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.