Introduction

August 2000
September 2000
October 2000
November 2000
December 2000
January 2001
February 2001
March 2001
April 2001
May 2001
June 2001
July 2001
August 2001

November 2000

1 November 2000

8 November 2000

9 November 2000

12 November 2000

20 November 2000

29 November 2000

1 November 2000
Wednesday

Well well well. It is 12:20 [1], and unfortunately the internet connection in the Smith Center is not working, so I will not be able to upload this until later. No, I have no idea why it's not working, except that I think it's the network connection (as opposed to these computers) that's malfunctioning. It's all this annoying thing with Deutsche Telekom. They sold us a system that only works with two phone numbers, and we have three, and the manufacturers (at least I *think* it was them) didn't say anything. So anyway, of course everything is malfunctioning, and that's why I can't get online. Ick.

But life is good! It's amazing how my opinion on life changes from day to day without the actual facts changing. For example, I still have to read Ulysses, and even though I've made amazing progress (nearly 500 pages in a week), that's only half the book. However, somehow I seem to have decided not to stress about it. Why, I don't know, but I feel happier anyway.

Yesterday Mara and Hillary had a little Halloween party in the kitchen on their floor. Not everybody dressed up, but some did, including me. I dressed up as a vampire in elegant black and painted my face (thanks to Shannon who let me use her face paints!). Caitlin Bo. drew a tattoo on my back. :-) It was fun, and I took pictures. We had lots of candy, and a few of us bobbed for apples (not very many, because we only had five apples unfortunately). I was the first one and got nearly my whole head wet, but that's all part of the fun. Actually, it was my first time bobbing for apples. It may be noteworthy that the only Halloween parties I've ever been to were not in the United States, though I'm not sure what it means.

Kevin is coming to see me today, which is Exciting. I have an important errand to do before meeting him at the airport (namely, copying the Seminarordner - course packet - for my linguistics seminar), so I'm going to leave you now and carry on being happy...

8 November 2000
Wednesday

Actually, as I start typing this, it is 23:30 Nov. 7, but I know that by the time I finish, it'll be tomorrow, so I might as well date it then. The reason I'm even up this late (I'm usually in bed by this time!) is that it's election day (night?) in the good ol' USofA, and our little colony of Merkins [2] is having a party. We're a little worried about the results of the election, and if it turns out badly we want to be together; maybe commiserating will help. In any case, it's an all-night thing. This is not too wise for me because I have 8:30 class tomorrow, but at least I don't have to get up at 6:30 to take the bus to the Uni (like I did this morning), since the Smith Center is about a 3-minute walk away from my class.

As I said in my last entry, Kevin came to visit me on Wednesday. That evening we went to see Dancer in the Dark (see Oct. 22) - this time in English. It didn't have the same effect on me the second time, though I'm glad I got the chance to see it in the original version and understand it thoroughly. It was also nice not to have the weird breaks in sound quality between German dubbing and English songs. Kevin apparently didn't like the movie all that much (he had a few critical remarks), but he didn't hate it either, so I count it a success.

My birthday was last Friday, November 3. It was very lovely; Kevin was here, and Gabi had a wonderful lunch for the group (complete with apple cake and candles and yellow roses! [3]). Kevin and I were planning to have dinner at a Turkish restaurant in the evening, since I'd heard a lot of good things about it and thought it would be a nice thing to take him there, but neither one of us was hungry after that lunch, so I ended up taking a 3-hour nap. <g> What a birthday, huh?

It was much much fun to have Kevin here. Wednesday to Monday (he left just yesterday!) was a long time, long enough for us to get enough of the other's presence and not be too sad when he had to leave. He got to see my life here, and the people I know, and the places I tread. I wish I had been a little bit more 'together' and taken a little bit better care of my homework while he was here, but it'll be okay. I did enough, and actually probably I'm just stressing too much anyway. I'm used to working a lot at MHC, and apparently there's really not that much work to do at the Uni here. Or so I've heard. Anyway, at this point I choose not to worry.

I have a Referat about the Treaty of Versailles (1919) for my history course. It's not going to be that big a deal; I just have to talk a little bit about what it says and what that meant for the Weimar Republic. I agreed to do that Referat because it means that it'll be out of the way, and I don't have to do it later in the semester! For the same reasons, I have another Referat for linguistics next Tuesday. Luckily, this one is in a group, so I don't have to do the whole thing alone - yay! Initially I didn't want to do it so soon, but I decided that I'd do it next week because since there's so little time to prepare, the prof won't expect us to be as great as others whose due dates are months away. The preparation will be probably be more intense than theirs, but perhaps less in the long run, since there's less time. Anyway, for better or worse it's going to be Tuesday, and I'll have one less thing to worry about later!

I have ridden a couple of times at the only barn we've been able to find that's accessible by public transportation. It's not great, and the instruction is lots different from what I'm used to. I was going to try once more to ride next Saturday (this time at a different time, and in a different group), but unfortunately I have to meet with the other people to work on my Referat that morning. It's all about priorities. Kelly unfortunately had a really horrible ride on Saturday, so she doesn't want to go back at all. I guess I'll go back the Saturday after and see if it works out. I hope it does; I hope it's something I can deal with, because I really want to ride.

At this moment I can hear things happening in the other room, so I think I'll go check out what's happening with the elections and then try to read the article for this Referat (we're meeting with the professor tomorrow at noon, so I should have read this article, at least skimmed it, or else it won't do any good!). Crossed fingers about the election results! Apparently it's extremely close, and it might even come down to Alaska and Hawaii! Cool for them, but we want to know now!

9 November 2000
Thursday

I know I just wrote an entry yesterday, but today I was struck by the fact that I am really in Germany. I was walking across the University campus [4] and saw a demonstration. I asked the women with me what it was about, and they said it was against the Nazis, because today is November 9, the Reichspogromnacht. A few minutes later, walking back the same way, a guy on a bicycle asked me what it was, and I told him it was an anti-Nazi demo, and he remembered right away what day it was. That just ran it home to me that I am in Germany. There's a historical consciousness, especially of Nazi/WWII history, that simply doesn't exist in the USA.

As I write this (16:30 European Central Time or whatever they call it), Bush is a mere 900 votes ahead of Gore in Florida. His lead is vanishing! But apparently they're going to have to wait for overseas votes, which are going to be overwhelmingly Republican. I can't stand the suspense!

I'm getting off now. We're going to watch a movie called Bob Roberts or something like that, which according to Caitlin is an extremely funny political movie, and very apropos. Since I'm all for apropos procrastination, it sounds like a good idea to me. :-)

12 November 2000
Saturday

Even though I have not been spazzing too much lately (unlike other times I could mention <g>), I am spazzing even less at this moment. The first week of class, I was completely whacked and worried about my classes, but now life is good, particularly because I went through and wrote down a nice list of my assignments and when they're due. It turns out that I have a pretty good distribution; my one oral presentation will be done Tuesday, I have a few little things due in the first week of December, my first major-ish (5-page) paper due Dec. 18, and then pretty much nothing until the end of February, when my long papers for history and Große Romane will be due. I can deal with this.

By the way, speaking of that Referat, I worked with my group for six hours yesterday on it! We just have to present the material from an assigned article, which shouldn't be too hard, but it took us at least half of those hours yesterday just to get a grasp on the article, which we had all read (multiple times) in advance. However, amazingly, by the end we had a very clear and tangible understanding of it. I just hope I can, with my not-(yet)-fluent German, explain to the linguistic innocents in the class what the difference between Sinn and Bedeutung (sense and meaning) is. I have my doubts, especially about my ability to deal with questions, but at least I won't be alone up there.

I now have a tutor for that hellish lecture class! Her name is Sonja, and she is also in the class, and she told me not to worry so much. :-) I've decided to do my paper about Ulysses, which will give me an excuse to read the last 443 pages of the book! I actually enjoy it and would like to be able to finish it, so choosing it as my topic means that not only is the entire novel necessary for my paper, I can completely blow off all the other 12 novels that are going to be discussed in the lecture. Thus, I will actually have time to read Ulysses! It's amazing how much time not reading Zauberberg and Moby Dick frees up. :-)

As for the other source of tension in my life, namely the American presidential elections, I've pretty much given up. I'm more or less certain that Bush is eventually going to win, and I have also stopped checking the news so avidly. There's no use in holding my breath if we won't find out until next Friday.

I've started going to the Mensa, the campus cafeteria, a couple of times a week. It's not great food (it is cafeteria food, after all), but it's warm, and it's cheap, and I don't have to cook it myself! I usually have soup and a Brötchen (DM1) and some sort of pasta and vegetables (DM4). I go to the Mensa whenever I can find someone to go with me, because if I eat a good bit for lunch I feel like I don't have to take the time to fix myself a good hot dinner. Unfortunately the Mensa is only an option for lunch, because I take care of breakfast myself, and it's not open for dinner or on the weekends.

I have found some Hamburg-related websites in which you may be interested:

Unfortunately, I think I should get off this right now and do some other work - for example, read Ulysses. Bye!

20 November 2000
Monday

It's insanely late at night - I should not be here. But of course I am. I thought I'd just come to the Smith Center and do one email and then do work. But of course life doesn't work that way... I have to open up ICQ and then it's the "good intentions" road to L-Space IRC...

So here I am, with Pirch open one one side of my screen and Notepad on the other, attempting to scrabble my brains into some sense of order and formulate the events of the past week into some sense of coherence and interestingness. [5]

My most significant act today was to make potato soup. This was, in fact, an act of desperation, because my potatoes were about to grow legs, they'd been sitting on my shelf so long. I think next time I will store them at the bottom of my dark closet - though that probably won't do much good because I always forget to close my doors - and/or use them up faster. Anyway, I made this potato soup, muchly reassured by my mother's assertion that I cannot do it wrong. :-) And surprise surprise, she was right! I put in corn and onion, and it came out very well. I will be eating potato soup for the rest of the week and into the next, but that's okay, because I like potato soup, and not having to cook is a Good Thing. And actually, even though I was in the kitchen for nearly three hours this evening, that was okay, because I had company and even managed to give away some of my soup! The kitchen is a very sociable place.

On the academic front, I have decided to attempt the reading of Berlin Alexanderplatz (by Alfred Döblin) in order to write a paper on it for my Anglistik lecture class. I haven't read very much of it, but it's comprehensible if slow. With the help of my tutor, I think it'll be a good paper eventually. Speaking of papers, I have the first draft of my first paper, for Jutta, due on Monday, and of course I've barely started. I keep on intending to work on it at least a little bit every day, but Life keeps intruding. Well, and the Lure of the 'Net. :-)

The past few days I've felt that control of my life is slipping away from me - not completely, but just slightly, enough to unnerve me slightly. But I think I've got it back under control; the realization that it's only a first draft and doesn't have to be perfect, as well as that even if I've only read 20 pages of Berlin Alexanderplatz it's okay (after all, I've got another three months to write the paper!), have lowered my stress level.

I've decided that I don't have enough fun. To that my Smithie-companions would say "well, duh" to that, but my idea of fun is not the same as theirs. In any case, I think I don't enjoy the time when I'm not working enough to give me a true break from the stresses of homework, errands, etc. so that my stress just builds up. So I have decided to consciously enjoy things, so that the time I do (eventually) spend working will be more productive and positive. Sounds good in theory, huh? But actually, I have found that I really enjoy cooking, if I'm not too tired and hungry (and thus motivated by starvation and desperation).

All right, Mara is leaving the Smith Center now, so I need to wrap this up and leave too, or else I'll never leave! Tschüss!

29 November 2000
Wednesday

It has been longer than I intended since the last entry. A lot of things have been happening, which is both why I intended to do this sooner, and why I didn't actually do it. Time has a way of slipping away from me these days; however, my life feels, if not exactly under control, comfortable. No spazzing, which I'm sure is mostly due to the fact that I've let go of my perfectionism for a little bit.

In France, the one most important thing I learned was that People Like Me For Myself. It's a very simple lesson, and before that fall I would have said that I knew it, but it's one of those things where afterwards, when something has taken a sledge hammer and slammed it into my head, I realize that even if my head had known the words, I didn't truly believe them. I think it's like that with my perfectionism. I know I will never stop being a perfectionist, and I don't want to because I enjoy the feeling of satisfaction I get from things done right. There have been (and still are) times when perfection becomes counter-productive, because I start worrying and spazzing. I feel nervous about such silly things as finding what I need in a supermarket - and I won't ask because I feel self-conscious. However, it occurred to me recently that the world is designed for idiots, and those who can't find the eggs even though they're in plain sight and don't understand anything said to them in perfectly plain German. The sky doesn't fall, and the worst that can happen is that I'll look like an idiot, which is common enough that it shouldn't bother me any more. :-)

So, I'm going to review the high points of this week. The 20th was a Monday; Tuesday mornings I usually have Linguistics at 8:30, but last week I didn't because the prof was running a conference. The week before she was sick and cancelled class, which was bad because my group was supposed to do our presentation that day (this was the Referat I talked about two entries ago, for which we prepared 6 hours on a Saturday), and instead we had to wait two weeks, until yesterday - by which time we had all forgotten whatever sense this subject had ever made. It just heightens the irony that explaining "sense and meaning" makes no sense at all. In spite of limitations of memory and mentality, however, the presentation went off pretty well. During my little section, my comrades corrected my language and grammar, which helped rather than distracting me. I was surprisingly calm and non-nervous; it's amazing how the knowledge that whatever I can produce in German will never equal either my English or my classmates' German calms me. It's as if knowing that perfection is impossible gives me permission to make mistakes. If that's the one thing I learn in Germany, this year will have been worthwhile.

I am quite enjoying Linguistics, actually; even though the texts are in German, I find that if I don't worry too much about understanding every word, I mostly end up understanding later. Even if I don't understand the text directly, we discuss it in class, and then all becomes clear(er).

Actually, in just the past few days my German has become a lot better. I don't know if it's obvious to anyone else, but my head feels better in German since I wrote my paper over the weekend. I think the process of expressing myself on paper, using new words and phrases in an attempt to mirror as exactly as possible the ideas in my head with linguistic expression, expanded my ability to think in German. I don't find it hard to think in German, actually, but my capacity to think that language is as limited as my capacity to speak it, and those boundaries have been pushed back a little bit.

Anyway, back to the timeline, and last week - Thursday the 23rd. Even though Germany doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving [6], the Smith program had a Thanksgiving dinner on that day. We ate in the evening, which felt strange, but otherwise it was a very good dinner, with friends (if not family) and appropriately bountiful amounts of delicious, American food. It's amazing how much I had missed real American-tasting food. I even ate and enjoyed the cranberry sauce, which I normally despise. [7] I ate more than I should have, but it was well worth it.

Over the weekend I wrote five pages of German for Jutta. This was the first of three drafts of this first Hausarbeit, which is basically a practice for our other papers for the Uni. Five pages sounds like a lot, but it's actually not, because we have to make the margins absurdly huge as well as include an outline in the body of the paper, which means that I only had to write about three "normal" pages. I turned my paper in on Monday with title page, table of contents (with page numbers, rather absurd for a 5-page paper but nevertheless mandatory), and bibliography, in a folder. It's only the first draft, but I figure hey, if I make it look good perhaps she'll excuse the weakness of the paper.

Monday I made soup again, this time from a recipe book I bought in Germany. It's actually an American vegetarian cookbook translated into German. That would be great, except that only the words are translated, i.e. "one can of beans" is given as 750mL while cans of beans in Germany are sold by weight, not volume. Come on, guys, translate the culture, not just the words! But what can you expect from a cheap cookbook? :-( In any case, I made bean soup from a recipe that was in there, which turned out really well in spite of the fact that this cookbook way overstates amounts of spices needed. Someone else made a recipe from this cookbook, in which the directions were to put five cloves of garlic in whatever it was. Obviously, that was way too much! It also told me to put a tablespoon of cumin in this soup; I put in half that much, and I'm very glad I didn't put in any more. Good recipes, but go easy on the spices.

There's a siren outside, which is not an uncommon occurrence in Hamburg. I've gotten used to hearing them all the time, especially because my dorm is near a volunteer fire department. Unfortunately that means that I don't pay attention to them so much, since I hear them so much, and one time I walked across a street with a siren heading towards me. It turned out okay, because I was well onto the pavement before the ambulance passed me, but I should not have tuned the siren out the way I did.

Yesterday I made egg nog (real egg nog, with raw eggs and cream and sugar and a bottle of rum) for a Christmas party on my floor tonight. I started at about 19:00, and I didn't finish it until after midnight; however, it's not as bad as it sounds since most of that was just letting it stand. Making it would have been hell if I hadn't been able to borrow a electric beater from the kitchen on Mara and Hillary's floor, but they saved my life. I would have died if I had to beat this all by hand, because the whole preparation of egg nog is beating. First you beat the egg yolks, then gradually beat sugar into them, then some rum little by little (and let it sit for an hour), then beat in more rum and lots of cream (and another three hours of sitting), then beat the egg whites and fold them in. I can't imagine what that would have been like in the time without electric appliances, and to be honest I really don't want to.

So now I'm so enamored of that electric mixer that I really want to buy one myself. Of course I won't be making egg nog all the time, though if I have a mixer of my own I may make it once or twice again this December (non-alcoholic this time, unless someone else pays for the liquor, because it's too expensive otherwise, and I don't particularly like the taste). However, I've got this craving for mashed potatoes, and though I know I can make those by hand, the temptation of electric power is too much for me, especially when the alternative is a fork. Mashing potatoes with a fork is not a happy pastime.

I went to Saturn yesterday for CDs; I was looking for They Might Be Giants. Saturn is an appliance/electronics store downtown that also has a big music section with great prices; the price numbers I've found there are about the same as current prices in the US (i.e. $15-18) except in DM rather than $ - so it's really less than half the price! I love Saturn!

On the way down from Saturn's music section, which is on the fourth [8] floor, I passed by the appliances and decided to take a look at the mixers. The least expensive one is DM49, but there's one for DM139 that has all sorts of attachments and things, including a hand-held blender and cuisinart-thing. It's many appliances in one! I'm extremely tempted. I'm becoming such a kitchen-geek, collecting gadgets... The problem is, I'm going to leave here anything I buy, which means that I'm not investing in tools for the future. Is the money worth the use I'd get out of such a thing in the next eight months? On the other hand, eight months is a long time, and if I'm going to pay at least DM49 for the minimum, the extra stuff might be worth the extra money. I don't know, I'm going back tomorrow to investigate more, perhaps buy, and also buy headphones so that other people don't have to listen to my music in the Smith Center all the time!

Anyway, I must go now, because this party tonight is in less than an hour, and it takes half an hour to get home. Bye!

December 2000

[1] PM, though these days I always use 24-hour time, which tends to make life simpler once I get used to it.
[2] (Affectionate?) term for Americans. Also means "pubic wig," which just makes the word even more fun.
[3] It seems that I get yellow roses on my birthday a lot. Our back-door neighbors gave me one on my first birthday, and on my sixteenth, and other people, without knowing about that, have given them to me too. Is there something about me that just says "yellow rose"? If so, I'd like to know what it is, because maybe I can make it say "chocolate" or "books"... <g>
[4] To a copy-shop, to make photocopies of the readings for my linguistics class. And yes, the Germans say "copy-shop" too.
[5] What is the noun form of "interesting" anyway? It's not "interest" because that's something that's done to the thing that's interesting. Or not. But in any case it doesn't sound right. Maybe that's just my German-addled brain. In the words of Mara, I have "zu viel Crack gesmoked."
[6] One weird culture-shock thingie (not severe, just a source of strangeness) is that Christmas stuff has been in stores and things for several weeks. Admittedly the big stuff hasn't appeared until just the past few days, but there were advent calendars in the grocery store at the end of October, I think. It's weird for me, because in the USA there's no Christmas stuff at all until the day after Thanksgiving, when everything explodes into holiday. Of course it would be absurd for that to happen here, because there isn't any Thanksgiving, so it's more or less logical, but it still seems a little bizarre to be thinking about Christmas so early. They need another holiday somewhere in between.
Another consequence of Thanksgiving's not being a holiday in Germany is that we had to have our dinner in the evening. I happen to have my Thursdays free, but other people have classes all day, so we started eating close to 20:00, and I didn't leave until about 23:30. Of course that's just the limitations of schedules and time, but it doesn't quite feel like Thanksgiving.
[7] The only disappointing food was the mashed potatoes, which were not actually mashed potatoes at all but Kartoffelbrei, i.e. German food, more like potato porridge than fluffy goodness. It didn't taste bad, but it just wasn't real mashed potatoes, and all really did was to whet my appetite for mashed potatoes. I'm going to have to make some myself soon, as soon as I get a mixer.
[8] German/European fourth floor, i.e. Merkin fifth floor.

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