Concerts, Sangria, and German high schools

Well this week has been a decently eventful one even if my weekend has been quite boring. Tuesday was the concert with my guest family. It was actually really good. The middle son of my host family lives in a group home for mentally handicapped people where they have quite a big community and workplace. I guess this is based off a theory of an American psychologist who developed this group living.working community where the mentally handicapped could participate in a mini society more successfully and feel more productive. At any rate, they just celebrated their 10 yr anniversary of being open and Sparkasse (the bank I now don't hate as much since they finally gave me my money) sponsored a concert evening. The musicians were really good. The piano guy was actually the winner of Bonn's competition last year to find the most skilled pianist in the area or something. There was also a cellist, a flutist, and a clarinetist (sp?) if that's what you call them. The music was all classical and really well played. (And they even had snacks in intermission!) After talking with my guest mother, I discovered that she is quite possibly the Aunt Sue of Germany. She knows everybody everywhere and when I mentioned I was looking for a practicum/internship to possibly do to extend my stay here until the summer, she said she'd be sure to "network" that request amongst everyone she knows. I've also discovered she'll be quite handy to have since her husband was a diplomat, they have some buddies in the passport/visa office. The wife just left to go to India for three weeks and "expedited" her visa request by having her hubby put in a call to some buddies in the office.

Wednesday evening was filled with celebrating my friend Sophie's 23rd birthday. We went to a little local restaurant/bar called Take Two that has awesome nachos and Sangria. There was quite a good-sized group of us, I think between 15 and 20 people. And we ate plenty of nachos and drank plenty of Sangria to not want to go to class the next morning. (I did go by the way.)

Thursday was another eventful (looong) day. I went with another classmate of mine to my German teacher's high school classroom to talk with his kids (they're seniors) about 9/11 and U.S. involvement in the Middle East. It was actually really cool. The students were really interested in hearing what our perspective was since their high school is relatively small and in a rich part of town, so they've never had any real life experience. Many of them were just excited to meet some Americans haha. I gladly gave out my email address and have hopefully made a couple of friends. On the train ride back to Bonn, I was talking with my teacher about wanting to become a teacher myself one day. Well, he took that to heart and said he would shop around the English department in his school and see if anyone is interested in having some help from an American as like an intern or something. That would be REALLY cool if he could pull something like that together.

Other than that....I've been working on grad school stuff and hope to have my list narrowed down to maybe 3 or 4 programs that I'll be applying to. I also need to cut down my course list from the 6 courses I was looking to take this semester to only 3! The intro course counted for 4 credits, and I've just found out (finally!) about how credits transfer back home. And since I've paid for 12 hours already (and only 12 hours) I can only take 8 this semester (since the intro course was 4 already). So I'm cutting back to my German history class, Text Production, and American Poets of the 19th cent. I'm hoping to still be able to audit my Oscar Wilde class and my German Lit class. And then the Dialectology one is just out the window. It was also on Thursday with 2 other classes, and I think that was just too much for one day. Not to mention I had no lunch break :)

Okay well thanks to all my faithful readers! 55 days til I'm home for Christmas :) Send your gift wish lists soon haha. Much love to all...

Richtig Hiking...

Well here's my update for this weekend:

Friday evening I went to a basketball game in Cologne with some people from the International Office. We'd gotten free tickets (woo!) which made the game even more fun! Our seats were decently good, and we had a lot of fun cheering on the Cologne 99ers, as they are called. We heard lots of particularly familiar cheers such as "Let's go Cologne, let's go!" (In English of course.) There was a group of guys in the fans from each team who had drums and beat them along with the cheering. It almost felt like a high school basketball game or something. It did make me miss cheering for my Golden Knight basketball boys team. We won (of course) against the team from Goettingen, I think the score was something like 70-50 but I'm not positive. Friday was a long time ago :) Our colors are red and white, so should I go to another game, I will certainly come prepared. It was kind of funny though, the building they play in is called the "Energy Dome" but it's about the same size of my high school gymnasium with maybe a bit better seats instead of bleachers. The rules appeared to be the same though. I was surprised to see that the Cologne 99ers were actually the German National Champs last year, and have won their Regional Championships just about every year for the past 6 years. Impressive.

Saturday was spent on an outing with Sophie's family (she's the friend of mine who's German and works at the Intl Office here). Her parents are in town since her birthday is this coming Wednesday. We went with her parents and older brother to a nearby vineyard town called Dernau. It's quite close to Mayschoss, which is the place we had our Wine Tasting near the beginning of the Intro Course last month. In fact, we actually hiked through the Dernau vineyard through the large hills/small mountain sides on which all the grape plants are planted from Dernau to Mayschoss. I think there was a total of about 10 kilometers that we hiked. On the way there it was lots of up and down between the rows of grapes. At one point or another, we were cutting across mountain side with sheer drop offs to one side, or up and down stone steps cut into the mountain side that were quite difficult! However, we were rewarded by a lovely meal at an awesome restaurant in the middle of it all. I tried Federweisser for what I believe is the second time. I think I had some when I was at Claudia's that summer when I was 15. It's a wine that's made fresh (not aged) and is most popular (tastes best) in September and October, early fall, I'm guessing when the grapes are freshly picked. You can have it in either red (Federroter) or white (Federweisser). See, I'm becoming quite the wine connoisseur!

Sunday, today, I'm working on homework. I picked up my room this morning, and attempted to do laundry, but since there's only two washing machines for an entire building of probably about 130-140 students, and one is currently broken, it's always in use :( So I pulled out my homework for this week and am getting a head start. I already finished what I needed to do for tomorrow which is read The Importance of Being Earnest. For Tuesday I have to read some German lit article and do a worksheet on it (I hate worksheets), for Wednesday I have to read some Longfellow poetry (more likely to get done today than the german lit), and for Thursday I have to read an article on Otto von Bismark and answer some questions about him. So nothing too hard. I'm also still working on recommendation letter drafts to give to professors so they have good stuff to write about me to the grad programs to which I'm applying. I'm also working on "Personal Statements" to send to each school as well. Basically, it's just a statement saying why I think I'm qualified for graduate work, and what in my past history supports that claim.

Well I will try to keep you all better updated. This week I have a concert on Tuesday evening that I'm attending with my host family. Other than that I don't think there's a lot going on. Okay well, back to that homework.... Much love to all!

i'm a bad updater....

Okay well the semester has officially started! I have gone to all of my classes except two. One is later this evening, and one was canceled today because there was some ceremony thing going on. But so far I have had my Monday class on Oscar Wilde, which went really well. We're reading The Importance of Being Earnest first, and then An Ideal Husband, and then Picture of Dorian Gray, and a few shorter stories and pieces worked in there as well. The professor seems really nice, and the class is in English, which makes life easier. Tuesdays I have German LIterature of the 19th and 20th centuries. It's in German, but it's taught at the international office and only open to exchange students, so they at least recognize that German is not our first language...

Ok well I'm picking this post back up later to finish writing it...which means I've gone to my German history class now. It's actually looking like it might be one of my favorites. The teacher is guy with a lot of energy, and you can tell he's very knowledgeable about his subject, and excited to teach it. He actually invited a couple of us to come visit his class (roughly the equivalent of seniors) in the high school where he teachers to come talk about the impact of Sept. 11th on life in the U.S. They're talking about it in his classes right now, and he knows that it's had a much different impact on us than his students necessarily understand, having only seen it on TV and such. So he thought it would be a really good experience for them to hear it straight from the horse's mouth so to speak. And hey, I don't mind being a horse for a day. I look at it as an awesome learning experience, as well as something else to add to my grad school resume! :)

This coming weekend I have a few plans. Tomorrow (Friday) I'm going to a basketball game in Cologne. Saturday I was going to visit Caitlin in Koblenz, but it turns out that due to a serious mixup at Sparkasse....I currently have no money. They seem to have misplaced my $5,000 that I deposited there. So tomorrow I'm bringing a German friend of mine to the bank with me to make sure I know exactly what's happened to it. I got a notice in the mail today saying my rent hadn't been paid since I didn't have sufficient funds in my account. Yay. *sigh*

Other than that, though, I have some homework already that needs to get done before next week. I have an article I have to read for my German Lit class and a writing exercise to do for it. I have a few questions I have to answer for a short text I have to read for my German history class. I have to read The Importance of Being Earnest. I'm not sure how much of it we need to have done for the first class period, but I really enjoy it and it's short, so I figured I'd just have it all read by the next class on Monday. Then I have to read a handful of poems for my American Poets class. The only class I don't have to do anything for was my Text Production class since we wrote two things in class already. (I think I omitted talking about how this class went previously...but it went really well. The teacher was excited to hear that I enjoyed creative writing and was studying it in school, since a portion of what she wants to do with us in the course is a good amount of creative writing.)

I'm currently trying to solidify plans to go to London to hang out with Sarah for Thanksgiving, and then Paris the first weekend in December with a couple of the girls here. Then I want to head to Vienna in January hopefully to see the Spanish Riding School and the Lipizzaners! Okay well I'll try to stay better updated as the weeks go on. I only have another two months here! Weird, huh? Over a month is already gone by. Crazy! Much love to everyone!

Aachen

This past Friday, the 5th, we went to Aachen for the afternoon with the International Office. It was actually a pretty cool city. We got to tour through Charlemagne's church, which is the shape of an octagon (very scandalous), and has lots of art of how Karl der Grosse, otherwise known as Charlemagne, is bigger and better than the church. I took a lot of cool pictures. The inside of the place was beautiful. And there's a cool myth about where his throne comes from. They're theorizing that because it's so plain in comparison to everything else, that the material then must be what's important about it. They can't quite place it, but you can see on the side of the throne there's a sketch of what looks like a board game, something that might have been at one point in time carved into the ground somewhere. Hence, the material for the throne was dug up from somewhere inherently important. Through dating both the material and the particular game that was played with that sketched out board, they think it's from the time of Jesus Christ. And so the theory somehow is that Charlemagne imported the marble from the tomb of Christ or something like that. (I didn't quite get all of the German...)

At any rate, today I received my grade for the intro course. I got an A :) yay. Now I'm just waiting on them to open class registration online so that I can get into my classes for the semester!