stinkeye!

So I woke up this morning, slightly hungover, (if I’m gonna be honest) and got on my way to school. I ended up walking due to the frozen brake and gear lines on my bike, and got to school just barely in time for class. Walked into my classroom, said good morning to the students, and approached the teacher to say hello. She jumped back from me when she looked up, and goes “oh my god, what happened?!?” not the best confidence-booster first thing in the morning… turns out, my left eye had had some sort of capillary break, and so the whites were completely red. Not bloodshot. Red. Scary- zombie- gonna eat your brains- red. I went to look in the mirror and almost freaked myself out… So, as I was teaching the class, I wondered why they were all so quiet and well behaved, albeit staring at me like I was gonna start projectiling green all over the classroom. I must say, it was one of my most successful lessons. So, lesson for future: if you aren’t scary enough to get kids to listen to you, avoid visine for approximately 24 and a half years, and you’ll be good! it's the automatic stink-eye!
happy thursday!
-seany

jetlag

also, I'm freaking tired. I always get terrible jetlag when flying east, and this trip is no exception... Since weds, I've probably ended up catching maybe 8 hours of shut-eye, in short segments, at irregular times. It's really really annoying! However exhausted I get, I usually end up waking up within a couple hours of crashing, and am unable to go back to sleep. Maybe Aidan and I will experiment with the soporific qualities of wine tonight (or this afternoon...) :D anyways, hope everyone is staying inside and keeping warm! Or at least enjoying playing in the snow!
happy weekend!
-seanyB

backlog no. 1

Weihnachtsmarkt misadventure:
Sooo, if you don’t know by now, the Christmas markets, Weihnachtsmärkte, are one of my favorite things about Germany. I try every year to go to as many of them as I can, collect glasses, eat and drink a ton, and generally enjoy myself, while soaking up some German culture. I have some favorites, (Goslar chief among them) and I also explore new ones. This year, I was taking some of my foodie friends to the Goslar Weihnachtsmarkt, and we had it all planned out. (that statement right there should sound warning bells in your head if you know me at all…) We ended up meeting at the train station in Göttingen, and had to run to catch the train. Turns out, when you’re running to catch a train, sometimes you don’t pay attention to what the train actually says on it. This was one of those sometimes. We pack onto the train, all of us collapsing in between train cars, the doors close, and the train starts moving. In the wrong direction. Lovely. I just started laughing, what else can you do? We found out that we were on the train to Chemnitz, which is approximately near the German-Indian border. The next stop for the train was Heiligenstadt, which means “holy city.” We got off at Heiligenstadt, hoping to find SOMETHING holy, or at least mildly entertaining, and found it dead. The only thing that was open was a grocery store. So what do a group of foodies do? We raid the grocery store for the hour we have to wait for the next train that will take us back to Göttingen. The 5 of us spent approximately 45 minutes perusing the candy and booze aisles. We left, successful, with lots of ritter sport (to bring home for Christmas) and a really nice bottle of champagne for really cheap (for the train ride home!) As we wandered back to the train station, I decided we needed to pregame our ride of shame back to Gö, and so we passed around a bottle of champagne in the freezing cold, sleeting terminal. We ended up going back to the Weihnachtsmarkt in Gö, getting ourselves some dinner, and then going to Goslar a couple days later. It turns out, nothing is a misadventure, as long as you have people you can laugh with (and at,) and share some wonderful champagne with. From the bottle. :D I love how appropriate my blog title really is.

post-christmas update!

Hey guys, sorry for not updating in literally forever…
I just got back from Christmas break at home in MD, got to visit the family, and a bunch of friends. I took a couple days off from school, and left early, so I got to fly home the 17th of Dec, in order to have a full three weeks at home. Thankfully I got there as early as I did, because as we were driving home on the 18th, a blizzard started that lasted all weekend, blanketing MD with abt 20 inches of snow. It was amazing, and completely unexpected. And by unexpected, I mean that I hadn’t read the weather forecast online, and has therefore only brought clothes appropriate for a SOMD winter: casual shoes, a nice jacket, gloves, a hat, that’s abt it… Not optimal for climbing through, shoveling off, or otherwise adventuring in snow. Oh well! It was gorgeous! I took a ton of pictures down at the beach, including a pretty amazing snow-angel that I made :D I spent a lot of the first couple days hanging out with the fam, getting some kitchen therapy, and making more cookies, candy, and cake than my family could possibly go through, or give away. (strangely enough, not much of any of it is left though… hmmm..) We ended up doing two different turkeys for Christmas, papa made one with marsala, and I made one with lemons and oranges and herbed butter. Both turned out really well, and we stuffed ourselves. I also made a chocolate buttercream meringue cake that turned out AMAZING even though it didn’t look as good as it could’ve… I need to work on my cake-decorating skills. Pics of that will also be posted soon. We had surprise guests right after Christmas. Our parents refused to tell us who was coming (I referred to them as “stranger-danger” until they actually showed up) It turned out to be our fairy god-parents, Dave and Ivanka, with their adopted German daughter in tow! It was a really nice surprise, and Ivanka convinced the kids to come up to the cape for new years. After Christmas, the sisters and I went up to NYC to meet a bunch of our friends, and then up to cape cod, as promised. We dragged along one of my old high school friends, and had a really good time relaxing and sleeping and eating a ton. We drove home on the 2nd of Jan, which was a looong trip, and then celebrated Amish Christmas that evening with the fam. I got some really fun cooking tools, some of which I unfortunately could not to bring to Germany, as they would get ruined by Julian’s “cooking” :D
I spent the last week in MD meeting as many people as I could, before I had to head back here to Germany, but still ended up not seeing a bunch of people I wanted to. Sorry you guys! I’ll be home in july though, and we’ll have plenty of time then to catch up, and for me to cook for you…
All in all, I had a great time, seeing old friends, meeting new people (I have some GREAT stories abt aidan’s friends :D ) and hanging out with the family again.
I’ll try to update this more and more as my Germany tour winds to a close (frowny face) so if you haven’t lost faith yet, hold on to it for just a little while longer, and hopefully I won’t disappoint. Many more misadventures planned for the spring and summer!!

gah!

this could not have been on a more appropriate week.

epic fail...

So apparently American culture really is taking over the world. I have gotten used to seeing mcdonalds and burger kings and subways all over the place. I have gotten used to the Yankees hats that everyone thinks just means NYC. I have laughed at English words that have become part of the German vocabulary: “hast du das online gefunden?” It’s become old hat now. I was not prepared, however, today, in my 9th grade class, when, while working in a group project, one of my students, in the midst of a convo in German, dropped the epic fail. Really. As in: “hast dud as gesehen? Was er gemacht hat war ne total epic fail.” My jaw actually dropped before I cracked up mid-class. I had to ask the kid where he had heard that, and whether people here said that now. Apparently so. I cannot WAIT to here the epic fail bomb dropped in other conversations with my friends. I will make fun of them mercilessly.
In other news, happy almost Halloween!! (how has October flown by so quickly?!?!?! AAAHH!! Aidan is here, doing well, and still apt hunting. I’m back at school this week, and I’ll start my new schedule next week. Yay!
Hope you’re all doin good!

-seany

Hamburg Foodfest!

So, on my second day of fall break, today, I headed up to Hamburg with a few friends to go to the northern Germany organic food expo. Ooh yes… woke up this morning at 545, after a few minutes of sleep, and headed up to the lovely city-state of Hamburg, where, shock of all shocks, the sun was SHINING!! It NEVER shines in Hamburg! It was pretty cool… we went into the convention center, got our pretty nametags and swagbags, and headed in! it was pretty much heaven. Except for the vegan stuff. Let me just say: ew. I normally avoid vegan things like the plague, probably because I believe that vegans carry the plague, and that they also can’t taste anything, which is why they choose to be vegan. (sorry, readers who are vegan, no offense intended, but I happen to think that that is a poor life choice. Also, don’t be offended if I put on rubber gloves before I shake your hand… I do that to some other people as well.) I ran away from the vegan foodhawkers, but was tricked once! They cheated, and actually looked like they had eaten real food! So, I tried a vegan blueberry muffin for the first (and last) time ever. Lets just say, (and, oh god am I gonna get shit for this) that there was no bluffin with this muffin… I took a single bite, and lets just say my face didn’t know whether it wanted to shrivel up in disgust, or explode with vomit. Needless to say, I thanked the vegan decepticon nicely, and spit my mouthful into the nearest available receptacle. I will never, ever, ever give up meat and meat products. ever. Other than that, the food was amazing… got to try lots of different organic chocolates, cheeses, coffees, wines,(!) fruits, veggies, and various and sundry other lovely things… On the way there, I got my fill of foodie conversation, and on the way back, I got to talk abt international politics and econ, which was lovely.. all in all, a fantastic day. Now, back to the rest of my fall break :D
-seany