Hopefully I’ve remembered to post it on time.
So, to take care of a few loose ends:
The basketball season, for us, is over. The EWE Baskets put up a good fight before losing the 5th game, and getting kicked out of the playoffs. Would it be unsportsmanlike of me lay some of the blame (or a lot of the blame) on the referees? Because man, some of those calls were real doozies.
Anyway, the playoffs here work in sets of 5: the first team to win three games advances to the next round. We played Alba Berlin, who won the first two games by a decent amount. Then, amazingly, we came back and won the next two games. The 4th game was 80:79, Baskets.
What. A. Game.
And frankly, what lousy referees (for the first half at least).
To be fair: being a referee is the worst of both worlds. The winning team pays you no mine: we didn’t need your help (or we won despite your lousy calls), and the losing team always lays a bit of the blame on some lousy calls from the ref, regardless of whether the calls were actually lousy, or not.
Even so, when a stadium of 3,000 people is up in arms, booing, shouting, and pretty much ignoring the game-- these are Oldenburg fans remember; not watching the Baskets while in the EWE arena is like going to an Eagles game, not wearing green, and chatting about how much shopping you’re going to do the next day—at that point, you know something’s wrong.
Side note: at one of the 2 games we went to, we walked to our seats, and “Rapper’s Delight” from the Sugar Hill Gang started playing. I told you basketball was awesome.
And for those of you with entirely too much “Schadenfreude”**, here’s another lingual mishap for you:
Last week (or maybe the week before), I finally gave in and started writing in pen, rather than in pencil. 98% of the time, people here use pens, or incredibly fine tipped markers, in order to take notes, or fill in a worksheet, or do homework… you get the idea. But anyway, I finally started using one of those fine tipped markers, and (being the talented mess-maker that I am) managed to come home every day that week with blue flecks of ink all over my hands.
Don’t ask. It’s a talent.
Anyway, Friday night of that week (whichever week it was), some friends and I went out for Pizza, and when I tried to tell them “yeah, I started using this new pen, and now I’ve got blue flecks all over my hands”, I said instead: “Yeah, I started using this new pen, and now I’ve got bruises all over my hands”…
Apparently “blaue Pflecken” does not translate exactly as “blue flecks”. Good to know.
Also, in UNESCO, we encountered some technological difficulties when attempting to watch a French cartoon film (dubbed in German, thankfully). First, we couldn’t get the right input. Then, once we had the right input, we had the wrong DVD.
Rather than playing a children’s cartoon, we had some official media DVD from France. When we turned on the TV and upped the sound, we were confronted with a French version of Shakira.
Insert short period of stunned silence here.
Take 2: We exchanged the DVD, couldn’t get the system to work again, and so also changed the System.
When we booted up the new system, we realized the language was set to Greek.
GREEK.
There were some bilingual kids in the class, and the teacher spoke both German and French (at least), but not a one of us could handle that.
At that point, we all just sat back and laughed until the bell rang. There was no time left to see any of the movie anyway.
Then, this week, we actually got to watch the film, and I quite liked it! The movie’s called “Kiriku”, named after the main character, a very very very small boy who saves his village from a sorceress. The sorceress has stopped the well to the village, and captured all the men who ever came to fight her. Kiriku, being small and wily, completes all kinds of tasks and travels all over and has a wonderful adventure before finally defeating the sorceress. The story actually goes on a bit further from there, but I don’t want to spoil it.
The film won all kinds of awards, and you can read more about here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181627/
Also, I had a presentation in history on Friday. It was a legit class assignment, and the topic was Johannes Kepler.
I haven’t been so nervous for a presentation in a very, very long time. I mean, even given the fact that it was history class (my favorite subject), I knew the material already (read all about him in McKay last year), and the fact that giving a preplanned-presentation—even if it is in German—is soooooooo much easier than doing Improvisation in Theater class---
To borrow Grandpop’s phrase: MYYYYYYYYY GOSH. Forget Butterflies. I had hornets flying around my stomach. Very angry hornets.
But, according to my teacher at least, it went pretty well. He told me that everything I said was completely understandable. I know I made some silly gaffes—masculine articles for femine words, or vice versa— but that I think I can blame mostly on nerves. And changing the article doesn’t (usually) change the meaning of a sentence.
Although, I did use the word “Kraeterkenner” for “herbalist”, which prompted some poorly-stifled chuckling, but I just said “Hey, blame the translator. Dictinoary’s word, not mine”, prompting another short burst of chuckling.
Anyway, the presentation went well and, after banishing the hornets, I actually had a lot of fun with it.
Although, I couldn’t concentrate for the rest of the period because I was so relieved it was over.
Last thing: I am fully aware that with each week I am here, my blog posts become more and more riddled with grammatical mistakes, spelling errors, and the occasional German word that is not a cognate, but that I completely just don’t see when I go over the post a bit. I mean, I do try to edit these things, but… well, I don’t always have the energy or time to do it well…
Three day week this week, and OLMUN (Oldenburg Model UN) next week.
And Paris in a few weeks.
Over and out,
Shannon
PS: Got an email from Georgia Tech about summer reading yesterday. Excited much? Um, yeah….
**for a definition of “Schadenfreude” listen to Avenue Q’s song of the same name.
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