Where Has the Time Gone?

So I realize I've been a little lax with updating this place. Make sure you're comfortable/have some sustainance nearby, because this could get long.

Thursday was our last day of real school. I'm sure I've said this a million times, but Friday, Monday, and Tuesday are project days, and Wednesday is only a half day. It brought back kind of a nostalgic deja voux experience (I could've sworn I was falling into this sort of mellow apathy just two months back...) but it feels good to finally be at the end. It was a pretty low-key day, too. First hour Musik fällt aus (was cancelled), second hour was Gemeinschaftskunde, in which the teacher for some reason decided upon insisting to continue teaching, introducing basic economic principles like Nachfrage und Angebot (supply and demand). Suffice it to say I was utterly confused by these complicated terms. Okay, okay... sarcasm is a little hard to convey over the internet. Basic economic theory is essentially the easiest and most boring thing ever. I showed up for Mathe 12 third hour to learn that Herr Kunde didn't feel like teaching, so we were free to go. I went back to Geli's Englisch class (Geli actually wasn't there the whole day; she was working downstairs at the Bücherrückgabe) and we watched Bowling for Columbine for an hour and a half. (Each period is only 45 minutes, so that was two class hours.) Fifth hour, the Deutsch teacher invited us out to ice cream, which was really nice, and then sixth hour we watched a documentary film about the rise of Hitler and the Nazi party in Geschichte (History). It ended up being pretty boring and I think a number (including the teacher) dozed off at some point... I spent a large part of the rest of the day researching more colleges and scholarships. An utterly unproductive day overall, as most scholarships aren't open to application until September (at least), but I did get the scoop on a few colleges, so it wasn't totally useless.

Freitag. We didn't have to be in to school until 9:40, since I guess the teacher didn't feel like coming in until then. Fine by me, although 9:40 was ridiculously late in practice, as good as it sounds. I woke up before my alarm, ate breakfast, and still had like an hour to sit around. Once we got there, though, we were set to work. Myself and 8 others from Geli's class opted to leran Chinese from the Chemistry teacher. His English is quite good, even if he speaks kind of funnily, but I really don't know why he would have reason to learn Chinese. After 4 hours, though, I scolded myself for ever thinking German was hard. Essentially, Chinese writing is extremely complicated, in that when two things are added together, they don't necessarily equal their sum. The written word for "family" is the word for "pig" under the word for "roof." Don't ask me. Essentially, though, he told us that when a Chinese person runs across a word they don't know, there's really no figuring it out just by looking at it, and one must use context or go to an extensive dictionary, which is quite complicated due to the fact that there are no letters and hence no alphabetical method of arrangement. Not to mention that the fine Caligraphie isn't easily written with Bleistift oder Kuli (pencil or pen). We barely got through the numbers, as well as some methods for finding and writing the symbols using a computer, before it was 1:00. It was an interesting Friday night, because there were no birthdays or parties, at least none that Geli and I were invited to. Just a quiet night at home...

Saturday I got up reasonably early and went into the Marktplatz with Manfred, to shop for some fresh fruits and vegetables, largely for the party that I was having later on. If you read Chris Derby's blog (and I'm sure many of you don't), I announced there that Geli and her friends were throwing me a Euro-Houlapalooza. It was on Saturday. But I'm getting ahead of myself. We then went and picked up Geli from her dance practice and went to the supermarket Lebensmittelgeschäft. That word is the difference between the difficulties in Chinese and German. Well, also that Chinese doesn't use letters, but... Lebens (living) + mittel (means) + geschäft (store) = grocery store, the store selling the means of life i.e. food. Much more straightforward than pig under roof. But I've gotten off again on a tangent. We bought a large shopping cart full of food and stuff, then went home and started setting up for the party. I'd invited about 25-30 people on Wednesday and Thursday, so I was pleased with the about 20 or so that showed up. We grilled some hamburgers and brats, blew up some balloons, sat on the couch and talked, devoured a watermelon, etc. I got a lot of pictures, which could show up over on the right at any time, so be prepared. More detailed coverage of Euro-Houlapalooza will be forthcoming with the pictures I'm sure. Hopefully I get around to doing that. Eventually.

Sonntag. Church. After that the family took me out to Maulbronn, which is home of one of the oldest and best-perserved monastaries in Deutschland. We took a tour, did all the touristy stuff, you know, looked over the old buildings and whatnot. It was fairly interesting, and there was an elaborate water and heating system that was extraordinarily advanced for its time. Then we came home and ate some leftovers from the party. Manfred took his class out to a theater production in Stuttgart.

I've decided that this blog is going on hiatus. :P

Seriously, though, I'll probably have about one more update and then be off and on my way... Where? you ask. Well, I'll tell you, I say. Wednesday is only a half day of school; the evening and night are sure to be marked by much fun and drinking down at the Neckarwiese, the beautiful fields down by the river, a meeting place for kids to celebrate the end of school. We'll drag ourselves out of bed (if we get that far) around 7 Thursday morning to catch a train headed over to Munich. Going on this trip will be Geli, Chrissy, Tina, Nico, his cousin Timo, and I. We'll be staying there in a Jugendherberge (youth hostel of sorts), visiting the city and seeing the sights, for example the Deutsches Museum, probably the best musuem in Germany due to its technical and interactive content. We'll hang out there until Friday I think, at which point Manfred and Frank will pick up Geli and I and take us on vacation. We'll head south by Lake Constance and into the Swiss Alps, tenting our way through and then racing across the ugly part of northern Italy until hitting the Italian and French Riverias, including Monaco and Monte Carlo, around Wednesday and Thursday. We'll get about as far west as Nice, then head north again, back through Switzerland, hitting Geneva and maybe Bonn before getting back into Ludwigsburg Saturday or Sunday before my mother comes on Monday (August 8th, to reference). She'll stay with us briefly, then early Wednesday morning, Marina, Geli, my mum and I will take off for Berlin. We hope to see a bit of the city before leaving Friday afternoon for Munich. We'll get in that night, sleep over, and then meet the incoming World Youth Day pilgrims from the Diocese of Duluth (that includes Brainerd and Nisswa, by the way) on Saturday the 13th. That program takes us a week until Sunday the 21st, where we'll end up in Cologne, over on the other side of Germany. I'm basically lost as to our itinerary in between, but we'll hopefully make it back to Ludwigsburg that Sunday night. Monday I'm sure I'll be saying a final goodbye to many of my friends and acquaintances from Germany, at least the closer ones, and then Tuesday is our final departure from Ludwigsburg and the Reinhardts. We'll check out Stuttgart during the day and take an overnight train to Paris, hoping to arrive the morning of Wednesday the 24th. We'll do stuff in Paris, you know, the Louvre and Notre Dame and whatnot, spend a day in Versailles, then fly out around 1 o'clock Friday, August 26, 2005, and hopefully arrive around 3 or 4ish CST at HHH in Minneapolis.

As you can see, this doesn't leave me much time to use the computer, which is why I'm trying to get all that out of the way beforehand. Also, expect large delays in updates after Wednesday ;)

I hope I don't have to change money (again) in Switzerland.

Nobody really commented for me to answer outside of Matt, so I'll wrap up with our Twain quote and then those of you that are Deutsch illiterate can go read Don Quixote... j/k Parker :P

"A dream...I was trying to explain to St. Peter, and was doing it in the German tongue, because I didn't want to be too explicit."
- Mark Twain's Speeches, 1923

Hallo Matt, es freut mich von dir zu hören! Ich mochte deinen Kommentar; du kannst uns mehr von diesen "Strand Haasen," so zu sagen, erzählen, wenn du willst. Hast du auch deine AP Noten? Ich will wissen, ob du eine 5 für Deutsch gekriegt hast. Ich schätze, daß du hast... und auch Englisch. Hoffentlich war mein Blog nicht zu schwer durch zu lesen, ich weiß daß ich echt lang schreiben kann. Wann gehst du denn heim? Und wann habt ihr's vor, Berlin zu besuchen? Als du gelesen hast, ich bin da von 10ten bis 12ten August... Hoffentlich können wir uns sehen, bevor du an die Uni gehst. Das wär' mir traurig, wenn ich dich nicht wieder sehen könnte... :( Tara und Mitch, ihr müsst auch hier auf Deutsch Kommentaren lassen, nicht weil ich will Deutsch hören -ich kann's wenn ich will, natürlich ;)- aber weil es ist grausam gegen unseren kleinen gelben Freund, und es macht mich froh, ihn ärgerlich zu sehen! Bis dann.