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...