Schule, TU BS

I took my camera to school 2 days ago and this is what I came up with. The really ugly building with all of the windows is mine. The building with the statue in front is where the auditorium is located (this is where the 1st year students have giant lectures). The bikes are typical. They are everywhere. The bike racks fill up early in the morning and people just drop the kickstand, throw on a lock and leave their bikes outside of buildings, on the edge of the sidewalk, in the plaza, etc. A lot of the bikes have been altered from thier original state. Baskets, independent carrying aparatus, child seats, etc are commonplace. After market paint jobs are frequent. People cover their seats in plastic bags to protect them from the rain, it is cute. I thought it was fitting to photograph the signs that someone had locked a bike too haha. The top photo is an aerial view from my classroom (6 floors up). The weather at the time is pretty typical around here - overcast with a chance of rain! I think I had more sun in London then in Braunschweig. On an unrelated note, Braunschweig is called Brunswick on most English maps in case you happen to be looking at a map of Germany and wondering where I am. The county is Lower Saxony and it's middle north on a map. Today is Thanksgiving in America, Parick met me after school and asked me if I would like a turkey sandwich for lunch. After learning that said turkey sandwich was from Subway I declined. It's just not the same. Instead I ate some sort of mexican chicken and veggies with french fries from the school cafeteria, in two days I will be cooking my first ever Thanksgiving turkey (Pute) here.

am Sonntag

So last Sunday we went to church. There's this large, old church im Zentrum (in the center) of Braunschweig and I wanted to check it out besides it's been too long since I last went to church so Patrick agreed to mitkommen (come with me). When we arrived, there were orange signs outside and the place looked deserted, we thought the church was closed but a sign on the door said otherwise so we went in and sat down. The inside of the church looked almost exactly like St. Cecelia's but a bit wider to one side and with seating only in the center not on both sides. Also, the seats were chairs and not pews. On the alter was a giant candelobra that looked Jewish but with less candles swanked by lots of children in red chior robes (95% of these children were blonde). I did not see a large crucifix behind the alter as anticipated but noticed a small one on the front of the alter. Mass seemed to progress as normal (except in German), I could pick out the Our Father and Act of Contrition though they were said in opposite order and the Gospel. There was no sign of Peace but I know not all churches do that so I went along. The children's chior was so cute, the chior master would lead them to the back of the church and then return them to formation in the front, the priest told the congregation that today was the first performance of the chior and everyone clapped. I noted that all of the children in the church were in the chior with the exception of two seated a couple of rows in front of us and one of them appeared to be too old anyway. I also noted that Patrick and I were prob the youngest adults in the place. He later asked me if young people go to church in the US, aparently they don't in Germany. Suddenly, the chior master was leading the children off of the alter and away from their seats, why were they leaving? oh wait now the priest is leaving and people are getting up and putting on their coats. There was no communion? What is going on? In high school, Fr. Charlie told me that mass is like a meal lol, there was no Eucharist in this mass, it felt so weird. On the way out I noticed a display by the door labled information in foreign languages where they had a selection of colored flyers with information about hte church sorted by language. They myst have had at least 20 languages but somehow not English. I took Spanish and Italian and decided to challenge myself (I never read them as I was distracted buy a caramel latte machiato) I asked Patrick to explain and the best he could come up with was, "maybe they don't do it on Sundays" I laughed at the rediculousness in that response so he asked two older woman who were walking in front of us. They informed us that it was not a Catholic church but an Evangelical church, thus no communion. The women were even gracious enough to tell us that we could catch a Catholic mass at a church a little ways down the road at 11. Maybe next week.

It's the Russians You need to Worry About...

Okay so I'm just going to preface that today everything seemed to be going wrong so I came home and went to sleep hoping to wake up and start over this evening. I woke up to an email with some good potential so now for some entertainment: When Britney Spears, Christina Aguleria and Co. first came onto the pop scene (circa 1997ish) people were shocked by their clothes and worried what kind of message they were sending to the young girls who followed them. Well since 1997, I have not seen many young girls dressing like they belong in a music video 24/7 and now I think Christina's grown up and defined her image and her audience has grown up with her, Britney's no longer a role model (she lost that status when she married K-Fed) and Jessica (formerly the virgin Minister's daughter) Simpson is the one marketing on sex appeal (and being overtaken by her newly cuter younger sister). Pretty much the others in the business at the time have either moved onto other things, gave way to new vixens who are not teens (i.e. Shakeria)or grown up themselves. Basicaly, I have not seen the negative side effects that were predicted to result from this generation of pop stars...and then I met a girl from Moscow, Russia. She is about 25, maybe 27 and each day she comes into class dressed like a poorly wardrobed back-up dancer in a music video (the type that would love K-Fed for his sleeziness). Her hair is bleached out and long (possibly extensions) with a few strands of hot pink, a few strands of black and, my personal favorite, a 3-inch wide section that starts about 4 inches from her roots and alternates between black and pink stripes. If you can believe it, the hair is far from the worst part of her daily ensambles. According to Patrick, she is part of the well off section of Moscow that gets MTV and uses it to form opinions of America and fashion. The thing is her clothes are so tacky they look more like Rave than Forever21 (and that's not saying that Forever21 is the best but they tend to be classiey than Rave). A typical outfit consists of boots, embazzled with sequins, beads or some sort of friverlously decorative article. Said boots are black and either have a stiletto or a 4-inch platform, she does own one pair of white boots that lace up in the front and zipper down the back all of said boots are of synthetic materials. One day she didn't wear boots but that was equaly disasterous with a pair of stacked wedge pumps (sounds cute but read on) black with bronze rivets all around the top and outlining the entire wedge, a gold piece of string that looked like it came off a box of Russel Stovers was tied around her ankle and it was visable as she was wearing black pants that stopped at the knee cumulating in a gathered snap and only suitable for well-to-do Pilgrims. If that wasen't bad enough, the pants had pleather back pockets with silver trim and a chain! These pants were paired with textured tights, a black long sleeve velvet shirt that had two sholder cutouts with mesh inlay and accented with giant hoop earings (the only thing not black but purple and sparkly), fishnet hand socks without fingers and the tackiest belt ever (not in belt loops of course) black pleather with multi colored jewels all over it and a jewel incrusted oversized silver buckle. This is as good an example as any of her daily look. Often the hair is braided at the bottom and a terrible mesh baret looking contraption is used to cover top (hence why I think extensions may be involved.) Every day, I look at her and hate American pop just a little bit but moreso I wonder when she will wake up and realize that no one in the real world dresses like that!

My Future...

I was sitting on the kitchen floor finishing up the painting project I started weeks ago and listening to my iPod on shuffle. John Mayer's 1983 came on and I started to put my life into perspective. When he sings about wanting to be 6 again I feel the same way. Well maybe not exactly but things were so much easier when I was in school and my future was just a far off dream. I wanted to be a dance teacher (briefly), an art teacher and then a marine biologist. I now have three degrees, all in the field of business and I want to be a business woman. When I think about why, I always come back to my original motivations, the clothes and power to make decisions. Are those really good reasons to choose one's life profession? I'm not sure but maybe that has something to to with my current situation. Right now I would say I'm a perpetual student currently learning German. I support constant learning but this is never what I wanted to do with my life. By now, I expected to have a job and be climbing the proverbial ladder. I'm not sure that I don't like where my life is right now. I'm happy. Soon I'll start teaching, not art but English. English as a second language and taking these German classes is going to be quite helpful as I'll be able to empathize with my students. It is just that I'm not working in the business world. I can't go anywhere with this job and I don't even have health insurance nevermind a 401K! Sometimes I feel like I'm missing out other times I love my life as it is. Two days ago, for the first time, I thought about going home and getting a real job and getting on with my life. I'm still undecided and I need to buy a plane ticket if I'm going to make it back here for training and to be able to start my job.

This Night

So I convinced Patrick that we should go to IKEA, not to buy anything but just for fun...okay we bought some stuff. The coolest thing we bought was a paper lantern lamp which went perfectly with my plan to rearrange the bedroom in anticipation of putting my desk in tomorrow. I am currently sitting on my rug/yoga mat typing this. Anyway, my computer manages to injure me in the process. I guess this is my first ever computer induced injury. The battery box thing on the cord fell right on my face as I was lifting it. So these are the photos of my new room arraingement and injury, it is more swollen in real life and I hope it is better when I wake up. Guten Abend!

Germanizing

I'm currently cooking a pretzel, German style. Well I guess it is kind of cheating because you buy the dough frozen and already in pretzel form but they are still fun to make and they start off white and turn pretzel-brown. haha I'll post a real post later. I have really come to appriciate Fridays more now that I am on a set schedule. However, I have so much German homework on the weekends.

WWII Leftovers

Today, as we were driving to the grocer store we heard on the radio that a rocket launcher from WWII was found near the Autobahn. Aparentl they detinated the rocket and no one was hurt. This was the second time since I've been here (about a month) that I've heard of WWII weaponry being found in Germany. The first was a bomb that was aparently burried under the Autobahn. It was struck during construction and killed at least one person, injured others and caused a traffic delay. Aparently this happens from time to time in Germany. What I don't understand is how come, almost 70 years later, these bombs were not removed? Things were just built over them as they lay dormant in the ground with the possibility of explosion looming. Aparently they are under cities, towns, etc and it is too much of a hassle to remove them/it is not know where all of them are. This is the kind of stuff you don't hear about in America!