about what i'm not going to do

here's a list of things i'm not going to write about:
1. i'm not going to write about the k-week-activities. k-week is the "welcome to university of kentucky (in the following referred to as uk or uok) everybody - freshmen (erstis), look, what we've got here, all kinds of things and groups and activities and free food and masses of free t-shirts"-week. i'm not going to write about this because it really is too much to write about while not too interesting in the end anyway.
2. i'm not going to write about the big blue u, which is getting acquainted with the football stadium, the school colors (blue and white) and the mascot (wildcat), the fighting song and similar stuff. a detailed report about all of those things will be given with the big game against louisville (pronounce "louville") on september 17th including nice blue pictures and stuff. i hate watching sports but i am kind of excited to get to feel the atmosphere in this case. i do not feel exatcly comfortable in big cheering crowds except demos but we'll see.
3. i'm not going to give you a detailed schedule of the past events because there's too many of those anyway and it's kind of boring for you, too.

so, what am i going to write about, then?

first, i'd like to get you acquainted with my living conditions:
room


(community) bathroom with prison charm







view out of the window


hallway




i don't have a view-from-outside-pic yet, but it's a nice brick building, you know, a dorm is a dorm is a dorm, right....

that's the library









and my study tree, i sit under it for reading as long as the ants don't realise my being there.


the shelves in the library are put very close to each other, too close to get in between them. you have to type in the number of the book you want and then they move aside to give you access. really like in harry potter only without wands.
all the furniture is wooden, you know, that dark, naturally classy looking expensive wood, and looks so dignified (if you can actually say this about interior design of which i'm not sure - native speakers, please comment), there's a ridiculous number of study and reading rooms, computer access everywhere and they have a video editing mac room in the basement. oh, and yeah, of course the library is open 24/5 (and a half actually) from sunday 12 p.m. til friday night and then some more 12 hours on saturday. sometimes i wonder why exactly i actually chose the uni of bremen for my studies back then. no need to mention that this library has an amount of 3000 books on the topic i'm writing my paper about and not 30 like ours does...

kentucky is very green and very hot, too. i don't mean hot as in "oh, the weather is so nice to day, 24°c, let's go out and hang around in the park!". I mean hot as in "man, i really don't want to walk this ten minute way, it's 38°c or so in the sun! let's take the air conditioned bus." oh, yeah, that leads me to my next topic: every room is air-conditioned. except our dorm, obviously, which has more of a sauna atmosphere to it. but every other room is air-conditioned, which basically means: cold. you go out and sweat like a pig in shorts (more like hot pants) and a sleeveless shirt, you go in and freeze in jeans. well, possibly not in jeans. but never forget to carry your fleece around, it might save your life at some point.

let's see, what else.... the area is still beautiful. classes have started. i've got my class on major black writers in about an hour. yesterday we talked about "the american way of life" as referred to in germany and "the american dream" once again. i still don't believe it works, our teacher however has kind of a well.... let's say... erm... more optimistic view on those things, to avoid nasty words like naive or ignorant.
our group is cool, though i get the feeling that we start splitting up into several subgangs which is okay since there are several people i can connect to in a better way than others but still makes me think of how things will develop within the next four weeks - cause that's really it, only four weeks left in ky, isn't it weird how fast time runs by?

i'm learning tons of new things here, i think that's the best about it. not only languagewise (which is not one of my weak areas anyway, but i still learn a lot, especially my vocabulary grows in very necessary areas: on sunday i learned to say "license plate") but mostly in practical things: salsa dancing and juggling have been named, yesterday we went to the gym and i ran on a treadmill for the first time, later on we're going to check out yoga and then our schedule sends us to watch a baseball game. also i've found out about how much better the meyer-briggs personality test is compared to a four cholor scheme personality sorting system (what a very german way to build a phrase, but i like it so i'll keep it in here) - but i'll keep you in suspense and write a whole blog entry about that some other time. only so much for now: i'm sort of 35:33:17:15 blue-green-orange-gold. you're supposed to be one of those colors.

okay, my class will be starting soon, i'm gonna grab some more coffee - oh yeah, that's one more thing i've learned here: ordering at starbucks. to keep things easy enough for beginners like myself i always get a grande latte.

gotta run - have a great day or night everybody, love you, bye!