Student: How do you say "I'm going home"?
Me: Ich gehe nach Hause.
Student: How do you spell "Hause"?
Me: H-A-U-S-E.
Student: Oh, just like the English!
Me: ... *blink* ...
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
I live here, too.
Folwell Hall, home of the German department. My office is here, the classroom where I teach is here, all of my classes are here. This is a crappy picture - you can hardly see the gargoyles.
So, today was the first day of the spring semester here at U. Minn. I got a bit lucky this semester and don't actually have any real classes Tuesday or Thursday, so all I had to do today was teach, and even that was fairly minimal, since it was the first day. I just did a brief mixer so the students could refresh their German and get to know each other a little, then went over the syllabus with them. It was kind of weird, since I knew half of the students very well (they were in my 1001 section last semester) and the other half not at all (although I'd heard about a few of them, from the TAs for their 1001 sections). It looks like it's going to be a good semester - the students were all energetic and friendly right from the start.
In other news, I got my books for the semester ($176.40 for ten books, not too bad), and I bought a rat for Pablo. He was abominably foolish when I put the rat in his cage, though - he got so excited he struck the glass (twice!) before realizing where his dinner was, and by that point he was so scared by bumping his nose on the glass that he just sat there and looked at the poor rat for half an hour before trying anything.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
I live here.
So, this is where I live. It's an old brick building, ivy up the sides, lots of dogs (but surprisingly little noise), hallways smell perpetually like curry (but in a good way). I'm on the third floor.
This is the view from the front door. Yes, the window is cracked open, in Minnesota, in January. That heater between the window and the bookshelf puts out an obscene amount of heat - I think it'll probably melt through my various wires one of these days and burn the whole building down, but until then, I'm just happy that I don't have to worry about being cold. At all. Ever.
The half-down blind is to stop the sun from glaring on the monitor and interfering with my WoW obsession...
If you look left immediately after entering the apartment, you see what some might refer to as a kitchen. It works well enough, but it's about the same size as my closet, and the stove isn't big enough to hold a normal-sized cookie sheet, which makes me exceptionally sad.
The amusing part about the kitchen is that the landlord recently had it remodeled (which is nice in that everything works well but not so nice in other ways, as I will soon disclose). The trouble is that they apparently measured wrong or something, because the place where the fridge is supposed to go (where I currently have a shelf holding foodstuffs) is too narrow for a regular fridge. Well, damn. So for the first several months that I lived here, the fridge sat just on the other side of that wall, right in front of the closet in which I keep all my cleaning stuff, so that I had to move the fridge every time I needed paper towels. This, naturally, was beneficial in that it gave me an excellent excuse to not clean things, but it got old pretty quickly. Mom suggested over Christmas break that I get an extension cord and move the fridge to the other side of the room, so I did, and it's excellent, and I feel remarkably foolish for not having thought of that myself.
Hi, Fridge! (additional greetings go out to Boris the Turtle and a stack of tragically homeless cookbooks)
So there's that side of the living room. The couch is absurdly comfortable, so I overlook its ill-advised Southwesternness. I spend a great deal of time in it watching Lost, BSG, Mad Men, Jericho, etc., instead of writing papers.
And here's the other side, where I spend a great deal of time playing WoW instead of writing papers. Don't look at the cable in the doorway. I've got the hook-y things to put it up around the doorframe, but I'm terrified that I'm going to hammer one through my finger or something, so it's been there since September.
The bedroom, home to Pablo, some books, and a great deal of shoes.
The bedroom as seen from the bed. Disregard the dirty clothes - I'm planning on washing them tomorrow (which is to say, Sunday).
And, just to be thorough, the bedroom as seen from the window! Thrilling, no? Note the full-length mirror on the bathroom door. It's my favorite thing in the world. Behind the door (the one with the doorstop, not the one with the mirror) is a really big closet, but it's full of stuff, so you can't see it.
My tiny little bathroom. I have nothing to say about it, other than squeeeeeeeee I have a bathtub!!111!1 *cough*
Yes.
I do.
There is a window to nowhere on the other side of the bathtub (actually, it's apparently an old dumbwaiter, but it looks like a window). The windowsill holds a lot of unnecessary foofy girly things. Also, the bathtub is not actually that grubby - it's just the lighting. I should've made this picture black and white, just to be artsy. Bathtub windows require art, you know.
And that is where I live. The End.
This is the view from the front door. Yes, the window is cracked open, in Minnesota, in January. That heater between the window and the bookshelf puts out an obscene amount of heat - I think it'll probably melt through my various wires one of these days and burn the whole building down, but until then, I'm just happy that I don't have to worry about being cold. At all. Ever.
The half-down blind is to stop the sun from glaring on the monitor and interfering with my WoW obsession...
If you look left immediately after entering the apartment, you see what some might refer to as a kitchen. It works well enough, but it's about the same size as my closet, and the stove isn't big enough to hold a normal-sized cookie sheet, which makes me exceptionally sad.
The amusing part about the kitchen is that the landlord recently had it remodeled (which is nice in that everything works well but not so nice in other ways, as I will soon disclose). The trouble is that they apparently measured wrong or something, because the place where the fridge is supposed to go (where I currently have a shelf holding foodstuffs) is too narrow for a regular fridge. Well, damn. So for the first several months that I lived here, the fridge sat just on the other side of that wall, right in front of the closet in which I keep all my cleaning stuff, so that I had to move the fridge every time I needed paper towels. This, naturally, was beneficial in that it gave me an excellent excuse to not clean things, but it got old pretty quickly. Mom suggested over Christmas break that I get an extension cord and move the fridge to the other side of the room, so I did, and it's excellent, and I feel remarkably foolish for not having thought of that myself.
Hi, Fridge! (additional greetings go out to Boris the Turtle and a stack of tragically homeless cookbooks)
So there's that side of the living room. The couch is absurdly comfortable, so I overlook its ill-advised Southwesternness. I spend a great deal of time in it watching Lost, BSG, Mad Men, Jericho, etc., instead of writing papers.
And here's the other side, where I spend a great deal of time playing WoW instead of writing papers. Don't look at the cable in the doorway. I've got the hook-y things to put it up around the doorframe, but I'm terrified that I'm going to hammer one through my finger or something, so it's been there since September.
The bedroom, home to Pablo, some books, and a great deal of shoes.
The bedroom as seen from the bed. Disregard the dirty clothes - I'm planning on washing them tomorrow (which is to say, Sunday).
And, just to be thorough, the bedroom as seen from the window! Thrilling, no? Note the full-length mirror on the bathroom door. It's my favorite thing in the world. Behind the door (the one with the doorstop, not the one with the mirror) is a really big closet, but it's full of stuff, so you can't see it.
My tiny little bathroom. I have nothing to say about it, other than squeeeeeeeee I have a bathtub!!111!1 *cough*
Yes.
I do.
There is a window to nowhere on the other side of the bathtub (actually, it's apparently an old dumbwaiter, but it looks like a window). The windowsill holds a lot of unnecessary foofy girly things. Also, the bathtub is not actually that grubby - it's just the lighting. I should've made this picture black and white, just to be artsy. Bathtub windows require art, you know.
And that is where I live. The End.
Holy crap, I have a blog.
I completely forgot about this thing. I think I may start actually updating... First thing: pictures of my new apartment in Minneapolis! After that: updates on school, probably, and possibly amusing incidents from my students. And then: whatever the hell else I feel like, dammit.
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