Fahrrad Fahren

I tried riding a bike the other day for the first time in almost ten years...

Riding a bike is not like riding a bike!

Anyway, I've had quite an adventure since I last posted. There'll be pictures and summary of my trip to Berlin, Prague and the North Sea soon to come.

Das Wetter

Das Wetter in Dortmund ist Scheiß!
I still don't have internet in my dorm so I have to come to the library to do anything. I'll put something of value up here when I can do it in the comfort of my room. So far though, my time at the Universität has not been a pleasant experience. The weather is terrible (freezing, raining, sleeting, hailing, snowing, windy, I live a mile from my class, the library and the cafeteria, etc...) and because I came in the middle of the Deutsch class for the exchange students, I'm the odd one out.
But it's definitely getting better. Yesterday we went to see The Reader auf Deutsch (Der Vorleser) and I thought it was pretty good but still not worthy of the Oscar people said Slumdog cheated it out of. Slumdog was better. I was surprised that I could understand almost everything for at least the first half of the film and at least half through the rest of it; it was a good experience. I met some of the other students from the other levels of the Deutsch class and today I had lunch with some of them and then we went to a cafe called the Sonnedeck (Sundeck) and oddly enough the sun did make a brief appearance through the seemingly endless mass of clouds above the glass roof. Tonight I think I'll try the party at one of the student bars; a different dorm hosts a party each night. I went Monday and had a good time but Tuesday morning i felt like dying so at least I know where my limit is with Deutsch Beer now.

Venlo

Today was my second full day in Deutschland and it went very well. I’ve been working really hard on my Deutsch and so I apologize because I will probably become more and more hypocritical over time as I make grammatical errors due to my mind being set in Deutsch and not English. I am still a grammar nazi, I assure you.
I’ve been staying with my Tante Martina and Onkel Freddie and I have a good opportunity to practice my Deutsch since my Onkel doesn’t speak English and my Tante knows just a little more English than I know German. I’ve got to hang out with my whole family (minus my cousins, most of which all have their own jobs and houses now) at my Opa’s house twice now and that was really cool. Living in Deutschland with locals has revealed many new things to me that I did not experience last year traveling across the country as a tourist, I definitely like it. I was made for this kind of life.
Today I went to Venlo with my Tante Isolde and Onkel Norbert. Venlo is the first Dutch city over the border in the Netherlands. That was definitely an experience; there was a lot to see there. And it is where I took that picture of the skull with the crown of thorns. It was mounted on the back of their Rathaus. I learned a lot of Deutsch on that trip because they speak English very well and they like to talk.
When we got back, I took a walk with my Tante Martina down the road to a restored 18th century village. That was pretty neat, also in the open-air museum was a building with a huge train set –bigger than any I’d ever seen in hobby shops or anywhere else in the states. It was pretty neat too. When we left there, we were already pretty close to the house that my cousin Yvonne just moved into with her husband in February so we went to visit them and their place is really cool. It is small, one house split in two like most Deutsche houses, but I really liked it. I found out it’s not that expensive either –it’s about two or three times more than I paid for my apartment junior year but twice as large and at least ten times as nice –large windows, a porch and a yard with a shed, spiral stairs, a basement and an upstairs… and that’s all after I converted the rent in Euros to Dollars. Lemme just come clean: I’m not coming home ;-)
We had homemade, Deutsch style pizza for dinner and it was gooood. In the evenings we watch a little bit of TV which is pretty crazy here. It also helps my Deutsch because they talk very quickly and they have different accents. We watch a comedian named Mario Blarth and he’s pretty damn funny. It’s like Mind of Mencia (except obviously better) or imagine a late night talk show mixed with a sketch comedy show –it’s hilarious, even if you only understand half of it. They guy reminds me of a mix between Paul Rudd and Simon Pegg, two of my favorite comedic actors.

Goodbyes

I can’t believe it’s only two days now before I leave. This will most certainly be the longest amount of time I’ve ever spent out of the country but it will also be the longest trip I’ve ever been on and every minute that I get closer to it, these things become more and more evident to me and it’s beginning to blow me away just thinking about it. Having to say goodbye 90 different times to the residents at Ardenwoods was difficult enough but then I was faced with saying goodbye to my friends which I had no idea how to go about doing. Whether it was Megan, who I’ve known for seven years or Maren, who I just met in January, or my college friends I’m so comfortable with or Michelle and Katie and the other people I work with whom I consider friends though we don’t hangout that much after work –I left everyone after wishes of god luck and pleas not to forget to come back and every time I had a sinking feeling in my gut as the fact settled in me that I wouldn’t see them for almost five months.
I also have at least a couple friends I didn’t get to see and some that are graduating in May (including a few of those I didn’t say bye to). This is all relatively new to me and I’m having a hard time processing it. I know I’m going to miss a whole lot while I’m gone but I’m both a little curious and also a little afraid to find out what I will miss the most once I’ve been over there for so long.
To everyone I may not see again (or won’t be seeing for a very long time most likely), I wish you all the best of luck in your lives and I hope maybe someday when we’re older we’ll find somehow to catch up. To everyone in the Whee (and also Angie) we need to have a big throwdown when I get back. And to everyone who doesn’t know what they’re going to do without me, I wouldn’t be going anywhere permanently unless I could take you with me ;-)

One week to go

The past week has been quite a trip. First we got that big snowfall Sunday night which was a cool change of pace. I got my car stuck on a hill trying to get home and then took a cool walk the next morning with my sister. I had a couple days off from work and I didn’t have to teach at all. Thursday and Friday I hung out at Jeremy’s and Friday –I think– was one of the chillest days of my life. I felt so good. A positive light was suddenly cast on everything and it lasted all day and a little into Saturday. Sunday, at work, I was kinda pissed off but afterwards I watched Transsiberian, which was pretty cool. I definitely liked the fact that the Russians actually spoke Russian. I also threw together a PowerPoint on the Byzantine Empire and the Crusades which I taught today.
The lesson went fairly well but I just wasn’t feeling it the way I was with the last couple I taught. I wasn’t very familiar with the content and I had already talked to them a bit about Byzantium on the day that I subbed so I think they were getting bored a little bit.
Right now I wish I had asked off for this whole week or not booked my flight until a week later because I feel very rushed. I have to teach again on Friday and this time I will be observed by my professor from Western and I have to have a professional lesson plan done up. He also has not responded to my e-mail as yet and this is beginning to frustrate me. I haven’t started to pack anything and I leave in 9 days. I know it’s all going to work out someway or another, though. Whatever loose ends I have next Wednesday morning, they’ll just have to wait 5 months to be resolved because I am getting on that plane. If it gets too stressful, I’ll probably just watch Sarah Marshall again and I’m sure I’ll feel better afterwards.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall

Nevermind: I just watched Forgetting Sarah Marshall for the fourth time and it is awesome. It's one of my favorite movies of all time. Seriously; top ten. It's so good just because it is, not because of the good mood I've been in. It simply is awesome.

Good Day(s)

Monday I had a day off from work –my first in over two weeks– but I had to spend it working on my lesson I presented yesterday. I taught the class a section in the chapter on Ancient Rome. It covered Caesar, Augustus, the Early Empire and the Pax Romana (all the important stuff about Rome). It went so well. I finished with just enough time to give them a review quiz and summarize the chapter before the bell rang. The class seemed genuinely interested in the lesson –something I contribute to the material and not necessarily my instruction– and they asked a ton of questions. I did a PowerPoint presentation which I think they really liked. I’m so used to professors using PowerPoint that I’d forgotten how little it was used in high school. Today in class, one of the students even suggested that the teacher use PowerPoints from now on because it helped her learn and another told me the way I taught made it easier for him to take notes yesterday.
After school yesterday I went back to work and it seemed like an eternity since I’d been off –I’ve grown so accustomed to being in uniform and pouring coffee and whatnot. Yesterday night I went over to my Grandparents’ to watch the Sabres stomp the Leafs on the road which was sweet.
Today went rather smoothly and I had the day off again. Surprisingly, I was not called in and I was able to get some errands run which always makes me feel good. I found out I have over $1000 in the bank for the first time since the summer of ’07 so I’m pretty damn proud of myself about that. All in all, I’m feeling pretty good. I’m not even worrying too much about my thesis right now, I’m just trying to not let things get to me and I have to admit it is so much better this way.
I watched Forgetting Sarah Marshall just a couple of hours ago and I thought it was great. It’s probably due more to my overall mood these past few days but I laughed out loud all by myself watching it. It was hilarious and Mila Kunis definitely redeemed herself for her role in Max Payne because that movie was definitely not good. I’m sure if I had watched it at any other point in my life, it wouldn’t have seemed so good to me but I did and so it did.
That’s it right now. Just wanted to put down some thoughts on how good I’ve been feeling.