When I said it was sunny...

I actually meant it was sunny for about an hour this morning, and now it's pouring. Go figure...

Anyone want some rain? I would happily trade for even just a little sun.....

And now off to get soaked while going to class...

Today I bought an elephant...

I bet you're reading this because of the title. Ha! Gotcha!

But I really did buy an elephant today. Not the kind that eats up to 300kg a day, but the smaller, fuzzier kind. The saddest part of this is that I bought this elephant at ikea after seeing the elephant my moms bought Deborah's granddaughter and wanting one (now I have one, because they keep basically the same stuff at all ikeas, regardless of country). Why is this sad? Deborah's granddaughter is almost two. I'm not. But I love my elephant very much. And the proceeds go to unicef. Any naming ideas?

A really quite pathetic picture of me with my elephant...

In other Oldenburg news, the sun came out today. I said to my horn teacher "The sun is shining! What's wrong?". This was the first sun sighting in probably a week. It's rained pretty much constantly the last few days (or longer... I'm losing track). It's really quite amazing how "cold" it is here when it's still well above freezing. The humidity kills.

School is going pretty well. I'm starting to understand more and more, although I still have days when my teachers might as well be speaking martian. Who knows, maybe lessons would make more sense in martian.

Anyway, the time is ripe to curl up with my elephant and a mug of hot chocolate and possibly lunch. Until next time!

Oh, and for all of you who read the required comment post and didn't comment, FAIL! Unfortunately, I don't know who you are (it doesn't tell me who reads my stuff....). But feel guilty, feel very guilty.

Macbeth

So.... I saw Macbeth last night. The catch? In German. I was really curious to see if they could translate it poetically, which, they can. Could I understand it? Not really. I got some of the monologues, but a lot just went right over my head. I think I'll stick to the original English when doing Shakespeare from now on. Shakespeare really doesn't need to be made any harder.

But that's okay, because I enjoyed it anyway. It was a crazy, cool experience that I'll probably remember for a very long time, even if some of my memories are of utter confusion. And it was a good Halloween activity.... bloody knives, murder, suicide, death, destruction. Good stuff!

My Courses

So, I've dropped some stuff so that maybe, just maybe I'll be able to survive the semester. Here is what I'm taking: Literary Translation (awesome masters class that for some reason I'm taking. We spend hours on just paragraphs, and it totally messes with my brain), Timeframe of the Enlightenment, my focus being on Jewish/Christian relationships (scary hard), Literature focusing on the Sturm und Drang authors (also very hard), German (the easy class for exchange students), The Symphony (music theory), History/Theory of Persian/Arab music, Orchestra, and a private lesson.

Jealous, anyone? Great, you can write my history paper. Every time I think of that class, my heart fills with dread and I want to drop it, but alas, I can't.

And with that happy, happy thought, I end this post.

Homework

Okay, if you read this, you are REQUIRED to comment. Please. As you know, I tutor some boys. Right now I'm mostly working with the 9-year-old, and every week I give him something to do as homework (in English). I'm running out of ideas really fast..... so if you have ANYTHING, please give it to me or tell me about it. He's really too young to do a lot of the typical assignments I associate with learning a language, so anything is helpful.

Also, we're sort of running out of things to do while I'm there. My access to English children's books is really quite limited, so I need something new to do.... Today we mostly played board games, which would have been fine, except that the cards were in German, and it was hard to get him to say anything in English besides "your turn"....

So you've read, now you get to comment!

The small stuff...

I was riding the bus to the University today, and I saw a man walking with a double bass. In one of the bow pockets? An umbrella. It made me smile.... because we really do have two types of weather here: cold rain, and really cold rain... although I guess it also mists, fogs, and clouds here.

I've been thinking... a dangerous pastime, I know (sorry, had to make a Beauty and the Beast reference)... it's the little moments that matter. Considering that my nearest family is thousands of miles away, there are days when I feel really alone... and then a woman will help me at the grocery store, or someone will smile at me on the street, or invite me to their house for a meal... and then I feel better. But then I also feel like I have to pass it on, whether its a smile or food.

I think everyone should spend some time in another country.... learn about another culture, learn another language.... I feel like the only possible thing it can foster is tolerance, a necessity in a shrinking world. Being far from home forces people to rely in the kindness of strangers, and realize that no matter where a person lives, where they're from, or what they believe, they're still people.

Haha, my writing is so disorganized today! But I hadn't posted actual writing on my blog in a while, so I figured I would write a bit today....

Anyway, any questions or topics anyone wants me to write about later?

Die Wattwanderung Part II

Remember about two months ago how I promised more pictures from our hike across the North See? Well, I finally figured out where on Facebook these pictures are, so here they are!

Before we hit the mud there were pretty flowers....

The beginning of the mud, when we still all thought we could avoid it by walking around it.... :)

But then we got here, where there was really no way around it

So evidently if you pick up enough jelly fish it stops hurting. Our guide found this one for us.

Our view from across some mud....

Closer.... the orange and yellow one is me... :)

Our guide found us something.... Or was telling us how many bacteria we were stepping on

A cute little green crab...

A closer look at the crab...

I don't really remember what I wrote about this trip last time.... but in case everyone else has also forgotten, we hiked from an Island back to the mainland during low tide. It 13 Km and about four hours and mud! There were lots of animals, lots of shells, and lots worms. Our guide was amazing, and told us more than we could ever want to know about the mud! Oh, and for those of you who have been holding your breath since August, my tennis shoes did come clean in the wash.