back in the saddle again

Well, hello there! Thanks for trying to keep up with me, even when I haven’t written in ages : )

Things here in Germany are going well.  The spring weather has transformed Kiel into a nice place to live.  Our temps now are typically between 50-60 F, and there are more sunny days than rainy.  We have gotten hail/sleet a couple times since I’ve been back, but it doesn’t last long and the sunshine that follows seems all the more intense for it. One of the coolest things is that it doesn’t get dark now until 9pm!!  This year has definitely taught me how much of an impact weather can have on a person.  You see, talking about the weather really isn’t all that boring. It’s really a masked attempt at talking about feelings, nothing more than feelings.

Another good thing about being back in Kiel is volleyball! Man, I sure am going to miss it when I leave.  I’ve been told that beach volleyball season is near, but in the meantime we are all happily toiling away in the gym. My practices with the women’s team are over, but I’ve been picked up by a mixed team.  Our past week was very successful. On Monday, we won a match against probably the best team in the league (besides us, of course) to secure our number one ranking this season. Then we played in a tournament yesterday and got first place! Here’s our victory picture:

we are the champions

The tournament was good fun with good people. All-day tournaments like this are also good German practice. Yesterday, I even started talking to myself on the court in German! Marie and I play ball at the university together, along with Andre who is behind us in the picture.  Andre makes my playing with the team possible by driving me to all of the games. I tip my hat to you, sir.

The volleyball group at the university is awesome. They are becoming some of our best friends here (Chris fits right in even though he’s not a volleyballer).  On Friday night, Matti, Frank and Volker very patiently taught Chris and I how to play Skat, THE card game of Germany.  The game seems very German to me, involving lots of math and strategy.  These types of things are what make studying abroad great. Matti has also invited us to parties at his place where we are the only non-Germans. It really gives you some inside perspective on the culture and the people while you have a good time : ) Individuals can have such a large impact on foreigners’ perception of their country. I hope they know how much they are helping to tip the scales to the positive. That goes for Giulia, as well, who led us around her hometown of Rome. She was so great. She put a lot of time and effort into our three days there and when it comes down to it, she is just a really cool person. She is part of the reason that Chris and I will probably always love Rome. We have even talked about adding Italian to our language repertoire… I think Italian culture would be a good balance for German culture in my life ; )

Oh and then there’s the reason I got sent here, the writing my thesis stuff. Right. I have finally finished doing enough research to feel like I can start writing and organizing my thoughts. I have an overwhelming amount of quotations that I have pulled from secondary sources. 17 pages, single-spaced, to be exact.  There is just so much information out there that it’s hard to ever feel like you are informed enough to write anything. I know there is more that I could read, but I think I really just need to start writing now. the clock is ticking.

In other education news, I found out last week that I will probably have to stay at KU for a whole year when I get back. They have trapped me so that I can pad the department’s stats. jerks. There are only 3 different times when you can take your MA exams each year, August, January, and March. The new rule that they added this year, is that you have to be finished with your thesis the semester before you take your exams. I guess they are trying to lower stress levels, but I think it stinks that they can change things on me at the last minute. So I will not be able to do the August date, I will have to wait until January. January, however, is considered spring semester. Therefore, I have to be enrolled in spring semester, as well. evil, evil trap. For them to continue paying for that semester, I will still have to take 3 German dept grad classes and teach, even though I will be finished with my exams. I wish I could just be finished, but in reality, it’s not tragic. It will give me more time to find a job while still being paid to teach. However, there is going to be a big shuffle going on in the dept because we will be losing Dr. Keel as the head of the dept and Dr. Crawford will be moving on because she didn’t publish enough to get tenure. Dr. Crawford apparently will not be replaced because of the budget. She is a real loss for the students. The grad students voted her as best teacher two years in a row. All of this means that course offerings will dwindle, and I will have to take classes that I have already taken. sigh… but there’s not much I can do about it but look on the bright side.

Hope you all are well! I miss you.

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when the dog bites, when the bee stings…

Last week was rough. Thinking about the approaching holidays, I got suddenly very home sick. I even checked to see if I could find a deal on a flight home for Christmas.  But alas and alack, it’s just too expensive.  I keep reminding myself that I’ll be home in March; I can wait until then.  Thinking about Christmas was really the worst part. I panicked a bit because we didn’t have any concrete plans. Rumors of invites here and there, but nothing I could count on. Chris and I checked out some bed and breakfast places in the Black Forest just to have something to fall back on.  Surprisingly, many of them had Christmas specials. But then, Asisa came to the rescue, as she so often has in the past months.  Chris and I will be going to spend Christmas with her and her family in Braunschweig. I’m excited to meet them and see Asisa’s hometown.  While the Black Forest would have been cool in some aspects, I’m much happier to be able to spend Christmas with friends.

Chris and I also are planning to do a late Thanksgiving this Sunday. We’ve invited a few friends, none of them American, so it should be really fun. I am not sure how we will get all of this cooking done and time it all correctly, but I’m keepin the faith. We are planning on having a couple turkey breasts, mashed potatoes, stuffing, green beans, a pumpkin pie and an apple pie. We will have one vegetarian and one who’s lactose intolerant, so we will have to make some adjustments here and there.  Can you make good vegetarian gravy? I dunno, that’s something I need to look up. Besides all of that, I’m just looking forward to exposing people to one of my favorite American holidays. : )

So, after making plans for the holidays I started feeling a bit better about things. Alison also gave me a good pep talk last week. Sometimes you have to step back and think about the facts. Even though I’m not enjoying my classes all that much, I am enjoying other aspects of my life here.  I really look forward to my sports every week.  I play mixed volleyball at the university on Mondays with a group of really nice people.  I’ve never played mixed consistently before, but it’s a lot of fun.  Our group is mostly men, and after always playing with women, I appreciate the guys’ simple pleasure in the game and the no-strings-attached competition. Men just have a different attitude about sports, it seems. With women there are always feelings involved, but these guys just want to play. I am glad, however, that my friend Marie is there.  I, after all, can’t fully identify with the guys, and Marie is my kinda gal. She’s younger than me, but has traveled a lot and lived abroad and one of her majors is German.  We have some good stuff to talk about. After practice, a group of us often goes out to Oblomov (that restaurant and bar nearby that I’ve mentioned before).  It’s nice to just hang out, have a beer or two and speak some Deutsch.  I have also started playing volleyball on Wednesdays with a women’s club team. Volker, who runs the mixed practices, hooked me up with the club that he plays for. Despite being in a league lower than I played in Austria, the team is just as good as my Graz team, or better. I am enjoying being back in the intense practice atmosphere once a week. I just think, “oh yeah, this is how we used to practice back in the day.” It’s been a while since I’ve been to well-organized, challenging practices. I’m being pushed to be precise, which hasn’t happened in a while. That serves to create some frustration with myself because I’m out of practice, but I think it’s slowly coming back. Ah, and then there is ultimate frisbee on Saturday afternoons. It’s pretty fun and really good exercise. Asisa and I go together, continuing the tradition we started last summer.  Man, I am really glad that I play sports.  It has been a great way to meet people and run all that stress out that comes when living in a foreign country.

The other weekly event is Hansa48 Tuesday movie nights. Asisa introduced us to this. The movie “theater” is a normal-sized room that has seats for like 30 people. There are couches in the front and the rest of the rows are those travel bus seats that you can lean back. They also sell bottled beer and candy by weight (you can pick what you like out of the glass jars). It’s a neat little set-up.  It’s kind of like we are renting a cool living room once a week. Plus, it’s much cheaper than a normal theater and they show a nice mix of foreign and German films.

And now, what you’ve all been waiting for… Husum, Süderlügum and Tønder. Chris and I went on a little weekend trip with a group called StepIn Kiel. It’s a group of German students who have all studied abroad before and want to help welcome international students. We all met Saturday morning at the train station and headed northwest to the town of Husum. I was pretty excited about this part because Husum is Theodor Storm’s hometown. Unfortunately, none of the other internationals really knew much about him (most of them aren’t literature students), so we didn’t do any of the Storm stuff while there. I kind of expected that, so I couldn’t be too disappointed. I know I will be back there a few times to do research and such. This trip just served as a good little introduction to the town. It was really well-maintained and had lots of good-looking buildings. The weather made it look exactly like Storm describes it in his poems and novellas: “the gray town by the sea.”

Husum wharf at low tide

Husum library

Husum castle

After walking around Husum, eating some fish sandwiches and learning how to peel these baby shrimp things from a fisherman selling his catch, we headed to another small town in the area, Friedrichstadt. It was designed like a Dutch city with canals. There were some cool old buildings there, too.

built in 1624!

they like fish, even as door handles

Nothing much was going on around town. It was a pretty small city. Chris went in to a shop that sold bulk coffee and tea to see if he could get a cup to go. The owner said that they didn’t serve drinks to go, but offered that Chris could go sit in his kitchen with him and drink a cup! Darling! Since we had to move on, Chris couldn’t take him up on that. Too bad.

Finally we decided to move on to Süderlügum. It wasn’t really a pretty town like the two others we just visited, but there were some really cool houses around with reed roofs.

sorry, it was dusky. this one was also from the 1600s and had a tiny door.

We had to go outside of the town to get to our cabin in the middle of the woods.

Our home for the night

It was pretty old school. The only heat was from the fires downstairs. The large sleeping rooms were upstairs, and I was glad I had my very warm blanket along. We also had to go outside and down the stone steps around the side of the house to get to the bathrooms. Interesting.  We had chili with noodles/rice for dinner. It was funny to see different people’s reactions to spicy. Many Europeans are not used to it. The rest of the night we played games, danced, talked, drank, etc.

ha

We all stayed up really late and were slow to rise the next morning. This made us late for the train, which caused a big problem. So our leaders had to shuttle us there with two cars. Because of that we only got to spend about an hour in Denmark, but oh well. The town was really pretty, almost too pretty.

tasty waffles with soft serve!!

doesn't do the city justice, but the camera batteries were running out

It was a really fun weekend. We got out to see more of Schleswig-Holstein and we finally got to know some of the other internationals a bit better.  I’m sad that most of them are going home after this semester : ( I guess we will just have to make do with the time we have!

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving everyone!

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