*wasting two hours in bed after waking up earlier than you expected to
*wandering around the city in the afternoon, forgetting to buy your groceries for sunday but then remembering that the doener stand is always open and that you've been there so much that they have your order memorized
*trying to decide whether to buy a german dictionary for foreigners or another german-english dictionary and in the end buying a german thesaurus and Bible instead and finding yourself much more satisfied because the thesaurus came with a cd-rom for only 4 euros more
*eating breakfast twice and then having lunch so late and the cheesecake from the bakery just before dinnertime so that you realize that you don't have to eat your dinner food for dinner tonight and consequently have food for sunday; problem solved
*waxing metaphorical while speaking with friends on aim
*listening to every soundtrack cd currently stored on your computer's hard-drive
*discovering that there's nothing you can do about it; you're not going to have classes mondays or fridays, one class on tuesdays, and you're done by 1 on thursdays because the other classes have conflicts...but it'll still count as 18 credits back at valpo
*taking a shower at 4:30 in the afternoon because it seemed a convenient thing to do while washing your laundry, since you discovered that you didn't have any socks left and your jeans were starting to develop their own personalities
*not dying your clothing funny colors with the crazy german washers for maybe the first time since arriving, though it's your fifth time doing wash
*thinking about doing homework and deciding not to do it, listening to said soundtracks instead
*thinking about packing your things for your upcoming move in less than a week but realizing that you have so few things that you could probably pack everything in about an hour, as opposed to the five days of agony you spent in may at valpo
*watching cold mountain in russian and realizing that your russian has already gotten quite out of shape but enjoying the movie anyhow because you've been plodding your way through the book in german
*very nearly crying at the end, not only from the ending but also because the music was so incredible
*being very glad that you don't live during the time of the civil war with rapes and murders and no form of electronic communication with your boyfriend
*listening to the street musician of the day--a bagpipist--play some of your favorite celtic tunes and wishing you could open the window but then being happy that you don't want to because it's a cold fall day outside and so cozy inside
*wondering where the whole day disappeared to but still feeling rather content because saturdays were simply made to do nothing

and how my day went from normal to fabulous between 22:40 and midnight

so we went to lake constance today, all the little deutsch kompakt kids and our teachers. we had to be at the bus stop at 8 a.m. this morning and didn't get back until 22:30 tonight. we went first to an incredibly ugly roccoco church. waking up to a pink church with wood painted with a marble texture instead of real marble is, um, tacky.

then we had a 50 minute drive to friedrichshafen, home of the zeppelin makers. we went to a zeppelin museum, which we were actually excited about until we went on the tour. it is mostly possibly the most boring tour i have been on in my entire life. and it lasted an hour and a half to go through 4 rooms. i really think i would have learned a lot more from reading the placards around the museum and doing a self-guided tour. it strikes me that zeppelins were one of the most impractical inventions for human transportation that ever was, and yet germans were so gung-ho about it at one point that most of the major cities installed zeppelin stops with the expectation of establishing a zeppelin public transportation network...they were obviously short a few marbles...

from there, we went to meersburg and saw the oldest inhabited castle in germany, more than a thousand years old. the castle was pretty cool. one of germany's top 10 poets of all time lived there for quite a while (annette von droste-huelshoff, just in case you recognize the name), and there were plenty of other interesting things about it too. the downsides were that it was freaking cold and windy all day long (low 50s and quite a swift wind), we had a picnic lunch on the top of a hill and thought we were going to die of frostbite, and we were forced to wander around a very expensive tourist city with nothing but very cheap-looking kitchy stuff for more than two hours.

so we sucked it up and did what every right-minded freezing german bakery addict does: we found a cafe and drank coffee and ate wonderful german desserts only an hour after a very unnutritious lunch. and then we paid almost $5 for the privilege, but hey, at least we weren't freezing our buns off anymore!

then we took the bus on a ferry across the water to the city of constance, which is on a peninsula that juts out into the middle of the lake and through the middle of which runs the border between germany and switzerland. erin was determined to enjoy the fresh sea air as the boat crossed the water and also explained that sea-sickness would result if she stayed on board the bus during the crossing. so she stood at the railing for the crossing and came back with completely soaked pants but was happy because she said she felt more alive than she had since she arrived in germany 22 days ago. i, however, took a nap and enjoyed the separation from most of the loud and annoying people belonging to the group, most specifically to my class.

erin and i wandered through various shops for about an hour and looked at the city a bit, but we only had an hour before dinner. so then we ate the strangest lasagna i have ever encountered: the only visible cheese was melted onto the top layer of noodles, and the innards consisted of green beans, carrots, zucchini, broccoli and cauliflower. in a reddish sauce. hmmm....at least i like my veggies, so it was okay to me, but most of the kids went hungry, i think. poor tikes.

dinner company was interesting. for the past week or so since learning the word, my classmates have been calling the people in the other two classes schwer behindert, or severely retarded. so i appreciated it when today the englishman called us some name and then another guy from the middle class called me condescending and arrogant. he then clarified that he didn't mean to offend me specifically because most of the people don't have a clue that i am in that class because i refuse to hang out with the people. but i was so glad to have someone say something about it because it bothers me so much. so this is most likely the first time in my life i have been proud to be called condescending and arrongant!

upon arriving home, i found out that i don't have to write 8 pages of b.s. to get credit for my moscow internship because they never informed me in writing of said requirement; instead, i only have to write one page detailing what my responsibilities were while i worked at the center.

and then tina brought up the mail, and i discovered that my daad scholarship has kicked in, and i have money again! at the same time as being 41 euros over my daily budget of 10 euros after many days of pinching to get above a 30 euro deficit a couple weeks ago. oh, happy days!

to top it all off, i get to talk to mike before going to bed. and this is how my evening became wonderful: i'm condescending, lazy, and rich...

no, not for me. don't get all worried yet. i've still got two years of college ahead of me :-).

some congratulations are in order: my big brother asked megan to marry him this week, and she accepted! they want to get married in may; this conflicts with my school schedule, but it's do-able if i'm willing to spend 2 out of 5 days on a plane. which i am of course willing to do, since your big brother only gets married once...we pray!

so lots of congratulations, and lots of prayers!

*first, i would like to introduce hai tian. hai tian was erin's suitcase that she bought on her trip to china last year. however, he decided to be a rebel during his journey to europe and broke down completely before we managed to get to my apartment when i picked up erin the other day, which meant that we had to share the responsibility of hauling her 45 pound suitcase across the city in our arms; my arms are still sore. however, last night, in a moment of inspiration, erin and i wrote this obituary*

Hai Tian was a lovely suitcase.

He was born in China, with lowly roots. His proudest feature, was the triumphant Nike swoosh clearly visable on the front cover.

Separated from his parents, Hai Tian was sold into slavery one chilly March evening. His owner? Oh, I think you know.

Hai Tian made the long, stupid, painful, just-plain-icky flight to America and survived in tact. He worked in such exotic locals as Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Indiana. He was never rewarded for his hard work, merely kicked and tossed about to dark corners, under beds, and in closets.

Then came a fateful moment for Hai Tian. One might even say destiny. He made his last journey for his cruel master, carting 41 lbs across the Alantic to London, and then to Germany.

Hai Tian was sorely injured in the journey, and when reunited with his master, was dragged on only one wheel to the waiting arms of one Helen Huggins, nurse and mother, extraordinaire.

Despite hasty attempts at surgery, Hai Tian was forced to undergo several amputations, and Helen feared that he would not last much longer. His slave driver was unsympathetic, however, citing the fact that he had been purchased at a very low class establishment for the reasons of his decreasing health.

Hai Tian died at 12:17 pm, at the end of Gleis 7 in front of a large crowd outside the Hauptbahnhof in Stuttgart. His corpse was transported to Tuebingen for burial. The pallbearers suffered greatly during the journey under the weight of the corpse and the sorrow they felt at the loss.

well, erin arrived safely yesterday morning, and i went and met her at the stuttgart airport. we somehow managed to get her quality (please sense the extreme sarcasm here) chinese suitcase and her other two better-functioning suitcases out to my apartment, where we looked up the 'open' hours for the student housing office for her to get her key and move into her apartment. 'open' is not the way to describe this office: the lady works 2 hours a day! and of course, she was already closed at 11:30, and we didn't get settled, etc. until past 14:00, so erin and i had a nice little slumber party last night and stayed up talking until...3, and then had to get up at a reasonable hour today so that we could get to housing-lady on the other side of town before she closed for the day.

the story about erin's suitcase: the wheel mechanism was already partly broken when i met erin at the airport. but as we walked along, it literally dropped more and more pieces. i finally gave up on rolling it when we changed trains at the hauptbahnhof (main train station) in stuttgart and picked it up by the handle. by this point, i was already carrying some other random parts that the suitcase had dropped as we walked. and all at once, the handle came off, and i was left standing in the middle of the train station with a handle in my hand and a suitcase on the floor! so i added the handle to the collection of junk the suitcase had shed and picked it up.

i don't think the walk from the train station to my apartment has ever been so long! that suitcase weighed 41 pounds, and erin and i had to take turns carrying it. we each could only make it a hundred yards or so before we had to take a break.

but either way, it was really nice to see erin, and i wasn't so heartbroken that she couldn't get out to the housing office yesterday because it was quite nice to be able to talk to her again. she fell asleep for a couple hours in the evening, and then she woke up again, and we watched a movie and chatted about things in general for the rest of the evening. her suitcase is now her ultimate enemy, and we plan to just stick the whole thing inside my suitcase this evening to get it out to her apartment.

erin is living in the boonies in a very ugly dormitory, unfortunately very similar to an american dorm. i think i'd rather go through the hassle of finding my own apartment, as much as i dislike that idea, too, and have spent so many hours of my life staring at the different ads on student websites for housing options. anyhow, we managed to get out to the student office before it closed today. the whole building smells incredibly of cleaning fluids. her room is probably about 9 square meters, has one hanging lamp with an 'economic' lightbulb (which probably means 40 watts), a few shelves on the wall, her bed, and a closet. oh, and a desk. no curtains, though the hausmeister said that he had some curtains somewhere that some other international students had left behind before that she could use.

we decided to walk back to the center of the city to see how far away her apartment was, since the map didn't really give us a feel for what kind of walk it was, and to save the $2 on bus far because the bus is freaking expensive until we get our semester bus passes. albeit we got lost a little, but we walked for more than 40 minutes to finally get back to the city center, and there were some fairly steep hills involved.