I tried, I really did

So Sunday evening, I went up to my friend Elizabeth's room. The plan was to do yoga for 30-45 minutes and then go back down to my room for a few minutes to freshen up real quick before meeting a friend for church. I had skipped church the previous two weeks, but had enjoyed it the first time I went, and wanted to return.

I knew something wasn't quite right when I got to Liz's door and there were two cute pairs of shoes sitting peacefully outside her door. As far as I knew, Liz kept her shoes in her room, and besides, they were like no shoes that I had seen her wear. I knocked on the door and found it already open. I walked inside, and there were two young Korean women talking to Liz. Liz explained that they were Erasmus students and motioned for me to sit down.

They introduced themselves and the woman I sat next to said she was studying Theology. They said they were from South Korea, and I was like, "Is that the one with Kim Jong Il?" (Yes, I can be a bit ignorant. But asking questions is the way to fix that.) They looked horrified, said he was from North Korea, and started talking about how his atomic tests were terrible and that it was likely he would bomb the whole world in the "Plague by Fire" predicted in the Bible.

It started to get really weird-- they had a book full of things that looked like middle school science hand-outs that they took out and would point at. They turned to a page with an Atom bomb that said, "Plague by Fire". They then turned to a page with a picture of the Sun and the Earth with lots of scary lines coming out of the Sun that said, "Solar Winds." There was also one that had a picture of a catastrophic possible meteor collision with Earth.

But, they made it clear that if we celebrated Passover with them, we would live on because of God's promise. All of this we (Liz and I) understood. However, they kept on bringing up some vocab that we didn't understand over and over. I looked it up using Liz's computer and found that they wanted us to get baptized.

Liz tried to tell them that she was already baptized, but they made a bunch of sad faces and told her that she really wasn't (because she was baptized in the Catholic church) and that she needed to get baptized again. After a while, they asked her if she needed time to think about it and agreed to come back next week.

When I looked at the time, I saw that I had missed church.

Ironic?

I wish I had a better immune system

On Tuesday I caught my second cold of the season (the first one being almost exactly two weeks before), which is ridiculous. I mean, Monday, I wake up, I'm happy, go to class, contribute, yadda yadda; Tuesday, I wake up, I'm fine, and then. . . Tuesday night. . . one side of my throat is swollen, I have a fever, and I end up coughing all night. No fun. At least it only really lasted two days. And it is sort of funny how diseased my study abroad program is. On Wednesday morning, half the people in class were sick, and it was just ridiculous trying to get anything done. The Professor would say something, and only half the people would do it. The others either wouldn't be listening, wouldn't hear, or would forget within seconds what they were supposed to be doing. Our brains were muddled and our motivation was low. The room was a symphony of sniffles.

Other than that the week was pretty cool. It was the first week of classes, which is always very exciting for me. It was different than usual, though, because here almost all the classes only meet once a week for an extended period of time instead of for 3 one hour sessions. I'm not always rushing from one place to another. Something I'll have to get used to.

At this point in time I am class shopping. Meaning, I am taking way too many classes until I start to do badly in some or decide that I don't really care enough to try. I've already decided to give up on the French class, but otherwise I'm taking 1 German grammar class, a mini class about communicating better in German (working on essay writing and speech giving), 'An intro to German Literature', 'Germany: 1945 to the Present', 'Modern Munich Literature; 1900-1950', and 'Goethe's Italian Journey'. All through my program and all in German. I'm also sitting in on two University Physics classes until I decide whether or not I am going to take them: Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity. I really want to take them, and think I understand enough German, but sitting through them this week reminded me that Physics is hard work. I really hope that I give them my all and don't slack off. It would be really wonderful to succeed.

I considered taking a French class, but am now thinking maybe not. I was really embarrassed because I took the French placement test and appeared to have tested into a really low level. But then, I went to the class that I tested into, and was a bit overwhelmed by the rapid French and the intensive grammar review. So confusing! The class was titled 'Cours Elementaire' (translation: 'Elementary course') but maybe I misunderstood. Anyway, seems to be a bit more trouble than it's worth at the moment, and I would rather concentrate on my other classes.

As I said before, I'm on the third day of a cold. I feel fine except for residual congestion, which puts me in a lame situation-- I can't go out, because I want to get completely better; I can't sleep, because of my stuffy nose; and I'm well enough that just sitting around is boring. Ah well, such is life. I'm sure I'll be better by tomorrow and back to enjoying my year in Germany.

Oktoberfest! Another Try

My old room-mate wasn't the only one to visit that weekend; on thursday night, I had to go to the airport to meet an old friend from high school. By the time we got back to my "apartment", it was really late, so we just went to sleep in preparation for the big day.

Sometime in the early morning, we woke up and got ready to go to Oktoberfest. We got there shortly after 9, walked into a beer tent, and asked three german guys around our age if it was okay to sit at their table (at nine in the morning on a weekday, Oktoberfest is already packed and there's no getting a table of one's own-- besides, sitting by germans gives me an excuse to practice). We talked a bit-- they were from northern germany, one of them was working (internship or apprenticeship, can't remember what german word he used and wouldn't know the difference if I did) and two of them were studying mechanical engineering. I think. Might have been the other way around. Luckily, I was sitting closest to them out of everyone at the table, so I got to practice my german quite a bit. I would say something in grammatically incorrect german, and they would reply in english. At ten, the waitresses came by with beers, and the drinking started.

I kept telling them that they could speak german, and as they started to drink a little they spoke more and more. I don't remember everything we talked about, but it involved a lot of pointing at Annie (friend from high school) and saying that she was the only one at our table that didn't understand german. Over and over again. I don't know why I did it so many times, but it was sort of funny because she didn't understand what I was saying.

Inside the tent was so cool. There were so many people from so many places, all brought together by alcohol. There were drinking songs, people chugging maßs (a liter of Oktoberfest beer), and lots of standing on benches and tables. Also, beer was everywhere, making everything quite slippery.

Sometime in the afternoon some guys from our program came over and convinced me and Annie to go to the funhouse with them. The funhouse wasn't that great, but there was a room that spun around so fast that everyone got stuck to the wall. I don't know who's idea it was to have so many rides at a festival full of drunk people.

We went back to a friend's room and she made us pasta. After that, everyone passed out except for me. Around nine Annie and I got back together with two other girls to hang out, but I left early in order to meet two people from my college who were also visiting me that weekend.

I went to the Hauptbanhof, and Annie went to a club. I met who I was supposed to, a friend from college (Katie) and a guy who I hadn't met yet (Daniel), but who also goes to Wooster and is in the same study abroad in France program as Katie. We got back to my room around 12:30, grabbed a beer each, and went downstairs to see if anything was going on. We talked with a few guys until 2 and then went back up and went to sleep.

We woke up around 7:30 to find that Annie had never come back. I went and knocked on a friend's door to see if she was there, and when she wasn't, figured she was a big girl who could take care of herself.

I left a note saying that I would be back in time to take her to the airport with a few hours to spare, and then left with my college buddies to have a second day at Oktoberfest.

Alpenexkursion

On Wednesday night, the 30th of November, my room-mate from last year came for a visit. Well, kind of. She wanted to visit me, but it was more for Oktoberfest, which is a good thing because I was busy most of the time she was here.

So the next day she went to Oktoberfest and I went on a day trip to the Alps. When we got to the Alps, our professor showed us a map and explained to us that we were not actually hiking in the mountains today, but taking a leisurely stroll up a hill. We then proceeded to walk up into the mountains for an hour and a half.

Most of it wasn't too bad, but there were about three ten minute sections that were very tough mountainous treks-- straight uphill, no breaks, very steep. I like hiking and walking up hills, but many group members felt deceived by our professor's earlier description.

The Alps were beautiful beyond description, so I won't try. When we got to our destination, we ate a hearty lunch-- we were supposed to take a lift down to where we started, so it didn't matter whether or not we ate ourselves into a stupor. Or so we thought. The train was broken that day.

Our professor thought it would be boring to simply retrace our steps and wanted to find an alternate route down. There wasn't really another way back, so we made our own. At one point the hill (there was no trail, by the way) became so steep that we couldn't continue walking-- we sat down on our butts and slid.

At the end of the day, we were sweaty, grass-stained, and thoroughly content.

I'm back!

Sorry I haven't kept up with my blog (if anybody's following it. . .)! This past week and a half was quite busy: Oktoberfest, 4 visitors out-of-city visitors in 3 days, a sickness, a new refrigerator, and a search for a seemingly non-existent bank account. You see, constantly having guests, drinking too much, coughing and worrying when the next meal will be are all activities that can distract one from one's duties. A lot of (hopefully) interesting things happened, and I will describe them in installments. I hope I finish, as I am going to Salzburg tomorrow and have quite a busy weekend.

Tuesday the 29th of September: A Strange Prelude to an Amazing Week

As you may or may not know, my classes for the semester have not yet started and I'm still in Orientation. Orientation is a combination of things: German, learning what's important in Munich, a very brief course in German politics, etc. On Tuesday, our homework was to go out and find a German person that we did not know and interview them. We were divided into groups and instructed to go to either a bar or cafe.

Our group wasn't too exciting; we found a nice young woman downtown who was currently involved in a hotel internship. When we got back to our student housing, we noticed another group sitting at the student bar talking to someone, and a few of us decided to join. The man offered me a place to sit next to him, and I did.

Now, what I didn't know when I sat down was that this man was a) not German, but in fact Romanian, and b) extremely perverse. I did not feel threatened by him in any way (he didn't try to touch me and didn't even really give me any looks that made me uncomfortable), but he would randomly insert sexual things into conversation. Example: I was talking to the girl across from me about how excited I was to go to the Alps that Thursday. "I love hiking!", I exclaimed. He turned his head and said, "What? You love f***ing?". (That was the tamest example I could think of-- didn't want to offend anyone). He also (recognizing that I was too young for him, I guess) tried to set me up with every guy my age that was at the table with us. When I first sat down, he asked me if I liked nice, young American guys and motioned to someone I knew sitting across from me. I was like, "I already know him," and he dropped the subject.

A guy I knew sat down with us, and when he got up to go use the bathroom, Heraldo (the Romanian) turned to me and said, "Ingrid, I could tell he was devoring you". I was like, "What?". A second later, I figured out that he meant to say 'devouring'.

Well, this Romanian did have a little crush on me so when I got up to leave he ordered the table a round of beers so that I would stay. "Ingrid," he said, "give me two months and I will be falling in love with you." I laughed nervously.

The group that interviewed him made up fictional answers for their presentation the next day. All the ones he gave were too vulgar for mixed company.