On the...train again!

Tomorrow morning I go with my host mother/brothers (host dad staying home for some reason) to visit the host grandma in Bad Oldesloe, a town about a half an hour away from the city Hamburg. On Monday, I'm taking the train to see Hamburg, including the wonderful port, and then on Tuesday, I'm taking a two and a half hour train ride to BERLIN!!! I only get to see it for one day, though. I made a plan for sightseeing. It includes seeing the old apartment building/home neighborhood/school. Funfunfun. It's gonna be a marathon. So, I'm signing off until, at the earliest, Wednesday night. Byebye.

quizquiz

If you haven't discovered quizgalaxy.com yet, go there now and be distracted. This is my lame-ass excuse to break up, according to one quiz:

"Please stop referring to yourself, in the third person no less, as 'beautiful.' You look like a horse."

I should be working....

Diktat

Last night I wrote this Diktat (dictation) with my host brothers, my host dad dictated. They chose a random article out of a book about whales. I made only five mistakes! I'm good. I think I'll translate to the best of my ability without outside help afterwards. This is probably boring, but I'm proud.

Der Schwertwal

Der Schwertwal ist in sämtlichen Ozeanen der Welt, in den südlichsten ebenso wie in den nördlichsten, anzutreffen. Er kann die Wärme durchaus gut vertragen, aber er zeigt, dass er den kälteren Gewässern den Vorzug gibt, wahrscheinlich weil er hier seine bevorzugte Beute, Flossenfüsser, Pinguine (I misspelled it with e after the p) und kleine Wale, vorfindet. Es passiert, wie übrigens auch bei anderen Walen, das öfteren, dass sie plötzlich durch große (according to the new rules, you still have to write it with ß, apparently, I always write things with double s) Eisfelder vom offenen Meer abgeschnitten sind und keine Möglichkeit finden, sich zu befreien. Die 21 Minuten Atemstillstand, die der Schwertwal, der an sich kein grosser (I wonder if that's supposed to have ß too, he didn't mark it) Taucher ist, sich aber trotzdem gelegentlich bis zu 1000 Meter Tiefe hinunterbewegt, maximal durchhalten dann, reichen nicht aus, um unter dem Eis in die Freiheit zu schwimmen. Deshalb sterben sie oft vor Hunger oder ertrinken. In einer (I didn't hear the r, should have known it was there) Umgebung, die günstigere (I added an r there, wasn't thinking) Lebensbedingungen bietet, vermindert (I left out the last r, forgot how it was spelled) sich das Risiko natürlich beträchtlich.

Ok, translation, no dictionary or online translator or anything, just my head:

The Swordfish (is the swordfish technically a whale? or am I thinking of the wrong fish...)

The swordfish can be found in numerous oceans, as much in the southernmost oceans as in the northernmost. It can tolerate warmth well, but shows that it prefers colder waters, probably because its preferred prey, (ok, I have no idea what Flossenfüsser are, one sec.....ahhhh, walrus, had to go to german wikipedia and look under a synonym I found) walruses, penguins and small whales, are found there. It occurs often, like with other whales, that they suddenly are cut off from the open sea by large ice fields, and find no way to free themselves. The 21 minute breath endurance (? is that what it's called?) that the swordfish, which is no great diver but despite which moves down to depths of 1000 meters from time to time, can maximally hold isn't however enough for it to swim under the ice to freedom. Therefore, they often die from hunger or drowning. In an area that offers favorable living conditions, the risk is of course reduced.

So, that was my Diktat. That wasn't really a very complex translation. Not very many challenging words. I made the same number of mistakes as my ten-year-old host brother. Hehe.

Monday

We had Chemistry and Math like normal on Monday, then Nunt and I had our two hour break while the others had French. I left the school and was planning on sending a couple postcards and reading/passing out in the bookstore, but then Nunt ran up to me and asked where I was going and if she could come with, so I was like, sure. So, since Nunt probably didn't want to sleep for two hours in the bookstore, I thought of where we should go. The week before Nunt had gone to Söflingen (five minutes with the street train=Strassenbahn) and walked around the whole time, so I was like, we could go to Söflingen again, and she was like, ok. But then, when we were walking across the bridge over the train tracks, I was like, hmmmm, should we take a train to Blaubeuren and look around there? (15-20 minutes by train, very beautiful little village) So, we found the next train to Blaubeuren, which was just about to leave when we got to the train station, we booked it onto the platform just when it started moving. So, I kicked it, and found the next plan: Laupheim. A little farther away (25 minutes by train), but neither of us had been there before. So, when we got to Laupheim, we looked around a little bit, decided it was a pretty plain little town, mostly agriculturally-based, found a church steeple, and went church hunting. It's surrounded by a beautiful graveyard, and the church itself (picture) is quite pretty. After about a half hour, we walked back to the train station, found that we had looked on the wrong schedule for our return train, and would have to take a train that would make us ten minutes late for English. We also had to wait a long time for it, but we amused ourselves with the ticket machine. We ran back to school from the train station in Ulm, got into English a little less than ten minutes late, looking very disheveled. It had occured to me that I could explain ourselves in English, so advantage Brent. The teacher was like, you look somewhat disheveled, haha. So, I began explaining, fearing the worst (my host mom had said that the last (first) excuse she wrote me was the last she would write). I said that we had wanted to see Laupheim during our break (class roars with laughter), and that the train made us late. The teacher was like, 'hmm, Laupheim is somewhat far away...the train station is hard to find. Did you find it, then?' I was like, yup, we saw a church, I have pictures. And he was like, ok, that's fine then, sit down. End of story. Good old English teacher. I then discovered that he now thinks my name is Bert. He had me explain all the southern food that was listed in this story about southern USA, and he was like, 'well, you can explain for us, Bert.' Everyone snorted, and fought to control their laughter, the girls in the back were about to correct him, but I thought it would make the period more amusing if we just carried on (which it certainly did). So, I kept struggling to give explanations for things like fried perch fingerlings, iced tea, hush puppies, fried shrimp, etc. And by struggling, I mean to stay in my chair. Once, I didn't give an answer quick enough cause I couldn't stop laughing, and the teacher was like, 'oh, come on, Bert' in an admonishing tone, always with a somewhat British/German accent, which didn't help anything, of course. Once, the girls in the back were joking about it, I only heard 'mumblemumblemumble...Bert! laughlaughlaugh.' So now everyone calls me Bert, especially when I get called on in class. I think they're stopping now, though.

This afternoon I went "shopping" (messing around with things until we nearly break something) with Morgan in the Blaubeurer Strasse, where lots of big stores like IKEA and the shopping mall and Media Markt are. We went into Media Markt first cause Morgan wanted to buy an mp3 player, and I looked at memory cards for my digital camera for the Europatour. A 1 GB memory card for my camera costs 70€, which is what I would need if I only bought one, but then I spotted (well, Morgan spotted them) portable hard drive thingies, whatever you call them. One has 40 GB for 80€. So, as long as I take my camera USB cord with me and my camera batteries are charged, I can take unlimited pictures on the Europatour. Well, I haven't bought it yet, but I got the clear from my dad to buy it, hehe. I wonder if someone should take a power strip on the bus, I heard that there's only ever one plug on the bus, and there will be about 56 people on the bus....anyway, excited about that. And I can load music on it too, of course. I'm going to take my camera and camera cord with me to the store when I buy it to make sure that everything will work.

So, I have to call Morgan now to check if we can go skating tomorrow. She was going to call Nunt to ask if she was going to come along too. No school tomorrow! Yippee!

teeheehee

I was cleaning in my room, and I kept seeing my host dad walk up to the house, then back out, then back up to the house, then I saw my host mom following him out, around to where the car is parked, then all of the sudden, the car goes flying past in front of the house, my host mom sprinting and pushing behind. Heehee, their car is a piece of shit. Urgh, I hate cleaning, wastes my morning.

School, etc. etc. etc.!

I haven't posted in a while, for me...this might be long. If I can remember everything I was going to write about. So, to start with, some school quotage...if I can find it all. Ok, English! (oh, btw, the picture is of a poster in one of the classrooms, thought it was hilarious, hope it's readable, I'm posting it super-big, so it better be)

English teacher, in explaining the difference between diner and dinner: "And what does the diner do? It eats the dinner!"

Teacher: "And what can you see in the picture?!" *no one answers* "People eating a lot!!"

Classmate talking about American trucks/truck drivers: "The cabin is very large, and they do many things in there that they do in their bedroom."

And from today, this was absolutely classic. Three guys in my class were having an argument about something during the break in between two periods of Earth Science this afternoon, then all of the sudden, the debate came to a climax with:

"A TURKISH PERSON CANNOT BE BLACK AND JEWISH AT THE SAME TIME!!!"

Almost fell out of chair laughing. Sometimes school here is so random, it cannot be believed. Especially Sport, haha. Once, we were doing gymnastics on rings, and the teacher was patiently explaining how to flip off the rings and land, we were all grouped in front of him, the rings were right behind him. Aaron snuck around him, started silently swinging on the rings to gain speed, then did a perfect flip off, no mat, and the teacher had no clue, but we all saw it. There were lots of snorts while the teacher was still explaining it, I was on the floor laughing, literally. They don't bother wondering what we're laughing about anymore.

Haha, Moritz the host brother can be a bitch sometimes, but at dinner, he's freaking hilarious. He talks so much shit about my host mom, I can't control my laughter. This time, he was asking about why they have emergency buttons in the new buses now, and he was like, "it's so that if fat mamas fall on the bus floor and can't get up, they can press the emergency button." He starts talking shit about her so randomly, so funny. I apparently turned red in the face, trying to normally eat my bread, before I just started hooting. Then Moritz decided to draw what my host mom's mask would be like for Fasching if she went to a Fasching party, but he first drew what she 'actually' looks like. Omg. I kept it. And, I almost tipped over in my chair onto the floor, no joke. Haha, and my host mom was like, "you're such a little bull-shitter Moritz, but you're a twelve year-old, smart little bull-shitter, it's very difficult. If only I had had a girl!" (she says that a lot, haha, always when we're all laughing at her :P)

So, school is kickass when Aaron's not here, haha. The teachers actually like me, cause I work anddo my little bit of stupid shit in class. Tomorrow I have a physics test that I'm supposed to be studying for right now, ahem, will be a late night tonight. And my math teacher is freaking in love with me, I swear, the stuff we're learning right now is such a joke, I learned most of it in eighth grade, or we should have learned it in eighth grade. The only thing is that they learn how to do things based on these ridiculously technical, complex definitions with unnecessary notation, instead of learning to do things step-by-step, practically. Once, the teacher was like, "would anyone be able to, right now, explain the connection between this *gestures towards righting on top half of board* and this *gestures to bottom half of board.*" No one said anything, I had just started paying attention when he said that, cause things seemed to be getting dangerous, but he was like, "well, of course Brent could do it," creepily smiled at me, and continued teaching. So, for the first half of class today, I was almost not paying attention at all cause I didn't understand anything that he was talking about, but then I realized that he was figuring out x-intercepts for a parabola, and I gave him the second intercept which apparently people don't know how to do in their heads here. Again, they don't learn the important things step-by-step here. So, that made my teacher's day, even though I still had no idea what exactly we were doing until about 5/6 of the way through the class, when I realized that it was utterly retarded, as usual. (Hehe, first semester of math last year was like that, we would play games almost the whole hour until we got our homework assignment, then check in the book how to do it, and do our homework. Such a joke, I thank it for destroying most of my work ethic for math last year. Trig bit me in the ass the last quarter. Well, for me.) I showed this girl next to me how to find the other x-intercept from y=4x(x^2-3) step by step (well, it started out as 4x^3-12x, I 'splained that too), like, x^2-3=0, x^2=3, etc., which we did in eighth grade, and Joanna was like, wow, thanks, I actually understood that! And I thought, wow, your math teachers must have sucked in the past. I must make a note to write an email to Ms. Berlin commending her for being the best math teacher...ever. I wonder if I'm going to have space in my schedule for math next year...I hope not, I would suck at it after this year. I think that the math curriculum and standard teaching methods in the US have no problems, it's just the students who are all slackers and aren't motivated to do homework and study. And some teachers suck, haha. If we all worked like the Germans, we would be the best at math in the world. Some of us already are...(see recent post on my sister's blog, haha).

Ok, so we had Winter Sport Day ! ! ! last Tuesday, which meant that we had no standard school, were only required to go skiing, snowboarding, sledding, skating, or swimming for at least two hours. I skated, most people in my class skated, except the ones who are fat and lazy, grrr. Second time, much more progress. Can balance on one foot now, haha, and I can control highish speeds. But, still fell down my usual five times trying to balance on one foot too much. Hahaha, I looked reaallly funny sometimes, I would push off with the right foot too hard, then be flailing about trying to keep my balance on my left foot, loop around a bit and crash on my ass, right in the middle of a group of peacefully skating girls, haha. So...many...people...in...rink...grrrrrrr. But, I think I'm pretty good for a tall, pudgy guy who's skated twice and had virtually zip rollerblading/-skating experience. Grrr Veery, you scarred me.

And yesterday, a group of people from the orchestra (me included) and some random 13th graders went on a trip to MUniCH!! to hear the Bavarian Radio Orchestra play Beethoven's 2nd (which was really the first piano concerto he wrote, numbering accident) Piano concerto with Pierre-Laurent Aimard, a French pianist who has apparently become well-known from his somewhat recent CDs of Mozart and Beethoven, etc. It was great, they talked a lot about the piece and demonstrated features of the piece, Aimard speaks really good German. After they discussed the piece, they performed it all the way through. It was supposed to be some sort of rehearsal, but it was more of an interactive short concert...for free! Everybody was dressed casually in the orchestra, pianist too, very cool. And there were about 800-1000 people in the audience. The train ride to Munich was over two hours each way, we took double-decker Regional Expresses both ways, I went on a group ticket with four other girls from my class and my grade, hehe. We had tons of fun, laughed so much. Munich is sometimes called Little Berlin, I think...or something like that. And I ate four oranges on the way back cause I didn't want to throw them away and they were too dry for the girls to eat, haha.

I have kind of seat-of-the-pants plans for the weekend, need to ok them with the host ma. And, need to study. Ciao.

Olympics

Btw, I saw the opening ceremonies from Torino last night, live. Booyah, reiterated. I hope I get to see some competition.

i be productive

HA! I got up at 7:30, made pancakes (American-style, nice and thick) for my host family, cleaned my room and bathroom, and practiced organ, all before lunch, which is an hour earlier today for some reason. Booyah. I forgot how much I like that word. Booyah. So, the question is, what all will I do this afternoon....will see if the host fam has something planned already.

It is still snowing! This is the view from my patio door in my room here. Delicious. The path on the left goes to a flight of steps that leads up to the front door of the house, which is on the 'first' floor. My floor is technically the basement. Or, the ground floor. Anyway. Lunch will happen soon. Spaghetti.

math quotage

My math teacher, to explain a characteristic of functions:

"All Negros are people, but not all people are Negros."

My hilarious classmate and kickass soccer player Constantine, in response to my math teacher saying that his wife has control over the kitchen:

"And who wears the pants?"

Hehe, I be good in Math. This girl gave an answer in class today, our teacher said there were two mistakes in it, and was going to wait until someone found them. I was totally not paying attention, playing on my calculator (geez), but I heard the part about waiting until someone found a problem. Herr Kohler noticed I was paying attention, and he was like, ok, Yassamine, can you repeat your answer? He didn't want to wait either, haha. Hey, I may be conceited, but I enjoy not being retarded in at least one class.

Music, music, music

It kept snowing today! Now we have about four to five inches, very very nice, but all the Germans seem to hate snow...I can kind of understand why, but...it's SNOW! Anyway, it's a winter wonderland here. I meant to take a picture to illustrate this post with a picture of it, but, alas, I keep forgetting to take my camera with me in the morning, or have too little time in the morning to grab it...hmm. Tomorrow, then.

Today Aaron from Colorado wasn't here for the first time ever, after only one day I already feel more fluent in German, and a better exchange student. Too bad he couldn't switch classes, we both wanted him to, haha. We played more soccer in Sport today too, and I believe I might be getting a bit better at being goalie...but hard to tell, haha. I want to learn some offensive tricks. Or be able to play offense. I'm not quite nimble enough and I don't pass well. So, they stick me in the goal, and I try to make the most of it. Man, I don't know how good Americans my age are offensively, but if I join the team next year, Shirley, which I'm not sure I'll have time for, I think I would kick ass at goalie...maybe.

After Math, I went to try and transfer money with the bank card my parents sent me, it just doesn't work, such a bitch. Back to prehistoric methods of money transfer...then I went to the other bookstore I hadn't looked in for Homo Faber, the book we're reading in German, found it and bought it, spent fifty extra cents for the really good edition with notes and comments, wahoo. Then, I went into the Münster, which is amazing with all the snow on it.

Had to take a break in writing this to eat dinner. Only in Europe can you bread and fry a whole wheel of soft cheese, eat it for dinner with cranberry jam, and call it healthy. Of course, we also had bread, more cheese, meat and carrots. Yum. After dinner, I was cleaning up with Moritz, who was in the moment talking to the host mom, who got a new fancy hairdo today. Moritz was fake-whining about how we should bake some cake that he wanted, and all of the sudden, he was like, eewwwwww, and pointed at her hair. Omg, almost burst out laughing. Moritz was like, 'only old grandmas get hairdos like that' *does crude grandma imitation,* my host mom was like, 'when I came out of the hairdresser, I felt like, *in english* oh, I'm so beautiful!' (Brent hoots with laughter from the kitchen). Host mom, in fake-anger, 'oh, I'm done with you both! If only I had had a daughter, would have been so simple...' (Brent doubles over hooting in kitchen) *host mom goes outside to smoke cigarette.* So, those were the highlights of dinner tonight. I have good relationships with my host family for most of the time, it's just hard to take how much of a dumbass my host dad is sometimes. Oh, and I prosted my host dad's little wine glass with my ginormous glass of sparkling apple juice, almost making him spill his, he thought it was funny, then I pounded mine to everyone's amazement, haha. For some reason I was really thirsty today. And once I start drinking, it's hard to stop. Ooh, that sounded bad...

Ok, so back to my story from today. As I walked out of the Münster and across the square to the street in the direction of school, I passed a group of American tourists who had just come out of the the town hall and were being given a run-down of how fabulous the Münster's gothic architecture is. I kind of just stood there and listened for a little bit, right in the group, some people smiled at me while they were taking pictures. I was going to talk to some of them, but I could only picture myself speaking German to them for some reason, so I thought, I gotta get back to school, so I just turned around and left, which was the strangest feeling, like I was turning my back on English and going back to my German reality, or like pressing my nose against a window into the English world and willingly turning away. And, the most interesting thing was, I felt light-years away from being a tourist. So, I enjoyed my walk back to school, it's really amazing when the wind is blowing hard and whipping snow into your face, and you're walking downtown. Well, for me, anyway. Then I went into orchestra and came back down to earth when I had to strain to understand the director from across the room. I usually feel stupid when playing the timpani in orchestra. Piano goes better, except I never practice enough.

I don't think I've ever had so much music to learn for so many different things. I've got organ, lots of it right there, my own piano repertoire, which I try to squeeze in sometimes, orchestra music on two instruments, music I have to practice for accompanying people, and now I'm going to be playing a couple church sevices at the church where I practice. I won't get the hymns until a week beforehand, I hope I can handle it. Oh, and I have harmony studying to do.

Tomorrow morning I'm going to try and make myself get up at 7:30 and make pancakes for the family. Omg. That's going to be super-hard. I finally got up at the right time for once this morning, I was in agony for an hour, so tired. Well, maybe I can enjoy getting lots done tomorrow instead of feeling dead. Ridic. Gotta get to bed at a reasonable time tonight...like eleven. Ok, gotta do...something...so many things to do.

February snow

It snowed more while we were in the concert, I think, it's almost two inches, now. The concert was long, but good, I was badly informed about the program, it was only one trumpet concerto, an overture by Rimsky-Korsakov, and Tchaikovsky's fifth symphony. The Ulmer University Orchestra was playing, not a philharmonic, what was my host brother thinking...oh well. And, it was in the Kornhaus, same place as where I heard the Rachmaninoff second piano concerto. I loved the Rimsky-Korsakov, I should probably be more familiar with the piece than I am. Lots of Russian folk tunes. The trumpet concerto was interesting, by a composer I had never heard of (Arutjunjan). The trumpeter had a nice big cadenza right before the end. The Tchaikovsky was very big and very long, it's not my favorite symphony, but I might have liked it better had I been a little more awake, haha. The program said it's one of the most often-played symphonic works...hmm...don't think so...whatever. Definitely a lot of Russian rhythm. My host dad said that was his first time to sit right in front of an orchestra in concert...hmm. I thought he didn't know what he was talking about when he said the hall had good acoustics...And, the usual non-musical side-note: the first violinist was hhhhot. Darn exciting female musicians.

socks!

I like lots of clean, hand-rolled socks. Period. Isn't my life great?

It snowed again this afternoon, a little less than an inch. And in the church where I practice the organ, it was below freezing again, and the heaters still don't work for some reason. So, I wore my gray jacket and black cap, quite unshaven, looking like a bum who wandered in to play French Romantic music. Very cold bum.

My host dad informed me that my toilet was not clean to his liking this afternoon, which is bullshit because I clean it almost every time I go to the bathroom. Makes me angry. I will now fully clean it twice a week, and if he complains again, I will be angry. Very. Angry.

Going to a trumpet and orchestra concert in a few minutes, my host brother Moritz's trumpet teacher is playing three concertos with the Ulmer Philharmonic, didn't know there was a Philharmonic in Ulm. Might as well be. When we get back, I will read and do homework, and attempt to get to bed at a reasonable time for once. Hah.

omg

always wantec to try drunk typing, am now. haha. my organ lesson is canceled, by my teacher, best day of my life, I swear. In the spirit of my sister, why isn't everyone drunk, righ tnow? Geez. Gotty talk to a french woman now. Peace.

Incomprehensible:

1. Size of the universe
2. Mass suicide
3. Age of the earth
4. The power of music
5. How I can get up at a quarter after six for school with little problem, but not before eleven on weekends
6. Evolution of man
7. The future

I could think of more, I think, but my mind is tired from thinking about those...and I like the number seven.

Aquarium, Ulm

Today I went with the host family to the Ulmer Aquarium, the one my first host mom bugged me a couple times to go to. Realized why I didn't want to, haha. Naw, it was ok, it's just that it's pretty small, unbeautiful, and I was very familiar with almost all the animals. Got to see these sea anemones and their clownfish partners, though. I was a dork and took my camera. There's also a limited collection of reptiles, spiders, birds, monkeys, and a small petting zoo. So, it's officially a zoo, I think, but pretty tiny. Nearby is some park that's supposed to be really beautiful in spring, am going back then. The lake nearby was mostly frozen over. Haha, we were looking at the asian pythons, the biggest snakes in the place, and I was like, yeah, those are really nice, I got to hold one a lot when I was in a reptile club in Oklahoma, and my host mom (who is terrified of snakes) just stared at me. I had almost forgotten about my Roving Reptile days...good times. We really freaked some people out that one Halloween, haha.
I heard someone asking as we were leaving if they had to pay to see the bears outside in the petting zoo, and the woman behind the counter was like, umm, they're in hibernation, I had to fight not to laugh. We were walking back to the car, and Moritz was messing around with Johannes, he was like, let's play a game where whoever grabs the other person's cap first wins, and Johannes was like, ok, so the first time Moritz went past me, I just grabbed his cap, I was like I win, haha. Then I gave it to Johannes, who tried to keep it from Moritz as I walked on. A little bit later, Moritz jogged past me, going, I got it baa-aack, and then Johannes jogged past me a little after that, and he was covered in snow. I was like, hmm. Moritz did something to Johannes the other day so hard, I don't know what he did, but he made him bleed, and Moritz had to clean up the blood. Yowzers.
I have an organ lesson again tomorrow, as usual, was going to practice in the office, but no, host dad has to work there tonight, and he needs UTTER silence, not even the sound of the keys on the keyboard while I play with headphones is quiet enough. Whatever.
Well, gonna go see what's on TV tonight with the host mom. Usually something good Sunday night.

my brain is on fire!!

In a good way! Nothing invigorates your noggin like exercise and fun. And, boy, did I ever have both. Played hardcore badminton for close to three hours, I was playing by myself most of the time, and going all out as I always do, cause I'm weird like that. I wanted to get some good exercise. It got into the region of the exercise that I get from playing tennis in Oklahoma...ah, good times. Afterwards, my brain was pretty vigorous, haha, I had PERFECT grammar. So hard. I need to run on the hills up here regularly so I can lose weight and always feel this good. And I've gotten 20 hours of sleep in the last four nights, geez. Nobody messes with Brent when it comes to badminton. Or tennis, haha. Yeah, right, Val can still beat me. Grr. Tomorrow's Sport (more sweating!) and orchestra! Wahoo! I still have stuff to do tonight...hmm.

The picture is from my Christmas break vacation, one day of which I went hiking with friends of mine in the Pfälzer Wald, the forest on the other side of the Rhine river valley from the Black Forest. Two random guys there, and the hiking was treacherous with all the ice and hard frozen snow. Which would also be ice. Gesh. I wish I could post music on blogger.

Jesus Christ, Superstar

Thought I'd post this picture as a sort of good-bye to winter here, which seems to be going away. Well, it sure smells like spring, at least. It's been a good winter. I like this picture.

I realized today that I'm missing home more and more every day, even though that I'm experiencing amazing things this year, and have more amazing things coming up to experience. It's just January, January's been pretty normal. Very normal, really. But, I miss home, and I am really looking forward to my senior year, except I'm not prepared at all to go home yet. I've almost forgotten what it was like to live at home, and to go to school at home. But, boy, has it been worth it. And I can't wait until the Europatour. Going to be kickass, even though we're going to just be eating mediocre sandwiches for lunch for the whole three weeks.

School was pretty cool today. Politics was the usual bullshit, trying to understand the usual 25 letter words, trying to understand what the crackwhore teacher is saying at such a rapid rate, and getting chewed out for not working. At least German is interesting. My teacher is really cool, this is his first year teaching, and he's really good at it. I could listen to him talk about the book we're reading for a long time, a very interesting speaker. Very animative, haha. Speaking of intersting speakers, I had Herr Plewka in Religion after German, we've been reading and talking about sickness and this article about a girl's experiences with cancer. Herr Plewka got into little sermons, not ranting sermons, but very good ones, ones that anyone would have no trouble paying attention to. I think I was his best listener today, whereas normally I have big struggles to stay awake in there. I miss church, and listening to Herr Plewka was a nice taste of home. Yeah yeah, snort all you want, atheist readers. You know who you are.

I opened my patio door to air the joint out here, and the air smells glorious. It reminds me of the beginning of fall in Oklahoma, just as it's getting dark, and I go out with the dog running. Mmmmm. A smell for the soul. A sound for the soul is Jack Johnson. Combine the two, and you have a kickass, relaxing afternoon. This evening I'm going to play some intense badminton to get some exercise. I would like to do something truly enjoyable this weekend, I've organized my organ practice time now so that I have the weekends free, that's when my host family wants to do stuff, I never have time for practicing.

In music today, our teacher had us listen to the soundtrack from Jesus Christ, Superstar, and follow along with the text. Aaron and I were a bit of a disturbance, because we were falling out of our chairs laughing the entire time. Does anyone besides Germans take Jesus Christ Superstar seriously these days? We were thinking, how does our music teacher expect anyone to take this seriously as classroom material? Andrew Lloyd Webber should have been ashamed of himself for so many reasons, haha.

Weird, huge explosions keep coming from direction Neu Ulm. I think somebody told us that they come from some energy plant there, but I don't know how such a big explosion could come from an energy plant without some serious shit hitting the fan. Scares the shit out of me, especially when you're in Ulm when it happens. Once, I was walking across the bridge (see below picture) with Aaron, and all of the sudden, it was like, BOOOOOOM!!, and I jumped like three feet in the air. Unbelievable. I love being cold as long as it's not freezing outside.

Oh, I was going to post this story that my Okie friends wrote in school. One of those 'each person writes a sentence at a time' stories. The randomest kind. Ah, I'm going to look forward to doing intellectual things in school again. Heh, this would be intellectual for me now, wow, I be sad. I suppose it could use an edit or two. Well, enjoy!

It was a brilliant November morn, but all was not well. Zeus, god of the
gods, woke up completely bald. Not only that, he looked under his covers and
to add to his astonishment he was bald all over!
   "My manhood!" he exclaimed.
As for his twig and giggle-berries, they had disappeared. On top of
everything else, his wife chose that exact moment to enter the room - along
with their neighbors. Frantically covering himself with his blankets he
vainly tried to pretend he was still asleep.
   "What the HELL are you doing?!" Hera yelled, "who are you hiding under
there?!" Suddenly, something jumped out of the bed and ran into the closet,
closing the door behind it.
   "Hera! N-...Wait, this isn't what it looks like!" Zeus fumbled for
words, struggling with his utter confusion. Hera immediately went to rip off
his blanket, but Zeus knowing the chaos that would ensue created a blinding
flash of light and hid under the bed. Unfortunately, only his head fit under
his mighty bed, leaving the rest in exhibition.
   Hera began running in circles, screaming and pulling at her hair while
the neighbor went to get a closer look. After examining Zeus, the neighbor
checked his own pants; only to be astonished. After proclaiming his
discovery to the others, his wife fainted. Then all hell broke loose as the
closet crashed open.
   "My manhood!" exclaimed Zeus, pointing his dastardly finger towards the
open closet, where his manhood stood, knife in stow, waiting for a chance to
attack.
   Hera ran from the room as Zeus was grabbing the lamp from the bedside
table, ready to fight. Just as Zeus's manhood lunged at him, knife raised
and wearing an angry expression, two other phallic runaways crashed in
through the ceiling. Not wanting to destroy that which makes men whole, and
because he couldn't stomach the fact of fighting his manly pride, Zeus ran
to go protect Hera.
   "Hera, you're the only one who can save us now!" whispered Zeus to Hera,
who, understandly nodding, promptly got up and did what she did best:
disrobe...
Time had worked wonders on Hera's bosom, and the resulting sight left the
pursuing manhoods so wilted and inanimate that they no longer had the will
to fight.

To be continued...

Quite creative, kids. Hats off to you.

Omg, I'm listening to Avril Lavigne and enjoying it. Well, she only has, like, two good songs. Oh, well.

Hehe, bad picture

Well, I did as you asked, Shirley, and took a picture of my head. My hair isn't really that long yet, by it's long for me. And my head looks really big back there, whoa. Me too lazy to get haircut. And too cheap. So, I be scraggly hobo. Ha, my Bahncard picture is worse, I didn't know that the passphoto machine had a time limit, and Aaron and I were having fun with it, and Aaron was making a camera video as I was assuming an...amusing position in the booth, and then I heard the machine start counting down behind me, "five, four, three..." and I was like, oh crap, and I turned around and positioned myself just in time to get my shitty picture taken. Haha, I hadn't shaved in three days, and my mouth was a bit open, such a bad picture, haha. The machine took forever developing them, and then it went, "whirrrrr-thwuck!" and spit them out, and Aaron immediately collapsed laughing. We do that a lot...

Today we had NO chemistry first period, which I didn't know, so I tried to do my physics and math homework and ended up partly giving up and sleeping, but then the damn annoying Germans kept poking me when they got there, I couldn't anymore. Then, we had Physics, the teacher is always hilarious, I can't remember what he did today. Haha, Aaron and I did something though, he was demonstrating as an illustration of what happens when you realease a weight hanging from a spring, and as the thing fell downwards, Aaron and I threw our hands in the air and went, "WHAAaaaaah". We do that a lot, too. We have fun with our Physics teacher, he looks a bit like Einstein reincarnated. Not quite as much hair. But white.

Then we had Biology, the German class we have instead of Latin, our real German class, and Math. Hehe, our math teacher, Herr Kohler is about five feet tall, has a nice, big round bald spot, and a mustache. We call him the mouse. He can also be funny. Today was good.

Fabian (classmate explaining answer): "And then, I found where the point (P, P)-"
Kohler: (chuckle) "What is the point called again?"
(Aaron and Brent bury heads in hands laughing)

Classmate Marc: "I want to throw a party sometime, you'd be invited..."
Kohler: *bounce* "Saufen!" (getting drunk!)
(Aaron and Brent fall out of chairs laughing)

No exaggeration or jokes. I love Germany.

So, that was good. Aaron said that at the Abitur party, or the party for the end-of-year exams, Herr Kohler got drunk, took off his shirt, danced on a table, and crowd surfed. If you don't find that extremely funny, I'll have to post a picture of him somehow.

So, I need to get busy with WORK.