concert!

oh yeah, AND this is who i'm going to see on feb 22nd at Pier2 in Bremen:



YAY!

friday rambling

Yesterday was awesome. This week is the last of this semester, and so my new schedule starts next week (on weds, mon and tues are holidays!) Instead of having a schedule handed to me, Ulla, my supervisor, handed me a list of teachers that has requested me, and when their classes were, and asked me if I had time to make my own schedule. Do I ever?!!? So, I get to make my own schedule, which is sweet… In addition to that, yesterday, Philipp took the last part of his bar exam, and in German tradition, a bunch of his friends met him outside the building at 1 in the afternoon with beer, and we stood outside in the freezing cold for an hour or so, drinking and celebrating with him. I got to meet a bunch more of Julian and Philipp’s group of friends, and they’re all really fun and easygoing. Had some great conversations with pretty much all of them about everything imaginable, and go to practice much more of my real (not academic) German. We continued celebrating throughout the afternoon, switching venues several times, watching a rugby match and a handball match, and finally going to see Rac’s play for his theater class, which was… interesting. We ended the night at the Irish pub, which is always a great way to end things. Karen had joined us about midway through the festivities, and also seemed to be having a great time. After the play, and before Irish pub, I made a stop at döner king, and I had quite possibly the best döner of my life. I don’t think I shut up about it for at least 30 mins. Sorry Karen.
This weekend, we’re planning on doing a little touristing. Since we have Monday and Tuesday off as well, (YAY 5 DAY WEEKEND!) we’re gonna head up to northern Niedersachsen, and visit some of the cities we haven’t seen yet. I’m also planning on hitting up Hamburg again, because I love it. One of Karen and my friends from BC is coming up for the weekend, (she’s teaching at a boarding school in southern Germany) and she’s gonna come with and see all that lovely Niedersachsen has to offer!
I’m still undecided about what I want to do next year. I’ve gotten advice from all sides about whether to extend, stay here for school, go back to the states to find a job, or go back to the states for school. I’m going to re-apply for a second year here, just to keep my options open. Thankfully my school has expressed an interest in keeping me a second year! I’ve also taken Karen’s advice to start doing more research every day into my options, to better inform myself, and to stave off anxiety attacks at 3am about failing in life. So far, its worked wonders, and I’ve been sleeping soundly.
I’ve had a stupid sinus infection for the past week or so, and its finally starting to really get a deep hold on my brain, so today’s chores start with going to the pharmacy for some hardcore decongestants, and some sinus meds. Then I really really need to buy food, because I’m down to potatoes, onions, rice, and milk (and lots of each, thanks papa!) I also need to go buy a new inner tube for my bike, UGH! Apparently the one I got last week is defective or stupid, because it refuses to hold air when it dips below freezing. Which it does here. Regularly. Such a pain! At least I can get my back wheel off, unlike Karen! Makes changing out tires/inner tubes a little easier…
K, sorry, this has dragged on long enough, and I’m rambling. Have a great Friday, everyone!

-seany

happy monday!

So, I've realized that I'm almost completely unqualified for my job here. Aside from the fact that I've spoken english for the majority of my life, I still cannot tell a german why the hell you need to break a paragraph-long sentence into separate ones, other than the fact that it "sounds terrible." I almost feel bad for these kids, having to try to understand why it is they need to do the things I tell them, with little to no explanation. whoops! I've realized this after having a slight life-crisis at the convenient time of 3 am today, when I was supposed to be sleeping. It started off as a realization that my German still isn't anywhere near as good as I want it to be, followed by me wondering if I'd rather spend a second year here, improving my german, or actually get started on my real life, and possibly start thinking about what I want to do with it. I'm basically right in the time where I need to decide what I want to do with my life, and how I need to go about doing it. granted, my German is pretty damn good, especially considering I'm not a native speaker, but... what exactly is it going to do for me later in life? ugh!! so, I'm juggling a few options in my mind: 1) stay here a second year, perfect my german, and then move back to the states to do...... (?) 2) Apply to culinary schools here in europe, (germany or france) complete that here, then come back to the states, get a job in a restaurant/bakery, start to pay off my $60K in student loans (thanks BC!) 3) come back to the states, go to culinary school, prolly CIA either in NY or CA, while working to pay off said student loans, before finally getting a job. 4) come back to the states, attempt to find a "real" job which will help pay off student loans, while going to culinary school at night/in spare time. so yeah, those are kinda my options at the moment. any suggestions from anyone? comments always appreciated...
in other news, Karen and I finally got her TV hooked up to her DVD player, and watched a movie this afternoon... that was my accomplishment for the day. school today was relatively normal; I got to dissect Obama's inaugural address with my 13th graders, which was a lot of fun, seeing how much of the subtext they understood (not much of it) other than that, not really much new going on.. had a nice relaxing weekend, read alot, and hung out. Tomorrow we're gonna show "supersize me" to the kids, instead of having Stammtisch, and we'll talk about how the fast food culture of america has really spread out, and actually been blown WAY out of proportion (most of my kids would assume that its the norm for americans to eat that much mcdonalds :x)
ok, now I'm rambling... have a great week, everyone!

-seany

if youtube had been around when i was a child:

this would've been me:

Happy Thursday!
So basically, it has been a combination of awesome and awful week. First off, I’ve had a lovely migraine that’s been coming and going in varying intensities all week. Pretty much all of my classes this week were a lot of fun, I got to play around with my kids, and they got to see a little bit more of my personality. (migraines tend to make me slightly more sarcastic…) I got to talk about the election, and the inauguration, and got to lead some pretty cool discussions. The afternoons were mostly spent cowering in bed or the bathroom with a cold wet towel wrapped around my head. I missed stammtisch on Tuesday because I spent the majority of the afternoon yacking, and didn’t think it’d be a good idea to leave my little cave. I watched Obama swear in online, and watched his speech, and then passed promptly back out. I also had fun bike misadventures this week, and so I ended up spending more time and money (neither of which are plentiful) than I wanted to, attempting to get it back to operating status… Other than that, the week has been kinda un-eventful. (I think… but then again, in my drugged out stupor, another war could’ve broken out, and I still wouldn’t have noticed…) Julian is taking one of his final bar exams today, and Philipp is taking the actual bar exam this week and next, so we’re going to go out tonight to celebrate a little bit. No plans for this weekend yet, but, who knows how that will develop! Have a great rest of the week, kids!


OH!! yesterday, while still under insomnia from Imitrex, i discovered a fantiastic website that allows you to make obama-style icons of yourself, so i made a few funny ones:


I felt a little elvis-y... my hair was doing crazy stuff anyways, so the sneer comes automatically :D



...just having fun with my webcam, as per usual...

late update...

Hi guys, sorry it’s been a while since I updated. Life has been pretty crazy the past few weeks! The entire family came to Göttingen, and got to spend a few (freezing) days running around my neighborhood, and exploring what there is to do here. On weds, the 7th, Meghan and Mariah came to visit, and stayed for a week. It was amazing to see them again, I can’t believe it had been almost 9 months since the last time I’d seen them! The family left Friday morning to go back to Munich, and flew home safely on Saturday. The girls and I got to play around my apartment, which FINALLY warmed up, and then spent the weekend in Berlin, also freezing our butts off. We had Karen with us to show us around her favorite city in the world, and so we had an awesome tour of the city, as well as an entire history of every single building we saw! Hehe… It was my first trip to Berlin ever, and it def won’t be my last… it seems like a really fun city, and I can’t wait to go back! The following week, we laid pretty low, aside from going out a few nights with my roommate, and Meghan and Mariah went on a quick day trip up to Hannover to explore. They left that Thursday, leaving me with an entirely empty apartment, and a lot of fun pics… (thanks, Meghan!) Last weekend was fairly uneventful, I stayed in and was antisocial for most of it, balancing out the previously hyper-social month.
In fun news, the stove/oven is fixed, so I can cook again *YAY!* I got to expand Meghan and Mariah’s culinary experiences while they were here, (HA) and have been cooking up a storm since then. While the fam was here with a car, I made papa take me on a mass grocery-hauling run, and picked up a ton of big things that are a pain to walk/carry on a bike home. I got a 15 kilo bag of potatoes, and a 15 kilo bag of onions. The onions are not QUITE half gone, but with plans to make French onion soup over the weekend, they will be soon. Any ideas/recipes for potatoes would also be greatly appreciated. I TRIED to make a Spanish tortilla for the girls, only to discover that neither of them like eggs… echt schade!
The next few weeks will probably be uneventful as well, with the exception of the first weekend of feb. I have feb 2nd and 3rd off, which means: sean has a 5 day weekend, followed by a 2 day week. I’m not sure what I’m gonna be doing that weekend, but Karen wants to go visit Matthias, which I’m down with, as I haven’t been down to Aachen yet to visit him (whoops!) we’ll see how that goes…

oh yeah, and happy inauguration!! YAY!!!!

stay healthy and warm, y'all!

-seany

Second Christmas Break Blog

Hey everyone, I hope you had an awesome New Year's Eve!! I yet again have a quick internet connection, so i'm uploading more daily updates combined into one big post.

enjoy!


Weds, Dec 31st
New Year’s Eve, in Spain! We spent most of the day lounging around, eating, and wandering outside a bit. We went to the royal palace, and saw the old downtown area. That evening, Daniel ran a 10K, and so we went downtown to watch him pass by. There were something like 40,000 participants, and many of them dressed up in fun costumes for the race. I got some great pictures of the sprinting smurfs, a running case of beer, plenty of Scotsmen, and lots of other very inventive costumes. We then walked back to the apartment, through the streets of Madrid, which had been cleared of car traffic for the race (very eerie). After that, we headed down to Abuela’s (Hope’s mom- Abuela= grandma in Spanish). She treated us incredibly well, and filled us beyond what I thought humanly possible with food. She had roasted an entire suckling pig, and we ate pretty much the whole thing. At midnight, the Spanish tradition is to eat 12 grapes in the 12 seconds after midnight, and if you succeed, you’ll have good luck for the rest of the year. I, of course, succeeded (I have a large mouth). By 2:30, pretty much everyone was beat, and couldn’t eat another bite, so we hit the hay.


Thurs, Jan 1st
I personally slept in until about 1. I was not, however, the last one up! Still full from the previous meal, I skipped breakfast and lunch. We had been invited by Abuela to one of her favorite restaurants in the outskirts of Madrid, so, we all got dressed up, and met the entire family out at this restaurant. The food there was also fantastic, although no one could eat very much. Afterwards, we went out for coffee at this HUGE restaurant in the area, which used to be in Franco’s personal hunting grounds, so now its surrounded by a huge nature reserve with lots of deer and wild boars, which walk right up to the fence. Went home afterwards, and packed.

Fri, Jan 2nd
Got up early, (8) packed up BUP, and got on the road to France. It took almost 10 hours to get up to southwest France. There, we met up with some old friends, who used to be our neighbors in MD, and who’s kids have become my little sisters. We got in late, had a fantastic late dinner, and a really nice reunion. (the girls are all grown up now, it makes me feel really old...)

Sat, Jan 3rd
Got to sleep in a little, had a nice breakfast, and then went out into the back yard to clear out the bushes and trees. The Ras’ live in a huge old farmhouse that they’ve restored, and still have a lot of yard, so, after sitting in BUP all the previous day, it felt really nice to be outside, and active. I also got to play with fire, which always makes me happy. I didn’t really make a New Year’s resolution, but I figured, if I had made one to be more active in 2009, I had already done my entire resolution just on Saturday. Stayed up for a late dinner (and s’mores,) and got to bed late.

Sun, Jan 4th
Slept in a little, groaned my way outta bed (I was much sorer than I thought,) and made my way downstairs. We decided to go out to a couple little old French towns in the area to be tourists. It was nice and cold, so we bundled up, and wandered around, and got some great pics.

I'll be home either the 5th or the 6th, and will most likely be able to post pictures then, although I am going to try to post them now... we'll see..

-seany