If something is continually late, doesn't that make it on time, and the stuff that's “on time” merely early??

I’m sorry the blog is late again this week.  I was sick on Wednesday and, after some much needed rest, I realized that I may have been pushing myself just a tad too hard.  I think that’s what caused the whole “sick-day Wednesday” bit seeing as, after the world’s longest nap EVER, I was like 90% recovered. 

After taking a mental chill pill, I reminded myself that Rome was not built in a day.

Or a week.

I’m not going to be fluent in a language composed of nearly a million words after only
a month and a half of work.  Now, I’m no math whiz, but something there just doesn’t add up.

That being said, I’m really hoping it’s not gonna take a thousand years either.

Anyway, to help banish the last 10% of illness, I had Doener for lunch on Thursday and Friday.

And Monday. 

Note to self:  Just because Elizabeth Gilbert could afford to gain 28 pounds on her
trip across the globe does not mean that I can.  My budget is not robust enough to
accommodate such dramatic re-wardrobing.  Though not for lack of effort, I assure you.

Aside from my self prescribed remedy of eating entirely too much Doener, I discovered something AMAZING on TV last Friday: 

ABC’s “Castle” auf Deutsch.

For those of you who live in a hole and don’t know this, the World Awesome factor of “Castle” is greater than that of discovering a world in which Jack Bauer crash lands on a remote island with a smoke monster. 

AKA: World Awesome Factor = Ridiculously High.

Oh Friday, like you really needed another feather in your cap.

On Saturday, the day I usually write the majority of my blog, I relaxed.  Chilled out. Did some things in English (the horror! The horror!). 

But as soon as I pronounced myself A-OK, I was back at it; my host family and I went to Bremerhaven on Sunday, an old port at the mouth of the Weser River.  Although it was a gorgeous day, it was still a tad too cold to wander the coast much, so we spent the vast majority of the day in the Klimahaus— the climate museum.

Don’t give me that look.  I’ll be honest: when my host family first told me there was a really cool museum on climate, I gave them the “The Climate Museum is ‘cool’?  You mean ‘cool’ as in ‘cold’ right?” look, the same one you’re probably giving the computer screen right now (unless you’re a meteorologist, in which case, I apologize for the latter remarks).  After looking at the website though, I was as excited to go to the Klimahaus as I get when we to go to the National Indian Museum in Washington DC.

The NIM has legitimately fantastic exhibits, not to mention Mexican Hot Chocolate.  I get more excited to go there than I do for a soccer game.

Oh yes.  It’s is that awesome.

Anyway, the Klimahaus is a HUUUUGE museum that takes you on a trip all along the 8^th degree of longitude, stopping at 8 different locations.  In addition to showing and telling you about the area that you are “visiting”, they show and tell you about a family from that area.  You see and hear them talk about their daily routines, their lives, what they love, like, dislike, and why they do what they do in that particular location. 

The Klimahaus has a very different way of presenting their material: they truly transport you to each of the locations, and every technique used to do so is amazingly subtle, yet profoundly effective.  The Klimahaus does not decorate, they recreate.  For instance: in the Sahara exhibit, the floor isn’t a floor at all.  It’s sand.

Sand!

They even altered the scent and temperature of the rooms, so while you may not be dying of heat in the Sahara, it is definitely hot!

On the other hand, they also take you to Antarctica; and let you wander through a snow-filled room chilled to 0 degrees Celsius; it was cold, but also cool.  

At the end of it all is the Postcard Room, where, surprisingly, you can buy postcards and ship them wherever your heart desires.

Everyone understands that I say “surprisingly” with complete sarcasm, right??

I won’t go into any more detail because the Klimahaus is truly an experience; you gotta go, see, listen, and learn.  I promise: you’ll be tired at the end of it, but it’s that wonderful, “wow what a wicked-stellar day” kind of tired.

On a different-ish note, the Klimahaus also brought to the fore what has long been lurking at the back of my mind: German Architecture.

Stop with that look already!

A lot of people may not know this, but Germany is considered the origin of many of today’s modern Architectural forms, Functionalism being the most prominent among them.  And though the “architectural rebirth” that started here is past its prime, I can see its effects in a hundred different places just riding the bus in the morning.

And I’m not even really awake then.  

Klimahaus Outside View

But anyway, I mention all this architecture stuff because half of what draws you into the Klimahaus is what it looks like from the outside.  The little book I picked up there describes the building as looking “squat” from the outside, but that’s certainly not how you feel once you step inside…

Klimahaus Entrance Hall

See what I mean??  And that’s just one of the many architectural wonders that flood the port of Bremerhaven.  The city has said that it’s tired of being known as “run-of-the-mill”, and hopes that the Klimahaus will do for it, what the Guggenheim did for Bilbao, Spain.  

Mission accomplished Bremerhaven.  Mission.  Accomplished.

As far as school last week goes, it was pretty chill.  The longer I’m here, the more I learn, the less I make mistakes.  Which means that you, dear readers, will be reading fewer and fewer stories about whirling laundry.

Hopefully.

Although, me attempting to speak German with a Russian accent on Wednesday did lead to some

interesting misunderstandings in Theater…

That being said, Math was pretty interesting last week.  We have two books for math; the first is a big pit of incomprehension, and the second is a slightly smaller pit of incomprehension.

We put down the big pit, and started filling in the small pit.  It was great!!  The first formula my teacher put on the board was “y=mx+b”.

I never thought I’d be so happy to see slope intercept form.  My excitement was short lived however, seeing as we quickly put that down and picked up “Kartesisches Koordinatensystem im Raum”.

We went from the lovely little coordinate plane on the left, to that monstrosity on the right.   

  

Apparently the small pit of incomprehension is a lot deeper than I thought.

It’s not so bad though; I went home on Tuesday and looked up the topic in English.  I’ve got a decent handle on what we did last Tuesday, what we did this week though?  Let’s just say that’s a bit of a different story…

After Math Tuesday, some friends and I met up to study for the English Klaseur we had on Thursday.  A Klauseur here is basically a midterm, so it’s like super-duper-mega-ridiculously-important.  We spoke mostly in English seeing as, for one, it was good practice for the exam, and for another, although I’m fairly good at speaking German now, switching between and English and German every other sentence is still ridiculously tough.

In my defense, I did try to switch back and forth at the beginning of the session, but when it got to the point that I was literally sitting with my head in my hands trying to figure out what language I was speaking, I decided that, for the sake of sanity, I should really just stick to English for a bit.

So yeah, that’s it for the past two weeks really.  I got a bunch of stuff on the agenda for this week again, including another Baskets game next Sunday (yeah!!).  On the Tuesday though, I take the History exam.

Oh boy.

More to come next Sunday,

Over and out,

Shannon

Except not really....

As a PS: This blog has several purposes: for me to keep track of my adventures and progress yes, but also to entertain, and to keep in touch with people at home.  Of the three, I find that latter two to be of utmost importance.  Please, don’t hesitate to tell me what you like or dislike.  If you’ve a question: ask it!!  If I don’t know the answer right away, all I have to do to find it is walk around the corner.  Much easier for me to do that, than for you to take a plane from wherever you are to Oldenburg.  Especially since Oldenburg doesn’t have an airport.  Makes landing a bit tricky…

On the serious side, this is an exchange.  The point is to learn; two heads are better than one, and a hundred heads are better than two.  The more you all ask, the more we all learn.