Continuing News Feed, Live From Europe

Thursday was another normal day. Herr Kunde, 12th grade Mathe teacher, wasn't here, nor were a large number of the 12th graders, so the few of us from all the 12th grade math classes convened to do some really easy volume stuff, like from Pre-Calc (here's the length of a rod. determine the maximum volume of a tent built by four of them) and we took two hours to do it. Ah well. Coming home after school, we turned on the TV and saw live news coverage about terrorist attacks in London, but there wasn't very much info on them. Also, I got a big package in the mail filled full of candy and cereal and a calculator and batteries. The Reinhardts figured that my mom thought I wasn't fed over here, but I reassured them that my family is just naturally crazy. Thank you very much for the package, mother. If anyone was wondering, it was one week in travel, or at least, I got it on the seventh with a note inside dated the 30th. Later that night Geli and I tried to scrounge up people to go with us to War of the Worlds, but couldn't, so we went alone. It was quite a good horror/action/thriller movie, and the ending wasn't really as bad as most people say, just kind of cheesy. I don't want to ruin it for anyone, so I'll leave it fairly vague.

Friday. No first hour, sixth hour was cancelled, and Physik as well, leaving me with Mathe 10, Religion, Chemie, und Geschichte. I really don't get the Religion classes here. They divide the kids up by religion, then don't actually teach them anything. It's more like: our theme today is belief. Write down what belief means to you. Now make a poster. Now go sit in the corner and sing kum-ba-ya. It's like a CORE math class gone horribly wrong. I don't know how one could possibly be tested or graded on anything done in there...

Let's hear what our listeners have to say:
John, I hardly even noticed that you translated my critique of the dubbed version of Rain Man.
Yes, Tara is correct. Tests are graded descending 1 to 6, exactly like our A to F scale. However, better grades are traditionally harder to recieve.
Jeff, it most certainly is. I'm considering wearing that on the first day of school next year. Freak some sophomores out, at least.
Do you need pronunciation on any of that Josiah? You're right, German is fairly hideous (reference my Twain quote for today), but also quite intellectual.
Hi Liz, good to hear from you. Be sure to check back here if you're wondering how things are going in Ludwigsburg! I won't be coming back until the middle to end of August, though...
As I said earlier, good grades are harder to recieve, so that 4 could be somewhere around a C to a D. In fact, though, the scientific terms are the easiest ones to pick up on, usually because they're Latin or have roots that are very similar (Kation for Cation, or Ammoniak for Ammonia, for example). However, there are a few tricky ones in Chemie...

Wasserstoff - Hydrogen
Sauerstoff - Oxygen
Säure - Acid
Stichstoff - Nitrogen
Kohlenstoff - Carbon

However, the symbols are universal, so the names don't too often come into play. The simple problem I had with that test (as well as basically all the other tests I've taken) is that tested material was being tought for a while before I arrived, so I never got notes on it. And I may be smart, but I don't keep six properties of salts stuck in my back pocket in case I happen to run across them on a German Chemistry test. Still his advice to me was quite sound, and I'm taking it to heart.
It's cooling back down in Germany, which is good. Highs are sitting around 70, whereas before they had been in the 90s, which made rotating between the four or five shirts I have in a week a sticky situation (pun intended).
The Tour de France is certainly covered, the Germans are all about Jan Ullrich, one of their national champions... we were considering actually heading over to France when they came by the German border to watch them, but I don't think that's going to quite pan out, sadly. I haven't been watching too many sporting events on TV, though. I followed the French Open quite closely, and there was also the Confederations Cup (Fußball), but I didn't watch any Wimbledon, and haven't seen any Tour de France yet.
Tennis is fairly haphazard, and we get in only about an hour a week. Manfred and I usually just hit, and if he notices something I'm doing really badly, or something that he's easily able to take advantage of, he'll tell me. It's definately not like instruction. He's not exactly the "tennis pro" Mom made him out to be. He's a gym teacher, sure, and quite good at tennis, but he doesn't give instruction regularly.
Umm... about classes. I'm sure most of them are already set, but if you'd like, you could call and inquire as to whether AP Chemistry would fit into my schedule. Also noting the 4.33 average of the Calc BC kids, you could try nagging about that class, but I'm fairly sure there's nothing to be done about that at this point.
The food here is really good. I've never heard of leberkas, and weißwurst is essentially, yes, white sausage. They don't sit down and eat big hunks of meat like Americans are known to do, which is something I could get used to. More likely than not, Swabian foods have a sour taste and make a glopping noise, but certainly not in a bad way. My favorite food so far has been Maultaschen. Literally "mouth pockets," they're like large ravioli. Legend has it that back in the middle ages, monks cut meat up very finely and hid it inside of spinach and other greens which are packed into the middle as a way of sneaking by the meat-eating ban during Lent. Also good are Döner, a type of food brought in by the Turkish immigrants. There's a large slab of meat rotating on a spit; when someone orders, small slices are shaved off of it and put, with some greens, onions, tomatoes, and a tangy sauce into a pita pocket. They're remotely similar to a gyro, and quite delicious.
I've emailed you about the Berlin travel info... whatever you'd like to do is great by me, I'll do whatever; just find out how much time we need to do what and then try to e-mail me back about how much time we'll need. If things get into too much of a crunch, I can always call or we can talk on MSN.
I don't expect AP scores for another week: the 15th, right guys?
During the live feed, they said that a group called "Al-Qaeda in Europe" was claiming responsibility for the attacks. Because of the organization of the attacks, I can't believe they were planned on the short notice of the games coming to London; besides, that's still 7 years off. I find it more likely that they had to do with the G8 summit taking place in Gleneagles, Scotland. I personally haven't noted too much a change in German attitudes since yesterday... of course, Ludwigsburg is also like the Brainerd of Germany; there's extremely little chance that any sort of terrorist action would occur here. However, Stuttgart could be a different story...

Ich find's schwer, etwas auf Deutsch zu schreiben. Ich hab' nicht so viel zu sagen, daß ich nicht schon gesagt hab'... Krieg der Welten war nicht schlecht auf Deutsch, und es war ein gutes Film. Es war lustig wenn es lustig sein wollte und traurig wenn es traurig sein wollte. Der Spezialeffekt war doch toll. Die Außerirdischen war ziemlich echt, aber es gab auch 'ne rühigere Szene im Auto daß doch toll dadurch gemacht wurde.

"In early times some sufferer had to sit up with a toothache, and he put in the time inventing the German language."
- Notebook #14, 11/1877 - 7/1878

The math problem again: (open to anyone)
Fact: out of any 79 consecutive positive numbers, there is at least one whose sum of its inclusive digits is divisible by 13. ("sum of its inclusive digits" means add up all the numbers that make that number. the sum of 803's inclusive digits would be 11, i.e. 8+0+3=11. the sum of 49's inclusive digits is divisible by 13 (4+9=13))
Explain why this is so, and show also that this does not hold for 78 consecutive natural numbers.

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