All Work and No Play

This morning I let myself wake up when I was ready. I had talked about going to church today, but the girl I was going with was also the one who was supposed to tell me about Wine Fest. So I figured she wouldn't call. I think I got up around 11. After Heidi got back from Köln, she was going to call me so that I could tell the others when we should meet to work on our project. We decided on 2 at AJy so I sent out an email and she sent text messages (SMS is what we call it here!)

We had a lot of homework for the weekend, so I figured I would go to AJY early and start working on it before meeting with my group. I guessed that our meeting would only be an hour or so and then I could finish the rest of my homework, hopefully by around 6. Heidi showed up a little before two and then one of the other guys came. At about 2:45, we hadn't heard from two of the other group members so we decided to call them. I guess they hadn't checked their email or cell phones, but said that they would be there shortly.

While we were waiting, John (the guy who showed up on time!) and I went to grab something to eat. I had forgotten my wallet and wasn't going to get anything, but he offered to buy, so I couldn't deny! The bakeries were closed (almost everything is closed on Sundays) so we opted for ice cream. I got a scoop of mango and it was perfect. I've noticed that the ice cream here is more icy than creamy. Hopefully it is also lower-calorie!! I think this was only the second or third time I've had ice cream here so it really doesn't even matter!

In the time that we were gone, one of the guys had shown up. I had to run back to my apartment to get my computer and by the time I got back, the other girl was there, too. So at about 3:30 we finally started working on the project. We had all interviewed people and had our answers and pictures with us. We still needed to find a few more pictures online and then put them in the powerpoint. The guy whose computer we were using made everything more complicated than it needed to be. Really, it doesn't take that long to add pictures to a powerpoint and decide who will present each slide. As we worked on the project our conversations would go off onto random tangents and at one point I suggested that we focus on the topic so we could keep moving and finish it. The same guy tells me he thinks we are going as fast as we can and that we're doing pretty well on time. I could tell that one of the other girls was also getting frustrated so I did all that I could to move the process along. Finally around 6 (when his computer ran out of power) we called it quits. So in the time that I wanted to finish the project and my homework, I only partially finished the project because we decided we'd work on what we were going to say about our slide on our own.

Frustrated and annoyed, I came back to my apartment and worked on my homework for about an hour. I took a little break for dinner and warmed a brötchen with fresh mozarella and then added tomatoes and italian dressing. I also cut up part of a cucumber and it was a nice light dinner. Such an easy and tasty meal!! Back to the homework I went. I can't tell you how hard some of this grammar is! It is preparing us for the DSH (huge test to study at the university) but the stuff is so difficult and the test so deep that it seems impossible! Julia helped me with some of it and then I worked on my part of the presentation. I was doing the introduction and talking about "Typisch Deutsch" around the city (Bicycles, Public Transportation, Recycling, Autobahn, etc.)

Julia had a friend over for dinner tonight. She was Chinese and we spoke a little bit in German. I was surprised that her German didn't have much of a Chinese accent. They were in the kitchen talking and I was in my room doing homework with the door cracked and could hear what they were talking about. It was pretty cool because I could understand them without having to really focus on what they were saying. Then I had a question for Julia that I needed to ask in English and she explained it in German and then we finished our conversation in German. I just love the fact that we can go back and forth so easily!