Procrastination is my worst enemy . . .

. . . but I'm doing overall pretty well at warding it off.  Today I did laundry, but other than that I've basically been shut up in my room, trying to finish the next spread for my book.

Highlights of the day were:
1) Marni came by to borrow some change for her laundry and to inform me and Indra that she found a tick on her from our jaunt in the meadow yesterday.  We all proceeded to check one another's hair after that, just to make sure we didn't have any unwelcome little critters hiding there!  Didn't find any, so hopefully we're all good.  Indra did say, though, that ticks don't really carry diseases in this region like they do in some places, so if we were to find any on us, it wouldn't be much of a concern.  Marni says to just put oil on them and they'll suffocate . . . I've heard peanut butter works too.
2) Accidentally washed out my paintbrush in my teacup.  I knew that if I went on with the habit of drinking tea while doing watercolors, it was bound to happen sooner or later!

Took way too many snack breaks.  I had the munchies big-time this afternoon (which is why I was drinking tea, to try and ward them off!).  Been listening to podcast episodes of Adventures in Odyssey and a free audiobook version of Anne of Green Gables on YouTube to pass the time.

I just have to say, I'm glad I'm not like Anne in the story, cramming for exams in history, Latin, and arithmetic to get into an academy.  Being an art student is definitely more fun--I can't really complain about my finals consisting of nothing but drawing and painting work!

Ahhhh...another lovely weekend in Holstein!

Back from Indra's house, and it was another very lazy and pleasant weekend in the country!

First of all, a few stats from the weekend:

• Glasses of fresh cow milk drunk by me: several!!!
• Scoops of ice cream eaten by me: approximately 10 
• Scoops of ice cream eaten by Roland: I lost count
• Number of strawberries eaten by me: no idea, but I'm sure it was over 60
• Chocolate bars eaten by Marni: approximately 2
• Number of apricots the five of us finished off: at least 15
• Number of cherries we finished off: a kilogram's worth

(For the record, I also rode a bike and went swimming for the first time since I got to Germany, which is exactly four months.)

Anyway, this was our weekend:

We left for the train station at Altona (on the west side of Hamburg) around noon on Friday.  From Altona we took the Hamburg zone train to Elmshorn.  Indra's dad Roland was really nice and picked us up from there so we didn't have to pay for a regional train the rest of the way.

When we got to the house, it was very mellow.  Indra's brother Aljoscha wasn't around because he is on a trip to Bulgaria, and of course Frank and Luna weren't there this time.  We said hi to Gaby (Indra's mom), and Marni and I put our bags in the upstairs loft.  It felt like coming home to see our cozy couch bed again!

It was only around 2 pm, so Indra and her parents asked if we wanted to go back to the beach at St-Peter Ording, where we went the last time we were there.  Of course we had no objection to that, so we all piled in the car and drove there to spend the rest of the afternoon.

The weather was cloudy this time, but not very cold, and there was no wind and very few people so the beach was unusually quiet.  Roland took a short dip in the water (there were no waves this time either, due to lack of wind) and Marni and Indra and I walked along the shore and stuck our feet in.  I had worn my skinny jeans and they wouldn't roll up very far, and at first I tried to keep them dry, but then Indra was walking through the shallow water to the sandbar that the low tide had made and I gave up on having dry cuffs.  (My legs were slightly cold the rest of the time, but I didn't really care.)  I collected a bunch of shells (which I just now realized I forgot to bring back to Hamburg with me . . . oops!).  We also sat on the fuzzy picnic blanket and watched the seagulls.  Some of them look almost identical to California seagulls, but there was also a different kind called a "laughing" seagull which has a dark brown head and a white spot around the eye.  They're funny because they look like they're wearing a hood, and they make a sort of high-pitched noise that does sound a bit like laughter.

After that we walked back to the car and drove to the town.  The first thing we did was go to get ice cream, because Roland always gets lots of ice cream whenever their family goes on an outing.  Indra said that if there are multiple ice cream places, he will go to all of them and sample a few scoops from each.  (But in case any of you were wondering, he is definitely NOT fat, because he usually eats very healthy.)  We went to a gelato place (most of the ice cream places in Germany are gelato) and got a pre-dinner ice cream.  I had stracciatella (which is like chocolate-flake-chip) and walnuß (walnut).  Gaby had an eggnog flavor!

Then we walked to the boardwalk-pier to look for a food place.  It was very much like an Atlantic-coast pier, with lots of places selling fish-based dishes and a wooden boardwalk that ran over the sand dunes and grassy marshes towards the ocean.  There was also a tent where they were setting up for a live band to play later.  Indra saw someone she knew from Hamburg!  He was on the stage setting up the sound equipment.  We didn't eat on the pier because the place we checked out was sort of crowded--instead we walked back to the place that had the fischbrötchen where we ate last time we were there.  They had a sit-down area under a canopy and we had our dinner there.  Roland and Gaby ordered antipasto plates with a few different things, Indra and I had bruschetta (I ordered it on Indra's recommendation), and Marni had fischsuppe (fish soup, which had not only fish but also squid in it).  After dinner we walked back to the gelato place for a second round of ice cream.  This time I had "after eight" (which is like mint chocolate chip) and nutella (yummy--it had a thin layer of nutella on top!).  On the way back to the car we walked on a path through a wooded area, and we saw a giant anthill made out of pine needles.  The ants were about the size of California red ants and they were crawling on every square inch of the hill!  It was really cool!

We got back to the house sometime around 8.  While Indra took a bath, Gaby and Marni and I talked in the kitchen and proceeded to eat our way through some cashews, quite a few cherries, and literally dozens of strawberries.  By the time Marni had finished her bath and I went to take my turn, I don't know how many strawberries I had, but if it's possible to eat yourself sick on strawberries or give yourself a rash from strawberries, I think I would have ended up doing one or the other if I had eaten many more.  They were just so good it was almost impossible to stop!  (And the night before I had already eaten probably two dozen of them, because Indra bought two boxes of them on sale at Aldi and they were so good we couldn't stop then either.)

After I finished my shower it was late, but Indra and Marni had been saying we should watch Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (the first movie), so we watched it.  I actually never had seen or read Harry Potter, because I was sort of young when the books and earlier movies came out and by the time I was old enough to handle them I would have been way too behind on the bandwagon, and I never really wanted to read or watch them anyway.  So this was actually my first time seeing it.  I have to say, I enjoyed it, simply because I like movies that star good child actors and are about kids.  And because it was only the first one, the story was overall fairly lighthearted.  I don't think I would like the later movies so much, though.  But I did like this one pretty well.  We went to bed around 1:30 because the movie ended so late, and I slept in till after 9 that morning.

Our Saturday started with a nice big breakfast: croissants, brown grain bread, cherry tomatoes, cheese, a variety of spreads including butter, jam, quark (similar to plain yogurt), bell-pepper cream cheese, and nutella, plus coffee, orange juice, and FRESH COW'S MILK!!!  I was so excited to finally try it!  It had about the same density as the store-bought whole milk, but it had a sweeter and creamier taste.  Really, really delicious!  (For the record, Gaby and Roland don't eat breakfasts like this every day.  But Indra told me that her mom really likes breakfast, so whenever company comes she uses it as an excuse to make a nice, fancy spread.  I'm a breakfast lover myself . . . maybe I should adopt this method in the future . . . )

It was more like a brunch because it was 10:30 am by the time we finished.  At 11 we went out to the front of the house to watch the fire brigade march by.  It was the 130th anniversary of Hanerau-Hademarschen's fire brigade!  So they were having a big celebration.  People had put out a bunch of decorations in their front yards: Schleswig-Holstein flags, wooden cutout firemen, even straw dummies dressed up like firemen!  The next-door neighbors lit their portable barbecue to make smoke and rigged their hose up to the stand-up wooden fireman on their driveway, so it would look like he was fighting a fire.  When the fire brigade came by, they were marching in formation in their uniforms, and their band was at the front playing a marching tune.  Even the junior firefighter squad was in the procession!  It was a neat thing to see, even though it only took a couple of minutes for the procession to pass by.  Indra said they would have a big event at the firehouse later, with games for the kids and of course food and drinks.

We hung out at the house while Roland and Gaby went to the store.  When they came back, we got in the car to go spend the afternoon in Friedrichstadt.  It is north of Hanerau-Hademarschen and is known as "little Amsterdam" because it has Dutch-style buildings and tiny canals.  Indra had told me about it before and said it was a nice place to visit.  On the way we listened to Nightwish, the Finnish band that Indra and Marni had introduced me to a while ago.  Indra's family has favorite CDs just like our family has, and all weekend while we were driving we listened to a bunch of them.

In Friedrichstadt we browsed through some really neat and cute little shops and art galleries.  There was a super nice antique shop with tons of beautiful china and dishware, linens, dolls, furniture, and old household items like clocks and appliances, and a gallery with all kinds of colorful, funky, and cute glass sculptures and lamps that either looked like animals or were formed into crazy abstract shapes (it reminded me a little of Dale Chihuly's glasswork), and a chocolate and tea shop, and funny little tourist shops, and lots of clothing boutiques.  We also got--guess what--ice cream.  There was only one ice cream place, so Roland went back there twice.  I had zitrone (lemon) and himbeer (raspberry).

After ice cream and shopping, we rented an electric boat and drove around all the canals.  The town reminded me more of Haarlem or Lübeck because it is smaller than Amsterdam, but it's actually even smaller than either of those.  In an hour we drove through every canal there was.  The canals are really tiny also, just wide enough for two boats to pass.  (For those of you who know Long Beach, they're generally even narrower than the canals in Naples Island.)  Roland elected me the captain, which actually turned out to be not a very exciting job because it's rather boring to have to steer a boat with maximum speed of 2 miles per hour, especially on water that's pretty much as flat as glass.  So I ended up steering standing up most of the time, which was a lot more fun.  I was able to touch the underside of the bridges when we went through them.

We also went into two of the churches (both of which were small, not big like the ones in Lübeck or Haarlem), and Indra and I sang in both of them.  Indra always likes to sing when she goes into a church if she can.  She knows lots of religious classical pieces, so she will usually sing a couple of those.  The first church we went into had really nice acoustics.  Her voice sounded extremely pretty inside it.  We also sang our "Evening Rise" duet because it is the one duet we have practiced together and can execute well.  (That's the one I posted on here back in March . . . I haven't finished learning the Bach church piece she gave me, so we weren't able to do that one.)  Roland, Gaby, and Marni were saying that she and I should try to make a few recordings because our voices blend well.

It was around 6 when we got back home from Friedrichstadt.  Marni wanted to borrow Indra's bike and go for a ride because we had had a pretty lazy day overall, and Roland and I decided to go too.  Indra stayed to help Gaby with dinner because she was tired from our late movie-watching party the night before.  I rode Gaby's bike, which was a hybrid.  It was the first time I had gotten on a bike since I got to Germany (there is a public bike-rental program in Hamburg called Stadtrad, but I just never wanted to bother with paying for it).  And I didn't have a helmet.  So I have to say, I was rather nervous about the whole thing.  Praise the Lord, I made it back in one piece, though my legs definitely felt it near the end!  Marni, who has been taking full advantage of the Stadtrad bikes in Hamburg, was happy as a clam and zooming on ahead the whole ride.  She absolutely loved it!  Roland took us all the way to the Nord-Ostsee-Kanal (or Kiel Canal), which is a big channel about 5 kilometers from Hanerau-Hademarschen.  It connects the North Sea and Baltic Sea and is actually the most heavily traveled shipping canal in the world, even more than the Panama Canal!  We had to drive the bridge over it to get to and from St-Peter Ording and Friedrichstadt.  It was a very scenic ride, but I don't think I enjoyed the scenery quite as much as Marni did because I had to spend a lot of time concentrating on shifting gears or maneuvering over uneven terrain through grass and weeds.  There were also a zillion big brown slugs on every single road and pathway, and we had to be watching the ground at all times to minimize running over them.  The slugs in Germany are MUCH bigger than the California ones--some are a couple of inches long and as big around as a small carrot.  There were also some snails, which are light yellow with white dots and generally about as big as the slugs.  And there were also clouds of flies that sometimes would end up in my face.  In SoCal you have to watch out for car traffic; in Holstein you have to watch out for bug traffic!

When we finally got back it was after 8.  Indra and Gaby had laid out quite a spread: boiled potatoes, freshly cut and fried pommes (aka french fries), dandelion salad with raisins and seeds, Caprese salad (tomato and mozzarella in olive oil and vinegar), and more strawberries.  Roland did one of his famous experimental recipes: he fried mint leaves in butter, which turned out to be really delicious with the boiled potatoes.

Indra, Marni, and I had wanted to make ice cream with the gelato maker at some point, and we considered doing it, but we were all so tired from our day that we decided to go to bed instead and hold off on the ice cream until the next day.  We were all in bed by midnight.  I crashed out--pretty sure the bike ride helped with that!

This morning, Sunday, we had another semi-late, large breakfast (basically with these big and leisurely country breakfasts, you just eat well and then you don't need to have a real lunch).  This morning Gaby made soft-boiled eggs, which I've always wanted to try but can't remember ever eating before now.  I have to say that when I started eating it, I couldn't help thinking of the poem from the children's book Bread and Jam for Frances: "I do not like the way, you slide, I do not like your soft inside . . ."  Except that, unlike Frances, I thoroughly enjoyed my soft-boiled egg.  Also had more fresh cow's milk!  The stuff really is amazing.

When we had finished eating, Indra took out her old bow and the arrows she and Alijosha used to play with, and she, Marni, and I went for a walk.  We found an open field to do some archery in.  The problem was, the arrows were old and ratty and mostly missing all their feathers, so they kept veering off in all directions and sort of tumbling out of the air rather than going in a nice straight arc and sticking in the ground.  And the field we chose hadn't been mowed in a while.  So we spent most of our time wandering around looking for the arrows, and eventually four of the seven ended up hopelessly lost and we finally gave up on finding them.  We took a back-road loop to get back to the house.

After we got back we made ICE CREAM!  (Because we just hadn't had enough of it already.)  Gaby had bought chocolate bars so we could make it chocolate, and we added some of the cow milk, plus a bunch of cream, sugar, and one raw egg.  It only took about 15 minutes in the electric ice cream maker.  Definitely not the healthiest thing to have for lunch, but BOY was it good!!!

A funny moment: There were a couple of flies that had gotten into the house, and I was trying to whack one of them in the kitchen with a newspaper.  Indra asked what I was doing, and I tried to say something about "die Fliege," which I learned this morning means "fly."  Only I couldn't remember the exact right word, and I said "die Fliese," which apparently means "tile."  Indra was confused because the fly happened to have landed on the tiles on the wall, and she didn't know whether I was talking about the fly or the tiles.  I busted up laughing because the word I said when I had been trying to say "fly" just happened to be the word for the thing the fly was sitting on!  It was a really funny coincidence.

When we had finished the ice cream, we packed up our stuff and piled in the car.  Roland and Gaby drove us to the station at Itzehoe, which isn't in the Hamburg zone but is still not too expensive to ride to Hamburg from.  On the way, we listened to ToTo (Emily, you have to look them up--that's some classic '80s music for you!) and Roland took us on the scenic route through the back roads where we could see nice views of all the fields and farmhouses.

At the station, we said goodbye and hugged Roland and Gaby and thanked them over and over.  They were so incredibly generous to me and Marni both times we visited.  This weekend they not only let us stay at their house, but they fed us ridiculously well, bought us ice cream and dinner, and took us for afternoon trips (and a bike ride!).  I've definitely been blessed by some serious hospitality and generosity here in Europe--Ineke, Joey & Rebecca, Martin & Ivanna, Janos & Anja, and even Indra herself have showed it to me for sure--but I have to say Roland and Gaby were particularly kind.  Just the fact that they let us stay the whole weekend and took so much of their time for us really meant a lot.

We got back to Hamburg, without incident, around 3:30.  Marni got off the train at Borgweg to find free wi-fi and download audiobooks to her iPad (in preparation for the nonstop homework grind of the next four days).  Indra and I walked back to Georgi-Haus and on the way--you won't believe it, but--we decided to stop by Eis Warneke at the end of our street and get ice cream.  Indra had a scoop of something whose name I can't remember but which was this amazing fruity blend of apple and lime, and I got quark (plain yogurt) flavor, which had berry swirls in it.

Needless to say, after we got home I was psychologically feeling like I really, really ought to exercise before the day was out.  So since it was fairly warm outside, I decided on a whim that a swim in the Stadtparksee was long overdue.  I put on my swimsuit, threw on my sundress over top, grabbed my cap and goggles, and zoomed the couple of blocks to the Stadtpark.  When I got to the lake I went down to the water's edge, stuck my flip-flops and sundress in a big bush, and waded in.  It was rather chilly, but no worse than Alamitos Bay was when I had to swim it in Junior Lifeguards, and it felt soooo nice just to swim again after so long!  I went across and back twice, which took about 20 minutes, then got out.  Fortunately it was a mostly sunny day and the wind wasn't too cold, because my sundress decided to fall off the branch while I was swimming and land in the water at the edge of the lake, and it was completely soaked by the time I was finished with my dip.  I wrung it out and put it on, but of course it did nothing to keep me warm.  So a hot shower was much appreciated by me when I got back!

Ahhh, yes, it was a splendid weekend.  And now, back to the grind!  Marni and I are planning to basically shut ourselves in our rooms for the next four days so we can get our book illustration projects done.  Aside from trips to the grocery store, laundry room, and printmaking class, I think I'll be sticking to that plan . . .

Before I sign off, here are photos!!!

Having fun in the backseat.  I think we're all still 8 years old at heart . . .

Relaxing on the beach at St-Peter Ording

Indra and me with our bruschetta dinners 

The fire brigade marching past

Friedrichstadt

Indra with her mom and dad

Friedrichstadt town square

Indra and Marni in the church with the really good acoustics

Gaby, Indra, and Marni

Cruising on the e-boat

Yes, I'm aware of the red dot on my forehead.  I had a run-in with a mosquito in St-Peter Ording.

My soft-boiled egg!

Marni in the kitchen

Looking for arrows in an unmowed field is literally like looking for needles in a haystack. . .

Indra and Marni were better at archery than I was, I think.  Except that the featherless arrows made it hard to tell.

Walking after our archery session

HOMEMADE CHOCOLATE ICE CREAM!!!  YUM

Soccer fever is sweeping the nation

This morning was painting class and I finished up my last figure painting and gave my teacher (Christian) a couple of my paintings for the student exhibition.  Acrylics haven't been easy, but overall I'm proud of my work in that class, and Christian seemed pleased with it too.  And either way I got my course credit slip, so that's the most important thing!

Then this afternoon was the public viewing of the USA-Deutschland game!  I borrowed the German flag that has been sitting dormant in our kitchen to wear as a cape.  On the U-Bahn I saw lots of other people wearing their colors and all dressed up too.  I was actually the very first one at the meeting spot and I thought I must have gotten something wrong because I'm never the first to show up for anything.  But after a couple minutes, some of the other students showed up too.  It turned out that there were a lot fewer of us than had responded to the event on Facebook, but by the time the game started we still had a pretty decent group.  I was really glad to see Laura again--I think the last time we were together was that day we went to Miniatur-Wunderland back at the end of March!  She brought two of her friends from Spain who were visiting for the week, which was cool.  Cristina, one of the HAW tutors, met us at the station, and she brought a face-paint stick so we could all put the flag on our faces.  We went in pretty early, so we ended up sitting around for almost two hours before the game started.  Overall nice weather, thankfully--it's been kind of cloudy, rainy, and cold the past few days--though it was definitely on the humid side and the clouds kept sprinkling down random drops despite the sun.  A couple of other students came during that time: Emese from Hungary, Camille and a couple other girls from Belgium, Bettina from Switzerland, Lucy from Austria, and Eirini and a few others from Greece, most of whom were fully decked out in German-flag garb.

The rest of the American students showed up later, decked out in red, white, and blue, and when they saw my red-yellow-and-black flag cape and face paint they all yelled at me and called me a traitor and wanted to know what my problem was.  I said I didn't care and I always root for the USA, so today since I was in Germany I was going to root for Germany.  Seriously, who wants to pull for the opposing team when thousands of people around you are all rooting for Germany?

I have to say, the American students--who showed up just before the game started at 6 and were already tipsy--definitely cemented the American reputation for being obnoxious. Not that Germans can't be obnoxious when they're drunk, but my fellow citizens definitely were making their presence felt, particularly during the first half of the game.  They kept yelling "FREEDOM!" and waving their American flags, and people behind them kept telling them to put the flags down so they could see the big screen.  One of the guys even put the flag over his head and drank beer through it.  Cristina and I finally moved away from them a little bit, because they were blocking our view and also because we didn't want to be nearby in case anything went down between them and a German fan.  But thankfully they settled down after halftime.

I actually ended up watching very little of the second half because I started drawing, and then Eirini and Cristina asked if I would draw them, so I did.  Then everybody wanted to see my sketchbook, and they were all admiring my London and Paris drawings and asking about my major and stuff.  So I was kind of half-watching the game and half-thinking about art.  I wasn't even looking when Germany scored the only goal of the game, but of course the roar of the crowd around me quickly told me that something exciting had happened.  Near the end of the game I started drawing Emese, who was standing next to me, and a couple behind me started talking to me and asked if I could take a picture of them and draw from it, then send it to them.  I was like, "Sure, if you want me to," and the guy said he would pay me for it!  I said, "Um, sure, okay, if you want!"  So I took a photo of them with my camera, then got their emails and found out what sort of a drawing they wanted.  They were both all excited about it and told me thank you multiple times.  (Wake-up call for me as an artist!  I need to set up some kind of online portfolio, make some basic business cards, and figure out how much to charge for things!)  That was definitely a cool moment!

The game itself was actually really boring--it was such an even match that the only score in the whole game was by Germany (yay!) near the start of the second half.  But that didn't matter so much.  It was more the fact that everyone turned out to support their country.  Everywhere you looked, people were decked out in Deutschland jerseys and every kind of red-yellow-and-black accessory you could think of: scarves, flags, headbands, flower leis, ponytail wraps, wigs, sunglasses, face paint, striped bunny ears, and all sizes and types of hats.  Cheers and chants were going on constantly.  Of course, with the event being held on the fairgrounds, there were lots of stands selling fair food and drinks at ridiculous prices, and beer and grilled sausages were being consumed at an extremely high rate.  While we were in the crowd it didn't seem like there were that many people there--maybe like 10,000--but when the game ended and everybody flooded out of Heiligengeistfeld into the streets, I realized just how many people there were.  Indra had told me that it feels like a ghost town if you go anywhere during World Cup games, and she wasn't kidding.  From the masses of people pouring out of the fairgrounds, it literally seemed like the whole city had turned out for the public viewing.  Emese and I left at the same time because we didn't want to go get food or go to the bar with any of the others.  We decided not to get on the train at St. Pauli because it was like a major human traffic jam just to get down into the station.  We crossed the street instead, and it was incredible.  Car traffic was stopped and people were walking every which way in the road.  All the cars were repeatedly honking their horns and the people inside were yelling and hooting and hollering and waving flags, and the people in the street formed this sort of massive victory parade that marched down the block towards the Reeperbahn.  It was almost like when the Lakers won the NBA finals a couple years back!  Except this wasn't even the quarter finals or anything!

Emese and I walked through a section of Planten un Blomen, the downtown botanical park, and got on the train at Messehallen.  Probably three-quarters of the people on the train were coming from the game, and at the Kellinghusenstraße stop there was a huge group of guys around my age standing around and chanting a team-spirit cheer, all wearing Deutschland jerseys.  They got onto one of the other trains and started up a new cheer once they were inside.  I looked out the train window at the streets as we crossed the bridges.  Indra was right--they were mostly deserted.  Only a couple of cars were driving.  Even the marquee sign at the train stops flashed back and forth between "Next train arrives in 2 minutes" to "Game score: USA 0, Deutschland 1."  It's incredible.  The whole city literally devotes itself to soccer for a couple of hours.  I don't think even the dedication to the Super Bowl in the U.S. is quite like that!

So while the game itself was honestly rather boring, the whole public-viewing thing was pretty cool.  I might go again, although I have a feeling that the crowd will be a lot more rowdy once it gets down to the quarter- and semifinals!

Tomorrow Marni, Indra, and I are taking off for another weekend at Indra's house!  We're leaving around lunchtime.  I can't wait . . . we had so much fun last time we were there!  Blog posts probably won't come until Sunday, though.


DEUTSCHLAND!  DEUTSCHLAND!  DEUTSCHLAND!

Me and Cristina showing off our lovely face paint

Humid weather over Heiligengeistfeld

Red.  Yellow.  Black. 

It's a "sea of red, yellow, and black!" as Aunt Nadia would say.

Fußball fans

The floods of people in the street just outside the fairgrounds

. . . and in the train station

Projects, projects, and more projects

Not a whole lot to tell about today other than it was very productive.  I spent about eight hours total in the printmaking workshop, trying to get as much done on my intaglio series as possible.  Finished almost all my final print editions for the exhibition--I just have two left that I need consult my teacher on for help with the arrangement on the page--and did a little bit more of my mezzotint project at the very end of the day.  I was especially pleased with how the print of the Queen of the Night and her attendants came out . . . a nice dark Prussian blue made it look perfect.  I can't wait to finish the series and post them on here for you all to see!

Needless to say, I was tired by the time open workshop ended at 6.  It felt REALLY good to sit down! Made pesto for the first time tonight, since my basil plant is still alive at this point.  Found that pesto is an extremely quick and easy thing to make.  I didn't have pine nuts, but it came out yummy anyway.  I just made a little bit in a bowl and then tossed in some cooked pasta to eat with it.  And of course, salad and more basil-pistachio bread.  Delicious!

Right now I'm in the middle of homework round #2: more illustrations for the picture book.  I found a free audiobook version of Anne of Green Gables to listen to, which is keeping me entertained (and keeping my brain from falling asleep).

Tomorrow evening is the highly anticipated game between Deutschland and the USA.  Marni and I are going to meet a bunch of the other international students at the humongous public viewing near St. Pauli (it's at Heiligengeistfeld, which is the big fairgrounds area where they have the Hamburger Dom fair).  They set up gigantic video screens and something like 50,000 people all cram in to watch the game.  I think it will be a little crazy, but I think it's also something I should experience at least once.  I bet the enthusiasm level will be almost like being at the actual game!  If there's such a thing as soccer fever, Hamburg's got it big-time right now!  There are literally red-yellow-and-black flags everywhere you look.  People have them hanging off their balconies, displayed in their windows, tied to their bikes, and flapping on their cars.  Seriously, every tenth car that drives by has either the little clip-on flags sticking up from the windows or stretchy spandex flag covers on the side mirrors.  The number of flags tomorrow night at St. Pauli will probably be INSANE . . .

Made bread! And succeeded!

Today I did homework and then tonight I went to women's study.  It was at the Ropers' house instead of at Janos and Anja's because Anja was sick, and actually it ended up being only me and Rebecca!  We had a nice prayer time and ate some yummy banana chips and dried mango.  I really liked the Ropers' new house.  Their old one was nice, but this one is even better.  It is just down the street and around the corner from Janos and Anja's, in a nice woodsy area on a really pretty street.  This house is a lot more spacious than their old one was too, so it looks like they've got a really good place.  They were also telling us before they moved that the landlords were great too.  God hooked them up for sure!

Anyway, you're probably wondering about the bread part.  So I did another first today: I made my first bread with yeast!  I decided that since I was home today, and since I had just bought a new basil plant at Lidl yesterday (the other one croaked while I was in London), I could make a second attempt at my basil-pistachio bread that epic-failed last time.  Yes, the first one was technically edible, but only when heated in the microwave and soaked in generous amounts of milk.  Pretty much resembled a basil-pistachio rock.  I had done that one like a basic American biscuit, with flour and water, and used baking soda.  That resulted in it being not only hard as a rock, but slightly bitter.  So this time I used yeast, since Indra had a couple packets of it and she said I could use one.

I looked up a couple of recipes online and then went from there.  Turns out that bread is not only pretty easy to make, it's fun too!  I liked the kneading part best.  It was like being in Little House on the Prairie or something.

Here are pictures following the progress of my happy little basil-pistachio loaf.  And I'm happy to say, it came out much better this time.  A fairly dense bread, but it has the right consistency--not hard or dry like the other one was.  And now it has that nice bready yeasty flavor rather than the bitter baking soda taste.  Success!!!

(What started out as a travel blog is quickly turning into a foodie blog.)

Rising in the bowl

Rising again in the baking pan, this time with the basil and pistachios added

All ready to go in the oven!  (I tried to put flaxseeds on top, but most of them fell off once I moved the pan.)  :)

In the oven!

All done . . . cooling on the rack

TA DA!  Basil-pistachio perfection!!! Is your mouth watering yet?  :)

Homework and food!

This morning was cool.  I got up sort of late because I needed to sleep in after all my semi-early mornings this weekend, and when I went in the kitchen to have breakfast it was already almost 10:30.  Corina, who lives next door to Indra, came in to make her breakfast too.  She usually just makes her food and then takes it back to her room, but I was talking to her while she was finishing up her coffee and so she came and sat with me and we ate together!  I was a little surprised because she has never done that before.  Indra came in from her morning class a couple of minutes after that, and we ended up talking until almost noon.  It was a lot of fun, and I really enjoyed getting to know Corina a little more.  I learned that she is half Colombian (which is why she speaks Spanish), and that she and I are alike in the fact that we love breakfast and could eat breakfast food any time of the day (though she doesn't like cereal--she usually prefers to have more of a spread, like eggs and toast, or rolls with cream cheese, butter and jam).  Until today I had only had short conversations with her here and there.  She isn't home a lot of the time, and when she is she is usually in her room or has one of her friends over.  So this was the first time we talked for more than ten minutes or so, and I have to say it made my morning.

Spent the majority of the afternoon trying to get my homework mode into high gear.  Got some more of my book done, though not as much as I would have liked.  Petra knocked on my door around 5:30 to see if I was ready to go to the store.  We were planning to make a tortilla soup from a package she had, but we had to go to the Lidl supermarket to get tortilla chips to put in it.  So we walked there and got the chips and a couple of other groceries.  We ended up having to go to Rewe for avocados, though, because the ones at Lidl were really picked over and the only ones left were too soft.  When we finally got back, it was almost 7.  We got the soup started, but then we realized that the beans in it were going to take a lot longer than we had expected because they were dry beans.  So we got out our art projects to work on while we waited.  Marni showed up a couple minutes after that, and we put on Mumford & Sons and made a humongous batch of guacamole with the avocados.  Just when we were starting to get concerned about Indra and wonder if she had met with an unfortunate accident on the way home from her tutoring appointments (she tutors high schoolers in a variety of subjects a couple afternoons a week), she came in.  She had been in her room, finishing up a set of calculations for her homework.  (Such a contrast--Marni, Petra, and I have no homework other than to sit and draw, while Indra has to do complex math problems.)  The beans were taking forever to soften, so we all just drew, talked, sang along to the music, and proceeded to eat a first course of chips and guacamole.  It was Indra and Marni's first time trying guacamole!  They both liked it, though Marni couldn't quite get past the fact that it looked like some kind of mushy green science experiment.  Petra and I, of course, mowed through it like it was going out of style, being from that beautiful continent where guacamole is a well-known and well-loved phenomenon.

The soup finally was ready around 9 o' clock.  It had such dark spices and was so thick that it really was more like bean chili than soup.  We ate it like chili, with crumbled tortilla chips, shredded cheese, and sour cream on top (we had to explain to Marni and Indra how to assemble the toppings).  It was super good.  Not identical to U.S. chili--the cheese was Emmentaler, which tastes more like Swiss than cheddar--but I really enjoyed it.  And it had no meat, so it wasn't overly filling like some chili can be.  I told Petra that this was her and my super-late birthday celebration, because both of us were traveling on our birthdays (hers was in April and mine was in May).  No better way for me to celebrate my birthday than with Mexican-style food!

We worked on our projects for a while longer after we cleaned up.  Marni went back to her apartment pretty soon after we had finished eating, because if we're all honest with ourselves, we get a lot more done when we're alone in our rooms than we do when we're together eating, talking, and listening to music.  Petra, Indra, and I were in the kitchen till almost midnight.

Um, which brings me to say it's now after 1 and I need to go to bed.  Good thing I don't have to get up for any classes tomorrow.

Before I sign off, here are pictures from our night (sorry Indra, I never took any pictures of you):

Our mega bowl of guacamole (the epic Doors pencil case belongs to Petra)

Marni doing what she does best . . . watercolor pencil! 

Petra stirring her soup

Singing and drawing

The Goose.  That's me.

Worship in German

I suppose today is a landmark day because I led my first worship set in German!  I guess this also marks the first time I've actually led worship in a foreign language . . . even though I know Spanish worship songs, I've never done a worship set in Spanish.  So today was kind of cool!  Thankfully my pronunciation was okay and I didn't majorly muff any of the lines.  But it was very low-pressure because there were less than ten people in the service today.  I actually just did the songs at the end.  Joey played the first set at the beginning.

I have to say, it's been really helpful to start learning songs in German.  Most of the ones they sing at City Light are English songs that have been translated into German, so since I know their English translations it's been helping me learn a lot of new words.  Joey let me take home one of the word booklets so I could practice.  (I've found that it's definitely easier to sing in German than in French--I had a tough time when I went to Vespers in Notre Dame and to Calvary Chapel Paris!  French pronunciation is so tricky anyway, and when you put it in songs it gets even more confusing!)  The two German songs I chose were ones that they have sung enough times that I knew them pretty well, and I had the words in front of me to help me too.  They were "Der Herrliche" and "Du bist so treu zu uns," which are both Chris Tomlin songs . . . original titles "The Famous One" and "Great is Your Faithfulness."

The Bible study was super good.  Joey is finishing up talking about the vision and mission for City Light, and this week the topic was bringing glory to God.

Some thoughts from the study:

• Mankind was made to glorify God.  Only God is deserving of glory and honor, and we need to give it to Him instead of taking it for ourselves.  Any time people try to take the credit and the glory, they can't handle it and they end up falling.
• The reason we should be going to church, Bible study, or any gathering of believers is to meet God and experience His presence.  We ought to go to a church meeting with the expectation of meeting God, the same as we go to the supermarket expecting to buy food or go to the theater expecting to see a movie.  God has promised that He will show up when believers are gathered in His name, and we should be eager to receive His promised presence each time we go to church or study.  Other gatherings, like World-Cup-watching parties and fitness club meetings, don't have the promise of God's presence.  But gatherings of believers do, and that's a special privilege we should look forward to!

Been doing homework this afternoon and evening.  Also made another one of my frozen veggie burgers for dinner.  Absolutely amazing.  They seriously get better with age . . . sounds scary, I know, but the flavors blend so much better when they've been frozen for a while.  Put avocado on it too--that absolutely made it.

A couple of good "deep" discussions today.  First was with Marni this afternoon when she dropped by for a bit.  We were talking about psychological disorders, self-perception, and how faith fits into all of it.  Kind of just knocking ideas around.  Second was with Indra . . . we were talking about governments, political history, surveillance, and how the whole world changed after 9/11.  That conversation started after I brought up something interesting Marni had told me earlier.  Apparently Nir, the international student coordinator for the art department at HAW (who is Israeli but also a German citizen) had been talking to the international art workshop class about the World Cup.  He said that up until Germany hosted the World Cup in 2006, citizens never displayed the German flag.  I remembered Indra mentioning that, but what Nir was saying was that the 2006 World Cup was actually a turning point in the German national identity.  It finally gave them a reason to display their flag and be proud of it.  So all these red-yellow-and-black flags I have been seeing absolutely everywhere over the past few weeks are still a new thing here.  Before 2006, it apparently was just something they didn't do.  I have been told by a lot of people that Germany still is struggling to shake loose from the whole Nazi thing.  They have had difficulties with bad connotations, stereotypes, not repeating the past, not being overly nationalistic, finding a new national identity for themselves apart from Nazism, etc.  The German republic is actually still a very young nation.  It's interesting to me and also really sad how Germany is still so bound by a bad political regime in their past.  I think that, from what I have observed, it is a really neat country now, and I like its people a lot.  And I think it is really great that they have finally reached a point where they've regained some sense of national pride in their flag.  Whoever would have thought soccer could break down barriers like that?  I guess being American, I'm so used to seeing flags displayed everywhere and to having a flag that has been essentially the same for centuries and that has always stood for freedom and opportunity.  So even the thought of not being able to take pride in your flag is kind of a crazy concept to me.

Wow, I don't normally get this serious or deep.  All right, that's enough philosophizing for one day.  Good grief, speaking of surveillance, I'll probably post this and then get new ads popping up and telling me to buy German and American flags, based on the keywords on the cookies on my computer . . .

On a lighter note, Indra and I also talked about our favorite Disney movies.

More printmaking and a yummy recipe

Another successful day of printmaking.  Got my two plates pretty much finished--they need a few more touches, but for the most part I'm ready to move on to the last two.  Yay!

Weather is extremely unpredictable right now.  Fluctuating between cold wind and overcast, sun and clouds with wind (in which case it gets warmer), and random sprinkly rain showers.  I wore two layers and my jacket and scarf to school today.  A little too warm walking to school, but it was cool enough outside that it felt good.  WAY too hot walking home later because the sun happened to be out at that point!

Marni and I were planning to go to the humongous public viewing of the Germany-Ghana game down at St. Pauli, but it turns out the game isn't until 9 and neither of us felt like being out that late in this ridiculous weather, especially not with all the school stuff we have to do.  There is also a giant party in the next building of our student residence--it's called Multi-Kulti and it's the biggest event of the year here at Europa-und-Georgi-Haus--but we didn't really feel like doing that either.  Saturday nights when finals are coming up, you kind of have to forgo all the activities going on.  Why would they schedule a big party right before finals anyway?  I see no logic in that.

When I got home from class I had a leftover half of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich that I had taken with me to school but hadn't eaten while I was there.  (My appetite has been as unpredictable as the weather!  Wednesday after printmaking class I was a bottomless pit, and then yesterday and today I packed a whole sandwich instead of a half so I wouldn't be so hungry and ended up not needing it.  It's not that I'm not hungry--I just keep feeling like, "I have enough energy and I don't need to eat right now.  I'll eat later.")  So anyway, I had this sandwich and I didn't want to waste it, but leftover PB&J for dinner is not a very nice prospect.  I needed to make something nice to make up for the soggy sandwich, so I busted out all the veggies I had in my fridge, plus a couple of "special" things I had recently bought on sale ("special" meaning that I don't normally buy them because they're more expensive), and made myself this beautiful salad that turned out WAY better than I imagined it would!

And I realized that while I always talk about stuff I make, I never share any recipes.  So I decided to share this lovely salad recipe that I made up.  Compared to the salads I usually make, this was like gourmet!

Serves 1

This salad looks prettiest served in a large, shallow dish such as a wide-rim soup bowl.

ingredients

5-6 lettuce leaves, preferably more leafy (I used both iceberg and the super ruffly kind)

a 1-2 inch slice of cucumber

1-2 handfuls grated or julienned carrots

1 handful cherry tomatoes

1-2 handfuls green olives

1/2 avocado, sliced

olive oil

grated Parmesan cheese

instructions

Wash all vegetables.  

Tear up lettuce into bite-size pieces and place in dish. 

Leave cucumber unpeeled.  Slice section into very thin pieces and sprinkle over lettuce.

Add cherry tomatoes and carrots to salad.

Distribute olives generously over top of salad.

Sprinkle just a bit of the olive brine from the jar over top.

Place avocado slices in an attractive arrangement on salad.

Drizzle with just a bit of olive oil.

Sprinkle with desired amount of grated Parmesan.

I didn't add ground black pepper, but it would probably be another nice garnish if you want some kick. I'm sure homemade croutons would be delicious too!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Okay, there you have it.  A fancy salad recipe for your dinner tonight.

Gotta go!  More homework tonight, plus I have been requested by Joey to play a couple of worship songs for the church service tomorrow, so I have to get there early to coordinate things.  I'm excited, but BOO to lack of sleep . . .

Good art day!!!

As far as art goes, today was awesome.  Went to book illustration class today, and my teacher and I finally clinched the concept for how to get my whole "Rainy Big Wave Day" book to visually fit together.  I'm super excited to keep working on it!  Which is what I'm going to do as soon as I finish this post.

After book illustration class, it was mezzotint class.  Got there at 11-something and class didn't start till 2, so I had a couple of hours to prep my zinc plates and get started on my last plate for the other printmaking class (intaglio).  My series for The Magic Flute is almost done.  I just have to finish making that last plate on Wednesday and I'll be ready to print them all for the student exhibition.  During mezzotint today I got about one-third of the way through my next two plates of my series of Grandma portraits.  Hopefully I will have those finished by the end of class tomorrow.  So much printing to do, but a lot of fun at the same time!

By the way, I have to say I really love all my teachers here.  They are so kind and helpful.  Bernd, our book illustration teacher, is great.  He is super involved and knowledgeable about the whole bookmaking and publishing industry, and has a lot of good insight.  He is also really mellow and good-humored, which makes class with him a fun experience.  Louise, my teacher for mezzotint, is awesome too.  She reminds me of Miss Romero, my Torrey Academy teacher from my high school years at the Biola Star program--young and pretty with a soft voice and a nice smile.  She is from Köln (Cologne) and used to be a HAW student herself when she was getting her bachelor's degree.  Today she told me that she has lived in Hamburg for ten years, so based on that I think she has to be younger than 30.

Christian, the teacher for my Thursday life painting class, is nice too.  He is funny because he always says his English is "not so good" (sometimes he doesn't know a word for something, but I can always figure out what he means).  He gives lots of constructive criticism, but in a nice way, and he has helped me a lot with the technical side of painting: relative values, color temperature, sense of light, etc.  Katrin, my teacher for the intaglio printmaking class, is really great also.  She is very bubbly and always smiling, and she's always so eager to help us with what we need.  I have really enjoyed her class because she has introduced us to so many different techniques and she always seems so happy to be there with us.  One thing I have to say about art professors, at least at good art schools like CSULB and HAW, is that they are usually very friendly, approachable, and supportive to students as well as being really good at what they do.  They honestly end up being more like mentors and career guides than university professors!

Weather feels like it's regressing to early spring.  Overcast, around 60 degrees F, and strong winds.  Not really that bad, but after all the warm weather we've recently had here (and going mostly sweater-less in Paris and London!), that wind feels chilly!  Apparently "June gloom" exists in Hamburg too.

One minor concern today . . . cheekbones and head hurt.  That cold I had last week left a LOT of crud in my sinuses.  Notes to self: Must rinse sinuses with saltwater at least twice a day.  Must not get a sinus infection.  Must get sleep.

Gotta go . . . time to get on the homework!

Typical Hamburg weather is back

Lately the weather has definitely been summery.  I was just about ready to go buy a pair of shorts last week.  Then yesterday and today it got gloomy again, with lots of wind and some scattered drizzles and showers.  This is the classic Hamburg weather . . . overcast and rainy.  I think I hit it on a really good year, because overall we've had very little of this kind of weather.

Busy weekend ahead!  So glad I didn't go to Vienna--I've got a TON of schoolwork to do!  Book illustration class is tomorrow morning, and then mezzotint class the rest of tomorrow and also all day Saturday.  Then comes church on Sunday. . . I think Joey might want me to lead worship this week.  He said to call him tomorrow.  That's not much of an extra commitment, I guess, except I will probably have to be there early after all my other weekend craziness.  Phew!

However, the projects are all going well.  I'm happy with what I've done so far.  I just wish I were further along on everything!  Pretty much all of us international students have been kind of messing around all semester, going places, doing activities, hanging out with friends, and now we've all entered the "Oh snap, we've only got two weeks till finals" phase and are all holing up in our rooms spending hours on our projects.  Kind of funny.

Ended up not selling my ticket to that other student.  I called Germanwings today and they told me that when you added up all the fees for changing the name and adjusting the flights, it would be like 200 euros!  So I messaged the guy and told him that unless he felt like paying that much, there was no deal. Of course he didn't want to pay that much, so the ticket will remain unused.  I felt bad for having gotten his hopes up, but I had NO clue a budget airline could charge so much to make adjustments!  The guy was bummed, but not at me, just at Germanwings.  We were both kind of saying, "Oh well, at least we tried, but SERIOUSLY! Why are airlines so ridiculous?"  Anyway, that's that so I don't have to worry about it anymore.  There will just be an empty seat on the plane to Vienna tomorrow.

Joanna and Emily, you'll get a kick out of this: I started writing a new song today in '80s style.  Not finished yet, but it's definitely off to a good beginning.  It's a fun one and I'm purposely giving it semi-corny lyrics.

Also got a collaborative project going on with some of the other international students.  Marni and I started it up last month--we made a Facebook event and had everyone share photos of Hamburg, then voted on a favorite one and cut it up into pieces.  Everybody got two pieces, and they had to do their own version of those pieces either by hand or on the computer and then send them back to me.  We're going to put them all together to make a big image.  Lots of fun, though it is a bit of extra work!

Must sleep now!!!

Another cooking night! It's been a while

Ah, a blog.  One of the only places where you get crêpe recipes one day, dissertations and drawings of plastinated human bodies the next day, and then more talk about food the day after that.  The contrast is a very comical one, I have to say.

Today was printmaking and it actually wasn't normal class hours today because our teacher is out of town.  So we only did open lab, which went from 1 to 6.  I got home at 6:45 with my brain (and body) feeling like mush.  I was like, "Must . . . eat . . . food . . ."

Marni and Indra, quite comfy in the kitchen after dinner.  (Lemon
bread was already almost gone by this point . . . don't underestimate the
appetites of three college girls! We surprise even ourselves sometimes.)

I had just turned on the oven and was getting ready to get out some veggies to roast when Indra and Marni came in with a big sack of groceries.  I was so excited because we had talked about having another cooking night, but I wasn't sure if they were still able to do it.  Thankfully they had gone to the store and gotten all the stuff we needed, and they were free for the evening.  So we all got to have dinner together and then draw and listen to music, like we had been doing earlier in the semester before we got so busy!  It was super fun to do it again.  Marni stir-fried vegetables and ground beef with some olive oil, avocado, and spices, and she also got goat cheese and pocket pitas so we could make our own mini-döners.  A döner kebab is something that is really popular in a lot of European cities, and especially in Hamburg.  It's basically fast food, Turkish style.  The kebab is made from meat shaved off a big vertical rotisserie, and it can be served in a pita like a gyro sandwich, on a salad, or with other side dishes like french fries.  Usually they're fairly inexpensive.  You see döner places all over Hamburg (there are two of them on the street just around the corner from our house, near the grocery store and drugstore), and I saw a lot of them in Paris and Berlin and a few in London, too.  Anyway, these were sort of a homemade version and they were absolutely awesome.  We each ate two pocket pitas full, and then finished off the leftover meat and veggies still in the pan.  (Printmaking really works up an appetite for me, apparently.)

Indra made lemon bread, which has a similar consistency and flavor to cornbread except that it has a lemon-zest base and is not made with cornmeal.  We had one loaf of it for dessert.  Marni and I actually ate more than Indra did . . . we had the munchies even after our pita pockets.  I washed the dishes since there wasn't a whole lot for me to do during the cooking part, and threw in a couple of euros to pay for the groceries.

Marni and I worked on homework drawings (and Indra just hung out) until around 10.  We listened to Indra's iPod first and then to mine.  Playlists tonight were Harry Potter, Tron, and The Curse of the Black Pearl soundtracks.

Found another international student who can use my ticket to Vienna this weekend!  I would be happier if I could actually make a profit off the ticket . . . but it costs 60 euros to change the name (no cheap or free changes to a flight because it's a budget airline) and that's all this guy can afford to pay.  So at least I'm not losing money by transferring the ticket to him.  But I'm not gaining any back either.  Oh well, there was no way I could have foreseen having to cancel the trip, so I'll just have to roll with losing the money I paid for the flight.  C'est la vie, as the French say . . .