Christmas Break so far

sorry guys, this is a big one... I haven't had an internet connection for a couple weeks, but I've been making daily updates on the new comp (YAY) and now I'm posting them, so... be warned!

Thurs, Dec. 18
Last day of classes. I said goodbye to my kids, and the teachers I know, and ran home to pack (of course I hadn’t done it earlier). Packed all my stuff into my hiking bag, and made my way to the train station. Turns out, the train is packed, so I can’t reserve a seat all the way to Ulm. So, I got on the train, find a compartment with two guys already in it, sat down, and promptly fell asleep. The train ride to Ulm was 4 hours long, so I got a nice little nap in. When I got to Ulm, I called mama, and met the girls in the train station. It was really weird seeing them here, it seemed like I was the one out of place, as I’m used to the family being far away. That night, we went out to “barfuesser,” a german microbrewery and restaurant, and had a couple liters of beer, and some kaesespaetzle. After that, we met up with Judith (a cousin of the Marstallers, the girl I met up with last time I was in Ulm) at the Weihnachtsmarkt, had some pflaumenwein, and proceeded to get mama wasted. When we had tucked her into bed, the kids all went out in the city. After a while of indecision, we decided to head to her friend Maxi’s new apartment, for a housewarming party. We all had a lot of fun, the girls all got along well (too well, in fact… scarily…) We stumbled home at about 2, relatively early in German “going-out” terms.
Fri, Dec 19
The next morning, we woke up, and mama and I headed to a little café/pastry shop to get some breakfast, where Judith and the girls met us later. We then made our way through a part of the Markt we hadn’t seen yet, and had some more gluehwein. Judith had to leave, for paris, so we said goodbye, amid promises that she would come visit again after Christmas, followed by a formal adoption into my family. We ate dinner that evening in the Weihnachtsmarkt, some really good wurste. The sisters and I then watched “the Fall,” which I had ordered, and they had never seen. Its amazing, if you haven’t seen it, I recommend it! (oh, also, the fam brought my new mac!!! YAY!! Its so pretty and awesome… I lurve it good. No more craptop for me! W00t!)
Sat, Dec 20
We woke up relatively early, checked out of the hotel, and had breakfast in a little café. We then got into the ugly-ass-rented-Peugeot, and made our way towards Herrenberg. After abt an hour in the car, we were there, and my ass was numb. Checked into the new hotel, and made our way over to Meisenweg, to see the Marstallers, our old neighbors from when we lived in Germany before. It was great to see them again, and we spent the next few hours re-hashing the last 15 years.
Sun, Dec 21
We all went out to Hohenneuffen, a castle in the area that has an amazing view of the alps and the B-W region. The castle is now pretty much in ruins, except for a restaurant that’s still there. It was originally built in 2200 BC, but the “new castle” was built in the 1100’s. The weather was cloudy and gray, as per usual, but as we got to the top of the mountain, it cleared out really nicely, and we were able to see pretty far, and take some great pictures. Both of the cameras my family brought were malfunctioning, so I let Meagan borrow my camera, since she’s a much better photographer than I am, and she took some great shots of everything. Those will be posted later on. Afterwards, we went out to Villa Meineck, to visit Marianne’s mother, Oma. We had tea with her, and sang some Christmas carols around the piano. The house was just like I remember it, and Oma still looks the same. She calls me Sean like the French would say it, i.e, without an “n” at the end. It’s quite funny. After that, we went to Esslingen, to the “Mittelaltlicher Weihnachtsmarkt,” the middle-ages Christmas market. It was really cool, and huge, and the town itself is gorgeous. We then headed home, and relaxed a bit.
Mon, Dec 22
We had planned on going to the Mercedes-Benz museum today, only to be reminded by Marianne and Joerg that museums are closed Mondays. Ugh. So, instead, we hung around, wandered around Herrenberg, and I made some kaesespaetzle. After that, we FINALLY heard from my dad, that he had arrived, and that he was already in Herrenberg, so I went to go pick him up with BUP (big-ugly-Peugeot). Marianne had bought us all tickets to the Christmas circus in Stuttgart, which is a famous circus that comes every year, with the cream of the circus crop. It was my very first circus ever, and it was pretty cool, I must say… pictures of that are also gonna be posted.
Tues, Dec 23
Today has been pretty slow, papa is sleeping off the jetlag, the family is around, doing various things that need to be done. We spent the afternoon making Christmas cookies, and then the girls started doing crafts for Christmas, including paper stars, and other fun stuff. We also helped decorate the Christmas tree that the Marstallers set up in the living room. I made some zimtsterne (cinnamon stars) and some vanillekipferl (vanilla shortbread) both turned out really well, and were promptly gobbled up.
Weds, Dec 24
Christmas Eve, which was lovely, and very low key. The Germans open their presents on Christmas eve, which is kinda cool. We sat in the living room with the Marstallers, around the Christmas tree, and then opened presents. I got a spaetzle board!! (so that I can hand-make spaetzle… mmmm….. We then went to the Christmas eve service at the city cathedral, where marie-lena sang.
Thurs, Dec 25
Christmas day, we spent most of the day wandering around the city, which was almost completely empty, and cooking. I was put in charge of the Christmas goose, my first, and so I spent most of the afternoon cutting, prepping, stuffing, buttering, and basting. It also turned out incredibly well, although in my opinon, slightly overcooked (whoops). We all sat down for a fantastic dinner.
Fri, Dec 26th
Started off for spain, after a tearful goodbye with the Marstallers. We left at noon, and made it all the way to the south side of Lyon, France, before having to pass out.
Sat, Dec 27th
Left early, drove most of the day, before finally arriving in Madrid at around 8pm. We found our way to Dave and Esperanza’s apartment building, parked BUP (now also called the Silver Hornet,) and played around with them for a few hours, before crashing in a really neat apartment in the building.
Sun, Dec 28th
We walked around Madrid with Dave and Esperanza, and also got to go to the Prado Museum, to see a Rembrandt exhibit, which was amazing. We then walked back through Madrid, admiring how well the city is lit up for Christmas (pictures of me hamming for the camera will be posted soon!)
Mon, Dec 29th
We didn’t do too much, mostly played around with Dave and Esperanza and their son Daniel, who is 16. (the last time we saw him, he was maybe 2) I’m slowly getting used to the Spanish tradition of eating lunch at abt 3pm, and eating dinner (or starting to go out) at 11pm. We haven’t really gone out and experienced the nightlife yet, but that will be soon coming, and I will further report on that! I hope everyone had a merry Christmas, or a wonderful celebration of whatever you celebrate!

Talk to you in the New Year!

-seany

LAST CRAPTOP POST EVER!! YAY!!!

Hey guys, this’ll be my last post for a while, as tomorrow afternoon, I’m off to Ulm to meet the fam. Also, this will be my last post EVER on craptop!! YAY!! I’m so excited for the mac to get here… haven’t decided what to name her/him yet… suggestions??
This week has been a lot of fun, actually. Lots of my classes were cancelled, which was annoying, but it gave me the opportunity to hang out in the teachers lounge, and talk with the other teachers, which was nice. I also got asked to go ice-skating with one of the 6th classes, and so I went. We went this afternoon for two hours, with one of the classes that hasn’t had me yet, so I spent the first 20 mins talking abt myself, and answering that yes, I do know I’m tall. The ice was kinda crappy, all pitted and scratched up, but it was still fun! It turns out I’m not absolutely terrible at ice-skating, even after… 3 years?? Rachey which of your birthdays did we hit the mall rink for?!?! I can’t remember anymore… Other than that, I’ve been going to the Weihnachtsmarkt, and been having a good time.
Tomorrow, I’m leaving for Ulm, where we’ll spend a couple days, and then, on to Herrenberg for Christmas, and then after that, france and spain. Altho I’ll have the as-yet-unnamed-mac with me, I don’t know if I’ll have internet, so, this will probably also be the last post of the year. Have a merry Christmas, happy Hannukah, and a great new year’s celebration!! I’ll be back on/about the 6th of January, and then will be hanging out with the fam in Göttingen, as well as showing Meghan and Mariah around!! YAY!! I’m so excited to see everyone!!

-seany

le weekend!

Oooooh, the sun is shining and the grass is green, under the 3 feet of snow, I mean!

Hehe, ok, so there isn’t actually any snow, but the sun is shining!! For the first time in a few weeks, there has been more than 15 minutes of ACTUAL sunshine!! Its amazing! I just spent the last hour walking around Göttingen, with my sunglasses on, enjoying the freezing warmth. Everything is closed today, because its Sunday, other than the weihnachtsmarkt, so I wandered through there, looking for various things that I may or may not need… any requests for Christmas things from Germany? If so, lemme know, I’ll be glad to mail stuff home. Just keep in mind I can’t mail beer, sorry…
This entire weekend has been a blast so far. Thursday was quiet and nice, I stayed in and watched movies and cooked. Friday, there were three birthday parties, so we started off with Mariel’s, then moved on to philipp’s, and then ended up meeting the other birthday party at the bar with philipp’s group. I ended up going to bed around 5ish, and had a fantastic time all night, other than being slapped, and getting my hat stolen. (by the same woman, might I add….) at least I got my hat back! Saturday, I woke up around 1, bummed around for a bit, got clean, got food, ate, and then went with Julian to meet Philipp and his dad and his dad’s gf Anja for a beer at one of the OLD pubs in town. It was the coolest place ever, practically a dungeon- I could barely stand up because the ceilings were so low, and vaulted! It was in the basement of a building, lit mostly by candles, and very quiet and creepy, but awesome! I hadn’t meant to really go out again, but next thing I know, we’re back at thanner’s, and its approaching 4am. Whoops. Oh well, it was still philipp’s birthday! Woke up today, a bit groggy, saw the sun shining, and had to get outside!! As I walked around, I picked up a baguette and some cheese, and so I think that’s going to be my lunch now.
Oh! In other news, mama and the girls have landed safely in München, and are now in Garmisch, sleeping off jetlag, and hopefully having a good time in the snow! I have classes this week, but will be taking the train down on Thursday to meet them in Ulm! YAY!! Its so strange to me that my family is suddenly much closer to me, but that I still can’t see them for a bit…
Have a great weekend!

-seany

the rest of the week!

I realized that I forgot to blog about the remainder of last weekend, and this past week, so, here goes! After the lovely misadventures on Thursday, I decided that I wanted to go up to Hamburg to visit some fulbrighters there, and also attend the Christmas tree lighting party at the US consulate. On the ICE, it takes abt 90 mins to get from Göttingen to Hamburg, but on the FREE regional train, it takes abt 4.5 hours. Being that I’m cheap, the slowtrain it was.. Ended up getting into Hamburg later than expected, and starving, so I met up with Caitlin, stopped by an asian grocery store, and bought ingredients to make some thai curry. We went back to her apt, and I started cooking, while she invited the other FBers to join in. (I still have not figured out how to cook for less than 4 people, btw…) Made dinner, which turned out fantastically, and sat eating and drinking for abt 4 hours, before deciding to go out into the city. We went to stern schanze and St. Pauli, which are two really fun districts in the city, and went barhopping until about 5am. Hamburg is a very alternative city, and so I got to see a lot of things that I’d never experienced. We’ll leave it at that, for the PG rating, and because my mom reads this. The next morning (afternoon,) we got up, and went to the Weihnachtsmarkt (Christmas market) and got food and glühwein, and wandered around looking all the different crafts and stuff you can buy. I headed back to Göttingen at around 4pm, and got in exhausted, and pretty much passed out immediately, instead of going to the Niklausparty that was being thrown at the Uni here in Göttingen (which was a ton of fun, Karen reports.) On Sunday, I went with Julian, Philipp, Rac, and Karen to Goslar, which is a medieval town near Braunschweig, and also happens to be where Julian is from. The Weihnachtsmarkt there is well-known throughout Europe as being one of the best, and most entertaining. Every year they put up huge pine trees, clear off the first 7 feet of branches, and attach bar tables to the trunks. You go into this fake forest, which is covered in Christmas lights, buy glühwein, and pretend you’re in a real forest, in the middle of the city. Its really quite lovely. We also tried “feuerzangenbowle,” which is a hot concoction of god knows what, tastes lovely, and almost immediately numbs your body from the cold. We wandered around the town, hot drinks in hand, and took fun pics (which are posted, btw). After a few hours of spatziering and drinking, we went for dinner underneath the Rathaus, and hung out there for a while to warm up. After that, we ran to the train station, barely caught our train, and headed back up to Göttingen. Karen, Philipp, Rac, and I then decided to go to the Irish pub for a nightcap. I dragged Karen back to my apt (see pics,) because her bed hadn’t arrived yet, and she passed out on my couch. Woke up a few short hours later, and went to school, which was uneventful, except many of the teachers asked me how rough my weekend was. This past week has gone by relatively quickly… the only remarkable thing was that the kitty who lives in my building got into my apt, and I took pictures of her as I was trying to shoo her out. Those pics are also posted.
I’ve realized that I use my weeks to rest up for the weekends, which, although not normal, works well.
Today, the fam is arriving in München (minus my dad, who’s arriving on the 22nd) and so I’m waiting to hear from them, and know that they got in safely. I will be posting soon, and will also upload more pics in the near future! Good luck with finals, those of you that have them!

...and now, the misadventures!

So, I’ve blogged about food plenty so far, and now its time for the misadventures to start. Yesterday, Karen and I went up to Hannover to visit the Weihnachtsmarkt, and our friend Andrea. We also needed to make an IKEA run, due to the fact that Karen’s new apartment does not contain any furniture. So, after wandering through Hannover’s Olympic training center, we made our way down to ikea, which is a 10 minute train ride, and then a 40 minute walk. We knew the general direction we were going, and some key street names to look for, which was a great start, especially for us. As we wandered through the really cold rain, we eventually spotted the ikea, and turned down the road towards it. Sounds logical, right? Apparently Germans don’t like logic much. We made our way down this road, which then turned into an autobahn (with no sidewalks, I might add). We saw a little trail cutting through the woods, and figured that this must be the continuation of the sidewalk. It wasn’t. We ended up trekking through the woods for a bit, (ikea sign still visible, of course) and then ended up walking along the autobahn. We had noticed a footbridge a little further down, and made our way towards it. When we got to said footbridge, we then realized there was no easy way for us to get UP to the footbridge. We ended up climbing up the embankment under the bridge, which was muddy and covered in dead brush. Karen aptly described this as “bushwhacking,” and I agree completely. I jumped up onto the bridge, and helped Karen up as well. We could finally make a muddy track towards ikea! Ikea was lovely as usual, and much bigger than the one in Kassel, which is a waste of time, and Karen actually enjoyed it this time, I think… We also THEN found out that there’s a bus that goes from the train station to ikea in abt 10 mins. Convenient. (btw, the ikea trip was karen’s baby… I didn’t really NEED anything from there) So, after paying and getting everything ready, I was starving, so got in line for a hotdog, and Karen decided to check out the bus schedule. She came darting back and mentioned that the only bus for the next hour was leaving in one minute. So much for my hot dog. We sprinted towards what we hoped was the bus station, and got just into view as the bus pulled away. Lovely. Instead of waiting for an hour for the next bus, we decided just to hoof it, and so, made our way back to the train station (on the correct road this time.) As we got to the train station 10 mins before our train was supposed to leave, we noticed on the board that the train was leaving NOW, and so we sprinted down the stationary escalator, once again, just in time to see the train pulling away. Perfect. The next train was in an hour. Is this sounding familiar to anyone else?? We then went to the S-bahn half of the train station, hoping that we could make our way back that way, only to find that the Sbahn station had been closed. We then wandered around the station, looking for a street train, and, just as we found one, saw the train we needed, pulling into it. The only problem was, the station was about 2 blocks away. So, we YET AGAIN watched the transportation we needed pull away from us without us in it. Thankfully this time, we saw that the next train arrived in like 10 minutes. I can deal with that. We met up with Andrea at the Weihnachtsmarkt, and enjoyed some glühwein and other foods. We then headed back to the train station, and eventually got home (after missing our train by about 2 minutes, and having to wait another hour.)
I got some fun pics of the Hannover Weihnachtsmarkt tho, so those will be posted shortly. I’m heading up to Hamburg today, and then going to Goslar with my roomy and a couple friends on Sunday. There will be plenty of pics of those adventures too, and hopefully lots of food, and further misadventures.
Have a great weekend!

-seany

thanksgiving!

So, I've been having kinda a downer week, for no reason in particular. I knew i needed to cheer myself up, so i've thrown myself whole-heartedly into thanksgiving preparations. Karen and i are co-hosting a thanksgiving dinner on weds. night, and have been preparing for the past couple days. We've been on a supply hunt for specialty items in the grocery stores for about two weeks now (2 hour grocery shopping trips really are quite fun!) We've found most of the stuff we need, with the exception of the things you really can only find in America, like cranberry sauce, pie pans/crust, and pumpkin. We're ersatzing most of the stuff we can't find here, so it should still be quite yummy. I decided to buy turkey breasts instead of whole turkeys, as they are much easier to prepare, and don't require as much space to store/cook. We've been assembling our menu for the past couple days, and i finally put it all together, and have started! I made a brine bath for the turkeys with apple cider and a ton of spices, and the turkeys have been in there since last night. Those are going to get roasted tomorrow. The menu is:

Mashed potatoes with roasted garlic
Pureed Cauliflower with herbs de Provence
Karen's special Salad
Stuffing with roasted chestnuts
Lemon-Rosemary-Olive stuffed turkey
Bacon-Sage-Cider stuffed turkey,
some cider gravy (mmmm)
apple pie
cranberry sauce (ish)
plus, lots of alcohol.

I'm going to be spending most of the next 30 hours in the kitchen, and i can't wait. Sometimes i wonder why it is that i really want to be a chef, and then i remember the feeling i get when i'm in the kitchen, making stuff for other people. Its extremely calming for me to be in control of all the different aspects of preparing something(s), and really centers me. It reminds me of all the time i spent in the kitchen with my mom, standing on a stool (the one with strawberries) so that i could actually see the top of the stove, and "helping" to cook things. Mostly, i was making a mess, and eating ingredients out of the pot. :D I guess doing this whole big thanksgiving feast is the one way i can be close to my family during this season, and stave off the homesickness until they get here in a few weeks. This will be my first thanksgiving away from the family, and its strange to me to think that i'm growing up, and starting to have my own life. (yikes) I'm starting my own traditions, (no more boiled potatoes!!) and branching out, but that doesn't mean that i don't miss the family, or the crazyness that always occurs when we're all together. This thanksgiving, i really will be giving thanks for my family and friends, good and bad memories, big dinners (with family, and college friends) and the people that surround me and keep me happy.
I hope everyone has a great thanksgiving, and enjoys it wherever they are. I will hopefully post pictures after the fact, and look forward to hearing from you all!

-seany:o)

SNOW!!!

YAY!!!! its finally snowing!! its so pretty out right now.. so far its only a dusting, but its supposed to continue snowing all weekend, and accumulate 2-3 inches. i'm so excited. i love the snow.

now, out to play!!

have a great weekend, everyone!

-seany

Put your hands up for.... Detroit?

Sorry I haven’t updated in a while, I’ve been either really busy, or too bored/boring to actually write anything! In the past weekish, I’ve done a lot of fun things- we had our second stammtisch last Tuesday, which went really well. There were about 15 students there from Karen and my schools, and we spoke English and hung out for about 2 hours, which was fantastic. The rest of last week was fairly boring, I spent most of my time either in school, in bed, or grocery shopping for hours, because I had nothing better to do. My schedule is frustrating me a bit, being that I’m not really working much, and yet the hours that I am working are spread out in such a way that it’s impossible for me to do anything in my free time. Not that I’m complaining, far be it from me to complain about being paid to be in Germany, and work 12 hours a week. It just gets a little monotonous. Last Friday, Karen and I went to the Americans/ Democrats abroad meeting. We met at a nice restaurant/bar, and hung out with some old ex-pats for a couple hours, learning about their lives, and telling about ours. They’re organizing a huge thanksgiving dinner the week after thanksgiving, so I’m looking forward to that. On Saturday, Karen and I headed to Braunschweig, which is about 90 minutes away by regional train. We met up with the FSAs there, after doing some touristing of the city, and actually enjoyed it this time, being that the weather wasn’t anywhere near as bad as it was last time. We wandered around the center of the city for a couple hours, got food, and then went out to an Irish pub, and then to a Mexican bar. (yeah, typical German hangouts…) Karen’s birthday was Sunday, so at midnight, we rang in her birthday with a restaurant-wide chorus of “happy burst-day” and a tequila shot. Sidenote: Germans do shots of tequila with cinnamon and an orange slice. Weird. We all had a ton of fun, just hanging out, singing songs, eating, and totally letting loose for a bit. I ended up crashing at Thibaut’s apartment (which took forever to find, being as he was lost, and I don’t know my way around Braunschweig). Woke up fairly late on Sunday, being that I didn’t get to bed till about 530, had a nice breakfast, and then met Karen at the train station for the ride back to Göttingen.
OH! I forgot the reason for the title of today’s blog: On Thursday evening, Karen and I went to the “sportfach” party- a party hosted in the main building of the university by the “sport” majors. There, we hung out, peoplewatched, and got some dancing in. In the midst of all the terrible music (including backstreet boys, MCHammer, 20 fingers, (remember that 20 fingers song, Meagan and Aidan?!?) C&C Music factory, etc, they played this one techno song called “put your hands up 4 detroit.” It consists of: thumping bass, techno beats, and the refrain “put your hands up for Detroit, I love this city.” Echt classy. When Karen and I heard the words, we both started cracking up in the middle of the dance floor… out of any city that a pseudo-english-speaking hip-hip artist could pick, this guy picks DETROIT?!?! No offense to you Midwesterners, but… seriously? So, we danced with our hands up for industrial wasteland, and enjoyed the irony. Then, on Sunday, in the Mexican bar, we were having a nice conversation when all of a sudden, a familiar beat came on the speakers. I couldn’t quite place it, so I ignored it until, just when there was a lull in the conversation, we heard PUT YOUR HANDS UP FOR DETROIT! Karen and I promptly fell off of our chairs laughing. This song has been stuck in my head since then, and it won’t go away. Its remarkably easy to get stuck in your head, being that it only contains ONE LINE OF LYRICS. So yes, for your listening/viewing pleasure, the link to the video is below. Enjoy!

Happy November!

So this week has been fun... last Thursday, I went up to braunschweig for an FSA conference, and got to meet all the other fsas from lower niedersachsen. they were a ton of fun, and we ended up going out to a pub after the thingy, and chilling out for like 3 hours. On Friday, my roommate, some of his friends, and I went up to Bremen to watch a soccer game (Bremen won 5-1 against berlin). It was my first german soccer game, and it was a blast! We stayed at our friend Philipp’s house, and got to hang out with his dad, who used to be in a rock band, and is awesome. We spent Friday night getting wasted with his parents, and then got up at 9 on Saturday to get ready for the game. We went to the game, drinking on the way, got there, watched the game, drank the whole way through, and then went to the folksmarkt, which is Bremen’s version of Oktoberfest. (for the record, yes, this is my third Oktoberfest this year) There, we drank, ate, and sang till our hearts content. After that, it gets a little fuzzy, but we ended up hitting up a few pubs, roadside food stands, and who knows what else. I will post pictures eventually, after a heavy edit. Sunday afternoon was spent in recovery. I was actually feeling pretty good, no hangover, no issues (thanks, BC!!) So mostly I made sure everyone else was ok, as I had been doing all the previous evening. Got back to Göttingen Sunday evening, watched the Formula 1 championship while eating döner.
Monday, I finally got my backup discs from home, and so I went about backing up all of my files onto my external HD, which takes FOREVER. So annoying. I eventually got around to actually re-imaging craptop yesterday, and, so far, it seems to be running alright. There are still quite a few issues with it, the main one now being that it doesn’t seem to recognize the USB ports anymore. Kinda a pain, when you need to connect your external HD to retrieve your files. I’m gonna give it a couple days, fiddle with the settings, and then ask one of julian’s friends, who did comp science, if he can come hit craptop with a really big hammer.

Its my friday!!

YAY!! no classes for me tomorrow... i'm heading up to braunschweig to a FSA conference, with all the other FSAs in my state. should be interesting... In other news, its also supposed to snow tomorrow!! only a little, and i doubt it'll stick, but still... you all know how much i love the snow! this weekend, i don't really know what i'm going to be doing. there are probably a ton of halloween parties this weekend, so i'm hoping to go to a few of those, as well as possibly going ice-skating on sunday with karen? who knows. anyways, craptop still isn't fixed, but its running well enough now that i can check my emails regularly, and am online for longer than 5 mins at a time. have a great rest of the week!
-seanyB

craptop meltdown

sooo, yeah, craptop is in the middle of a long, hard breakdown... its been on its last legs pretty much since i bought it 4 years ago, and i think its almost about to kick the bucket. I got some sort of virus on it that pretty much ate through all of my programs (ironically enough, the anti-virus programs got the worst of it) I ended up having to go back through, and completely reformat my comp. lovely. and the problems are still there. i'm currently in the process of re-downloading AIM and other useful programs so that i can remain in touch other than by email, but, if we're happily chatting away, and i suddenly disappear, its not because i don't like you, its because craptop doesn't like me. soo, yeah. I'm currently working on a computer that is basically defenseless (yikes) because, smart me, i left all of my program discs in the US. btw, mama, feel like mailing me the windows XP and microsoft office discs? or maybe just a new laptop? every time i try to start up mcafee, i get blue-screen-of-death, then fuzz, and then a little window pops up that says "couldn't open this program, please try again later" so helpful. so yeah, turns out i may not be doing much travelling for the next couple months if i end up having to buy a new lappy. we'll see... happy friday!!
-seanyB

Herrenberg, Stuttgart, B-W as a whole

hi! this one is gonna be long, soo, only read further if you have time, or if you need to avoid doing things you need to do!

Ok, so last Friday, I went on a hiking trip to Brocken with Karen, and then, Saturday morning, left for Stuttgart! On Saturday, I hung out with charlotte and a bunch of her friends at Wasen, which is Stuttgart's Oktoberfest. We hung out and played quite a bit, and I crashed at Charlotte’s house that night.
Sunday: took the very short trip to Herrenberg, was met at the train station by Jörg and Marianne, and then we went on a hike near Tübingen to the top of a little hill with a restaurant on top, so we sat down for lunch, and enjoyed the sunlight. We then went back to Herrenberg, where we toured the town, and I took lots of pics. Later on, went back to their house, where we met up with Lena and Julian, and Lena’s boyfriend Mauri. (sp?) The following day was Mauri’s first day of university, so we hung out, played games, and went to bed relatively early.
Monday: Julian headed off on a week-long trip to Tarare, France very early in the morning, and everyone else had work/school, so I explored Herrenberg, took some more pictures, and attempted not to get lost. I was actually surprised by how familiar everything looked, even after 13 years, I could find my way around ok! Things have changed a lot, lots of new buildings, the town has expanded greatly, and there are new roads and trains and buildings everywhere. I then went back to my old school and took some pics, and generally re-lived my childhood.
Tuesday: After Marianne got back from work, we made a quick trip out to the Hohenzollern castle that is abt 30 mins away from Herrenberg. Its this amazing castle on top of a cone mountain in the middle of a valley, and just completely badass. The family that built it in the 1400’s still owns it, and the prince still hosts parties there on a regular basis (note to self, somehow get an invite) We had to put on wool slipper things so we wouldn’t track dirt around that castle or scratch the floors or whatever, so I spent most of my time gawking and sliding around the rooms like a kid on rollerskates.
Weds: Spent the day touristing around Stuttgart by myself, which was great! I started off going to the Daimler-Benz museum… for 4 hours… its an amazing building- no straight lines or corners anywhere. The architect designed it to look like a double helix, and its gorgeous. But what it contains is even better. I think I might’ve suffered a bit from dehydration because of all of the drooling I was doing. (see pics) I then made my way out to the fernsehturm, which is a huge TV tower on the outskirts of Stuttgart with a skyview platform, and a little café way up top. It was really windy and freaking cold, and unfortunately cloudy, so the pics I took don’t really show a great view of Stuttgart, but they’re still fun. Took lots of pictures, ate in the café, and generally enjoyed myself for a bit. Then, headed downtown, took pictures of the old city, and wandered around until I found a real döner shop, at which I paid only 2 euros (!!) and got a huge greasy/creamy concoction just like I remember from my childhood. Not like the weird little ones up here with currysauce (although they’re still good). After that, I went to the markthalle, which is a huge indoor marketplace. I bought everything I needed to make dinner that night, and ended up spending abt 2 hours wandering around and trying things. The stall owners were all really nice and helpful, and surprised that: a) I knew what I was doing in the market b) I'm American (they usually guessed Swedish after I talked, must be the tall blond thing). After that, I met up with Charlotte to take some more pics for Dave and Ivanka, and then headed back to Herrenberg, laden with my supplies. When I got back, the Marstallers were just beginning to get home, so I whipped up some butternut squash risotto (meghan’s recipe) and we had a nice dinner.
Thurs: Slept in a little, and then called Charlotte to meet up in her hometown. Her mom drove us (charlotte, her older sister, and myself) out to the Ritter Sport museum. For those of you not in the know, ritter sport is amazing chocolate. Go find yourself some. So, toured the museum, played with all the stuff oriented to the kids (free chocolate machine, duh!) and then went to the shop. Lets just say I put a big ole’ dent in my supposed plan to save a little cash. I bought about 10 kilos of chocolate (at a discount, of course) (and half of it was for the marstallers anyway, don’t judge!) and some other fun stuff. Then we went to the café, and had some cake and hot chocolate, which consisted of hot milk with a bar of ritter sport in it. Basically, I was in heaven (diabetic hell) for the entire day. After that, we swung by patch barracks, and I took a quick pic out front, for old time’s sake. As we were parked out front, a bunch of school busses started rolling in with decidedly American-looking kids. I'm glad my dad decided to send us to German schools.
Fri: Woke up early, got on the train to Ulm! It’s a little city (abt göttingen’s size) on the very east coast of B-W, right on the Donau river. It is famous for being the hometown of Hugo Boss, and for having the highest church tower in the world… which you can climb… which I did. It’s 181.53 meters tall, and consisted of me dragging my ass up 768 steps. I had met up with the Marstallers cousin/niece Judith, who is studying medicine at the university there, and she showed me around. It was actually her first time climbing up to the top of the tower too. The climb itself was tiring, me hating to do anything involving physical activity and all, but the architecture and the views were amazing. After we got to the top (lots and lots of windy stairs) we posed for pics, squeezed around the other people up top, and attempted to make our way back down. For most of the way, there are separate stairs for up and down, but not at the very top or the very bottom. We had chosen an opportune time to leave, as half of Germany’s schoolchildren were arriving at the cathedral, and making their way to the top. Not fun. Lets leave it at that. Judith took me to lunch at a bread place (yum), and then had to go to class, so I wandered around, took pictures of the old city, and went to a museum in the area. Lots of modern art (meh). A couple pretty cool 3D works, and some cool mechanical sculptures tho! After that, met up with Judith again, and met one of her best friends, and headed off to ikea! I needed to find a support beam for my schrank, and Judith needed a new plant/ wanted to goof around in ikea. We spent way too long goofing around the various displays in ikea and teaching me new words in German, most of them not repeatable on a pg13 blog, except knutschkugel, which is what they call little tiny round cars. It means makeout ball, basically. We bought my thing, and Judith got her plant, an Australian chestnut, which she promptly named hugo. We quickly discovered the hugo had 3 nuts, one of which had mold growing on it, and that hugo smelled bad. After that, went to a creperie for dinner, met up with more of judith’s friends, and generally had a really good time hanging out with people my own age. Headed back to Stuttgart after drinking and eating way too much, and got home at midnight.
Sat: Was our lazy day. Lena was busy working on math studying, but the rest of us got to play around. Marianne had to do a science experiment with her class, and was doing test-runs. She was attempting to take the chlorophyll out of leaves, and separate them by color (often called chromatography). We tried freaking everything to get the colors with absolutely no success. We boiled, ground, blended, mashed, and did all sorts of other unspeakable acts to these leaves to try to get them to separate. No dice. We decided we had the wrong kind of alcohol. (they call it all spiritus there, no ethanol/ethyl/ether differentiation) so we decided to try it again later, with different kinds. For lunch, I made some spätzle and goulash. Marstallers have both a press, which I have used, and a board, which I haven't. Jörg showed me how to use the spätzle board and I wasn’t too terrible at it, actually! I was quite proud of myself. We sat down to a nice lunch (btw, its so nice to cook in an already-established kitchen!!) After lunch, we went to the high school, where the upperclassmen were having a fair. Lena and the choir were singing there, so we went to watch her. She sang two songs, backed up by the choir, and it was lovely. Their performance was followed by kids doing strange things to strange music. Apparently some form of Brazilian martial art/mind control/creative outlet for those of us that are deaf. My head and my ass were both numb after that experience. Later on that evening, I went with Jörg to my very first handball game. It’s a really fun game, a combo of football, soccer, rugby, and WWF. Needless to say, I enjoyed it, but will definitely be staying on the spectator side, lest I get broken in half. It was regional league, so most of the players on our team are born and bred in Herrenberg, and one of the guys was actually in my grade in the grade school, which was cool.
Sun: Marianne and Jörg and I (Lena was still studying) headed off to Heidelberg, which is in the northwest region of the state. It is an old university town, where lots of famous people studied (Goethe being one of them). Its absolutely gorgeous, huge old redstone castle on the hill, renaissance buildings still in existence, cobblestone streets, the whole 9 yards. We went around the castle, went into the basement, where they have GIANT kegs, used to store water during times of war (from the 17 and 1800s). Took the requisite pictures, natürlich. Then we headed out onto the terrace garden, which is HUGE. It offered great views of the city, so took more pictures, and during our wanders, Marianne found some giant leaves that none of us could identify, or find the tree from which we came. Being a dutiful teacher, she carried a few of them along to show her kids. We sat down for lunch in a restaurant that is more than 300 years old- an old student hangout, full of writing on walls, carving in tables, and student history. The food was typical schwäbisch, and amazing. After that, we toured more of the city, saw the river, went to Marstall Straβe, and found a käthe wolfahrt. Uugh. We also picked up some student kisses, which are an historic confection made since the 1600’s. it was named after the son of a chocolatier who presented his invented chocolate “kiss” to the girl he loved, and they continued to make them. The family that started the tradition still runs the chocolate shop… pretty cool! We then headed over to the university library, which houses the Manesse manuscript. For those of you who don’t know what that is, ask Resler, or google it. I took a picture of the copy of it (made in 1700’s) because the actual one is like 1200 years old, and is encased in a vault. There was also a kafka display up (he studied in Heidelberg too) and a bunch of his original manuscripts were on display, as well as some of his early critique work for the student newspaper. They also had samples of illuminated books from the middle ages up, so spent some time going through that as well. Then, headed back to Herrenberg. (Freudian slip, I had actually written “headed back home,” but figured that’d be confusing)
Monday, we finally succeeded in getting the chlorophyll to separate out (YAY!) I made some saltimbocca for lunch (yum) and started packing to head home. (göttingen)
Tuesday, met up with charlotte one last time, got some lunch, got some icecream, met up with one of her friends, and then hopped on the train back here!!

Congrats, you’ve made it through my novel. I'm terribly sorry.

hiking tour, now stuttgart!!

hi! just a short post as i am EXHAUSTED!

today, karen and i went on a hiking trip up the Brocken mountain (hill). Its part of the fairytale road, supposedly the woods are haunted by a witch that the grimm bro's wrote abt. yay! in any case, lots of uphill climbing, and my legs are killing me... and, bright and early tomorrow morning, i'm heading down to stuttgart to visit charlotte, jessica, and the marstallers! (and whoever else i can find that still lives down there) i will be incommunicado for the next few days, but feel free to leave comments, or shoot emails, as i will attempt to check those regularly. pictures of the hike and of stuttgart will be posten upon my return.
happy fall break!!

-seanyB

Its tuesday, and....

So it’s been an interesting couple of days.. well, not really, actually… I'm finding that, besides my job, there’s not much else going on in my life. Göttingen is actually a little boring, although hopefully that will change when more uni students move in, and I can actually make some friends! Yesterday, I only had one block class, which started at 1130, so I got to sleep in, which was really nice. I got to do a little lecture on brave new world, which was fun! After fall break, which starts this Thursday, and runs for 2 weeks (YAY!!) I'm gonna show the class the movie Equilibrium, which is an amazing movie.. Today, I had my regular 4 classes, but for the first one, I got to teach spur of the moment, when the teacher felt sick. I pulled a lesson about sports outta my ass, and killed the 40 minutes I needed to! My last class was somewhat more memorable- it is 13th graders (abt 19 years old) and we did a short story about a father and son, and the relationship tensions btw them. We got to talk about living vicariously, and what the qualities of “perfect man” are. I asked them to list qualities that they think about when they think of the perfect man, and when I asked them to list them. After a few responses, one girl in the back raised her hand, and went “you.” The entire class went silent, and I think I more shades of red than I've seen. It was a bit difficult to regain speech and writing because I was trying really hard not to laugh, so I told her she needed to reset her standards, and continued on with class.
In other news, I bought bedroom furniture today!! I bought a wardrobe, and a desk! W00t! And it only cost me 60 euros including delivery!! Sweet! They’re coming Friday. So, now, I just have to buy all the accompanying crap like: hangers, a desk chair, a desk lamp, and a whole assortment of random other craps. Karen and I are planning an IKEA trip tomorrow, so that we can take care of all of it in one fell swoop, and then, hopefully by Friday afternoon, my bedroom will be all set up and orderly! I'm pumped!
AND oh man… Karen and I found what could possibly be my favorite store in Göttingen yesterday. It’s a store called ‘Vom Fass,” which means “from the tap,” and they have all sorts of liquors, cordials, wines, oils, vinegars, ciders, and everything imaginable that comes in a barrel, and can be poured from a tap. I bought some chili-oil that is amazing, and also got some honey vinegar and some quince vinegar (both for free.) the best part is, you can wander around the shop, trying all of these different things (which Karen and I did,) and so, by the end of our 30 minute tour, Karen and I were full of bread and olive oil, and I, at least, was close to being pretty damn wasted. All of their stuff is pretty amazing, and relatively inexpensive. I'm going to live there. I told the poor lady that worked there that she’d be seeing a lot of me.

So that’s it for news for me, I will update later in the week, and also take pics of the apt, once its all set up, and post them!!
thanks for reading!

-seanyB

its the weekend!

so this week has been fun... I got to teach some classes by myself, which was challenging, but it made me feel like I might actually have a reason for being here! I got to work with two 6th grade classes, one, while waiting for the teacher to show up (she ended up being like 20 mins late) and so I occupied the kids in the meantime going over vocab and verb tenses. The other class was given to me a couple days before, so I got to prepare a lesson for them. It is one of the more difficult classes, and its the last period right before lunch, so they're extra antsy... lots'o'fun, basically. I ended up having to make them late for lunch because they wouldn't sit down and pay attention.. Thankfully there was some anger from the kids that were behaving towards those that were being douches. there's also a kid in one of my 5th grade classes who looks just like an overweight harry potter, glasses and all. his name is leopold, and I can't look at the kid because I can never keep a straight face, i just wanna laugh.
Also this week, I've had a sinus infection (the first of many, I'm sure) brought on most likely by oktoberfest and its activities. well worth it! So, instead of going back to hamburg yesterday for the day of unity festivities, and up to bremen today to tour, I've elected to stay home, eat lots of homemade chicken noodle soup, and sleep. So far, since friday, I’ve been awake maybe 10 hours? its been quite nice just relaxing in my jammies, drinking lots of tea, eating comfort foods like baguette with nutella, watching movies, and just generally lazing around. Who would've thought it'd be nice to take a break from my otherwise not very stressful life?
In other news, I STILL haven’t gotten paid by the fulbright board, although that will hopefully happen soon. I needs to pay my rent, and hopefully buy food!! I'm also planning on heading down to Stuttgart next weekish (we have fall break from Oct 8-26) to visit the Marstallers, Charlotte, and anyone else I can find that’s still down there. I also am gonna try to go to Ireland (pending payment from Fulbright) to visit the girls from HYC. I have two weeks to do whatever, so I am going to need to get out of here for at least PART of it!
Ok, that’s all that’s even remotely interesting in my life at the moment… I hope everyone has a great weekend!!!
-seany

Oktoberfest/ new apartment!

Hi! Sorry I haven't written in a while, its been a busy few days… first off, on Friday, Karen and I headed down to München for Oktoberfest. It was completely insane as expected, and I at least had a blast, (I’m pretty sure Karen did too…) we had reserved a hotel room east of the city, abt a 15 minute metro ride, and it was actually really nice, esp considering we only paid abt 45 euros each for it! Friday night, we went to the Augustiner tent, and, after not eating since about noon, we proceeded to get completely smashed off of a couple of “maβe” which are 1 liter glass mugs of beer (I stole three, pictures of them are on picasa  )
Saturday, after accidentally sleeping in till 9, we made our way back into the city, only to find it completely swamped with people. Because it was so sunny and beautiful and warm, Karen and Eileen (another BC girl) and I decided to tour München, which is gorgeous, and I took lots of pics, apu… We made our way back to Oktoberfest, and met up with the other fulbrighters in the Hacker Pschorr/Schottenhaller tent, and made some very good friends. (some of us made better friends than others) It was Italian weekend at Oktoberfest, so the few and far between Germans were hard to notice, hiding behind all the loud, wasted Americans and Italians. We found some anyways, and hung out for a good long while, also with a bunch of NYU kids that are scattered throughout Europe on exchange semesters.
Sunday, Karen and I got up relatively early, and headed into München for our last day. Karen, who had, the day before bought a dirndl, (see pics) convinced me to try on lederhosen, just for the pics. I should’ve known better. I am now the proud(ish) owner of some authentic Bavarian Lederhosen. I will eventually take pictures in them and post them, probably holding my Masse! Btw, liquidity-wise, 1 Maβ is about a 6pack of beer, and has the alcohol content of your average American 12pack. Thankfully, its good German beer, so you drink it slow(ish) and can actually enjoy the taste… anyways, Sunday was much emptier in the fairgrounds, probably because the Bayern-München soccer team had lost sat. evening, and the city was in mourning. So we didn’t have to wait in line for any tents, and ended up hopping from Hacker-Pschorr to Hofbräu to Löwenbräu to Paulaner to Spatenbräu. Needless to say, amazing. I poured myself onto the ICE back to Göttingen, where they happened to be giving out free beer onboard. Bad news bears. Oh well! I remembered to get off at the correct stop! I got back to my house around 8pm, had dinner, and promptly passed out.
Monday, had school bright and early, biked home, packed, went back to school for the afternoon class, the oldest of my students, and I got to interact with them a lot, we were talking about genetic engineering and cloning (they’re reading brave new world). It was great to finally be able to speak to students in a normal tone, and with a normal pace, and not have (all) of them stare at me like I’m an alien. Then, went home, finished packing, and passed out for another couple of hours. At 8, packed up Carina’s van with all of my stuff (it took abt 2 seconds to load both bags into the back, then swung by another teacher’s house to pick up my bed. Of course, with my luck, it also happened to be torrentially downpouring (note to self- lean mattress against radiator to dry it out) I moved all of my stuff into my room, which now contains my bed, a small schrank (wardrobe, and nothing else. I’m gonna need to go furniture shopping soon- living out of a suitcase sucks! OH, I just realized, I’ve been here for exactly 4 weeks! Yay! (sorry, still sorta spastic and exhausted- did I mention I only managed to get abt 6 hours of sleep all weekend?) The new apartment is awesome, its small, but very well suited to me, with 10 foot ceilings  I will post pics of the apt as well! So, for those of you in the area, or expecting to be in the area, chezSean is open for visitors! My one roommate’s name is Julian (yoo-lee-an) he’s 27, and finishing up his last year in the university here. He’s from the area-ish, and so far, we’ve gotten along quite well. Ok, I’m off to go do my first bit of grocery shopping, so that I can cook my first meal in Germany! YAY!

WEEKEND!

YAY! its finally the weekend!! (for me at least, sorry everyone else..) this week was eventful, i put in my visa application, which ended up being much less beaurocracy than expected because karen and i came well prepared!! I also bought a bicycle today, its big and black and badass! (speaking of asses, i need to get a new seat, because my behind is killing me!) it was a used bike, and has all the standard things on it, including lights and a basket! yay! now all i need are streamers for the handlebars (and a new, squishier seat)

tomorrow morning, karen and i are leaving for munchen for the weekend, to experience some Oktoberfest goodness! It will be an insane time. i will try to take as many pictures as possible, thankfully my camera has autofocus!! i won't be online or anything this weekend, but feel free to comment, shoot emails, whatever! i will update and post pics when i come back sunday evening.
-seany

Weekend in Hamburg

Hi, sorry i haven't updated in a while.. i've either been doing absolutely nothing, (friday, only left the house to go for a run, otherwise watched movies) or i've been gone. this weekend, i went up to hamburg to see the city, and visit a couple of the other fulbrighters in the area. the weather was perfect, it was like 70 and sunny, perfect for walking around a harbor city... we wandered around, beers in hand, (YAY GERMANY) and saw alot of the really interesting and diverse city. We ended up staying up till abt 5am, out in a really fun, cozy bar, before passing out hard! my lovely trip did end on a bad note, however, as the ATM at the train station decided it didn't like my (correct) pin, and so told me it was eating my card, good luck with life, aufwiedersehen! i hate german atms... they're not even polite abt it! so, my deutsche bank ATM card is gone, thankfully i had enough cash for an ICE still in hand, but ended up going to the bank today, and ordered a new one.

In other news, my first week at school was good. nothing really challenging or interesting, i'm nowhere near actually doing anything constructive with the students, being that they're all still scared of me. I ended up having mostly 5th and 6th graders, which, frankly, kinda sucks.. Its great that i can help them early, with their pronunciation, but part of my project for being here was to teach a business-style american english, which is hard to do when half of the class is still wearing velcro shoes and miley cyrus tshirts (including some boys... oh yeah, we're def in europe) I'm really hoping to get my stammtisch program off the ground pretty soon, so that i can actually have conversations with the older kids, and find out more abt them, what they want to know, what they feel is lacking, etc... its all well and good to show kids spongebob to teach them english, but there's only so many seconds of that i can stand (read: 2) Today, my afternoon classes were cancelled, so i only had one... at 750... how nice... i promptly came home, and went back to bed! lets see, what else? nothing, really... this week, i'm going to hit up ikea, buy stuff for the apt, do my visa anmeldung, (hopefully) and... uhm... ? do other things? i really do have too much free time... i need to pick up a hobby. or a german. a swede perhaps?
have a great week everyone, i will be posting pics of hamburg momentarily.

-seanyB

APARTMENT FOUND!!!

YAY!!! i finally found an apartment!! its just south of the city center, in an old building, and has 10 foot ceilings! its a 2 bedroom apt, and the guy who owns it lives in the other room. so, thats a HUGE relief off my back. other than that, had an interesting day-- followed the 11th graders around all day, which involved math, spanish, philosophy, some social studies something, and physics!! YAY!!! i wanted to shoot myself, pretty much. but my actual classes start tomorrow, so i'm excited for that, except for the fact that they rearranged my schedule so that i only have ONE class mondays, of course, first period, FOUR on tues, 3 on weds, and 2 on thurs... ugh, so much for german efficiency... ugh, at least it will be better when it will only take me 5 mins to bike to school rather than an hour to bus there! OH, on that note... one of the teachers offered me her spare bike at school today, and took me out to look at it. It was a very nice bike, and would've fit me perfectly if only i were about a foot shorter, and possibly still 12. oh well, something will come around

and now its time for me to go to bed!!

good night!

First day of school!

So today was my first day of school, which was kinda exciting! i felt like i was in kindergarten all over again, except this time sitting in the teachers' lounge, awkwardly staring at my feet while the other teachers stared at me, rather than beating up girls. I followed a 6th grade class around for the day, which was... interesting... they asked me all about myself in the english class, and i very quickly realized that i have absolutely nothing in common with 12 year olds. My favorite music, books, movies, bands, art... none of them (even the teacher) showed the slightest hint of recognition... oh well! it was interesting to see the social aspects of gradeschool from the teacher perspective. there was the nerdy kid no one wanted in their group, likewise the ADDchild that couldn't sit still for 2 seconds, the popular kids, it was all very interesting... they were all perfectly polite and nice and slightly scared of me, which is just the way i like it! I also got to meet a bunch of the teachers, once they had established that i actually belonged in the teachers' lounge (note to self: stop wearing a bookbag everywhere!) and i was invited to play in the teachers league volleyball matches every monday evening, which should be fun! They are all relatively young, and seem to want to get to know me, which is also nice, as long as they don't try to do it en masse, like they did today, where i met more than 40 new coworkers in about 5 minutes. i flat out told them i'm not going to remember names, so i'm gonna have to steal a yearbook and start trying to memorize :x shit!!
i left around 12, being that classes were almost over, and i needed to go to the ratshalle to get my visa, only to get there, and find out it has the most stupid and inconvenient hours in the history of german beaurocracy (which is a feat, lemme tell you!) so... yeah, i'll be going back on thursday, which is the only possible time during their daily 2 hour daily open period that i can go. so rude...
in other news, i went out to dinner tonight with all of the university fulbrighters, who are having their orientation in goettingen this week. there are two in the goettingen area, so hopefully we can hang out occasionally, but they all seemed very nice, and of course the free food and booze helped the situation!
in more other news, i have karen to thank, for apparently introducing me to a stalker/crazed 12ishyearold ballerina who wants to play with me whenever i have free time. everyone together now: THANKS KAREN! i may plead gay. or possibly desperately in love with karen... should be fun paybacks, in any case... i hope you're reading this karen, i'm sic-ing one of my students on you!

back to school tomorrow, i'm following around one of the 11th grade classes, before i start my scheduled term on weds, which consists of:
Mon: class at 750 and 1030
Tues: class at 750, 940, and 1030
Weds: class at 750, 94o, and 1220
Thurs: class at 840, 1130
Fri: LOOOOOONG WEEKEND

aaaaand thats it!! more updates tomorrow, don't forget the now COMPLETELY uploaded Hannover pics, link to the right (it says KLICKEN SIE HIER, kids...)

Hannover visit, the internation fireworks competition!

Just got back from a lovely day in Hannover, which is a 25 minute ICE ride north of here (or an 1.5 hour regional train ride back, at 1am... uuugh) Karen and i saw a random poster at a bus stop, like you do, for the international fireworks competition, and decided it was worth a visit. We shot off an email to all (both) of the fulbrighters we know in Hannover, and asked if they wanted to meet us/show us around/have a beer. We met up with Andrea, who is teaching there, and toured the city, which is amazing... it was almost completely destroyed during WWII, where it was bombed into oblivion, except for the statehouse, oddly enough, which is huge and looks like a castle (pictures are on the link to the right) There's an old church that was bombed, and now the walls stand as a memorial to all those who died, and its really quite stunning, as the pictures show... We wandered around Hannover, following a red trail through the city that vaguely reminded me of the trail of tears through boston, as poor karen probably heard abt 02e42352894 times yesterday. There are lots of old buildings and historical stuff, and a huge shopping center and fussgaengerzone (pedestrial zone). We also walked down to the lake in hannover, which is a big rectangular thing with boats and fun things, so took pictures of that too! After, we went for dinner at a little falafel house, where i had a lamb doener (mmmmmm) and then we made our way up to the huge english-style garden north of the city, where the fireworks were being held. Admission price to the gardens was 15 euros, and we were prepared to pay it, but when we got off the Ubahn stop, there were people sitting in the grass by the side of the road, so we figured, why not? we sat there for abt an hour, listening to music, before the show started. It was awesome, synchronised to music, and very colorful. I got some relatively good pictures, and a movie, which i'm not sure if i'm going to be able to post (not that mama at home will be able to see with dialup anyways...) We then hopped on the crowded Ubahn when it was over, and jetted back to the haubtbahnhof, in order to catch the last train back to goettingen. We missed the IC by literally a minute, and then had an hour to kill, till the regional train came in. Thankfully, we killed this hour mostly by figuring out how to break the 50 euro bill that karen had, because the ticket machine wouldn't take 50's. We made our way into a little store, and bought things we never knew we needed, like little bottles (and cans) of wine for the trip home, a hand towel, and pretzel sticks! Through further exploration of the train station, we found what appeared to be a headless "nessie" sculpture, which was vaguely depressing, so we decided to liven it up by riding it, see pictures.
Meanwhile, throughout the trainstation are people walking around in strange costumes, asking for stuff. Apparently there's a tradition in germany, where, the night before you get married, part of your bachelor/ette party involves going around and getting random things from people, while dressed as either the perfect hausfrau, or husband? strange, to say the least... In any case, our train eventually got there, and we hopped on, and popped open our respective alcohol selections! Got back to goettingen around 1ish, too late for me to hop the bus back up to weendenord, where i live, so i crashed on karen's couch.

outside of this, apartment searching seems to be sucking, we've only heard back "no"s, if we've even heard back at all, which really really sucks!! i really need to find my own place closer to the city, and karen really needs to find a place with internet.
craptop is now bugging me to restart, so i will give in to its wishes...

happy sunday, hope you all enjoy your weekend! to those of you in TX, i hope you're ok, shoot me an email!!!

-seany

....aaaand we're back!

YAY! so the past few days were spent in Altenberg, which is just outside of Cologne. Its a really old monastery, complete with cathedral, et al. All the english FSA's had to get together here and go through orientation, which was partly fun and partly useless. I got to meet a whole ton of other americans that are gonna be doing the same thing as me, but spread out all over germany, which is great, because i now have couches to surf on!! A bunch of them were really fun, and we ended up hanging out alot, and planning our oktoberfests together, which should be ridiculous!! i finally got to goof around and be myself, instead of trying to behave and not be overanxious re: finding an apartment. It was also really nice to find out that there kinda is a backup system for us in place, and that if we are stuck with something, we can actually do something to change it... i've decided i'm going to register for classes at the Uni here, even tho its gonna cost me an arm and a leg, and i'm hoping that i'll be able to get into this semester still... the beaurocracy involved is staggering, and even more daunting when your german is stuttering at best. oh well, something will work out! I'm going in later to pick up a course catalog, so we'll see what classes i can/want to take!

I don't start teaching until monday, and most likely for the first week or so, i'll just be sitting in on classes, until they can get a normal schedule for me, and teachers put in requests for my time (thankfully not to me!) I think i'm going to fit in pretty well at the school, the teachers are all pretty young and active, and i'm going to try to join in their activities as soon as i can, which will help my german too! I'm also about to post pictures to picasa from goettingen and altenberg, so click the link below, and check out the fun pics!!


CLICK HERE!

Hiho, hiho, its off to cologne we go?

Hi, just wanted to let peeps know that i'm gonna be in cologne until thursday afternoon. We have our orientation thingy, which i'm hoping will prove somewhat useful. I probably won't be online, so feel free to leave comments, messages, emails, whatever! I will be posting pictures from cologne and Goettingen when i come back, so get ready for those!

-seany

almost a week!

Ok, so I landed last tuesday in Frankfurt, after 8 boring hours of non-sleep and not enough legroom, breezed through immigration/customs (they said my German sounded perfect!) and then gathered my luggage, which was ironically the first off the plane. Since I had counted on it taking forever to go through customs, i hadn't booked a train ticket till noon, and it was now barely 7am (2am body time). I made my way through the extremely confusing airport terminal, then ended up having to take the S-bahn into frankfurt proper to go to the haubtbahnhof. (main train station) So i got there in record time, and then had 4 hours to kill... whooopie! i found a nice quiet corner in which to sit, amidst all my crap, and looked like a bum for a few hours. Apparently my ploy to not look american didn't work, as nobody asked me for directions, but i got asked if i needed help finding anything (in english) about 5 times... poo! as it was rapidly approaching the point where my body was about to shut down, i decided it was time to move, and maybe go for some coffee. so i found a starbucks in the train station, walked up to the counter, and ordered a grande something. 20 minutes later, half of it gone, and i remember that i havent eaten in 4 hours, and i have a slight allergy to caffeine.
the next hour or so went by in a pretty quick, jittery blaze. Got on the ICE to Goettingen, sat in the nice, dark, quiet train for about an hour, all the while trying not to fall asleep on my lap. I had told karen, the other fulbrighter in Goettingen, that i was arriving around 1ish, and so she told me she'd try to meet me there. I got off the train and was met by Frau Kramer, who is the head of the english dept at the school i will be teaching at, and karen! we had a nice little convo abt Goettingen, and how dead on my feet i was, and then we went out to lunch. After lunch, she dropped me off at the house where i am staying, and they had hung an american flag up, and had cakes and cookies and coffee all ready for my arrival. I sat in the dining room, glaze-eyed, and lacking in the german skills, also having not showered for the past 40ish hours. I quickly begged out of food, and into a shower, which did wonders for my human-ness. Went back upstairs, met Frau Krause's 4 sons, and proceeded to stare blankly at them as they asked me questions in german. I promised myself that i would stay up till 7pm, and i actually made it, before completely crashing at 7:01. Had the typical terrible night's sleep from jetlag, and only ended up getting about 5 hours.
The next days since then have been mostly spent exploring goettingen, finding good food places, setting up a bank account, registering as a resident of the city, and generally touristing around (no fannypacks tho!) Goettingen is a great little city, lots of really old buildings and cobblestone streets. The entire downtown area is a pedestrian zone, so its a great walking and biking city (reminder to self: GET BIKE!) Karen and i have been mostly inseperable during this time, as we understand each others' broken german, and we're stuck in pretty much the same situation.
On friday, i went into my school to meet Frau Kramer again, and get things with the school all set up. I sat in the teacher's lounge in jeans and a longsleeve T, and i think i was still overdressed... looks like teaching isn't gonna be such a formal job! I got to meet a ton of the teachers, few of who's names i remember, and got lots of requests to come to classes and talk to the students "in real american." I visited a bilingual geography class (6th grade) and was forced to answer questions from the class about myself in english. They all seemed pretty excited that i was there, so that'll be a huge relief! Frau Kramer also talked to me about doing any extracurriculars, and i'm definitely going to be doing that. We're going to have a stammtisch witht the older kids, and probably an american movie night for the younger ones at least twice a month. In addition to that, i'm going to work with karen to try to do a thanksgiving dinner, which should prove quite interesting, considering turkeys are hard to find up here. (no butterball) Yesterday was rainy, and kinda gross, so karen and i decided to have movie day before our WG visiting appointments last night, so we got some good bread, cheese, and wine, and sat in her room, watching movies and generally relaxing. The two apartments we saw last night were really nice, actually! One was only looking for a girl, so karen went up and said she really liked it, the other was looking for either, and it was pretty nice, and in a good location. we left our numbers, and hopefully we'll hear back from them soon. Otherwise, the WG search has been a bit stressful; the demand for living space is so high that the person renting out the room has to choose from a bunch of candidates, which sucks for us! We've seen quite a few of them, most of them completely gross and old, which sucks. In addition to that, these houses were all built before jesus, so the ceilings are all at about forehead level, the rafters are at about chin level, and the doors reach up to my shoulder. I have enough back problems, so those are an automatic no, at least for me! (and for karen, unless she never wants me to ever visit) Today is nice and sunny, and so in a little bit, i'm going to be meeting karen somewhere to do something, not quite sure what, where, or when yet, but something will fall into place, i'm sure. Tomorrow we leave for Koeln for our orientation thingy, which will last thru the 11th. Here, i'm sure we will learn how to open a bank account, register as a resident, find a WG, and do everything else that karen and i have already had to figure out on our own(s) Oh well, at least its another mini-vacation for us!! Plus, we get to see all the other fulbright kids from BC, and everywhere else too. that should provide us with some valuable contacts for where we can couch-surf around germany!!

ok, this has gotten quite long enough, i hope only a few of you has actually made it this far down!! i will be posting pictures either here, or on my picasa account, for which i will provide the link.

hope all is well!!

-seany:o)