Storytime

Hey all!

I haven't collected any major stories in the past few days, but I have collected a whole lot of little ones.  Here they are, in no particular order:

--At the couchsurfer meetup on Friday, Tool made an appearance, and I made him pay me back for the whisk.  In addition, the Kiwi gifted me with a 50 cent whisk she found in a secondhand shop, so now we have a whisk for the kitchen, and a whisk for flunkyball.

--Speaking of flunkyball, the Kiwi and I are organizing a giant grill party/flunkyball tournament for next week.  It's bound to be many things, including epic.

--Speaking of the Kiwi, we're going to Berlin next weekend!

--Oh, and she came over and we cooked a roast last night.  I don't think I've eaten that much since I moved to Germany, and my stomach was so happy, and the food was so good, I sang songs about the chicken in between shoving it in my mouth.  And then we watched Game of Thrones, followed by the 12 minute epilogue of Lost.  Which apparently exists, and, in case you were wondering, clears up absolutely nothing.

--I missed my only class on Friday because my bike broke while I was on my way there.  And by "broke" I mean "the chain came off," which I'm usually pretty good at fixing myself, but this time I couldn't do it.  So I had to forego class to take my bike to the repair shop.

--Other bike things that are sad: my front basket fell off the other day.  By all appearances, it seems to have rusted through, but I'm really, really sad.  German Mountain Man is going to see if he can weld it back on on Thursday, and I sure hope he's successful.  I mean, if worst comes to worst, I still have a basket, like ever other bike.  But I miss my super cool double-granny baskets.

--In Portuguese today my professor asked me for an example of a traditional American food, and I, like the graceful swan I am, said, "Uh...hamburgers?"  His response: "Do you know why portuguese food is better than american food?"  "No, why?"  "Because Portugal still has a culture."

Really?  Really?  Do we want to play this game?  By all means, let us talk about that beautiful, strong, glittering culture Portugal has worked so hard to maintain.  Let's talk about how it has ceased to be relevant since approximately 1602.

I sort-of got him back later, when he was asking everyone for acronyms so he could demonstrate how they're translated into the beautiful, strong, glittering language of Portuguese.  When he asked me for an American acronym, I busted out "NAFTA." The Mexican girl laughed, but the professor just stared at me for thirty seconds, and then called on someone else.

--Speaking of language classes, Mondays are pretty much my most difficult day, if only because I have Portuguese and Swedish within a few hours of each other.  My roommate says that your native languages and your foreign languages are located in two different places in your brain, and when, for example, you're working in your foreign language Swedish, the part of your brain that deals with German and Portuguese are also activated.  Which makes sense, because on Mondays, by the time we're an hour or so into Swedish class, my brain starts legitimately short-circuiting.  I'll go to ask Al what this word means, or how you say that, and then it's like the demon hamsters that power my brain go on strike--suddenly, I can't formulate the most basic of sentences in any language, and I stare blankly at my worksheet with my mouth hanging open. Then I usually just start stabbing it with a pencil and making broken noises.

Although I have to wonder where Portuguese is in my brain.  There's a surprising amount of grammar we cover that I know without knowing I knew it.

--I found a singing teacher here in Göttingen, and he's super cool, so that's fun!

--The weather sucks, but I still love every second of my life.  Between friends, the boy, and school, I am fiendishly fiendishly busy, and I haven't even added an income to that situation.  I don't know how I'm going to get through the semester sleeping several hours a night, but I do know it's going to go by fast.  I can't believe it's already the first week of May.

--Oh!  So I was considering being a good student and getting an internship during the month of August, since all my friends will be gone.  And then I reconsidered, and decided I'd much rather go on a two-week tour of Eastern Europe before meeting up with Claire in Ireland for our month of backpacking.  YAY!

--I was to a house party Friday night, and I ran into the girl who teaches my rolled-r class.  She was drunk and hooking up with some dude.  Tomorrow's class is totally not going to be awkward or anything.

--Al and I went to a castle last weekend--which turned out to be closed, because you can close castle ruins.  So then we went to another castle.  Partial life win.

--New song of the day?  Sorry it's in German, but it's still nice:

Hope you all had fabulous weekends!