Wednesday, May 30, 2007

He goodjuated!!!

If you don't get that, don't ask. :)

(Updated June 2)

I had an amazing weekend at home in Brentwood celebrating my little brother's graduation!
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First things first, here are all my pictures:
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by stinaberlin

The short update:

Had some complications getting home, but everything worked out just fine and I was incredibly thankful. I landed in Nashville at 6:30pm and was greeted by my family, and lots of hugging ensued. :) Afterwards we had dinner at Chili's, then I crashed.

Saturday was Jim's graduation party, so we spent the morning prepping for that. We made the house look nice and pretty, including the garden, where Mom and I did a little planting. :) The party was a blast. Lots of friends, neighbors, teachers, etc. came and we all had fun. I had a great time talking and hangin' out with "the usuals" like Ms. Medlin (forensics coach) and the Clakrs, as well as people I didn't know beforehand, like my bro's girlfriend Brittany. We also catered from Qdoba, and there are still leftovers at my house that my family is still eating! After the party I went over to Amber McLeod's to spend a few hours chatting and catching up with a very special friend. It was soooo good to hug her!

Sunday morning I went to church with Mom, which of course was great. My pastor is doing a series on "Front Porch Living" and they actually built a porch on the stage in the sanctuary. It's kinda crazy, but cool. (Haha sounds like my pastor!) Afterward we picked up the boys and headed off to the big graduation ceremony, which was great. Only mishap was that my bro's name got read wrong! Poor Mrs. Huddleston felt so bad. There's a kid in his name whose last name is Loudermilk, and she knew them both, and whaddya know, when Jim walked across the stage she said, "James Marshall Loudermilk. Uhm, James Marshall LORDEMAN!" It was funny, he was amused. Apparently some kid brought a rat and let it out on the floor during the calling of names. Silly kids. :) After the ceremony we had an early dinner at Maggiano's, and Brittany came along. :) Later in the evening, Mom and I drove around delivering graduation gifts to some girls who were on the forensics team with me. We got them these really funny boxes for laundry detergent at Butler's (in Berlin! I am going to miss that store!) and filled them with everything you need for doing laundry - Bounce sheets, Tide detergent, a bleach pen, a pen that's kinda like a Shout wipe but it's a pen, etc.

Monday morning I had breakfast at Cracker Barrel with Mom, Dad, Alan and Kimmy. I needed some yummy country-cookin'! We had fun. Afterward, Mom and I did a little shoe-shopping and stopped at Kroger to get barbecue sauce and Mountain Dew for the Heimlichs, then headed to Chili's to meet the Maguires for lunch. They are growing up so fast, especially Mack! We had a blast, and Mom and I were totally stuffed after that. :) From there we picked up a few more things from Walmart that I wanted to take back, and then it was time to go home, pack, and head to the airport. My flight was delayed, so the four of us had a little more hang-out time in the airport before I left. I made it back to Berlin safely around 3:30pm Berlin time on Tuesday.

It was a great, action-packed weekend and it was totally worth the flying time. Hopefully worth the money for my parents too. :) I'd totally do it again, especially if there's skipping class and absurd amounts of Mexican food involved. Hehehe...

Here's something random I wrote on the plane from Nashville to Chicago, if anyone cares to read any of my "deep" thoughts when I was feeling contemplative and sleepy. :) http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b252/clorde/flighttochicago.jpg

That was my update on my trip! Hard to believe I will be moving back home in two months from today... Time really flies!

Saturday, May 19, 2007

Hamburg, Spargel Saison, 1,0 for Frau Lordeman, Vanessa

This post is rather delayed, so I've made chapters.

Hamburg
Last week (May 9-11) I went to Hamburg on an excursion with my study abroad program. It was pretty cool. Hamburg is a really pretty city with a lot of history, and the weather was better than we'd expected (though it did rain quite a bit at the end). Some highlights:

-City tour with a tour guide who had blue eyesbrows. No joke. Like bluer than blue. And eye makeup to match. (See pictures.) But the tour was really interesting. Hamburg's Rathaus is really pretty and there are boats (and ships and such) everywhere since it's a big harbour city.
-Saw a play called Nora. I'd never heard of it before. It was okay. Actors were good, story was kinda random.
-Tour of NDR studios. NDR stands for Norddeutsche Rundfunk - North German Radio/TV. German public television includes 2 networks, ARD (the first one created) and ZDF, (added a little while later) for all of Germany, plus 9 regional networks. The various programs on ARD are distributed across the various regional networks; for example, one regional network is responsible for reporting, one for news, etc. NDR is responsible for the production of the famous original German news show "Tagesschau" and talk/discussion show "Tagesthemen". We got to go "behind the scenes" and see where the shows are filmed, all the control rooms, the make-up room, etc. I've been on a similar tour of, I believe, CNN, but it was cool to learn about the differences between German and American news programs. Afterward, they had a private conference room reserved for us in their cafeteria, which was very nice. We were basically treated as VIP guests, and technically that kind of tour is only allowed for visitors from within the NDR region! They made a special exception for us because we're not really Berliners either... (Berlin is in the RBB region - Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg)
-Visiting a WWII bunker in Altona, a part of Hamburg which used to be its own city. Hamburg was a particularly big target for air attacks in the war because it's a huge important city that is relatively easy to find at night. Planes coming from England could just follow the Elbe, whose mouth is large and noticable, from the North Sea straight into Hamburg. Berlin, in contrast, is harder to find because its farther inland and doesn't have any big rivers leading straight into it from the ocean. Although Berlin was the most heavily attacked German city in the war, Hamburg sustained the most damage and I think also the most casualties because it had a lot more small, narrow streets with denser residential areas (that is, each bomb that fell in Hamburg did more damage than in other places). In addition to equipping cellars and basements to serve as "bunkers" in case of air raids, cities built lots of communal bunkers like the one we visited, which was designed to hold hundreds of people. There isn't a whole lot to see in such a bunker - just lots of rooms with rows of special chairs with head-rests and other rooms where people could lay down on tiny bunk beds - but the guy who led our tour gave a whole talk on the air raids on Hamburg and his own personal experiences as a kid growing up in Berlin during the war. It was very interesting.
-Being formally greeted by equivalent of Altona's mayor (not really a mayor since Altona is now only a district of Hamburg and not a separate city). He shared with us about Altona's unique history and relationship to Hamburg, and afterward invited us to join him for a glass of wine (or juice) in his office in the Rathaus!
-Playing on the COOLEST playground I have every seen with Molly, Jamen and Andrew. This was totally designed for 20-somethings and not kids, it was like grown-up size and super fun. Afterward we - ironically - ate hamburgers for dinner.
-Time by myself in an art museum looking at Renaissance (approx.) art. We had a group tour of the section on the Romantic era, and it was okay. Afterward we could wander on our own or do whatever, and I kinda lost myself looking at Renaissance art. I am definitely not a big art person, but I kinda have thing these days for religious art. Some of the paintings I saw in this museum just totally took my breath away and I basically had a little one-on-one worship service with God. It was really incredible.

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by stinaberlin

Spargel Saison
Okay "Spargel" is the German word for asparagus, and "Saison" the French-quasi-German word for season, and these two words compose a very important aspect of Germany in May. Asparagus - the big, fat white kind, not the skimpy green stuff - is a big deal in Germany in May. Like really big. Everyone is selling it - all the fruit and veggie markets, random people who set up little markets JUST to sell asparagus, and restaurants of course. Every restaurant is advertising their asparagus specials - asparagus cream soup, pasta with asparagus, pizza with asparagus (no joke), asparagus with a side of steak (haha)... Yep. And although I've never been like head-over-heels for asparagus, I have to mention that I had the most delicious meal in a really long time the other night at good ol' Tutti Gusti, my Italian restaurant/pizzeria right down the street where they know my name. I have eaten there billions of times and this was the best meal I've ever had there, hands down - it was ravioli in a cream sauce with thinly sliced ham and big fat chunks of white asparagus. It was absolutely heavenly.

1,0 for Frau Lordeman
I finally got my last grade back from last semester and it was a very pleasant surprise! This was the paper I wrote for my TV and History class about West German TV in East Germany. It was the one I worked the hardest on and the one that had been the most interesting, and I knew the prof well enough to know he wouldn't grade me easy just for being a foreign kid. (With my other profs, I was not so sure this would be the case.) Basically, I was waiting to get this grade to see more or less how I could really do in a German seminar, with no handicaps. The prof took a really long time to grade it (don't know why) but I am taking another class from him this semester, and I emailed him last week to see if I could come by to discuss my research project for this semester so I could get started on it. He wrote me back and said that would be great and then we could also discuss my paper from last semester. So, I was kinda nervous, because I don't really like getting a grade from a prof face-to-face; I'd rather find out anonymously and then perhaps discuss it later, after the initial reaction. Anyways... I went and met with the prof, and he decided first to talk about this semester, so I had to wait even longer, but then he was like, "Okay, so let's talk about last semester..." and he pulls out a copy of my paper and his comments and such and he's like "I really liked your paper a lot. I haven't graded all of the rest of the class's papers yet [who, P.S., were all or mostly German students], but from those I've read, yours was my favorite..." and out of the corner of my eye, I see the paper he's holding with a very significant number written in red grading-pen ink... 1,0. 1,0!!!!! That's the best you can get!!!!! That's like an A+!!!!! And I'm like, "Really?!?" I was definitely not expecting to do THAT well. I would've been stoked with an A- or even a B, and satisfied at least with a B-. I was totally shocked. And needless to say, I'm totally feeling encouraged about this semester...

Re: the title - This professor calls me Frau Lordeman. That's really normal, since professors and students address each other very formally all the time as a general rule of German-ness, but most professors don't really address students that much, so I don't hear it that much except from this guy. And I still it sounds really funny. Frau Lordeman. Hehehe.

Vanessa
Vanessa came to visit this week! (Vanessa is a friend from Crusade and music classes at Penn, for those who don't know...) She's been studying Scotland this semester and just finished up, so she's doing a big European tour with some friends. We had a good time and I got to do a little bit of tourist-y stuff. Probably the best was a four-hour free bike tour of the city! These people give free bike tours and work only for tips, so they know they have to do a good job if they want to earn any money. We had a great time riding around the city and seeing everything. We also went bowling one night with two of her guy friends from high school who are tagging along on part of Vanessa's trip. (One of them studied in Florence this semester.)

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Knut and other cuteness

Yep, I did indeed see Knut over the weekend. Yes, Knut is the baby polar bear who was rejected by his mother and, after some controversy over whether a rejected baby polar bear should be put to sleep or be raised by a human being, is being raised by his "keeper". Knut, however, is growing very fast; he now has teeth and claws and all that, and his keeper has to wear special clothing and stuff to cover his hands so he doesn't get torn to shreds playing with Knut.

It was a very fun day at the zoo. Manu was at a seminar for the day on Saturday, and Timo wanted to do something fun with the kids, but it's difficult for him to go anywhere with three kids all by himself. So he asked if I was interested in going with them to the zoo. And of course I was! We had a blast. The kids really like the animals, and Berlin has a pretty nice zoo. I enjoyed it. The place was still packed when it came time for Knut to come out and play, and that was a little crazy, but not bad. We had a fun day.

Other than that, there's not a ton of news... Life is good. A couple things on my mind lately; one thing I can't really discuss publicly (it's not bad, just, uh, secret!) and the other is, well, my future. Specifically, there are some people from our denomination here (the Evangelical Free Church) who are coordinating a missions project called Live to the Power of Nothing (Live^0). They are sending teams about 20 young people (20-somethings) to various cities around the world for a 2-year project; the main focus is on ministering to people particularly through social aid. Anyways... they are contemplating sending such a team to Berlin, and they asked me to help with the research and drafting of a proposal for what the team would do. I'm working with Timo and mainly one other guy on this; it is super exciting, mainly because one of the big things we are really considering is ministering to the Turkish communities in Berlin. Right up my ally! It's so exciting to have other people around me who are excited about my passions and can envision a practical application of them. That doesn't really happen much in America. ("I think when I grow up, I want to teach Turkish kids in Germany." "Huh???") Yeah, so it's really cool.

And that's basically life right now. Oh yeah, I'm doing a really cool Bible study right now, "Experiencing God" (or "Gott Erfahren" in German!) by Henry Blackaby. It's way awesome. My biggest lesson out of that so far is that serving God doesn't just mean doing stuff. It means having a close relationship with Him, knowing Him intimately and being moldable in His hands. Then He can really use us for whatever He wants to do in the world. I am learning to go to God not just to ask for my next assignment, but to get to know Him and enjoy Him for who He is.

Ah yes, the photos from the zoo, as well as a dinner at church with a kids group we have:

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by stinaberlin