woo! so the speech went wonderfully, better than I could have ever imagined. The ladies loved it, totally ate it up in all of its glorious corniness, mostly since I delivered it in German, and now I've been invited to more events. One involves American college students, and the other a bunch of American ladies new to Stuttgart. I even got invited to a ski weekend! Too bad I can't ski. And in this case, trying _would_ hurt. but I might as well...

Oh man. Takes just one of these events to really boost your esteem. I walked around the Stuttgart Weihnachtsmarkt for a few hours afterwards with this feeling that I truly had a handle on the German language. After all the praise from the old ladies, I was convinced I was, in all things German, untouchable. Course, I've come down from my high now, but I should be able to comfortably coast into tomorrow's festivities and on into the weekend of fun with the other American DAAD scholarship kids.

Whee!

going to Stuttgart this week for another Verband seminar. Should be really fun to see all of the crew again. Only thing is that I have a speech to give today for a Christmas Tea in front of a whole bunch of little old German ladies... hopefully I don't mess it up too bad.

Somehow Jeff and I managed to miss class this morning. You'd think with each class being once a week, we could make it to every one. Oh well, we'll just have to get the notes from somebody. Probably Scott.

Have a great weekend everyone!

I love panini! it was a delicous mini-baguette with mozzarella and tomatoes, topped with pesto, olive oil and balsamic vinegar, heated in the oven to perfection.... I really talk too much about food.

Also made some brussel sprouts. it's one of my family's traditional Thanksgiving foods, and I missed it this year, sadly. but now i have my own batch!

dang it! I just wrote a nice long post about the post office, my really great salad I'm having at the moment for lunch, and walnuts. Now Blogger deleted it. I'm angry.

Sometimes it hits me how delightfully old-fashioned German can sound. If you were to directly translate some of the phrases, they come out quite British-sounding, and very charming. For example, the following which I recently wrote in a letter:

"Ich freue mich auf den Besuch von meiner Tante und hoffe sehr, dass mein Vater und meine Schwester ihre Reisepaesse bald besorgen und mich auch besuchen."

When I read this, my translation is something like "I'm excited that my aunt is coming to visit and I really hope that my dad and my sister get their passports soon and visit me too." But run through the automated-translation-gamut, it comes out sounding like this:*

"I look forward to the attendance of my aunt and hope very much that my father and my sister procure their passports soon and also visit me."

Isn't that nifty? So when I speak German, I'm speaking British, the only differences being 1. that I know how to do it and 2. it's in German.

Well, today it looks like I'll take my turn hasseling with the German post office to get them to allow me to send Christmas presents home for the low, low price of 32 Euro (does that make any sense?). Then I'll probably go to my cell phone company, 02, and yell at them for giving me a defective phone that shuts itself off every 5 minutes, and demand a replacement. (That sounds so much more successful and assertive on this blog than it will really be in real life.) Last plan is to go to the gym, and then find somewhere where I can dance tonight - for some reason I've been hit with a big wave of Tanzlust. Then tomorrow I'll be going on a shopping trip to Reutlingen with some other Amis to look for winter Strumpfhose (long underwear). I didn't think they'd be necessary but they really are - it's ridiculously cold here, and it's only November!

Til then, lieblings - tchau!

*The translation had a little help from me in the grammatics department. Didn't change the words, though.

There seem to be no good avocados in Germany. While this should theoretically save me money over the course of the year, I am still bitter about spending up to 10 euros on avocados, both at the fresh markets and the supermarkets, that have not once proven to be any good. At least I won't waste another cent on them here in Europe.

On the flip side, however, they have very tasty pomegranates here! Each one takes, of course, about 15 minutes to shell, and cost about 2 Euros each. But - they are so worth it.

I solemnly pledge to stop blogging about inconsequential and irrelevant things that no one wants to read about.

did I mention I saw the 4th Harry Potter in Stuttgart on Thursday? It was awesome. Harry got pretty hot in these last couple of years... I joined the facebook group that declares the sentiment.

I'm bored.. I have stuff to do but I don't want to do it. At least i made it to the gym yesterday. I'll probably go back tomorrow before class at 2.

Kay, I guess I'd better read for class.

Justin reflecting on his 21st birthday:

Justin: yeah, Itll probably kick me in the ass later though...I guess I called someone's mom too when I was drunk calling people....
Me: haha you don't remember doing that? that's great
Justin: she was raging pissed....i think I called her a cockbag though so that would make sense

ahahhaha. J-dawg cracks me up....

in other news: my sock is almost finished. then I can start making the other one. i have DC++ up and running and now can't stop listening to "I Will Follow You Into the Dark" by Death Cab for Cutie. I had it on repeat for a while. I had to add "Soul and Body" into the mix, else I'd go crazy. I'll probably put those on my iPod, and Weezer's Pinkerton, which I have been recently obsessed with, and go to the gym in a bit here. Tonight I will see a choir concert in the Stiftskirche, and then choose from 3 different party options. I kinda want to go to the Die Aerzte fan party, but I'm afraid it will suck and I'll never want to listen to Die Aerzte again. The other options are going to SudHaus with some of my dorm mates and dancing the night away, or hanging out with the Americans from last night's party.

Today we went to the Ritter Sport Chocolate Factory in Waldbuch, to test out the very real concern of the human limits of chocolate consumption before one dies of cocoa poisoning.

We all survived. But I did buy a lot of chocolate. Enough to last me for a few months and send a good amount home for Christmas. So much that I had to describe it to Jeff in terms of kilos, to which he replied, "you know what else is sold in kilos? Cocaine."

"Yeah," I replied, "but only dealers buy in kilos."

I know, I know, I set myself up for that one.

Really, I did buy a lot of chocolate today. It's easy to get there from Tuebingen. The 826 towards the Stuttgart airport leaves from the Hauptbahnhof , and it's just a few Euros to get there. The factory is in Waldbuch, and the stop is "Postamt". From there, you turn left and walk down the street until you come to a big factory. Congratulations, you've made it.

Well, to continue in the theme of doing unuseful but fun things today, I'm going to a birthday party. Ciao!

Oh man. I shouldn't have started with this site, but now that I have, I have to show you the best ones:

Rejected Bond Girls

What I Like About You

State Songs, If They All Suggested the Apathy of Idaho's "Here We Have Idaho"

Things Hagrid the Half-Giant Would Say If He Served Jesus Instead of Harry Potter

And last, but certainly not least (it is, in fact, my favorite because it made me laugh out loud):

Not-So-Good Names for Murder Mysteries

In other hilarity, the Word Verification for this post is "heeey". I think it's really time for a nap now.

mmmm! I just made a big batch of basmati rice. I was taught well, as Javod's dad told me once that basmati is to be washed 3 times with cold water, then cooked. I screwed up the end part, though, where I'm supposed to put butter at the bottom of the pan and then let cook. Either I mixed the butter too much or I didn't let it cook long enough. That, and I added way too much saffron. Why didn't anyone tell me how potent that stuff is? Guess I should have known - after all, I know it produces a yellow color (mellow yellow, if you will), and when I opened the package, I found a little vial of completely red powder. Sprinkled a lot of it on my rice, and now it's almost completely yellow. Oh well. I'll try again next time when I make rice to go along with my first attempt at Kabab Koobideh. I can hardly wait!

But for now, I have my basmati and a nice salad with tomato, cucumbers, feta and a homemade balsamic vinagrette. So I'm good, and quickly becoming sleepy. Probably won't go to the gym today. But I'll make time to see Harry Potter in Stuttgart... and to work on my newest knitting project. Socks.

I should rename this blog to reflect my love for food. That's what most of the rest of the blog is about, anyway...

just found out the German word for "worst-case scenario". It's "Gau".

I think that's great. So short! So concise! And so very German.

Admittedly, it's a acronym of the full phrase, which is "groesster anzunehmender Unfall". But I think they say "Gau" in place of that, because it's shorter and awesome. And it rhymes with "cow".

Gym time! then class.

Is Steve still eligible for the Distinguished TA award at UW, even though he's finished his PhD there and is doing a postdoc at U of A? If so, I recommend everyone who ever had him as a TA (and even if you didn't, but you go to UW) to nominate him here.

Wait, maybe they don't care about your submission if you never had the guy as a TA. Whatever. Steve rocks. I nominated him.

Somewhere back there was my 400th post. Too bad I didn't think to commemorate it...

Today is the day after my birthday, which means I am now 21 and hung out with friends in the kitchen last night. The party was kind of a quasi-surprise, meaning I knew about it but I didn't know who was going to show up or what was going to happen. Two girls, German and Turkish (their names are Clara and Ilif, respectively), made me what I think was a rum cake, and everyone else brought something more or less indicative of their homeland. Not that we had too many international kids - it was 5 Germans, Ilif from Turkey, Irene from Italy, Tihomira from Bulgaria and Nizar from Syria. And Jeff and I. I had forgotten to buy a case of beer like I'd been planning, and stores are closed on Sundays, so I had to offer what I had, which wasn't much. Oh well. It was still a lot of fun! And towards the end, the German conversation was almost completely understandable. I was proud of myself, because they were speaking normal speed (aka fast), and I could keep up. Ilif and Irene were proud of themselves, too, I think - we kept exchanging smiles when we pulled off sentences in German that were almost normal speed and perfect grammar.

I came away from it all with about 40 facebook greetings on my wall and in my message box, a dozen beautiful roses, a yummy Greek dinner, a book on brewing beer and a photo of Tihomira and me overlooking Tuebingen. She wrote what she called a "wish" for me on the back, which I will later have to transcribe onto this website, because it is so cool and so beautiful for someone who doesn't speak English natively (she was the only one at the party who doesn't speak German, so she wrote the wish in English).

Well, it's time for class and then the gym, so I'll leave you all with this little gem:

"Modern English is the Wal-Mart of languages: convenient, huge, hard to avoid, superficially friendly, and devouring all rivals in its eagerness to expand." -Mark Abley, journalist (1955- )