My ears aren't actually this small, are they?

Also, I have named the camera Klaus.

New camera!

Got a new camera! Canon Powershot A630, got it on Ebay for a bit less than the Amazon asking price, including a 4 gig SD card. Yay for good deals! It looks like this:


See, it's got a fun swivelly LCD screen, so I can see myself while I take pictures of myself making faces. When it's put away, it looks like so:


There was already a picture on the SD card when I got it. I was reluctant to post it for fear he might call someone out to break my legs, but in the interests of full-disclosure (and to punish the Ebay seller, who assured me that the card as well as the camera was brand new), here it is, in its full glory:


I have named him Ted.

Me, looking skeptical about this whole picture-taking business. Or, as Ben assumed, plotting how to use my new device for profit and world domination.


I kind of liked this one. My eye looks like a supernova. Could use an eyebrow wax, though...


All in all, I took pictures until well past Pablo's bedtime. Sky is a pretty color here.


So, this is my shiny new toy, which will accompany me faithfully to and fro. Welcome, mighty ... as-yet unnamed camera thingy!

Gratuitous me!

Because this is my blog and I can, I will now post the results of my attempts to photograph my pigtails.

Hmmm, no.


Also ineffective, but fairly cool-looking, no?


Yay a discernable picture! But alas, no visible hair. :(


Well, there's one of the beasties... Darned bathroom lighting and difficulty of taking photos over my head.


Weeee, furry success, despite my apparent skepticism.

Gratuitous moment over...

Ewoks?

Apparently the forest moon of Endor is right outside Dresden.

The picture is actually the Dresdner Heide (Dresden Heath, I think - a 50 sq. km forest in the north of Dresden), but doesn't it look just like Ewok-land? This dude would look right at home.

Yay! Early culture shock!

So I got an e-mail from that apartment place I mentioned in my last post, and apparently no one's going to be manning the desk at the time I said I'd arrive, so they gave me a passcode to get my own key out of the box. Weird. Also, here's where Dresden is, since I'm rather obsessive at the moment:
And, to further illustrate my complete infatuation, here's a webcam of Dresden's Frauenkirche right now: http://webcam.frauenkirche.de/ Oooh, shiny.

Update on the Germany situation.

So, very exciting news which most of you already know: I've been placed in Dresden! Weee! I've been hoping to be placed there since I applied for the Fulbright, so I'm very very very very *deeeeeep breath* very excited to actually get it. It's a very cool city - one of the larger cities in Germany, and very old, and lots of history. It was bombed out in WWII by the allies, but a lot of the old buildings are still there and a lot more have been rebuilt.  



Pretty, no (click it to get the actual picture with the right proportions)?  The river is the Elbe.
So now I'm preparing everything, and it's really exciting but also scary to see everything coming together finally - dealing with actual dates and places and times.  I've got my plane tickets already to go to Cologne.  The three-day orientation is in Altenberg, 
a little ways from Cologne, in this very cool monastery:




After that, I go to Dresden - have to arrange the train myself and all, which should be entertaining, at least. I think I'm going to stay in the International Gaesthaus, run by the Studentenwerk-Dresden, for the first month. It's fairly inexpensive, includes all utilities and internet and so forth, fully furnished, and includes dishes and bedclothes and whatnot, so it'll make moving there very easy and give me a good base of operations to find a "real" apartment. The decoration appears to me amusingly attempted-modern, but it looks comfy, at least.


It's also only about a kilometer from the BSZ-Ernaehrung, where I'll be working. The school itself is cool. Some German secondary schools combine technical classes and academic classes with an apprenticeship to teach a trade, and this one is focused on cooking stuff, specifically brewing and baking. A picture from one of the baking department's tests:


Looks excellent, nicht wahr?
So, yeah, that's what I'm doing now - setting up apartment rental, and looking into train tickets, and just generally panicking over all that needs to be done.