Testing, Testing.... Hallo?

First things first:  Birthdays. 

To Morgan Kehoe and Amy Hobday:  I hope you both had a wonderful time celebrating your birthdays!!! 

Second things Second: School.

I took my Physics Klasure on Wednesday this week.  I wasn’t really anticipating it to be fantastic or anything, but I think missing the last Physics class on Friday (I was sick!!!) definitely exaggerated the situation.  I understood the material for maybe 2 questions on the test, and got maybe half a question right.

“Maybe” being the key word.

On the Friday after the Klausure, my teacher gave us all a very stern lecture.  I’m not a 100% what on, but he definitely was not a happy camper.  Apparently none of us did too terribly well on the Klausure.  We just did terribly.  After he was done lecturing us on the morals of being a student (I think that was the topic), he started to explain one of the problems from Wednesday’s test which, as the German phrasing goes, I understood “uberhaupt nicht”. 

Translation?  Totally, completely, 100%, not at all.  In my defense, there was a big nasty graph with multiple variables and loads of Calculus.

I took Calculus in the US, yes.  I took Physics in the US, yes.  But at no point in time did those two subjects overlap. 

I miss that.

Anyway, seeing as I had no clue what was going on, I used the time for something constructive: the lovely little doodle below.

I apologize to any and all CalTech people that may come across this blog.  To be clear, it is meant to exaggerate my inability to comprehend this Physics class, not to imply that you are all silly surfers.  Although some of you certainly may be.  I don’t actually know seeing as my knowledge of CalTech is on par with my knowledge of Physics.

Anyway, my point here is that Physics this week was just a tad bizarre…

After Physics on Wednesday I had my new Gym class, badmitton.  You see, my old Volleyball course was a mix of kids from the 11^th and 12^th grades, and 12^th graders are done with school now.  That being so, a bunch of the kids from the class are no longer there, and we didn’t have enough kids left to justify actually having the class.  Normally, this would be totally chill, and I would just be done with Gym.

But when have I ever done anything the normal way?

Gym is the last credit I need for Pennsbury (my high school in the US), so it is the one course I have to have the whole time I’m here.  There wasn’t much space left in any of the other Gym classes, so I ended up dropping Politiks, and taking  badmitton instead. 

Which is a lot more intense than people will lead you to believe!

We ran drills, we played games, we learned rules.  Holy Moly.  I never thought a tiny little piece of plastic could be so much bloody work!  It’s a good thing I know how to play tennis already or I’d have been completely lost, and looked much sillier than usual.  As it was, tennis and badminton are similar enough that I was able to get by quite nicely I think.  I’m legitimately really looking forward to this week’s class!

As well as the two free periods I now have on Tuesday.  Aaaah.  Chill time.  I wonder what that’s like…

Deutsch on Thursday was also a lot of fun.  I’ve gotten to the point where I no longer have to spend the entire class period translating words; I can actually concentrate on understanding the poem now, which is really really cool.  And this week’s poem was quite beautiful.  It was written by Clemens Brentano, and called “Der Spinnerin Nachtlied” (read it here http://www.literaturwelt.com/werke/brentano/spinnerin-nachtlied.html).  It’s all about a woman  ho’s beloved has either died, or left (that was the million euro question for the class period), and every time she hears a nightingale sing, she is reminded of him.  I tend to think the man is dead seeing as there are numerous allusions to the Fates, however both sides of the argument are quite plausible. 

Case in point?  Deutsch was really really awesome this on Thursday!

Thursday evening I attempted to make dinner.  My host mom had had parent teacher conferences, and both my host brother and I had had Klasures this week, so I thought it would be good to try and give them a bit of a rest.  For dinner, I decided to use the pancake mix my host sister had sent over.

To clarify, my host sister is still in the US, living with my family.  I am now in Germany living with her family.  The logistics of this exchange are a bit interesting. 

Anyway, all the instructions for the Pancakes and the molds were in English, and I’ve made pancakes a few times before, so I figured “hey, I can do this.  Adding molds to the process should be no sweat”.

Silly me.

I needed help getting the batter sorted out seeing as I don’t have US system measuring cups here, and I haven’t made pancakes often enough to know about what the batter should feel like.  Anyway, once we did get the batter all sorted out, we started to use the pancake molds.  Below is the result of the first two attempts:

Uh huh.  Beautiful aren’t they?

The third time, as it turns out, really is the charm.  For the third attempt, we changed the position of the pancake mold, and got this:

So, now we all know how to make pancakes, use pancake molds, and to say a whole lot of new words for a whole lot of obscure kitchen gadgets.

A very productive evening I’d say. 

Side note:  Crepes (a French style pancake) may be common here, but Maple syrup isn’t, I don’t think, so we ate the pancakes with sugar and apple sauce instead.  Yuuum!!!

On to Friday: after the lovely Physics class (the one with the lecture, not the Klausure), I got my history Klausure back!  Like I said, I didn’t really write to the exact question asked, mostly because I didn’t have time (or, I’ll be honest, energy) to read and translate all the required stuff in the time limit.  It didn’t seem to matter though, my teacher was really enthused that I put so much
though and effort into the essay.  He wrote me a sentence or two saying “Thanks for the debate on Adam Smith! “ and suggested I read some stuff by an author that is either A) an American who examines capitalism, B) examines American capitalism, or C) none of the above.

The poor guy’s handwriting rivals mine.  I’ll give you a better translation once I figure out what he actually wrote, and have time to translate it properly.

As far as the school week goes, that’s really it.  My host brother went to visit his dad this weekend, so my host mom and I decided to test out the bikes and took a ride to the city yesterday.  It was quite a ways, but the ride was really beautiful, and there weren’t too many cars on the road, so it was relatively quiet and peaceful as well.  We got to the city, checked out the new mall that just opened,  and admired a whole lot of awesome European clothing.

And shoes.  Don’t forget the shoes.

Sadly, I am too miserly for my own good.  The most I bought were some funny postcards and pack of gummi bears. 

Another Side note:  Although Germany is fairly famous for its chocolate, most of the Germans I have met eat more gummy bears and such.  I mean, they enjoy chocolate too, but most times, if they’ve a craving for something sweet, they chomp on a handful of gummy bears, not Milche or Rittersport.

Moving on:  I did, finally, take a bunch of pictures of the city!  You can check them out with this link: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=281617&id=641132010&l=034f85dc18

It’s the facebook public link, so even if you’re not friends with me on facebook, you should be able to see the pictures.

Moving on, I mentioned a moment ago that the ride to the city is quite a ways. It would follow then, that the ride from the city back home would also be quite a ways.  Conveniently, there was an ice cream place along the way, so we stopped for a break, and enjoyed the first real ice cream of the season. 

Have I mentioned how tasty hazelnut ice cream is?  Sooooooooo gooooooooood.  Anyone know if that exists in the States?  Cause if so, Granpop: you gotta try some!

For those of you who don’t know, my grandfather is, among many things, an ice cream connoisseur.  Ben and Jerry look to him to judge a flavor’s worthiness  (that is a slight exaggeration, but you get the idea).

The last bit for this week’s post:  I woke up this morning thinking in German.  And didn’t realize it until I ran out of German words, and was forced to substitute an English one.  I was quite confused there for a bit this morning, I must say. 

Ah well, coffee cures all.

Not sure what's on the agenda for this week, but I'll tell you all about what goes on with the next blog post. 

And for Mrs. H’s sake, I’ll try and make sure that it goes up on Sunday morning.  Sorry I’ve been disturbing the morning routine by not posting promptly!

Over and out,

Shannon