Classic Crumbs

Blog Move!

2009-08-19T22:04:00.002+02:00

Hey everybody!

I've moved my blog to http://classic-crumbs.blogspot.com!

June photos and cake!

2009-06-22T00:04:00.003+02:00

What I've been up to since I returned stateside...

Monsieur Buttons!

Awww, my two favorite boys.

The original recipe for this cake can be found at that wellspring of fabulousness, Smitten Kitchen, HERE. I multiplied all of the measurements by 1.5, so that I could make the cake in the a pretty little Bundt pan, since I didn't have the 9" round that the original calls for. I also replaces the raspberries with cherries, since a certain guy I know would eat himself to death on cherries if given the chance...

Preheat the oven to 400.

1.5 cups flour

3/4 tsp baking powder

<3/4 tsp baking soda

3/8 tsp salt

3/4 stick unsalted butter, room temp

1 cup sugar

3/4 tsp vanilla

3/4 tsp lemon zest

1.5 large eggs [just crack the second one, beat it up a bit, and pour half of it into the batter]

<3/4 cup buttermilk, very well shaken

1.5 cups cherries, pitted

To pit the cherries, use a small paring knife and cut the cherries in half around the pit, like you would an avocado. Then, using a toothpick or -- even better -- a bobby pin, poke/scoop out the pit. I suggest wearing some gloves while doing this, or you'll be stained purple for days.

Mix the flour, salt, baking powder and baking soda in a small bowl with a whisk and set aside. Then, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Add the vanilla and lemon and mix again. Then, add the eggs one at a time and mix. Finally, in rotations, add the dry ingredients and buttermilk, ending on milk. DONT OVERMIX! I think I overmixed this a little, since the crumb wasn't as buttery and fine as I would have liked. The cake was nonetheless tasty and delightful, and not too sweet. Great for breakfast!

Return to the American Blogosphere

2009-06-21T22:55:00.001+02:00

please stay tuned as we make the move from travelogue to your promised blog of all things baking, photography, and PhD action.

More adventures in baking in Germany

2009-05-23T01:18:00.004+02:00

It all started with a trip to the "big grocery store" the last time Sylvi and I baked [see the post for delicious banana-chocolate chunk-oatmeal cookies]. We had previously discussed taking a furlough from cookies and baking a cake, and as we were walking down the aisle with all of the different baking mixes -- Sylvi showed me that they do, in fact, have pancake mix -- she stopped to tell me about this one fancy-looking fare called "Russischer Zupfkuchen," and said that we must bake this cake, but from scratch. And that's how we ended up in the kitchen on Thursday, elbow deep in an impressive amount of butter.

So, translated, this cake is called a "Russian Pulling Cake," and we've deduced that the "pulling" part comes from the fact that you can pull out the little chocolate dough pieces from the cake filling. I'm not entirely convinced, and yet I can offer no better explanation. This is kind of like a cheesecake, only a bit lighter, with a sort of mosaic of brownie action going on. Sylvi says she has always thought the dough pieces are flattened and put in the filling, but the recipe we had said to make little balls and -- literally -- "throw" them into the filling. And so we did. It was truly amusing.

Now, I've made my fair share of seemingly complicated cakes in my day [the cranberry swirl cheesecake with gingersnap crust from Christmas 08 rings a bell. Also, the ill-fated masterpiece, that authentic Schwärzwalderkirschetorte (German Black Forest Cake) that I toiled over for hours making for a certain ex's birthday and he didn't eat any of it...], but this one is definitely a little bit time consuming and, above all, messy -- if you're a klutz like I am. But it's certainly not difficult, so I challenge you all to go out, get yourself 500 grams of butter, and give it a shot. The photos will convince you. Recipe at the end.

in German, the word they use for the bottom of

the cake or tart, etc is the word for "floor".

I think they should chance the name to "Cow Cake" = "KuhKuchen".

It just sounds awesome.

[We got our recipe HERE. Another blogspotter doing the world a favor, and baking!]

Ingredients:

for the chocolate portion:

400g flour

200g butter [room temp]

85g white sugar

40g baking cocoa

2 eggs

1 tbsp baking powder

for the filling:

250g butter [room temp]

125g white sugar

500g margerquark

3 eggs

1 tbsp vanilla sugar

oh no! Don't know what quark is? Well I'll tell you, we're not talking infinitesimal parts of atoms, here. Quark is a soft, mild cheese that people here love. It tastes like cheesecake filling, no lie. If you haven't got access to this delicacy where you are, I've approximated the taste to be something like 3 parts ricotta to 1 part sour cream, for the right consistency and flavor. The recipe we used also said you can use yogurt, but I don't feel like it has the same thickness. Cream cheese would be much too thick. Perhaps you could mix yogurt and cream cheese? But I feel like this would be just a bit *too* tangy. Trust me, go with the ricotta-sour cream equivalent. I feel it in my culinary gut. It's the right call. Also, as regards vanilla sugar, you could also just use 1 tbsp vanilla extract.

To start, preheat your ovens to 200C -- that's 392F [we'll say 395. Or 400] and grease a 9 inch springform pan [all we had was a bundt-style springform, but it worked just as well] . Then, attend to the dough that makes the "floor" of the cake and the tasty little spheres. In a bowl, mix together the flour, cocoa powder and baking powder. In another bowl, cream the butter and sugar. Add the egg and mix until fluffy. Then, add the flour mixture to the butter and knead with your hands until it just comes together. Use 2/3 of the dough to cover the bottom and sides of the pan [just as you would graham cracker crust for a cheesecake] and reserve the other 1/3 for later. Next, cream together the butter and sugar for the filling. Add the eggs one at a time, then the vanilla. Then add in your quark or substitute cheese fillingness. Pour the filling into the pan. Next comes the fun! Roll the remaining chocolate dough into small balls and toss them into the filling. I realize now that the point here is to have them at different levels within the strata of the cake.

The recipe says to bake this 1 hour on the middle rack, but we got some burnage on the top of our cake, sadly. I would advise to put some foil over the pan for the first half of baking, then remove it, rotate your pan for good measure, and finish baking. But you know your oven better than I do.

Two weeks notice cookies

2009-05-16T16:00:00.003+02:00

Soooo, only 2 weeks left until I'm on a plane and USA-bound! I'm kind of feeling that this is at the same very short and very long. I'm not sure what I'm going to do to fill my days until then, since one can only clean and organize for packing so many times. To occupy ourselves last night, Sylvi and I spent another evening in the kitchen baking some American-style cookies. BUT FIRST! we went to a great big grocery store that is about 923218x awesomer than the one right by my apartment, so that I could see that Germany did, in fact, have grocery stores that rival their American counterparts that I have so been missing...

We whipped up some Banana-Chocolate Chunk-Oatmeal cookies, the recipe for which I found HERE, at one of my all-time fave foodblogs. My cookies came out really moist and sticky, though, so I'm not sure what happened in translation. They were still delicious, though! The little touch of cinnamon definitely does something magical, if you ask me. Also, fab German chocolate chunks... recipe after the tasty photos...

Banana-Chocolate Chunk-Oatmeal Cookies

makes about 2 dozen cookies

Preheat oven to 350

Ingredients:

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour, unbleached please. I bet this would be great with whole-wheat.

1 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp nutmeg

6 tbsp butter, room temp. unsalted!

1/2 cup white sugar

1/2 cup packed light brown sugar

1 large egg, room temp

1 tsp vanilla

1 cup oats [not the quick-cook kind]

2 cups [12 oz] chocolate chips [we used 200g german bittersweet chocolate, chopped]

2 bananas, mushed

1. In a medium bowl, mix together the flour, baking soda, salt, and spices. Set aside.

2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugars with a hand-mixer until fluffy, about a minute.

3. Add the vanilla to the butter and sugar, then add the egg. Mix once more.

4. Scrape down you bowl, and add the flour mix in small increments -- about 3 -- but don't overmix. Gluten, overdeveloped proteins, etc...

5. Add in your bananas and oats. Stir with a spoon.

6. Spoon in the chocolate.

7. Using a tablespoon, drop spoonfuls onto a baking sheet. Or roll in your hands. Our mix was a bit too wet and sticky to do that, though. I think the Germans oats aren't as big and absorbent.

8. Bake until the edges and brown the tops look done. Original recipe says about 18 minutes, I did about 12 and my cookies were a bit underdone, so I'd aim for 15 minutes. You'll know by the smell, which is delish!

Crumble these and serve one vanilla ice cream. It's just a suggestion. But it's a really fab suggestion.

One-pot amazingness.

2009-05-14T17:10:00.003+02:00

Okay. So, first, I found the most incredible baking blog ever. I spent a good hour or so looking through all of it. I wanted to start making a list of the recipes I wanted to try, but then realized it was about 99% of them and gave up. All that time I waste on Stumble actually led me to to like, a baking oasis. But, I ask you, WHERE does this lady get off having a double oven, when I don't even have a four-burner stove?

On that note, my stove did not fail me last night. This is quite possibly the best thing I have cooked since being relegated to Germany and forced to live a life without the glory that is Stop&Shop. Now I don't think I've ever even eaten Mexican-style rice, but I had a pretty idea of what must go into it, having seen it before; not too sure if this meal is authentic is any way, but I do know that it is all of the following: delicious, 30-minutes, one-post, cost me less than 10 bucks to make, will feed me at least four times. You could also easily make this vegetarian or add a different meat, or different vegetables... I don't know. You could do anything with it -- it's that good.

MexiRice with Chicken

Ingredients:

2 chicken breasts, cut into small chunks

1.5 cups long-grain rice [I used a Basmati/Wild rice mix that my roommate had lying around and won't eat because she's on a diet. Since when does rice make you fat?]

1 cup tomato juiciness from a can of either crushed or peeled tomatoes

2 cups water

1 tablespoon chili powder

1 tablespoon vegetable boullion [or i guess use 1 cup veg. broth or stock in place of 1 cup water. all i have here is powdered veg boullion]

1 green pepper, diced

1 medium onion, diced

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 tbs olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

In a pot, sautee the veggies for about 3-5 minutes over medium-high heat in a tablespoon of olive oil. Add in the chicken and the chili powder and continue cooking for a few minutes, just so that everyone can get acquainted. Add in the tomato juice and water, as well as a bit of the tomato chunks, if you like them. I don't really, so I didn't add much. Bring the mix to a boil, add in your rice, and cook at a low simmer with a lid on for 20 minutes. Salt. Pepper. Serve.

Now, this is all based on the manufacturer's instructions for my rice: 2 parts liquid to one part rice, boil liquid, add rice, simmer 20 min. If your rice has different instructions, adjust accordingly!

Go make this! Tonight! Now!

Hello again, blog.

2009-05-12T18:51:00.004+02:00

Wow, sorry folks; haven't updated much lately, save yesterday's "shameless self-promotion" [btw, all the photos on the site are now watermarked so that thieving internet bandits can't haxors my photographys]. Not much has been up, really, I've mostly just been lounging about the house reading and dreaming up all the recipes I want to make when I get back to the states in a mere 19.5 days! I've got a hankering to bake that one afternoon of chocolate chip cookies just couldn't satiate -- tasty as those cookies were... I swear, they were the best chocolate chip cookies I have ever made; even BETTER than the marble cookies I made for the RWU kiddies when I was home in March. What? I didn't post the marble cookies? Well snap, I'll get to that at the end of this post, then.

Things with my roommate have been super on-again, off-again and I've basically just given up trying to sort it out. I smile, say hello, and otherwise just keep to myself in my room, which, if you know me well at all, only pleases me all the more because I do love me my solitude. I've been taking some time everyday to organize stuff in gleeful anticipation of packing. There's so much Germany-paperwork I want to throw out, but am afraid to part with before I'm safely landed in the U.S; nonetheless I chucked a whole bunch of useless paper today and cleaned out my suitcases of the junk they've accumulated in their little dusty corner. Boxed up my books and winter coat and sweaters to send home sometime later this week and weighed the box to make sure it did not exceed 20kg [we're at 15.5, woo!]. The interesting thing will be the sight of me and Sylvi trying to get the box to the post office, what with the damn trams still being detoured around the stop in front of the post, and the box being an awkward size for me to carry alone [which is not to say I can't lift 15.5 kilos, kids]. I think with that one box being sent everything else should fit nicely into my suitcases; I'm just hoping against hope that neither suitcase is overweight and I have to pay for it, since that was a pretty penny the first time and I'm already shelling out 65E for the box to be shipped. I might stuff a few more things into the box just to be safe, since I've still got a few kilos to go on that anyway. Ugh, if I never move large quantities of my stuff across oceans again, it'll be WAY. TOO. SOON. I know, I know, I've said that about a lot of things [trains, 8-hour flights, eating lentils...] but this time I mean it, hardcore.

In other news I've been hunting around the interwebs for jobs; applied to a few but haven't heard back in the positive about anything yet. Mostly just clerical/administrative assistant stuff, but also a researcher position, a baker position [totally not qualified, but god wouldn't that be so awesome], and a few positions with children's programs in Providence. Also going to apply to be a sub in the Montville schools for the last few weeks of the term there if I haven't gotten anything lined up before returning home, and next week call up The Potting Shed to see if maybe they have some hours for me. I might put a listing up to be a nanny on craigslist again like I did last summer, since that was pretty successful last time around, I just screwed because I had to leave the country a month earlier than planned. Ahh, if only I lived in a world where people would just instantly want to buy my baked goods with as much zeal as I bake them, right? So that's been that and I've otherwise been kind of stuck inside since Sunday, when I jacked up my knee pretty nicely while running. It's such a nice day today, I'm like boiling with rage that I can't go for a jog, but I don't want to set myself back further than I already have. I'll do some yoga later. Also been looking at apartments, which has been going pretty well, all things considered. It'll be easier going once I'm back home and am there to take part in tending to such affairs, assuming we don't move on anything until I get back, which seems somewhat unlikely at this point; in any case, I remain for the most part unworried. And that's the news for now. I'm going to skulk off and maybe pack up a few things in my buzz of anticipation. Right after I post this recipe for you all...

I got this recipe from one of my favorite food blogs: The Crepes of Wrath. It's fabulous and a lot of fun. Also, the raw dough is to die for. Next time, I think I might mix it up and replace one set of chocolate chips with nuts, since this was kind of a crazy lot of chocolate for a girl like me, who likes her chocolate chip cookies easy on the chips. Recipe after the delicious photos.

[Preheat the oven to 375] [this recipe made like a bajillion -- aka 2 dozen -- cookies]

Ingredients:

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

3/4 tsp salt

1 cup [2 sticks] unsalted butter, room temp

3/4 cup packed light brown sugar

3/4 cup white sugar

2 tsp vanilla

2 large eggs, room temp

1/4 cup Dutch-processes cocoa powder, sifted [I could not find this stuff, so I used Stop&Shop cocoa powder. But next time...]

6 oz. white chocolate chips

1 chocolate bar of your choosing, chopped up [I actually used 1.5 Hershey's bars. Next time I might spring for something fancier]

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, and baking soda. Then, in a larger bowl, cream the butter and sugars together until the mix is light and fluffy. Add the vanilla. Add the eggs one at a time. Add the flour mix slowly in small increments until combined. Split the dough in half, and to one half, add the cocoa powder. Add the white chocolate chips to the cocoa dough and the chocolate chunks to the vanilla dough. Using a tablespoon, or any medium-sized spoon, fill up half the spoon with one dough, and half with the other. Roll this into a ball, flatten a bit with your palm, and place on a greased cookie sheet. Bake for 8-10 minutes.

DELICIOUS. NESS.

I heart shameless self-promotion

2009-05-11T23:53:00.001+02:00

I hope to sell some of my skills OTHER than dead languages:

http://amlafrancephotog.weebly.com

let me know what you think!

there's a surprise

2009-05-07T01:16:00.001+02:00

in case you wondering, i will still jump with joy when i don't have to live with my roommate anymore. because she's still not fun to live with. 25. days.

Top 100 to-bake list, 2009

2009-05-06T16:49:00.005+02:00

As you all know, I've been following a handful of food blogs while I'm here in Germany, sort of as an outlet for my passion for cooking that has been massively squelched by my lack of oven and tiny grocery store. It's also given me about a bajillion great ideas of dinners and delicious baked goods. So recently Brown-Eyed Baker and How to Eat a Cupcake both posted genius lists of the 100 things they wanted to make in 2009, and I naturally must follow suit with the top 100 recipes I've spied on the food blogs. You all better plan on inviting me to every dinner and party this year, otherwise, I'll never get through the list. And you won't get to gnosh on tastiness...

Dinner-type foodstuffs:

jambalaya

chicken brunswick stew

pasta with asparagus, parmesan and bacon

penne alla vodka

penne alla betsy

pierogis

pesto and chicken pasta

gnocchi

lasagna verdi al forno

kung pao chicken

mongolian beef

stewed chicken

roasted veggie penne

honey ginger chicken

german-style pulled pork

pulled chicken

chili

sesame chicken

turkey joes

pot roast

asparagus-beef-mushroom stir fry

lasagna rolls

sausage and spinach stuffed shells

fresh pasta

italian wedding soup

roasted pepper and basil pesto penne

pizza crescents

orange chicken

chicken and broccoli

turkey and artichoke stuffed shells

chicken with goat cheese and sun-dried tomato sauce

white bean dip

Baked goodness:

blueberry almond cookies

lemon poppyseed cakes with lemon mousse

blackberry vanilla cupcakes

lemon poppyseed shortbread

oatmeal snack cake

cream cheese and chive biscuits

buttermilk cake

brown butter shortbread

cranberry vanilla coffeecake

rugelach

walnut cream cheese sandwich cookies

blackberry tart with honey mascarpone filling

cookies and cream rice krispy bars

whole wheat bread

raspberry sour cream crumb cake

chocolate chip scones

bagels

brown sugar raisin bread

parmesan ciabatta bread

cranberry scones

soft garlic knots

madeleines

guinness chocolate cake

oatmeal raisin sandwich cookies

green tea cake

apricot white chocolate chip oatmeal cookies

cinnamon bundt cake

sour cream coffee cake

whole wheat maple scones

snickerdoodle cake

honey peanut cookies

pbj bars

s'mores krispies

ginger molasses cookies

oreo fudge bars

white chocolate macadamia nut blondies

lemon bars

samoas bars

plum cake

brown sugar pecan shortbread cookies

tiramisu cake

fig cookies

"breakfast in a scone"

coconut butter thins

chocolate chip cookie pie

reindeer chow

chocolate-covered cherry cookies

s'mores bars

andes brownies

apple crostata

pistachio cake

chocolate chip espresso cookies

blueberry crumble bars

cinnamon buns

homemade funfetti cupcakes

chocolate and nut swirl sour cream bundt cake

snickerdoodle blondies

peanut butter cheerios bars

German American chocolate chip kekse!

2009-05-05T19:48:00.005+02:00

So last weekend after an impromptu photoshoot Sylvia and I finally got into her kitchen [with and OVEN! oh, glorious oven!] to make some good ol' American chocolate chip cookies from scratch. I've seen chocolate chip cookies here, but only pre-made ones that taste like cardboard. Not like the kind I, being the Betty Crocker I am, whip up on a fairly regular basis at home; you know, where I have an oven...

The whole ordeal was quite the adventure, what with figuring out what the German word for "baking soda" is, then converting all of the measurements into weight so that we could use their scale. It is worth mentioning at this point that you cannot convert cups of flour and sugar to mL. It's just not correct...

These were probably the best cookies I've ever made. I think it had a lot to do with the German chocolate we used, cut into nice big chunks. Recipe after photo tastiness... [The original recipe can be found HERE.]

being a graffiti princess

Chocolate Chip Cookies - German~style

300 grams all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

225 grams butter, room temperature

104 grams white sugar

225 grams brown sugar

8 grams vanilla sugar

1 teaspoon salt

2 eggs

350 grams Zartbitter chocolate [bittersweet]

Mix the flour, salt and baking soda together in a small bowl and set aside. Mix the butter and sugar together with a hand mixer until light and fluffy, then add the eggs one at time. Add the flour mix to the butter and sugar slowly with the hand mixer. Chop of the chocolate into chunks and add to the batter with a large spoon. Spoon tablespoon-sized drops of the dough onto a baking sheet and cook at 350F [176 C] for 10-12 minutes, or until golden and browning around the edges.

future blog renovations

2009-05-05T19:45:00.002+02:00

so, i'm taking suggestions on what to re-name this blog after i get back stateside. oh, and in case you didn't know for all these long 11 months, "wörterbuch": "dictionary".

may 5th is the best day ever, it's true.

2009-05-05T14:04:00.001+02:00

my early termination has been approved. see you in less than 4 weeks, America!

still have to figure out what day i'm flying home, really depends on what day is going to cost my the least in flight change fees and the like. luckily, the STA office doesn't open until 6am PST! so i have another hour to agonize, then going to go change my lease with the landlord. woot woot!

Reason #... only. Why Germany is better than America:

2009-04-29T17:06:00.003+02:00

OMGWTFBBQSWINEFLU.

I'm sorry, but you all are aware of my irrational fear of highly infectious diseases, right? Biological warfare, right? That time they gave me anthrax antibiotics?! EBOLA!? THE T VIRUS!?

Stirrings afoot...

2009-04-28T00:26:00.002+02:00

Big Brother was Deutsche Bank.

Waiting for an answer from the Commission about a June 1 termination.

At long last, success with the German postal system.

My roommate and I are going salsa dancing on Thurs. This is most bipolar relationship I've ever been in. That's saying ALOT.

After re-reading my dream post, I think I'm going to start logging my weird ass dreams on here.

A new "German words I've learned" post is in the making.

Patience is a virtue. For 67 more days.

2009-04-25T00:52:00.002+02:00

I'm dealing with my roommate, I'm really doing my best to be above it and thwart her puerile behavior with kindness and politeness. But as I'm sitting here, getting a migraine from the cigarette smell, it's not totally easy. I do not deserve the bitchy cold shoulder [or the salt and pepper shakers and dishtowels being removed, etc. two of which, PS, were mine.] just because I enjoy my solitude at home and don't make conversation.

This? This is NOT what I signed up for. And I am not just talking about the roommate situation...

This year has been the biggest disappointment of my entire life.

I would give a LOT to call up Fulbright and ask to be allowed to go home June 1. All it would take is an email, and believe you me, I am so close. 9 months of misery was NOT part of my contract, man. You can go ahead and think I'm overreacting if you want, and to that I just say: you aren't living it.

Argh

2009-04-24T00:42:00.001+02:00

OMG leave the damn window open.

Big Brother?

2009-04-23T13:54:00.002+02:00

So, on Tuesday I think, and then again twice today, I've gotten calls from a number listed "Private". I haven't picked up because A. I was asleep or in class and B. I have no idea who it is. They haven't left messages. I can't call them back, since its a private number. Freakin weird.

Time for a glorious nap. Then, some apartment searching and maybe French and maybe violin.

Weird!

2009-04-22T13:12:00.002+02:00

I just had the weirdest dream, and feel the need to blog it so that I don't soon forget what a weirdo my subconscious is:

I was driving home from somewhere. I went to go over the 2A bridge, but it had been under construction, and was all new and huge and had way more roads going over it and it was complicated and confusing. Somehow, I took the wrong lane and got on a portion of the bridge that wasn't finished, and drove off into the river. But in my dream, it looked like a vast ocean in the caribbean or something. Memory gets a little fuzzy here -- I think I probably was terrified at the thought of being trapped in a sinking car in the ocean and started waking up -- but somehow I escaped and was back on the bridge complex, walking through a kind of parking garage type deal. I ran into some old ladies, obviously going to the casino!, and got on a bus to get home. The thing is, I took the bus in the wrong direction. I don't know what to do because my purse with my wallet, keys, cellphone, everything, is at the bottom of the river with my car. Also, for some reason, I have no shoes. A nice gentleman and his wife on the bus help me out: they give me $10, as I'm telling them I guess I will just get off at the first stop and try to figure out a way to get home, and the guy suggests I go into a Wendy's if I'm going to ask to use a phone somewhere, because the employees there are always the nicest [wtf?]. So, the first stop is on Route 12, right before the entrance ramp to 95. In my dream everything about this location was actually correct, except for the existence of the Wendy's... there is one in the area, but it's really like 2 miles further down the road. In any case, I go into the Wendy's and I'm afraid they're going to throw me out because I had no shoes [for some reason, at no point in the dream am I soaking wet, as I should be, after plunging into a river...] but I explain to them what happened, they size me up, and eventually go to get me the phone. It's a bunch of guys, not so much unlike those I used to work with at Dunkin'. So, naturally, they first play a trick on me, giving me a fake phone or something. Also, it is important to notice that the counters were unnaturally high in this place, I'm talking almost as high up as my head, so like 5 feet or so. You'll see why later. But finally they give me the real phone, and I call home. The problem is that my parents are away and my brother is the only one home. Since it's the middle of the day, he's asleep. He answers the phone all groggy-like, and I slowly try to explain to him the situation. Again, my memory of the dream here is a little blank, but he either hangs up, or enough time elapses that I call him again, trying to get him to come get me.

Here, there is a total break in the dream, and we skip to a part that makes no sense whatsoever with the previous part of the dream...

My brother comes to get me -- only whoever it was in the dream did not look ANYTHING like Brad -- and for some reason he's really pissed at the guys who work at the Wendy's. He wants to fight them and kill them. So, I keep jumping in between him and each employee in order to stop any violence. At some point, though, I jump up on a counter in between my dream-brother and some guy, and my brother grabs me, like flips me or something, and throws me down on the floor. Remember that the counters are 5 feet high. I'm horribly injured and... there's like 3 more minutes of the dream, but I can't remember. Then I woke up and was totally confused. Now I want a cheese sandwich...

woot

2009-04-20T21:38:00.001+02:00

and we're back online. endlich mal wieder!

Reason #293482932 why studNET is lame:

2009-04-20T14:21:00.003+02:00

so, the university network is down, at least in my building. they posted a little note saying they weren't sure when it would be back up; hopefully it's not too long. in the meantime, i guess i should be somewhat grateful that i am being forced off the internet, and therefore not using up any of my dwindling throughput. right now i am at a bookstore in town [wow, town. hello. it's been a while.] using the wireless. shamelessly -- i'm downloading the new episode of the office that i had been waiting until may to download, so as not to use my throughput. muahaha. all in all, as network outages go, it could definitely be worse.

while the office downloads, i'm surfing www.fmylife.com and checking out apartments. this one looks quite promising. i mean really, who DOESN'T want to live in warren? awesome. after the download is all done, it's off to the drugstore and grocery for a few things, then back to my internetless place to chill and then go running later. the weather is fab. we're approaching the 10-week mark. it's almost may. as soon as it hits may, i am so in the home-stretch.

More random German words that I've learned

2009-04-15T16:06:00.008+02:00

verkacken: to screw something up

mangeln: obviously, to mangle. I saw this in reference to the treatment of the German language; luckily, it wasn't being said about me!

Mandeln: tonsils. Also, almonds. Cool!

spitz auf jmdn. sein: to have the hots for someone

Maschendratzaun: chain-link fence. This one is sort of a convoluted story that includes youtube, weird German western films, Bayerisch, and me hopping a fence and almost breaking my foot.

Myrte: myrtle. Thanks, Greek epigram seminar.

schwänzen: to be a truant. [also "blau machen" -- to 'make blue,' means to play hooky]

Erdmännchen: meercat/prairie dog ["little earth men"]

Geflugelfleischwurst: delicious, delicious chicken bologna log!

Assi's: short for "assoziale," meaning homeless people/drunkards. Note to self: don't tell your German roommate you are "assozial," if you really mean the English "asocial" -- they're not the same.

Luftpolstertaschen: those envelopes with the bubblewrap on the inside

sonnen: to lay in the sun and get a tan. Oh yeah.

Marienkäfer: ladybug

Schach: chess [Dame: queen; Bauer: pawn; Läufer: bishop; Turm: rook; Pferdchen: knight. Strangely enough, I don't know the word for "king," as relates to the chess piece. Oh also, chess piece: figur]

Schwul: gay. I think this must be the derogatory term for it, since my dictionary also produces "fruity" when you search this word.

Es rockt meine Socken: translation for, "it rocks my socks"

Tor: goal. As in soccer. As in the constant stream of boys playing soccer outside my window.

Bestandteile: parts. Thanks, greek geek.

Hawptbanhoof: "Hauptbahnhof," in Sächsisch. I think this may have been the first time I really was drawn to notice the horrible, nasally wonder that is the dialect of Sachsen. Thank you, Mr. Tram Driver Man.

Hackfresse: umm... ground-meat-face. Wow. Germans are mean.

Nachtigall: Nightingale. Not to be confused with "Nacht egal" [wtf was I thinking?]

in der Klaps: in an insane asylum. My dictionary gives it the term "paddywhack," which I think is just fantastic. [Germans try to explain things to me in my own language from time to time, and I give them props. The accent always makes it enjoyable: "the place for mentally sick people."]

tollwütig: rabid. Not rabbit.

verhindert: impeded. Pretty clear from the word. Don't confuse this with "behindert," which means 'handicapped'. On a related note, today I thought my professor called me mentally challenged.

Dick und Doof: Laurel and Hardy, comedy duo from 1930's America. Apparently, I am unamerican and have an educational gap because I have never heard of these folks.

Goebbel: Hitler propaganda minister. Apparently, you call troublemaking little children this. As previously mentioned: Germans are mean!

der Fluchtling: a fugitive

...and, because I guess I may need to know it sometime soon:

die Schweingrippe: SWINE FLU!

Springtime; Nostalgia, hit Leipzig.

2009-04-15T14:59:00.005+02:00

Haven't been up to too much since my last post. The weather here has gotten fabulous -- it's been high 60's - mid 70's everyday basically. Really makes me want to do nothing than sit in the sunspots with all the windows open, enjoying the warm breezes. Everything here has started blooming, so Sylvi and I have really taken advantage and had a few lovely walks, taking photos of every bit of nature in sight.

That's just a few; I'm kind of screwed for my throughput this month after downloading Season 5 of The Office [thanks to the Brownies for getting my hooked, and Josh for feeding my addiction], so I can't upload too many photos.

Classes for the second semester started up last week; the semester schedules are totally weird here, so while I'm used to be in a dead heat to the May finish right now, I find myself painfully at the beginning. I've got two classes: a seminar on Tuesdays about Greek epigrams that is without a doubt contributing to the definitive likelihood of my development of Germany-induced PTSD [I am so not even joking. About the class or the indelible marring of my psychological functions], and a nice lecture about Pindar on Thursdays with a prof I had last semester. As it stands right now, I have 11 more meetings of my seminar [I've survived two! I consider this a massive accomplishment, really] and 10 more meetings of my lecture. I'm undecided yet if I'll go to my last meeting of the seminar on June 31, the day before I leave to go back to the US -- it's somewhat complicated because my lease on this apartment actually ends on June 31, so I have to check out of here that day and stay with a friend that night before leaving and I don't know if I'll really have the time to go to the seminar. Plus, I'll basically be standing at the ready to make a mad dash to the airport. Of course, it would be kind of cool experience one last gut-wrenching slice of Germanness before the escape. We'll see how it works out, depending on who I'm staying with that night and how accommodating my landlord is about my check-out time. Let me tell you how excited I am at the prospect of finally moving out of student housing and ridding myself of such bureaucracy forever and ever, amen.

Speaking of moving out, apartment hunting has kind of absorbed a fair amount of my idle time the past week or so. It'll be really fabulous to have a place to call "home," and have the word not really mean: "campus," "my parent's house," "the nebulous, abstract idea that is 'America'," "my soviet-bloc apartment/place of temporary exile that I sleep in". The hunt has been going fairly well, and right now the front runner is this apartment listed on Craigslist. I think Matt's going to go see the place in person on Saturday, and I'll be interested to hear how it is. Right now, it's kind of the best marriage of location, price, and space, although I have about a a dozen other craigslist links bookmarked and have emailed about 5 landlord's listed on Brown's auxiliary housing website. I'm getting worried about not having a place already lined up by the time I get back, just because by then I imagine there will be slim pickins; but then there's the thought of paying rent for a place starting June 1, when I can't live there until a month later at the very earliest. Complications aside, I'm still pumped and all about it. I'm not really sure anything can rain on my US-Brown-Providence parade, not that I'm inviting fate to try. Oh also, check out the pseudo-double-kitchen of that place. I could bake so much... can't wait to get back stateside and overhaul this blog, including way more foodie entries. Which will undoubtedly torture Missy until she gets back in August. But it's cool, because I have not forgotten my promise of artichoke ravioli with sundried tomato pesto, dear.

Besides surviving seminar week-by-week and going blind reading apartment listings, I've been able to start reading again, thanks to finally having a new pair of glasses. I borrowed "The Clan of the Cave Bear" from Matt and just finished it a few days ago. Definitely a fabulous read, and I can't wait to get to the other books in the series when I get back to the US. I also picked up five books in Paris that I have been peeking through at leisure, while at the same time slowly beginning my translation of Belance's "Epaule d'ombre". It's been good fun reading Cesaire's letters and I am convinced that the cost of shipping the four giant anthologies back to the states is totally worth it. So now I've picked up Ender's Game for the second time, because I am totally enamored of it and know that it's a great lazy afternoon read. After that I might finally crack open the Augustine biography that's been sitting on my shelf since junior year, if I'm feeling up to something that resembles academia. Honestly, I might have to forego such seeming scholastic endeavors and just re-read Ender's Shadow or start the current gem of the bookshelf, Cat's Cradle.

I've been pretty down the past few days just because the weather has really gotten me nostalgic for warm spring days in Bristol, full of grass naps, skipping work, walks in Colt State, and wing nights at Topsides. Now that I know I've got the Brown deal and been rejected from everywhere else, I feel like there's no further reason for me to be here -- and when I think of all this time I am just passing through, and the wonderful times I could be having, I really get frustrated. Obviously being here is a huge, wonderful opportunity and in the past few months I've really been doing by best to make the most of it [which has been rather successful, with Paris and the best Easter since my frosh undergrad years] -- but at the same time I'm missing opportunities to make valuable memories and have good times back in the US, too. I think of all this time I'm never going to get back and it makes me sad. But with Missy and Josh and knowing I'm not alone, I feel a little better. I'm just trying to rack up as many pro's as possible now, in order to salvage the memory of Germany for posterity. Gorgeous spring weather has done a lot to brighten my spirits, even while it makes me long for RI coastlines, and now that I have a pretty busy social life I think not all is lost. But pretty frequently I look back at pictures from this time last year and sigh. Then I translate like 20 different Greek words for "branch" into German and count the days.

Picked up a new yoga DVD when I was home in March and I LOVE IT. It's a different style of yoga from what I had been doing, and I like that now I can mix and match the workouts. Went for a run on Monday, but didn't yesterday and probably won't today, as the poor muscle fibers in my legs ache and rebuild. I am determined to be beach-n-bikini ready the moment I step foot on American soil, and in the name of such a goal, 76 days doesn't seem like nearly enough!

It is so warm in this room [south/west facing, an entire wall of just windows, sunlight 8 hours a day]. I am going to roast when summer weather descends on Leipzig. Hopefully the delightful balminess we're experiencing right now [and is somewhat unseasonably warm for April] will hold out through May and I will not have to relive sweltering memories of things like Stonewall move-ins, greenhouses at The Potting Shed, and that time the AC crapped out at Dunkin Donuts. While last summer gave me a more favorable acceptance of dead-still heat [think July on the second floor of Matt's house, a 4-hour expedition to Cape Cod, grilling behind Almeida 100], I don't think I could survive such conditions without things like Del's lemonade, wave-spray at Brenton Point, and coastal breezes.

Oh! FYI, I have also been invited to start contributing some of my literary work to THIS fabulous litblog, headed up by some poetry-minded friends of mine from RWU who are now scattered all over the US. I don't post there too often, since I am not such a prolific writer as the others, but you should definitely enjoy their unctuous verses.

Of course.

2009-04-05T00:53:00.001+02:00

Just when you think Germany doesn't suck anymore.... it sucks.

C'est si bon

2009-04-04T12:23:00.006+02:00

I guess it's about time I blogged about Paris. I wasn't going to, but, you know, for posterity...

Day -1

Since my flight to Paris was so early out of Berlin [6:45am], I had to stay overnight in Berlin. So, on the 25th I got my stuff together and headed out to the west side of Berlin to meet up with Matt's uncle's German friend, Stefan, with whom I've been communicating via email since July 2008. I was a little nervous having to stay with strangers, but let me tell you, this kind of ended up being the highlight of the whole trip! Stefan and his wife are super nice, speak perfect English, live in the most gorgeous place I've ever seen in all of Germany, and made me a restaurant-worthy meal. I got a little lost getting to their place [courtyards?], but was glad to finally see an oven and a German home with a legit livingroom. They put me up in a spare bedroom on the first floor and I basically had the whole downstairs to myself, including a bathroom!, for the night. They said if I ever want to come stay again I'm welcome to, and I may, even though I can't really stand Berlin, just for the quiet and possibility of baking! They're gone a lot on business and travel all over the world, so we had fun talking about globetrotting, while gnoshing on some kind of white fish slathered with homemade pesto and wrapped in proscuitto, boiled german potatoes, roasted tomatoes, the best wine I've ever had [I need to find out what this was!] and fantastic German ice cream. It was a great evening, though I didn't sleep a wink that night and was out of the house by 4:15am the next morning.

Day 1:

Got out of Berlin without a hitch. The awesome thing about flying out so early on a budget airlines? I had a whole row of seats to myself and, even though it was only a 2-hour flight and I will never have such luck on my next epic 7-hour transatlantic route, it rocked. Airberlin is pretty fantastic. Landed at Paris Orly around 8:30am and wondered what to do, since I couldn't check into the hotel until 1pm. I decided inadvertently by falling asleep on a bench at the airport for a while. When I woke up, I read for a while and enjoyed watching a crazy homeless Frenchman argue with some social workers for a good 30-45 minutes. Then I decided to be brave and make my way via public transport to the hotel.

The trip across Paris to my hotel was definitely the best part of Day 1, I think. A lot of green was coming out in Paris [versus here, where it seems to have just started right after I got back, woo!], so the train ride was lovely, and there was a street performer playing typical Parisian tunes on the accordian. I pwned the RER and metro and made it to the hotel with unbelievable ease. When I got to the hotel, though [which was fairly ghetto, BTW; do not book yourself at "Little Hotel" anytime soon], there was a problem because they wanted the booking voucher, which Josh had. I asked if I could wait in the lobby [3 chairs] until he got there, and so I sat down to read. After an hour or so, I think they got unnerved with me being right there, and let me up to the room. Josh got there just a few minutes later, we purchased some shoddy wifi, got everything straightened out with the desk, and headed out. We meandered down Rue St. Martin, went by Notre Dame ["I thought it was... bigger."] and then wandered the Latin quarter for a while. Got a fine espresso at some sketchy little bar because it was too early for dinner, then tried to find some authentic french eats. We ended up at a restaurant that looked like it was decorated by a grandma with no style. This place was a disappointment for the most part, but definitely a laugh-riot. I had escargot [in the shells! my use of the little clampers to hold them was comical...], salmon, and a délice au poire. There were about 5 noodles of spaghetti on my plate for some inexplicable reason, and my dessert was canned pears with vanilla ice cream and hersheys syrup. We wandered the Latin quarter a bit more, saw the Sorbonne and Pantheon, and then headed back to the hotel. Watched Juno. Slept. Oh, PS -- GROSS. SHOWER.

Day 2:

Day 2 was a 2-crepe, 2-museum day. Grabbed a nutella crepe en route to the Musée D'Orsay, where we spent the earlier part of the day wandering modern art fantasticness. A lot of the galleries I wanted to see, however, were closed [Klimt/symbolism, and photography]. But there was an awesome Rodin exhibit going on, which I was happy to take pictures of for Woody. Then, hit the Louvre. The Mona Lisa is smaller than you think. The Louvre is full of stuff that is famous, but not really my style. What was great was that, despite the fact that the Louvre was packed, no one but Josh and I wanted to see any of the Greek/Etruscan/Ancient Near Eastern stuff, so we had some nice quiet time admiring kylixes. I saw the Code of Hammurabi! We left and wandered through the Tuileries Garden before finding some dinner; an improvement upon the previous night, delicious pizza at a swanky-lit place near the hotel. Our waiter was odd, but he did try to teach me the better colloquial phrase for, "We'd like the bill, please." Second crepe [creme de marrons is way too sweet.] The Office. Much-needed sleep.

crepe avec nutella

Bella with the Mona Lisa!!

this was my favorite thing that I saw the Louvre.

Egypt, circa sometime a long time ago.

The Louvre! Too bad there's no sunshine in this photo.

Despite what the other photos may suggest, rain was a

common feature of my trip. I gave you the good shots.

Day 3:

The epic day of walking. We got up and headed out on a mission to see the Eiffel Tower. Made our way slowly into the city, got delicious French pastry for breakfast. Made our way slowly through the bipolar weather to the Eiffel Tower, which was pretty damn far from where we started out. On the way, we hit the Latin quarter again and I stopped into some bookstores that Thomps had suggested, including my Mecca: Présence Africaine. I bought three books. We got a huge, fresh French baguette for lunch for a mere 1 euro. Stopped into a cafe and got coffee when it rained. Got some great tourist pics in the park before it started pouring. During the flash-monsoon I listened to some Germans talk about spiders. It was definitely weird to be hearing German, especially since I was struggling the whole time to not insert German words into my French. It's like my brain only has three linguistic pathways: ancient language, English, and modern-not-English. When it stopped raining we headed over to the Tower and got in line for the stairs. I was all ready to conquer the stairs up to the second deck, and then take the obligatory lift to the very top. Not a shred of fear, other than that I'd be embarrassed by how out of shape I am trying to climb all those steps. Not a third of the way up to the first deck, I was TERRIFIED. Literally, I have never been so irrationally scared of anything, ever. I don't even have a fear of heights! It must be because the stairways are just entirely outside and exposed to the wind and open so you can see the ground. Whatever the reason, I honestly felt like I could not move a single inch further by the time we made it to the first deck, and we made the call not to go any higher. We enjoyed the view, which was plenty high enough to see all of Paris and then some, and grabbed a delicious waffle in the little bistro. We, uh, took the elevator down. Hehe.

After the tower we slowly made our way further west and caught the Arc De Triomphe around sunset, which was fabulous. Walked down the super-chic Champs Elysées and got caught in the rain trying to find some dinner. We settled on Italian again, since you can never go wrong with Italian [and since French restaurants are weird. First of all, since its Paris, everything is overpriced. Second of all, basically everywhere we looked had one of those pre-set menu deals, which I am no fan of, really. Especially not after the disaster the first night]. I had the most fabulous looking salad of my life, although I disappointed that there was only one egg on it. We got crepes [butter and sugar, the best way to have them!] and made it back only moderately soaking wet, and muddy from my near-death slip on the walk through the park to the tower.

Housekeeping left us no new towels or soap. What is with this hotel?

The Arc de Triomphe

As Matt pointed out: yes, I WOULD get a nature shot with the

Eiffel Tower.

The Arc in all its massiveness, and the Champs Elysées

Day 4:

We decided, after the death march the day before, to take it a little easier today. I wanted to see Montmartre and Sacre-Coeur, so we headed out northward. We had breakfast at a delightful little cafe at the foot of Sacre-Coeur [best view at a restaurant I've ever seen]. Had real French food! Mmm Croque-Madames. Thne we scaled the steps to the hulking cathedral and enjoyed some sunshine. Avoided people trying to sell us stuff. There was a great performing duo. They played Bill Withers ["ain't no sunshine when she's gone"] at the summit of the cathedral, and I almost cried. Matt always sings me that song. We toured the inside of the church, which was gorgeous. We sat in a park next to the cathedral and read for a while in the sun before heading west to find the Moulin Rouge. It took some doing, but we finally found it, were a little underwhelmed, and made our way south into the center of the city. We got some coffee [one of many, many delicious decaf espressos I had in Paris]. We kept seeing police vans everywhere. We had spotted them earlier, on the first day by the Sorbonne. There must have been some sort of protesting going on somewhere, but honestly, who would really be surprised? It is Paris, after all. Were too tired to find somewhere for dinner, and found ourselves back at the fantastic pizzeria of the second night. Honestly, it was THAT good. More crepes, more The Office, and much sleep.

Sacre-Coeur, as viewed from the café where we ate breakfast.

Man, I'm really bad at taking straight photos.

Day 5:

Josh had to leave early in the morning, and I left the hotel around noon at check-out. Made my way to Gare du Nord, proceeded to search for the luggage lockers for a good half hour, and stowed by things away for the day. Hopped the metro to Notre Dame, went in and prayed for a while. Avoided the beggars on my way out. I didn't want to stray too far from the metro stop, since I needed to get back to Gare du Nord later for my stuff and to get the RER to the airport. On a whim, I went back to the Latin quarter to revisit the bookstore that had been closed for lunch the other day. They didn't have what I was specifically looking for, but I peeked around and found a book I liked. When the grumpy old Parisian man couldn't break my 10 euro bill, I told him I might be back later; two failed attempts at buying something? Yeah, I wasn't going back. I went back to Présence Africaine and bought two more books. They were huge, and I felt like an idiot because then I had to walk around with them in my bag all day, but I was quite pleased. I spent almost 100 euro on books in Paris, but seriously made off like a bandit. Half of them you can't even get in America, and the others are only on amazon.fr or other more obscure sites for upwards of 70 euro, plus the international shipping. I ended up with the complete works of Senghor, a smaller Senghor edition, a collection of Cesaire's poetry, the complete works of Rene Depestre, and the crown jewel: "Balles d'or" by Guy Tirolien, which literally, just doesn't exist anywhere. Add this to "Epaule d'ombre" [Rene Belance] which I found from a Haitian book website in February adn picked up at home in March [and am working on translating in its entirety with my eye on publication, since an English translation has yet to be published!], and I'm like the happiest kid alive. I schlepped my books around the Latin quarter some more, got a leisurely coffee and a quiche, and then hit the metro to get to the airport.

Yeah, I took a picture of a bookstore.

I miscalculated how long it would take. I was terrified I was going to miss my plane. Obviously, I didn't, since nothing is every on-time in an airport, but I was definitely freaking out for a few minutes there because I got on the wrong RER-B [well, theres B2, B3, B4, B5 and B6, and they aren't labelled, so how was I to know I was on the wrong one?]. My flight out was at 9:10pm. I was exhausted. Since I got into Berlin so late [11pm], I had to stay the night in Berlin again, and met up with Lisa, a fulbright friend of mine from the Marburg program. Somehow managed the Berlin transportation system in my sleepy stupor and passed out on her couch. The next morning, I went to catch a 10am train back to Leipzig. Got on the wrong subway after a bit of misunderstood directions and almost missed my train. Thanks to a kind Berlinner, who helped me out in finding a bus to the train station from somewhere in the totally opposite direction, I just made it, and was so glad to get back into Leipzig sometime just before noon and meet Sylvi in the wonderful sunshine. We came back to my place, I got unpacked, and we chatted before Sylvi headed out and I fell asleep for half of the day.

The weather in Leipzig has since been nothing short of mind-blowing. On Weds, Sylvi and I went to a few parks and lakes, riding one tram line basically from one end to the other. Thursday I relaxed, tried out my new yoga DVD [fantastic, btw. Breath of Fire is so awesome. I'm really hoping to see some good results.]. Yesterday me and Sylvi went to the zoo an scaled the MDR tower, then hit up Volkerschlachtdenkmal to get a photo of Bella [the little green stuffed person in all of my photos] before I have to send her back to the US [I'm doing it for the class project of the daughter of a friend of mine]. I made a delicious dinner of orange and teriyaki glazed chicken with garlic, red peppers and broccoli over spinach noodles. Watched more of The Office. Tonight, homemade falafel and hummus night with Suzanne and a friend of hers from work. It's nearly 70 degrees outside. Truly, it is paradise. It's a shame classes start on Monday! But I just have a seminar on Tuesdays from 1-3 [yay! Sylvia's in my class] and a lecture with a prof I loved from last semester on Thursdays from 11-1. All in all, not bad. I wanted to have plenty of free time to work on those French translation projects, and to really just enjoy nice weather and try to be happy in Germany. While I still have the chance to not feel guilty about doing no work [because come Fall, I'm owned by Brown for the next 5-7 years], I wanted to take advantage. And honestly, I do not feel a bit bad. I do feel bad, however, that I havent played violin in weeks because of all the traveling. I played a bit on Thursday, and should probably pick the instrument up for a bit today, or at least tomorrow. Need to email my teacher and schedule a lesson for this week. Hopefully I don't suck because of all the time off. Tony gave me a mute when I was home, so now I can play in the house and be way less annoyed.

Wow, that was a lot.

Interim Paris Post:

2009-03-31T19:09:00.002+02:00

see my facebook for the photos from Paris. I'll post the blog about it tomorrow probably. I'm too tired now! Back in Leipzig safe and sound, and glad for its relative calm and quiet!

yikes more travel.

2009-03-25T15:45:00.002+01:00

leaving in a half hour to Paris via Berlin. back in Leipzig on March 31.

My US / Grad School Adventures...

2009-03-21T16:26:00.005+01:00

Yeah, I know. I've been in the states for almost two weeks and haven't updated all of you curious bloggers about what I've been up to. It's been a busy little jaunt. I guess I'll start from the beginning.

So on March 9 I got up sometime before the sun and made my way out to the Leipzig airport, hopped a 40-minute flight to Frankfurt, then the long flight from Frankfurt to Boston. I tried to fight the good fight when I got home, and stay up to a normal time so that my sense of time wouldn't be screwy, and made it to a respectable 9pm. Tuesday got a haircut and did some errands to go apply for my loan at the bank. Wednesday I did some baking and then made my way to MA and got to finally see Matthew and his fam. Thursday morning I headed over to RWU and saw all the kids and Tony, Lydia and Sandy and then met with my old sociology Prof to go over my surveys/interviews for my fieldwork. A successful meeting indeed! Went back to spend the rest of the afternoon with Matt before going to Providence to meet the grad student I was staying with while at the Brown interview.

Upon arrival at Annie's, she called up her bf and we had a nice little happy hour with some fine ales before skipping off to a fancy shmancy dinner -- on the department, of course. Since we were allowed $40 a person, we hit up a nice place on Federal Hill called Medditeraneo [it was the most expensive place we collectively knew of]. I had the most fabulous salmon and tiramisu ever, and we finished it off with free shots of house-made limoncello. It reminded me of good times spent in A*222 my junior year. Then we headed back to Annie's, watched a few episodes of The Office [which I am now in love with] and then called it a night.

Day 2 at Brown was a bit more strenuous... and by a bit, I mean, this day was EPIC. I was booked solid from about 9am until something like 9pm. Had two interviews with professors first thing in the a.m., then sat in on a class [Pucci's Latin Lyric, of course], then it was a nice lunch and a presentation on Augustine, then two seminars [I still can't believe the one prof asked us to sight-translate Greek. I was spared.], then an improv campus tour, a reception with the archaeology kids, then we all met with our smaller groups for dinner. I got to go to Kabob and Curry on Thayer St. with an awesome Swiss professor who spoke to me in German for half the meal. The food and company were fab. Then we skipped off to the Graduate Center Bar -- home of over 200-something beers! -- and winded down. It took a lot of willpower to stay awake for just about all of us prospectives, but we all made it until about 11pm, it was respectable. This day was a marathon of events and trying to sell yourself, oh man. It was even harder because the other 12 prospectives were all really cool and just as qualified. I'll be interested to see who got offers.

Day 3 was another long one to be sure. Had an interview with the department head first thing in the morning, then one with Pucci. Then a few of us took a tour of the RISD museum, which I have a soft spot in my heart for to begin with. Returned and met with a small group for lunch at some other swanky Thayer locale and had some tasty Greek food and chatted about coffee and Athens. Returned to campus, listened to two presentations by grad students and then had a Q&A session before skipping down the street to my final interview. After the interview I caught back up with Annie and Joe and we headed back to her place to chill/nap/watch The Office before we hit up the pizza party dinner hosted by one of the other grad students. Got into a pretty involved conversation about my research and then we went to the closing party with the archaeology students, which was INSANE. These people put on a good party. Full of some quality Sam Adams, I dragged my exhausted self back to Matt's sometime after midnight and fell asleep practically at the door. Apparently it all paid off, since I found out that I've been offered a fellowship. I'm just waiting on the official paper letter to see what the offer amounts to before excitedly accepting. Honestly, it makes me even more anxious for it to be July, so I can start my fab life in Providence with my favorite person.

Now I'm just being lazy and plotting to see said favorite before I head back to Germany on Monday. Get back on the 24th, then head off for a night in Berlin on the 25th to catch ab obscenely early flight to Paris on the 26th, then its Paris until the 30th, staying the night in Berlin again [stupid late flights], then back to Leipzig finally on the 31st and then just three months until I escape limbo and move back to the Ocean State!

After the interview I stayed in MA with Matt for a few days. Got to go to the beach, have fish tacos, go to a movie and went to Boston on Weds. All in all, absolutely fabulous. I even got to see the seals at the Aquarium!

Now I'm just plotting how many jars of peanut butter I can smuggle back....

whoamygod

2009-03-20T01:07:00.003+01:00

BROWN PHD FALL 2009!!!

[excited!][nervous!][baked goods!]

2009-03-08T16:18:00.004+01:00

In 24 hours I will be halfway across the Atlantic, en route to the USA!

That's all, really. Packing, prepping for the linguistic arms race [interview @ Brown w/ a dozen other badass classicists competing for 3-5 spots... yikes!] Also, watching season 1 of Prison Break. I forgot how much I love this ridiculous show. How there are 5 seasons at this point, though, I just have no idea. Also also, compiling a list of things to bake while I have an oven. I hope the RWU kids aren't on a diet... I'm looking at probably making apricot and white chocolate chip oatmeal cookies and espresso chocolate chip shortbread cookies. But I don't know if that's too much chocolate [as if there were such a thing...] Not that I really mind pondering baked goods all afternoon. Not at all.

SUNSHINE: it's a hit!

2009-03-04T13:09:00.005+01:00

I'm currently enjoying sunny 52-degree weather. Sorry to all you folks back home, who are recovering from some sort of blizzard. But, feel vindicated, that it is going to start raining here again tomorrow -- I only got two days of sun, making it three total in about so many weeks. The warm and the sunshine are making me ache for summer. I used to hate summer, now I love it. I don't know what it is. Well, yes I do: combine working outside everyday for one whole summer in the dirt and mulch and greenhouses and generally being as disgusting as it is, with one whole summer of blissful unemployment spent romping around RI with my favorite person ever, and you've got a equation that causes me to stand the heat better and have some serious positive connotations with the season. I literally just can't wait for it to be summer and be back in the RI. It's a feeling of wanting that emanates into my toes.

So I "started packing" for the trip home, which is officially in 5 days. I threw some sweaters I don't need here anymore into a suitcase and stuffed the suitcase under my desk... yeah, that's my idea of "starting packing". I've still got to put in all of my nice clothes for my interview and everything else, it's looking like I won't have space to take home dirty laundry this time, booo. We'll see what I can manage. I'm really glad I'm flying straight out of Leipzig this time, should be way less stressful.

What's not less stressful is my Paris trip. I'm flying out of Berlin, since that was the cheapest flight. Now, this wouldn't be a big deal, except that my flight to go to Paris is so early in the morning that I have to go to Berlin the night before, and my return is so late that I have to return to Leipzig the next day. I've secured a place to stay on the return, but not so on the way there. I'm scrambling to find a place, in hopes of not sleeping on the floor of the airport, i.e., wandering the airport all night until my 6:45am depature. But, it's totally worth it to have full days in Paris on the first and last day. I'm worried about the logistics of the arrival/depature now, but once I'm there it's no thing -- going to be so much awesomeness and fun. I'm going to eat crepes and drink champagne until I have to be rolled back onto that plane. Not to mention: walking to the top of the Eiffel Tower, Louvre, Musee D'Orsay, Montmartre, Sacre Coeur, Arc de Triomphe, Tuileries, Notre Dame, the Latin Quarter, a tour of Paris chocolate shops and whatever we can pack into 5 days. I've already set aside spending money for the trip, so I should be all set.

I've been pretty unproductive this last week or so, and once again, I'm feeling anxious about it. Perhaps today after my violin lesson I'll get some work done. I've been slacking on practicing violin, too... I don't know why, really. I just can't focus on playing when I'm not actually at a lesson. Of course, after today's lesson, it doesn't matter, cause I won't have another for five weeks, and I'm not bringing my violin with me to the states or Paris [not after the scare of a guy dropping it from the overhead bin last time], so, I won't have to practice until the week I get back. I'm going to have him give me an extra week without a lesson when I return so I can refresh and practice then. I'll consider it a new start and hopefully be more prudent. Once I get back from Paris there will be just 5 days until the start of the new semester. I still haven't seen the listing for the Greek courses being offered [oy, Germany], but I already picked out a seminar for Latin [Cicero's De Legibus], and it's going to require more work than classes I took last semester... hopefully this means I won't feel like a useless piece 24/7. I'm thinking just another Greek seminar, and then MAYBE a lecture, but we'll see how bogged-down I feel by the two seminars, since I also want to have time to develop my methodology for my fieldwork and write up my lit review. And enjoy springtime.

And now, pics of the new digs:

you can see that the place is a bit smaller, but it really is enough space

plus it feels more cozy.

if you're saying, "damn, that looks EXACTLY like the old place," you'd be right.

because I moved all the furniture into the same position so the change wouldn't

be so hard on me. plus, it just looks the best this way.

you can see that I have WAY too much crap. I'm sending a box of stuff home

sometime before I leave for good in July, and hopefully if I get another

interview in April, I'll bring some extra stuff home then.

yay pictures!

yellow. floor.

sylvi brought me some pretty housewarming flowers that match the color scheme!

I was a little sad that they made the bathroom bigger and kept the same tiny shower;

however, I love this shower. It has one of those super moveable shower heads

and a really neat system of controlling the heat/pressure. Also, its clean.

the coup de grace!: this kitchen is gorgeous. It is a crime against humanity that it

still has only a two-burner stove, no oven, and a mini-fridge [that white thing].

I'm love that I have a table and window and cabinets, though. Last night, I even

sat and ate dinner with my roommate; imagine THAT.

If it's not one thing...

2009-03-01T01:38:00.002+01:00

I know, I know: you're all sick of hearing me complain, I should be happy I'm here, etc. etc. But none of you spent the last 5 months living with the Russian nuts an are now sitting in your new place developing lung cancer from your new roomie who smokes in the kitchen.

Why am I already at my new place, you may ask? Oh right, that's because Germany really is THAT anal... so my lease here starts March 1, and thats when my internet turns on. So, a little after midnight, my net at the old place stopped working... because it turned on here promptly at midnight, March 1. Ugh. So flash to me, sitting here in my empty room, with the windows open freezing my bum off because of the cigarette smell that has invaded everything...

Sigh. 8 and a half days till home, though, right? And then its two weeks at home, a week in Paris and it's already April, and only April-May-June. Hopefully with a jaunt to the states again in April... so, after my lengthy US-France vacation, the end will be almost in sight...

Let's just seriously hope I don't develop emphysema by then, kay?

Grievances and Comparisons

2009-02-27T02:48:00.003+01:00

Today ... -- okay, you know what, just look at the photo:

The former was on the counter for about 3 hours, the latter for about... well, it still is on the counter -- and will be for the next day or two, since my roommates don't believe in refrigeration [even when things can fit in our miniature DDR fridge, they don't put them in there. how they have not succumbed to salmonella yet is beyond me]. So, just, FYI, my whole apartment smells like low tide.

No other news to report for today, really. It rained more. My violin lesson was cancelled. I'm still sick. Oh! I read one of the articles I printed, so, while that's not really very productive, it's better than what I have been doing, and I'll take it as a step in the right direction. Don't hate on me; I'd read more if I had my glasses. As it is, I got a headache just from that one and called it quits. It's Germany's fault, see? For losing my glasses. Tomorrow: bravery -- the library to return some books. Dropping some stuff at the new digs in preparation for the final move on Sunday. 10 days until USA, refrigeration, and my favorite person.

Just so that you don't have greasy mackerel nightmares, witness what I made for dinner, in all its verdant glory: [I think I'm becoming a food snob...] [OH! And while we're talking about food, a shout out to Leah, the very first other foodie to start following my blog! Seriously, I squealed a bit with excitement.]

Chickpea salad [I keep changing it up a little. I just can't get the combination right.

Today, I tried cumin. Today, I realized that I don't like cumin],

Guacamole [not nearly as good as Matt's, it's true], and field greens.

I seriously need to get a tripod, or hire someone who can hold the camera still.

Well, actually, I really just need a DSLR....

....and the $500 to buy it! Next year, next year.

Patience = Waning

2009-02-25T01:40:00.003+01:00

So, last night I had a dream -- or it could have been this morning, or even this afternoon, since I woke up at the staggering hour of 2:30pm, late even for me! that's how I know I'm swiftly and miserably succumbing to illness -- that I finally got another grad school letter. Alas, this was no prophecy, for I checked both of my mailboxes* and my email a hundred times today, and no dice. I'm getting really impatient to hear more news, particularly anything about another interview that I would have to schedule for sometime in April. Even if I've got the interview at my #1, I'm still antsy to hear about an official offer [acceptance, money] or about another trip. Le sigh.

[* if you plan on mailing anything to me from now, direct it to my new address:

Adrianne M. LaFrance

Tarostrasse 12 / 606

04103 Leipzig

Germany]

Yesterday I was somewhat productive and actually went to the library for a few before going for some retail therapy with Sylvia and getting a few nice things to wear to the Brown shindig. Today, I woke up super late, am still sick, and thus spent the day doing practically nothing. I did drop some stuff off at my new place on my way to the grocery store and since my new roommate wasn't home snooped around a bit. I think she might be away for spring break, since there's nothing in the fridge besides a tub of margarine [but, honestly, who knows? It is Germany...], so I'm going to go by again tomorrow and test the theory. I mostly want to see if she's not there in order that I can get some cleaning done, since, during my spying this afternoon, I noticed that the bathroom floor desperately needs to be cleaned. My bedroom also needs to be swept and mopped, since the person who lived there before didn't bother to be conscientious. I didn't see a broom or mop there, which means I'll have to buy one -- lame. So tomorrow, after I head over to GWZ to pick up the last of my audit slips [finally. it only took two and a half weeks to get them all. it's a half-sheet of paper, guys, really...] I'm going to go over there to drop stuff off, see if the roomie is there, and if not, go get a mop and broom and go back and clean. I'm moving on Sunday officially, but I want to try to get a fair amount of stuff over during this week so that Sylvia and I don't have to make 100 trips on Sunday, potentially in the rain. Because, PS: it is STILL RAINING. I'm glad Leipzig isn't below sea-level, or we'd be screwed....

Still trying to put the affairs in order for getting to/from the Tegel airport in Berlin for the Paris trip. At this point, though, I'm actually not that worried about it [whoa!], since I just gotta do what I gotta do to get there, and then bask in the glory that is Paris. I just really don't want to have to sleep in the airport, if I can efficiently avoid it.

My steam/motivation to post is swiftly wearing out. Being sick and alone is über-doof.

My blog: now with more StumbleUpon

2009-02-23T23:50:00.002+01:00

I just added the URL of my blog to StumbleUpon, so, if you've got Stumble [and if you haven't, visit www.stumbleupon.com and sign away your soul; you will never be truly productive again], log on and give my blog a thumbs-up! I want to be able to get traffic going through my blog for when I switch over to mostly food blogging when I return to the states.

Thanksss!

Just because my dinner was prettier than yours...

2009-02-22T23:51:00.005+01:00

So today, like yesterday and the day before, I didn't really do anything. Oh wait, I did go out last night. At least I'm being socially productive. I was supposed to go out with Suzanne and her flatmate and his two friends, but when I heard they weren't even going to be leaving until midnight I turned the offer down, since that means coming home after public transportation stops running = walking back to my place from god-knows-where at like 3am. So instead, I just went over to their place around 9 to hang out before they left. It was a pretty good time, minus the horrendous cocktails and insults. Nice Germans boys offer me a drink as soon as I enter the place, and seeing that it was neither beer nor wine -- both of which I loathe -- I took them up on the offer. I received a glass full of a mixture of vodka and wild cherry "iced tea." It would be important to mention here, that "iced tea" here basically never even has tea in it, it's just fruit-flavored artificial grossness. It basically tasted like Robitussin with vodka in it. Come to think of it, if I ever get sick, Robitussin plus vodka would probably be a great idea. In any case, it was a little less disgusting than "the Grimace" [circa spring 2007, generic 'grape drink' with Everclear. Thanks, Chuck. This nightmare lives on in my memory ad infinitum], but the boys kept refilling my glass, so I obliged to smile and keep drinking. At some point in the night, I wasn't included in any coversation, so Suzanne's flatmate starts talking to me. Entirely in English. I think it was because he called my name a few times and I didn't answer, so he flipped over to my more familiar parlance. You see, when a German calls my name, it doesn't sound anything like what it sounds like in English, so it takes me forever to pick up on it [my name in German is Adrianna, all with soft a's. Much lovelier, really]. In any case, when he started stumbling on one word that he couldn't think of in English I told him he could say it in German, since, you know, I speak German. This guy, who has met me and spoken to me numerous times before looks me dead in the face and asks, "You speak German?" A bit disgruntled, I gave him a confident, "Very well, yeah." The conversation disintegrated into him telling me that, my German was good -- not as good as Suzanne's, of course -- and that I made little mistakes, but no big ones. Needless to say, he failed entirely at rectifying the insult [or recognizing it. I'll steer clear of any stereotypes here....] but the situation was ameliorated when group conversation took hold again. At some point, everyone else left the kitchen but me and the one guy I had never met before, resulting in a deafening, awkward silence. I am very proud to say that, against my nature, I tried to strike up a conversation. Luckily, this guy now thinks I don't speak or understand any German and starts injecting everything he says with a translation of half the words. When he said to me, "Ich fahre immer beim Auto -- uh, a car -- und...." I had just about had enough. He really thought I didn't know what Auto meant? I got begged once more to go out with them -- me and three inebriated German men... yeah -- but I explained that it was too late for me, since I'd end up having to walk home from wherever we were very late, and it wasn't safe. The stranger who thought I was retarded smoothly offered to bring me home. I politely declined and left around midnight, proceeded to walk home through the [very heavy] sleet on a stomach full of vodka and cherry drink. I got home soaking wet and freezing and definitely didn't do any yoga. Unsurprisingly, I woke up today with that "I'm catching a cold" feeling at the back of my throat and some residual insultedness. Productivity was already looking grim, before I realized it was pouring rain for the 8th day running and it was once again practically dark out at 1pm. Yeah, productivity.... most definitely not.

I spent most of the day lounging around, being driven nuts by my roommates who never cease making noise or leaving raw hacked up fish and onion on the counter for 8 HOURS. I hit a good stride in early evening, though, and made a lovely snack of broccoli and kiwi [yep. keep asking yourself, "where does Adrianne get the lovehandles?"] and then did some yoga. Organized a few things so I could get registered for the Kentucky seminar, surfed the net, made the most delicious dinner on earth, shower, and then here have I sat since. Tomorrow, however, I will definitely be productive because I'm meeting Sylvia in the afternoon to pick up some paperwork and then hit the library for a little bit. Don't know if we'll be there that long, but it's still a step in the process. The book I really need is loaned until March 20, so I've decided to just take it out at RWU when I'm there and make the necessary copies [for frees!] in the lab -- so really, there's not much I CAN do before then, besides print out my articles and maybe peek in a few other books. Then we're going for some much-needed retail therapy, since she needs to get away from her painful Terence term paper and I need some nice things to wear to my interview. Hopefully it won't be pouring like it was today. Sigh. All this rain is really dragging me down; I feel like warm weather and sunshine will put me in more of a mindset to get work done, so for now I'm trying my best to not feel guilty or stressed about not being productive. I may have mentioned in my last post that I swear I need hypnotherapy for the stress and guilt I feel about not getting work done, even though I have no responsibility to finish or any deadlines other than what I set for myself -- so if I don't feel like working, it shouldn't be a big deal, and I know I'll be spending the next 6 years going nonstop come this Fall, and I should take the time now if I can. But, alas, inner conflict. I'm going to try some deep breathing or meditation or something, to get rid of the knot in my stomach that I feel tighten every day I don't spend hunched over a dusty old book about Wilhelm von Humboldt.

I wanted to take a picture of the fish carcass that has been rotting on my counter all day, but just before I went out to snap a shot, my roommate cleaned it up. Only took since about 2pm. So, instead, you'll have to enjoy some much lovelier eye-candy:

yeah, I thought kiwis were supposed to be green, too. oy, Germany.

just in case you didn't know [which, unless you're matt, you didn't]:

I make some damn fine french toast.

the "after" shot. om nom nom.

Epic German winter...

2009-02-21T14:03:00.004+01:00

Today, I woke up at 1pm [I had been doing well for a few days! I swear Mon-Weds I got up before noon], and it was practically dark. It is now 2pm, and even more practically dark. I might just... go back to sleep.

My stretch of unproductivity will end when horrendous German winter ends. It has been 30 degrees and raining or snowing for over a WEEK.

Anti-Anti-Socialness and a Kentucky Roadtrip.

2009-02-18T13:05:00.003+01:00

I know, I know. I haven't updated since Saturday night, and it's already WEDNESDAY. I can't believe it myself. Time seems to be flying by, and of course, I couldn't be happier about it. I guess it helps some that I have been doing by best to squelch my anti-social tendencies and get out of the house. Went to Wittenberg with Suzanne on Saturday for Valentine's Day, spent Sunday in relaxing and recovering from a massive headache and frostbite, then Monday night I went over to Sylvia's and we had a fun photo shoot [I'll post a few pics -- but know that it makes me feel narcissistic], and then Tuesday I went to CCD. Today is violin at 4, a yoga class at 7, and sushi afterward with Suzanne and a few of her friends. Tomorrow, since I have nothing planned, I'm going to hit the library and try to get some more of my articles printed, then Friday is tutoring and maybe another jaunt to library for more printing or for finding the books that I can't take out and looking through them for any goodies. So be proud -- I will be doing something every day this week! Which means, another week down in the countdown to my trip to the states in March for the Brown interview. Also, another week gone between me and the trip to Paris which falls just a day and a half after my return to Germany from the US. And then, the new semester. I guess that whole 2-month spring break isn't quite as long and arduous as I once thought. Then, hopefully, Missy is coming here in April [I'm waiting to hear from any more schools who may invite me to an interview in April. Hopefully not like, right after I get back Paris. I'm hoping for mid- to late-April], and possibly a wee little foray to Italy with Josh and Co. at the end of June right before I go home.

And then, naturally, 5 days after returning home I will most likely be taking a 13.5-hour roadtrip to Lexington, Kentucky for the UKentucky Classics Spoken Latin Seminar from July 6-14 and taking a detour on my way back northward to visit some family in North Carolina for a day or two.

Holy. Cow. All this traveling does kind of go against the moderately-autistic fibre of my being, but hopefully it will be a good experience. And if not, I will return from Lexington, hole myself up in my new digs in Providence, and not leave RI for a few years.

Missy said, "Where's the money for this, jefe?" It was a fine question, and one I spent all of yesterday afternoon contemplating and plotting. That story after a brief interlude for a shower because I am a dirty hippie european right now...

Right. Soo... all day yesterday I was combing the internet and racking my brain, trying to find a means of getting to this conference, which is about $300 for registration fees and lodging, then whatever else on top of that for the travel and feeding myself. All told, I'm guessing around $5-600. I emailed the guy running the conference, and while he said they would love to have me there, he had no idea where I could get funding. He did, however, offer up himself and his students as guinea pigs for my fieldwork -- a great success, indeed. After an afternoon's worth of searching, I finally decided that my best bet was to apply for a personal loan, thereby getting the funding for this trip and covering any exorbitant up-front costs of moving out, not mention lowering my credit card balance by paying off the trips I'm taking in the next few months. So, after having closed my account at my old credit union this summer in the name of having just one account, at Bank of America, now I have to go an re-open an account and apply for said loan. I'm hoping they won't deny me, since I'm only asking for a laughably small amount [literally, my mom laughed] and my parents are going to co-sign. I think its a good decision since it will put me at ease about the seemingly vast expenses I am going to incur before I start getting paid by school and, incidentally, help me build my credit. It's a nice weight off the shoulders, hoping that I get approved. What sucks is, I think I'll have to register for the conference before I know if I got the loan, so, if I dont..... yes. I am, indeed, screwed.

I'm currently sitting here debating if I want to play some violin before my lesson today... but first! Photos... mind you that I can't take any credit; Sylvia is just THAT good behind the camera.

Valentine's Day in Germany

2009-02-15T13:30:00.006+01:00

So, I'm going to blog in an attempt to feel somewhat productive while I spend most of the day today in bed, trying to recover from total exhaustion and a massive headache. Also, frostbitten toes, weeee! Let's start at at the beginning, shall we?

So Suzanne and I planned for yesterday to go to Lutherstadt Wittenberg, a little city about an hour and a half north of Leipzig. Friday night, I set my alarm for the painfully early hour of 7:30. Then proceeded to fall asleep at my regular hour of about 3:30am. Well, what else could I have expected? It's when I ALWAYS fall asleep! Then, one of my roommates [the one who isn't legally my roommate, gr] came HOME at around 6:45am, talking on the phone [I swear, they are ALWAYS on the phone, what gives?] and woke me up. She was making breakfast and washing dishes until after 7am, so I decided it was no use going back to sleep. So with just three hours of sleep to my name, I headed off to the train station, met up with Suzanne, and made way to Wittenberg, hometown of THE Martin Luther.

Did I mention it was effing freezing yesterday? We're talking like, barely 20 degrees. I was fairly well bundled-up, but it was no match for bitter German cold. More about that later. First, we get off the train and wander in the direction of the historic city, which we finally did find [whew]. I'm going to bring up the topic right now, that the place was a total ghost-town. We're not sure why -- perhaps the season, the unforgiving weather, who knows -- but it was totally creepy. We were the only people out in the streets, basically, in what is a tourist town. So we stopped in and saw the Schlosskirche, where Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses, basically a list of grievances he had against the Catholic church. It was very grand inside, but since there was a fee to take photos, I only got some shots of the outside, most of them merely artistic in nature....

After that, we made our way further down the street and hit up the Haus der Geschichte [House of History], a museum chronicling everyday life in the DDR [former East Germany as governed by the Soveits]. It was a very cool tour, where we walked around three different schemes of rooms all decked out like they would have been in the 30's/40's, 50's/60's and 70'2/80's in the DDR. It was all very kitschy, and the prevalence of bright orange and plastic obscure kitchen tools reminded me of my grandma's old camper in NH. Again, it cost to take pictures, so I've got nothing. The coolest part was that the actual building was legit owned at one point by a lady who lived through the war and the establishment of the DDR, and everything there mostly was donated by people who had experienced it. Let's just say, I'm not complaining about my current kitchen anymore.

Then it was time for some lunch. Suzanne and I being masters at saving a buck, we both brought our lunches and, as a result, had to eat on a park bench outside. In the freezing cold. After lunch we were dying some warmth, so we went on a mission to find a cafe and get a cup of tea to thaw a bit. About a half hour or 45 minutes later, we finally stumbled on a place that wasn't totally empty and sketchy, an Italian restaurant, a sort of place where it tries to seem really fancy but is just kind of a total dive. Our waiter was über sleezy and the bathroom faucet was loose, almost soaking the front of my pants. The tea was bad. A hilarious failure, indeed. I'm generally lacking of photos for that hour or so, because I was just too damn cold to take my hands out of my pockets, even with gloves on.

After warming up a bit, though, I was in much better spirits and we wandered the main square, where we saw the Altes Rathaus [old town hall], and some enormous Luther statues with bible verses inscribed on them.

At some point we also stepped into the Stadtkirche [city church] -- disappointly, not much warmer than it was outside. This church was way less ornate than the Schlosskirche [what do you expect? Schloss = castle...] but I liked its rustic charm, and was absolutely filled with glee at the little art exhibit of hand-carved wooden saints in a wee little room off of the sanctuary. I got some bitchin photos, and Suzanne has one of me with a saint. If she posts it on facebook, I'll snag it for you all.

my obsession with church windows continues...

my man, John the Baptist

Moses

That guy is stepping on Jesus!

It was getting a bit later in the day, so we hit up a few shops and decided it was getting just way too cold. On the way back to the train station, we stopped by the courtyard of the Lutherhaus and took some photos, but scurried away pretty quickly.

My latest worldly want, an overpriced possession that I do not need in any way,

is a DSLR camera. These things run about $400, used. As I was sticking my

little point-n-shoot Canon into a water feature to take this photo, causing my

camera to get dripped all over, I said to myself... not with the expensive one, if

ever you own it, Adrianne...

postcard photo! do not be fooled by the lovely blue sky, which might

suggest anything of warmth.

Hopped a train back to Leipzig, and upon arrival [after missing my tram by all of 20 seconds and having to wait in the swiftly increasing cold of dusk for 15 minutes] I put on some warm clothes and curled up in bed and passed out until about 9pm. I'm pretty sure I legit have frostbite on my toes, which got so cold I have blisters. This happened to me back in December, but it didn't occur to me at the time that this was the cause. Now, I am quite certain. Converse were not made for the great white north that is Leipzig. I hope it warms up a bit soon, since I am fairly averse to spending money on a warmer pair of shoes that will only be useful for a few more weeks [hopefully] and that will just add weight to stuff I take/send back to the states. Thanks to getting no sleep the night before last, and being super tense from the cold all day yesterday, I'm laid up in bed today with a pretty killer headache. Looks like productivity in earnest will have to wait until tomorrow.

Speaking of productivity, I'm at a standstill, it seems, with my research. I made an outline the other night because I felt aimless in the process of it, and now I feel organized, but can't seem to take any of the next steps: creating survey/interview material [methodology and data collection] or writing up my lit review. Truly, the survey and interview questions are posing a particular problem because I'm concerned about not being under the auspices of any American institution and not going through a Human Subjects review -- I don't want any of my work to be unethical, since that would certainly rule out any chance of publication. Moreover, I'm not much more than an armchair anthropologist and don't know how to make a really solid survey; poor methodology would also ruin chances for publication. So for now, I'm stalling a bit on that, hoping to get in contact with a few professors at RWU to give me a hand with the creation of the survey materials and... well, I could start the lit review but I'm just struggling with overcoming the inertia and writing something.

All of this in mind, the other day I decided to fill out my mid-year report for IIE, the program that is partnered with Fulbright. I filled the whole thing out, with really thoughtful answers, and when I went to submit, every page had not saved. I was annoyed, but it was my own fault because it says to do the program in Internet Explorer 5.5 and I tried to use Safari. I tried again in Firefox, but the page just wouldn't load. So I tried to find IE5.5 to download, but as it turns out, they don't have this version available for Mac. Gr. I'm going to have to do it at the library, I guess. My favorite place... I have to go there anyway to get some research done from books that can't be taken out, but really... sigh. Technology.

I finally got around to booking my flight to Paris the other day, and I'm wicked excited but also nervous [March 26-30]. In the first place, my flight is out of Berlin at 6:45am, meaning I have to be at the airport by at least, say, 4:45am. There are no trains from Leipzig to Berlin early enough, and probably not transportation that early in the morning in Berlin to warrant staying with someone, so I'm probably going to stay in the airport overnight, which sucks major. But it was that or a flight that got into Paris at like 11 at night and miss a whole day. Then there's just the nerves of traveling that I always get, no matter where I'm going or what I'm doing, plus I'm going to be by myself for most of the time. THEN, finally, there's the issue of what happens if I get offered more interviews. If somewhere wants me to interview in the time in March that I'm in the states, I can no longer extend my stay stateside, because I'm leaving for Paris only a day and a half after returning to Germany. This would mean either giving up the time I've planned to spend with friends and family at home, or requesting to interview in April instead. The April thing shouldn't be a big deal, since it is a distinct possibility I'll be back to the US in April to interview with Harvard, but I just don't want to push my luck requesting an alternate date with any school.

Always with the fretting, it's true. And now that I found out that Brown only takes 3-5 new PhD students per year and I got one rejection letter, I'm feeling a little more nervous, particularly about spending two whole days hob-nobbing at Brown. Tony gave me some pointers on what to do, most amusingly:

"Act liberal. But, not communist, like you are."

So now I have to decide if I want to book a hotel or a hostel in Paris. It looks like I can get a pretty nice hostel for just a wee bit cheaper than a standard-grade hotel [Comfort Inn type deal]. Hostels mean sharing a giant room, drunk kids, etc -- although cheaper and with breakfast and some internet access. Hotel means privacy but a bit more expensive. It's still up in the air, but I have some time to decide. Then I need to plan out what I want to see and do, that way I can feel more relaxed about the trip. I have five whole days, so I imagine once I'm there I will pretty zen about it. Also, exploding with excitement for having finally made my pilgrimage.

I'm feeling really guilty about not being super productive everyday. I just have to keep reminding myself that my project does not need to be finished by July, and everything I do here is really just for myself and I should therefore not stress about it. As it is, I can't carry out my fieldwork here, so I either have to do it by mail/internet, or once I'm back in the states after the summer, when I really will be too busy getting geared up for grad school classes. I'm going to get in touch with a few profs at RWU to hash it all out and see what they think, and I just hope I can get better at letting go of my feelings of obligation, since there actually isn't any. It's the same deal with violin, I always stress about it, when I'm really just doing it for fun. Then I'm trying to decide if I'm really going to go through with my baptism on Easter, since that I actually do have to tell the church people by Tuesday night. So here I am, sitting in my bed, with a day of laziness ahead of me, and I am definitely, markedly stressed.

ergg

2009-02-14T07:43:00.001+01:00

7:30 is way too early, and my roommates never cease to be annoying.

elaboration later this evening after I return from Wittenberg.

German Postal System: Hasssssss

2009-02-12T21:36:00.002+01:00

So, it's basically official. Lost somewhere in the German postal system, never to be found again: my brand new pair of glasses, 8 months of my birth control pills, and a package of Oreos.

It's been three weeks since my run-in with the confused little man at customs. That package is NEVER seeing the US again. Sigh.

I'm going to smother my growing anger and discontentment with a little bit more productivity, then yoga. But, not with oreos. Since I don't have any. [expletive]

Holy whoa!

2009-02-12T00:11:00.003+01:00

I just did 90 minutes of yoga, and it totally rocked my socks. Now, of course, I might completely pass out...

[thanks to Charity for the tip; check out the podcast of Yogamazing]

Two amusing conversations from Germany:

2009-02-11T19:00:00.004+01:00

Kiesling [my violin teacher]: [psshh] Sie sind aber eine große amerikanische Geigerin! Ne?

[Come on! Aren't you a great American violin player?]

Me: uh... nein. Eigentlich, nein.

[uhh.. no. not really, no.]

Kiesling: Haben Sie keine Imagination? [Do you have no imagination?]

Elina: so was ist das für Essen? [so, what kind of food is that?]

Me: es ist... ein... Wrap?

Elina: ach so, ein Wrap, ja. wie bei Mcdonalds. [oh, right! a wrap. like at mcdonalds.]

*we are looking at my wrap, made with hummus and all fresh, organic vegetables.*

Me: um. genau. etwas wie das... [yeah, something like that...]

American news and my new place

2009-02-11T14:52:00.003+01:00

So, I guess I'm not totally living under a rock when it comes to major news stories back in America: today [via Facebook...uhh..] I found out that 14-time gold medalist olympic swimmer Michael Phelps got a 3-month suspension after a photo surfaced, depicting him taking a hit off of a bong at a party in South Carolina [Meanwhile, Yankees star Alex Rodriguez... steroids...? nothing. No punishment]. Apparently this is big news back in the states, especially on the west coast [why am I not surprised?]: check out the LA Times article HERE, if you're interested. But, seriously, give the kid a break. Yes, marijuana is illegal, and yes he is a role model to little kids. But so is Britney Spears. And we can't punish her for... well, being her. Give him his 3-month suspension [which he kind of deserves more for being an idiot and letting someone snap a photo of him with a bong, knowing he is, like, you know, famous... rather than for doing something illegal]. The LA Times article puts a lot of emphasis about how this is bringing the legalization question to the fore. Frankly, I don't really agree with the fact that it takes someone famous doing it for the majority to be swayed to thinking that its OK, but I'm not about to get into my opinions about the legalization issue via Blogger. As a closing note to this topic: Seriously. A-Rod. Steroids. WTF.

So today I went over to check out my new place, now that I knew where to find it. I walked in to my new roommate enjoying a cigarette in our kitchen. Sigh. I have the general idea that she'll stop once I officially move in, because she was told I has asthma, so I guess it's not too bad. My room is significantly smaller than this one, which kinds of sucks, just because I'm so used to all this incredible space. I guess it's better that I readjust to something a bit more downsized, though, before I go back to the US, where I inevitably won't be having a cavernous bedroom. Not even that I have stuff to fill it up with, I'm just used to having the space to roll around on the floor, should I so choose. Oh, also, the floor covering lineoleum stuff is YELLOW. The kitchen is orange. Yeah. Go German designers. The kitchen, on the other hand, is GORGEOUS. What gets me, though, is that they made the rooms smaller, in order to make this fairly large kitchen, but it still has no oven and only two stove burners, and a tiny mini fridge. Frankly, you don't need that much space if you can only cook in one pan at a time. But, it has a table with chairs, real countertop, and actual cabinets. Same with the bathroom: much bigger and everythings new and nice, but the shower is still the size of a postage stamp. I like to think that in America, we make rooms enormous, but we use the space by filling it with appliances and other such things. So my new roommate seems pretty cool, she studies Classical Archaeology, so at least we have a common denominator. Yet again, I got the luck of living with one of the like 5 Germans who don't speak English. She asked me, "You're not from Wisconsin, are you? I lived with an American from Wisconsin once...." I assured her that RI was nothing like Wisconsin, and she seemed pleased. I moved the furniture around in my room so that it's laid out like here [luckily, with so much furniture and little space, a lot of that heinous yellow floor is covered...] but I didn't bring much over, and I'm glad, because the room desperately needs to be swept and mopped. Dust kitties were just exploding out of everything. I guess I have the last girl who lived there to thank for her conscientiousness.... also, I now know I don't have to clean this place when I leave. I dont see why I really thought I should anyway, since no one is moving in and theyre going to be tearing everything apart in here. I'll take pics of the new place when I move in and get everything set up on March 2, a week before I go back to the states! WOO! 25 days!

I think the new diet may be working; I'll be pumped to start some yoga after I pick up the DVD at home. I was looking into taking a Shaolin Kung Fu class [when I saw there was no muay thai in Leipzig, booo. I wanted to punch the crap out of people], but not sure yet if I want to spend the money, on top of what I shell out per month for violin. I'm thinking 5-6 days of yoga via DVD/week should be good. Also, yay relaxation and flexibility. I'm hoping this will help me with how restless I get when I try to sleep.

Still no sign of my package back in the US. Crossing my fingers it comes today. In other news, I didn't win the Eurail "Economic Crisis" competition. They picked some lame one that was definitely not as witty and coy as mine. Looks like I will be paying for my travel to Paris after all [I maybe should start planning this trip soon, no?], and will not be globetrotting my way through the next 140 days. Gee, 140 doesn't actually sound too long, really -- I've been here for 183. In exactly 20 weeks, I will be en route back to America for good. Minus the two weeks in March for the Brown interview, and possibly minus another 2 weeks in April for the Harvard shindig, if I get invited [another finger cross, please]. So that's really 16, then. Not too bad.

I just reminded myself that I have to email Fulbright and tell them I can't go to the Berlin conference. Eep... here's hoping I don't get into trouble.

The fiasco continues...

2009-02-10T22:40:00.004+01:00

Seriously, today I felt like Germany was just being ridiculous. I mean, really, can't ANYTHING just be easy here in the life of Adrianne?

There was, indeed, a glimmer of hope! I went over promptly at 2pm to pick up the keys to my new apartment from the landlord. I double crossed my fingers that we didn't have another "misunderstanding," and that I could legitimately have both sets of keys at once. Without a hitch, the man gave a chuckle at my expense for last week's folly, handed over the keys, and I was out of there in 5 minutes. I stopped to check the mailbox to see if any grad school goodies had come, but alas: emptiness. I scuffled through the near-rain back to my building [meanwhile, I might add that it made me TERRIBLY homesick for RI. There were really sporadic, huge drops of rain falling, the wind was whipping, but it was almost a little bit warm. Total RI vibe. Sigh.] and was feeling pretty good about things. Outside of my building, a little swarm of snot-nosed 12 year old German boys had collected. As I zoomed past and began trying to get my key in the door, they started heckling me. I wasn't surprised. 12 year old boys EVERYWHERE are harassing brats, and this was most definitely not the first time by far that this is happened to me in Germany. I ignored the few calls of "hey!" and "we know you can hear us!" despite my urge to yell at them "I don't speak German! Screw off!" and got into the building. Before the door shut, I heard the friend of the main heckler shout after me, "But, he loves you!" and they all laughed. As I was scaling the five flights back to my place, I reflected: this kid, even though he was being a twit, addressed me in the formal. I had to laugh at the fact that these kids were so indoctrinated linguistically, that they couldn't even harass me without technically being polite.

I decided to go check out my new place, with the excuse of bringing some stuff over. So I assembled a backpack full of books and a box of clothes and headed out into what then was much less inviting weather. Climb in the elevator and head up to the 6th floor. When I get out of the elevator, the place does not look like the inside of my building. In my building, there is a hall of rooms on either side of the landing; here, only one hallway. Well, at least I didn't have to stand there and choose, so I opened the door and headed down the hallway. Now, I'm supposed to be living in 606. These doors all have numbers like 645 and 634... all in no order, some doors with TWO entirely different numbers on them. I guess a few years ago, they decided to try a new numbering system in my complex, but only did it to about half of the rooms, and kind of abandoned it partially... it's messed up. In any case, I didn't see anything that might lead me to believe it was 606. I saw a 636, and randomly tried my key, but to no avail. I headed back out in the corridor. I felt like a bit of an idiot when I saw the hallway on the other side, half a flight down the stairs. Because, honestly, how could I forget that Germany has half-floors? [ugh.] So I scurry down to this other hallway, and am glad when I see that the doors have the regular numbering system, and it starts at 601. My room must be down this hallway. Soo... I see: 601/602, 603, 604, 605, 607, 608/609, 610/611, 612/613, and finally 614. Take a good look. What number do you NOT see? Oh, of course, 606. Where I live. I stand there, holding this damn heavy bag of books and the box, pondering. I might take the time now to mention that the hallway has a red-tiled floor and bright yellow walls. And that's the renovated part...

I went back downstairs. But as the elevator reached the bottom, I decided to go back up. I figured, 606 has got to be with 605 or 607, and I would just try my luck with my key. But when I got back up there, I could hear someone, and I couldn't tell from which, and I didn't want to try my key in the wrong door, freak out some German, who would then come out asking for an explanation. So, annoyed and feeling like an idiot, I went home.

I sent a facebook message to Christiane, the girl who used to live there, to ask where my room was. I'm never going to meet her, so I don't care if she thinks I'm stupid. So here's a good one. Not only is my room on a half floor... but... so there's a door directly at the end of the hallway, with nothing on it. I assumed it was an electrical closet. You may be thinking, "Well! that must be Adrianne's room!" but no, it's even MORE asinine. Christiane tells me to go through this door, and take the door on the left, which is also unmarked. So, you know. You have to go through a door, to get to the real end of the hallway. How exactly do they expect anyone to think to do that? Moreover, my new roommate must live in 607 or 605, but we have a shared apartment, so why is there another door for her? Maybe there are doors directly into our bedrooms, I dunno. That'd be neat, I guess. But I'm just puzzled and annoyed, at my wits end.

Tomorrow, I will go drop off a few things and check the place out. The room faces the same way, so I get the nice sun, but the view isn't as nice because its past the nice green soccer field, and faces what I never knew was a huge construction site [THATS where all those loud noises come from all day and night....] I'll just leave the curtains closed, I guess.

I think, though, that I actually... brace yourselves for this: have a TABLE and CHAIRS in the kitchen. OMG. I almost had a cow when the landlord was mumbling things to himself to check off on the sheet of things I am responsible for not damaging. I still doubt I have an oven, but am nonetheless floored by the idea of having what approaches a real living space. Maybe the shower is even big enough that I don't have to turn the water off to soap. But let's not get our hopes up.

It was a tiring day, really. I got wicked upset after failing to find where I live for the third time in Germany; it was like the straw that broke the camel's back, I think. I didn't go the library as planned. I went to CCD. But now I'm just feeling somewhat dejected and tired, and I miss sunshine and Matt and scads of other things. I'm going to turn on season three of Bones and vegetate.

My dinner, however, was BOMB. See photos below of what is no doubt the best thing I have made since moving to Germany: wraps with spicy-ish something-flavored hummus, field greens, shredded red cabbage, and mushrooms and red bell peppers sauteed with garlic. This was SO worth paying out the bum for hummus [2,49E for like a 200g container... that I had to go to a fancy gourmet/international food store to find], which actually looks like I'll get a fair number of servings out of, so I can't complain. The mushrooms, considering the fact, were the bigger splurge, since they cook down to nothing. I'm a country where they go pick mushrooms as a pasttime, like regularly, and yet it costs an arm and a leg in the store for regular old white buttons? Seriously, the thing that I will most revel in upon my repatriation, besides having my favorite person there when I wake up in the mornings, will be the selection in American grocery stores and a real kitchen to cook it in. Dude, you've got to eat to live, so I firmly believe it should be something that you enjoy doing. Here, not so much.

and once more, because my hands are too shaky for supersharp images, grr...

What I spent my day doing, instead of being TOTALLY unproductive...

2009-02-08T22:24:00.003+01:00

In my defense, I also sorted through the rest of my stack of 18 books from the library, finding which were totally useless, and marking the pages from the others that need to be copied. So tomorrow I'm going to go and return the useless ones and copy the useful ones. Then Tuesday, another library trip to try to print some more articles.

I also spent a fair amount of time today playing violin.

So, I guess I was actually more productive than usual, and spent the other bit of time creating THIS BADASSERY. It basically makes me 10x cooler than I previously was.

Today was also successful in a few other matters as well....

I had left a little note in the mailbox of the girl whose room I'm moving into, to ask her to not throw out any letters that came there for me before she left because I was expecting some important documents. Honestly, I had assumed that she'd just ignore the note and throw it out [this is, at this point, a fairly well-educated and tested assumption]. Instead, she Facebooked me and we've been chatting a bit, through the course of which I have found out that I still have my lovely western [she says southern. Seriously, guys, its west] view with sunshine all day and that the kitchen even has a window. I'm pumped to see what the renovated places look like; if there's a window in the kitchen, it's a different layout from here. The window is a good thing, since apparently my new roomie likes to smoke in the kitchen... the girl I've been talking to asked for my new roommate if it's alright, and I told her I didn't jive on it a ton since I don't smoke myself and have asthma, but if she was really used to it it was fine with me, as long as she wasn't offended if I kept my door shut. She tells me she's fairly sure the girl won't do it much, hearing that I have asthma. In any case, they both sound quite nice so that makes me feel much better. I'm going to go either early tomorrow morning [7am] or Wednesday afternoon [2pm... much nicer] to the landlord to pick up the keys, so at least I can keep an eye on the mail and then maybe drop some stuff off over there before the official move on March 2. Hopefully there hasn't been another misunderstanding, and I am correct in thinking that both the landlord and the renter said I could be in possession of both sets of keys at the same time. But who even freakin knows.

I've also been rocking a new diet, and should be all sleek and sexy in time for my interview/visit to the US in March. I went running too, on Friday, but it has since not been nearly as nice and warm so I don't foresee going again anytime in the next week or so. Stupid fluke weather. Mike's 100 pushups and 200 situps recommendations are nonetheless going swimmingly, despite the fact that I am not in any way helping the linebacker-ness of my already not-so-feminine shoulders. I can, however, lift big heavy things and have no batwings. So, it's a positive. And yes, I do real "boy pushups".

Images are Back!

2009-02-08T14:40:00.005+01:00

Magically, Blogger decided to let me start using images in my header background again. Now, I've wasted the whole "morning" [12:30pm until now... 2:45pm] trying to resize the photos [a problem solved thanks to Missy!] and then choosing which image to use, and then subsequently changing the template colors -- which after all that, I kept the same as the original.

Input? I have about... 10 others photos that I was considering. I didn't get to use any of my signature green-filled themes, but I think this one says... Adrianne heart's RI and photography. I know maybe I should have something that says "Germany," but I'm keeping this same blog after I go back stateside [changing the title] since the URL is nondescript. And besides. Just look at it. RI is so superior. No offense, Germany.

Still avoiding productivity, but the laundry is at least in the dryer...

2009-02-07T16:55:00.002+01:00

February 7, 2009

I can't seem to get an image as the background to my header anymore.... why?

A sure-fire way to avoid productivity:

2009-02-07T15:36:00.001+01:00

February 7, 2009

I'm thinking of hunting around the internet and changing my blog template again....

Linguistic Oddities

2009-02-04T23:58:00.005+01:00

February 4 2009

So my last post got me thinking about how many German words I must learn everyday. Seriously, I feel like I have that childlike sponge capacity to just soak up everything I hear, without sorting it into memory based on practicality and usefulness, etc. Here are some of the best strange, funny, interesting German words I've learned:

doof: a slang term, equivalent to English "lame," as in, "that's so lame." I love this word, and use it at least 50 times a day. At least.

Anti-Baby Pille: female oral contraceptives. This is really the funniest one on the list, no doubt -- and I actually got to legitimately use it when speaking to the customs officer.

Abwasser: sewage

schwarzfahren: to ride black, e.g., to ride public transportation without a proper ID or ticket

geil: a slang term meaning, as far as I would say it, "wicked cool/awesome," whose literal meaning is "horny"

jemandem unter die Lupe nehmen: "to take someone under the magnifying glass," i.e., the check someone out

Herrchen/Frauchen: the male or female owner of a dog, meaning "little man" or "little woman"

das Weib: equivalent to English, "woman," as in "yeah this is my woman" or "broad"

der Ständer: English "hard-on". I learned this while teaching Sylvia the phrase, "to have a hard-on for ____," meaning, to really like something.

der Abzieher: a squeegee

durchfallen: to fail something, literally, "to fall through." Also, to have diarrhea. [Tony would be so happy to hear I had occasion to use this word, in its first meaning, like a hundred times, just because he's secretly still 12 and laughs about the second meaning.]

der Kerl: a "guy". I think this is somewhat derogatory, but I'm not sure.

das Mädel: my dictionary gives me "gal" or "lass" in Englisch. My landlord called me this about 100 times today, so I thought I better look it up to make sure it didn't mean, "dumbass twit". Also, because I thought at first that he was saying "Mandel" which means "almond".

der Sumpf: a swamp

fluchen: to swear

...not to be confused with...

ficken: to fuck, see also, "Fick dir". I think you can figure that one out.

Schwein haben: "to have a pig" and, somehow, "to be lucky" -- so, the opposite of me in Germany

Ausländerhass: xenophobia. But the German takes it a step further, where it means, "hate of foreigners" and not "fear of foreigners". Hmm...

die Bekannte: "comrades," as in like... the communist, pseudo-Orwellian sense.

DDRmäßig: "Former-East/Communist Germany-esque"

das Flittchen: a tart, hussy, minx, etc. see also "die Nutte" which means the same thing, and apparently also "slag" in British slang.... no clue there, Brits.

Arschgeweih: literally, "ass antlers" -- German term for the English, "Tramp Stamp"

bescheuert sein: to be "one nugget short of a happy meal" or "to have a few screws loose". In a vulgar sense, to "have one's head up one's arse."

spinnen: literally, to spin; to be off one's rocker.

blöd: also kind of like English "lame," but in the sense that it/the person is kind of dumb.

IT-ler: an IT person

Ami: German slang abbreviation for "American".

reich mir die flosse genosse: literally... achieve for me the flap as a compansion... it means something like, "birds of a feather..." etc. In trying to demystify this one after I hear it, I also learned that "genosse" means "bedfellow"

der Hefter: the paper tray in a copy machine or printer. I learned this one after seeing "Hefter ist leer" about 20 times on the copier in the library: "Paper tray empty". DOOF!

der Leistungsumsetzer: a power converter

die Echthaarverlängerungen: real hair extensions [an example of "why TF do I know this word?" and how driving by the same storefronts everyday will cause you to learn lots of phrases.]

der Aufstrich: here's a fun one -- this means "up-bow" for my violin and "spread," as in jellies, jams, nutella, etc...

etwas ist der Hammer: something is a/the hammer; "that's bitchin'/awesome/the bomb"

Schade/das ist Schade: "that's a bummer"

peinlich: -lich is just the ending for adjectives; pein = anguish or tormet literally, peinlich = embarrassing. I'm glad that I really am saying "that was total torment" when I meant I was embarrassed. Cause embarrassment in Germany does not come in small doses.

eklig: grody, icky

Echt?: "Legit?" [it means, "really?" or something like that. I thought I would give it the more on-the-streets American translation.]

kuschelig: cuddly. Strangely enough, my dictionary says that "Kusch!" means "Shoo!" But why would you shoo something cuddly?

die Schlampe: bitch

der Speck: literally, bacon. This is the only meaning I knew, and I got really confused at first when people were "speck" -- meaning they're fat. I was like, how are people bacon?

Der Fledermaus: a bat [the animal]

das Flusspferd: literally, river horse. i.e., a hippo

der Innensechskantschlüssel: an allen wrench. Yeah, I know. I'm a girl, and I actually know it in English, much less German as well.

der Leitungshahn: the spigot, like for turning on water. Good to know, when you want to do laundry.

"Pech haben" : to be unlucky

2009-02-04T18:20:00.002+01:00

I hadn't really thought [until now] about how seemingly unlucky I am in Germany. I know I wail a lot about things I don't like, but that's normally the mundane day-to-day things, like there not being any fresh spinach at the grocery store. I guess the true arena in which I have exercised my stoicism [I know Matt's going, "Stoicism? Adrianne?" but hear my out here] has not been with dealing with those sorts of things and homesickness, but in taking the blows of major mishaps and still moving forward. I mean, really, let's start right at the very, very beginning: my flight gets delayed and then cancelled, I miss the first day of orientation and show up to Germany as a zombie, having been awake for over 50 straight hours. Only to find out I've been put in the one building with no internet. And the SIM card I had gotten in the US doesn't work. Oh, also, I fractured part of my foot with my suitcase. That's all just Day One. Weeks later I found out I had been denied the lease on the apartment I had been looking at and was going to be homeless in Leipzig. So I called up the University housing and got it fixed, and moved out of Marburg and came to Leipzig -- but not before falling down all the stairs at the train station with my suitcase.

When I arrived in Leipzig I had to meet this one lady. Who wasn't there. They sent me to another lady who had stepped out for the afternoon.... I think you get the picture. This went on for, literally, two days.

Whether Greek Prose Comp was in itself a misfortune or not... the jury is still out...

The latest in the series of unfortunate events that is my life was my visit to the Custom's office over in Taucha. Oh, you never heard? My mom sent me a package with my new glasses, some OREOS, lotion, and my birth control pills. She insured it because of the glasses, so I had to go over to customs myself to open the package for them so they could inspect it. Long story short: you cannot send medication by post, and the guy tells me he has to send it back. By "it" I assumed he meant the pills. But no. They sent the whole package back, and my mom needs to re-send it. That is, after it gets back to the US. I'm beginning to get worried, because hasn't gotten there yet. If they lost my glasses, that would just be the icing on the cake. Oh PS, I went to this Custom's office which was 35 minutes away, with a migraine.

That brings us to the latest tale of woe. Admittedly, it is somewhat hilarious just because it doesn't really impact me negatively, but about 3 hours ago, I was infuriated. If Sylvia wasn't there, I probably would have cried, for wont of knowing what else to do...

As many of you know, I was supposed to move out to another room in my complex today. Why? Because -- of course -- I got housed in the one building that has yet to be renovated, and it's being closed April 1 for said renovations. I was truly really proud of myself for successfully getting all of the affairs in order for the move and then packed everything up last night. Everything. Everything was packed. So at 2pm I went over the landlord's as planned to trade the keys. But what's this? There's been a misunderstanding?

Sir, my life here is just one misunderstanding after another. What is it this time? Cause, last time, they thought I was an international drug trafficker who was going to make math out of estrogen pills. Yes, really. Me.

I haven't signed the right papers with the guy in charge of the rentals? But no problem I can just run over there and get that taken care of, then drop my keys in the landlord's mailbox. At this point, I give the landlord a bit of a look and ask how I get the keys to my new room. "You want a new room?"

Really? Did he... he just asked that, didn't he?

He thought I was just moving out for good, to go home. I tried to explain to the man that [I would love to go home, but] my home in the USA. I told him that the other guy told me there was a room for me. Well, apparently, that room isn't available until the 7th of February, someone's still living there, and I ought to go sign the papers with that guy, and make another appointment to move. Keep in mind of course that the German language has really specific words having to do with moving: "Ausziehen" = move out, "Einziehen" = move in and, most importantly "UMziehen" = to switch places. I most definitely told this guy I was umziehing, especially since I didn't know the word "ausziehen" until... TODAY, when he said it [I've learned a lot of random words as a result of my unluck here: the german word for birth control pills, amusingly: "Anti-Baby Pille" Customs Office for Importation: "Zollamt" to ride the public transportation without a valid ID or ticket: "schwarzfahren," to ride black] . Needless to say, I am now not moving until the end of the month, and had to come back and unpack EVERYTHING. Luckily -- if I had not encountered ANOTHER misunderstanding -- I can get the keys to the new place anytime after the 7th and move my stuff over there whenever I feel like it. I somehow doubt this is the case, that I can have both sets of keys at once; I hope anyway that I can at least get the mailbox key for the new room after the 7th, because I already went nuts [1 or 2 minor heart attacks] trying to change my address with the bank and graduate schools, so all my mail is now going there. Hopefully at least this won't be a problem, since truly my landlord is really nice. Even if he knowingly speaks to me way too fast.

Germany: always a new can of worms. I am so climbing in bed for a well-deserved nap.

Change is Lame

2009-02-04T12:09:00.001+01:00

February 4 2009

I'm just sitting here in my packed-up room, waiting for the move. Sigh.

Holy long post: Brown, Platonic Revelation, Stoicism, Money Hating

2009-02-03T22:31:00.003+01:00

February 3 2009

All productivity came to a grinding halt today in the name of getting packed up for the move tomorrow. I don't think it will be bad, generally, speaking, but I hate change and am therefore not exactly ecstatic. I'm happy Sylvi will be there, just so that I don't get all my crap in the room and then sit on an unmade bed crying [a scene I've found myself in 3 or 4 times already here in Germany]. I still, however, deny all of Matthew's claims that I am mildly autistic based on my massive distaste for change, loud sounds, and crowds. ;)

Got almost everything packed up minus a few things that I will stow away before bed or in the morning. Everything's basically cleaned; I'll give it a final wipedown tomorrow and hope that the landlord here is not as anal as the houselady in Marburg. With her in mind, I even pulled all the furniture away from the walls and cleaned behind it. As it turns out, whoever lived here before me definitely didn't have the same courtesy. Behind my bookshelf was GROSS. They were not dust bunnies. They were dust mammoths. I sneezed away most of the afternoon, went to my church group, and then here were are. Now I'm just waiting while mom calls the credit card company so that I can book my flights home for March. Needless to say, I am like dancing in my seat, even if there aren't any window seats left for the long flight over :( I'm going to go aisle. In any case, I will be back in the States at about 3pm March 9th and I fly back out on the afternoon of March 23rd, with the weekend of the 12-15 being spent at Brown for the interview/campus visit/meet-n-greet shindig. I've got to consider biting the bullet and actually spending some money, and getting a few nice things to wear. Don't get me wrong, I like shopping as much as the next girl, but I HATE spending money. Especially while I'm staring down the possibility of having to PAY taxes this year because of my fellowship. Oy. I had a minor financial meltdown this evening -- I'm really trying to learn to take it one step at a time when it comes to issues that cannot be solved now. I'm not really very good at it, to be honest. In case you couldn't tell.

I'm getting fairly lazy; Spring Break has definitely come just in time. Only one more class and I am free [aside from CCD and violin] until April. Free, that is, to read until my eyeballs fall out and try to make something of my research project, which despite various roadblocks [for one: I'm neither a psychologist nor sociolinguist] is coming along swimmingly. I'm really enjoying all the reading, draining and mind-boggling as it is. I need to get on the ball and order the French books I need to start my translation work. Luckily, I can now forgo international shipping and just have it sent home and I'll pick it up in March. That way I can also snag a few other french resources. But I can't bring much back. Looking at all this crap I have packed up for the move, I am realizing that I am definitely going to be shipping stuff home in July and moreover taking things home in March and leaving them there. But a few paperbacks won't hurt. Let's just say I'm putting aside a sum of euro now in order to fund the shipping of boxes. Potentially luckily, I may be looking at a second trip to the US in April for an interview at Harvard, and I can truck a few things back then, too. Do you see what I mean, about worrying about things that are fairly inconsequential, months upon months in advance? I guess I can never be blamed for a lack of foresight.

Speaking of lack of foresight, it would really make my day if they'd post the course offerings for next semester already. Oh, Germany. I'm beginning to get the feeling that I really will miss it once I go home, and I imagine that has to be a good thing. I'm glad that enjoyment is becoming a possibility for my last 5 months here [147 days, to be exact. But who's counting?] and I seriously could cry I'm so happy to be doing work again. Even if some days [a la today] I don't get to the books, I finally feel like I'm approaching some semblance of my old self. I was really worried that Germany ruined me forever.

This does not mean that I have forgiven the customs officer for sending my glasses and MY OREOS back to the states. No. Never. HASSSSSSS. [SAP: "haaaaattteeee"]

It occurs to me that I have still not told my current roommate[s] that I'm moving out tomorrow. I figure they'll get the clue when I start trucking out all the suitcases. Is it socially obligatory to pay those sorts of niceties to someone you spoke to about once a week? I'm not sure. We'll see how it goes. I'm just hoping that there are no fiascos with the mail. I think I've alerted all of the grad schools, my bank, and the commission of my address change, so I should have no need for mail forwarding [which is expensive and is for a minimum of 6 months]... I just hope no grad school letters get lost. I'm going to put a little note on my mailbox here for the post person. Maybe they'll be nice enough to pay it some mind, since I'm just moving to another building. I'm not terribly hopeful, though. This is the land of rules and bureaucracy, after all. Of course, as far as the grad things goes... pending this Brown shindig.... well, let's not jinx anything or put all of our eggs in one basket or any of those many proverbial warnings.

I have a deeply intellectual/spiritual issue that I need to put out here. You can give your input if you like. So, I'm going through this CCD thing so I can be baptized and confirmed and get first communion, hopefully in April [although, the people haven't said anything about it to us, and I'm not exactly feeling very convinced that they ever plan on it]. It's all well and good, and I like it, if for nothing more than the intellectual aspect of coming together with people and discussing our ideas about god and morality and all of that. But, the other day, I had a Platonic revelation. I was talking to Eric about something... I can't remember what now, but it included the idea of truth, generally speaking. And I began to explain that, from a Platonic standpoint, humans can never attain knowledge of the real truth, we can only aspire to it. The aspiration to truth, the path to truth, and coming as close as is humanly possible to truth is happiness. The Greeks believed that were two realms of "law": the nomos -- manmade law, or convention -- and the physis -- natural or "divine" law [for those of you who don't jive on the whole "god" thing necessarily, don't worry. it's not really where I'm going with it. hence the revelation/crisis]. Here's where the question of trust comes into play with the whole truth/trust dichotomy... Nomos, since it is manmade, can lie. There is no real truth in nomos. We can choose or choose not to trust our fellow man and take his law to be "truthful" in the human sense, the sense that we are actually able to understand. Physis, on the other hand, since it is natural/divine, is inherently true. It does not -- cannot -- lie. But, since it is ultimate truth, we as humans can never understand it, we can only try our best to approach understanding, and, as mentioned previously, this is tantamount to the achievement of happiness. The issue for man is that he does not want to believe what he cannot know is true -- RELIGION. This is the same as believing in God despite the fact that we cannot prove his existence per se; it requires that jump of faith that says.... I'd rather overcome my nature to disbelieve things I cannot understand, because I am then closer to truth and therefore obtain happiness.

So you may be asking [I mean besides asking how I became so chock-full of Platonic philosophy. I guess I understood more of Sier's lecture that I though]: why is this revelation causing you to have an existential/spiritual crisis, Dr. Crocker? Because according to this scheme -- which I believe in whole-heartedly, really -- organized religion is not necessary for a relationship with god/a higher power/etc. Going back the to the Platonic argument... knowledge of truth cannot be taught, since no human can know it. It also, therefore, cannot be imitated. The path to true knowledge can only be made by the individual. I think you see where I'm going with this. I do not deny that organized religion may help people find the path to knowledge [and therefore happiness], but I think that since I recognize this scheme consciously that I do not need help; organized religion for me, then, is just a means of satisfying other human needs such as community and social belonging, etc etc.

So after having this revelation a few more things came to mind, particularly when a girl accosted me outside the library, asking me to join her bible/worship/god group [I'm the number one target for these sorts of people here, I swear]. She also asked me what I believe in. I was confused about what she meant by the question, so I gave her my best "Wie bitte?" and she suggested, "Like, do you believe in Jesus Christ?" I gave her a somewhat confused look and answered that I believed in "something like god". She smiled and continued to ask me some other questions, [INTERLUDE: including where I was from. Once I said I was from America she exclaimed, in english now, that my German was fantastic.... and proceed to talk to me for another ten minutes entirely in English. Please tell me, if my German is apparently so good, why ALL Germans do this to me the second they find out I'm from America? I live in effing Germany, okay, you can speak to me in German. It would be appreciated.] but it got me thinking. I don't really believe in a lot of official church doctrine. Okay, really, I figure that a lot of religious people don't. But, if I view my connection to a higher power in terms of the Platonic system previously mentioned, then I think it is safe to say that I believe in something decidedly different than, say, all those middle-aged Germans I sit through CCD with, and CERTAINLY something different from what the Priest and the Sister think. I don't think it makes me a bad Catholic, though. I think that I achieve the proper ends -- being good to my neighbor and a pious believer in the power of a divine force -- just through different means [these actions being a step on the path to true knowledge and happiness]. End rant about spiritual revelation.

Just booked my flights. Yay, 33 days! How come the flight to the US is 8 hours 5 minutes and the flight to Germany is 6 hours 50 minutes? Okay, okay, air currents, blah blah, I know. But I swear it was only 7.5 hours when I flew home for Christmas. The good news, however, is that I got window seats both ways! One is way near the back, which sucks. By the time you get there, inevitably tons of other people have, and you have to worry is some asshole took up all the space in the overhead compartment. Because nowadays people bring whole suitcases as their carryons. What ever happened to the backpack? I'm debating whether to bring home my violin [and thus brave the overhead compartment issue] or leave it here and then just have to deal with having my tote in my seat with me per usual. I didn't play at all over Christmas, so I'm kind of doubting I will play during this trip, either. But I should. But, broken strings, more crap to lug around, etc... We'll see.

There was other stuff I had planned on talking about here, but by now [epic post, sorry] I've totally forgotten it. It's time to maybe do some reading, then the last episode of John Adams, then bed, then MOVING. Oy.

I GOT THE BROWN INTERVIEW: see you march 12, America!

2009-01-31T23:06:00.003+01:00

January 31 2009

Yeah, it's emo. That doesn't mean it's not fab. [check out the stillshot. HILARIOUS. okay, okay...let's get serious now.]

2009-01-30T02:42:00.002+01:00

January 30 2009

The day I found Goffman, became a psycholinguist, and my brains exploded. Shortly before I went blind.

2009-01-30T00:37:00.001+01:00

January 29 2009

Excuse me while I return to my bed with my laptop -- my normal grounds of conduct -- and listen to my back complain after sitting hunched over my desk for five hours. There's something ergonomically unsound about the relative height of chairs and tables in Germany. At least, for a shorty American girl.

Day 2 od productivity was a major success. I got off to a rough start, having trouble finding any articles online, getting just little blurps about conversational Latin here and there. Finally, a breakthrough: while surfing Google I came upon a link to Univ. of Kentucky's Classics program, and subsequently this conference . I really want to attend said conference, but the cost, while not outrageous by any estimation, is beyond my means for certain. Since I've declared the end of my grant period with Fulbright as July 1, and the conference starts July 6, I don't think I can bark up their tree for money to send me, even if the whole thing is relevant to my research here. So, I've spread the word, asking how/where I might be able to get funding to go and am otherwise crossing my fingers that my family and friends back home won't skin me alive if I end up coming home July 1, just to skip out to Kentucky 5 days later for over a week. You know, to be a nerd and talk about conversational Latin. I'm going to get in touch with the guy running the program, hopefully, to ask him about funding, if I might be able to present my research, and otherwise just generally to chat about his experience with conversational latin. I'm hopefully going to be able to get in touch with a number of other professors and scholars back in America, just as soon as my guidance committee [Tony, P Thomps and Sandy] get back to me about the appropriate means of making contact.

So after that I hit a bit of a wall, but then started digging up tons of articles via RWU's databases, and now I probably have somewhere around 20 articles to print at the library [damn the cost. oh well] and a list of books that is now upwards of 50 or so [again. damn the cost. again. oh well]. So, while I haven't actually read anything -- and thus feel like I just spent five hours doing... what, exactly?... -- I know it's most definitely a step in the right direction, and I just need to compile all of my readings and jump in and... wait until my eyes bleed out of my skull.

After all of the prelim reading and amassing notes and everything, I'm going to write up a literature review, to introduce the topic of my research and the debate surrounding linguistic relativity. Then, I'm going to make my own hypothesis about what this all means for the latin classroom, and provide evidence from the existing experiments that both prove and disprove my ideas. Finally -- probably once I'm back in America, to avoid a number of sociolinguistic and logistical problems that really stand in the way of my work being publish-quality if I execute the fieldwork here -- I'm going to figure out a methodology [um, hopefully...] over the course of all the reading [...please?] and conduct my own original experiment, the results of which will either confirm or deny, to some extent, likely not conclusively, my hypotheses. For any social scientists reading out there: how does that sound?

I'm reluctant to get started with printing the articles tomorrow just because my glasses aren't here, but if I wait, it's going to set me back probably another two weeks at least, and who knows if the library is even open during spring break. I still have to learn how to take books out from the library, too. Or, at least find them in the library, so that I can copy the pages I need and bring it all back here. That is going to be a mind-bendingly momentous task; to find the books, go through them, find the pages/chapters I need, copy them... it's going to take days, literally. Days when I'm not actually contributing to my knowledge... just doing literal busywork. I seriously want to hire a research staff or something.

In any case, my mind is boggling because some of the stuff I pored over tonight was just nuts, ranging from far-out linguistics jargon, to billion-variable social experiments, to neuroscience and psycholinguistics. I'm not sure if I'm reaching too much, diverging to far from the Latin. Since, as we know, "I am all about the Latin, man." But I feel like I'm bringing something new into the field that is worthwhile and different and hopefully doesn't cause me to be labelled as the crackpot Latinist.

Oh yeah, I went to class today, too. And the post office and the bank and the grocery store. I took some lovely food photos! Definitely a fine use of my macro function [Makroaufnahme! I love how many new German words I learn all the time now, I feel like I'm a kid, with that sponge-like capacity] My chickpea salad, which I remade again this week in the name of using up the rest of the somewhat-pricey olives I bought for it the first time [and still have enough left to make it again, thus proving that it wasn't really a pricey investment, after all], didn't really come out that great this time. Too much olive oil [Ja! brand just isn't quality enough for raw use], and I think I want to nix the onion alltogether, and use chive or garlic... something less offensive. Duly noted for the next batch; it's still edible enough to have on bread, an application in which the flavor and texture isn't quite as in your face.

Next week is my last week of classes -- without prose comp yay! -- and my move is on Wednesday. Violin on Monday [grumble]. I'm thinking packing on Tuesday. So, I guess tomorrow is my once chance to get some stuff printed at the library so that I can read it during the weekend and continue to feel productive. Because being productive again is a really good feeling. I can't wait to write again, oh sweet lord.

FabFoodFotos [and yes, I'm pretty sure my roommate does think I'm nuts, taking photos of food.]

egg rainbow! seriously, the eggs here are SO much better than in America. Check out that one with the really orangey yolk. [then a slightly less orangey yolk, then a yellow yolk. hence the rainbow.]

It reminded me of sunshine. I wish the lighting in my kitchen wasn't so sucky, because then this would look even better.

The remains of my pricey olives, to be eaten in another application. I got these at this kind of swanky-seeming store under an über-pricey department store. I may go back just to peruse and see what there is to be bought, for too much money

Truly, this photo is the coup de grace of the set. I think it belongs in Gourmet magazine or something. Or at least on Smitten Kitchen [see the link to said foodblog on the right of your screen, under "Blogs I Follow"].

I am Benjamin Whorf.

2009-01-29T00:04:00.004+01:00

January 29 2009

Okay, okay. Earlier's aggression was due mostly to an oncoming headache, resulting from my lack of glasses. All in all, I think that the customs guy who sent them back to America is the one to blame here. Minus the hot water thing; that still just sucks.

So today, finally, after... what?... 6 months? Well, we'll say 4 months... I finally sat down and started doing work on my research project. I don't know if I blogged about it yet [I think I did, so I'm not going to totally elaborate. If I forgot... well, whatever], but I have decided, after trying to work on my optative article a little -- and wanting to hang myself out the window -- to turn my attention back to my original research question and try my best to plow through it to the extent that it is possible, given the restrictions of my social science background/methods and resources here. Sandy emailed me back yesterday with a list of about 12-15 authors to check out, so this evening at like 7 I sat down [yes. at my desk. WHOA.] and began searching some article databases, doing some wikipedia to get the general gist of everything, and googling a few things. At about the time of my last post, you can tell, things were looking a little grim: RWU's databases were loading painfully slowly, I had run out of wikipedia articles, and google was turning up only citations without links to any texts. It looked like almost everything I needed, moreover, was full-length books [i.e. stuff you can't find on the internet]. I'll admit, I gave into assumptions, and guessed that the university's library here wouldn't have any of them, and I growled a bit as I checked to see if we had hot water yet. Since we still didn't, I figured I'd amuse myself by just seeing if I could navigate the library's website enough to search the books. As it turns out... well, I now have a list of probably well over 50 books. I prioritized the list, and once I learn how to find books in the library/take books out, I'm going to basically spend one long-ass week there, copying crap out of the books [and shelling out some cash for the photocopies] and compiling all the info. Then, I can hole myself up in my room and read all spring break, hopefully coming up with something that looks like a lit review, along with some extrapolated hypotheses and claims, in time for any interviews I might potentially have in March. Which, I guess, is not really the whole spring break, just around half of it.

Let's not even get into the whole ish I'm having right now of not being able to actually plan any of my trips because I have no idea if I'll have interviews, or when they might be. The travel plans is just a whole different can of worms that is currently weighing heavily on my soul.

Earlier today I killed a few hours before violin [interlude: my next lesson is on monday, giving me only like 4 days to practice, grrrr] hunting the web for info regarding my french translations that are in the works; it seems I may have narrowed down my options for book-length projects based on availability/cost of books and pre-existing english translations. Then there was all the other books I want anyway... oy. Of course, now that I know how to work the OPAC book search for the library here, maybe I can see if the books are available that way, and not spend any money. Woo! Here's hoping the library is open during the spring break. Who ever thought I'd say that, right? What, with how ridiculous the library is here.

Speaking of all my research: a number of the authors that Sandy sent me are still alive, working at universities all over America [although many are on the east coast. Many, in fact, are schools I've applied to]... so I'm seriously considering emailing/mailing them letters asking them about their work and what they think of my research and if they could offer me any help. I'm torn between how to use my connections. I know that people at those schools are talking about my application, so I don't want to look foolish sending mail to these people...on the other hand, does it look good? It's a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't looking situation. Input? I'm guessing I'll just email Tony and ask him about it, and we'll see if he gets back to me... you know, before I come home in July. Maybe it's a good excuse to drop Pucci a line, considering my future graduate education is in great part thanks to him. I ought to send along a real thank-you card. But let's make sure I get in somewhere first. If I get into Brown, that man gets dinner or something.

Take a look to the right of your screen, at the "blogs I'm following" and click on the one with the recipe for the chocolate chip cookie dough cupcakes. Holy OMG, delicious heart attack in a cupcake tin.

It feels really good to be working again.

Oy.

2009-01-28T21:34:00.001+01:00

January 28 2009

I'll expand on this more later, but I am seriously annoyed with not being the US right now:

1. I need an American library. Desperately.

2. I would like hot water for my shower.

sick + rain = lame.

2009-01-27T13:38:00.004+01:00

January 27 2009

Woke up sick Sunday morning, still kind of getting over it. Thus did I skip Intro yesterday [but not Prose Comp, since it was the last meeting, woo!], and then Epic today. Maybe CCD tonight, I haven't decided yet. I have a sore throat and it's rainy and it's just one of those days when you don't really want to have to get dressed and leave the house. I find myself really missing having a car these days, so that I might just hop in and drive down to the ATM, rather than walking 10 minutes, waiting 5 minutes for the tram, getting on the tram, riding 10 minutes, going to the bank before it closes at 4pm [or taking the other tram to the ATM in the train station, longer ride.], going to the ATM [which takes all of 2 minutes], waiting for the next tram probably 5-10 minutes, repeat. All told, a 30-40 minute ordeal just to get some pocket change. With a car this takes all of 10. Back at RWU, it was just a walk to dinner and then downstairs. Yeah, in light of everyone going back to campus my heart is feeling pretty heavy with some homesickness for good old Bristol. When I was home for Christmas Matt and I drove down there to get some delicious eats at Jacky's, and my emotions were seriously confused when we didn't turn down Bayview to go back to Almeida 100, like it was the middle of the summer and I was carelessly unemployed and laid in the sun reading or listening to music whenever I wasn't traipsing around Newport or Colt State Park with my favorite person ever. But it was snowing and we drove right past. Cold, rainy days here get me thinking about that and it makes me sigh a little. I'm afraid, though, that warm spring days will only be worse, as I assume that German springtime is lackluster in comparison to a perfect Rhode Island summer, complete with Del's. How did I get on this line of thought? Right. Missing my car, ATM ---> RWU, Bristol. There we go, we're caught up now. But yeah, basically, today I'm feeling a little apathetic and probably won't leave the house. I figure, I'm sick and it's raining so it's a good enough excuse. I'll play some violin and the day won't be a total loss. But maybe by 5:30 I'll be bored out of my mind and I'll go to CCD just in the name of passing time outside these walls. But... it's looking unlikely right now. I'm torn between feeling its legitimized and feeling guilty. I feel my irrational distaste for obligation rising, a la Grease rehearsals senior year of highschool. Speaking of which, check out the photos Julie Cles posted on Facebook, circa 1998-2002. You'll get a good laugh, and I'll look at how skinny and blonde I once was before college.

I move in a week; next Weds. Hopefully it doesn't suck. I'm trying to get excited about it. On a related note, I've been haunting the craigslist providence apartment listings on a fairly regular basis, with the high hopes of an acceptance letter and a nice big check from Brown. If I hadn't mentioned already, I did a little looking on the Boston listings and cried a little inside: I could only go to Harvard if they paid me ton and I still starved. Holy. Expensive. In any case, it always makes me all excited to go back to the US and move into my own place and have an adorable little life. I'm glad now that it's not just in the name of getting away from Germany, but just for the sake of how awesome it's going to be all on its own. And then I get to thinking that I had better start work on this Optative article, since I'm going nowhere with my original research proposal, in the name of having something to show for myself, should I get an interview. I'm pretty sure that, "I write surrealist French poetry," or, "I spent the year thinking," isn't going to impress any of those admissions committees.

There have been some good happenings afoot, though, all in all. Spent the weekend hanging out with friends. Discovered the glory that is tea with honey. Perhaps incidentally, perhaps coincidentally, it's been probably almost a week since I took any medication to sleep. I've noticed I don't sleep quite as well, but it's certainly liveable, and I'm sure that once I someday return to a normal person schedule, it will be fine. Sylvi found me some sources for my article [ :D danke ]. And time keeps going past and soon I will hear back from schools, hopefully all in the affirmative, or at least in the "interview"-ave.

I'm thinking maybe I should drag myself to CCD tonight, just because I'd better get out of the house. We'll see what happens when 5:30 rolls around. For now, some violin so I'm not a total slacker either way, and then possibly some tea [found some really good stuff here] and some John Adams.

Eeee

2009-01-24T13:03:00.001+01:00

January 24 2009

[fret fret fret fret fret]

hold all your breaths [for an interview in march]

2009-01-24T00:32:00.000+01:00

Dear Adrianne,

Thank you for applying for admission to Brown University Graduate School. We are reviewing applications and will soon prepare decision letters. Offers of admission will be sent via postal mail. Responses to offers of admission must be postmarked no later than April 15, 2009.

If you applied to multiple programs, you will receive a decision for each program. Please note that you can only matriculate into one program. If you accept an offer, any and all remaining Brown Graduate School offers are withdrawn.

Thank you for your interest in the Brown University Graduate School.

With best wishes,
Dean Sheila Bonde and the Admissions Staff
Graduate School
Brown University

Newsflash: sunshine.

2009-01-22T13:02:00.003+01:00

January 22 2009

I'm on my way out to Taucha to pick up my package. Should be a nice long ride. Mail from the US always makes me so excited. In the meanwhile, for your reading pleasure: [translation second]

IV [Printemps]

-partie une-

Avril me hante

suivante la longueur des

chemins du coeur de la patience,

qui batte insuffisamment.

un essaim des moustiques,

en exhortant.

violente

les cris vertes et velvetes:

la rouille d'un ancien lavabo.

les expressions brouillons

construient ses panneaux indicateurs.

quel qu'en soit l'illogique

je sortes de la bouche béante

d'un homme infortuné.

partie deux

ton rire:

le mille allées des gouttes de pluie

descendrant la nuque.

se polotonner dans

telle une clavicule:

une diversion n'est pas fortuite.

le renfoncement le plus verdoyant

de la jungle des heures du matin

si jeunes

émettrent lilas.

IV [Spring]

part one

April stalks me through

the well-trodden paths of

patience's barely beating heart.

a swarm of midnight gnats, urging.

violent

green, velveteen shouts:

the rust on an old washbasin.

disjointed phrases build

their signposts.

however illogical, i emerge

from the gaping mouth of one

wretched man.

part two

Your laugh,

the thousand paths of

raindroplets

down the nape of a neck.

To curl up in such a

collarbone,

no accidental deviation.

the most verdant alcove

of a jungle of

the hours of the earliest morning,

radiating lilac warmth.

-----------------------------------------------------

I'm really getting a feel for the advantages and shortcomings of each, in translating all this stuff for you between the two languages. For example, I'm loving, "patience's barely-beating heart" as a phrase, but the french can't be constructed that way. On the other hand, the french words give it all that mouth-feel that I'm really going for. But, right. To Taucha! Perhaps, inspiration.

Film review and more

2009-01-20T23:54:00.002+01:00

January 20, 2009

You all already saw the gorgeousness that was my dinner. Truly, chickpea salad spread schmutz is fab. Not the only notable event of the day, however. Stayed up way too late last night to wake happily at 9:30am. It was one of those instances where you know the alarm is going to go off and you won't like it, so you keep waking up because you're expecting the imminent, unavoidable discontentment. Thus were my too few hours of sleep also pretty poor. Lame. I'm going to try going without my daily Valerian Root regimen for a few days after I run out of caplets, though, just to see if I still need to take them. We'll see how it goes.

Headed to class. Epic is really probably my favorite, just because epic poetry is like my abstract love. And because we're talking about Vergil. Today was especially worthwhile, though, because I got to listen to the German ideas about American classicism [FINALLY], and also got to hear Deufert try to say trendy American english phrases like, "The Harvard school of thought" and "two-voice theory." It made me finally feel validated, to hear a German professor throw a bone to the American contribution to the classics. Also, the total reverence for all things Harvard was just fabulous. I wanted to raise my hand and be like, "Yeah, I'm getting into Harvard. I'm one of them," but I figured I wouldn't jinx myself. And besides, Deufert knows I applied to Harvard, and no one else there would have cared. These sorts of things are lost on people who are a little more preoccupied with your still slightly poorly-pronounced German. Furthermore, I don't know how to say "I'm getting in" auf deutsch. So, my daydreaming ended there. Well, after I debated discussing the two-voice theory in other genres, a la my work concerning the acquiescent two voices in Catullus 8. But, since it's a class about epic poetry, I gave that up.

Interlude: something is making terrifying screeching/screaming/howling noises out in the field behind my building.

After class I took and adventure to a park with Sylvi, which was enjoyable despite the slushiness. Dude, squirrels here are RED. Also, I just forgot the english word "squirrel" and could only think of "eichhörnchen." We discussed the strangeness of the American "Groundhog Day" [both the film and the holiday], I tried my best to convey in German what a tater tot is, and then we headed to the movie theater to see the American film "Revolutionary Road." First of all, German theaters are exactly like their American counterparts, except this one had way awesomer seats, and there is a price gradient based on where you sit, and seats are thus assigned. But all of its over-priced glory is basically the same. The film was dubbed in German, which made me grin through some parts of where I could read the lips and figure out what the English words were, and all in all I'd say it was worth my 5,50E [Tuesdays are Kino-Tag, lower priced admission! Plus, matinees are always cheaper]. The film is seriously dramatic and depressing, but well done. As I explained to Missy, it's the kind of depressing where you know you are either definitely in the same situation as the characters, or definitely not. Since I imagine most of us are among the latter, [as in us reading this blog -- as I later had to answer Sylvi's question, whether most American couples are like the couple in the film, I think a lot probably are] it's a film where you say, "Wow, that's really depressing that that exists," instead of "Wow, this makes me hate my life" and then you go cry in a corner like an emo kid. It is nonetheless emotionally really gripping and wants a little for ANY comedic relief. Or any relief at all. Unless you're going to a cheap matinee, I'd wait until it comes out on video to subject yourself to it's drama, however well done it may be.

After the movie we sought some light-heartedness in a search after some fresh olives for my delicious dinner, which we found in a gem of a high-end grocery store in the bottom level of a way-too-nice-for-me department store. I may go back to peruse their selection of health-type foods, depending on the price. I'm hoping I may be able to find nuts in something resembling bulk; I'm still avoiding going to the massive and daunting "Kaufland" [shopping world], which is along a tram line that doesn't go in the direction of my stop and is, well, massive and daunting. I hear that the produce selection there, however, is way better. I also hear its kind of more expensive, just like the aforementioned chic grocery, so I figure it's 6 and a half dozen of the other. I'll stick to my comfort zone along the #2, thanks.

Got home and found a slip from the post office in my mail box. Since my package thats coming is insured because it has a very expensive new pair of glasses in it, I have to personally sign for it and so it couldn't be delivered and they're holding it at the post office. But not the normal post office. Of course, no. No, some asinine little branch of the post office way out in the middle of nowhere [nowhere is now Taucha, by the way], practically not even considered Leipzig, a 32-minute tram ride from where I live, on a line that has stops at the main station only every 20 minutes. Sigh. So, I was thinking of going tomorrow, but now that I reconsider, I think I'm going to be feeling too lazy and, in the face of needing to practice some violin before my lesson at 5 [after waking up sometime after 11:30 and before 1:30], I'll likely just go Thursday after class. Then I can subsequently kill more of the endless span of afternoon on Thursday, wasting my life sitting on a tram for almost an hour and a half, in total.

All of that brings us about to now, leaving out the purchase of my wonderfully cute little basil plant that I swear is going to become like a pet to me. I'm not pathetic.

OM NOM NOM:

2009-01-20T19:12:00.003+01:00

[January 20, 2009]

the scientific term for: "I'm going to eat this like it's my jorb."

via Chickpea salad on ciabatta with roasted red peppers.

Countdowns, contests, and pastry literature.

2009-01-20T01:10:00.004+01:00

January 20 2009

That means that I have survived around 1/12 of my remaining time in Germany! Just 11 more times.

These numbers make it seem damn short, in addition to the recent influx of good vibes and things to do. I can only hope that this trend continues, spring flies in, and I can enjoy my second half a little more than the first. First, though, I'll have to make it through my move unscathed, in about two weeks. It's going to suck moving all my crap, and who knows how the new place will fly, but I'm trying to maintain a positive outlook. Or at least a, "it can't be that bad," one. I look at all the stuff I have here that I'm going to have to move and realize two things: 1. if I got home in March, I so need to bring stuff home and leave it there, and 2. I'm so shipping stuff home instead of bringing it all in über-heavy, overweight-fee inducing suitcases on my final trip homeward. It costs 65E to ship a 20kg box to U.S.; around $85. It costs... 100$ on the US-Germany trip to have overweight baggage. I think we see the logic here. Plus this means less hassle dragging person-sized suitcases through trams and trains and airports. Let's just hope nothing gets lost in the postal system; although, I've had good luck thus far. I say with crossed fingers and a knock on some wood, as I await the arrival of the package from home that has my new [super sexy chic] glasses. Speaking of which, I will be so happy to start reading again! And: not going blind.

To avert my attention away from the stress of the move to my new room and seemingly endless countdowns, I've been focusing on fun things in the not-entirely-too-distant future, like looking pathetically around craigslist at apartments. Again, two things come to mind: 1. I better get into Brown, so I can live in Providence, where it is affordable -OR- 2. Harvard better have a VERY big paycheck with my name on it. I don't know how Mike and Nicole do it, it is DAMN expensive to live in/around Boston, much as I would find it a lovely adventure. Still waiting to hear back from any grad schools about interviews in March [plllleeeaaassseee fly me home] or final decisions or anything. I guess it's still fairly early, really. But that doesn't make me any less impatient, as I approach the cusp of a gaping 2-month spring break. Hopefully I'll be filling that time with a trip home for a week or two, Paris, possibly Belgium, and the Fulbright conference in Berlin. Oh, and you know, some work, so that I have something to show for myself at said conference. I know all the adults in my life who read here are now up in arms thinking I'm not doing the work required by my program, but fret not: I actually don't have to do anything but go to classes, since I'm not a scientist. And give me some credit; completing four classes run entirely in German is something of an accomplishment, and one I never really give myself credit for, since I always see "class" as "easy," ignoring entirely the whole... German language, German people, German system thing.

In desperate hopes of filling up spring break some more, I am pathetically entering a contest with Eurail to win a 15-day train travel pass [1st class, whoooaa-ho], valid for all of the 30-something Eurail countries. If I won, I could travel via Eurail for any 15 days within a two-month period to tons of fabulous places. The thing is, you still have to afford to overnight in said places, so for me, I don't know how much I could take advantage of it. In fact, if I won, I might actually try to sell the pass [its worth over $1000], take the money, and take one or two trips and be able to afford the flights and hotels, and have some left over to pay off my credit card. Not that I actually think I'll win, but feel free to help me out with ideas: the competition is to write a blurb/video/anything about "Why you should travel with Eurail during the economic crisis." So far, I'm thinking of going with a witty list of things. I've come up with the following:

1. Evade your tax/bill collectors.

2. Lots of opportunities to collect money as a bum playing a musical instrument in a train station.

3. Wander from country to country to find work: the euro is worth more than the dollar!

4. Plenty of riding time to read "____ for Dummies" Books: learn a new, higher-paying career.

5. Use your prestige as a "cultured, international globetrotter" to impress potential employers.

6. Its basically a rolling commune, anyway, right?

If you have any ideas, let me know. Or, if you want to enter, check out the Eurail page on Facebook.

The weekend was pretty good, really. Friday I tutored then went out with Suzanne on an adventure to a skeevy bar/club down in the hip area of town. It was "Monsters of Indie" night; needless to say, we didn't do any of the dancing we had originally planned on. In fact, we were basically the only people there, because we went earlier in the night, given our dependence on the public transportation system, which doesn't run very late, even on weekends. We skipped out, but the night was not a loss! Got bitchin' Falafel, hopped the last tram back to my stop [whew!] and tucked myself into bed. Saturday, slept in, got up and went on another expedition to realms previously unknown with Sylvi. Finally, I have left my apartment and gone right [south]. We visited the Völkerschlactdenkmal [umm.. people battle monument], a really unbelievably massive structure that is quite lovely even in ugly gray winter. I am assured that is much lovelier in spring and summer, and I definitely plan to go back then and take photos, since it is one of THE tourist destinations in Leipzig. We went down the street a bit to what is possibly the happiest cemetery on earth -- also terribly pretty, and again even more so in spring and summer -- and wandered in the snow a bit before heading back to her place and enjoying some Kekse [ugh, delicious delicious cookies. Germans and their sweets] and tea and chatting about music and making plans to go see a movie tomorrow after class. Sunday I rested and did some homework and today I dragged myself to Monday classes for the first time in over a month. It was not easy, but I now have only one more meeting of my not-so-beloved Greek Prose Comp and only two or three more of Intro, which is boring but bearable.

Today in Intro we started on a chronology of Roman literature. I guess last week I missed the Greek counterpart, so I'm going to do some googling and make myself a timeline. In any case, I pwned first-year German classicists with my expansive knowledge of Roman authors. I was actually really surprised, since the Germans do read way more classical texts than their American counterparts, at least before college [and I would say during, as well]. I was even more surprised because one of the authors, Horace, was one I would have considered fairly oft-read [Plautus, not so much, although I recommend it highly and think he should get more air-time]. I think we skipped entirely over Lucan, which offended my vast love for all things Epic and left me kind of incensed, since he's totally a la mode in America right now and I wanted to jump on it and give the Professor something to chew on. I hate to get all uppity [I think I'm using the word correctly this time, Matt ;) ], but all I ever see for English-language sources here are British, and I'm really dying to show the Professors here that Americans have something worthwhile to bring to the conversation. So, I may turn into the one-woman army for Lucan in Germany, but that can only be a good thing for my academic career, right? I mean, SERIOUSLY. The guy's diction is so... precise and the character development and themes and language are so intertwined. Lucan's Bellum Civile is like a literary cinnamon bun or something. And the Germans do so love their baked goods.

Today I encountered the TV-police, but we made it out OK.

2009-01-16T13:14:00.005+01:00

January 16, 2009

Happy Birthday Missy!

In other news, I seem to have had a fine lot of motivation to blog lately, and I can only interpret this as meaning good things. While I'm still fairly unproductive on the Greek front [though I did make a move, emailing a professor here for some help with that article I swear I will begin work on soon; most likely during my epic-length spring break], I have also been making a lot of progress in my various French works -- some translations, prospects of a book-length translation project, and more original work en français -- thanks in great part to the encouragement of PThomps back at RWU, who has been a saint in trying to get my work up to par, with the hopes of a number of opportunities for publication. So I'm a classicist who publishes work about francophone surrealist poetry? Whatever, it's progress nonetheless.

So I found out that my new place isn't a single apartment, though I'm not really let down, since both the single and double have their pro's and con's. I'm just a little sad that the new room is a bit smaller than this one, since I've become pretty used to my momentous, vacuous space here. Now I just have to decide if I want to move out Feb. 1 or March 1. I'm a little worried about waiting until March because who knows if I might be back in the US for grad interviews then, or if I'll be on one of my other trips. Also, if my roommate here moves out before then, I would be without kitchen supplies. Moving earlier, however, means leaving a place I'm comfortable in earlier and possibly living in a place I don't like as much for a month longer than entirely necessary. I'm going to weigh my thoughts over the weekend and get back to the guy on Monday. Then, of course, there are all the other worries, unavoidable by choosing either date, relating to German renting/moving policies that are more mere annoyances than any real problem per se. Right now, I'm leaning towards moving on the earlier date just to get it over with and avoid worrying about whether I will be here in March, but it nonetheless a reluctant choice. I'm trying my best to get excited about the move, taking advantage of my new good spirits to get past the change -- I have learned quite well in the past 6 months that I really just don't like change very much. But who does, honestly? I'm going to try to treat the new digs like a new countdown, so it will seem more like time goes by quickly. Speaking of such things, Wednesday will mark the official turning of the halfway point of my time in Germany, with 162 days elapsed and 161 days remaining. But I think we all know that the coming warm days of spring and early summer will most definitely go more quickly than these dreary winter times.

And truly, time does seem to be picking up now along with my good mood. I've been back almost two weeks, but it definitely doesn't seem like it. Let's just hope the trend continues, especially as I'm facing a record-length spring break that begins February 5 and lasts until the first week of April. I still have my fingers crossed for a trip home during March, and I'm trying to assume that I'll get one, considering that Pucci told me Brown requires an interview now for people they're thinking of accepting, and I'm fairly confident they're going to be considering me seriously. With that in mind, it is only a short bit of time until a nice trip home, and then only a slightly longer stretch until a fabulous summer return in aeterna. But, I don't want to get too ahead of myself.

Right now I'm just sitting around waiting for my tutoring session at 2:30, and then going dancing with Suzanne tonight. I'm feeling some inertia and don't really want to do either, but I know that once I'm there it'll be fine and a good way to pass some time. Meanwhile, I've decided to grace you all with the english translations of the poetry I posted yesterday, just so you don't have to feel so out of the loop...

III

The flapping of the wings

of grey crows

is the heart of a comatose man.

the heart of a comatose man

is the eyes of a tortured girl.

the heart of a tortured girl

is the love of all the world.

You have become for me like

A yawning void:

Offensive, like the space between

two exhalations of eyelashes.

The bristle of your voice,

with a stratum of soft mold.

I look as you as though through

a glass of water,

and your face was a constellation

of accusing streetlamps,

which dissolve into clouds

of locusts --

ringing yellow.

He seems to me

to be the sheep in a snake.

When i see him

it is like a thousand feathers

[who escape from a quilt

of hallucinations]

collected by the wind

in the dip

of a persian rug.

He is a circle

in a square

in the ripples of a lake

and he is the voice of reason.

[a voice delicious, like madeleines]

Even if reason exists

only at the bottom of a green glass bottle,

full of the tastes of thoughts

set on fire by the light

of drunken eyes

[blue like the taste of an orange]

that stifle my breaths

with their fuzzy fingers.

He is merely

an absent muse

of ill-advised ideas

[but sweet like the golden honey

of a rogue drone]

that plays out over synapses,

insulted by dreams,

viscous and purple:

one of the tangible people.

Brief, pre-lecture ponderings

2009-01-15T10:22:00.002+01:00

January 15, 2008

Got an email back this morning from the housing guy saying that they had found me a room to move into when mine is closed in April. It's smaller than my unusually massive abode here [14.3m^2 there, 21.somethingm^2 here] and I'm thinking its a single apartment. The single apartment is exciting because I'd have no roommates, but sucky all the same as well because it is, as mentioned, tiny, and I have here been using all my roommate's kitchen stuff, which I'd have to then buy a few things there and [gulp] spend money. Moreover, the kitchen there isn't it's own room. It's IN the bedroom, meaning that when you cook everything you own and sleep on and wear ends up smelling what you've made. I'll be sure to not make anything terribly pungent anymore. I told the guy I accept this room [instead of asking if he couldn't locate me another double apartment, which I might be so bold as to do once he answers my question about what it is: a single, double, or triple -- though I am quite sure it's a single] just because I don't think they'd find me another one, and it is in this same complex which makes life and the move easier. I've also asked if, although he says I can move in February, I can stay until my room here is closed in April. Just because I hate change and, if all my things are going to have to smell like my cooking, better for just three months rather than 5.

For your reading pleasure, if you might be linguistically inclined or have a good online fr-eng dictionary:

III

Le battement des ailes

des corbeaux grises

c’est le coeur d’homme catatonique.

le coeur d’homme catatonique

c’est les yeux d’une fille maudite.

les yeux d’une fille maudite:

l’amour de tous le monde.

Tu étais devenu pour moi comme

Un vide en s’ouvrant :

Repoussant, comme l’espace entre

deux exhalations des cils

le frisson de ta voix

avec une couche de la moisissure douce

Je te regard comme à travers

Un verre de l’eau

Et ton visage était une constellation

Des réverbères accusateurs qui

se fondrent en des nuages des

sauterelles --

Sonner jaunes.

il me semble

le mouton dans un serpent

quand je lui vois

c’est comme un mille des plumes

[qui échappent d’un duvet des hallucinations]

ramassées par le vent

dans un déclivité

d’un tapis perse

il est un cercle

dans un carré

dans les frissons d’une lac

et il est la voix de raison

[une voix délicieux des madeleines]

même si la raison existe

seulement au bout d’une bouteille verte

pleine des goûtes des pensées

en feu par le lumière

des yeux ivres

[et bleus comme la saveur d’un orange]

qui répriment mes souffles

avec ses doigts duveteux

tout juste est-il

une muse absente

des idées malavisés

[mais doux comme le miel doré

d’un bourdon fripon]

qui déroulent sur les synapses

isolées par des songées visqueux

et violets

un des gens palpables.

Unctuous visions from the dead of winter. [Nostalgia]

2009-01-14T15:36:00.007+01:00

January 14, 2008

So, today I've been going through my iPhoto looking at photos from this wonderful, wonderful summer. I thought I'd share some of the best shots with everyone, just so you all have an idea of what it is that I could possibly miss so badly about Rhode Island. And so you, too, can close your eyes and imagine that you are not, in fact, huddled up in a frozen wasteland. I hear its pretty damn cold back in the US, too.

The end of the winter of my discontent?

2009-01-13T15:43:00.002+01:00

Today, I got invited out to coffee with a girl who is in a few of my classes. We chatted, and determined that, once the weather was a bit nicer, she would show me all the good parks [she finds cities somewhat detestable and comes from a quiet little town as well] and we would take photos together. She said that she had no idea that I had no friends here until my Professor mentioned it, and we should definitely hang out and I ought to visit her lovely apartment -- with a reasonably sized kitchen! -- and chill.

Woot!

Also, German cafés have bitchin' hot cocoa.

delicious musings...

2009-01-12T19:22:00.002+01:00

january 12, 2008

pomegranate crĕme brulée
[this recipe is for 6 little dishes of tasty, tasty custard]
1 quart heavy cream
1 vanilla bean, split and scraped [oooorrr for those of us without access to such things, 2 tsp vanilla extract]
1 cup vanilla sugar, divided
6 large egg yolks
2 quarts hot water
2 cups pomegranate juice [trendy!]
1 pomegranate

Preheat the oven to 325.
First thing is first: in a saucepan, bring the pomegranate juice to a boil and reduce to about 3/4 or 1/2 of the original amount. Prepare your fruit as well. Then, bring the cream and vanilla to a boil over medium-high heat. Once boiling, remove the cream from the stove and allow to sit for 15 minutes. Meanwhile, whisk together 1/2 cup sugar and the egg yolks until well blended and it just starts to lighten in color. Add the cream a little at a time, stirring continually ["tempering"]. Pour the mixture into 6 (7 to 8-ounce) ramekins [those little tiny ceramic dishes you always see creme brulee served in, n'est-ce pas?]. Using a measuring cup, because it has a nice little spout, drizzle some pomegranate juice into each cup, and then make lovely swirly designs with a knife, toothpick, or whatever. Place the ramekins into a large baking pan and pour enough hot water into the pan to come halfway up the sides of the ramekins [honestly, i'm not sure why you do this with custard, really. i think it must be gentler cooking]. Bake just until the custard is set, but still trembling in the center, about 40-45 minutes. Remove the ramekins from the pan and chill in the fridge.
Remove from the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes prior to browning the sugar on top, like so: divide the remaining 1/2 cup sugar equally among the 6 dishes and spread evenly on top [so that's 1/12 of a cup per custard, for those of you who are being wicked anal. Seriously, folks, just sprinkle some on there]. Using a torch [WOO!], melt the sugar and form a crispy top. Allow the creme brulee to sit for at least 5 minutes before serving, so you don't burn your face off. Sprinkle on the seeds of the fresh pomegranate -- wicked fancy.

Finally, a new post! Brace yourself for lengthy reading.

2009-01-12T14:53:00.003+01:00

January 12, 2009
Is this the first real post of the new year? I think it may be. In any case, sorry for the total lapse in sticking to my posting responsibilities; I have been generally reluctant to sit down and write because my wonderful trip home, only followed by having to come back here, has basically sucked the life out of me.
My vacation was fabulous, and I'm sorry to anyone who was expecting a visit and didn't get one. Truly, two weeks was just not enough time to get to all the places I wanted AND relax, in the middle of crazy holiday-ness. Oh, and that badass snowstorm I drove three hours through to Seekonk. Good times. Let's just say that I now know my winter driving abilities, and they far surpass those of some other idiots they give licenses to.
The trip back to here was for the most part without any notable moments. I mean, other than the iPod vending machine I say in Logan Airport and the power cord to my laptop getting stolen from my checked baggage. And that I returned to a Leipzig buried in a foot of snow, with temperatures setting record lows unseen since the 1940's, we're talking negatives BEFORE the windchill factor. In fahrenheit. Needless to say, Tuesday afternoon was a mess, as I dumped everything out of every piece of luggage I had in search of said stolen power cord, then ventured back into the iciness to find a new one, then realized I had come home to an apartment without toilet paper [a short interlude here, as I know you all like hearing about the throes of foreign roommate life: when I left on December 20th, there was about a roll and a half left. I had bought that package, so I assumed that my roommates would buy the next one while I was gone, the cycle would continue, etc. But, no. Oh, no. These girls must have gone at least... somewhere around a week without toilet paper. In fact, since it is not my turn, I did not put the new package I got in the bathroom, and there still is none. Only Missy has heard in depth about what I can only now deduce is a soda-bottle bidet -- but still . The toilet seat cozy, and now this thought. Sweet Jesus, get me back to America and all its hygienic glory].
So needless to say I have spent the better part of my time back here so far moping around the apartment doing absolutely nothing but feverishly work towards beating this one level of MahJong that has still eluded me. Went to class on Thursday, though, and afterwards met with my professor for a chat about my plans for next semester. He gave me the email of a guy in another department who might be able to help me with the article I am thinking about writing and suggested I get myself into a seminar with the other Greek professor next semester. It's going to be a bit harder than my classes this semester, but it might do me some good to have some work to keep busy with. As it is, I have basically given up all hope of getting anything really done concerning my original proposed research question. In truth, I came up with an intriguing question, but not any means of finding the answer. Moreover, no one here cares and I am furthermore faced with all the issues regarding the fact that it is something of a social science question, for which I am ill-equipped to research, especially considering that back in the US I would probably have to go through a lot of human subjects review hoops. I am sad to give up on it, really, since it is such an enticing idea, but I am fairly confident no one else is going to have a breakthrough with it before I am back in the US and have access to the resources [technological, scholarly, and human] necessary to really give it the attention it deserves. To make up for this defeat, I am pursuing another topic that I had stumbled upon while studying for a Greek quiz a month or so back that Tony suggested would make an interesting article. It's much more down my alley of expertise, so much more suited to the kind of... individual... [read as: totally alone because the Germans don't actually do anything with Latin or Greek and don't give a care what the strange American girl is asking them about...] work I am relegated to here. And that brings us to this meeting with the professor and the email address of another professor and so on.
Really, though, I am worried about the progression of the article because I have become completely unmotivated, especially since returning from America. I can't get into my groove here. I think groovage requires a number of things that I simply don't have in Germany, namely: a sense of permanence, relatively easy access to necessary resources and, most of all, happiness. I feel really guilty about my general state of unproductiveness and the way I seem to be rationalizing it, but at the same time I am feel like I shouldn't beat myself up about it. After all, I'll spend the next 5 or 7 years working hard, so who will really look back and blame me for taking it a little easy in the one free year I had from the ages of 4 up to almost 30? I just think of what I will say to people when they ask me what I did in my glorious year abroad. Mind you, the whole "glorious" thing is an inference of theirs. So, I'm doing my best to find a balance that allows me the most relative contentment, somewhere between quieting all this guilt with some work, and letting myself give in.
My recent talks with a few people who actually know where I'm coming from have gone a long way towards making me feel less ashamed of myself for the way that I feel about being here and my subsequent lack of motivation and total idleness. Finally, one or two people have come forward and said that it's okay to be a little defeated by Germany; rather than telling me 6 months isn't a long time. I just have this to say: since when do any of you really think six months is a short amount of time, REALLY? And the whole "you're already halfway done!" argument does little good, since, in fact, I am actually a little short of halfway done and -- just to point it out -- halfway done means I still have to live through another equally long term.
I am certain, however, that this second leg will go more quickly than the first, and this gives me a little bit of optimism, on a good day. Soon enough, this semester will be over and I will be free from Greek Prose Comp, in itself a blessing. Then, god willing [and, cross your fingers for me here, folks], I will get a few interviews at graduate schools for sometime in March and get to have another visit stateside. This would split the remaining time into two much more "doable" chunks, and I only wish I could know now that I was sure to have this trip -- also, because it would mean I am probably getting into those schools that give me interviews, too. And, really, that is something to look forward to. I have in any case a trip to London in early April that also splits the remaining time almost precisely in half, and a trip to Paris that I will hopefully be able to enjoy in the face of spent money [we know how I hate to spend money] and short time. Then, the new semester will at least be a nice change of pace that will no doubt make it seem as though time is moving along quickly, at least at first. Plus, unlike the first half of my stay here, I am past the process of getting used to speaking German and being afraid of everyday necessary transactions, have a [somewhat] permanent place to stay [unlike when I got here, knowing I was only in Marburg for 6 weeks and then having to adapt to a whole new city. There is still, nonetheless, the looming issue of the fact that I will be moving to another apartment April 1st-ish because they are remodeling where I live now. I am trying my best just not to think about it, and telling myself that I can get help from at least Suzanne with getting all my stuff to wherever it needs to go -- I hope, not far. I wish, just the next building over. Tarostrasse is kind of a hole, but I am used to it now, and I'm not sure I can really handle any more major changes during my time here]. The change of apartment, too, seems like it could be something to look forward to. Perhaps I will be somewhere with an oven -- or at least a bigger kitchen -- and, while I am adapted to my roommates and have a certain comfort because we're used to eachother, they have really been getting on my nerves lately and it would be good to have a change. And, even if I really don't like my new roommates, it will only be for 3 months -- a space of time that, at this point, seems quite short.
I think part of what makes the time so seemingly unbearable is also all the things I am really looking forward to once I go back to America: moving into my own place, seeing everyone again, American summer in New England, graduate school [read as: "real intellectual engagement, unlike the German way"] and, honestly, a big shower and an oven. Seriously, folks. Two things I really want back: baking, and not having to turn off the water to lather.
So, for now, I am biding my time and attempting to balance my conflicting feelings the best I can and just get by day by day. I am also waiting happily for my new glasses to get here, so I can at least pass the time reading. I came with a huge stack of books off of grad school reading lists, so I can at least feel as though I'm doing something worthwhile for myself academically while I'm otherwise idly passing time until summer. Also, they are super cute. And purple! Unfortunately, I didn't really take any photos during vacation, so I have no visual stylings for you. No, not even of the wonderful Van Gogh paintings I saw in NYC.

I'm exhausted, so, in sum, this:

2009-01-08T10:27:00.001+01:00

Jan 8 2009

An American Interlude, 2008

2008-12-30T19:20:00.004+01:00

Tues. Dec 30 2008

So I haven't been sitting at the computer much -- thus no updates regarding my fabulous American vacation. Let's recap, for posterity:

Touched down in Boston on Dec 21 despite wintry weather. Got stranded in MA for the night, but you didn't hear me complaining. Actually, you didn't hear me doing much of anything. At 9pm I succumbed to jet lag and slept as fitfully as ever I did until my dad came and picked me up the next morning. We braved the tundra and came back to Montville for my birthday on the 22nd. Got my hair done [so now I no longer look like a yetti], and hung out at home. Mom made delicious delicious steak for dinner. On the 23rd I got up [way too] early and went grocery shopping with Mom and Nana for all the Christmas dinner fixins. After a two-hour ordeal at Shoprite I came home and spent the afternoon baking. An apple cake for the Troias and homemade doggie biscuits for my favorite four-legged friends. I shape those little bones by hand. It took forever. They were, by the way, really freakin tasty. Yes. I tried one. Also went and got some last-minute Christmas shopping done with the fam. Christmas Eve morning was spent baking up the most fabulous cheesecake you've ever seen for the LaFrance Christmas dinner, then I sped off to MA and went to a Christmas party with Matt's family, where they proceeded to embarrass the hell out of me by trying to get me to sit on Santa's lap. It's a good thing I like them ;) We watched A Christmas Story. A fun time was had by all and then I got up early on Christmas morning and drove back down to CT for family Christmas. Got a few sweet gifts, and then began to bustle about the house getting everything ready for Christmas dinner. Did the holiday thing with the fam. 26th: went to my eye doctor's appointment and ordered a new pair of glasses, so I will finally be able to read again. Luckily, they don't keep my weirdo lenses in stock at the place, so they're going to take two weeks to make and get here, which means my parents have to ship them out to Germany to me. Lame. They're super cute though. And PURPLE. Woo! On the 27th the Stonewall 4 gang came down and we played some Guitar Hero: World Tour, hit up Chili's for dinner, and watched the new Resident Evil CGI film. Sunday was boring. I went out and braved the post-holiday madness and bought myself a sleek little neoprene sleeve for my lappy so that it stops getting so beat up, and season 3 of Bones was on sale for $20 so I snagged that, too [along with Kung Fu Panda, a few days earlier]. Now I'll have some new stuff to watch back in Leipzig. Yesterday I went up to MA and went out on an old-school date [with an old-school gentleman ;)]. Went to Jacky's and had tasty pad thai, drove through campus and looked at all the crazy construction, then went and saw The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. It was a really good movie, but not nearly as lighthearted as the previews led me to believe. Now I'm back in the 'ville for the day, then tomorrow its back up to MA for a game-night New Years Eve, then New Years Day in Boston with Mike and Nicole, Friday back in MA, then back to CT. As Missy rightly pointed out with amazement, gas is $1.70! I had previously been a little worried about all this driving, but had budgeted for gas at $4/gallon, so now I have no problem throwing caution to the wind.

It is time to sit back and enjoy my American TV. Oh yeah.

Photos!

Cranberry Pecan Cheesecake with Gingersnap Crust aka Deliciousness^2

the long road to america

2008-12-24T03:03:00.002+01:00

December 23, 2008

i'm actually too freakin tired to relay all of the lengthy details of my journey westward to america. the abridged version: lots of trains, free first class seat, one missed departure, a good time in marburg, flights without a hitch [whoa, really?] and finally getting [not reluctantly] stranded in MA by the snow. jetlag ensued. holiday chores.

there's a cake baking in the oven. what did you expect from me, honestly?

finish cake, wrap presents, make a wreath, take a shower, and go to beeedddd. up early for familial duties and then driving out to MA for christmas eve.

[yaaaaaaawn]

"Come tomorrow I'll be on my way back home..."

2008-12-20T09:43:00.004+01:00

December 20, 2008

In about a half hour, I will disembark [through the rain, so when you ask, Matt... ;) ] to the train station, catch an 11:15 ride for almost 5 hours to Marburg via Frankfurt main station and chill with Charity in my German stomping grounds for the night. Then, bright and early, a 7:35am from Marburg to the Frankfurt airport station via Frankfurt main station to arrive around 9am, to sit and wait until my flight at 12:15. Then, it's only 8 hours of cramped Lufthansa comfort until I am joyfully repatriated for two glorious weeks, including my birthday, christmas and new years.

I'm looking forward to seeing the ocean from the plane. Ah, I have so missed Rhode Island.

I am nervous. Sigh. Here's hoping nothing gets delayed and we have no major OR minor catastrophes.

An Addendum [slight elaboration]

2008-12-19T00:08:00.002+01:00

December 18, 2008

Here is a photo, a means of elaborating some on this morning's post...

For later elaboration...

2008-12-18T10:15:00.001+01:00

December 18, 2008

I am so sick to death of my annoying/disgusting roommates. Just putting it out there.

Class.

Dresden: Apparently the capital of Saxony.

2008-12-14T20:27:00.009+01:00

Sunday - December 14, 2008

Today I got up at the unholy hour of 6am -- a time I have seen from the "morning" side not since my pilgrimage to Oktoberfest -- packed my PBJ, bundled myself against the cold, and met up with Julia and Suzanne to hit the Dresden Christmas market. Little did I know, what other finds the Hauptstadt Sachsens held in store.

For one, there was a palpable drop in temperature. And by palpable, I guess I really can't mean palpable, as my toes and fingers were swiftly numbed after our 9:30ish am arrival. The Dresden main train station is OK; I'm still totally partial to Leipzig's. We make our way through a poser Christmas market in the general direction of where we think the main market is. See, unlike Leipzig, whose inner city is dense and the borders of which are fairly clear, Dresden [and other cities, such as, oh I dont know, Berlin], kind of sprawls out fairly lazily, covering way more area. This accounts for a marked difference in the species of Weihnachtsmarkt: in Leipzig, the market is dense and fills the entirety of the inner city -- there's just one huge one that is like a lead ameoba of people, Lebkuchen, and strange wares. In Dresden, there were a number of ghetto knock-off markets, and the main one was kind of spread out haphazardly in a marketplace. Granted, the entrance to ours is in the marketplace, too, but our marketplace is much smaller, and the surrounding areas more dense. To be honest, I was unimpressed. The Leipzig market has all the same wares, for the same or lower prices, and looks more lovely as a result of its density. But maybe I'm just not totally impartial. The Dresden market wasn't very big, and it was early still, and thus pretty empty, so we made our way through quickly.

What did impress me about Dresden was the architecture. This place is beautiful in a very particular way. As you likely know, allied forces basically laid waste to the city in World War II.

newspaper photo of Dresden after the city was bombed in WWII

Today, all of these places have been restored and rebuilt -- some better than others -- and they even re-used the stone from the original buildings as much as possible. The Frauenkirche [quite possibly the biggest, most ornate church I've ever been in, it may even top the Nikolaikirche here in Leipzig, where I go to mass] was just recently finished being rebuilty, apparently, and you can see all the new versus the old stones, and it's absolutely gorgeous. The architecture of all these old buildings -- with really dark aged stone and patina-ed copper domes and light fixtures -- is very baroque and distinctive. Even more than when I'm around in Leipzig [although, it may just be that I'm used to Leipzig now, so that I don't think anything in particular about the enormous Prussian tower of the New Townhall], I got this feeling like I went back in time. Plus, all the streets are cobblestone. How cool is that?

We tooled around for a while, seeing the lovely buildings [of which I think only I was really so enamored...], got a bite [oh man, I so got gebrannte Mandeln, and they were, indeed, delicious as ever they were], and then took a tour of what is apparently a wicked famous opera house. I don't have any pictures from inside said opera, since you had to pay 2E to get an allowance to photograph, but it was basically über-frilly, and I really wasn't jiving on it, anyway. The tour did, however, get us in out of the cold. Oh yeah, btw, Dresden was so cold and windy it made my insides seize.

apparently, Dresden is the capital of Saxony. It was news to me, and I live here.

the Frauenkirche on the left [note the various dark stones used from the original destroyed building], and some other church on the right

oh, PS, Dresden has a palace [see left], and some crazy suffering wall fresco archers. This fresco is actually above some even more crazy street-performers dressed in all-gold getups and masks.

a fine shot demonstrating the overall feel of the city

I think the sequel to my Berlin photoproject of motorscooters will be one on light fixtures, for which I already had a number of great shots, but Dresden provided even more fabulous specimens. To the right, REAL LIVE mistletoe that was being sold at the Weihnachtsmarkt. Yes. Living, real, mistletoe. I had never seen any, so I had a small cow. After smelling the putrid flora -- have you ever caught a whiff of Mountain Laurel? Basically the same deal -- I decided I couldn't buy any to bring back to the US and use to ambush Matt, so I settled for a picture, with the consolation that the picture can hang above a doorway in aeterna

"...do not open yourself as a tenuous neck, to cause a stir in my flesh."

2008-12-09T21:47:00.005+01:00

Dec. 9, 2008

Still waiting on that last letter of recommendation, thank YOU, Tony. I'll beg Pucci for letters, if I have to, in order to avoid this crap for the umpteenth time.

There was, however, good news to be had in the past few days: Yesterday I woke up to an email saying that Prose Comp was cancelled, which naturally made me want to run through the Tarostraße singing. With a smile on my face, I headed out to Intro. Upon arrival, I found a sign on the door saying that it, too, was cancelled. I thus spent Monday being useless to the world.

Couldn't sleep Monday night and felt decidedly ill. Very unhappy to get up at 9:30am today, but I told myself that I skipped Epic last week and couldn't again; after all, all I had to do was make it through the lecture [I had already decided I wasn't going running -- sigh -- and that I probably wouldn't crawl out to CCD later]. So, I sat through the lecture and managed to extrapolate that I hadn't skipped anything last week, that the class had been cancelled. A little annoyed that I could have stayed in bed, I came back after class and crashed for a few hours. Debated going running but thought better of it [I still have a text on my phone from someone who worries too much that reads, "Stop running so much!"] and was otherwise a bum until I dragged myself out for ccd. Didn't look at my violin stuff because its pizz this week -- easiness. I'll give it a look tomorrow and Thurs before my lesson. Still trying to decide if I should make up for not running today and do it tomorrow, Weds normally being an off day. I'll see how I'm feeling.

Getting up to go out into town at 6pm was not looking good, really, until a fabulous email from P.Thomps. He had thrown me the link to the online LitMag he's the editor for a week or so ago to check it out, with a suggestion that I try to polish up a piece to submit. Ezra, as it is named [don't ask me why, I never thought to find out myself], calls itself "an online journal of translation," a description straight to the point. Authors and translators submit works that they have translated to be published bi-ennially [I think?] on the site. All the translations are from the original language to English. So, for funsies, I spent some time digging up an old Senghor text I had done a presentation about sophomore year [I had wanted to do some Cesaire, but its impossible to track down passages online] and took a few hours one afternoon to do a rough translation, stepped away from it for a day or so, and came back to re-eval. Made a few changes and sent it along. I wasn't sure how formal the Mag was, so I checked it out in the meantime. It's pretty legit -- all real authors and everything. So, much as I had assumed at the beginning that it was a gimme because I had an in with the editor, I then kind of changed my mind and, after not hearing back from Thomps for a little bit, forgot about it entirely. Until today, when I got a return email...

Apparently, I approach some kind of surrealist prodigy. Thomps assures me that he has never seen such a good translation of the piece published, and that, although Ezra is booked until 2010, he's going to shove my work in to the Fall '09 issue. He asked me to try for one or two more pieces so he could put it in as a collection [if you check out the site, they usually have authors presenting about 2-4 works], but added that if I didn't have the time/resources, he thought it was something actually good enough to stand on its own. Thus have I now become a 4x published author, and finally have something other than a rinky-dink R-Dub journal to boast about -- much as I take the Civil Discourse Journal to heart and love the editors and the mission, it is not exactly what I'd call "scholarly." In any case, see the end of this post for the piece that is definitely going to appear in the Fall '09 issue of Ezra, and hopefully over break I can requisition myself some text from the depths of the boxes of books in my bedroom back home and do one or two more. It makes me so happy to "get back to my roots," as they say. After all, as I often like to tell people who ask me about getting into Latin and what I want to do with my life: I'm all about the Latin, and I'm making it my life's work, but French was my first love. French is never "work." That's why I haven't made it into a career. I'm too afraid to get angry at it like I get angry at Greek [ = "work"]. It's a nice thought that I can still do scholarly things like this on the side, and, in an alternate universe where anyone would take me seriously enough, I'd love to do a collection of poetry in translation. The problem would be choosing between Cesaire, Senghor or Damas. Oh, and, you know, actually getting it published.

So, while I was writing this post, Tony IMed me with the draft of my letter for Brown, which I assume means that they'll all be submitted within the next day or so. I feel a little bad about getting angry about it, since it is really a very nice encomium, but at the same time I know it probably only took him 15 minutes. But, at least I know it's approaching some state of being resembling "Done". He writes about the "maturity" of my translation and interpretation abilities. I find this timely, with respect to the Ezra news, and endorse it fully with the added reflection of how little the German students get their hands dirty with translation and eating up the text the way I was taught to. Sure, they beat me with a stick when it comes to the really strict grammar [in Greek, at least. I think I probably equal them in Latin, but only because I'm a freak] and prose composition, and they have this weird thing where they actually say the Greek or Latin [decidedly interesting for my project], but I could translate any one of them into the ground. As far as interpretation goes, it's a witty metaphor so far beyond "into the ground" that I couldn't even think of it. We talked about Catullus 1 the other day in Intro, and I was baffled with how superficial their insights were. Granted, it is a first semester course -- but still. All of those students have already had at least 2 years of Latin before, so as far as I'm concerned, they've got no excuse for the lack of depth with which they read. Sure, they all could find in the grammar some note about the present being used as the future quicker than I could [as an answer to which question I just thought: present is progressive, generally, so why wouldn't it also express futurity?] Maybe I was a little partial. I did, after all, nearly submit as part of my writing sample to graduate schools an essay I had done on Catullus 1, in which I attempted to show how the piece is really Catullus making a mockery of Cornelius because the whole poem is really just a cleverly euphemetic metaphor for self-gratification -- a thesis that was NOT, you might note, rejected by either of my professors. We simply ruled it out for the writing sample due to the fact that it was so short and would have needed more work in order to beef it up in time for the applications to be sent. Moreover, I stand by my interpretation was completely plausible. This is Catullus we're talking about, after all. No glimmer of such a taste for interpretation from the Germans. In that way, I guess, they are the American stereotype of "German," I guess. Truly, I am disappointed to see it. It is, however, wildly informative and interesting in terms of my research, so I just eat it up. And get an arrogant little smile on my face: the Americans aren't so far behind the German classicists. I'll make sure of it, personally.

That's all for now, folks. Check out my sweet translation, and bathe in its unctuous, dripping surreality: [I told Thomps that the reason I think my translation came out so beautifully was because I had actually composed some of my own pieces of surrealist poetry in French, with English translations; that I had a surrealist connection with the work that others who are just translators, and not writers, might not have. That, and I was obsessed to get all surrealistic on it, short of dropping acid, putting a bag on my head and going into a Desnosian trance state]

Leopold Sedar Senghor

«Masque Nègre»

Elle dort et repose sur la candeur de sable.

Koumba Tam dort. Une palme verte voile la fièvre des cheveux,

cuivre le front courbe

Les paupières closes, coupe double et sources scellées.

Ce fin croissant, cette lèvre plus noire et lourde à peine – où le

sourire de la femme complice?

Les patènes des joues, le dessin du menton chantent l’accord muet.

Visage de masque fermé à l’éphémère, sans yeux sans matière

Tête de bronze parfaite et sa patine de temps

Que ne souillent fards ni rougeur ni rides, ni traces des larmes ni de

baisers

O visage tel que Dieu t’a créé avant la mémoire même des âges

Visage de l’aube du monde, ne t’ouvre pas comme un col tendre

pour émouvoir ma chair.

Je t’adore, ô Beauté, de mon oeil monocorde!

"Black Mask"

She sleeps, reclines upon the ingenuousness of the sand.

Koumba Tam sleeps. One green leaf of palm veils the frenzy of hair,

cambered copper forehead

Closed eyelids, a bowl doubled, wellsprings cemented fast.

That fine crescent, that lip more black and voluminous up to the brink of grief --

where goes the smile of that conniving mistress?

The plates of cheeks, the silhouette of the chin, singing a mute chord.

The face of a mask, closed from the ever-fleeting, without eyes

without matter.

A head of bronze, absolute, and with its patina of time

defiled neither by artifices nor rouges,

nor wrinkles,

nor by the footprints of tears

or kisses.

Oh face, such as God made you even before the memory of all time,

face of the dawn of the world,

do not open yourself as a tenuous neck,

to cause a stir in my flesh.

I love you, oh beauty of my single-chord eye.

Praha, Snow, and an Obnoxious Orange Hat [to match my Obnoxious Orange "Terrorist" Scarf]

2008-12-03T16:11:00.003+01:00

I woke up this morning to snow again. It was pretty, but forced me to cancel my original plans to run another 5k [I did it for the first time yesterday! Woo!], hit the bank to do some financial maneuvers in preparation for vacation, and wander the Weihnachtsmarkt for the last of my christmas shopping. Swiftly turned to rain, so I fell back to sleep until 2pm. It was a bad call in general because now I have that headachey, stiff-necked "I slept too much" feeling. Since the rain has stopped, and in light of this cabin fevery, I'm thinking about braving the damp coldness and getting my Markt on now, but I can't decide. I can't go tomorrow unless I go after violin at like 6:30pm, at which point it will be desperately busy. Then Friday it's supposed to rain again. I could always just wait further until next week. I had it in mind to get all the spending out of the way so I would know how much I was leaving to the US with, but alas. It will be fun when I go, though, to peruse the German wares. Moreover, going to the Dresden Weihnachtsmarkt tentatively on the 13th with Julia and Suzanne. But I hope to have all my shopping done by then, really. For me, its a glorious chance to take a super cheap trip to another city and make some lovely photos. "Make photos"? Wow, the German language is beginning to permeate.

In my boredom today I began snooping around the Deutsche Bahn [German Rail] site to look at the final costs of all the travelling for my vacation, and for funsies looked up some fares to Prague [Praha]. As it turns out, there's a deal going on right now for inter-European travel, and I'm looking at a 38E round trip ticket! Looked up a hostel for 13E/night and I'm thinking of going on a Friday morning, seeing the sights and loveliness in the snow of January, and coming back Saturday sometime. Not sure yet if I want to spend the money, but in light of possibly canceling my Rome trip for such reasons [in addition to the whole stress thing], I think I can legitimize this spending. Not to mention, the mail fairy delivered a letter full of money to my box yesterday... I wonder who it was that had such a crazy idea and planned it just so that I was 4,000 miles too far away to sneak it back into his possession.... I'm shaking my fist, but formulated a plan that satisfies both parties.

Yesterday I found a bitchin' orange winter cap -- in that strange European style where it's all big and floppy in the back -- that matches my obnoxious orange "terrorist scarf" [thank you, Jeff Brennan]. It's fabulous because it goes oh-so-well with my teal pea-coat. If you're raising an eyebrow at that statement, you may want to reconsider how well you know me.

Still grappling with my decision on whether to leave the house now and go downtown to the markt. Ugh, indecisiveness is such a pain when you live all alone. You'd all be so proud at how I somehow manage to get through everyday life and decisions on my own. When I get back to the States, I'm not picking what to do, when, or where for a good month or two. So, prepare yourselves. My decider will be too tired.

So last night Missy showed me this cool slideshow thing she's making in iMovie with all her photos of her first term, and it gave me the [poser] idea to do a documentary of my year here including all of the video blog entries that I can no longer post, and photos and music and everything. It's an undertaking to say the least, but it will rock if I can pull it off. Needless to say that now I have to start video recording again after two months, so there will b a big gap, but it's still fabulous. It sucks a little because I realized, upon seeing all her pictures of people and everything, that all of my photos are of animals at the zoo, buildings, and foliage. It kind of epitomizes my everyday existence, wherein I interact only superficially with people as necessary. Much as I have branched out in more serious ways than I think anyone else abroad this year has -- taking violin lessons, enrolling in CCD, and teaching -- I still have no friends that I see on a regular basis at all, and can go days on end without talking to anyone. But, so shall it be documented, and it'll be a realistic representation of my life here. Don't start feeling bad for me or anything, because we all know I'm asocial anyway and would pick solitude over jam-packed social planning any day. I just hope that there will be some at least short-lived effect of this experience when I get back that makes me just a little less antisocial for a few months or something. Or I'll develop PTSD-induced separation anxiety. Either way.

Snap. Saturday night is the Nikolaus Spezial Söhne Mannheims concert! This is an awesome sociopolitical inspired rock band that Nicole introduced me to a few years ago, and, while I am nervous to have to go to a packed rock concert all by myself, I am wicked excited to see them live. The CD I have is from their 2004 Frankfurt performance, and it's fabulous. The band is enormous, and has people from all over the world, and their songs are in German and English, so it's sure to be a great show. I'm currently plotting ways to sneak a camera in. I'm going to take a page from Lindsey's book and put it down the front of my shirt where they don't pat you down. Ah yes, the benefits of being female. Saturday is also Nikolaustag [St. Nicholas Day], and I'm debating if I should get my roommate a little gift, as is traditional. I'm not sure if she does the whole holiday thing, so I may change my mind and do something nice for Suzanne and Julia instead, but I'm not sure what. I'm thinking a Nikolausbrunch is in order. I feel like I do miss out on a lot of holiday cheer because I don't have many friends. I saw all the pictures of the Fulbrighters from the Marburg course, who met up at Ashlan's place in Mainz and had a huge family-style Thanksgiving. It made me so thankful that Suzanne, Julia and I had a holiday dinner, but it also made me miss my Marburg peeps. Yun and I don't get a chance to chat as much anymore, and I basically don't talk to anyone else except the occasional facebook comment, so I'm hoping that my spring break plans/grad school interviews don't interfere with the Berlin Seminar in March, so that I can see everyone and we can go out for a damn good Schawarma in Berlin revisit warm, late-summer memories of the ups and downs of Marburg. Not to romanticize it, or anything.

I'm really stalling on my decision to go out to the market, no?

Peculiarities of the Cosmos...

2008-12-01T22:05:00.003+01:00

Yesterday I was absolutely in a funk. Still no letters of recommendation in, a long boring weekend, prose comp looming in the near future: truly an equation for discontentment.

There's a lot to be done this week, so getting up this morning was something of a fight. Thanks to the cosmic pull of the universe, however, the day turned out quite well...First of all, we have officially broken the three-week threshold for my glorious US Xmas vacation. Also, Söhne Mannheims concert this Saturday night. Then, intro was good, and prose comp was fairly OK. As it turns out, I was the only one who didn't totally bomb last week's quiz [HA! HA! TAKE THAT YOU SNOOTY BASTARDS! but let's not get puerile or anything, right?], so she reassigned the same quiz with the addition of only a few more verbs for next week and gave us no homework. Now, if you ask me, this is all absurd. It's an easy damn quiz -- indicative of my being able to do so well on anything Greek -- so she shouldn't be going easy on it. But, I'm not about to say anything to her on the topic, and get myself slapped with 15 sentences.

Went to the library after class to submit my Yale and Penn applications because I needed to print out the payment voucher page for my fee waiver application. I was fairly nervous in the first place because the library is evil and second because after like 3 months I'm finally officially sending these applications away. So very pleasingly, I didn't have to wait for a computer, got the things done, and didn't even have to wait for a copier/printer. This must have been the result of some sort of fault in the time-space continuum, but I'll take it. Big smile, picked up a few groceries, and came home. Got to talk to my most favorite American right when I got home. Had some eats. Didn't practice violin, although I could have because no one was home. Actually, no one is home now, either... but I'm feeling lazy and have tomorrow and Weds. afternoons with no one home to practice. Got my other applications sent out, minus Brown and Harvard because I'm waiting on fee waiver stuff. Legit fabulous: called Harvard on a whim and found out that, contrary to popular belief, they do offer a waiver for their ludicrous $90 application fee. Hopefully I get approved. This would mean that I'm paying $0.00 in application fees. And we all know how much of a fan I am of not spending money on ridiculous bureaucratic BS. Then chatted with my mom about vacation plans and the like, worked out a wee bit. I think I managed to pull a muscle in my shoulder, yay. Got back up to 2.5 miles yesterday after a truly weak showing this weekend of only 6 laps a day. I'm looking to get up to 5k [3.1mi] before break. I don't think I'll add on more distance than that, mostly just try for a slightly faster time. But not too much faster, since I still want to do 30 minutes of running. We'll see what happens. The past few days were pretty rough on the old lungs, for no apparent reason. Sucks to you assmar.

On a completely unrelated note: At long last! A new recipe for yous.

Creamsicle Bars

This is totally inspired by the Little Debbie orange cupcakes [the (superior) orange cousin of the tradition chocolate cupcake].

Orange pound cake: [I stole this recipe from Foodnetwork.com and tweaked it a little]

1.5 cups cake flour

2.5 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

1.5 sticks butter, room temp

1.5 cups whole milk ricotta cheese

1.5 cups sugar

3 large eggs, room temp

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 orange, zested

1 tsp orange extract

Preheat the oven to 350 and grease a 9x9 glass dish. Combine flour, powder, and salt in one bowl. Cream butter, ricotta, sugar and add the eggs one at a time. Then, add in the vanilla and the zest before adding the dry ingredients in parts. Cover up the pan with some tinfoil [you want the cake to look nice and bright orange, not brown!] and bake for about 45 minutes. Set the cake aside on a wire rack to cool. Meanwhile...mix up the following with a hand mixer until nice and smooth and delicious...

filling:

1.2 cup unsalted butter room temp [1 stick]

3/4 cup powdered sugar

pinch salt

1 tsp vanilla extract

Once the cake cooked and removed from the pan, very carefully slice it in half into two layers. Smooth some of that cream filling in between the layers, cut into bars, and enjoy! To really make this like the original, set aside a wee bit of cream in a pastry bag and make the loopy stripe across the tops of the bars.

MMMMmm so good. Why do they not have Little Debbies in Germany?

Leider kein Erntdankfest / Thanksgivingless in Germany

2008-11-27T14:23:00.003+01:00

I'm spending the day being overwhelmingly emo on account of my lack of Thanksgiving. Just for those of you who didn't hear about it yet, Germany doesn't even have turkey, stuffing, or gravy in the grocery store. The other day, I happened to come upon two [bewilderingly] huge turkey legs in the store -- I'm guessing for the two American families that exist in Leipzig? -- and I cried. I cried not just because I realized I was not going to get to have my favorite meal/holiday of the entire year, but also because for a nanosecond I was very excited at the thought of perhaps buying this delicacy and cooking it for myself and maybe my roommates [when they're not eating some strange stuffed internal organ... I lie not. I think there are kidneys in my fridge], and then realized that I had no oven, and no pan large enough to finagle some fashion of cooking this thing on the stovetop. Then I thought, "Stovetop," and cried a little more. Arms full of groceries, I sniffled my way to the checkout.

So yeah, you might say I'm no ray of sunshine today. I even considered skipping my class, but knew that if I didn't get out of the house, said broodiness would be exponentially magnified. Got home, came to find that one of my genius Christmas gift ideas has gone irreparably awry and now I have to think up something else, which inevitably cannot top the first idea, and at least made a delicious lunch. I'm becoming kind of a master of the fried egg art. Then, I burnt my hand really bad on the pan. Weee! Maybe its some kind of universal karma scolding me for being a wretch today but it's still not really stopping me. There's a guest lecturer tonight giving a talk on some episode in Thucydides; I'm still vacillating in my decision whether to go. I'm not going running. I'm most definitely not doing Greek homework [the up side here? She only gave us 9 sentences for next week, and it's a topic I think I know pretty well. Also, no test next week. So, there is some ray of hope, I'll admit]. I likely won't play violin -- but I will draw out my scales and that stuff. I'll probably stay here, in my PJs, wanting turkey really bad, and watching old episodes of House streaming online, eating up the last of this month's throughput.

Tomorrow is my vegan substitute for Thanksgiving. Basically: it's not actually on Thanksgiving, and contains little to no food actually resembling that of legitimate Thanksgiving. Really, I think it makes me feel even more disenfranchised. Tomorrow also calls for a number of errands to be done, which could go either way. [It could, in fact, be raining. ;) ]

We are, nonetheless, joyously approaching the three-week mark !! So I'm going to smile at that thought, and probably take a nap.

Yes, Really.

2008-11-25T23:04:00.001+01:00

Nothing really to report today. So, check out how I've been assuaging my various griefs/killing time:

this brings happiness into the world, and proves that there is nothing that isn't on the internet.