Ladies and Gentlemen, We're Experiencing Technical Difficulties

The Reinhardts are switching internet companies and something's gone awry, resulting in a lack of internet usage on my part in recent times. I'll try and bring everyone up to speed.

Wednesday: went out to Waldhaus again, this time some of the Amis came. A couple, being 18, put down a few shots of absynth. Not sure on the English spelling, so forgive me.

Thursday: Today I went with the Amis to the Residenzschloss. We got a tour (in English, the Amis don't speak German well at all. Their German teacher with them sure liked to, though, and I marked a number of grammatical mistakes she made) from an English-speaking, charming guide named Wolfram. "Ehh... no, you're not allowed to use the flash, but ifa you take... uh, flash photography, I turn my head, no?" He even brought us down into the wine cellar, which isn't part of the standard tour. One of the girls from the night before got a picture with her mouth open under the spout of one of the barrels, prompting the German teacher to comment:
"Isn't that funny... but you're not 21, so there'll be none of that, sadly." Turning to me, "What are your rules on that? Are you allowed to drink?"
"Yeah."
"Ah. Well, that's Minnesota. No drinking for us. We're from the Bible-belt."
I tried to keep a straight face as I pictured the Amis downing their absynth. Bible-belt. Right.
After school I went and played tennis with Geli. I was able to do some serving but I didn't put on the heat considering she was returning.

Friday: Religion was even better today. We had a free-write time in which groups of 4 or 5 sit around a big piece of paper and write without conversing orally. Quite interesting. Went shopping for the '60s theme party on Saturday... got an outfit for about €25... you'll all have to wait for the pictures, they're pretty good. These pics, by the way, should make their way onto the internet relatively quickly, along with many other shots I've taken. I shrink the shots 5x both horizontally and vertically to make them manageable on a monitor, and also on a dial-up connection, but I keep the photos full size on the computer for when I put them on CDs to bring home. I'm also not going to post every single photo I take, just the real goodies for now. Friday night we didn't go out but rather stayed and watched Rain Man, auf Deutsch, of course. One doesn't realize how excellent a job Dustin Hoffman does until one sees the film without his voice in it.

Saturday: Geli had a tennis tournament. Manfred and I went to watch her, but she got beat 2-6, 2-6. Her team was also beaten. German Vereins field teams of 4 or 6 players, each playing individually a singles match and a doubles match for 6 or 9 points. 4-player teams' tiebreaks are determined by the doubles matches... and I'm not sure how so thereafter. Saturday night we went to Valerie's party. I knew that most of her and Geli's friends would be there, so I brought my camera. Therefore, most of the pics of people that I know are from this party, where most people are dressed in their 60s clothing. Wow. My English is really suffering, I feel. Anyways... the party was fun. They had some 60s music at first, but then went to the conventional stuff that one would hear at prom or Christmas Ball. The party went as follows: from 8 to 10:30ish, the group split into two halves. The first half drank and danced and drank some more, the second half wandered off into the woods across the street from the house. By 10:30, most of the first half were drunk, or at least wiped out, and most of the second half had returned to dance and drink. There were also a few who didn't stop at 10:30 but went on partying with the second shift, and these were the ones that had headaches, or, in a few extreme cases, found themselves throwing up in the gutter around 12:30. Luckily, everyone's quite friendly, and those people were well cared-for. I belonged to a small minority that didn't drink heavily and was able to party/dance until around 11:30, when we found couches and chilled. The absynth-drinking Bible-belters were quite enthralled by all of the alcohol, and one drank quite a bit and hit on me on the dance floor. She felt quite dejected when she was turned down, and we had quite a chat sitting on the couch later. She insisted she wasn't drunk, so I asked her what the capital of Pennsylvania was. She contended that that wasn't standard sobriety testing procedure, and I conceded. She then walked a four-inch wide floorboard fairly well, only stepping off once. She even got the alphabet on the third try. Later, we went back to the state captials, and she did fairly well, getting around 40 right on the first guess, although I penalized her for her insisting that Denver was a state. I don't know whether to count that one under alcohol or sheer stupidity. A select few guests stayed that night, and since I was with Geli, I was one of them. Don't worry, anyone, I was in the livingroom and the girls were in the bedroom. That's my detailed social account, or at least the first.

Sunday: Got up quite early to go to church. To my great surprise, there was a group that played what could be called contemporary music, but by any means it was better than that awful organ. The homily was a presentation done by little children about the Apostles, so I was luckily able to understand much of it. My favorite part was near the end, when the church-school teacher was wrapping the presentation up in telling that the Apostles could all do something.
"Matthew was a tax-collector, so he could read and write. That wasn't common back then. So what are some of the things you all can do well?" She brings the microphone to some child whom I couldn't see.
"I can, for example, play sports very well."
Okay, maybe its not as funny here, but in context, and auf originalem Deutsch, it was quite funny.
We then went over to the Residenzschloss where there was a large exhibition of old-timer autos, ranging from the 1930s to 1970s, most from the 50s and 60s. One car was owned by John Lennon and later by George Harrison. There were also six-door cars, the like of which I'd never seen before. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera along. Later on, Geli's grandma came over, and Manfred, Marina, Frank, his grandma and I went out to a smaller palace built for the duke's mistress, with a nice lake that we walked around. That evening we played cards. Their grandma is quite rascally; I was trying to learn how to play Canasta in German, and I could've sworn she kept trying to cheat. It was probably even funner that way, though.

Finally. Monday, today: The first day that I was supposed to go to a different class. 3rd hour physics, however, was cancelled, so I got to sit through another fun day of Spanisch. In Deutsch we took a test on the book we'd read, Jugend Ohne Gott, which was fairly short but tough, I didn't do well since I didn't understand a couple of the words, but, oh well. In Math, the class began Trigonometry. Unfortunately, this means a lot of drawing triangles and measuring things when I know all the mathematical basics down pat. Mr. Blong (BHS mathematics teacher/ fishing guide extraordinaire) has compared math to reading: at first, you have a lot of pictures. Then, you start to tie these pictures in with sentences. Eventually, you don't even need pictures because you understand the words (equations) so well. To put it in this context, I've read Shakespeare and am now reverting to See Spot Run. Again, oh well. Englisch was another test, which she gave to the Amis (including me - most of the time when I say 'Amis' I'm referring to the St. Charles group). I just hope I did well... I might've slipped up with some grammatical things, but I don't know. There was also a short story and analysis which was quite easy for me. I went back in for Sport, in which we began to play handball. A handball is basically a soccer ball with a 6-inch diameter and more elasticity. The game is played by moving with basketball rules (dribbling, etc.) up and down a court a bit bigger than a basketball court goals at either end about 7 feet tall and 10 feet wide. There's a semi-circle about equal to basketball's three point line into which no one may go other than the goalie. I'm sure there are a ton of other rules, but I don't know them. Because of the size of the gym, American football abilites can be handy, and we practiced throwing long forward passes before playing the game. It was quite fun overall.

Kommentaren:
Parker. I was actually talking about another game, but I do remember that. It was at Bane Park, no? I didn't know you were pitching though. I think I still have that game ball ;P
Anonymous, a little yellow friend who lives in the same area and has been to my house. Likes pudding and has brownish hair. Wow. You could be any of about 50 people.
Jarid Johnson?
Ugh. What grade are you in/ have you graduated?
Stick in there Zoe.
Note to whom it may concern: it would be wonderful if you could do something to help out in the situation with Ms. Uppgaard. There's sadly little I can do from this side of the ocean, so you'll have to pitch in my share for this project.
Dad, don't worry, you can keep posting. I was invited to Boys' State, I think I told you... I probably would've gone, too... School's great, I don't need money for tennis or anything right now, but if you feel compelled to give me money at any time for whatever reason, don't let me stop you.

Thinking about it, some folks might not know those people behind their sign-in names. Here they be.
p "n" k: Parker Kienholz
Broken English: John Valesano
josh: Josh Mattson
emm... i dunno if there are any others or if these even mean anything to too many people. Ah well.
And now a morsel. I'm not entirely sure of international shipping procedures and what's required, but here's what I know:
Jason Houle
Gregor-Mendel-Straße 12
71642 Ludwigsburg

The Bundesland (state) is Baden-Württemburg, country Germany, etc. I don't know how much you need, but there it is.