awwwww, I can't procrastinate any longer....

Tomorrow morning, I'm checking out of here for about three weeks for the Europatour, I'm getting back in Ulm late on the 15th of April. Today, Aaron and I pissed off our German teacher (again) by becoming extremely bored and playing with paper, which culminated in a paper TIE fighter fight. Wow. That was a first. And, I we watched more of the Dead Poets' Society in Religion, I love that movie, even though I haven't seen nearly the whole thing yet. Robin Williams just generally rules, I guess. What is he doing these days, one wonders...

And, after that lovely movie watching, we had a Math test, big bummer. But, it was easy, the teacher gave us exchangies the normal test, plus a couple extra easier problems that we could do instead. I did almost everything, I actually think our extra problems were a little bit harder than the normal test...easier to understand, language-wise, I suppose. Then, we had Music, we're finally not doing Jesus Christ, Superstar anymore. Whew. We talked about Beethoven, the classics, and his 3rd Symphony (Eroica, the one he originally dedicated to Napolean, but then scratched the dedication out when Napolean crowned himself emperor). Soooo much more interesting, and intelligent. We listened to half of the first movement, and followed along with the full orchestra score. It's a whole different experience to hear the symphony and be able to see every little bare bone and detail of the symphony, it's quite enlightening. Well, for people like me who know virtually squat about orchestration, it is. Then school was over, I went first to Kaufhof (big department store downtown) with Nunt, I loaded up on chocolate covered coffee beans for the tour, oh shit. I'm going to be in heaven. Then, we went to the bank and tried out our new bank cards, I used mine to promptly hemorrhage money. I transferred 85€ for this orchestra retreat/rehearsal days thing in May, and spent 140€ more at the train station buying return train tickets for me and Kathryn for when we get back on the 15th. She's supposed to pay me back soon, grr, hahaha. Her's was 20€ more than mine, hehe, I love my bahncard. Geez, German apostrophe rules are screwing with me, I don't know if 'her's' is correct...geez. Anyway, then I finished my Austria report, in that I printed out and beautifully :P illustrated a map of Austria. Then, I called home to talk to the parental units before I left, then I hastily went to intense badminton. And, oh crap, I am good, haha. I played the whole time, as usual, and beat up on the best girl there, and the best guy there, and crap, that guy is gooood. There's so much time and space to be aggressive in badminton, lots more time than tennis. I got to play in a doubles match with the guy who moderates the badminton sessions, I think he's a retired pro, or something. We lost in two straight sets, haha. The guy's unbelievable, he makes you run so much. You have to be real alert to keep him from straight up dominating you. So, then my brain was all alert, and the grammar and vocab and stuff flowed nicely, always enjoyable. Now, I'm supposed to be finishing packing for tomorrow morning, but I'm a die-hard procrastinator, I got all the stuff together that I have to pack still on my bed, and said, ok, from there, it'll take about five minutes, haha. So, that's why I'm writing this boring account now. I'm still deciding if I want to sleep tonight, or stay awake until I have to go around 5 to catch my bus to meet the others who are driving us down to Stuttgart to catch our plane to Hannover. I think I might have to leave a note tomorrow morning for my host mom saying, 'I'm off to the train station, I'll see you in a month.' That would be a little embarassing, I don't know if she knows I leave that early tomorrow morn. My fault. Well, I still need to take a shower, and pack everything together, and such. So, this is my last until the evening of the 15th, I suppose. Y'all have fun. I sure will.

'seeping...for the roll tear....'

did I mention that my hair is long enough for me to pretend to be an emo kid? haha, I was doing that in Math when everyone else was working on math problems, and Aaron was dying laughing. gotta have the hair, the emo face, and the vigorous wrist-slitting motions. good times in math :P

The Who

TGIF!!!! Yesterday, I missed intense badminton, cause I had to go to Moritz's brass recital, which wasn't that bad, I must say. So many more people play brass instruments here than where I live, I think...and they're all so good....so anyway, I made up for missing that with Sport today, we did this kind of endurance/fitness course with about seven different different exercises. At one, we had to drop on a mat, do a push-up, slap our hands behind our back, run across the room to another mat where we would do the same thing, and back and forth. I was going through the course with Aaron, and with that one, we were intense running and jumping into pushup position, like jumping about six feet away from the mat, do a half rotation and land in a pushup position, haha. Then, I landed on my knee, and I stopped that. Owow. It's swollen, I think. So, after that, we played soccer as usual, yay! At the very beginning of class, some people had to do these exercises on bars still for grades, but the rest of us were just playing soccer, kind of. We were more just playing keep-away with teams, which gave me an opportunity to try and relearn some of the offensive tricks I learned way back when, haha. I guess I have fast feet, but I just don't always have total control all the time, so there were times when I would do something and fool two Germans at once, and this guy from my class was like, ooh, nice, and then there were times when I would lose the ball behind my feet, haha. Well, I'm getting better. With goalie, too, I only let about 3 in today, and one of those was a double pass right in front of the goal, which you can't do shit about. That's good, considering I get about fifty billion shots from those damn Germans every time. And, wow, my ankles are weak. After Sport, we had Math, easy as hell, nothing more to say except that our teacher is still being a bitch to Aaron about his needing an excuse for being in the US longer that he said he would be. Then, we went and had cake and coffee. At that point, we realized we were being a bit gay. Haha, Aaron said that on myspace, he wrote that he's as straight as the road, as long as he's not shopping with Brent. Same goes for me reversed, haha. Then, we were going to Aaron's bank so he could get money, and on the way, we saw a poster for The Who, who're giving a concert in Ulm in July, on the square above, the one in front of the Münster. I was like, wow, we should go to that, and then I looked at Aaron, and his mouth was hanging wide open, haha. So, we quickly located where they were selling the tickets, and immediately bought two. Yay. They're playing in Berlin and Hamburg, the two biggest cities in Germany, and then, Ulm, haha. Not everyone in Germany knows where Ulm is.....kickassss. And now, I should work on my report on Austria that I haven't started on....so, later, fools.

Pfoot pfoot goes the organ

This morning I played a church service in this church ^^ the church where I practice. I had to learn four hymns for it, which I got on Tuesday. Whew, glad that's over with. Now, I can enjoy my Sunday and eat a buttload at lunch, I only had a banana for breakfast. The pastor woman was kind enough to thank me in the announcements near the end, she said I was from England, haha. I'm supposedly going to get paid something for it, yayay. I gotta turn in this paperwork stuff, though, I hate paperwork.

So, scratch what I said before about Avril Lavigne, I think she's great, haha. And Fall Out Boy's good as long as you don't see them live, yuck.

My host dad has a surprisingly good collection of piano CDs, I'm pirating all of them and importing them onto iTunes, hehe.

And now, off to read some Harry Potter in German, I bought the 5th in German yesterday, the last one I hadn't bought and read in German yet. I'm a dork, haha :P

Trumpetings

Today was afternoon school day, so I only got 1.75 hours of organ practice before I had to go home for dinner. Then, I the two trumpeters I'm accompanying picked me up, we had to play in this group recital at this girls' school in Ulm. It went pretty well, it's just that my confidence isn't ever huge in piano recitals, I wasn't that nervous, though. Ha, one of the trumpeters (the better, he's 18 and can play the Haydn trumpet concerto...well, there's probably more than one, but it's the most famous one) has his English Abitur (huge end-of-school test) oral exam tomorrow, so he was only speaking English, I was only speaking German, so funny. He kept making random English jokes, once, he was parking, and randomly yelled, 'shut up, buttmunch!' (beevis and butthead, sp.?). Then, another time, he was like, 'I heard someone shot at 50 Cent, but he survived. Why didn't he die?!' hahaha. Another time, he did a Texan accent. Omg.

Haha, gotta quote myself again :P

Aaron (in class): "Did you hear that?!"
Brent: "Yup."
Aaron: "What was that?"
Brent: "That was a hippo clearing its throat."

Ok, it's kind of an inside joke, kind of a mean one. We should stop it. It's just, not many people understand fluent English...

Hah, and our Math teacher admitted to this today:

"Ich bin klein, aber gemein."
"I'm small, but mean."

We've been saying that. All. Year. I wrote the German cause it rhymes. Apparently, he has a hot wife...how, one wonders...

Heehee, a couple funny links from the sister:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4068767512452275304

That's especially funny. I like Fall Out Boy, except that the lyrics suck. They're interesting, definitely, but bad. Google them, you don't get them with that video, haha.

http://www.ebaumsworld.com/flash/endofworld.html

This is good. Except, the guy's weird accent is bad. The foreign accents aren't horrible, but his normal jabber is weird. And bad. Otherwise, really funny. HA, Shirley, just remembered, MOTHERLAND!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (not -hood, haha) That was a long time ago...but a good time. Remember when I did Harry Truman and the atom bomb? Probably not. Oh, well. Still no email from Hromas...GRR. haha

Ok, work to do...

I too, am a nerd

*forgetting how desperately I should be learning music*

Today's Monday, so what does that mean? Well, first off, we I have two hours free in between Math and English, which is always entertaining, especially now that Aaron's back :P Secondly, we have hilarious English class, and thirdly, I have an organ lesson. So, in our free time, we heckled the hot female employee in the bank who knows us by sight now, walked in a bookstore, and went up to the top of the huge downtown parking garage, which is one of the best kept secrets in Ulm, I think. See picture. I almost hit a woman smoking on the sidewalk with a snowball from that height. We went back to English, we barely got there in time, as usual, and then the teacher handed out our tests from two weeks ago. The test consisted of questions about this young woman who came from Yugoslavia and worked illegally in Britain, and was taken advantage of by her employers. The whole time, Aaron and I were making bad jokes about how she had gone to Britain to prostitute herself for more money (we were slightly, um, giddy), and then the teacher said, out of nowhere, "you all can't write on the test, 'everyone has it in their mouth'! Don't write about your fantasies!!" Aaron and I laughed until we cried about that for about ten minutes. Apparently, the phrase that's equivalent to having a question 'on the tip of your tongue' in German is to have a question in your mouth. Hey, the teacher said it out loud, we didn't even need our little bad jokes, although it made it ten times more funny. So, anyways, then I went home, ate lunch, was ordered to accompany Moritz shopping, had my organ cram-session ruined, enjoyed myself thoroughly grocery shopping with Moritz (we talked shit about teachers the whole time), crammed for an hour in the church, and got through my lesson. Whew. Then, I bought meself the German Evangelical hymnal, which I need for organ lessons. Then, I went home, dinner was still being prepared, Moritz showed me this little wooden puzzle that you have to put together into an octagonal solid (what's the name for that...), he said that no one in the family had figured out how to put it together yet, so I put it together. Not like my host family is all that bright put together...oh well. Smarter than my last host family, can't complain. Then, at dinner, we got onto the familiar topic of how my host parents would have like to have had daughters, Johannes was like, but, you have a daughter, and then there was a fierce battle between him and Moritz to try and point at each other. Then my host dad was saying how girls are better, they always flush the toilet, and Moritz was like, they don't need to, they shit in the corners. That was one of those times when I kept trying to eat my bread and turned red from choking. Maybe that's a well-heard joke, but I had never heard it. Then there was general shit talking about girls and teachers. Ha, my host mom is an un-ashamed feminist. Then, my host mom told me that the organist from the church where I practice called and gave her the hymn numbers for Sunday, there are four and none of them are remotely short. Oh, shit. Why am I not panicking right now. I'm also gonna have rehearsals with the two trumpeters I'm accompanying, have one tomorrow. This is going to be interesting. Pray for me.

NYARG! : The Eselsberg Massacre

We got a relatively large amount of snow yesterday and the last two nights, over a foot in 24 hours. I had a huge snowball fight with my host family yesterday afternoon (my host mom stayed out of it, grrr), my host dad had the snow shovel and kept coming after us and dumping snow on us with it. Ha, once, Moritz was trying to get closer to nail him with a snowball (entirely covered in snow, looked like Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes after Calvin got nailed by one of Hobbes' snowballs), and my host dad was like, 'want some more, do ya? I've got another shovelful for ya' and even though it was German, he managed to say it with some sort of an Irish accent, so funny. There are massive mounds of shoveled snow by the street, we had to get snowballs from those cause the rest is pretty much too powdery. Eventually, Moritz and my host dad went inside, cause they're pussies, and then Johannes' friend showed up, so it was them against me for about an hour, I kept throwing them in the mounds, hehe. By the end, I was totally soaked, and I couldn't ever see much, cause my glasses were totally wet and foggy, and it was impossible to dry them. As you can see above. Nyarg!

Hehe, yesterday I was drying dishes with my host brothers, and Moritz was trying to throw a wet rag at me, so I hardcore rattailed him with the dish towel in the leg, it made a sound like a gunshot, and he was laughing and dancing on one foot for a little bit, going 'owoooooh,' it was soooo funny. Today, I went outside in my house shoes on the patio and took pictures of the snow, Moritz came out and threw snowballs off the patio, I took that picture over my shoulder, hehe.

Tomorrow's school. Gar. School sucks. I was reading the end of Harry Potter 4 in German on the couch in the living room this afternoon, the sun was going down, and I was getting sleepy, I nodded off, my head hit the wall behind me so hard, that it shook the painting above my head, made a sound that reverberated through the first floor, and left a bump on my head. Owow. Gotta go to bed early. I hope we don't have to walk to school tomorrow morning, my host mom keeps threatening that we might have to. Yeah, right, I rode a bus this morning and we rode them this afternoon. Well, I should go do something productive, like try and be prepared for my organ lesson tomorrow. Yikes.

Bad Oldesloe, Hamburg, Berlin, oh my!

So, blogger's working now, so I can posty. I left on Sunday with my host mom and my host brothers to visit their grandma, Oma Edith (see picture there, younger host brother Johannes is in there, too), who lives in Bad Oldesloe, a little town about a half hour away from Hamburg. I ate dinner with her and my host family Sunday night, then took the train to Hamburg on Monday morning. I had never been to Hamburg before, it's a very interesting city, with the harbor and all. The tenth and (how do you spell 12th?!) 12th picture down there is of the Hamburg Rathaus, or town hall, I took a tour of it, very swanky. The second picture of it is from a tower of a church that was bombed in WW2 and left as a memorial. The fourth picture is of the Hamburg harbor, from the ferry docks. I took a ferry for about a half hour to a little suburb of Hamburg, sat outside on the top deck the whole way there, was frozen by the time I got there, ate some hot french fries, and took it back. I also saw several famous churches in Hamburg, of course, steeple hunting is fun. I got back from Hamburg around 8:30, watched The Spy Who Loved Me in German with the host mom and brothers, then went to bed. I got up at 5 the next morning to catch my train to Berlin, was very excited. It was a half hour back to Hamburg, then about two hours from Hamburg to Berlin. I saw everything that I wanted to see except for KaDeWe, the biggest department store in Europe, cause I forgot to go there when I was on the Ku'damm, a big shopping street, where the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church is. So, starting from the top, that's Rüdesheimer Square, the neighborhood where my family lived for six months when I was 9/10. My dad took a picture of me on that square on my tenth birthday, in warmer weather the whole square is full of beautiful flowers, and the fountain is running. Then we have a view of the Spree river and the surrounding area. Then, the Reichstag, the German Parliament building (right?), then the sign at Checkpoint Charlie, then me in front of the Brandenburger Tor, the Brandenburg Gate, the Berlin Cathedral, we heard St. Mathew's Passion back in the day, and once, we wanted to go to church there, but we had forgotten that the time change had happened, so we were an hour late and missed it. Then is our old apartment building, Moritz bouncing on the couch at the host grandma's, teeheehee, and the Berlin Phliharmonic, which is connected to the Musical Instrument Museum, my favorite museum in Berlin. I got in there for a half an hour, it was still free for me, yay, they don't have as many Stradivaris that they used to, only one now, and they don't have the harpsichord that most likely belonged to J.S. Bach, but several from the organ builder Silbermann, and one from C.P.E. Bach. They used to have four or five Strads, I think. Oh well, it was still great to see it again.

So, that was my beginning of the week. Now, I'm supposed to be stressing about all this music I'm supposed to be learning. Yikes.