alright folks! here come ten randomly sorted things i have learned in the last three days:
1. doors never open the way you expect them: those you want to push you have to pull. those you want to pull you have to push. those that say "automatic door, caution" you have to open manually. those that ask you to use your id for opening stay open all day. to open the door you have to turn the key right. to close it, left. doors are really interesting around here.
2. everything is awesome!. sometimes it's aaaaw-some!!!!. but mostly it's just awesome!.
3.everything is sugary. but to keep your conscience clear, they mostly put high intensity sweetener in there to make it sweet but free of calories. i wonder how that actually keeps people running - my body is aching for vegetables and real meat instead of sticky food already. and also, it is already willing to accept vegetarian food - who would have thought!
4. coffee: very thin. i leave out the cream or milk because it just wouldn't make any difference. but then again, they've got fancy variaties of it like a cinnamon-flavoured one. it tasted like very thin coffee with cinnamon flavour.
5. tea: only black. deal with it. we found a place that sells green tea, too, though.
6. people are very easy to approach and really like germans. everyone has a german relative or friend or a friend with a german relative or a relative with a german friend. they really like us here. the general reaction is: awesome!
7. my cell phone doesn't work.
8. w-lan = wifi. there is some for free everywhere - on campus and off campus and even in the airports.
9. people share rooms in their dorms, usually they've got one roommate. noone in germany would ever be willing to share their room for a whole year - people around here feel great about that the first couple of months, it seems. those who do not get a roommate are even kind of sad about it. leo, i love you and you know that - but i really appreciate that door between our rooms.
my roommate nelli is very nice though. she's one of our group, one of the university students, and we live a happy life next to each other, when we are in our room. that's mostly for sleeping.
10. campus university means you have to walk up to 45 minutes to get from one side of the campus to the other. anyone ever had any complaints about having a class in gw1? don't even try to whine on me! the definite pro of this is the beauty of the area, the amazing library and the fact that all of your friends are somewhere around at all times. the definite con is that you live at school and there's no getting away from it whatsoever. the whole thing leads to a strong identification with the school and thus to a great school spirit but at the same time to a big pressure on everyone to adjust to the group. i'm not sure yet whether i find this latently aggressive and authoritarian or pretty cool and a good opportunity to connect people regardless of their differences in situations and whatever else.
what else happened in the last two and a half days?
we were informed about our schedule, some nice events are coming up. we had breakfast at mc d, i'd prefer not to repeat that experience but i'm afraid i will for the us-americans don't feel any urge to get up as early as germans which i can highly identify with but which hinders them from offering real breakfast on weekdays.
yesterday i learned to juggle with three balls. it works for a couple of seconds already, i'm so proud of myself. also i learned to dance salsa yesterday.
we went volunteering for the lexington community today. the name of the program was "fusion", which makes me happy because i'm easily amused and because now i can really say i have been to fusion. yay. i was weeding and collecting rubbish at a homeless shelter for men. for the most part we were collecting cigarettes while the men were smoking and thus providing more work for us. i came to understand once again how important it is to involve people into improving their life and how not only senseless is is to collect rubbish for them if they are perfectly capable of doing so themselves but also how it must lower their self esteem significantly.
i went on a see-four-churches-tour with a few dozens of other freshmen, no one of our german group was there so i had a real chance to get to know people. that was interesting. churches look more like malls around here, they're very modern with huge plasma tvs and they use power point to present their church work and such. that was very. erm. christian. they provided good food and nice giveaways, though, and i really got the chance to meet some really nice people.
so far i like the states, only my head is exploding from all this information already.
i'm to lazy to upload pics today. sorry about that. have fun reading!
and remember: anyone who wants cards: read the instrunction under "you've got mail"!
have a good day or night, folks!
P.S.: sorry leo, i cannot do that. that would interfere with my principles and since i am in the us now, i cannot let that happen. you'll get used to it, i promise! ;)
1. doors never open the way you expect them: those you want to push you have to pull. those you want to pull you have to push. those that say "automatic door, caution" you have to open manually. those that ask you to use your id for opening stay open all day. to open the door you have to turn the key right. to close it, left. doors are really interesting around here.
2. everything is awesome!. sometimes it's aaaaw-some!!!!. but mostly it's just awesome!.
3.everything is sugary. but to keep your conscience clear, they mostly put high intensity sweetener in there to make it sweet but free of calories. i wonder how that actually keeps people running - my body is aching for vegetables and real meat instead of sticky food already. and also, it is already willing to accept vegetarian food - who would have thought!
4. coffee: very thin. i leave out the cream or milk because it just wouldn't make any difference. but then again, they've got fancy variaties of it like a cinnamon-flavoured one. it tasted like very thin coffee with cinnamon flavour.
5. tea: only black. deal with it. we found a place that sells green tea, too, though.
6. people are very easy to approach and really like germans. everyone has a german relative or friend or a friend with a german relative or a relative with a german friend. they really like us here. the general reaction is: awesome!
7. my cell phone doesn't work.
8. w-lan = wifi. there is some for free everywhere - on campus and off campus and even in the airports.
9. people share rooms in their dorms, usually they've got one roommate. noone in germany would ever be willing to share their room for a whole year - people around here feel great about that the first couple of months, it seems. those who do not get a roommate are even kind of sad about it. leo, i love you and you know that - but i really appreciate that door between our rooms.
my roommate nelli is very nice though. she's one of our group, one of the university students, and we live a happy life next to each other, when we are in our room. that's mostly for sleeping.
10. campus university means you have to walk up to 45 minutes to get from one side of the campus to the other. anyone ever had any complaints about having a class in gw1? don't even try to whine on me! the definite pro of this is the beauty of the area, the amazing library and the fact that all of your friends are somewhere around at all times. the definite con is that you live at school and there's no getting away from it whatsoever. the whole thing leads to a strong identification with the school and thus to a great school spirit but at the same time to a big pressure on everyone to adjust to the group. i'm not sure yet whether i find this latently aggressive and authoritarian or pretty cool and a good opportunity to connect people regardless of their differences in situations and whatever else.
what else happened in the last two and a half days?
we were informed about our schedule, some nice events are coming up. we had breakfast at mc d, i'd prefer not to repeat that experience but i'm afraid i will for the us-americans don't feel any urge to get up as early as germans which i can highly identify with but which hinders them from offering real breakfast on weekdays.
yesterday i learned to juggle with three balls. it works for a couple of seconds already, i'm so proud of myself. also i learned to dance salsa yesterday.
we went volunteering for the lexington community today. the name of the program was "fusion", which makes me happy because i'm easily amused and because now i can really say i have been to fusion. yay. i was weeding and collecting rubbish at a homeless shelter for men. for the most part we were collecting cigarettes while the men were smoking and thus providing more work for us. i came to understand once again how important it is to involve people into improving their life and how not only senseless is is to collect rubbish for them if they are perfectly capable of doing so themselves but also how it must lower their self esteem significantly.
i went on a see-four-churches-tour with a few dozens of other freshmen, no one of our german group was there so i had a real chance to get to know people. that was interesting. churches look more like malls around here, they're very modern with huge plasma tvs and they use power point to present their church work and such. that was very. erm. christian. they provided good food and nice giveaways, though, and i really got the chance to meet some really nice people.
so far i like the states, only my head is exploding from all this information already.
i'm to lazy to upload pics today. sorry about that. have fun reading!
and remember: anyone who wants cards: read the instrunction under "you've got mail"!
have a good day or night, folks!
P.S.: sorry leo, i cannot do that. that would interfere with my principles and since i am in the us now, i cannot let that happen. you'll get used to it, i promise! ;)
Well, there’s a great tutorial out there which guides you to pass the door: http://failblog.org/2009/08/17/understanding-automatic-door-fail/. So anytime you get in trouble, follow these instructions and you have the power to arrive the other side of the wall. ;-)
AntwortenLöschenhehe, deswegen wollte ich wissen wo du wohnst. Sowas hab ich mir schon gedacht. Ähnelt sehr den Geschichten meiner Cousine. Aber mit nur einer Zimmerpartnerin hast du noch das große Los gezogen glaub ich ;)
AntwortenLöschenDa sind Männer, die außerhalb des Campus wohnen, wohl äußerst begehrt nehme ich an.
PS.: die Einstellung scheint anders zu sein: meine Cousine zieht freiwillig mit vier Mädels in ein 60qm Haus mit zwei (ich betone: 2!! - sie sind zu viert...) Schlafzimmern... shared space.
The coffee thing is a problem throughout much of the US, but you can usually find good coffee in most cities if you know where to look. I don't understand the meat thing; the stereotype says that southerners like real "American" food, which means lots of meat & potatoes, plus grilling during the summer. Plus Kentucky is the home of KFC...
AntwortenLöschenKeep taking notes about the south; I'm curious.
Brett
p.s.-Give me a call if you get bored (although it sounds like that won't happen before Kansas): 651-387-6394