Still Alive in Germany

Hello faithful readership,

The international cuisine thing was a huge huge huge huge success, better than I ever expected. We hardly even advertised it! And now I'm ready to have another one. I think we'll plan it before Christmas so we can all make some traditional Christmas dishes. I'll be making cookies!! You can see pictures of the event in the More Random Pics of Friends album on Facebook. I made macaroni and cheese, which didn't taste like macaroni and cheese at all, and then mini sandwiches made with eggs, hot sauce, green onions, and cheese. They were delicious!! We all voted on the best food and Viktor won, and he got a nice little cookbook, which is now sitting on MY bookshelf :-) ha ha... his delectable creation was just that, delectable. And tasted good cold... always a plus for things like this!

The next morning I got up eeeaaarly to catch a bus to the train station for the trip w/ the campus Catholic organization to Eisenach. There was an exhibition in the big castle there about St. Elizabeth. Apparently people are REALLY obsessed with this person. I don't believe in the saints, that's not biblical, but these people apparently didn't mind escalating her to such a degree. It was REALLY freaky the stuff they did. Examples include using her flesh to create part of a sculpture which still exists today (the flesh was formed with wood into the head of Jesus on a crucifix sculpture). They also built requilary boxes for her remains, every bit of her remains. I saw a real finger inside a finger-shaped jeweled case. It was grayed and you could see the wrinkles through a little window on the front of the jeweled case. CRAZY. These people worshiped her more than they worshiped God. That was evident by the exhibition. Apparently people still worship her. Kinda makes me angry. People devoted their entire lives to a 24 year old woman, writing books about her, painting murals and paintings, carving grandiose statues of her, erecting churches after her... and thereby left Jesus completely out. Well whatever, that's my soap. Here are the albums from the trip:

Eisenach 1
Eisenach 2

Anyway... I'm continuing this post after almost 2 weeks, it kinda sat in "drafts" for a while, as I was tired and didn't feel like writing...

Mom sent me a package from home with a few very essential items... my "skinny jeans" which now fit (at least they did two weeks ago, but maybe not anymore!!) and *surprise* a CHRISTMAS TREE! It is now sitting on my desk all decorating. I've got lights around my windows, too :-) Viktor and I made cookies and brownies w/ the mixes Mom sent and now, again thanks to Mom, I can enjoy popcorn from my very own microwave. Sweet.

... I got a cold. And I've had it for almost a week. I know the worst is over, but I'm kind of ready to get back into my exercise routine which I have half-way fallen out of. I only got in two days of exercise this week! How sad! I guess that's better than nothing, though, seriously. And here, cold medicine really isn't that cheap!!

On a brighter note, I got a JOB! Yep, that's right, I am now working for the vice president of research here at the university as a translator! My job also includes correcting documents that have been VERY roughly translated. I'm debating on whether I should tell them that native German speakers should only translate from English to GERMAN, not from German to English. It is hard to correct when half the words are wrong in the first place, ya know?! So I'm making $11.07 per hour I spend translating. And it's fun to do and a great way to learn. I guess I'm most excited about how this is going to affect my future career. Not only do I get to write on my resume that I spent almost a year living in Germany absorbing the language, but I'm taking courses on translation AND working as a translator at the same time. So I am hoping this scores me big points when it comes time to get a job sometime in the future. I'm sure it will.

I got a new shower curtain and it is beautiful!! It really shows my age, in a way... 5 years ago the last thing on my Christmas list still wouldn't have been a shower curtain... but here I am, thrilled to have a new one!! Here is a picture:



Viktor and I got slapped w/ a $60 fine each yesterday when we got "caught" without tickets on a regional train... but it really wasn't our fault!! We wanted to buy tickets at the Automat, but because the price of the ticket was under 10E, the machine refused to accept 20 E bills.... which was all we had. And so we were left ticketless and assumed we could just buy them on the train. WRONG... well, first, we hoped that no one would come by and check for tickets, so we wouldn't have to pay at all, but of course, Lumpy the Ticket Man comes along and Viktor asks to buy tickets. Lumpy very rudely replies that we can't. We apparently can only buy tickets from him if we got on the train at a station that does not have automats at all or at a station in which the automats are not working... and it did not matter to him that the machine did not take our money. In short, he COULD have sold us tickets, but he wouldn't, because he's an asshole. So he gave us each a little piece of paper that said we owed 40E ($60) to the Deutsche Bahn. HOWEVER... something rather funny happened in my case: he asked us for IDs so he could put our info in his little computer (that does issue tickets in other circumstances!) and I gave him my driver's license... which turned out to be written in Greek for him, lol, because when I looked at my little paper that held my doom for $60, he had written my name as this: Johanna Caesar Caitlin. That is, Caitlin is my last name, Johanna (my middle name) is my first name, and Caesar (the name of my street back home) is my middle name. LOL. He also incorrectly input my birth date. So the only information he has from me that is correct is my home address, which does not include my room number. And so therefore he has the home address of about 300 other people who are also not named Johanna Caesar. Which means the Deutsche Bahn will unfortunately receive no money from anyone. Viktor isn't going to pay either-- he has decided to write a letter complaining, which you are allowed to do. I gave him a few pointers on how to write a complaint letter (I've written two!)... including finding something to quote from their website. I picked out a line where they had written "German Train Stations -- Experience the Service and Other Amenities Designed to Make Your Trip a Pleasure"... so he is going to quote that and ask where the heck the service was?!?! We have the number (not the name) of the guy who gave us the penalty, and we're going to include that in the letter as well, as he was very rude. Viktor said he didn't understand something the guy had said, and he replied "Yeah, I noticed". I had to sign a slip of paper that apparently certifies the information on the ID was correct, which I did sign for, but then I realized that the information he had copied from the ID was NOT. The way I see it, if the idiot ain't competent enough to write down simple information, I'm not giving him any of my money!!! In some trains you CAN buy tickets, in some trains you can't. And this information does not exist on the website. Anyway, I'm just NOT going to pay!

Here are the new photo albums...
Summer 2007 Non-German Style
A Very German Christmas

I'm leaving on December 20 in the afternoon to go see the cousins in Ingolstadt... Michi and I are going to TRY to go to Dresden in the meantime, but the train tickets are just so expensive. We might just go to Regensburg or Nuernburg instead. The Catholics are trying to get a trip together for Dresden in the summer, anyway, and it was fun going to Eisenach with them, so I might just wait and go with them since it'll probably be cheaper anyway...

Well that's it...! Thanks to all who have faithfully been reading and I miss you all and love you!

Caitlin

Late Nights, Toaster Ovens, and Dodging the Chocolate Breakdown

HeLLooooo everyone!

Wow it's definitely been longer than a week since I last updated. Shame on me! It's a good thing I write things down in my agenda, otherwise I wouldn't remember a daggam thing. And that's just because I am really busy.

Last weekend was a pretty slow weekend. The highlight was going to Cologne for the Worship Night they had there (see pics and videos on Facebook). That was just so cool. I was like a mini- Passion conference. We had the David Crowder of the German world, ya'll! Ok, maybe not that good, but still good. It is sooo neat to worship and celebrate and pray to God in another language.

Monday is grocery shopping day... so last week and this week I grocery shopped. I also grocery shopped today, because I finally figured out what to make for Thursday... the Student Government (called AStA here) is sponsoring an evening of international cuisine... we're all supposed to make something to bring along and I decided to make "western sandwiches", a recipe I discovered in my Healthy College Cookbook, and macaroni and cheese... from scratch. I tested out the sandwich today and it is amazing, so I am really excited about that. I'd like to make the sandwich and cut it into triangles and stick a toothpick through it, just for kicks. Not excited about making the mac n' cheese, but we'll see how it turns out.

Last week I stayed up laaaaaate Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday watching movies. Last Monday we went to see a movie called Lissi und der wilde Kaiser. I was very surprised to see how much I understood of the movie. I always doubt my skillz, yo. After the movie we went to a billiard hall/bar and I had hot chocolate and played a game of billiards... I lost, of course. Then we took Kito (guy visiting from Iowa/Cali) to the train station and ate at McDonalds and his train was like an hour late. We met an American randomly at the train station... he was fro Missouri and had met and married his wife while studying abroad in Hamburg 35 years ago! How crazy.

Tuesday night we all went to a "Sneak Preview" at the same theater and also went to McDonalds afterward. This time, though, I only ate ice cream. No cheeseburger and fries for me, man! Although I was proud of myself on Monday for not overdoing it, like more than a small-sized anything, that is. Honestly I don't remember a lot of what I did on Tuesday day, but I think I exercised. YES I did, I did exercise! Excellent.

Wednesday I ate lunch with friends and that evening Viktor hosted a film at his place for the Spaniards... I of course was there as well, lol. Got home late that night as well, and went to class on Thursday morning at 10. I did pretty good on my first translation. It always looks scary when you first get the text to translate, but then it gets easier as you dive into actually translating it.

I forgot to mention that I had sort of obtained a side job... I will soon be "contracted" as the official "english corrector" for some department on campus... I responded to an ad which resulting in my obtaining a 20 page document on bird flu in German newspapers to correct. It took me 6.5 hours and I earned over $70 :-) YAY! Exciting. So they'll be contacting me later to do some more work... in the mean time, I'm thinking of advertising a bit ;-)

Thursday I am pretty sure Viktor and I ate all three meals together... lol... yep we sure did, that is funny. Thursday is normally the "party night" for students here in Koblenz, and I was gonna go with some girlfriends dancing but, I felt like staying home. Sooo I went to bed, but woke up the next morning with the biggest freakin' headache EVER. I attempted to work out but I just couldn't make it to the end, so whatever. I felt better as the day went on. Met Melanie for lunch that afternoon, and Kathrin at 3pm for a little chit-chat. That was nice to see her!! I had dinner at Viktor's...... we had something quite unusual for dinner but it was really yummy... like these ravioli pasta thingers with sour cream and french fried onions... it totally surprised me how good it was, and I'll admit I doubted it would taste good in the least. We went to a birthday party and then to another party someplace else which was really fun, they had cool music and so I danced a lot. It felt good to dance!! "You can dance if you want to, you can leave your friends behind...!"
LOL

Anyway so Saturday der Schatz and I caught a train to Cochem and his dad picked us up there. We dropped off his parents at some friends' or relatives' or whoever's house and we visited some volcanic lakes. It was SO SO SO cold we couldn't stay long and I didn't take many pictures. I don't know a lot about volcanic lakes. But there were 3 of them, and we visited two. The second was pretty, there was a little church next to it that had the prettiest graves (weird I know, but hey, they looked nice!) so I took a few pics of that... we were going to walk to an observatory tower but I decided that I didn't want to because it was too stinkin' cold and we left and as soon as we got to the car it started raining... perfect timing!! We had a hot chocolate (best I've had since I got here!) and rented the movie Silent Hill to watch later since Viktor had never seen it... we even rented it during happy hour so it was 1/2 price, yo. So we went back to get his parents and ended up staying and eating, which was nice. There was cake, so I was happy ;-) j/k, it was a nice time. I felt kind of awkward being there because everyone was speaking Russian to each other for one, and for two the gathering was a sort of anniversary remembrance gathering for the host's son who had *cringe* committed suicide 6 months earlier. So yeah. Viktor and I spoke English instead of German, and he translated the Russian for me if I asked (like if everyone laughed or something, lol). Anyway we watched the movie and then went over to one of his friend's house to watch another movie (Wild Hogs) which was sooo freakin' funny. It was a really funny movie. We watched Silent Hill again but about a third of the way into it I fell asleep and woke up when it was over, lol... I amaze myself at how easily I can fall asleep sometimes and get so frustrated when I can't fall asleep....

Slept in laaaaaaaaate on Sunday, and got the train back to Koblenz at 6pm. Had to wait a while for the bus, but at least they were functioning... crazy thing was, earlier last week a live bomb was found at a construction site in the center of town, from World War II!! And so Sunday they blocked off the entire city until 2pm so they could defuse it and remove it. Wild, huh??

Sunday night I bought myself a toaster oven on Amazon and it got here this morning. The same DHL guy woke me up for the 3rd time, but it was exciting to get my toaster and my alarm was gonna go off in 5 minutes anyway. I worked out with my friend Friederike at 10am for about an hour, and we went grocery shopping at 12:30... got all my stuff for Thursday and all. She's coming over this evening to test out the oven with me; we're going to make mini pizzas, yum!!

Ok, so in regard to "Dodging the Chocolate Breakdown"... I am out of Nutella. And I refuse to buy more. BUT, I get headaches if I don't eat at least a little sugar. So, what I have resolved to do is this: out shopping today I found a box of little skinny chocolate bars... there are 11 of them and they are just a perfect size and less than 100 cals a pop. They taste really good and having them individually wrapped like that really helps with portion control. So I think if I have a craving I'll just stick with that and that way I can avoid The Breakdown by not having a giant jar of Nutella lurking in the cabinet. No, it really does lurk!! I'm serious!!

Anyway so I plan to go over to campus to the computer lab this afternoon for a bit so I can print a few things for class on Thursday and not have to worry about them tomorrow... then Rike will be here around 6pm and we'll make our mini pizzas. YUM I can't wait. Then the Spaniards are having a Spanish film evening, I MIGHT MIGHT MIGHT go watch the movie. But I want to work out tomorrow, so we'll see.

Ok so this time I covered all of the things in my title, I'm content, ha ha...


Cheers,
Caitlin

Terrible Classes, Halloween, and When it's cold outside

Hi!!

Ok so that class I went to on Tuesday? TERRIBLE. It was taught in English and called "The Story of English" so I thought, hey, this sounds interesting... WRONG! I fought the urge to get up and leave in the middle of it several times. I seriously doubt the professor knew what he was talking about. Anyway I am not going back to that class. As much of a slacker as it may make me sound like, I'm going to stick with two classes this semester. They are the only two that will be valid at UCF anyway, and I find that simply talking to my friends and listening to them brings me a LOT more benefit than sitting in a class. So, cool.

Tuesday I went to a meeting in the Asta office, an office on campus that helps first semester students and international students in many aspects. Long story short, I signed on to be a German tutor for the Spaniards, lol. I don't know if I'm seriously going to do anything or not, I've never done anything like this before... so... we will see.

Mommy's box o' glorious items to thrill and surprise me came on Tuesday as well, I was very excited. I hung my hooks yesterday! The safety pins came in handy for my halloween costume and now, thanks to the Ziplocs, my cheese stays fresher, longer. :-) Life can't get any better when you have fresh cheese in the fridge. My favorite favorite FAVORITE thing to eat for breakfast at the moment is a slice of Bauernbrot split in half and toasted, low fat spreadable cheese goes on first, then a bit of low fat sliced cheese, then one or two slices of salami. YUM! It is sooo good. Sometimes I'll also have a slice of toast with Nutella.

Also included in the box o' glorious items to thrill and surprise me was a new workout DVD! It came with the ab belt at Walmart for über cheap and so I did that Wednesday by myself... told my friend I couldn't do a workout on Wednesday but I really just wanted to try that one out alone, lol. I felt kinda bad, but it was a good walk so I am happy I did it. After that I went shopping for a Halloween costume :-) I wanted to be a cat. My friend Rike is a crafty girl and she helped me make some cat ears out of felt and one of my stretchie black headbands. I found everything else I needed at the local Big Lots... okay so it's not a Big Lots exactly, but I got the same excited feeling as I walked through it as I do at Big Lots. I even got a set of three pretty drinking glasses for 1€! THREE! Quite exciting. Now I don't have to serve wine in plastic cups anymore. Just kidding (I don't even like wine)!

So I didn't have enough time to do all my makeup right for my costume but I had my tail attached already (which I made out of a faux fur ski headwarmer thingy that I got for 2€ at Big Lots and safety-pinned to my pants, lol) but I was able to do eye makeup and a black triangle on my nose. Later, I got whiskers. Here are pictures of the Halloween party...

We took the right bus on the way home. No, that's not it, my story wouldn't be exciting if I just said that, would it? We DID take the right bus home, but SOMEONE neglected to realize that the bus did NOT go to the school...at all. So after the bus had exited the Stadtkreis Koblenz, we decided to get off... and we are far far far away from home. I guess not that far, but I was so tired I just did not want to walk anymore. Needless to say on the holiday yesterday I did NOT work out. And Aunt Flo is going to pop in for a visit soon so... we'll see how that goes. Today I just was lazy when it came to walking and I decided to go grocery shopping and update my blog, answer email, and work on homework...for once, lol. Tomorrow I do plan on doing some kind of workout :-) Maybe the 5 Miler!

Everyone is sick. Liz and Kathrin are both sick so unfortunately the Bonn thing didn't work out this weekend. I am going to propose the trip to Köln for two weekends from now, which will be the weekend before Thanksgiving. I'm going to propose leaving on Friday evening after everyone is done w/ class, taking the train and staying overnight Friday and Saturday in a hostel, sightseeing on Saturday, returning on Sunday. I love Köln (Cologne). I am actually going there this Sunday to the Cologne Worship Night. I'm really excited about it!!!

I cannot believe I have been here almost 5 weeks. That's how long I was gone over the summer. It feels like I have been here forever, yet simultaneously for no time at all. But 1 month is over, 9 more remain. What will happen? I'm excited to find out!

Mach's gut,
Caiti