proof questions, having to come up with an Endomorphism that isn't diagonalizable on the spot, stuff like that. I wasn't the best at that. Those things are, of course, easy if you already had an example for just that in your head. Once I had an example, since my tools of calculation in linear algebra are quite sharp, I could immediately check if it were an example for that or not, but coming up with the example itself was tricky. I had a few lucky guesses. :)

Overall, there was not a single definition or theorem question that I messed up, but not a proof that I didn't stutter about a bit before I managed to get it. However, given how I had prepared myself, I did pretty well. And, as I thought while pacing outside the professor's door while he decided my grade, there's no way I could have failed. I knew too much for that. And I was right. He opened the door thirty seconds later to tell me just that. He told me that some of my answers could've been just a bit better, but overall it was very good. Then he shook my hand and I left.

And now I'm DONE.

Not bad for an academic year abroad.

:)

Update

So, you all know my penchant for listening to classical/instrumental music while I study. Let me just say that it is now quarter after 4 in the afternoon and I have listened to the soundtracks of Pride and Prejudice, Pirates of the Caribbean (I and II), Lord of the Rings (I and III) as well as the Turtle Island String Quartet, and my favorite mix of Dvorak, Tchaikovsky, Holst and Saint-Saëns. I'll put on the soundtrack now from the new Star Trek movie, and then I think that'll have to be it for the day. Oy vey.

Quite Productive and Also Disbelieving

Hey.

It's 11:58 in the morning and I am in the math building on campus. I've been here since 8:30, just studying linear algebra. I don't think I've every immersed myself quite so much in one subject. Yes, last semester I had much harder classes and studied as hard as I could for them, but I never had the freedom to concentrate on only one at a time, like I do now. Basically, I close my eyes and see matricies, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

My plan for the day was for it to be a completely studying day. The exam is Wednesday - my very first oral exam in math - and tomorrow, I have to do some pesky things like exmatriculate and go to the city people and tell them I won't be living here anymore. Oh, yeah. And I should probably pack.

In any case, I am quite proud of my work today so far, and I certainly hope it continues into the afternoon. I also wanted to brag a bit and tell you that yesterday I ran 13 kilometers - roughly 7.5 miles. Oh, yeah!!!

Ever since I decided not to do the Women's Run in Frankfurt, I wanted to have some other goal to set for myself. I wanted to do more than my normal run length and yesterday, I ran all the way to the first bridge, did the Three Bridges Run, then all the way back home again. After so much static sitting and studying, it was pretty fantastic.

In other news, I'll be in California in four days. That's really strange. But I am excited.

Now, unfortunately, I must go. I need some lunch - all the other people in this silent work room keep staring at me since my stomach is making sounds like a wounded cat. Bye!

Birthday!

Oh my goodness. Last night, everyone came over for my party, and I don't think it could have gone better. We were inside and at our apartment since the weather was threatening rain, and we cooked lots of Flammkuchen - I don't think we have a word for it in English. It's like pizza, but traditionally without cheese and with a creamy sauce that is very milky and somewhere between the consistencies of yogurt and cream cheese - it's typically served with tiny pieces of bacon and onions on top, but we had some vegetarians among us, so some were with olives, capers, garlic, peppers and onions and the rest with peppers, onions, and bacon. Delicious. People also brought cheese cake, tabouleh, a fantastic invention that involves wrapping a piece of bacon around a date and cooking it in a pan (*drool*), and even a pudding-dessert with my name written in sprinkles on top. I got lots of presents which almost all catered to my love of chocolate and of office supplies - I now have paper clips in the shape of triangles, spirals, and elephants. My friends rock.

But presents and food aren't the important thing. The important thing was how everyone was there, everyone was happy to be there, and I think I had an authentic moment with each and every person. It's hard to have actual moments of communication and connection with people - hard enough in daily life let alone at a party. But there were some real moments last night where I actually talked to people. I love that. Everyone  (of course) waited until midnight and then sang Happy Birthday (in two languages) and in the middle of their singing, I got so choked up and felt the tears threatening to fall from my eyes. I was really struck at how similar I was feeling to when I left Thailand four years ago- surrounded by friends who had so suddenly and unexpectedly become family, faced with the fact that I would be leaving so soon. At least in this case, I know that I will be back. As C gently reminded me last night, when I excused myself into the bedroom because I couldn't hold back all the tears, "Darling, if you want to, they could all be here again for your birthday next year." It really isn't that long until I'll be here again. A year? What's a year. Nothing. :)

Also, something that touched me last night was that after they had finished singing, even though most people had hugged me when they came in and possibly other times during the course of the party, they all came to me one by one after the other and wished me happy birthday one by one. I just found it so sweet.

As is my custom, I intended on taking pictures and took none - the one that I think will stick in most people's heads, though, was me being hugged and then picked up and spun around by my 2-meter-tall friend (6 foot 7 inches). Hard image to forget!

In short, I think it was the best birthday I have had in a long time. And, I get to have it celebrated again when I get to the states.

In more ways than one, I am so damn lucky.

Little Lessons from the Past Week

1. If you keep looking at the weather forecast for the night that your amazing birthday bash is supposed to take place (for which you are completely planning on grilling and having a blast outside on the banks of the Rhine), it will inevitably look more and more like it's going to be rainy and cold every time you check the weather website.

2. While you are trying on pants at H&M (Thanks to a marvelous present from C's family -- thank you! I needed new clothes...badly!), the real question is whether your insane running-person's calves will fit in them, not the rest of you. (Here's a funny image for you: I tried on one pair of pants today that were the perfect size for my waist, but one too small for my muscle-y legs, AND they were a marvelous bright green color, which meant that your dear Emily looked exactly like the incredible Hulk in that tiny changing room... I had to stomp around and growl a bit just to be in character. :D )

3. NEVER underestimate how tricky communication between two non-native speakers of a language can be. (I.e. organizing my Linear Algebra oral exam next week with my professor who is decidedly NOT from Germany - and this is just the organizing phase. Let's see how the exam itself goes!)

4. If you think that you are capable of listening to Stephen Fry's autobiography only for the time while walking home from the store, think again. If you are anything like me, you will end up sitting on the couch chuckling to yourself for the next two hours. No joke. What a fun way to blow off studying.

5. Yes, you are about to turn 21. Can you believe it?

The great things about this rainy day.

So many things today have just made me smile in such a simple, unexpected way.

First of all, there was just watching the rain this morning from the table, looking out the window over the train tracks. I love rain. I happen to be one of those people.  And today, it seemed particularly beautiful to me. :)

Second of all, when I was at the gym, I was riding on an exercise bike that faces the main counter of the gym. On the other side of the counter there is a scale, where the gym-goers sometimes weigh themselves before or after a workout. I was at the gym in the morning today, which I know to be the time of the grizzled, gray, and surprisingly strong crowd - me and a bunch of eighty-year-olds, or so it feels like (which means we are never competing for the same equipment, and they don't smell that much of sweat like the younger sporty people! - two great things!).  I was looking over in the direction of the scale today when an older man (probably sixty) stepped on to the scale and looked down at the screen to see how much he weighed. I just happened to notice an older woman sneak up behind him and very sneakily put her foot on the bottom of the scale as well and push down. I watched the man's face go from slightly concerned to extremely worried as the numbers went up and up on the scale, until he happened to notice a third foot on the scale and turned around to nudge the woman away, laughing. I don't think they knew each other except for working out at the same time of day and seeing each other there, and it was just such a fun and playful interaction - I loved it.

Thirdly, I met with C at Starbucks today before she went off to have a camping trip with the other Germersheim folks, a sort of end-of-semester, end-of-our-studies party (even though a few of them aren't done with their bachelor's degrees yet due to spending semesters abroad, etc.).  We only saw each other for about twenty minutes after her work day before she had to get on the train to go meet everyone, but something about seeing her there felt so normal, so much of my daily routine - and every time that Mainz feels like home to me, I just can't help but smile.

Lastly, I went out tonight to dinner with three other exchange students from the same program as I am, and we just had so much fun. I hadn't realized how long it had been since I had done anything with an actual group of Americans. Some of the time I was thinking about how we were seeming to the German people around us, but some of the time, I wasn't caring about it at all. We had conversations I didn't expect that went in directions I didn't predict. And some of it was just silly, which is fun, too. The food was good, the two boys ordered Daquiris and were laughing about how they had ordered girl's drinks until they tasted them and decided they were their new favorite drinks, we talked about how American tourists in Germany seem to us now that we've lived here, we talked about the pros and cons of the different university systems in the two different countries, we talked about how fast the semester has gone. I just had a fun evening. :)

And NOW:  I get to go to bed and sleep in past 6:30 for the first time in at least a month. I am thrilled. On that note, good night!

Southside Broadcast!

Alright, if you feel like hearing a very small selection of the groups that played at the festival, go and have a listen! The broadcast is "fresh off the hard drive", if you know what I mean. Get it while it's hot! :)

Click here to listen!

Computer troubles lead to radio delays.

GAH. So, my computer, my beautiful macbook is haivng the first problem it has had in the three and a half years that I've had it - and it's a huge problem. I can't access the internet. My internet browser opens for about a second and a half, then there is an "unexpected error" and it closes. 

Now, this isn't a horrible problem as you can see, because I can sit here in one of the university computer labs and write to you all - however, when I want to record and upload a radio broadcast? That's a bit tricky. Studnets tend to frown on strange people in computer labs who talk with radio announcer voices into a microphone while everyone else in the computer lab is trying to study...

Basically, two broadcasts are underway, and I apologize for the delay. I'll have things up and running as soon as possible!

Remarks about my birthday.

My birthday party is next week. Most of my friends here know this, but not necessarily the people who read this blog, since many of them are not in Mainz. I've invited a bunch of people to a grilling-and-hanging-out party on the Rhine. If it rains, then things will really get interesting since C and I only own four chairs. But we'll make it work no matter what!

But there are two really important things that I want to mention about this party. The first one is something really neat that happened very unexpectedly last week - - last week, after four years, I got in contact with my friend Jiska again. For those of you who either don't know or have forgotten, Jiska was also an exchange student from Germany who was in Surat Thani, Thailand the year that I was there. We were the closest of friends that year - had a friendship that meant and still means so much to me. The friendship was formed under such extraordinary circumstances and the two of us would otherwise never have met, and I think for those reasons it was so unexpectedly wonderful. But after the year in Thailand, we lost contact. There was a brief visit the first time I went to see C in Germany after my year abroad and somehow it was strange between Jiska and me. We were in the middle of reverse culture shock and were both expecting the Jiska or the Emily that we had known in Thailand and I think we were disappointed when we didn't find it. After that, even the occasional Skype calls sort of faded away and we had no contact with each other whatsoever.

Until last week. Last week, I happened to be online on Skype during a time when Jiska was and we got to talking. First it was the usual tentative Skype chat, all typed, no actual phone call, nothing very real being said since there were four years of material to cover - how do you even start to explain how you are when you haven't heard from someone in that long?  But somehow, one of us got the courage to pick up the phone and call the other one -- overall, I think I spent about four hours on the phone with Jiska last week. And she's coming to my birthday party.

I am so thrilled to have rekindled this relationship. We talked on the phone about what went wrong the last time we tried to see each other and actually did get a chance to talk about the myriads of things that have happened to each of us over the years. And of course, we spent at least an hour talking only in sentences that started with "Do you remember when..." and reliving the best Thailand memories - things that I was sure only I remembered because they were so mundane but that it turned out had stuck in her mind as well. It was a blast.

So, she'll be coming down from Hannover to come to my party next week. I'm so looking forward to the chance to catch up. That was something really, really unexpected - life's fun when it does things like that!


The other thing I wanted to say about my party is that -- well, frankly, there are so many people coming!  I've been thinking about it and at home, if I take into account all fifty states, I have a total of 5 really good friends, people that I could count on to come to that party - and they live in four different states, which means that maybe they couldn't even come to a party if I had one.  And when I think about how nervous I was last semester about making friends, I just am so touched and overwhelmed when I think of the at-least-17 people who are coming to this party. I had no idea I would get to be in such a community while I was here, and I'm just SO excited.

Thoughts from Campus

It's such a stunning day. I'm sitting on a bench in the sun outside one of the university buildings and staring at the last few holes in my papers that I need to patch up. But in my head, I was racing through ideas of blog entries, videos, radio broadcasts - all having to do with Germany in some way. My subconscious is trying to figure out a way for me to take all of this with me, I think. I know that nothing I do will be able to let me bring even all the little things with me - the quirks of the university campus, the way our floor creaks in our apartment, the way you have a fifty percent chance of seeing a plane in the sky when you look up, either going to or coming from Frankfurt.  But I'm not only sad about leaving - I have so many things to look forwards to - including, but not limited to, my last year in college, i.e. getting my degree. In mathematics!!!

I think when we look back at other times in our life we always feel much older, we feel like we can't believe just how young we were then. How young I was when I went to Thailand. How young I was when I started college. How young I was even when I first came here!  Now, am I just full of pretentious thoughts or did I really age after all of those times? Are those ages certain plateaus and you don't feel much older for a while until suddenly, you've been bumped up a level and you can look down at what you were? That's C's hypothesis. We've talked about this before. It's an interesting phenomenon.

You might be able to tell that my head is all over the place today - I'm sorry if it makes for confusing reading. I wanted to tell you so many things - like how we spent hours on the train this weekend but still ended up having a simply lovely visit with C's family up in the north.

(In case you were curious, the hours on the train were not planned -- well, a few were planned, but not all of them. Our travel plans had us changing trains in Münster, where it turned out they had found an old bomb in a tunnel underneath the station during the night before we were supposed to travel. They were busy the next day with trying to evacuate the train station and surrounding homes so they could safely take out the bomb without endangering anyone, but somehow failed to find this information sufficiently important as to inform anyone who was on trains riding to Münster. Instead, we found out about twenty minutes before we were supposed to stop there that the train in fact was NOT going to stop there. ((Due to some very dilligent and wonderful grandparents, C and I had already been informed about this possibility. Thanks again!)) There were a few useless bus rides and then one important bus ride and we only ended up getting in about three hours after we were supposed to... oy, vey. But we survived!)

We were visiting C's family since it was her Grandmother's birthday and though we missed most of the festivities (see above) they saved us some cake (including a marzipan cake that my tongue is still dreaming about) and tea and we had a lovely time. After dinner, C took me to a playground that she used to go to as a kid and we kicked a soccer ball around and I realized that even though I love sporting my Germany jersey, I really am an embarassment when it comes to soccer! (Something that might change next year if my math classes don't take up too much time. :) )

The trip back yesterday was blissfully uneventful and I even got some work done in the train. Now it's Monday - the Monday of the second to last week in the semester. Either the last semester was half as long as this one or this one has been twice as fun, because I feel like this all just started.

Also, one paper is done and the other one will be done after about another an hour and half's work of editing, plus some time spent at a copier machine. Hooray! Anyone feel like reading twelve pages about Thai phonetics? Or anyone looking to set up a training session for American school children who want to study abroad in Thailand? Just let me know. I've got you covered.

Quick Sidenote

I'm sitting at one of the university courtyards right now and am just watching someone learn how to skateboard. I still think I'd be so much cooler if I could do that!  There really isn't enough time for everything in life.

A few of my favorite musings.

Today, I've come across some questions in my own head that I often have - brain projects, or brain wonderings, I guess you could call them. These are things that I think about in no regular intervals, but every time my brain wanders back to them (and it continues to do so over the years), I remember where I left of and continue to muse, even though for most of them I've never found an answer. I imagine that other people must have similar brain projects and today I thought I'd share the few that I've come across today.

1) There are so many things in my life that I am interested in. Is one lifetime really enough to experience all of the things I want to? I often feel like I am quite reasonable at a lot of things but not an expert in anything, and I want to be an expert in almost everything that I'm interested in. I want to live on a farm and grow my own food and ride horses every day, but I also want to go off into a jungle somewhere and discover something that no one else has before. But still more, I want to work for Apple and help design the newest and coolest piece of technology that is so cool none of us can even imagine it yet. But then again, I want to be fluent in six languages and work as an interpreter at the UN.  And I want to inspire students in a calculus class and run a marathon. And somewhere in there, I want to go hanggliding, go into outer space, and be a dancer in a broadway show. Somehow I don't think there's enough time for all of that. But is there enough time for some of it? Should I choose one and just run with it? Or should I try to do six of them but only halfway? Right now, I've tried to do all of them and it's not even halfway - maybe a sixteenth- or twenty-fourth-way. And I feel like I'm letting myself down, but that's because I keep expecting to be able to do everything. Those expectations clearly have to go. But I can try to do as much as makes me happy, right? Right. Maybe I'll find something that I'm drawn to more than anything else in the future. Right now, it's just all too damn interesting.

2) This thought is a real brain addiction. Ready?
What must it be like to be inside the brain of a composer?

Okay, so if you don't know my taste in music and habits of listening to music, it might not make sense as to why this fascinates me so much. Basically, I love music - music music music. And being a musician and coming up with melodies and songs is foreign enough to me - I just play along to songs that I like, maybe combine three chords that sound nice and consider that a good day. When I think about the writing of pop music, somehow that seems reasonable. You have a team of people, someone likes these chords, someone else suggests these words - I can see how that would come about. But composers?

Let's put aside those giants of Debussy, Holst and Dvorak just for a second. What about even the people who compose music for movie soundtracks? I have just spent the last three hours listening to the soundtrack of the third Pirates of the Carribean on repeat while writing one of my papers.  HOW do they do it?  Someone says "this movie is about pirates and it needs music". And out of months of work, here come the melodies - the singing cellos and pounding drums, swelling chords and thundering crescendos - and to me, it's creating something out of nothing. It's moving your hands through the air in front of where you are sitting and somehow bringing a beautiful woman into being (yes, music to me is a woman). Out of nothingness.

I just can't imagine what it must be like to be inside those brains while at work. Do melodies pop up the way our thoughts do? And when our thoughts pop up (another thing I'm fascinated by), at least in my head, they aren't in words. They are pictures, sounds, ideas - when I start to talk I realize that I have words for them, but the words aren't in my head before I say them. Is it like that for composers? Do the melodies or themes appear without notes and the notes are just like words for our thoughts and appear only when we need to express our idea to someone else?

I just find it fascinating. :)

Being productive feels so good, but now it's time for a nap.

Hey!

So, I underestimated the work I would have to do this week. I assumed that after coming back and diving back in on Monday, I'd have all the time in the world this week not only to get a good chunk of my papers done, but also to write lots of blog entries! As you may have noticed, that last thing didn't happen all that much, though the first thing did pretty well.

It's Sunday right now and I'm sitting with C in the math library on the university campus. That's right, in the library, working on a Sunday. That's nothing. Want to know what we did this morning? We got on the bus at 6:02 in the morning and rode fifteen minutes to the woods where I've gone running before. And we did the 10km stretch before breakfast this morning. Oh, yeah!

It did feel wonderful to be done with your exercise for the day at 7:30 in the morning - and not just any exercise but a properly awesome run. I really am starting to understand the "runner's high' nowadays - for me, the first kilometers are always a bit tricky and if I only do six or seven, I feel alright by the end, but if I run more than eight or nine? I'm flying for that last bit! I just look at the ground falling away from beneath my feet and with every step I feel like I'm blessing my legs for being able to do this wonderful thing, to carry me over the ground like that (especially on days today when I don't trip at all!). It really is a great feeling.  I understand now why some people run so much. This morning it was also so beautiful - the woods just after sunrise, still a bit wet from the rain last night and full to the treetops with singing birds. We even saw a hawk swoop over us twice on the trail.  It was beautiful.

After that, C and I went to a cafe that we just found out about last week that has very fancy and extravagant breakfast only on Sundays - we were up early, so we headed over there. Along with yummy scrambled eggs, rolls, coffee and fruit, we also tried pieces of deer and boar meat on our bread! Quite tasty, actually! And then, full and starting to realize that we were going to be sore later in the day, we dragged ourselves to the train station and got on a bus to the university. Now we've been here a bit more than an hour and I'm starting to feel less worried about my work. True, there's still a lot to do, but I think I'm equal to it.

And it's July. That thought keeps hitting me again and again. July. I don't know how this year went by, but I'm going to live up this last month. And it's not really my last month, anyway. If I have any say about it, I'll be back here again, and it will be soon.

(P.S. Due to computer issues, the radio show has been delayed but not cancelled. I'll let you know when that's gonna be up and running.)