Many Thanksgivings!

(Written November 24)

The week flew by!  It doesn’t hurt that my “week” is only 3 days…

Monday evening I worked on my paper and made scalloped potatoes for Tuesday’s Pre-Thanksgiving dinner.  While I really enjoy potatoes, I am too impatient to work with them.  They take so long to cook!  I try to cut them as thinly as possible, but even when my slices are translucent they still take forever.  I am usually way too hungry to wait.  While the potatoes were cooking, I worked on my papers.  Sigh.  I have some direction now, but I am still a little at a loss.

On Tuesday, I tried to get some work done before class.  I really dislike having to sit through the student presentations in that class.  In general, the entire German lecture structure is a little odd.  My professors went over the intro materials and syllabus on the first week and second week, then asked students to do presentations.  It seems here that your two grades are for doing a presentation and for writing a paper. The students have to choose one of the lecture topics to present on/write about.  From that point onward, the professor only lectures if there aren’t two presentations that day (which hasn’t happened so far).  I think it’s weird because there are such big gaps in the knowledge.  For example, I am doing a presentation on the history of rice in Southeast Asia.  However, that day just says “Daily Goods” as the lecture topic.  While I plan on being well-prepared, my topic is a lot more specific than the one the professor would have lectured on.  So, if students in the class want to know about meat, potatoes, bread, or anything that’s not rice, they’re out of luck.  It’s just so strange to me, that the professor might only lecture once or twice in a semester. 

Anyway, after class on Tuesday I had my tutorial.  I think the tutors (all of them) are starting to get frustrated with us, because a lot of people are skipping class, or not doing their work, or not paying attention.  It is getting hard to focus, and I have less and less motivation to go to class.  Although, I would like to point out that I have not missed any days of any of my classes! 

After tutorial I went back to my apartment to grab some plates, cutlery, and my scalloped potatoes.  Dinner was at Wehrda, so it took me a while to get there.  There were quite a few more people there than I expected, but there was plenty of food, and it was all tasty.  Bizz made really good porkchops with stewed apples in a tasty sauce.  They were so good and tender.  I was also very excited to see that Katie (the other girl from WV) had made pepperoni rolls!   They were delicious and reminded me of WV.  Almost no one else at the party had ever eaten pepperoni rolls before, which made me really sad for them.  We all had a good time and got plenty to eat.  I was so glad there was enough food.  After our Brenner experience, when most of the people who cooked didn’t eat, I was a little worried. 

This morning I had 8 am class (glad there are only 2 of those left!) and was not surprised to see that quite a few people were missing.  We had the first part of class to work on our papers, so I talked about mine with the tutor.  She had some good feed-back, especially as far as structuring.  Since the paper is so long (mine is 13-15 pages without an intro or conclusion) we’re encouraged to put it into sections and use headings and a table of contents.  I am more than okay with that. 

Since I haven’t had time to go grocery shopping recently, I was forced to get currywurst for lunch.  Oh darn.  There’s nothing better on a cold day than a plate of currywurst and pommes.  Yummmm.  There’s a place here I want to visit, where you can get different kinds of sauce on your currywurst.  They’re ranked in 5 levels of spice.  Only 50-some people have managed to eat the #5 (out of 500-some who have tried).  Alejandro is one of them.  He said it was awful, but now he has bragging rights. 

After lunch, I had conversation class.  Today we talked about vacation and had to act out some scenarios.  I’m also excited to go to Harry Potter on Monday (auf Deutsch, of course).  All the classes get to go see a movie as part of the conversation class.  Then, I had tutorial.  We talked about the structure of the EU government, since we are going to the European Central Bank on Friday.  We’re going there (Frankfurt) on Friday afternoon and are going to the Christmas Market for a little bit afterwards.  I am so excited for Christmas!  The markets are finally opening in Germany!  Marburg turned on its Christmas lights last night, and lit up a giant Christmas tree in the middle of town.  I am very, very excited to drink some Gluhwein (mulled wine) and browse the market.  I was disappointed to find out that it doesn’t normally start snowing until January in Marburg, but at least it feels Christmas-y with all of the lights and decorations up. 

I have no real plans for tomorrow, except to do some cooking, cleaning, and paper-writing.  I accidently left my casserole dish at Wehrda, so if I get it back by tomorrow I will make peanut butter cookies for the Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow night.  If not, I don’t know what I’ll make.  I don’t want to go without bringing something.  Hope you all have a good Thanksgiving tomorrow!