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

October 2000

2 October 2000

5 October 2000

10 October 2000

13 October 2000

19 October 2000

22 October 2000

24 October 2000

2 October 2000
Monday

Once again, I have had a very exciting week! First of all, Monday night someone broke into my dorm and stole the master keys of both my dorm and the one just down the street, for which my Hausverwalter (dorm superintendent?) has the keys. Therefore, Tuesday all the locks for all the rooms in both dorms were changed. That caused no small confusion when we all came home and couldn't get back into our rooms, but I was really impressed by the speed and efficiency of the operation.

On Tuesday I also found out that my cell phone hadn't been registered, which means that through no fault of my own (the store that sold it to me was supposed to report my address), my phone was going to be cancelled. Argh! I couldn't do anything until Thursday because I had no time, and then I went to the nearest store and asked; the guy there told me I had to go back to the store where I'd bought the phone. The next day I went there, and that branch had closed the day before. Rather irritated, I went back to the first store, prepared to defend my case, but the woman who was there at that time was very nice and solved my problem with only my phone number, I.D., and address. Much time and aggravation wasted!

Thursday evening I went to the signing that Terry Pratchett had in Hamburg. That was fun; I waited in line for an hour with three very nice women standing behind me, and we passed the time together. I got my two books signed, and I was happy. I tried once again to get tickets for the reading/talk later, but unfortunately I couldn't. Oh well, I went home and fell asleep anyway. I can never get enough sleep.

Friday evening I visited a riding stable where I and another American of my group, Kelly, will perhaps ride. It looks rather iffy in some ways, but we'll see how it works out. Unfortunately I won't actually have any time to ride there for another three weeks!

Saturday we went to Lübeck, which was absolutely marvelous. The gothic churches, with their detailed painting inside, were gorgeous; the food we had at the Schiffergesellschaft (seaman's guild?) was delicious and full of atmosphere. I had halibut with mushrooms and polenta, absolutely divine! (I can't get enough mushrooms). Later we had marzipan cake, which was just as wonderful as the mushrooms though different of course, and hot chocolate in which I could really taste the good dark bitter chocolate, mmmm!

Today has been as successful as the past week; first of all, I tackled Deutsche Telekom and arranged for my telephone connection. I was prepared for all sorts of difficulties, because lots of people have had trouble. For example, one woman found that she absolutely could not get a connection without knowing the name of the previous inhabitant of her room; others had to wait weeks for Telekom to come and manually connect it. I was prepared for those contingencies; I had the name scrawled on a bit of paper and was going to ask for an appointment on a Thursday morning, when I won't have any classes. However, it was completely simple; I needed none of that. My phone will be connected Wednesday, no hands-on work needed. The Telekom guy didn't ask for the name, or anything. Yay!

I *also* have a phone, which goes well with having a phone line! I bought it at Brinkmann, a huge technology/appliance megastore in the Innenstadt (downtown). I am very impressed with the organization of that place; I told one salesman I wanted the cheapo phone for DM30, he printed out a sheet of paper for me, I took that to the cash register and paid, and by that time my phone was waiting for me at another desk. Wow. Bureaucracy in action!

The other great accomplishment is that I know what courses I am going to take this fall. I am obligated by the University to take Deutsch als Fremdsprache (German as a foreign language), and there will be a placement test for that, hopefully at the end of October. The Smith program has several courses this spring, including a course on "German History and Culture 1871-1945" which I want to take, because that is exactly the period of French history which I studied four years ago in France. The comparison between French and German versions of the same story will be fascinating, besides the fact that it's a crucial period in Franco-German international relations. :-)

I have for a long time been interested in linguistics, so I intend to take a course on that here; there are several sections of those in the Germanistik department, and I am not yet sure which of those I will take. Unfortunately the section I really want to take might conflict with a lecture course I want to take, on "Great Novels of the 20th Century: England, USA, Germany, France." It is going to be a *huge* class, but I will have a tutor arranged by the program, and it's exactly my interests!

You can look at the Vorlesungsverzeichnis (course catalog) on the web, if you're feeling particularly adventurous. The linguistic courses I am interested in are under Fachbereich 07: Sprachwissenschaften (language-sciences; Sprachwissenschaft in the singular is a synonym for "linguistics") and under that, Germanistik I. Unfortunately, the new courses for this coming semester are not up there, but maybe they eventually will be, and in any case past semesters are there, in case you have lots of time to waste looking at confusing German course listings. In any case, I am extremely happy with all of my course choices, especially that I don't have to look at the catalog any more, and I can barely wait for the semester to start.

Unfortunately I have to finish the orientation program first, and at the end of that is a Referat, an oral presentation. The idea is that it should be an exercise on speaking in German, not a research project, so I'm doing mine on the French language and Anglicism/Americanism, a subject which already interests me. I might throw something about German in there too; we'll see what my research in the Stabi today turned up.

Btw, I've just found this; you can see the building that the Smith Center is in at this URL.

Anyway, I think I have wibbled on enough for one evening, and I have not eaten since 11 this morning, so I have the feeling that I should get out of this internet cafe and continue my life. Oh! The people installing the ISDN cable are currently kicking up dust in the Smith Center, and on Friday the people from Telekom should come and connect things, and then in the next week our new computers should come! Yay! Non-expensive internet! I was going to go to the social science department library today and check my email there, but by the time I was done in the Stabi, it was closed. Normally it's open until 8pm on weekdays (except Friday), but today it closed at 5pm. Oh well; I didn't want to let such a silly word as failure intrude on such a successful day, so I came here to get my online fix. [1]

Bye, thank you all for reading!

5 October 2000
Thursday

Hi! It is Thursday morning, and I'm in the social science library. I don't actually particularly have anything to say, but I do have three quarters of an hour before class, and not much email (waah!), so why not take advantage of this time, eh?

The odd thing is, now that I've gotten back into regular modifying of my web page [2], coding HTML text has become almost natural again. Even when writing email, I find myself starting to type a " " for a double-space. Pathetic! Note

Even if I may be getting a little carried away, it's good to know how to hand-code. Another MHC student in the Smith program, Kristina, has a very simple web page, which she created with PageMill. Since she would like to be able to change it but doesn't have access to a WYSIWYG [3] editor, she wants me to teach her HTML. I'm glad; I don't get much chance to geek, since other people usually do it so much better than I.

You know how I was enthusing about my phone the other day... Well, I shouldn't have typed so soon. It still doesn't work, and it was supposed to be connected yesterday. Waaah! My life is so crazy right now that I don't have time to go harass Deutsche Telekom about it, but if it's not fixed in a few days I'll get on their case. I'm slightly annoyed but not truly concerned; after all, Tuesday was a national holiday, so I'm not surprised if it takes a couple of working days for it to get done.

My Referat is coming along, I think; the books I got from the Stabi look good, and I feel like I know where my talk is going to go. I'm not finished by a long shot, but at least I know where I'm headed, which is most of the anguish, if not most of the work. Incidentally, one of the really neat things about knowing English, French, and German is that I can do research in all those languages. Of course we're supposed to do research in German (this is Germany, of course, and the idea is to practice German), but the books I found were just about equally divided between French, German, and English. I hope it's okay, that I won't get chewed out just because I couldn't find enough books on this subject in German!

My time is running out, so I must run off to class right now. I don't think it'll be long until the next entry, though!

10 October 2000
Tuesday

My last entry was very optimistic... Unfortunately, that day my wallet was stolen, which is bad mostly because I now have to worry about replacing the cards that were in it, such as insurance and library. I don't need anything more to worry about! :-(

I visited Kevin on the weekend, and it was lovely to see him, even if the weather didn't cooperate. Coming back was horrible; now I miss him terribly, even if it's better today than it was Sunday or Monday. It didn't help that I was a bit sick, so even though I wasn't really suffering physically, it sapped my energy and made me feel blech so that while I would normally have gotten up and done stuff and made myself forget about being miserable, I didn't have the energy.

My Referat is okay. I don't feel great about it, but I guess what I really need to do, rather than trying to do actual research on my topic, is to figure out what I already know and how I can say it in German, in a way that interests my audience. I have been absolutely paralyzed by fear, and I guess my real problem is that I'm afraid I don't know enough and can't do enough research in these few days, but in fact I only have to speak for 10 minutes, which is really not very long, and I do know things I think I know how I'm going to start out, and a rough idea of how the rest of the talk is going to go, so I'm set. Right?

My life is not that horrible... It feels hard because I'm in it right now, but it's amazing how silly I feel when I start complaining to the world and then realize that my problems really aren't insurmountable at all. Thanks for listening, and hey, words of encouragement are always welcome. ;-)

13 October 2000
Friday

"Hi, my name's Laura, and I'm a net-addict..." Is there a HTML-Addicts Anonymous anywhere? I think I need it. I've got a million and a half things to do, and where do I go? Back here to this stinky internet cafe, where I pay out of my ass to code HTML. Heck, I spend lots more time on this than I do on email. I am a sad case.

But other than my patheticness :-), life is good. No, really, I'm not kidding. Yeah, I could use a bit more Kevinish companionship, and yeah, I still have to feed myself all the time (which really bites), but I'm dealing. I gave my Referat [4] yesterday, and that went off fine. I have absolutely no idea what I got on it, though I'm pretty sure it was good. And in any case I don't really care that much. The important thing is that it's over.

But speaking of food, Bianka, who lives a few doors down from me, suggested that next week we bake a casserole together, which I'm very happy about because a) it takes care of food for one night and b) it's company! Eating alone is really darn annoying.

And back to my net-addiction... We have almost got internet access in the Smith Center. We were supposed to have it yesterday (well, we were supposed to have it weeks ago), but it doesn't work yet. I'm not sure why. But in any case it should work Very Soon, and then I'll have internet access that's available 24/7 (even if 30 minutes away from my room). Yay!

Tonight I don't have too much time to dabble with this, because I am having dinner with lots of people (dunno how many, exactly) at Mara and Hillary's dorm, so I need to be there by 8pm, with two bottles of juice, one bottle of mineral water, and eating utensils. It's kind of inelegant but true: "Would you like to have dinner with me? Come at eight and bring your silverware."

Yeah, I'm back to my "normal" self I guess. At least my level of mood-swinging is diminishing. The middle of this week was a roller-coaster; I'd feel okay in the morning, despicable in the afternoon, and heavenly in the evening. I can't take that for very long; being genuinely miserable is better, because at least there's a certain sadistic, pleasurable satisfaction with being completely, absolutely, hopelessly unhappy. That's something that really annoyed me at the beginning of this week, actually; I was unhappy enough not to enjoy anything else, but not unhappy enough to enjoy that sensation. It was like I couldn't make up my mind whether to be happy or miserable, like the weather couldn't make up its mind whether to rain or not. Very irritating.

In any case, I'm going to get moving now, but before I do, may I petition those who have not to sign my guestbook? It really gives me a kick to get new entries, and you know you want to. :-)

19 October 2000
Thursday

This is the second time I have started typing this. The first time, I started, and then once I had really gotten into it, I lost the connection to MHC and lost everything. This time, I'm writing it in Notepad. Hmmph. [5]

The only reason I can write it in Notepad is that I am, at long last, using the internet on the Smith Center's lovely new computers! That means that I can write email or update my web page for free, nearly whenever I want, and not worry about anything getting stolen!

Last weekend (Saturday-Wednesday) we all went to Berlin, and that was completely awesome. It has changed enormously since I was there in 1993. I was especially shocked by the change right around the Brandenburg Gate, which is almost all that I remember of Berlin. [6]

Actually, the trip is sinking into mental oblivion, now that I am back in Hamburg. However, I do intend to go back, dragging Kevin with me :-), and visit the aquarium (which I didn't see since I knew Kevin would want to) and the Sachsenhausen concentration camp (which I did see yesterday, but I didn't have enough time to let it sink in).

This afternoon we have just had a diagnostic test for German as a Foreign Language. It's a test by the University to see whether we have to have one or two semesters of that. The test was supposed to be in the beautiful twenty-story Philoturm, but the power is out today in that building because of construction, so no light or elevator! Thus we got to take the test in the Smith Center, plus we don't have to do the oral part of the test!

This morning I went out and bought lots of food, including fresh vegetables, and this evening I am going to have some sort of a stir-fry with red bell pepper, tomatoes, zucchini, mushrooms, and garlic. I'm excited already! Big progress from my despair of last week, though I think that was mostly general despair seeping into the rest of my life.

Right now I need to get off, because while the internet is temporarily working, everyone in the Smith Center is nearly rabid to get at the computers. I don't wish either to cause or to be the victim of violence, so I'll escape while I still can.

22 October 2000
Sunday

Life is wonderful. I have gotten used to using an English/American keyboard again (on Thursday I was pretty messed up from having used a German one so much), and I've spent the whole afternoon catching up on the emails that I should have been writing for the last two months. I think I/we have finally figured out how the internet works in the Smith Center, so good internet access is a reality! Woohoo!

I've found the webpages for both my majors, European Studies and German Studies. Slightly more exciting is Smith College's page about the Hamburg program. The picture on the first page is of Hamburg's city hall, which is beautiful; unfortunately the picture doesn't do it justice.

My stir-fry on Thursday came out pretty well. I put the red bell pepper and zucchini in too late, and the tomatoes too early, but it was supremely edible. In the satisfaction of self-accomplishment, I thought it heavenly. Next time, of course, will be better. Tonight I'm going to take a frozen pizza I bought and put fresh mozzarella, mushrooms, and perhaps tomato slices on top of it. I can taste it already. [7]

Classes start tomorrow. Actually, the linguistics courses all don't start until next week, which is good. I'll go to my lecture class first and figure out what time it actually starts (it might start at 10:15 rather than 10:00, in which case I can take another class that ends at 10:00) before I have to make a decision about which section of linguistics I'm going to take. Less stress is a very good thing.

I looked at the kommentiertes Vorlesungsverzeichnis (detailed/annotated course catalog?) for this lecture class, and it's got a heck of a reading list: James Joyce Ulysses, Thomas Mann Der Zauberberg, D. H. Lawrence Lady Chatterley's Lover, Robert Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea, and Herman Melville Moby Dick, among others (English, French, and German-language). At least I know I'm going to be reading Great (read, Whopping Huge) Works this semester...

Speaking of good media, yesterday I saw Dancer in the Dark. In case you haven't heard of it, the singer Björk stars in it, and it won the Palme d'Or this year. It is a completely awesome movie. I don't cry at movies and things, but I bawled at this one. For people who have seen the movie (and for those who haven't, this isn't a spoiler), I started crying when Selma said to the guard (what's her name? I can't remember), [8], "Greet your son for me." The first tear came then, and it was downhill from there. The funny thing is that Kristina, who was sitting next to me, started crying because I did, and both of us were uncontrollable. I wish Emily could have seen that movie; she introduced me to Björk 7 years ago, and I think she would have loved this film. I know I'm buying the soundtrack as soon as I can get my paws on it.

And with that, I must be off; I have to get home and fix dinner (don't I sound so horribly domestic? ewww!). Email me; I'll check it (and write it, too!) regularly since I've got access now.

24 October 2000
Tuesday

Hi again... I really am addicted this thing. I should be reading Joyce (I'm on p. 52 right now, and my goal is p. 200 by tonight... not going to happen I think <g>), but of course I'm fiddling with my webpage. Figgers. Anyway, I was going to say something more or less interesting... Oh! This morning I went to a market that's under the S-Bahn [9] line on my way to the University / Smith Center. I'd never been to it before, and it's absolutely huge; I kept walking and trying to get to the end of it, and it never came, so eventually I turned around and came back. I bought Studentenfutter [10], a vegetable pastry thing for lunch (very delicious, I must buy more later!), and bananas. Buying the bananas was interesting; they were marked as DM1,50 per kilo, so I said I wanted three bananas, upon which the vendor put a bunch in front of me and said "alle für eine Mark!" ("all for DM1"). I separated out three and said I only wanted those, but he insisted, so I gave him the mark and took the bananas. Shopping at outdoor markets is fun. :-)

Afterwards I came back to the Smith Center and hung around waiting for the theater class to end so that I could use the computers, and then Hillary came in and asked if anyone would go to her elementary particle physics lecture with her, so I said I would. It wasn't unpleasant, but it bent my brain a little bit with trying to synchronize the bits I can remember from high school physics with the bits I can figure out from the German lecture. I was a little bit weirded out afterwards. I can't tell if the effect would be better or worse if I knew more physics. Maybe it would simply be more prolonged.

And now I need to quit this thing because I still have emails to write, and then I need to get packing on this monster-book. It's not like I'm going to get anything written tonight, because I'm going to dinner on the Reeperbahn in St. Pauli [11] with lots of other Smithies.

Btw, I am starting to feel like a Smithie since I'm surrounded by them all the time. Everything's always about Smith, and MHC gets forgotten in discussions and things.

Argh, must stop...

November 2000

[1] (Addendum Oct. 5) I ended up spending three hours there! One for email, two for web page. It added up to DM25 (~$12). It's good for my wallet that the internet cafe's location is not very convenient for me. :-)
[2] Almost the same as in August when I changed something nearly every day -- it's like I just can't leave it alone. A word changed here, a new like there, continually tinkering.
[3] "What You See Is What You Get," for the acronym-challenged.
[4] It occurs to me that I haven't defined this before. It's basically an oral report. Ours were short, 10 minutes or so, though at the Uni they're supposed to be much longer, apparently.
[5] And then I couldn't paste it into here, so I had to type it all in again. Argh. But at least I'd already written it, and I type fast.
[6] The other thing I remember is the Haus am Checkpoint Charlie museum, which seven years ago was full of things about how people escaped from East Germany to West Berlin in the trunks of cars, in suitcases, and by other amazing and creative means. It's different now too; only a handful of those are there now, and instead the museum is mostly about resistance movements all over the world. Interesting, but not what I expected, and too much intense intellectual sinking-in for the little bit of time I had to look at the museum.
[7] (Addendum Oct. 23) The pizza came out incredibly well. I put on tomato, mushroom, green onion, fresh mozzarella, and oregano; it came out very juicy from the tomatoes (messy, but I ate it with knife and fork) and flavorful from the onion and oregano. Brilliantly delicious food with so little effort!
[8] I saw it dubbed into German, so I don't know what the original words are in English.
[9] Or is it U-Bahn? I can never remember which is which, or even what the difference is. U-Bahns are usually underground, and S-Bahns are usually above ground and have 1st/2nd class cars, but other than that I can't tell.
[10] Trail mix, nuts and stuff. Literally "student feed," in the same way as oats and hay are horse feed.
[11] St. Pauli is Hamburg's red light district. I've actually never been there before, since I'm not what you might call a "party animal." <g>

Note: 10 February 2001
I've stopped putting extra spaces everywhere in my HTML. It's annoying, and it makes things hard to read. I still double-space between sentences in my English papers, but my web page is different.
I'm wishing that I could design a web page about Orlando or Nazi history rather than writing papers. :-(

This page created and maintained by Laurabelle (send WebMail).
Best viewed with Internet Explorer or Netscape 6.