XI

Alice just got her books in! For her senior thesis project at PNCA she published a book of photography, and I am in it! Along with other friends of ours, of course. She made 1000 of them so there are plenty of copies available to go around. Buy one and support her if you so desire! The site for the book was designed by our friend Noele Lusano, and it's hosted on my domain. There should be sample photos up there shortly, I believe:

ME&YOU
a book of photography by Alicia Carrier

X

These are a pair of revived photographs from the Summer of 2004. That summer was especially good and I believe just because so many things were so particular to that specific period of time, that every image and every smell that can be associated with it is that much deeper, as cheesy as that is. I could write an essay on that, but that's not the point.

I feel as though I have reached this point. I have been in Germany for almost three months now. Naturally I miss familiar faces and places, but most of all I look backwards and I miss these extremely romantic parts of my life. Like that summer. Being in Germany, or Europe in general, is a romantic thing, right? But that's not what I mean. I mean, it's different. I am experiencing Germany right now and I do not even think that it is all sinking in. I won't feel this romantic draw to Germany until after I get back home and then I get to miss this, what I have right now.

So I sit here in my room and ruminate about good times and good friends that I am missing out on. I should really just be doing lots of really special things here, so that I'll be able to go back home and ruminate about good times and good friends that I am missing out on.

IX

My potato-onion-tomato cream soup matches the tree outside my window.

I would like to try some more nice home-cooking. Please share some ideas or recipes. You can comment here or send to me by email.

Today is a lazy day.

VIII

This week the temperature will drop every day until the weekend, when we expect snow. Acoording to the weather report, our low today is 40° Farenheit, and by Saturday it will be 25° Farenheit, with freezing temperatures starting on Thursday. This is exciting and daunting at the same time. Atleast I have a decent coat and mom's knee-high boots. If there is enough snow I will take pictures and share them because basically I love snow and fantasize about living among igloos and polar bears and huskies and having a sled and wearing lots of clothes at once. Actually, honestly, I think my favorite part of extremely cold weather is being forced indoors and drinking hot chocolate and sitting under all the blankets in the house. And the occassional venture outdoors to get the blood moving. Someday I would really like to try ice diving. Today Icelandic was cancelled. Today I am going to climb a mountain.

VII

Hard at work. Russian is by far the hardest class on the onset. I didn't work with it all over the summer and I have forgotten so much. It doesn't help that in my first year we hardly did any speaking/listening work and so my brain is buckling under the weight of a new class structure. In the end it will be better, of course. I have always been good with doing lots of work and study at home in the past. I have a pretty good graspe on the grammer and I can do all of that alone, so this will work out for me better anyway. It is just so hard right now! I have been sitting here at my desk all day long trying to do some refreshing studying, and I already feel more confident about it.

Please will someone give me a Russian-German dictionary.

I find it also especially useful to wear my knitted shawl and to look like a real Babyshka while I do my Russian homework. Please save me someone.

Oh yeah, yesterday a young Russian gentleman was downloading some music from me and I managed to have a fairly decent conversation with him, especially considering that I seemingly know 10 times as much Russian today as I did yesterday!

Be proud of me!

VI

Per request of Griog, I now have an account with Skype, a free online service which allows you to make "telephone calls" to anyone anywhere. All you need is a microphone and speaker. I have also used GoogleTalk with mom in the past, and that works, too. I can be reached through either:
GoogleTalk: undromance
Skype: brighidgriosal

So, a real update?
I am now a couple weeks into school here, and it is absolutely wonderful. I am taking a German Reading & Writing course, Intermediate Russian, Culture of Slavics, and I finally decided on Icelandic as my fourth, and it is definitely my favorite out of all of them.

So far I have taken a trip to France and visited a small village called Colmar which isn't too far over the border. I am thankful for the two years of French I had in highschool. Even though my knowledge of it is very elementary, it helped when I had to order food and be polite. Most of the French who live that close to the border know a lot of German anyway, but I didn't try. A week later I took a train with a few friends across the border into Basel, Switzerland. The city is directly on the country borders so there are different districts that belong to Switzerland, Germany, and France. Swiss German is completely beyond me. The dialect is so hard to understand, but especially because they speak so quickly it is nearly impossible. The city is wonderful, though, and a lot bigger than I thought. Near the train station is an open-air over-sized chessboard with 1.5 foot tall playing pieces. We saw some older men playing a game and there were many people just standing around watching the match. That evening on our way back we stopped and my friends Gabriel and John had a turn at it. And most recently, just this past weekend I made a trip to Berlin! My friend Jen Turner is there studying this semester. It was really neat to see her there. I met her in Portland about three? years ago, but then she left and went to college at American University in Washington D.C. Since then I haven't seen her very much at all, so it was something special to get to see her on the other side of the world. While we were there I saw a few museums, monuments, but not nearly enough. There is just far too much to cover in one weekend. I can't wait to go back again. We had a good time with her and her friends and we got to walk around a lot. I would also like to note that the Circus Hostel we slept in for two nights was exceptionally good (and clean!) and I will go there again next time. We had a very long and late train ride back, but it wasn't terrible. On Monday I finally got home at 5:30am or so, so I slept in to make up for all the sleep I missed on the trip. That pretty much brings us up to today. I had Icelandic!, then lunch, some homework, and now some more homework. Booooring.

My plant is still doing really well.