My Noble Steed

WoooooHOO! Got me a li'l bitta mon-ay! HOO-rah!

I checked my bank account today and had €600 in there. I was expecting more - something more like €1600 - but I'll take this little bit for now and wait a bit to see if the rest comes in within the next day or two. At least this allows me to catch up on my rent (from September, at any rate), pay my U.S. bills, and send some care packages. I am most definitely stoked!

Oh, and real quick -- I got this link from a friend of mine (thanks, Eric!) to what may be the bext German pop music I've heard since coming here: It's Peter Fox - "Alles Neu" (read the article and then check out the video at the bottom of the page). The song is heavy and catchy at the same time -- heavy because I don't know what else to call the awesome drum line and string combo and catchy because, well, it is.

Also, I had no school today. Well, I mean, the school had school today - there were students there. But my mentor and co-teacher for today was not. Hence, no work for me. I, however, woke up all early, got myself all dolled up, and walked to school without knowing this, so I was a little disappointed. I went into town anyway, went to the library, had lunch, and then hit the cafe. I'm thinking about going to the theater (the Theater Proper, not the movie theater) later this week. There's a funny musical-spoof playing called "The Phantom of the Oker" (the Oker is the river that runs through this area). It's about the rivalry between Braunschweig and Hannover and it looks like it'll be pretty funny. I'll let you guys know how it turns out, if I can manage to get tickets.

In the mean time, I'm going everywhere on foot. My bicycle -- my noble, noble steed -- is total kaputt. You see, I'm riding this bike on loan from a very nice colleague of mine. It's all I've got to ride, and it came to me as is. It's a men's mountain bike, though, which makes it not the most optimal of rides for a girl in the city. Also, the gears will slip now and then when I try to push the pedals too hard. So, say I'm riding up a hill and I try to put all my weight on one pedal, standing up and using the pedals kind of like a stair climbing machine. My noble steed decides that this is too much stress for one pedal to bear, the chain slips and my foot goes slamming down on the pedal -- crunch! -- as I go careening off into the bushes. Haha, bicycle, haha.

Okay, so it's more like a stubborn donkey than a noble steed, but it's my ride. It's got a bell that goes ching-ching! and a thing on the back for me to stick my tote bag in. I'm pretty happy with it. But I took it around town the other night and left it out by a club (my friends and I had all stayed out until late and taken a taxi home). I think to myself, "No problem. I'll just retrieve it in the morning..." (This is not a strange thing to do here). But when I come back the next morning, some drunken dork had let all the air out of my back tire and stolen the cap that keeps the air in. Faaaaaaantastic. So I drag my rattling bike back home. But later that day, when my roommate and I try to reinflate the tire, the inner tube keeps popping out to the side in one part and we can't make any progress with it. I'm like, "stupid noble steed ..." but my roommate says, "No worries - just take your bike on the bus to Radeklint. There's a good bike repair shop that I know there. I'll ride my bike and meet you there." Right on. Off we go.

... except that the only bus I could find to Radeklint went aaaaall the way around the city first. And this grumpy old bus driver-woman said I had to pay twice the usual fee to take the bike on the bus with me. And I didn't get to sit down. And, as I was in the bus buying my ticket, someone knocked over my bike and messed up the handle bars so that they don't point straight anymore. Ugh. Okay, fine. On the bus. So, I'm riding along .... and I'm riding along ... and the bus number for the bus that I'm on changes and now I'm on the 439 to some place called Donnaustraße ... and I keep riding because I haven't found the Radeklint stop yet ... and I'm in the country. Great. I get off the bus. I look around. There is NOTHING around me. I call my roommate and tell her where I am and she gives the pause like, "how on earth did you get there?" She tells me to just get back on the next bus coming the other way and to get off at Radeklint then. I say, "But I've only got €2 left" and she says, "Well, I'm sure if you explain to the bus driver that you're lost he or she will help you out."

... kay. So I'm sitting in the cold, in the country, at dusk, waiting for a bus that will not be arriving for another half hour. I am SO NOT having a good time. And when the bus pulls up, who's driving it? Grumpy old bus driver-woman! I think, oh this has to be good because she knows I was just on the bus and she'll understand that I'm lost. No. Not only is this woman not at all understanding of my situation, she tries to tell me that I'll have to pay double AGAIN for my bicycle, which was more money than I had on me. I end up pointing out that my bike pass is technically good for 150 minutes (as opposed to just one or two bus rides) and get away with only buying a new ticket for me. Still. I am not a happy camper at this point. And as I'm taking my second 45-minute bus ride of the day, my roommate calls to let me know that the bike place is now closed and we'll just have to go tomorrow or the next day. And then? Then the bus driver yells back to me that there is no Radeklint stop (something I had asked her about earlier, to no response); there are only three street stops that happen to be in the area known as Radeklint.

...

Why did no one tell me this? This would have made my life much easier, I think as I drag my bike - whose back tire now refuses to move at all, making a hideous squealy noise whenever I try to roll it - away from the main station. But no. Even the bus plan was ambiguous and unhelpful. It said "Radeklint" on it in such a way that made me think there was a Radeklint stop, I think. Then, as I am pulling my broken, squealing bike down the sidestreets towards my house, it starts to rain. Ah, my noble steed.

Alles Klar, Kommisar

Hey lovelies,

A quick side note before I get on to the blog post proper: there is a new step in the ritual of my coming to the internet cafe. See, you all know that I come to the same cafe all the time. And you all have heard about how I am on familiar-ish terms with the owner, and how my favorite computer is number 27. But now, the owener and I have this way that we greet each other. It goes like this:

Me: "Hallo!"
Him: "Hallo! Alles gut?"
Me: "Alles gut."
Him: "Alles klar?"
Me: "Alles klar!" (and sometimes, "Alles klar, Kommisar!")
Us: *laughter*

... and then I go on to my computer. I love this place.

So, the post:

I went hiking with my friend and her daughter a while back. Actually, we went "spazieren gehen", which I thought meant "taking a walk" but which actually means "to embark on a dangerous, arduous journey up a mountain where death is a real possibility". Who knew? Anyway, I wore a t-shirt, cute jeans, and these pair of fashionable tennis shoes with no tread on them whatsoever. And we're walking up these steep paths and down into these valleys and I'm like "oh, this is fun." We even found a cool rope swing over a little valley and had loads of fun swinging back and forth like monkeys. Videos and pics to follow, promise. But we come to this part of the hike where we either have to scale this steep, steep slope about the height of a three story building or double back and go a long ways around it. My roommate and her daughter are like, "No problem! We'll just climb up this." ... Mind you, this slope is so steep that you can't actually walk up it; you have to scramble up a step or two, hang on to a tree that is somehow managing to grow on this slope, and then scramble/leap/run to the next available tree. It's not spazieren gehen, it's mountain climbing.

So, I make it like this about two-thirds of the way up the slope, clutching my stupid, fashionable purse to my body with one hand and grasping at limbs with the other. But I'm watching my roommate's daughter, hoping she doesn't miss a limb and go tumbling. So what do I do? I miss a limb I was reaching for, slip on my treadless, fashionable tennis shoes, and go tumbling. I'm sliding down this pseudo-mountain in a pile of leaves at a frightening pace and I think "Well, there are two options here: Either I can try to save my jeans by skidding on my feet, which will probably send me flying and end in me breaking my neck, or I can accept that I'm going to get all dirty and just slide on my butt. So, I kind of stick one foot out in front of me, slide on my butt, like I'm a runner sliding into home plate, throw my hands up in the air, and yell "woohoo!" like I'm on some sort of slip-and-slide ride. And you know what? It actually kind of was like a slip-and-slide ride. I get back to the bottom in my now muddy and definitely no longer fashionable jeans, stuck in a giant pile of leaves, laughing out loud. I thought, "Well, I'll just start climbing back up again now ..." but then ZOOM! The roommate's daughter slides in next to me in a flurry of leaves. Now it's a game! We had a hoot sliding down the slope, then we got our act together and climbed back up it. At the top of the mountain, we had cold waffles and apfelschorle. For a near-death experience, it was kinda cool.

Oh, and on a side note: I'm on IMDB! Your baby's a film star! Check me out here.

It means WHAT in German?!

WOW. I haven't blogged in almost a week. Here's a bit of everything:

1. This computer at the internet cafe, number 27, is now MY computer. I come in now and the man behind the counter says, "Hello! You're computer is free!" and I say, "Thanks!" and go to number 27, which has the nice mouse that I can put on the lefthand side. Hooray!
2. We STILL do not have internet access at my apartment. What was the net company's excuse this time? Well, when they sent us the package containing (supposedly) everything we needed to hook up the internet, they forgot to include the ONE MOST IMPORTANT PIECE, the modem. We have cords, we have a wireless router thingie, and we have power cables to a modem that we do not, as of yet, own. Interessant. Now we have to wait on ANOTHER package. Yes, we do. No, we cannot just go to these people's store and pick up the necessary device. Why? Because that would be too easy. When the package finally arrives, I suspect we will have to jump through hoops of fire before we're allowed to open it. Just my guess. Okay, that moaning and groaning aside, I can move on to ....
3. Spencer Davis!!! As these kids on the interwebs say, OMFG. I actually got to see Spencer Davis, along with Peter Jameson and Miller Anderson, play at Barnaby's. They did this fantastic acoustic performance and I got to see them. I ended up sitting right next to these pretty cool guys who were also blues fans. We sang all the songs we knew along with the band and impressed each other by knowing about Keb Mo and Robert Johnson. I ate chex mix at the bar and had a couple of fantastic beers. At the end of the night they played "House of the Rising Sun" and "(Get Your Kicks On) Route 66"; I had a hoot cheering whenever they said that Oklahoma City was mighty pretty. I couldn't believe I had the good fortune to be sitting in this little bar, so far from home, listening to legendary music and just having a grand ole time.
   
4. I went hiking today. My roommate, her daughter, and I all drove out to this mountain called Asse. Yep. That's the name of the mountain. Asse. It's pronounced just like you think it's pronounced. I had a grand ole' time with that too. (whoops, here goes a digression...) In general, my roommate and I like to find words in our respective languages that change meanings in translation. For example, "gift" in English means something that you give to someone without expecting something in return (although Christmas is sort of an exception here, isn't it?). However, in German, the word "gift" means poison. Delicious! I love it. Or, as a further example, I was trying to describe why I like fried mushrooms the other day. I said to my roommate, "well they taste good and they're mushy" ... and she looks at me like, "they're what now???" Hmm. Apparently the word that sounds like "mushy" in English means something completely different in German. I'll leave it up to your inquiring minds (and Google searches) to find out what that German word is. ;-)

Whoops. Gotta go -- next time, more about the mountain and how I almost lost my life climbing in cute little tennis shoes!

Things The Germans Do The Same (As We Do In The States)

Hey all. I'm back in the 'net cafe. Hopefully by the time I get back home today I'll have my own connection there. Until then, I'm listening to this great girl with an acoustic guitar sing in my headphones (Reina Del Cid. Check her out on YouTube and follow along with me!) and typing away. Today's topic:

Things The Germans Do The Same (as We Do Back In Zee States):

Smoking: In the U.S. there are soooo many different brands of cigarettes to choose from - variations on Camels, Marlborros, Pall Malls, Parliaments, Lucky Strikes, Winstons, Capris, Virginia Slims, Kools, Monarchs, GPCs, Newports, and on and on... but Marlborro and Camel seem to be the big ones that everybody knows. So, when I got here I guess I expected the Germans to have an answer to this American Cigarette Market Domination in the form of weird German cigarette brands like Das Smoke or ÜberZiggies or something ... but no. It looks so far like they all smoke Camels and Marlborros just like the people in U.S. do. Except this one guy. I did meet this guy the other night who was rolling his own cigarettes with some tabacco that I'd never heard of. I was like, "You go, bar man who kind of looks like Mick Jagger! You go!"

Radio: All I ever hear on the radio here is American music. In every cafe, bookstore, clothing boutique, and funeral home I am bombarded with every Top 40 hit from this year - "I Kissed A Girl" and "Disturbia" - as well as some really random older stuff - like the other day when I heard Ginuwine's "My Pony" in a hair salon. Weird.

Yes and No: I'm coming to realize that I don't have to say "ja" and "nein" anymore. For example, as long as I get out an "n" sound and then pretty much any vowel, it comes out as an informal No. "Ney." "Noo." "Nei." "Nyeu." "Ngueiuo." It's all good. English kinda does the same thing. Think about it: "no", "nah", "nuh-uh", "nunghe", "nyeuu". As long as it doesn't start with a Y sound, you're golden. Try it today -- see how many people you can get to understand your new negations! Nyeugh, my friends, nyeugh!

Schulball 2008 Photos Are Up!!!

Okay, it's certainly not the photo dump I've been promising, but the photos from my school's annual dance (called the Schulball) are up on Facebook. If you can get on there and see them, check 'em out. If not, I'll post some of my favorites here. And, after I get 'net access on my laptop, I have some more funny backstage photos from this event.

First, a little about the Schulball:

Every fall the Wilhelm-Gymnasium has a school dance/prom thing - the Schulball. This year, the theme was "Unterwegs" which is like "Under way". It was all about travel and going places. The teachers performed a bunch of skits and musical numbers from each country that we had an exchange program or a school trip with: America, France, Poland, and Greece. I danced with a bunch of other women teachers in the American skit. So, thousands of miles from Oklahoma, I find myself dancing like a cowgirl to "Cotton Eye Joe" with a bunch of Germans while my students laugh and cheer. It was fantastic.

There was also a group of the biggest, manliest man teachers we had. They danced the can-can as pretty ladies from the Moulin Rouge, of course. There was also a Polish song that the Polish exchange teachers and some German teachers danced to (my mentor being one of them). And at the end there was a big dance number where we all got in a line and danced to this traditional Greek music. It was the kind of dance where you all do the same leg movements over and over, but the line of you moves and whips around so that the ones on the end are really running around. Do you wanna take a guess as to who was on the end? Yessir, it was me! I did that on purpose! I had a hoot, running around onstage and laughing and getting worn out from dancing.

The dancing went on late into the night, but I was pretty beat. I rode home in my cowgirl clothes. Yee-haw!

For more photos, check out the Facebook album here.

You can be the hat, but I totally get to be the shoe.

Today is an insanely beautiful fall day. I'm sitting in the ole' internet cafe, at computer number 27. 27 is my favorite because the mouse cord will move far enough across the desk that I can use it with my left hand. It's leftie friendly. I'm listening to the owner talk to somebody at the front desk in Turkish and, as much Turkish as I've heard in the last four weeks, I think I'm actually starting to understand him. I've just had my first Big Mac in weeks and I'm thinking about visiting a couple more churches before I go to my friend's to play Monopoly tonight. I'm so very excited about this Monopoly in particular because it's not just plain old Monopoly. No, no, my friends! It's ... Braunschweig Monopoly! As in, all the different sights around town are now places in the board. How COOL IS THAT?!

Yep. I'm easily amused.

So, anyway, I'm having great cheap fun around the city. I went back to the library today and picked up some more books. I got a Stephen King novel called Blaze that - shockingly - I've never heard of before. I also got a trashy medieval romance novel, a translation of Kafka's Amerika, a book that I've heard of before but have no clue what it's about (it's called Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil), and a funny political satire piece of fiction that "imagines the serial resurrection and assassination of tireless muckraker and writer Upton Sinclair." Huh. I love just going to the Foreign Language section of the library here and seeing what kind of bizarre combinations of books I can come out with. And I know that some of you may be saying, "But Raychel, you're in Germany! Shouldn't you be reading only German-language books?" The answer is, of course, NO. No I shouldn't. I live in German. I begin each day with a million things I want to say, which must be funneled through the sometimes narrow spout of my German vocabulary. This gets tiring and, at the end of the day, I just want to read something where I understand every single word. I read the newspaper in German and advertisements on the streets in German and my roommate's daughter's homework in German. My books are English.

Captain's Log, Stardate 10102008...

Oh, and a few miscellaneous notes:

Churches

Amber's church is here! It's the Dom St. Blasii, also known as the Braunschweiger Dom (Dom = cathedral). It's the biggest, baddest mo-fo of all the churches here because it's where the old Herzog who took over / founded Braunschweig proper was buried (he died in 1195). His name was Heinrich der Löwen (Heinrich the Lion) and he's the reason the symbol of Braunschweig is the lion. The church itself is big a really cool combination of the romanesque, the gothic, the neo-romantic, the über-modern, you name it. It's a cool mixture of style on top of style with lots of interesting little nooks and semi-hidden rooms to explore. It also has tour guide pages to take with you in Estonian, in Esperanto, but not (that I could find) in English. So I had an interesting self-guided tour in some 19th century made-up language. That would be Esperanto, not Estonians. The Estonians are real.

Right, so, on to ....

School

I went to school at the "other building" this week. That means I taught the younger classes. See, Gymnasium is for grades 5 - 13, but at my school grades 5 - 8 are in one building and grades 9 - 13 are in the other. It kind of helps to have them separated out that way. The atmosphere is way different between the two schools because of the age differences and, in my pre-Germany imaginings, I couldn't figure out how a school with all those grades together would work. The answer is that it doesn't, probably. You have to have two buildings or somehow split it up, I think.

In any case, I was at the younger building in a 5th grade class. The teacher brought me in as a surprise and introduced me as "a guest who only speaks English". This meant that the students didn't know anything about me and had to ask me questions in English to find out about me. In groups of three these kids would meet me out in the hall and ask me all the questions they could think of in their little heads. I would answer in English and then ask them some questions.

So, I got asked my name a million times. And my age. And some questions that, although they made perfect sense to a ten year-old, were totally out of left-field to me. Like, what's my favorite number? I don't know ... but, I thought, I liked Douglas Adams' books where the answer to life, the universe, and everything was "42". So I answered 42. Now my favorite number is 42.

Oh! And there was one kid in the class who had a Canadian mother, so he could speak great English with just a little accent. But I didn't know this. So, this group of kids comes out into the hall and starts asking me questions. One kid asks "how old are you?"; one asks "what is your favorite animal?"; and then it's this kid, David's, turn. And he asks me, "So, you know about the financial crisis in America right now with the stock market and how it's bad for the dollar? So the dollar is not worth very much against the euro, right? Do you think that will get better any time soon?" In English. THIS TEN YEAR OLD GERMAN KID IS ASKING ME IN ENGLISH MY OPINION ON THE AMERICAN ECONOMY. I was like, "Right on, little man!" and answered his question like I'd talk to an adult. He totally loved it. I totally loved it. His friends were totally dumbstruck.

One last note on this day with the 5th graders: at the end of class, I came back into the room and the kids then had to tell the teacher everything they'd learned about me. They told my name, my age, my favorite color and number, and so on. And one little guy raises his hand and says, "Raychel has two partners." As in, I have two boyfriends/girlfriends, because "partner" can go either way here. I was like, "WHUH??? When did I say this?" and the teacher is just looking at me and raising her eyebrows. After a lot of miscommunication and a game of charades I get that the kid is trying to say "Raychel has two pets" -- my two dogs back in the States. OH. RIGHT .... two pets ... heh ...So that was fun.

Blog Stuff

I've added this blog as a feed to my FaceBook page (thanks for the help, Amy!), so if you're a FaceBook friend and a blog reader, it's redundant stuff. You can read it in either place.

And finally ....

Notes to Everyone

Kelly: I'm glad you read my stuff! I heard about the thing that happened at IGI, but only in the vaguest of terms. Can I get an update? oh.no.raychel at gmail.com

Scott: You are a video-making machine, sir! I always check your profile for RDI and OUI stuff. You're my connection like that. Like a pusher. An improv pusher for my laugh addiction! My, what a nice analogy ...

Maddy: I most certainly WILL send you an e-mail. Tell Cody I says hello. And congrats on one year, pretty lady!

Everybody say, "Yay Pete!"

Dear Money God(s) and/or Goddess(es),

Thank you. Thank you thank you thankyouthankyou. I'm holding a feast in your honor or sacrificing a goat or something. Unless money gods are vegan, in which case I'll burn a little soy instead.

So, I owe my sanity to a man named Pete. You see, I was broke at home last night, so down I couldn't sleep. I've never been so depressed that I couldn't even sleep before. And what, Dear Reader might ask, had got me so depressed? Well, what gets any of us depressed? Money. As I had said before, I'm quite broke. I took out a loan before I came to Germany with the expectation that I would use half of the loan to pay my bills in the USA while I was gone and the other half to sustain myself my first month here. $1,000 is what you need to survive a month here, so said the government committee overseeing my trip. $1,000? It was more like $2,000 or $2,500. Think about it; I have:

• a BahnCard 50 (necessary to make train travel a viable option) - €110
• necessary travel by train and bus around Germany - about €160
• a hotel room my first two nights here (no youth hostel to be found) - €110
• a bed, blanket, pillows and sundry things needed for work and home - €250
• cell phone and minutes - €50
• camera - €40 (okay, maybe I didn't need this)
• shoes, tights, gloves, a hat, and a belt (because it's cold here, I only brought open-toed shoes, and I'm losing weight) - €55
• batteries, power adapters, and things to make things work - €30
• food - somewhere between €5 and €15 per day, so somewhere from €150 and €450 (I'm gonna say €300, because I ate out a lot before I got my own kitchen)
• internet and a few calls to the US - €50
• gifts for people back home - €10
• various costs like entry to Barnaby's to see Tom Principato and the odd beer at a cafe - €40 to €50.
• my bills back in the US - $290, which is something like €217 - €220

All of this (so, everything that I can remember) comes to about €1435. That's somewhere between $1920 and $1950. That's what I can remember off the top of my head. I'm sure that with various bus passes, maps, sundries, yada yada yada, I've spent my $2,000 and more. I was dead broke. I couldn't pay my rent (€300 a month to a very understanding roommate), I couldn't pay the €56 that I owed for my part in a field trip to Berlin --I couldn't even pay my roommate back the €12 she lent me for a library card. I had asked my mom, my roommate, even my friends for money. I had stopped eating anything that didn't come from my house. I wanted to call home and whine or write an e-mail, but I didn't have the money for either of those. I was the most broke I could possibly be.

And then today I was like, "I have a euro. I'll go check my e-mail real quick (Okie-ism: "real quick". I get made fun of for it here.)..." I get an e-mail from my stepmom saying (from her e-mail to me) "Hey, I was telling my boss, Pete, about you and your situation over in Germany and laughed and said that you young and resilient, and one day you too will laugh about it... "She later brought him some company checks to sign and he said to write one to me for $1,000.

Serious as a heart-attack. It's in my bank account right now. I checked. Then I checked again. Then I started crying in the internet cafe. Then I payed my bills with it. Now I'm gonna go pay my rent. I have no idea how to thank this guy. If you're reading this, Pete, then know that for one Okie in Germany you are a dream/prayer come true. You are better than Nutella. You go, Pete. You go.

I sent my stepmom back an e-mail with more on this, which she will send on to Pete. I hope to pay him back soon. And to send him a church. And a nice card. But first and foremost I wanted to say thanks.

Well, on a completely different note, the movie I was in -- No Burgers for Bigfoot -- is finally up on IMDB. The cast and crew are being added bit by bit for some reason, so if you don't see my name there, check back in a week. I'm a movie star! Can my day GET ANY BETTER?!

Oh, Gimme Gimme Some Lovin'!

So, I'm back in the internet cafe. My roommate got a 136€ bill today from the phone company because, apparently, we were charged 6€ per hour for every hour we used the internet. Think about how often you guys are on the internet. Now think about paying $8 for every hour you use it. Wanna check your e-mail? $2 - $4. Read your comics? let's say $6 - $8. News stories? EBay? My blog? You get the picture. So junk is getting really expensive here, and I am SO out of money it isn't even funny. I've used every little bit of savings I had and every little bit of the loan I got before I left. $1200 - $1500 is what I'd need to make it here until my first paycheck, they said. "Ha!" I say. A very bitter, broke-down "ha" ...

Right. I'm done with that. Now, on to direct addresses:

Ma:Thank you for the cords!!! I await them eagerly. Also, I love you bad. I miss going to Taco Bell late nights with you. When I see you next, the first thing we are going to do is eat awesome food. If it's in America, we're eating King Wah and then Taco Bell. If it's here, then we're eating at this good pizza place I know run by a funny little Italian man. Also, say "loveyatalktoyalaterbye!" to Marvin for me, because I know you're probably reading this aloud to him right now. Hi, Marvin!

Dad: I miss my daddy. I was on the street the other day and smelled something that really smelled like the inside of that old brown molester van you used to drive (the one that took the whole softball team to state competition one year) and it made me really miss you. I wish you and Rachael could visit me so that you can tell me what the hell's going on in American politics over there. I hope I get Skype soon so I can talk with all you Eltern.

Musketeers: Ladies, you are leading crazy fun lives of your own but know that I miss you and am constantly finding funny little things that I would love to share with you. Drink a strawberry margarita to me and keep on writing to me! PS: Ambie, I showed a picture of you and me to a fellow teacher here and he said you were pretty. Actually, he said something a little more graphic, but I'm the censor here!

Improv gang: Amy, I love you for commenting on my posts! Comments make my day. Also, do we have any other improv people with blogs, or am I going to have to give in and make a MySpace page? Clint and Jen: Happy wedding! I saw the pics. You are beautiful, funny people. Are there videos of the ceremony or anything? Also, to everyone: I still get to read the listserv stuff for RDI, and it makes me pine for the stage. Can someone send me an e-mail and say what's new there?

Madison/Heather: Copernicus, I know you read this thing, but do you not have a blog for me to read too? And Bug, do you read this or not? I have no e-mail contact with you and I wants it.

My people here in Germany: I have two weeks' vacation coming up -- get ready for a visit!

Anyone else: Do you read me? Are you here? Would you like a comment?

Moving on to ... Barnaby's Blues Bar!

I have a place to go! Barnaby's, like I said before, is a little place in the middle of town with some pretty good live blues bands. I went to see the Tom Principato Band play last weekend and the place was packed. Everyone was quite older than me -- the blues crowd always seems to be more my dad's age than mine -- but we were all grooving and enjoying the band. I sat next to this group of older guys at the bar and ended up talking to them. One was rolling his own cigarettes and looked just like Mick Jagger; another had an earring and said nothing; still another was Bavarian (which meant I could barely understand him when he spoke German) and had coke-bottle glasses. A motley crew. But I had fun with them. And I'm totally going back on Wednesday. Spencer Davis is playing. Spencer effing Davis, who sang "I'm a Man" and "Gimme Some Lovin'", is playing. Granted, it's 42€ to get in -- and I do NOT have 42€. But I can hang out outside, have a beer, and listen that way. Vicariously take part.

In more boring news, I'm gaining class after class on my work schedule. I'll be working with the younger classes soon (5th, 6th, and 7th), which I'm excited about because I haven't had much experience with that level of English learning yet. I'm still pretty psyched about the whole teaching thing in general. My colleagues are letting me be more than just a living dictionary, which I hear some teaching assistants get. They want me in their classes; they want me to lead discussion groups and do fun stuff with them. I love it. The other day I led a bunch of 11th graders in a conversation group. Our topic was "film": what makes a film different from a novel, from a poem, etc ... So I had them talk about films with me: what makes a good film and what makes a bad film, what should all good films have, etc. Then I put them into groups and had them create a pitch for their own film. At the end of class they pitched their movies to me. It was hella fun. Can you imagine if your job were just to do this kind of thing every day? I heart my job.

Voodoo Chile

Hey, all!

I'm writing really quick from home today, again on the dial-up. Just wanted to say hello and that I'm still alive. I've had a really easy week this week. Monday and Tuesday were field trip days, Wednesday and Thursday I had no work, and today (Friday) is the Day of German Unity -- a Fourth of July without so many firework-related fatalities. Next comes the weekend! It's like I'm getting paid to take vacations ... if I were getting paid. I'm still waiting on my first paycheck and it's killing me. Please, please, Money Gods, get me some cash! I would dearly love to pay my rent.

I had an awesome day today. First, my roommate and I listened to our respective reggae collections and danced around the room. Then my roommate's daughter and I played with my make-up. Then we all dressed up in our fanciest clothes and had a fashion show and had fun making "Top Model" faces. Then we watched The Aristocats in German. I'm dead serious. That was my day. Now I'm watching German news and getting ready to go to a live blues performance -- the Tom Principato Band is playing at Barnaby's and I'm very psyched to go check it out. W00t!

Secret Move, Secret Move

Hey all! I'm writing from my apartment today. No, we don't have REAL internet yet (that doesn't come until the 14th) but I do have dial-up. My roommate and I make the connecting noises for fun whenever the thing boots up: "Wheeeeeeee-whaaaaaaaa-whooooooo-beeDOObeeDOOba-brqztztztrsschqrtr!!!" I hope the dial-up knows we're making fun of it. Stoopid dial-up.

Anyway, back to:

Hannover

I just wanted to mention here that, after hitting Hannover's version of Oktoberfest, my friend and I went looking for this club called Cafe Glocksee on the word of her friend that it was a cool place with good music. Well, we show up in front of this big building at 11:00 p.m., but there's nobody there and the place is dead quiet. We're like, "kay, what's going on here?"... We walk around the dark, scary, graffiti'ed up building and finally find an entrance. We pay our entry fees (ladies have to PAY to get into clubs here?!), check our coats, and go inside.

The place is totally empty. I mean, there's music playing but the red-lit, techno-filled, goth-type club is practically empty. There's nobody on the dance floor. There's nobody at the bar. There's nobody in the big leather couches at the back. Heading for the couches, my friend and I half-joke that we're in some sort of horror movie where the monsters come out at midnight and eat unsuspecting party-going tourists.

This was not the case. It turns out that, in Hannover at least, the party doesn't really start until 1 a.m. or later. Chalk it up to Things The Germans Do Differently. My friend and I had nursed a drink apiece, tried to talk over the loud music, and considered dancing for a while -- but just as we're like, "nothing's doing here" and get up to leave - the club gets busy. We ended up going home with the idea that, next time, we were just going to sleep until midnight and then get up and go to the club. We felt like old ladies, going home tired just as the party was just getting started.

Anyway, the next day was all about awesome waffles for breakfast and sight-seeing. We saw the new Rathaus and this cool bombed-out church. The Rathaus had a tower almost 300 feet tall and you could go up in it and take pictures of the town. Which we did. It also had a glass-bottomed elevator on the way up, so you could take pictures of how high up you were going. Which we did. The bombed-out church had been, well, bombed out in World War II and the people of Hannover left it that way as kind of a tribute to the lives lost and the general nastiness of violence. More talk of this, however, requires a digression to ...

Churches

So, I've been giving people their own special churches. Whenever I find a church around here that reminds me of someone, I light a candle there for them and think of that specific church as that person's church. So, for example, now whenever I drive by Aegidien Church in Braunschweig I think of my dad, because that's his church.

I have two new churches to add for people today: one for Rachael, my stepmom, and one for Marcy, my musketeer. Marcy, you're got the Aegidienkirche in Hannover. It's a beautiful old medieval church that was bombed out in WWII and now stands as a memorial of sorts. It's a really cool mixture of man and nature; there's red and green ivy growing all over one wall and you can look up where the roof used to be and see big, blue sky. It's really beautiful, and it reminded me of you. Pics to follow.

Rach, you've got the Katharinenkirche in Braunschweig. It's not only one of the oldest churches in Braunschweig, but it's also where the first performance of Goethe's Faust was shown (in the old opera house that used to stand in front of the church). Goethe is, like, the most famous writer in German history. Period. And Faust is his big work, the one that the most little German kids have to learn in school. I spent a whole semester just studying Faust. It's a big deal. This cool little old German curator at the church told me all of this after I had already decided that it was your church, so the whole historical importance is a nice bonus. Pics will also follow.

Right, back to ...

Hannover

Actually, I was done there. So, on to ...

Berlin

I went to Berlin! I got to go on a field trip yesterday with some Polish and German exchange students at my school. We saw all the sights - the Bundestag, the Brandenburger Tor, Unter den Linden (a famous street), KaDeWe (famous dept. store), the Siegesaule, the Staatsoper, museums, museums, museums, oh GOD! I spent my last semester at OU studying 20th century Berlin, so to actually go there and see everything was like a tourist/Germa-nerd overload. I took so many pictures that I wore out two rounds of batteries. I want so badly to write back to my German professors. As a matter of fact, if any of them are reading this right now:

Prof. Schutjer: I saw the place where Faust is supposed to have been first performed! I had an intelligent conversation in a cafe about the book and what the symbols and everything in it mean!!!

Prof. Baer: I saw Berlin! I saw graffiti in Berlin! I did not see the East Side Gallery, but I did lead another foreigner on a tour of some of the most important parts of the city! Oh, and I bonded with a German over Das kunstseidene Mädchen!!!

Prof. Sullivan: I saw the Dom in Köln! I explained to someone the difference between Romanesque and Gothic architecture and used German words to do so! "Look! Kreuzrippengewölbe!!"

Aaahh! I'm using what I've learned -- I'm living the dream -- I'm in Germany!!!

BOOMSPLAT *head explodes*