A Slight Measure of Calm before Another Storm

So this week was a three day week due to a holiday called “Himmelfahrt”.  Thank you four day weekend! Because of you, I no longer feel soooo jealous that the students at PHS are totally done in a week and a half, whereas we go until July 6^th.

On the other hand though, I am in Germany.  Defs not entitled to be jealous.

This week I didn’t really have much school.  German on Monday got canceled because my teacher was on a class trip, so we just had English, where we finished up the book we’ been reading.  Tuesday was fun, although fairly story-less as well seeing as the entire day got canceled due to big program somewhere in the city.  The program was all about internet safety and what precautions you should take while using Facebook and why and how to change settings and….

I actually really wanted to go.  I did!  At least for an hour or so to get the Oldenburg Police Department’s perspective on the subject.  Unfortunately, there were one or two key words that I didn’t understand, so I couldn’t figure out where I was supposed to go.  At the end of the day (after the program was over, of course) I figured out that all the schools in our part of Oldenburg were supposed to meet in one place, and then go together to the Weser-Ems Halle (a big assembly hall thing) and take a look at the presentation.

Seeing as I couldn’t figure that out, some friends and I went and shopped for rain jackets.  Very, very expensive rain jackets.  I didn’t see a single one for under 70 Euros.

Dude, that’s $101.41 for a rain coat.  A rain coat.

Grant it, they were North Face and Jack Wolfskin rain coats, but still.  I’m quite happy I brought my PHS soccer rain coat here with me.

Wednesday was a normal, long, Wednesday. 

Thursday and Friday though, were very different.

Thursday I went to a friend’s house (one of the girls that lived with me for a three week exchange) to have breakfast and celebrate her birthday.  It was great to finally sit down and meet and chat with her friends.  They’d all been so busy with the Abbitur, and I’d been so busy… well, just in general, that we hadn’t actually gotten to meet each other.

I learned a lot about Tupper Ware.  Apparently, you can do quite well if you sell enough Tupper Ware avidly enough.  Seriously, you can get a car inside of a year and a half.  A nice car.  And with a bit more time, you get a Mercedes.   No, like.  This is a pretty sweet deal.  I forget precisely how it works though.

Afterwards my friend and I chatted about Paris a bit.  In two weeks, we’re taking a bus from Muenster to Paris overnight, and we’ll have two days in the city, and one day in Versailles.  Oh yes.

Freaking.

Ecstatic.

Friday I met up with this friend and her family, and we went to a place called “Forest 4 Fun” where we climbed all over the place.  Now, I don’t like heights when I have to go up in an elevator or an escalator, but when I can climb up myself, I’m fine.

My friend apparently has the opposite problem. 

We still had fun though, and there was a zipline that you could take!  It wasn’t terribly high, but it did go nice and fast, and took you right over a lake!!!!!!  How cool is that??!

Becca Fishman:  thought of you the whole time!!  You’d love this place!

After the climbing bit, we when to a Rennaisance Faire not too far away.

You already know I love history, especially the middle ages and the Rennaisance, and while Renn Faires are not exactly what I would call “historically accurate”, they are definitely pretty freaking cool.

And that’s putting it mildly. 

We saw a jousting tournament and a sword fighting tournament thing and there was some really legitimately good music, and WHOA!  It was loads and loads of fun!!

On Saturday (yesterday) I went to Bremen with some friends.  We wandered around the city a bit, attempted to do some shopping but didn’t really buy much, and ended up eating some deliscious Spaghetti ice along the River. 

Around 4:30 we took the train home.  Well, we thought it was the train home.  It was actually a train in the complete opposite direction of where we needed to go.

The Kehoe sense of direction strikes again!

Except, I actually asked if we had the right train; something seemed off.  I was assured however, that we were at the right track, awaiting the right train.

Me not being a native German speaker, and not having spent 17 years living in the area and taking the train to and from Bremen fairly frequently, I didn’t push the issue.

However, one of the other girls I was with also noted that we were on the north bound track, when we wanted the south bound track.  But apparently she was too quiet, or our surroundings were too loud, because me and the other girl don’t remember hearing her ask about that at all…

Anyway, we ended up spending a lovely half hour in Ganderkesee, a small town with about 5 streets to call its own.

Although there was a lovely fountain and a statue of a goose where we took some rather hilarious pictures. 

So, to conclude, our spontaneous adventure was really quite fruitful.  Not only do we now have a wonderful story to tell, we have some really wonderful pictures too. 

On the Agenda for this week: OLMUN.  Oldenburg Model United Nations. Apparently there are over 500 participants from 15 different countries.  This should be an absolute blast!!!  Can’t wait to see how it all works out.  We’re supposed to speak in English the whole time, so that, at least, shouldn’t pose too much of a problem. 

More next weekend,

Over and Out,

Shannon

Some Sense of Normality has Returned. Maybe.

OK, so now that things are sort of back to their normal craziness, I finally have a chance to sit back, chill, collect my thoughts a bit, and then write the week’s blog. 

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 5^th 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 4^th 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.