A Week Later

I didn't find the time to post at all this week, unfortunately. Last weekend in Neunkirchen/Saarbruecken was a lot of fun -- Ben and I saw a soccer game, then we spent the night hanging out with the girls in Saarbruecken, and on Sunday we went to Germany's only Hooters restaurant in Neunkirchen. Odd for my first time at a Hooters to be in Germany. We had giant hamburgers for dinner, and the others left but Ben and I stayed to watch the Patriots-Steelers game. At a little after midnight, Hooters finally kicked us out...at which time it was only the third quarter of the game. While it was clear that the Patriots were dominating (sorry, Ben, it's just their time.), it was still excruciating not to find out the outcome until the next afternoon -- Ben, you really need to get the internet.

And since I had taken Monday off to give myself time to recover and return home from watching football in Neunkirchen, the week was pretty short. At choir on Tuesday the director singled me out to sing with her while the rest of the group did the chorus and "la la las" and such. This would have been uncomfortable for me under the best of circumstances, and it was definitely not the best of circumstances. I had never even seen the song before, the melody was tricky, and it was written in ol' black southern slang (the title is "Mary's Boychile," which should explain it). We did a few painful verses, during which the director kept asking the others to sing a little quieter; it doesn't matter how quietly they sing if all I'm doing is lip syncing, though. It was a combination of that and some mumbling and stumbling. Thankfully I won't be at the Christmas concert so she can't possibly ask me to perform a solo there.

Wednesday at school I had a meeting to gauge the interest of 11-13 grade students in having a conversation hour once a week. Some of the teachers were skeptical, but there was a large turnout -- apparently German high schoolers are curious about this "America" thing. I'm going to start the program some time after Christmas break so hopefully I can feed them my propaganda and end up with some devoted minions. Wednesday night I went out to some bars/clubs with a couple of German friends -- played some darts, foosball, and pool, and then went to a dance club for a bit. Both places were new to me, so it was useful in addition to fun.

Thursday I went to Thorlef and Brigitte's for the night, as Puppe and Richard had arrived on Wednesday. We had a fantastic dinner (three course meal involving goose is hard to beat) and spent the night catching up and sampling Thorlef's extensive liquor supply. "Sampling" implies that we had small portions of many liquors, which is true except for the "small" part. Then yesterday Puppe, Richard, Brigitte, and I went into Darmstadt to do a little shopping, see the Christmas market, and, naturally, eat some more delicious food. The place also brewed their own beer. Also delicious.

I took the train back home, showered, packed an overnight bag, and headed to the University. Eight of us from the Uni Mainz Ultimate Frisbee team drove to Dortmund for a tournament. This was my first, so I was pretty excited. It was mostly a beginner's tourney, but anyone was invited so there was a wide range of skill levels. We got there a little before 10 PM. We played our first game at 11 PM. We finished our last game at 7 AM this morning. The night was filled with food, beer, and ultimate frisbee, but definitely no sleep. It was a great experience to be playing for real instead of just practicing, although I clearly need a lot more work. Some people stayed in the gym to sleep for a while this morning, but one of our cars was headed back so I went along.

I was in the passenger seat, so I tried my best to keep up a conversation with the driver for the 2 and a half hour drive so he wouldn't get too tired either. When I was talking, I could function normally. When I stopped talking, my brain went into absolute shut-down mode, and I've never had a harder time keeping my eyes open (okay, maybe a few times in high school history classes). I was having the weirdest one minute bouts of unconsciousness and dream sessions. So when I got back home, I crashed...for a whole four hours. No time for more, though -- there's a birthday party to attend tonight. Duty calls.