Summer: A Play in Three Acts

SYNOPSIS
Act One: Jason and his friends take a trip to New York City. However, this is a lot of work, so doesn't really count as summer. He does manage to experience about half a week once he arrives in Germany, though, before going back to school.

Act Two: Finally done with school in Germany, Jason and his German friends head over to Munich to have a good time. Coming home, he goes out for about a week with his family through Switzerland and the area. This is both fun and relaxing and counts for another week and a half of "summer."

Act Three: After World Youth Day in Cologne, Jason and his mother go back to Ludwigsburg for some R & R. Later that week, they also take it fairly easy in Paris, and have a fun time. They then go back to the good old United States, where Jason meets some of his friends and they have a good time, totally around another week and a half before Jason leaves again to tour some colleges in the area.

My calculations of actual summer time put me safely below one month for the year 2005. But, enough whining on my part.

Tuesday I met with Herr Horlacher, the Chemie 11 teacher, with whom I'd discussed this device that he would supposedly give to me to take back to the states. I spent a large part of the day translating the website for it, as well as starting to look at some colleges. I decided eventually against Macalester, or however its spelled... it's about 4 times as expensive as the U of M and, as far as I can tell, not much, if at all, better. I also decided to switch out of AP Comparative Government for AP Chemistry next year. I stayed up quite late finishing an essay that the German teacher asked me to write.

Mittwoch. No first or last hour, also no school in the afternoon. The beginning of the end is nigh. Some teachers gave their last instruction to the kids today, and the kids gave their teachers little gifts. During third hour the history teacher came to oversee the Buchrückgabe, or returning of rented books from the school. Once all the books were sorted into their appropriate piles, he turned to me and asked (he likes to speak English a lot, and I don't stop him),
"Jason! Have you ever been to Hell?"
"Uh..." Can't say that I have...
"I mean that's what they call the basement of this school."
"Ah. No."
So he made me carry one of the stacks. The place wasn't bad at all. This was basically just a story to show that Herr Folk is quite often really weird. More on a related subject later. After school, we went with the class to one of the larger churches in the area to watch an orchestra perform part of Haydn's Schöpfung, "Creation," which includes the orchestra, a choir, and three soloists who sing parts equated to Uriel, Raphael, and Gabriel in Milton's Paradise Lost. That was about all that was interesting; it was like German opera, and though it was quite good, I started nodding off due to my late night the night before, which wasn't a good thing since I was sitting right next to the German teacher. I tried to be discrete about it, but I think I failed. Later on, I worked more on the translation, then went and played tennis with Manfred. We played with two other guys, one a native Croat (or Croatian?) who'd left Yugoslavia about 10 years ago due to troubles there. I first lost to the non-Croat 6-3 in singles, then Manfred and I beat them 6-2 in doubles, then the Croat and I lead 3-2 before we had to quit because of rain. I wouldn't call them Croat and non-Croat if I knew their names (I think non-Croat's is Gustav or Gregor or something starting with a G), but it's hard enough to remember the names of the kids I see every day without adding on Manfred's tennis buddies. It was quite fun playing with them, and we had also played with them Sunday, winning 6-4, 6-3 (I forgot to mention this, by the way).

About what I referenced by Herr Folk. Too often my answer is "yeah..."
"Habscha groan' dig nar gobbledegook, marg da natsho maifde?" (this isn't German by the way)
"Uhhh... yeah, yeah..." *smile* I could be selling my soul for all I know. More logically I would say "What was that?" or "One more time, slower please?" But it's not just I. It's basicaly human nature to go with the flow when one doesn't understand, I've decided, based on a conversation I had with Herr Folk. He asked about my future plans, and he was quite knowledgable about the colleges in the US, knowing about Notre Dame for one, and certainly identifying MIT as the top of its class.
"Well... are you familiar with the ACT test?"
"Oh yeah, sure... sure."
"Well. I scored a 36."
"Ah... but is that good enough for MIT, do you think?"
"Uh... ... ?"
"It's out of 40-some, isn't it?"
"No; 36."

INTERMISSION

Now that you're back:
Anonymous. Today I'll guess Nathan Kruise. That's got to be it. I'm almost 100% certain its one of my cousins, I'll just need to narrow those guys down.
David Hasselhoff was once HUGE in Germany. He's not really anymore. At least as far as I know.
I've given Mother the thumbs down on Kettering and MacAlester I believe, though I'd still like to check out U of W-Madison, MichTech, U of Chicago, and Marquette. Does anyone else know of decent colleges in that area that I should check out? By that area, I mean Wisconsin. Notre Dame is pretty much off my list too (sorry Tim; I know a few people that go there and I think it's a great school, just not the right one for me, you know?). Northwestern might be a possibility as well.
Hehe. Dad, I was the one that told Mom about John's ACT score. In case anyone's wondering, John Valesano scored a 35 on the ACT; must be something in the water. I guess we'll be expecting big things of Mattson and Holbrook now. Heck, for all we know, Holbrook could have a 36 as well... anyway, my formal congrats here.
By the way, if I plan on applying to MIT, I'm going to need to take three SAT II subject tests (just one more hassle for my mother to put up with surely). They need to be Math, Science, and one other. I think I could do Math II, Physics (probably over Chem), and either US History or German (with or without listening). The full list can be found here, if you're interested).

"...mastery of the art and spirit of the Germanic language enables a man to travel all day in one sentence without changing cars."
- Christian Science