Hey, I'm back

Brent is back on blogger. Maybe. Ha Vera, I remembered my login info after all! wrong user name...na ja. Ok, I go home in about 6 days. Yay. And oh yeah, I was doing a series of Europatour pictures....I guess I could continue. Where was I...ah yes, now we come to Paris, the city of love, the most beautiful city in the world, arguably. Have to have a sweet tooth for architecture, maybe. Na, not really. It's just gorgeous. Even though our youth hostel was the smelliest mother you've ever slept in. It still had all that atmosphere. Ok, pictures...gotta find the best.
The Arc de Triomphe, the monument most visited by Lance Armstrong in the world. Suck it, Frenchies. And yep, there's my tour walking ahead of me, while I take pictures and wait until a ROTEX notices that I'm lagging. At least we figured out how to get to the damn thing. Stupid circular traffic and underground labyrinths. And lastly, the windiest attraction on the tour.

Guess where I was and you probably weren't. Yeah, the Louvre. And you'll notice I'm not posting a picture of the Mona Lisa cause I actually respect the art that's in that museum unlike all the other bastards that take a picture of her. And to the other extreme, at least I don't sit in the middle of the gallery where she is for half an hour and not even notice that's she's there. For an example of such a person, see below.

Have you ever been a bum in the Louvre?

Notre Dame, and the chicks that I ran around Paris with for most of my free time. Fun fun.

An different view of the Eiffel Tower.

Read the sign.

An example of Paris' unrivaled beauty.

Ok, that was it for Paris. I'll see when I can post here again...maybe not all that soon. I'm gonna be busy when I get home.

FINALLY...posting again...Brussels!

So, as my second Europatour post, I'm doing Brussels. We did a day trip there from Brugge. I had already been to Brussels for three days when I was nine, so it was cool seeing everything again, especially the Atomium, which they just got done renovating. We were the first tour to see it after renovation, it's must better than the first time I saw it. Commentary follows.

Mannekin Pis, the little naked statue. Practically every country has donated clothes for him, but of course he was naked for the exchange students.


The Atomium park. It was built for a world fair in...I forget, look it up.


View of the Atomium from beneath it. In some of the columns are escalators, like the one below.


Cool blue escalator in the Atomium.


My Belgian waffle. Absolutely delicious.


Fountains of chocolate. Well, slap my ass and call me Willy....


Inside the Prostetant cathedral, I think...the second largest church in the world is in Brussels.


The group outside the Atomium. Mmm love those people.


The City Hall.


The big shopping promenade thing. Expensive.

So, that's the best of Brussels. This weekend, starting on Thursday, is the reunion weekend! We get all the pictures and music from the tour, which will be awesome. And we'll get to see most everybody, yay. And we're having a costume party, girls dressing as boys and vice versa. Nikki's taking care of me. And I'm bringing one of my sweaters that fits her. Excited. Got an orchestra concert tonight, can't wait to be done with that. More of a nuisance than anything else in these busy times. Ok, til the next time I get inspired to post.

Europatour, etc.

So, I think I'm starting to get over Europatour withdrawal, seeing as I'm keeping busy with plans and things for the future. And I'm excited about stuff again. But I still really miss everyone from the tour. Can't wait til the reunion.

Lots happened for me on the tour, and it really changed me. And I'm soo happy I was on the west tour, and not east tour. No offense easties, I would have missed so much on the east. So much.

So, I was thinking on the tour, how am I going to blog this?! Well, I can't, really, but I'm going to offer up a few pictures at a time from every city. Or I could skip the effort and make you check out my website where they all are going to be anyway. I've only posted up to Florence, working on Rome/Venice. I couldn't charge my camera batteries for the day in Venice, so I only have pictures from when we were leaving. I bought postcards. And I stole Morgan the French woman's pictures. But really, it is not possible to have more fun or be more intensely stimulated in three weeks than being on Europatour. It would be worth being an exchange student in Germany just for that.

so you don't forget, the website is:
http://roach.caltech.edu/~brent/
please enjoy

So, to start with, here's a small selection from Brugge, a small but beautiful city in Belgium. I posted them small and centered, for some reason...oh well.
It rained off and on our whole time in Belgium, so they're not the brightest pictures. On the day we went to Brussels, we came back and took a boat tour through Brugge's canals. It's called the little Venice of the north. The top pic is my boat, with our umbrellas out. The next is looking back behind the boat at Brugge, I was at the very end of the boat. Then is the town hall, and the town hall square. And we had fun in the youth hostel, but I don't have a good picture from that. So, that was Brugge.

fine, I guess I'll post

SO, back from Europatour. Still trying to get the fact that it's over, so I won't talk about it much now. BUT my sister has granted me use of her server, which means I'm posting every picture (eventually) that you would ever want to see of my exchange. Well, not true, this will be a g rated site. I don't take my camera to non g-rated things anyway, usually. So, my site is http://roach.caltech.edu/~brent/
It's in process, but I've got some stuff up already. Enjoy please.

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