Dienstag, 23. September 2008

as merry as the day is long-- i am right and you are wrong

on saturday, i went to a historical reenactment of a wedding in braunschweig. it apparently was mostly for shopping and all of that, so my host family and i didn't stay for long. for once, the sun was shining, so it was quite the day.

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there was a parade

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and a jousting match. when you don't understand context, everything is kind of magical.

on sunday, we went to see a classical music performance in the church which was absolutely beautiful. surprisingly, there were recorders that i didn't hate.

i'll ramble more about the history of braunschweig someday, but essentially, the king is trying to marry off his daughter. it's really just an excuse for folk dancing, musical groups and folks dressed up in the vaguely period costumes. it was quite snazzy, and i failed epically at taking pictures. i later realized i had the camera in macro setting. but i found a wondrous little musical school and a thrift store in my forages about the city on saturday, which i'll check out when the weather isn't so bad.

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because it's rainy and cold and gross. it's a different kind of cold than the kind at home-- it's windy and wet and just downright despicable.

so, we'll end this out with some brief quips, since i'm still exhausted and am just waiting for my host mum to come home so i can say goodnight and go to bed.

1. so, today i finally bit the bullet today and bought house shoes. they're just clogs (cute ones though, with flowers. the floors are mostly wood and we wear house shoes with socks in the house), but with them came a few triumphs. the first is that i actually found shoes that fit. then, i managed to communicate to the store clerk that the weather was gross, i didn't need a bag or the shoe box. success!

2. on the bus home, i sat across from a mum and a little boy, aged two or three. the entire bus ride, he was absolutely entranced. smiling and giggling and waving and all of that. so i pulled faces and he laughed and his mum stared out the window and it was very nice. but after a while they left so i pulled out my iPod (i listen to german podcasts-- david sedaris references at some later date) and a girl got on. she spent the next fifteen minutes giving me looks of various disgust. i'd never met her before, said nothing and wasn't even doing anything embarrassing. (see quip #3.)

3. this afternoon, i went swimming (for the first time in germany!) with my eldest host sister. she lives in hamburg and is here for the week on vacation. you have to get a ticket from the women behind the counter, but you have to specify. i was already, had my sentence all planned out, but in the end, i said "ich mochte schlafen", which means that i want to sleep. i totally didn't recognize what i'd done and thought she was smiling because i was just amazingly awkward until i was swimming about in the pool.
3.1. the swimming pool is really nice. it's big and there are diving boards and there are hot showers and heated floors in the dressing rooms. you rent a locker for a euro and then you get it back when you return the key. so we swam for about an hour, which is part of the reason why i'm exhausted.
3.2. apparently, it's very common for men to wear speedos. and i mean old men with pregnant bellies and teeny teeny little speedos. not pleasing. not at all.

4. i'm also working on college applications and online courses in addition to my sprachenkurs and independent studying. it's kind of gross. and when school/after school activities/possible music lessons start, it's going to be busy. i think my host mum is trying to get me to join a church group, but the church is pretty here and i won't understand what's going on, so i think it's okay.

that's all for now...

all the love
katie

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