It has been a Year!

It is unbelievable how much time has gone by. I haven't kept up with all that happened to me this past year. I simply didn't feel like it, but now (even though I don't have time for it) I will start catching up.
As a result of living in Freiburg for about a year now, I feel at home. This city is nice as it is the hottest city of Germany.
Last night it actually snowed and the world is covered in White. I don't think we will have white Christmas, though.
I passed my first two semesters fairly acceptable. I was just happy to have made it, this is especially true for my second semester bio test. God helped me through it, I wouldn't have made it alone. The time before the test I was so burned out and I didn't want to study so hard, but fortunately, as pressure increased, my will to pass did the same. My concentration came back and I was well prepared for two of the five professors who asked a question each. All in all I have been lucky. I didn't fail one class so far.
During my semester "vacations" I always work for Kipp in order to earn my living. It is not enough to see me through the entire six months, but it is a great part of it.
In January or February a friend of mine invited me to join an education weekend for the next badge of our scout organisation. For over 5 years I haven't done anything in that field and I noticed I had missed it a lot in the past, therefore I decided to go ahead and do so. This was the initiator for a lot of happenings this year, because: since I liked being a scout when I was little, I wanted to be a helper for a scout group now, in order to allow other children to have the same enjoyment as I. In Freiburg there were enough helpers around, therefore another friend of mine suggested that we should help out a church group in Emmendingen who were trying to start a new scout group. It ended up with me as the leader and my friend as the co-leader. A lot of my free-time was invested in this group for the first few months as camps had to be planned, group meetings to be prepared, etc. etc. Since I was pretty inexperienced with camps I asked if I could join the Freibuger scout group until I get used to my responsibilities for a camp. They allowed me to do so and I was very grateful.
We bought a tent from my former scout group and God made this possible. He had reserved this tent for our group. I learned later (at a training for scout leaders) that another group had tried to buy these tents but received a rejection. When I called, I didn't even have to ask for those tents but I was offered them. Also, they were affordable and we got all the other equipment with it, too. STEWA, the big camp, came around in May. The route had to be planned, so a friend and I drove around for eight hours in order to plan that route and find places where we could sleep. The STEWA turned out cold and rainy. In addition to that we were ill-equipped with rain clothes and therefore changed our original route. I was freezing most of the time and was so happy to have very good shoes which kept my feet at least a bit warm. Cathy, the co-leader of our group, started to warm herself up by clinging to one arm of the leader of the Freiburger Schwarzwaldelche... after a while I decided to do the same, even though I have never acted like this before! So poor Michael (that is his name) had to walk around with two girls, one on each side. This (Monday, May 27,2007) is the beginning of our romance ;) and on Thursday of that week I had to admit that I was very attracted to him. I didn't want to. I was looking forward to Sunday, to go home and cool down. But things were planned otherwise for us. Having missed the clean-up after our first camp, I told myself I would not miss it this time. Therefore I accepted the offered ride home in the car of Michael. We were talking, and talking, and talking,...
Clean-ups took two days and after the second day I walked home with my first date, I didn't think of it as a date back then, but in reviewing it all it definitely was a date.
Here I will stop for now and prepare for my next class ;)

Update Finally

I have to wait for my train and figured, I might as well be using the internet here to write a short blog about all the things that have been going on lately.

I listened to the health presentations at church and one of them was dealing with relationships. There is one crucial thing to remember which I found very important to think of in any situation! You cannot change your partner, only yourself! Many times, when you don't like a situation, YOU have to start rethinking in order for the situation to get better. I know it is not easy to do so, especially, when you think you are right, or what is even worse, you have the right to act and react the way you do. But think about the positive effect on any relationship, when you make up your mind first and tolerate and respect the other side. I thought I had to share this with you.

There is a study saying that love consists of 5 different languages. Unfortunately I don't remember all of them. What I do remember is:
1st Lob and Anerkennung (look them up in a dictionary, there is no time for me to do so right now)
2nd affection
3rd gifts
4th time
and the fifth I can't remember. I think this is interesting, because I would say any language works for me but the thesis says, that one language is the best for each individual and we have to find out what kind of language the other party (friends, boy and girlfriends, family members, etc.) speaks in order to show our love to them.

Ok this should be it for right now on this topic. Things in college are going all right. I bought a book for Bio today which cost 80€. This is a lot of money, but this book will last me all my life. I hope I don't have to buy that many other books.
English is fun. I think I have a good understanding of the meaning of words, but in translation I am horrible. I have to start learning vocabs in the good ol' manner with my beloved flash cards. There are so many other things I am concerned with at the moment though. Energy, telephone, internet, house stuff (e.g. broom, detergents, towels,....)

Time is up, my train will soon arrive and I have to leave now :D

Interesting (finished) Exercise

Our job was to write a short story of exactly 100 words using each word only once... I hope I can recall the changes I had to make :)

Suffering from cold, three small, yellow-spotted ducks shivered. Swimming fast did not help them get warm, either. Some old, gray-haired, married human being passed by, felling compassion for those poor, tiny, freezing creatures. Any large stick was good enough to suit his purpose of rescuing this little group. Having succeeded in placing these cute birds on a brown, comfortable lid, he walked home. Opening their apartment, warm air surrounded that strange cluster. Anyone who knows something about animals could easily tell they experienced heavenly life as the generous man's water basin filled [i should have better said bath tub filled with water, but didn't think of it in the moment] with liquid provided great living conditions.

This morning I went to the bank to sign my contract for raising a credit. So starting next month I will be in debt and this for the next 7 years :( There is no other way since I am not working but living on my own. I need to make sure to work each and every vacation I have. Finally I bought myself a book for chemistry. I found a cheap one for only 10€ which contains everything I need to know. Unfortunately the book consists of 380 pages which means I have to do 10 pages a day to be done by Christmas. Things are getting out of control here and I know I should be doing a lot more but I simply don't feel like it.
Yesterday I went to the Hochschulsport since it is for free. This is a good work out and I will be going twice a week.
This will be it for now, I should continue studying now...

So far... but two days old :)

It has been a while since I last blogged. A lot has been going on. Saturday after church I went to Auggen where I got picked up by another member of the orchestra. From there we drove to some city in Graubünden (some canton in Switzerland) where we had a quick run through the music. Some of the songs were very differently interpreted and some parts I had to sight-read. Fortunately the song was not as fast as we play it in Adventus Domini Deutschland.
The atmosphere within the orchestra is different from ours because the conductor likes having authority and therefore there is no chatting in between. The concert at night was the best one I have ever witnessed. I actually lived with the music and the music was talking to me. It was incredible. Handel truly is a great composer and the Messiah is well described through music. After we finished the concert we went to our sleeping place. It was an old military station with 30 in wide beds. There were 20 beds in our room and we were only 5 people so each of us took two beds to have more room. The mattresses were extremely thin but I slept comfortably and besides all the stupid things we did I even managed to study a bit.
The next morning I decided to join Manuel (who picked me up at the train station in Auggen) in hiking. The scenery was beautiful and after about an hour of our hiking tour the path was covered with fresh white snow and it was getting cold. It got steeper and steeper and only 2 of the 6 of us had hiking shoes on, the rest was more or less sliding along the way. Luckily nothing happened to us.
With the self timer in my camera we took a few group pictures of which I posted a couple.
Later in the afternoon we had another two concerts and I had a hard time concentrating and those concerts got recorded for a DVD. I didn’t find out why a DVD is done. I don’t really get it because this is not the purpose of any Adventus Domini orchestra and choir. Oh well, it wasn’t my decision.
I forgot to mention that in the email it said all women had to wear a long black skirt and something white for the top. This seemed so strange to me but I followed the instructions just to find out that those instructions were chorus instructions only meaning I wouldn’t be dressed appropriately. Now what to do? Several people offered me black clothes and I left my khaki shirt on :). All in all it didn’t look horrible since the light got turned off but oh man: Never again! From now on if I ever have to go black and white again, I will take some black shirt with me as well.
On Monday I got an email saying that I can have apartment 42 (which I wanted) and tomorrow I will go and sign the contract. All my savings will be used up just to pay provision for the real estate office, the security and the first monthly payment.

Quick Notice

I uploaded the pics

New Apartment??

It proves to be raatha diffficult to find a new apatment ( I really like the British accent, maybe I will switch around). Anyway this morning I was supposed to meet up with some man whose last name was Celik but unfortunately he didn't show up. I simply looked around myself and noticed that there is a "public kitchen and bathroom" and this is most definitely not what I want if I am going to spend 300€ per month. I hope I have more luck with the apartment this afternoon. I have to leave my discussion group early.
This morning I didn't feel like exercising since I didn't sleep very well last night. I woke up several times and it felt like I never slept at all (but I know I did) :) My grandma and I went shopping yesterday so that I can finally pay for some food. She won't let me pay, if I don't join her in going shopping and she doesn't have much money herself. In case I move out in the middle of the month we will keep visiting each other (and my grandma told me she will bring me a cake every now and then because she likes having someone to spoil :D )
I haven't done much studying lately, but I most definitely did a lot of thinking. I thought about what I expect from life and the result was not so very nice. In theory it sounds very nice, but I don't live according to my own theoretical will but more to my non-controlled will which is very egoistic. At this point in life I think I need to learn to be less expectant and more tolerant. I have become what I never wanted to be (at least to a point).
With recognizing the way it is I think I have already started walking on the path towards the good. The weather turned chilly two days ago and in the Black Forest the first snow flakes fell. Here it was a little frosty and the roof was white when I opened my window yesterday morning. All the plants had to be inside the house or else they would be frozen to death by now.

I think I need to check on my prescription because every time I wear my glasses they seem weird and I don't like wearing them (which is why I wear them as least as possible [can you say that, it sounds a little strange to me])
One of these days I will post some pics online but so far I haven't had the time to resize them for photobucket and I also have to chose which ones I want to share.

Tuesday and All Saints

Today I went to school early in the morning. I was supposed to meet up with a friend at the Zoocafe in the University. She didn’t show up until much later therefore I got all my internet stuff done. This was a very good thing. I am glad I had time for it. When she finally showed up, we went over some Chemistry stuff. We didn’t really have a clue but it helped doing it together. Then we had to go to our next Vorlesung. Unfortunately we didn’t know that it was cancelled. For some reason practically everybody else except for us knew it. So we were sitting around until 10 minutes past the beginning of the regular lesson and then we got up and went to a Café to go over some more chemistry. Basically our first lecture was at 1 pm. This was so stupid because I got up at 7:30 in the morning to do my exercise and man I am so sore! I can hardly lift my bag and violin which I had to carry along for the orchestra after going home.
English was fun. We went over some grammar stuff (and I didn’t get all of them right, but I think I understood the concept) They give you the hardest sentences to check on you. After English I went home to “eat” but I had already eaten lunch during my “break” and therefore I only ate a little bit of salad when I got home. After having finished eating I went upstairs to take a nap. The next thing was practicing my violin. It was so much fun and I think I got a little better since this past weekend because I played along with the recording. It is interesting how much such a play along actually helps. My grandma got home just before 6 pm and I had to leave, I thought. Stupid me! I had another hour but since rehearsal started at 7 last time I went, I didn’t realize that I was an hour early until almost at Freiburg. I had so much time left that I decided to go to the University to check my email another time and write some more.
It was so weird writing this part of the text because there was a homeless person sitting next to me and even moving closer to check what I write (I originally worked on some poems but I was embarrassed to continue so I switched to my blog text since I was sure he couldn’t understand)
Yesterday my grandma and I wanted to go biking but the weather forecast was predicting rain and therefore we decided to go for a walk instead. I think we were outside for 1.5 hours and it felt great. The rest of the day was filled with pictures, violin and eating. Practicing was so much fun. I went over my favorite songs and after almost two hours I started with my orchestra music and that was no fun anymore. It doesn’t sound very good with just a Violin II. It has to be done no matter what and I know I wouldn’t feel comfortable during the next rehearsal if I don’t try to do my best in preparing at home. At night we walked for another half hour. Unfortunately I had my black shoes on with some socks that weren’t high enough and now my skin is rubbed off where the shoe’s rim was. I discovered today that there is a lot of additional fat accumulating in the area of my belly of which I could get rid of but still I won’t do any diet just sports. If it disappears I will be happy if not I’ll live with it :) Today is the first day that is really cold and I noticed the missing heat in my room. I only did 10 minutes of my regular work out. The floor was so cold that I couldn’t get warm. Maybe I should start wearing thicker pjs.
It is incredible how fast time goes by. We are almost at the end of another week and now I should definitely study much more than I have been (Yesterday I wanted to learn how to knit but the pics got in my way. There were still pics from my stay in the US that I hadn’t worked on but now I am finally done)

Anna Theresa sent me a nice saying of Winston Churchill which I want to pass on to you:

You will make all kinds of mistakes;
But as long as you are generous and true, and also fierce,
You cannot hurt the world or even seriously distress her.
She was made to be wooed and won by youth.