"Guinea pig" in German is "Meerschweinchen."

So there's this woman who is always at my tram stop at about the same time as I am, and she has the cutest little puppy. It's very tiny and fuzzy and black and white and adorable, and every time I want to go say "Awww! Look at the cute little puppy! Can I pet it?"

But I don't know how. Welpe sounds way too clinical. "Junger Hund" sounds like "My, what a fine strapping young hound you have there, my man!" And I just made up "Huendchen," so I don't know if it's even a real word. So. Maybe I'll ask my brewers tomorrow if they can help me. Although I don't know if I have my brewers tomorrow...hmm.

Next week I start teaching full classes by myself. Eek. Clemens and Enrico helped me make a decent plan today, so I think it'll be okay, but still, I'm petrified. I had some classes with new people today - bakery shop assistants. Bunch of giggly 17-22-year-old girls. They were extremely talkative, which is equal parts good and bad. On the up side, it means they asked lots of questions, which means no awkward silences, but on the down side...for the love of god, would you shut up for four seconds so I can hear this person's question? Honestly! The teacher I was working with (Frau Kohs) got really fed up and talked to their primary teacher about that. But mostly they were nice.

So, that's essentially it. We talked a bit (E, C, and I) about what we're going to do with the English Club. I'd like to see it kind of like Stammtisch at Lyco - just casual conversation in a pub or something. I bet it'd get a better turnout that way, too. As-is it's held in a classroom, which doesn't really encourage conversation, oder?

A couple of students voluntarily came to me while I was sitting in the office to see if I'd help them with their homework (which I did). Makes me happy - means I'm not completely scary and terrifying. :P

So, that's it now. Outside of school, I've been quite lazy. Took a six-hour nap yesterday... But I needed it. I think I'm going to take another (shorter!) nap now.

I beat the doener man at his own game.

Pictures from my five-hour bike ride yesterday.

So, I'm really sore from my long bike ride yesterday, with the result that I stayed home most of the day. However, around 2 or so I decided that I needed some more English-language books, so I ventured out to find Internationale Buecher, which apparently has a great selection of books in English (it's true!). Things were fairly uneventful there. I picked up four Jane Austen books at 3,10 each. Jane Austen is basically emotional comfort food - witty romances that generally turn out well. I also got a Stephen King book, and Atlas Shrugged, and Die unendliche Geschichte (just because I've been looking for that and finally found it).

So, then I left and had a complete emotional breakdown in the middle of Altmarkt. There was some street musician playing an acoustic guitar and singing "Hey, You've Got to Hide Your Love Away," and all I could think about was listening to Charlie play that ages ago, and I was so homesick, and almost sat down crying in the middle of the square. So that was kind of depressing. By the way, Charlie, you should join Facebook so I can recruit you to my pirate crew. :P

So, I made my way blurrily back to the tram stop, and made myself feel better by completely besting the doener guy. By "besting," of course, I mean "communicating with." See, I stop at the Prager Strasse doener stand a couple times a week probably, and every time I think to myself, "Dammit, self! Why don't I know how to say 'onions' so I can tell him I don't want any?" I'm too proud to say "Uhhh, das Stuff zwischen die rote Sosse und die Rotkraut." So anyway, I finally remembered to look it up, and was finally able to ask for "keine Zwiebeln" and to have it to go ("mitnehmen") without any trouble. So I'm proud of myself.

On the way back, I finally joined the orderly German hordes. See, at the intersections, you're supposed to wait for the walk signal to walk, just like in America. The only difference is that in Germany people actually do wait. If you go while it's still red, even if there are clearly no cars for miles, they'll all glare at you like you've just shot their firstborn. It's even worse if you do that when there are little kids there, because they hate people setting a bad example for kids.

So anyway, today I was standing there with a group of others waiting for the light to turn green, and these touristy types starting crossing while it was still red, and I stood on the curb and looked disapproving with the rest of the Dresdners. Self-righteous disapproval feels awesome, people! I'm such a conformist...

A story, for your reading pleasure.

So, my apartment is furnished to cook in, but not well furnished. I have two tiny burners, no oven, one tiny frying pan, one tiny pot, a miniscule fridge, and no freezer. This means that I can't have any major cooking endeavors. For that reason, I picked up some one-pan meals last time I was at Rewe - some pasta things that you just mix with water and heat, etc. So today I tried one: Penne mit Broccoli und Fruehlingskraeuten. I think Fruehlingskraeuten are brussels sprouts, but I'm not sure. *checks* Meh, can't find it. Who knows?

Anyway, I got out a pan, put the water in it, mixed in the pasta and sauce mix, put it on a burner. Then looked at the back of the package. Realized I didn't know any of the words. So I scrambled to the computer to translate (argh, WHY did I forget my favorite D/E dictionary in Kalamazoo?), and lo... "Scheiss! I should be stirring constantly!" Run out to kitchen, start to stir, look at the next line of text... Dammit. Run to computer. Oh no! It's not supposed to boil! Run back to kitchen. Then I remembered that my stupid burners have precisely two temperatures: "#$(@*$%, why aren't you hot yet?!" and "Arrrrrgh it's boiling over!" There's nothing in the middle.

So. It's done now, after much excitement. It tastes pretty good, and it's warm, which is the most important thing. Man cannot live on Nutella alone, as they say... But let this be a lesson: if you're ever cooking in a foreign country, translate the instructions before you start it.

Bring on the bread.

So today one of my brewing students firmly informed me that "Yeast is a living orgasm." I just about fell off my chair laughing. Fortunately, Enrico took care of correcting his pronunciation, so I didn't have to go into explaining to this group of 25-year-old men what that means in English.

In other news, I'm going on a field trip tomorrow! It's to some kind of lab, not sure what, but I arranged it (in German!) with the lady leading it, so I get to go. Then I'm off the hook for classes until Monday. I'm trying to locate a new apartment - this one is awesome, but it's expensive, so I need to find something else soonish. But it's a lot less stressful since I actually live in the same city and all, and have a bunch of teachers who want to help me.

I think that's about all the news for today. I'm going to go explore the Zwinger and the Neustadt over the weekend, I think, so there should be new pictures and thrilling tales of adventure on the high seas...er...in eastern Germany soon.

P.S. - these crazy Sachsens keep saying "nu" for yes. This sounds almost exactly like the way they sometimes say "nay" for no. That is incredibly frustrating. At least I know now - Enrico just told me yesterday what "nu" means. Until then, I'd been reading it as "no."

O Peanut Butter, at last I have found thee!

I've been searching for peanut butter since I got here. It's apparently an American thing, and it's really hard to find. Nutella is great (fantastic, incredible, completely orgasmic), but it isn't a peanut butter replacement. So today I stopped at Rewe on the way home from school to pick up a few things and checked the jelly aisle on a hunch, and lo! There it was! Tiny little jars of peanut butter. Big ol' American flag on them, so everyone knows your dirty secret when you check out, of course, but still. Peanut butter! I am saved.

Other than that, it's been uneventful here. I was roused out of bed (reading, not sleeping) a couple of nights ago by some kind of rollerblade parade. It was around 10:30 pm, and I heard this techno music coming out of nowhere, so I went over to the window and looked out and there were hundreds of rollerbladers streaming by. The organizers (I assume that's what they were) were on bikes and had lights and speakers for the music. The ones bringing up the rear were pushing little kids on skates and wheelchairs so they could partake too. It was kind of cool. Terrible picture, because it was dark.

I've got some lovely bread and cheese. Ordering the meat was a bit of an adventure - I had no idea what anything in the case tasted like, so I just ordered a random name: "Bierschincken." It turned out to be delicious - kind of like uebersmokey baloney. It's best eaten German-style. You take a slice of bread (thinner than you'd think), put some cheese on top (brie works beautifully), and stick a couple slices of meat on it. Open-faced sammich.

Here is the tram that takes me halfway to school. Here is Dresden on a rainy day. Here is a man on stilts wearing techno-medieval garb and handing out flyers, and also (in the white hoodie) the third black person I've seen since coming to this country.

I think that's all for now. May post later. Ta-ta.

I present...

...for your viewing pleasure, the Simpsons!

So I was out and about a little bit today, and I stopped and got a doener for lunch (with cold Mineralwasser - I'm developing a taste for the stuff, Mom!). It was very amusing - the guys at the stand spoke heavily Turkish-accented German, and I speak heavily-English accented German. We did a lot of pointing. Anyway, I was telling Ilya this, and he showed me this clip, and it is perfect, so if you have reasonable internet, watch it.

Can we say "taxidermy," class?

Well, first, here are some lovely pictures of my first foray into Dresden proper a day or two ago. There's really not much to tell about that - it was pretty, and lovely, and I enjoyed it immensely.

As far as actual events go, I've made some pretty good accomplishments in the past few days. For one thing, I'm legally allowed to live here now, at least until June 30 2008. That was an amusing adventure... I'm very glad Clemens was there to do the complicated legal talking, or I'd be expelled from the country or something. The form was hilarious. I had to affirm that I wasn't a leading member of any banned organizations (apparently rank-and-file members are fine), that I wasn't a member of any terroristic organizations (brilliant plan, that - "Are you a terrorist? *angry face*" "Oh, damn, yer honor, ya caught me. *sad face*"), and that I had no plans to bring down the Federal Democracy or Something of Germany (though it feels nice that they have that much fear of my one-person demogoguery).

Anyway, there was a bit of hassle with the paperwork, but eventually that was taken care of. I got a bank account afterwards all by myself, in German. That was fun. The people at the bank were apparently as clueless as I was though, so I didn't feel bad. "Hallo, ich bin Amerikanerin und moechte ein Konto oeffnen..." "Amerikanerin? Aehmm.....ich rufe meine Chefin." But now I have an account, but alas, I won't get my account number for close to a week, so I won't be able to get money for a while yet. Fortunately, I think I have enough to last for a bit.

I finally made a schedule in school today. I'll have Fridays off, only one class Thursdays, and only three-four classes the other three days, so it'll be very relaxing and nice to start off with. Most of my classes will be with the eleventh and twelfth groups, but I've got four with the third-year brewers and one each with the bakers and the butchers and the shop assistants. All the teachers say the shop assistants are lazy and, er, not very bright. It's amusing how blunt they are here. I go into a new class, and the teacher starts by saying "Okay, these two guys are pretty good at English, she's terrible, she's smart but very lazy, etc." No dancing around being nice, like in American schools.

I got to go to one of the twelfth-year classes today, which was amusing. They're very nice in there - I even know a few names. Stefan, Lisa, Sebastian, Michael, and two Claudias. Maybe a Lars too, but I think he might be in one of the eleventh-year classes... Anyway, I was supposed to tell about some jobs I've had and let the students guess what the job was, as a warm-up for a class on getting a job in America. I started off with Wal-Mart, but that was really easy, so I went to my Fin Fur + Feather job next. That, may I say, was awesome.

"So, at this job, I got up very early, and I walked to work. Then I sat down and read for a while. Then someone would come in, and I would show them a bunch of dead animals."

You could practically hear the class's collective brain grind to a halt. The facial expressions were very entertaining. Then we spent five minutes trying to get them to say "taxidermy" properly. They'd say it, then I'd say it. "Taaaahx-IT-airmeee." "No. Taxidermy." "Taaaaaaaaaahx-it-AIR-meee." "Taxidermy. TAXidermy." "Taaaaax-it-air-MEEE?" "Close enough. Now try 'yiffing.'"

Then I went home. The End.