back in the states: chattanooga

I got a pet today. Actually, I got three, but they are the coolest pets ever. It's an Eco-sphere and I don't have to feed them or clean the tank or anything. It's perfect. Their names are Jason, Chuck, and Jackie. For Jason Bourne, Chuck Norris, and Jackie Chan. They are badass shrimp.

days 70-78: new york city

This is the first blog entry since day 38 that Flo hasn't updated my blog! Hurray for freedom of the internet! My time in NYC has had sketchy internet I "stole" from unprotected wireless networks around other apartments. I'm not sure if it qualifies as stealing because since they didn't think to put a password for their network, it's kind of like asking for people to use it. Anyway, it wasn't that reliable.
I arrived at JFK around midnight on the 2nd/3rd and took the shuttle to the apartment in midtown. It was a pretty nice place, and good thing there was no need to take the subway because of the monsoon they were closed and people were getting crushed. The real reason of the trip was to see the Broadway shows.
Friday: Altar Boyz
Saturday: Wicked and Rent
Monday: Spring Awakening
Wednesday: Legally Blonde, the Musical

Jill won lottery tickets to Wicked, so we were front row for cheap. the reason the tickets are so cheap is because the actors are so close you can get showered in spit. I really wanted to see Rent because the 2 main original characters, Adam Pascal and Anthony Rapp, were reappearing in the show after 11 years. I could only get standing room, but I love Rent, so it was worth it. Spring Awakening is this play written by a German guy over 100 years ago, but because of censorship laws it was forbidden and forgotten until a few years ago when they made it into a Broadway show. Jill and I were in line waiting for student tickets at 4:30 am and we weren't even the first ones there. The play was really depressing it seemed like they tried to smoosh every kind of teen angst from suicide, coming out, pregnancy, losing the v-card, incest rape, and some other things I'm probably forgetting. It was kind of a downer, but good and not quite wake up at 4 am good. Legally Blonde was really good. Jill and I were at the theatre by 5 for that one. The only thing was it was one of the biggest storms NY has seen and there were tornadoes in Brooklyn, so it was raining like a monsoon or something there. That's the only time I thought it was crazy we were out there waiting for musical tickets. I'm not kidding. The rain was falling at a 45 degree angle and the thunder was clapping shaking the windows. crazy.

days 67-70: xi'an

The train to Xi'an was a long one on the way up there. Alex and I pimped out our Chinese-speaking companion to flirt with the conductor to get us some sleepers. And it worked! So the 12 hour ride wasn't so bad going up there. I was glad to get out of sitting on benches. We arrived in Xi'an around 7 in the morning and went straight to the Xiangzimen International Hostel. It looked really nice and the people spoke very good English, but they made us buy an extra bed and wouldn't let us just rent the 3 beds we needed, which was a little weird.

That morning, I brushed my teeth and went out to the tour group going to the Terracotta Warriors. Before the Terracotta Army, we stopped by the Danpo village, a village of ancient Chinese that dates back to 6,000 years ago. Then finally we got to see the Terracotta Army! There were rows and rows of life sized terracotta soldiers, archers, generals and horses lined up in perfect formations. When they built the underground caverns of terracotta people, the emperor killed every artist, construction worker, and anyone else that had anything to do with building the tomb, as well as their friends and families. The total number of people killed making it was over 700,000. I had no idea that happened.

That night, I got a traditional Chinese massage. Not knowing what a Chinese massage was exactly, the guy ended standing on my back and popping every bone he could. At one point he was pulling my hair, and that bit really hurt. At the end it was all good and (kind of) relaxing. The next morning, we slept in and shopped around the Muslim Quarter. The market was fun and filled with all this weird food. My favorite Xi'an food was this pancake filled with hot veggies and other stuff I have no idea what it was, but it tasted good.

The train ride back to Beijing was probably the worst train ride I will ever have. We couldn't get sleepers this time so I was already expecting a 12 hour train ride on a bench where they don't turn off the music or lights all night. The people also spit on the floor and kids just squat and take a shit there on the floor. That's really gross even not in an enclosed space. That night it was raining and the tracks were flooded so we spent a few hours waiting for the rain to be siphoned off the tracks, which in total took 9 hours. I couldn't wait to get off that train.

But overall, Xi'an was good. :)

days 68-69: xi'an

I ate dog, and it was delicious.

days 62-67: beijing

This was the last week of teaching and the end of Summer Camp. Wednesday was the final competition and my group won 3rd place (out of 3500!!!) for singing "Go West". I'm so glad I will never have to hear that song again. The Final Competition and Closing Ceremonies were fun. When the students were walking in, the teachers were on the stage dancing the Macarena and electric slide. It wasn't until dancing in front of everyone that I found out how long the Macarena actually is. It feels like 10 minutes when you're doing the same dance over and over ..go west Then after the opening public humiliation, we sat through 24 acts of a solo, small group, and chorus of all 8 provinces. Then at the end, we got on stage and sang a song to the tune of "Let It Be" but instead sang "In Beijing":

I tried to learn to speak some Chinese
And the only thing that I can speak
Tsinghua Daxsue
And that took three weeks
In Beijing, in Beijing, in Beijing, in Beijing
Wo-ai Tsinghua Daxsue - In Beijing
All 10.000 people eating in the canteen they do agree
Nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine people use those green plastic chopsticks
Better than me
In Beijing, in Beijing, in Beijing, in Beijing
Eating pizza with my bare hands at Qing Qing
Wu Lun Ge Chang Bi Sai
Hshi Yan Jiang Bi Sai are so amazing
Qing Hua Xue Sheng De Chuang Ye
Zhen Niu B~

The last part made the crowd go crazy because "Zhen Niu B" means fucking amazing and something about the students at summer camp.

Then yesterday, we had our class party. The party committee bought the cake, chips, some Pepsi and a case of beer. I taught them how to shotgun beers. That entertained them more than anything else I've done for them. Not only that, but only a few people were drinking the beer but as soon as shotgunning caught on, we finished the case in about 10 minutes. The only thing is that my Chinese students hardly drink and all the sudden they were downing entire cans in a minute. Then I went out for pizza with 15 drunk Chinese boys. Oh, and it was 10 in the morning.

After all that fun, we had the teachers banquet...not too exciting. Everyone got dressed up and took pictures and ate a really good meal. We went out to some Huo Hua, the nightlife district of Beijing before going to another R&B club Mix and across the street was electric/trans club Vics.

days 56-62: beijing

To stop reading Harry Potter, I'm writing another entry. This week has been filled with disgusting foods. None of these I intentionally ate, but only after I gulped it down did I know what it was. Earlier this week, I went out to dinner with some teachers and a Tsinghua volunteer. The Tsinghua volunteer took us out to an authentic restaurant outside campus where they serve grilled kebabs and hot pot. Hot pot is just a pot of hot oil and spices and meat on skewers that you just pull out and eat. The first meat I tried tasted exactly like a fatty skin, but I just ate it like anything else. The second meat was kind of chewy and I couldn't really chew it properly. I asked the Tsinghua volunteer what it was and he told me to just swallow it, so I did. And he told me the first was the lining of a sheep's stomach and the second was the intestines of a pig.
Gross. Then, last night, I went to a Mongolian restaurant with a Mongolian and ate this black stuff. I asked him what it was and why it was black and it was sausage made from blood. I can't really decide which one is more disgusting.
This makes a good story, and now I feel warmed up for trying dog meat later.

I'm not sure what I would do without the help of the Tsinghua volunteers and my students. My Tsinghua volunteer got me 80 more hours of internet time and is making copies of my Monday's lesson. I took one of my students with me on Friday to help get a train ticket to Xi'an. My Lonely Planet says to get the hard sleeper for 300 RMB (~$40US) and if that's not available, pay the extra 200RMB (~$26US) for the first class sleeper. Unfortunately, the train was sold out of hard sleepers, soft sleepers, and soft seats, leaving me to ride on an 14 hour overnight train ride on a crowded hard bench. This should be a good story and it was cheap. I'll be able to travel to and back from Xi'an for the amount I was willing to spend on one ticket.
It rained the other day and the sky was blue! About every week, it rains and cools down the city. My favorite part of the rain is that the smog seems to go away for a day and you can actually see the sky and clouds. Usually in Beijing, the city is so polluted it's constantly hazy and gray, even when there are no clouds. This is the view from my room:

Classes this and last week were good. The highlight was on Friday we played "Cannibal Island." Each person had an occupation associated with their numbers. Like ones were doctors, twos were lawyers, threes were entertainers, fours hunters, fives construction workers, you get the point. They were split up into their own islands and then the big decision came: who will you eat first? Once they fought and argued for a while, they had to send someone up to the "dinner table" at the front. Then the meals had to first explain to the class why they were chosen to be eaten and then second, they had to argue between themselves who from the dinner table would be eaten first. Sadly, my two favorite students were eaten first in both situations :( This is Albert explaining why we shouldn't eat him first: (from left to right: Evan, Tony, Belinda (behind Tony),Mickey, Albert, Tomas)

Another thing about my class is we won our singing competition! We had to compete against 7 other teams in our province, and since we won first place there, we're going to nationals to compete in front of the entire 3,500 person camp! Our 50-person chorus is singing "Go West" by the Pet Shop Boys. Before the competition, I was looking forward to never hearing that song again, but since we won, we will practice every day until the final competition Wednesday. I wikipedia'ed "Go West" and actually it's about the gay movement in the United States moving west to San Fransisco and the spread of AIDS. And now my class is singing it, but I think they think it means go west to the USA...from the east...very literal. I'm including names because I worked very hard to learn them (from left to right, back row: Enya, Amily, Belinda, Tony, Faye, Julie; front: Connie, Candy, Misha)
(front: Jerry, Albert, Ivan, Elephant).
It's the final week of teaching and I finally got their names.

Today I went to the Temple of Heaven. If I knew more about temples, I'm sure it would be a lot more impressive and have more of an impact on me, but I was hot and tired and hungry so our group left early to eat and go shopping at the Pearl Market. By the way, let me know if you want any pearls. They are really cheap here. Like $25US for real pearls. I got Flo a shirt in exchange from the ones I stole from him. It's hilarious. He'll never wear it because of all the pandas on it, but I thought it was funny. He is going to post this now and Flo still hasn't seen the shirt :) muhahahahaha

days 47-56: beijing

I've finished my first week of teaching and have learned it's a lot harder than it looks. I feel like I have homework every night thinking of something to teach the next day. Tomorrow's lesson is an in-depth look at slang...like, whatever, so, stuff, and idioms are in the lecture tomorrow. Then I'm looking forward to Tuesday's lesson: speed dating! This other teacher with mostly girl art students is combining classes with my class of mostly boy engineers and they're going to speed date in English followed by a lesson of dating culture in America. We had our singing competition Friday and the small groups sang songs from the Backstreet Boys, Country Roads, and some other random pop songs I've never heard of. I'll upload my movies of it to YouTube later.

This weekend was kind of crazy. Thursday, some of my students and volunteers took me out to this beer garden where you could get "traditional German deer" in different flavors. My favorite was a Wheat Juice flavor that was green. Friday, I went out to celebrate the end of the week with some people and we got American pizza from this place down the street. The celebrating was fun until we left. It started pouring rain as soon as we got on our bikes and was just far enough away to not make it back soaked. And I almost got hit by a car.

Saturday was an early start. The buses left for the Great Wall at 8 and it took about 1.5 hours to get there. I had no idea how hard it is to climb the Great Wall. Not only do you have to hike up this hill to get to the thing, but once you're on it, it's so freaking steep!!! And they aren't kidding when they call it the Great Wall. It's really long. They call it the '10,000 Li Wall' here (one Li = 500 m). Even though it is so long, not all parts are accessible to tourists. My favorite part of the trip was stepping over the barricade where you're supposed to stop and walking on the closed part of the wall. It was overgrown with all these plants and there must have been a bee hive somewhere close by because there were bees everywhere and I'm still amazed I wasn't stung at all. I walked down maybe 300 m down the wall until I got to this really old tower, then walked back to the touristy part.

We got back to Tsinghua around 3 and I had a short nap before the Great Wall Beach Party. The party was a rave where the great wall meets the ocean. It didn't get off to a good start. The buses didn't leave the station until an hour after they were supposed to and instead of the 3 hour ride they advertised, it took 6 hours to get there because the driver got lost. I was in a pretty bad mood when I got there around 1:30 because of the long ride and puking on the bus, but vodka and red bull changed that. I met this German girl and we talked in English/Deutsch but mostly English, but she was from around Kassel and had heard of Edertal and Ulm. And then I found 20RMB (US$1 = 7.5RMB). Seriously. I found it in the sand. The Great Wall Beach Party was fun once I got there, but it doesn't compare to the Full Moon Party in Thailand. I didn't really want to go to the Great Wall party when I got on the bus, but I thought maybe I should start a tradition to hit up a rave every few international landmarks. The music was good, the food was expensive, I really liked that the bartenders would let you pour your own drinks, but the trip there took way too long from Beijing. This morning, everyone looked like they were up all night partying and I went with another girl from Tsinghua to eat an overpriced American breakfast. Now I have about 10 more hours to recover before week 2 of teaching starts again.

days 46-47: beijing

Today was my first day of teaching and I think it went pretty well. This morning was the opening ceremony that explained the outline of the camp and showed the creativity of previous years students. My ipod alarm didn't go off and thank you, Flo for letting me use your alarm clock because it saved me and gave me 15 minutes to run out the door with everything. I rushed to the building across campus with 5 minutes to spare only to find out that the class started 30 minutes after I thought...so I was 35 minutes early...Anyway, the opening ceremonies were kind of boring with cheesy inspirational music and definitely not worth being rushed that much, but I had to be there. My two classes afterwards were much better. We played a good warm up/get to know you snowball fight game and introduced myself and volunteers. One activity I did was each of 5 groups had to write any questions for me or the volunteers and every one wanted to know about our boyfriends. Like, how many we had, what is our ideal boyfriend, do we like Chinese boys, and my favorite, do you share a piece of love with your current BF? My other favorite answer was this one guy's favorite color. He said something like "#345674 (RGB)" when everyone else put down "blue" or "white". I hope tomorrow runs as smoothly as today. As far as first days go, today wasn't so bad.

This afternoon wasn't as smooth. An other teacher and I tried to coordinate the singing competition, but that will be better tomorrow. I really hope it's better tomorrow.

days 39 - 46: beijing

It has been quite a while since my last entry. My last days in Ulm were wonderful. My blog is blocked here and I can't remember the last entry I wrote, but I think it was the pizza. The day before I left, Flo and I went to the park and played a giant game of chess and then went to read under a tree. It was perfect weather and a good way to end my time in Ulm. That night, Flo, Stefan, Jonas and I went out to eat at a German steakhouse and got ice cream after. That Monday was kind of sad and I packed and got the last of my things together before going to the Frankfurt Airport. I said bye to Stefan and Flo at the airport and made my way to Dubai.

The trip to Dubai was uneventful, which I like on trips on airplanes. I got the entire row for myself and was pleasantly surprised with Emirates Airlines. My favorite part was by far the little stickers that went on the top of your seat that read "Wake Me Up For Meals" and "Do Not Disturb." The Dubai airport was very crowded and chaotic. All the women wore those clothes that covered their heads and faces and there were souvenir camels all over the place. On the plane to Beijing, I flew over the Himalayas and crossed a huge desert in China. I arrived in China and found a guy with a sign that read "Tsinghua University" and met the other two teachers on my flight. We came back to the University and after a long process of checking in, I finally went to bed. The next few days were full of going to seminars about teaching English as a second language and meetings with my province, and meeting with the other teachers and volunteers.

I bought a bike and named it Steve Irwin. The name has nothing to do with Steve Irwin, but it was the cheapest one I could find and another girl has a bike named "The Stingray" and we race. Unfortunately, and like in real life, The Stingray won. There's not much to write about Tienanmen Square except right after I bought a kite from a vendor, he was chased by the police and he got away. Going out here is kind of a blur. There are lots of clubs that are more than happy to welcome foreign tourists and give them free entry and drinks. As a foreign tourist, I like that a lot. A few nights ago, I went out to karaoke (or KTV as they call it here). That was like a really nice club and you sing in a private room instead of in a bar where everyone can laugh at you. Yesterday, I went to the Forbidden city with three other people in my group. My favorite part was the most random situation so far. Some lady handed me her child and I thought I was about to be mugged when she pulled out her camera and started taking pictures. Then a crowd formed and other people got into the picture and the people I was with came over and the crowd got even bigger. I took a picture of people taking pictures of us. Very random but funny. I guess that's my 15 seconds of fame. My favorite part of this picture is the guy in orange that's smiling for my picture.

We walked along the hutongs (narrow alleyways), the homes of 1/4 of the city. They're the poorest and oldest houses in Beijing. Last night, I had some Peking Duck. I really liked it. The skin kind of melts in your mouth. Our duck, Frodrick, was the 30,000 something duck cooked in that restaurant. You can even go out back and see the duck pin and choose the duck you want for dinner. If this is how restaurants work in Beijing, I can't wait to try dog. Only kidding...kind of. It's getting late and I have my first day of classes tomorrow!

-As dictated to Flo 8/7/07

days 37-38: ulm

Yesterday, I fed the German belly and today I'm trying to get over the events of last night. Flo, Stefan, Basti and Sarah went out to a pizza restaurant outside of Ulm to eat the biggest pizza I have ever eaten by myself. The waiter had an Italian accent, but when he spoke German, I had no idea. It all sounds the same when you can't really speak the language. Actually, I didn't eat it by myself, because I had to take home about 3/4 of it and I hope Flo and Stefan help me finish it. I brought my camera, but forgot my memory card, so I could only take 4 photos stored on my internal memory on my camera. But maybe you can see just how big these pizzas are:

days 34-37: ulm

The countdown for leaving Ulm has begun :( but the countdown to China has started. I finished my second lecture this week about the Olympics. I think I'm going to split the class into 5 Greek states and we're going to hold our own classroom Olympic events like hum identifying, Pictionary, and random fun stuff. And I ironed out my activity of playing Mafia one day too. So now I just need to finish my last lecture, but I have about 3 weeks to finish that. The topic has to be a controversial issue, but not too controversial because it needs to be censored enough for a Chinese classroom. Flo had the idea of presenting something about the Great Firewall of China. I just found a pretty cool website to test if domains are accessible in China. So now the plan is leave Ulm on Monday night, arrive in Dubai for a few hours before hopping on another plane to Beijing and arrive in China very early Wednesday morning.
The other night, Flo, Jonas and I went to the Mexican restaurant for drinks next door to Flo's apartment. It was a change from drinking wine every night to drinking wine and cocktails.

Flo and I just got back from mini-golfing in the park. The game looked pretty good for me at half time, I had a hole-in-one and Flo had a 7...but that all changed in the 2nd half. A few sneaky 7's and I lost the lead. Flo got a hole-in-one and I kept getting 7 after 7 after 7. But the last hole, was a hole-in-one again and I lost by 8 points. Now I owe Flo an ice cream and a beer.

this is how we mini-golf.

days 30-34: ulm

FRIDAY...let's see. 10 years after not eating beef, I couldn't stand it any longer and went to McDonalds to reunite with cows. I had a cheeseburger Happy Meal and Stefan ate a Los Wochos Bacon Jalapeño Burger. It was kind of dissapointing that the cheeseburger happy meal didn't really taste like anything.
Saturday, Flo and I took an early train to Friedrichafen, home of Germany's largest lake, the Bodensee. Then we took a 2 hour ferry to the island where we hung out for the day. We had lunch around the Schloss, and I was stuffed from a bratwurst und pommes and 1/2 liter of Radler, so we counted nipples on art and explored the island. The ferry ride back was relaxing and looked like a nice evening. For dinner, we went to an Italian restaurant in Friedrichafen, then got cocktails at the Beach Club! Too many later, we took the midnight train back to Ulm.

Sunday, we made salmon with spinach and linguine, except the linguine was black and black pasta doesn't look too good. I mean, it still tastes the same, but I think it looked like witch hair. But the salmon/pasta was still very tasty. We had the leftover black pasta again last night, and half of it came out of the pan and mixed well with the spaghetti sauce, but the other half stuck to the pan and Flo dug it out to make a nice black pasta cake. yum. actually, I couldn't eat it, but it looked unlike any pasta I've seen before. I'm just writing this now because I just cleaned the pan and it was really hard to scrape the pan and I had lots of time to reminisce about the black linguine.

days 21-30: ulm

I keep starting to update, but something else is always going on, so I stop in the middle. Seriously, I started this post on Wednesday and now it's Friday. But last time I stopped blogging it was to finish the last 2 episodes of Heroes, and that was definitely worth it. So it's week 4 in Germany... Here's an update from the past week: Stefan got his Thinkpad finally on Tuesday. Here's a picture commemorating the event.
Last Thursday was a uni party with cheap drinks and it was all good until it started to rain and there was no way I could return my cup and get the 2 euro refund, so now Flo and Stefan have a new glass for the kitchen. The next morning, we started the 4 hour drive to Edertal. On the way there, we stopped by McDonalds. German McDonalds crack me up just because the promotion for Tex-Mex is called "Los Wochos". We arrived in the village of Bringhausen around 3, met the fam, dropped off our stuff and headed back out to the dentist and meet Stefan for coffee because we haven't seen him in a few hours. Saturday was a packed day. First, we drove up to the man-made lake at the top of a hill that overlooked the villages. It looked like it was going to rain, so we decided to skip the dam for now and go visit the castle. The Schloss Waldeck was not only a castle, but also a crime and punishment museum! All for the kinder/student price! After the tour, we got coffee at the castle. Actually, Flo got coffee and I got hot chocolate. [this is new] Flo just reminded me about the weird German hot chocolates here. They always ask you if you want cream or milk in the chocolate. I always say "milch, bitte" but they bring me a bowl of cream beside the hot chocolate anyway. I have no idea what's going wrong because even native German speakers are befuddled also...i'm giggling about writing the word "befuddled"...anyway, the hot chocolate at Schloss Waldeck was probably the best hot chocolate I've had in a really long time. If you see in the picture, they make a little pot of hot chocolate and bring you your own cup, so instead of the standard one cup of chocolate, you get about one and a half. And who doesn't like 1.5 cups of hot chocolate?
After coffee/hot chocolate, Flo started talking about sledding in the summer and I was just confused, so we took a spontaneous 5km drive to the sledding place. It wasn't until I was being pulled up the hill I got what was going on. And there were all these signs in German that looked important...like warning signs or how to operate the sled written in big red German words but it was all good and I didn't die. Sledding in summer was one of my favorite things we did that day. You were pulled up this hill on an automated thing and once you were at the top you could pull the lever forward to go faster or pull it back to slow down and it was kind of like sledding down a slide on a sled with wheels. It reminded me kind of bobsledding. By the time we finished that adventure, we went to the dam that was bombed by the British in World War II and had a waffle lunch at a restaurant there. The waffles came with ice cream and heaps of cherries. I couldn't eat all the cherries. By then, it was in the middle of the afternoon, so we went back to the house and hung out until we went out to dinner at the restaurant where Flo's brother works as a chef. I have no idea how I finished my plate, but there was so much fish, bruchetta and salad. After dinner, we went to Dorfest 2007! There, I met some German readers of this blog, so shout out to them! There, you can buy 10 beers on a handy carrier and you get the 11th for free. I think this was as close as I'll get to a German beerfest, but I kind of get the point. Even better, there was a guy dressed in lederhosen drinking beer from one of those 11-beer carriers. Sunday, we had a huge brunch late morning and I ate 2 croissants just so I could eat more homemade strawberry jam. Then we drove through the woods to attend Flo's 3-year-old nephew's birthday party. I still can't speak German, but I think I improved a bit last weekend. This week was pretty good...we went to Ikea yesterday, and it's always a good time at Ikea. The unlimited drinks is what makes half the fun. Then we spent a while at an electronic store, but we didn't find a radio, so we walked home and bought some wine and polished them off last night. Good times in Germany.

days 17-21: ulm

** I just made 15 cents returning a bottle! recycling is fun and profitable! It's been exactly 3 weeks since my arrival in Ulm. I missed the market this morning because I'm at uni with Flo...But it's not that bad, we got to walk past and see all the old ladies with their baskets walking around the square, so at least the market wasn't forgotten completely. Not much has happened since the last update, except that I've been working on the midi and Tsinghua projects. During Flo's lecture today, I came up with my first lecture for China. The week is themed Music & Culture and my lecture is about how airplanes are bad for rock & roll.
So far, this is my list of rock artists killed in plane crashes:

• Buddy Holly
• Richie Valens
• The Big Bopper
• Otis Redding
• The Bar Kays
• Jim Croce
• Lynyrd Skynard
• Randy Rhodes
• Ricky Nelson
• John Denver
• Aaliyah

The next week's lecture is supposed to be about the Olympics because Beijing is hosting in 2008 and I want to talk about Trampolining, but I'm having trouble coming up with an entire lecture that can include my favorite Olympic sport. My last week's lecture is supposed to be about a hot topic, yet appropriate for a lecture, so i guess legalization of marijuana is out of the question. Maybe a lecture about the health benefits of chocolate will be good. Just because I can bring chocolate for the class because everyone likes food. The only thing is chocolate isn't that controversial.

days 8-17: ulm

So it's been a while since the last update. Not too much is new. We watched season 1 of Man vs. Wild. Now I question all of my survival techniques and ask myself, "would Bear do this?". So anyway, last week, Jonas, Stefan, Flo and I went out for cocktails first at the movie theatre, but that was too crowded, but the bar across the street looked ok, so we settled there. I really liked it and two cocktails and I was good for the night. But just so you know, Jonas had the same amount as me, and so pound for pound (or kilo for kilo, whatever), I can hold my alcohol pretty well compared to a full-grown German boy. The picture to the left proves my point. There, Jonas is drinking a candle, not his drink.
The next morning, I didn't feel too good and unfortunately that feeling lasted the rest of the week. The next night, it was Lasagna Cook-Off 2007! The question if homemade lasagna or box lasagna is better was tested. Team Us (Jonas and me) vs. Team Them (Flo and Stefan). Team Us made box lasagna and Team Them spent an extra few hours in the kitchen making lasagna from scratch. Ours was just as good. But I think everyone was starving and the box lasagna was the first one we ate. I think we should have a rematch, but this time with a different dish...maybe ravioli or something...



Flo and I had a nice trip [changed from "outing"... Flo says this is means gay in German]. We borrowed Stefan's car and drove about 30-45 minutes to Blautopf, a spring that's...blue. It was a public holiday in Baden-Württemberg so it was filled with lots of visitors. It was nice and warm so Flo got some strawberry cake and I got chocolate ice cream. Now I'm just trying to fill in enough to get to this line. YES! finally! Now I can start to write about the castle!




Burg Helfenstein is the ruin of a castle built around 1100. To get to the castle, we had to walk through the woods and across a small bridge to get to the ruin. Definitely not a Neuschwanstein type castle, but kind of better because it was actually a working castle and walking there wasn't an hour long strenuous hike up a mountain. After walking up the tower and around the fort, Flo got a Radler and bratwurst and I had a Sprite-type of drink to settle the stomach from too much castle exitement.

This is the most German I've ever seen Flo:

days 7-8: ulm

So right now, I'm amazed at the new Harry Potter theme park, The World of Harry Potter. Not quite sure what to think of this, but I'll be going on a road trip to Orlando to visit Harry at Universal Studios in 2009.
Today is post-Peach Cake day. Yesterday, Jonas filled me in on the history of Peach Cake Day. And even though Abraham Lincoln started Peach Cake Day, there is no Wikipedia article about it and that will change soon whenever Jonas tells me the complete history of Peach Cake Day. Our cake wasn't just Peach, but we made Jonas & Ashleigh's Choco-Peach Surprise Cake. Since the cake is gone and eaten, the surprise was little chunks of butter we couldn't mix into the batter.

I ate an incredible amount of peaches yesterday. Like 9-10 full peaches. You know the feeling when you eat an entire pineapple and your mouth feels like it's being eaten away by the acid? It felt kind of like that only with a peach flavor.

days 3-7: ulm

First, Happy Peach Cake Day! or Froehlichen Pfirsichkuchentag!



This morning I went to the market in the square in front of the munster. Every Saturday and Wednesday morning from around 6 until 2, there is row after row of vendors selling anything you could want as long as it is fruit, veggies, cheese, meat, fish, flowers or honey. I bought some strawberries (Erdbeeren) and peaches (Pfirsichen). And it's cheap! 1kg of strawberries was 3 Euro (~$4.00) and 1.8kg of peaches was only 1 Euro (~$1.30). I didn't mean to buy 1.8kg of peaches, but I was talking to the vendor in really bad German and he was responding in really bad English and threw in an extra .8kg. Maybe this is why I like the market. hmmm...

Shoutout to Jonas! For teaching me about the origins of Peach Cake Day and Abraham Lincoln. Because of Peach Cake Day, we're going to make a Peach Cake. Neither of us have made a cake without mix before, so the next blog entry should be interesting.

days 1-3: ulm

<-- Ulm, Germany in March 2007. I'll take another picture to show how much greener it is now. But you get the idea what it looks like . This is day 2 in Ulm, Germany. I'm not sure how this happened, but somehow blogger.com turned German. Flo and Jonas started a top 25 movies list and somehow Stefan, Flo's roommate and I decided to make a Top 25 things Ashleigh and Stefan have in common, so here it is:

Top 25 (not really 25, but it will be soon) Things Stefan and Ashleigh Have in Common:
1. We currently live with Flo
2. We like chocolate
3. We like Polo Ralph Lauren
4. We don't like the taste of beer
5. We're friends with Flo
6. We can't speak Klingon
7. We're both computer nerds
8. We like tacos
9. perfect cleaning up team, I prefer to dry while Stefan likes washing dishes
10. We cannot read Chinese
11. We work with Marc Hermann
12. We are both on Facebook
13. We do not like extreme cold temperature
14. Next week, we both will have Thinkpads
15. We both like ice cream, even when it's cold outside
16. We both have blogs
17. We like to chat to each other on Skype when sitting metres away
18. We like Grey's Anatomy


there seemed like more on this list when we made it up last night.

...I should rename the list the Top 18 things Stefan and Ashleigh have in common...
So this whole journey started in Hotlanta on 22 May. The flight was only 7.5 hours and the movies weren't too bad. The most random movie would have to be Cinderella, but I liked watching it. It was like a preview for the Neuschwanstein Castle. I didn't have that much to make the connection so there was no time to look for Dutch wooden shoes in the gift shops or anything. The next flight was only an hour from Amsterdam to Frankfurt. In Frankfurt I met Flo and Stefan and Stefan drove the 3 hour drive from Frankfurt to Ulm. By far the coolest thing I saw in a village on the way over was a horse in someone's side yard and a wind mill not too far away. We got back and supposedly watched Family Guy, but I only remember a few minutes of it before I fell asleep around 9 pm German time/3pm Eastern Standard time.
The next morning, I went to a lecture with Flo, and tried to stay awake by reviewing my German notes and reading a book, but it's hard enough to stay awake if the lecture is in English, and this was in German, so I kept nodding off and jerking back awake when my head fell forward. After the lecture about Bluetooth things, we met Flo's friends at the Mensa, the cafeteria at uni. We met Jonas later and hung out at his apartment and went to a beer garden then to another beer garden later that night.
Today was good. Flo went to uni and I slept in and went around Ulm alone. First, I went to a chemist to get some kind of antihistamine tablets because the pollen or something in the air was bothering my allergies, so luckily one chemist spoke English and hooked me up. Then, I started the multiple hour journey to find a USA-Europe Adapter. For the longest time, I could only find Europe to USA adapters, but at some travel store near the Munster had an all-converter set for any plug to adapt for any country, which is good so I can use it in China too next month. Then I took the scenic way back to the apartment and eventually found my way back and couldn't figure out how the key worked. Good thing Flo was home at the time :)

So that's about all that's happened so far. Not too bad for 2 days.

so this a post

hi, Ryan. This post goes out to you. so now you have another blog to read. the posts can only get better now.