JOURNAL: iserlohn

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  • Monday Monday... 2002-07-30 03:07:48 Well, it's Tuesday now...

    So yesterday began new classes and all that. Language Workshop I is definately for the lower level people, which is fine as it's nice review and the instructor is super nice (she teaches the German 2 class, which is where everyone but me in there is from).

    Workshop II is taught right now by the replacement German I teacher, and she's OK enough but not outstandingly nice or personable to me. There's 3 or 4 people from German IV in there and two from III. The class is entirely in German, including word explanations, so it's a bit ahead of where I am right now. Fortunately it's just for audit.

    The new German teacher for my group is incredibly nice, we played some games yesterday and focused on one thing the whole time, which is nice compared to "6 new things / day" Hella who never let us concentrate on anything. Hopefully the next two weeks will go well.

    Otherwise not much happened Finished the bottle of Schnapps by sharing most of it away (Lynn has had more of that bottle than I have, which is fine, it's sharing alcohol), and am damn tired now - went to bed at 11 and didn't fall asleep until 4, just to wake up at 7:30AM today to get breakfast and come here. Going to check if my laundry's done when I leave here and then sleep until workshop. May go into town during Sport and get some more chocolate or something or otherwise just sleep more. Tonite is a dance class, may go, may not, depends on what others are doing. Will go to watch probably if nothing else. 
  • I'm Ozzy Ozbourne, the prince of fucking darkness! 2002-07-29 02:39:14 Yesterday was another dead sunday. The highlights of it were, of course, the evening. All that happened otherwise was watching Formula One racing on ORF1 and swimming a little in the morning.

    Last nite tho we had the new course presentation, and I reaffirmed my suspicion that none of the courses would interest me. Filled out my form to say Language Workshop and continuing German and got ready to go.

    Played a few rounds of blackjack with David (at), Jesse (us), Andy (us), and Init (I think that's her name, I have to go check, nl anyways). No money involved, just killing time until we could get a DVD player hooked up.

    After getting to the second laptop, we get a hookup, and put in Austin Powers 2, which I had never seen before. It takes anotehr 10-15 min. to get the DVD configured and everything because Sabine's (at) laptop has so much crap running on it that the dvd software lags about 5 minutes (literally). On the second try everything works and a bunch of us watch a rather humourous if not slightly dated movie.

    After that most people cleared out to go swimming, ended up staying behind with Jesse and we watched The Osbournes. I'd only watched about 10 min. of it at home because it just got so annoying, but since they don't censor the audio track here it was actually enjoyable, because you could actually tell what the hell was going on! What's funny though is that they don't do a good job with the german subtitles that are on with the show, and almost none of the profanity is included in there.

    We then channel surfed a bit, watched some Billy Idol Storytellers, and then put on what we were waiting for, the German dub of South Park TV.

    It lasted five minutes before we turned it off and went to bed. The translation is pretty good, but the voices are just hideous. Cartman doesn't have the edge he needs on the voice, and Stan and Kyle are clearly the same guy not even trying to sound different. Plus the voice is artificially high. It sounds like someone using a falsetto.

    So in bed at around 12:15, up at 7:30 for breakfast, it's now 8:40 and I don't have class until 10:35. Should've brought some mp3's with me. Ah well, so it goes. 
  • Salzburg, and then some... 2002-07-27 17:47:54 Yesterday was pretty much a day of suck. Got up feeling sick, and was ill all day, mostly with a runny nose, which today managed to mutate into a cough that's not too bad but also damned annoying.

    Got grades. A- in history, but a low C on my German exam. If I don't massively get my grade up for the final in 2 weeks I don't get to transfer the class home which is VERY BAD NEWS. Not a great feeling either, I think it was actually the lowest grade in the class. I really don't have anyone to blame, though, than myself. I should have studied more/tried harder/taken more time to do the exam/known all this shit coming in/practiced more outside of class/etc. but I didn't. The next two weeks, though, are being solely dedicated, as far as class time is concerned, to improving my German, to the point where I can recover my grade and transfer the course.

    Improving social relationships may not be so bad either. A couple people said I looked really down today, and for the most part they're right. Getting the massive ego blow of a crappy test score tends to put one in their place and elicit high amounts of depression. This is fairly normal for most folk.

    Tutorial still sucks. I don't know why I go. I should be practicing my German there, but usually it devolves into useless bantering and Georgy from Bulgaria pissing the hell out of me like he always does and nothing gets done. Miriam actually sent me home early from it last night as I couldn't even focus on a simple conversation about movies. I guess I should be thankful, really, I got home, slept for an hour, took a shower, walked around the room a little, got a couple things out for this morning, and went to bed. The appx. timeframes for this was sleep 1930-2030, awake 2030-2130, sleep 2130-0645. Yes, I got nine hours of sleep last night, getting up three times during the night, one of which to adjust the blanket and take some cold pills.

    Got up this morning ready to go and wow, it was raining. Not a heavy rain, but another annoying rain. I wanted to sleep on the bus, even though I was well rested, couldn't, and started listening to RENT (which I haven't done in AGES), just when the driver turned on the radio. It also didn't help that people all around were having conversations with each other or their handys, which kept ringing both ways on the bus.

    The Schloß Hellbrun was nice, and the archbishop who built some of those fountains was an evil sadistic man who probably had sex with 9 year old boys. I took a lot of pictures there, though, and enjoyed a good amount of the visit there. The only downside was that my cold pills wore off towards the end, and I was begging to borrow water to take the next dose with. Until then, though, I made do with some Airways gum. This stuff is great, it's so strong that it actually opens your breathing passages. I'm bringing a shitload of this stuff home with me when I come back.

    The great thing, though, was the Festung, which is way up on a hill overlooking the town. The tour itself sucked, as all they did was give us the preprogrammed audio tours and the guide just opened doors and did traffic control. I'd love to have a day to just do free wandering around it, as it was absolutely amazing. Apparently the first lady of Austria was there as well, coming down as we were heading up. The Festung is also home to a small military museum which was loaded with pretty guns, uniforms, knives, and other neat things that make historians and such drool. I didn't take too many pictures at the Festung, though, as part of it was the need to keep moving, and part of it was the fun of going through this place and up the narrow staircases and through all these places more than what was there to take photos of. Didn't take too many in the museum either, as I can't turn off my flash properly, so everything would have glared. Also had to give up 4 pictures on a roll of film. I will be extremely pissed if this camera doesn't function right in the autoload because I'm not using Kodak film (kodak camera).

    After the festung, we walked to some restaurant for lunch. Everyone left hungry. The service was horrid, the food was OK but not great, and the portion sizes were said to be quite lacking according to the Austrians, Americans, and most everyone else. I ended up spending my free time with Carmen (at), Gun-Kristin (norway), and david and hanna (both at). Sadly I didn't really get to a cafe to get something, but the others got to an imbiß and had gyros...which I can't have. At least I found a bag of gelatin-free Gummi Bärchen, which were quite tasty but not very satisfying.

    Following free time (and learning that bookstores here are either highly specialized or only have fad books, typically for far too much - a display listed a book at 10 Euros and the tag on it said 14.50...) we all went to the casino. I didn't gamble, but I still lost out because in the moving of things (brough the MP3 player with me in case socializing got boring, which it thankfully didn't), I lost the foam covering to my right earbud, which makes it quite irritating to the ear - I keep wanting to scratch when it's in. At least it still works, so it's not the end of the world or anything worth replacing the set over.

    The promised free chips at the casino also didn't manifest themselves - all we got was a "buy 21 Euro of chips get 4 free" coupon, which meant investing my own money, a no-no as I only have so much here and gambling it away is not my idea of a good time. The food that we got, while free, was also lousy. The only vegetarian options was the dessert tray. While this SOUNDS good, it really wasn't, as the quality was again sub-par compared to what we normally get, even at the local Imbiß here in Strobl. Not much food either, as it was mostly h'or derves to feed people who had a hit or miss capability of getting food during free time (as the poor service at the restaurant cut off about 40 min. of what we were going to have, so people who wanted to get to churches or Schloß Mirabelles were screwed).

    So we spent two hours hanging out at the casino. Most people who played came out ahead, but that doesn't mean that I necessarily would have. I'm waaaaaaaaay too paranoid and conservative to make a good gambler and I know it. There were actually a couple people who weren't able to get in due to being underage (one guy in the group is 17), or mostly not making the dress code.

    After the casino was a loud trip home, reminders about the latin-american party currently going on, and the fest in town that I can hear right now.

    There was a fireworks display to go with the fest, and it was really nice. I watched it from the docks, but out of sight of everyone else...at first I was watching from right by where the campus goes out onto the lake, but then Jonah (uk) and his GF (ru) came by saying they were going to the docks to watch it. Me thinking of the love-love stuff going on decided to stay put. Then a group of the Austrians came by, and it became a "watch jonah and his gf be love-love and left out of conversation by the natives or stay put" type of decision. Eventually a couple more people including nikolas (pl) and another austrian and one of the staff came by and kinda dragged me a little of the way. I stayed to the back of the dock, and it was a great view.

    The fireworks ended, and I came to the lab to check stuff online. The question now is if so many people have laptops at Otakon, how come no one's bothered to post any up to the minute panel reports or party reports or AMV contest opinions yet? I don't know why I care too much about the AMV reports, as my video failed to make it in so I have no direct stake, and I've seen all the submissions before so I don't need reviews. I guess it's just one of those things.

    I also think I have a new favorite flavor of Milka bar: Sahne (Whipped) Creme. This stuff is incredibly smooth and rich and wonderful. It's like eating solid ganache. Must bring some home.

    I'm on with the IRCnet crowd right now. Sven (de) isn't understanding the theory of being depressed about being in a wonderful place...so it goes. Hopefully all will be better before I get to Dresden.

    The theoretical itinerary for next weekend is Salzburg fest Friday night, Salzburg city Sunday (to see churches, etc.), and a hopeful daytrip to Innsbruck on Saturday to knock out that extra day I've paid for on the railpass. We'll see how reality turns out, though, and who's up for travelling. I really don't want to travel by myself while I still don't have to.

    *sigh* At least I managed to only spend 1.80 Euros today - the gummi bears and a bottle of water. And no more bleach blonde leather skinned Hella making Deutsch suck. I hope her replacement for the last 2 weeks is good...someone like Cerue (last semester's instructor).

    I think that's all I have to say for now. More updates as things happen... 
  • 3800 hits and counting... 2002-07-26 02:52:44 Last night was a bit dull, and a bit interesting at the same time. It was dull because almost everyone had an exam for their 8:30 class today, which means they weren't in the mood to hang out or party or anything. Sabine opened the bar, but closed it really early because no one was there. She also kept bringing us snack food in the tv area to keep from getting too bored.

    So it was mostly me and Jesse hanging out, watching German TV (nice cars, bad dubs), had some schnapps and blood orange juice, and even gave lynn 1/8L straight up which she consumed all of, which was quite fun. Apparently she's tried smack too...

    Today should be quiet, as should tonight, as the Salzburg departure is at 7:45 and everyone's gonna need to be up at 7 to eat beforehand.

    Was also feeling better last night but went to bed and didn't. Still don't feel great this morning, and sleeping is annoying - I seem to get 3 hour shifts of sleep. I know I'm getting REM in there, but it's annoying to wake up every couple hours and start the whole process all over again. 
  • Exams are over... 2002-07-25 11:10:36 I think I got a B in history, which pisses me off, because I shared my oral with someone who was NOT feeling sick in the morning, and was VERY eager to talk, and of course I had to choke up a bit during the actual exam, though I had a couple minutes of the professor's time afterwards, hopefully to get my grade bumped up enough.

    German exam is over, I have 25 min. before I need to be back, as I finished quite early. I fucked up a couple sections, but think I did OK overall, either a high C or a low B, either way I can do better on the final.

    Kyburg: Thanks for the link, I feel better mentally after reading it even if I'm physically feeling not as good. I'm loving the beds here, and even though they're not common/typial to my knowledge, having a big heavy blanket to sleep under for an hour makes so many things feel so much better. That and a bar of strawberry creme filled chocolate and some blood orange juice.

    Tonight is experimenting with schnapps and hopefully getting other people to help me finish this bottle, as it's stronger than what I'd really want to be drinking regularly (but it'd probably fix whatever's in the throat real good...)

    Tomorrow is a wrapup lecture in Turning Points, and in German we're watching Lola Rennt (Run Lola Run). I love Lola Rennt, so it'll be a nice day. Mebbe I'll introduce some folks to eurobeat/parapara/DDR music tonite as well. Could be fun. I've slept enough for today, want to do something. *sing* I have to go Oooooooooooouuuuuuuttttt tonight...

    To all who are going to Otakon, have fun, and I expect emails with full reports when I get home. To those staying in, um...I hope you have a good weekend.

    And does anyone know why they feel the need to take us to a casino? It's cool that it's in a castle, but there are such better ways to spend an evening...especially since I think movie night is falling through. 
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