An awesome rainy day with friends

Today really was awesome.  I spent most of it hanging out with one friend or another, which was so fun.  And we had a good summer thunderstorm this afternoon too, which made it more interesting.

Me and Tiina outside Saturn

This morning after breakfast I was in my room getting ready to go to school to scan all my grocery and art school receipts from the semester.  (I kept them so I could keep track of how much I spent, but I didn't want to have to take all the scraps of paper home.)  Petra, who got back from Ireland yesterday, came out of her room, and I told her about the Abmeldung and how we have to fill it out before we go home and mail it to the office downtown.  Since I was already going to the computer lab at school, I asked if she wanted to come with me so we could print and fill out the form for her, and then I could mail both of ours at once.  So we walked to school together and did that, and then she went back home to meet another friend and I went to Hamburger Meile down the street to meet my Finnish friend Tiina.  She had to go home a few weeks early due to a family emergency, but she came back to Hamburg for the weekend because she and her friend Siru (also from Finland) got tickets to a Hugh Laurie concert at the Laieszhalle this weekend.  (And yes, I never would have guessed he would do any kind of music, but he has a band and plays jazz and blues, apparently!)  So anyway, I wanted to see Tiina before she went back home to Finland, so we met at Hamburger Meile to get (guess!) ice cream.  She wanted to go downtown to Saturn, the giant electronics store, and then go browsing for clothes at Mönckebergstraße, and Indra wasn't going to be back home until midafternoon, so I decided to go with her in order to hang out for a while longer.  We took the train downtown and headed to Saturn.  Tiina is a Library Science major, so she is into information and technology stuff.  She had found an external hard drive there earlier in the semester and wanted to buy another one before going back home.  Being in Saturn for her was like being in an art store is for Marni and me.  We found the hard drive and then she said, "We'd better hurry up and leave before I spend all my money!"

Stormy weather over the Rathausmarkt (those are the
St. Jacobi and St. Petri church spires, by the way)

When we came out of Saturn it was pouring rain!  I had noticed some rather dark and stormy-looking clouds when we were getting on the train a while earlier, and they had rolled in and were now producing a nice hot-weather shower.  I am still so thrilled by these summer storms--they are a phenomenon virtually unknown in California, so I'm always super excited when we have one.  Neither of us had an umbrella, and even if we had, the rain was blowing sideways and we would have gotten soaked, so we had to wait under the overhang outside the store until the shower had passed.  Thankfully it didn't last long, and soon we were on our way down Mönckebergstraße to Europa Passage.  We went to Desigual, and they were having a sale, but after looking at the "sale" prices Tiina quickly decided that even at 50 percent off they were way more than she wanted to pay.  (Shopping in Europa Passage, and in downtown Hamburg in general, is really expensive--they jack up all the prices at the chain businesses, and they also have a lot of the fancy designer brands like Chanel, Hugo Boss, and A&F.)  So we ended up leaving Europa Passage and walking to the Rathausmarkt, where Tiina was going to meet Siru and another friend.

Tiina and Siru aren't sisters, just friends, but they look and dress
uncannily alike.  I think their brains must be fused . . .

The tank-top trio . . . Tiina, me, and Siru (whom I think the camera
caught at the wrong moment, because she looks way serious)

We were surprised to see some kind of a food-and-wine event set up in the square.  It had lots of tables set up under canopies and wooden food booths selling pretzels, wurst, and other similar "fancy snacking" foods to go with the various wines that were being offered.  It reminded me of the Easter market in Kraków.  I had only had one scoop of ice cream at Hamburger Meile and the pretzels were a tad expensive there, so I just got another scoop of ice cream at the Rathausmarkt gelato place.  (I've got less than a week left in Hamburg, so I'm maxing out my European gelato experience, one small scoop at a time.)  We sat on a bench while we waited for the others to show up, and then I saw a lightning bolt and some more thunder rumbled across the sky.  Tiina's friend came walking across the square right then, and at that point the first big fat drops started coming down, so we beelined it to a Balzac Coffee down the street and waited for Siru there.  (Balzac was founded in Hamburg and is kind of the Starbucks of northern Germany, I think.  Their prices are as atrocious as Starbucks', too.)  The rain kind of let up for a few minutes, but after Siru got there it started to really pour buckets and it came down pretty heavily for a while.  We stayed at the coffee shop for at least an hour, just talking, since the weather was not suitable for going back out.  I really enjoyed the time with them.  I can't for the life of me remember their friend's name, but he is an Information/Library Science major like Tiina and Siru are, and they knew him from their classes at HAW.  He lives in Hamburg.  It was classic talking to the three of them, because the conversation was so different.  Nothing philosophical, like my conversations with Indra, Marni, or Petra would be.  Not much reference to music either.  Instead it was a lot of talk about grammar and computer-related stuff, and the jokes were information-major jokes rather than art-major jokes.  (It reminded me of the night we played Warhammer with Indra's friends and, although they tried their best to minimize the physics- and law-student comments, Johannes made a joke about the Kelvin temperature scale.)  It was just so fun to hang out with students who were studying something so completely different from me.  Incredible how your brain adjusts to your field of study to the point that your conversations begin to reflect it.  Anyway, we had a great time.  Ninni (my friend from the Berlin trip) was going to come meet Tiina and Siru at 4, but Indra would be getting back from Hanerau around then so I decided to leave.  I gave Tiina and Siru goodbye hugs and told them I was so glad to have met them both.  Between them and Ninni, I really want to visit Finland now!  I like the Finns!

Their friend had to leave too, so we walked out of Balzac together and he went to catch the bus.  I went down into the subway and actually happened to pass Ninni!  She was on her way to meet the other girls.  We talked for a minute.  I didn't keep her long, though, because we are planning to make another attempt at the summer Hamburger Dom on Monday (since our trip to the spring one back in April was a fail) and I will get to see her one last time then.

Indra wasn't home yet when I got back, and neither was Petra.  I had never had a real lunch aside from the ice cream, so I munched an apple while I was standing at the window listening to the thunder far away.  The storm was done, but the sky was so rumbly.  The thunder would sort of roll on and on for thirty seconds at a time.

Just after I had gone to my room and sat down to work on the painting of the couple I had met at the USA-Deutschland public viewing, someone rang the doorbell downstairs.  I answered it on the intercom and they were asking for me, so I buzzed them in.  It was a girl and a guy, and they were Jehovah's Witnesses.  Indra had talked to them twice before because they had come looking for me and I wasn't home either time.  (Apparently they asked for me because I have an American name.)  Anyway, even though I know my interpretation of the Bible is not the same as the JWs, I invited them in and we talked for a bit.  It was cool--they were both super nice, of course, because JWs generally are really nice--and we didn't ever end up getting into any deep theological discussions, really, because Indra came home at that point.  They were mostly telling me about their program of Bible discussion small groups.  When I told them that I try to read my Bible every day, they both seemed really surprised.  They said that hardly anyone they ever meet does that.  I guess it's become so much a habit for me now that I don't think about it much, but I really do read something out of the Bible almost every day (the only times I occasionally skip are when I am for some reason too exhausted to read before bed, which is very seldom since I'm a night owl).  I guess that is a rather rare thing among the general population, though, even among people who claim Christianity . . . still, I was kind of surprised at how surprised they were, if that makes sense.

This is how tiramisù was meant to be done, baby!

Anyway, after they left, Indra and I got changed and went to Il Pavone (the place with the amazing crème brûlée) to have a nice dinner, since Der König der Löwen never worked out.  Indra wore her pretty new skirt, and she loaned me one of her shirts to wear because my fancy shirt didn't look right with my earrings.  It was a nice royal blue, which she said suited me really well.  By then the rain was done, so we walked down the street to the restaurant and we were able to sit outside.  I think we were the only people in the whole place for most of the time.  Indra had a pizza margherita and I had bruschetta, and for dessert she ordered (of course, because it's her absolute favorite) the crème brûlée and I ordered the tiramisù, which was a nice big square and absolutely AMAZING.  Il Pavone is one of those gems of a restaurant where the chef really knows what he's doing and everything they make is incredible.  I didn't regret one bit that I didn't order the crème brûlée, because that tiramisù was off the chart.  Even the berries in lemon cream served with it for garnish were perfect.

When we got home, Petra came back and we watched a movie Indra had been telling me about.  It was called Sissi and it was one of those cheesy-and-romanticized-but-still-good films from the early 1950s.  The story was basically about the meeting and marriage of Princess Elisabeth of Bavaria and Kaiser Franz Josef of Austria-Hungary in 1853.  Of course it was predictable, and definitely cheesy like those old films are, but the three of us still enjoyed it a lot--the production was good, for the time period at least, and the sets and costumes were really nice.  I never knew anything about Elisabeth (her childhood nickname was Sissi) and Franz Josef, really, so it was informative for me even if the details weren't historically accurate.  I also learned more German words and phrases because we were able to watch it with English subtitles, which helped me figure out what the characters were saying.  Indra told us that they made three Sissi movies total about Elisabeth and Franz Josef, and apparently Romy Schneider, the Austrian actress who played Elisabeth, was sort of like the Grace Kelly of German film.  She was very pretty and played a lot of roles, but died before the age of 50 (except her death was thought to be a suicide, not an accident like Grace Kelly's).  By the way, Germany is not known for its filmmaking like France, Italy, Britain, and the U.S. are--in general its films are really awful, according to Indra, and so the Germans make up for it by doing really excellent audio dubbing for all the English- and French-speaking films.

Anyway, it's late and I have to sleep now.  But it was an awesome day!  Petra decided to not go to Amsterdam, so she'll be here for the weekend too, which will be nice.  Even though I'm now officially in my last week, it's shaping up to be a good last week.

More swimming!

This morning I went to school to pick up my prints and get a receipt for all my expenses in the print shop over the semester.  (Actually, I ran all the way there because I didn't want to take forever.  Mom and Joanna, that's about 2.5 kilometers . . . it was a little tougher because it was late morning and the sun was hot, but I kept it up surprisingly well.)  I also printed out my Abmeldung, which is my change-of-address form for Hamburg's city record to tell them that I will no longer be living at Georgi-Haus.

I was supposed to meet Indra at the Stadtpark at 1, and I didn't leave school until almost 12:30, but I decided to walk back home instead of taking the train because the day was so nice.  On the way I witnessed a slightly scary moment.  There were five girls (I think at least a couple of them were sisters) running in an asphalt lot at the edge of the little community park near Georgi-Haus.  There is a big permanent billboard sign set up at the corner of the lot there.  It has two vertical struts holding up the sign with two diagonal struts connected to those for counterbalance, and there are four big cement blocks anchoring the struts to the ground so the sign won't fall over in heavy wind.  You can walk under it, but you have to pay attention because between the vertical and diagonal strut on each side there is a horizontal bar connecting the struts, about four feet off the ground.  So these girls were all running top speed, chasing each other or something, and right as I got to the sign they were coming towards me from the other direction.  They went to run under the sign, but one girl (who was probably about nine or ten) didn't see the horizontal bar because it was just above her eye level.  She went running under the sign at top speed and BAM!  Her forehead slammed right into the bar and the impact knocked her flat on her back on the asphalt.  Of course she grabbed her head and burst out crying, and the other girls all screeched to a stop to see if she was okay.  The oldest girl, who was maybe fourteen or fifteen, helped her get up.  I stopped too, because I didn't know if she would need first aid or something.  But praise the Lord, that girl had a hard head, because she only had a little mark on her head, no cut, and her only other injury was a skinned elbow.  I'm sure it hurt like the dickens, and she'll probably have a pretty nasty bump on her forehead from it, but thankfully she wasn't bleeding or unconscious or anything.  I stayed long enough just to be sure everything was okay and then continued on my way.  But man, it scared me when the bar knocked her flat like that.  (Emily, it reminded me of that time when you were four years old and you clonked your head on that metal bar at the bank!)  I was really glad there were no stitches or major first aid required.  Hopefully she's okay now, poor kid.

Anyway, I finally got home and changed into my swimsuit.  I was late meeting Indra at the Stadtpark, but we had a nice afternoon anyway.  It was windy today, so we spent longer intervals lying in the sun and shorter intervals swimming.  The wind reminded me of the ever-present afternoon wind at SoCal beaches . . . preparing me for chilly afternoons working at the pool when I get home, I guess.

Indra went home to Hanerau for the night because she leaves for her trip to Hungary on Sunday and her parents wanted to see her before she goes.  (By the way, her trip will last a week and she is going to a special music academy program.  She qualified for it through her Gymnasium, or advanced-level high school, because she was and still is a good student.  It will be the first trip she has taken by herself, kind of like coming to Hamburg was for me.  Although in her case, she won't be gone nearly as long as I was.)

Speaking of coming and going, I've only got one week left until I come home!  God willing, I'll be landing at LAX at 7:30 pm next Wednesday.  I'm sad to leave Hamburg, of course, but I'm also excited to see everybody in California!  By the way, to any lap swimmers or pool staff who are reading, I was telling Indra about you today and I didn't realize until now how much I miss you all!  Don't worry, just one more week and I'll be back to bother you guys again.  :)

FINALLY! Printmaking course work in the bag!

At least I sure hope so!

I finished my last two plates with my portraits of Grandma, did two prints of each (one for me and one for Louise), and then made a little title plate and printed a couple of those also.  Took me a while, but I was kind of taking my time.  I got there earlier today, so I was out of the workshop by 3.  All I have to do now is go back tomorrow and pick up the prints (the paper has to dry overnight) and then get a receipt for my expenses.  (I don't want to know how much I spent on paper and zinc plates over the course of the semester . . .)

On the way home I got the brilliant idea to get groceries at Hamburger Meile because there is an Aldi there.  I figured it would save me a trip to the Aldi by my house, and I wanted to get my groceries before it got any later and the store got crowded.  But I had no shopping bag.  And my list of groceries looked something like: 2 liters of milk, a box of grapes, a box of peaches, a 6-pack of apples, a head of lettuce, a cucumber, and some tomatoes.  So it took me a couple of minutes to figure out a semi-comfortable way to carry them, which was still not at all comfortable.  And I had to walk almost 2 kilometers to get home.  Not that far, but when you have 2 liters of milk and a 6-pack of apples balanced in one arm, a shoulder bag with zinc plates and art supplies in it, and a couple of little plastic produce bags full of lettuce, tomatoes, grapes, and peaches in the other hand, it feels like a LONG way.  Actually it went pretty well overall--praise the Lord, I didn't drop anything and none of the bags ripped (good old German-made products!)--but my arms and my back were killing me by the time I got home.  Note to self: Next time just go to the Aldi near your house, you goofball!  At least I got an arm workout.

My cupboard is now empty and my fridge is totally full, due to the continued humidity.  If I'd been thinking, I could have saved all the moldy things from the past week and started my very own mold garden!  (Anybody remember those from the elementary school days?)  I've been performing daily mold checks on my food supply.  Good thing Petra is traveling, because if she were here we wouldn't have enough room in the fridge for us both!

Still no success on the Lion King tickets, unfortunately.  Indra says she doesn't think it will work out . . . it's peak tourist season, everybody is on summer break, and the discount tickets seem to be really hard to come by, even for a weeknight show.  Oh well . . . we'll find something fun (and probably a lot less expensive!) to do instead.  We had been planning to bring a fancy picnic dinner to eat before the show (Hollywood Bowl style) and to do each other's hair, so we can still do that stuff, just without the show added in.  Guess we'll have to be content with listening to the soundtrack.

This just in: Marni made it back to Australia in one piece!  I saw a picture on Facebook of her 1 am reunion with her boyfriend Will.  Of course she had the dazed "just traveled for over 20 hours" look, but I could tell they were really happy to finally be back together.  I know they missed each other.  (Good grief, eight days from now I'll be arriving back in L.A., wearing that same dazed look, no doubt.)

Still trying to finish my print series . . .

This morning Indra and I went down to the discount ticket office to see if we could get tickets for Der König der Löwen for tomorrow night.  Alas, we were unsuccessful . . . the only tickets available were full-price ones, which were more than we wanted to pay (even with how badly we want to see the show).  So we'll have to keep trying.  I hope it will work out!

Went to school from there and spent the day working on my last two plates for my mezzotint series of Grandma.  I was almost done, but then it was 5:30 and we had to clean up for the day.  So I'll have to go back tomorrow.  That's the sometimes-frustrating thing about printmaking.  It can take SUCH a long time.  Hopefully tomorrow I'll finally be finished with them and I can wrap up my time in the print shop!

Indra ordered a new skirt, which came in the mail today.  It's almost ankle-length and is blue and green with a flower-patterned stripe in the middle and some shimmery ribbons.  I think it looks really nice on her.  Up until now I've only seen her wear pants.  She said that she didn't have any skirts before she bought this one, because a lot of skirts don't look good on her.  I have the same problem--both of us have kind of short legs, which doesn't look particularly attractive for shorter skirts--but the long one looks great on her, especially because it's in her colors!  (In case I never mentioned it, Indra's absolute favorite color is green.  She also likes to wear blue, and she really doesn't like to wear black outfits.  The only black clothing items she owns are pants and shoes--her tops are always bright and cheery.)

This humid weather is wreaking havoc on our food!  Every time I open the cupboard or the fridge, it seems like something else is moldy.  My cupboard is getting more and more empty and the fridge is getting more full because I keep putting stuff in there to preserve it.  Tonight I ate more of the salvaged potatoes I roasted yesterday, along with cooked carrots because the carrots were going moldy and I had to use them ASAP.  I cooked some and then chopped the rest and stuck them in the freezer to cook with my other frozen veggies.  Had to make applesauce out of the last apple in the package because it had too many soft spots to just eat it.  By the time I cut out the soft parts and the core, there was only half the apple left.  I didn't trust my bread to stay free of mold, so it went in the fridge tonight too.

Wish I had more exciting things to report . . . today's events were a tad mundane.

Though I did solve two Sudoku puzzles after dinner, which was fun.  Indra flipped open one of Corina's celebrity magazines piled on the side table in the kitchen last night (yes, they have those ridiculous magazines here too and the only difference between them and the American ones is that all the celebs in these are German) and discovered that there are crosswords and Sudoku in the back of them.  So tonight we each took one magazine and tackled the puzzles.  I couldn't do the crosswords though, because they were in German . . . my skills definitely aren't up to par for that one!

One other random observation: Why are the graphics and color choices on those celeb magazines always so hideous?  I notice it even more now that I've been in art school for a while.  Is the ugly clash of colors, typography, and photographs supposed to be more eye-catching?  Do the magazines purposely seek out all the poor souls who failed graphic design school to be their employees?  Is there an underground contest among all the celeb magazines and tabloids for "Most Nauseating Cover of the Year"?  I just can't imagine wanting to actually pay for something so clunky-looking . . .

I am SO thankful for the Stadtparksee.

Because today was super humid and sweaty.

I went to City Light in the morning.  Walked in the shade as much as I could on the way there, but I was still quite sticky by the time I arrived.  Everybody else was too, though.  Janos's three-year-old daughter asked him, "Papa, who poured water on you?" because the back of his shirt was so sweaty after setting up the room.  I enjoyed doing worship, though by the end my shirt was damp too and I'm pretty sure I sweated on Joey's guitar.  (Sorry about that, Joey . . . if your guitar is sticky it's probably from me!)

Rebecca's mom and dad are visiting from California this week, so I got to meet them.  They are going with the Ropers up to Copenhagen and to the North Sea during the week, which should be fun for them all.  (Ah, Copenhagen . . . Marni and Petra told me great things about that city, but alas I didn't get around to visiting it.)  There were also a few other new people this week, one of whom was named Kelly.  She is from North Carolina and is in Hamburg for a while to be an in-house nanny.  We traded contact info so I could send her travel tips about hostels and stuff like that.

The service was really good.  Joey finished up the series about the vision of City Light that they've been doing the last couple months.  The message today was about giving.  I wasn't quite sure how that topic would go--after all, giving is one of those topics that makes a lot of people uncomfortable--but the way Joey explained it was different than I've ever heard it taught before.  We read 1 Chronicles 29, where David and all the people contributed willingly and generously to the building materials for the temple in Jerusalem.  When he saw how abundantly everyone had given, David praised God and thanked Him for everything He had given Israel.  Joey was talking about how the people's gift was generous because it was born out of true thankfulness to God.  The point of the message was: When we we start to really consider how much God has given us--how even the little things, like health and air to breathe and strength for each day, only come by His grace--then our gifts to Him flow out as a natural response, and we are willing to give not just money to serve God, but other things like time and skills and resources.  That was the case with David and the Israelites, and that is how it should be for believers today.  Extremely helpful . . . I've never heard it explained from that angle, and that helped me understand the "giving to God" concept so much better!

I met Indra at the Stadtpark at 1:30 and we went straight into the water.  It felt SO good . . . cold when you got in, but a very nice kind of cold.  You're just so glad to not be hot and sticky that the initial nip doesn't matter.  I have to say, this phenomenon is one that I've rarely experienced in my life, being from the California coast where you always have that chilly ocean breeze giving you goosebumps before you get in the water.  While we were swimming we heard the Polizeiorchester (which was in Planten un Blomen the other day) playing again!  They were on the west side of the lake and we listened from the water.  I knew it was them by their white polo shirts and white truck with the name on the side.

Thankfully some humid-weather clouds came in about midafternoon, which cooled everyone off to a comfortable temperature.  Indra and I left around 5 and made dinner sometime around 6.  She made Marni's pita-pocket döner recipe and I made a humongous batch of roasted potatoes because a couple of my potatoes started to go rancid and they had to be used up.  (Most of the batch went into the fridge . . . I think I'll be eating them for dinner the next couple of days . . . )  After dinner we watched Anastasia in English (which I had never seen before and enjoyed pretty well) and then Beauty and the Beast in German (its German title is Die Schöne und das Biest).  Ahhh, summer vacation, when you have no school so you spend the first couple weeks swimming, tanning, and watching movies--in other words, basically doing nothing.

I ALMOST made it through the semester without burning myself while cooking . . . but it happened tonight.  Got my knuckle on the inside edge of the oven and ended up with a sort of instant blister.  I iced it right away though, and Indra gave me some aloe vera gel and a nice little blister bandage for it.   Actually the burn was totally my fault, because I was being lazy and I didn't want to take the pan out of the oven to add more pepper to the potatoes.  So I kind of asked for it.  Oh well, live and learn.

Now I am going to bed.  Hot weather is making me so sleepy . . . Gute Nacht . . . zzzzzzzz

Another lovely day of sun and swimming

And tomorrow we'll probably go again.  The weather is staying hot and we're out of school, so we're keeping up this swimming-at-the-Stadtpark thing.

Getting dressed this morning meant "putting on my swimsuit and sundress."  Indra and I went to the park around 11.  We didn't go to the Naturbad today because we knew it would be packed (due to its being a hot Saturday).  Instead we found a spot on one of the lawns near the dock on the north side of the Stadtparksee.  We stayed for about four hours.  Our routine goes something like: Put on sunscreen, swim until we start to get cold, get out and lie in the sun until we're too hot to stand it anymore, then repeat the process.  While we were lying out, we nibbled on grapes and apples and listened to Der König der Löwen on Indra's mp3 player (one ear bud per person).  Indra also read, and I drew people around us.  More life-drawing subjects than I could ask for!  (For the record, most of the time in the Stadtpark people don't nude-sunbathe--they have a few designated areas for that--so everybody at least has their swimsuits on.  Don't be alarmed, ladies and gentlemen.)  It's been so interesting to me to see the European summer culture in comparison to the California one.
Europe: Gelato, white skin, lying out on grass, calm-water swimming
California: Cold Stone, tan skin, lying out on sand, surfing and diving under waves
I have to say, the European summer scene is neat in a way because there is less overall obsession with having the "perfect body."  Lots of people here are concerned about looking good, of course, but nobody here looks artificial, and although there are of course exceptions, people generally look more natural--fewer tattoos, spray tans, piercings in weird places, etc.  It's the exact opposite of spots like Huntington Beach.  People of all ages, from 2 to 82, strip down to swimsuits, no matter how ghostly white their skin is or how saggy or lumpy they might look, and just lie out in the sun or get in the pool.  None of the "Oh, I can't wear a two-piece suit, I haven't stuck to my diet this month" speeches.  It's refreshing.  Not to mention that it makes for more fun and interesting drawings!  Who wants to draw a bunch of people who look like Barbie and Ken?  There's no variety in that!

The Naturbad was SO crowded today!  (Which is why we didn't go there.)

Today was so hot that the initial plunge into the lake felt cold but incredibly nice at the same time.  We decided the lake needed a legendary monster, so we invented the Flachmonster (Flatmonster), which is a giant monster that is flat (obviously) and lives on the bottom of the Stadtparksee, eating the litter people throw in and saving the occasional distressed swimmer.  He has a velvety hide, rather than a slimy skin like a stingray.  We also tried to see what was on the bottom, but the main part of the See is so murky that you can't see anything until it is six inches in front of you.

On the way home we got a quick ice cream at the place at the end of our street.  I was glad I only got one scoop, because it had turned into a sorbet soup in the cup by the time we got to the front door.  It was only a little after 4 and we weren't quite ready for dinner, so we watched a movie Indra has been telling me about all semester called Les Choristes (The Chorus).  It is a French film about a music teacher who comes to a boarding school for "problematic" boys and teaches them to sing.  I really, really enjoyed it.  Indra had to pause it periodically and translate things for me because she had streamed it online and we didn't have subtitles.  My one semester of French did not serve me well for watching this movie.  But I still enjoyed it despite my lack of comprehension of the dialogue.

We made bruschetta (one of Indra's favorite dishes) for dinner.  It was really delicious.

Ugh, it's after 9 and it is still so hot!  My window is wide open, but the outside air is exactly the same temperature as the inside air.  Even the little bit of wind is doing absolutely nothing to cool things off.  Usually in the afternoons and evenings, the courtyard and backyards between the buildings are noisy because people are eating out on their patios and balconies and all the kids from the apartments are running around and playing.  Today it has been absolutely silent--no noise whatsoever since we got home from the park.  I think everybody is just sitting in their houses and moving as little as possible so they don't melt away.

Tomorrow I am playing worship at City Light!  I enjoy doing it.  I've learned lots of German words that way, and I can now sing multiple songs in German!

In the meantime I have to try and sleep . . . I wish I had a fan in my room . . .

Now it really feels like summer!!!

This is what I have been anticipating all semester--weather hot enough to warrant days at the Stadtparksee.  Indra and I went back there again this afternoon.

Actually, in the morning I went to open hours in the printmaking shop at school because I have more work to finish up.  I spent about two hours making a portfolio folder (in German they call it a mappe) for my Magic Flute series to go in.  Alas, the print on the cover didn't come out as perfect as I would have liked, but I had to live with it because I didn't have any more pieces of card paper and it had taken me so long to measure and cut.

Indra looked super cool wearing my sunglasses

At noon I cleaned up my mess in the shop and zoomed home.  I was supposed to meet Indra at the pool at 2, and I needed time to get changed and make our milk rice for dinner.  Marni and I accidentally bought milk rice instead of regular rice the other night when we were shopping for our curry-chicken ingredients, so I ended up with a whole unused package of it.  Indra said she knew how to make it, so she told me we could prepare some for our dinner tonight.  She told me how to do it, because it has to be prepared a while in advance.  You boil milk, add the rice, let it boil again, and then take it off the stove and wrap it in towels and blankets to keep it hot for a couple of hours while the rice soaks up the milk.  The plan was to make the rice and let it sit wrapped up while we were at the pool.  So I came home from school and prepared the rice before changing into my swim clothes.  I was successful, although I made a bit of a mess because the milk boiled over and I had to clean the stove off afterwards.  Once I had the rice boiling, I took it off the burner, wrapped it in a towel, and then put it in my room and covered it up with my bed comforter like Indra said to do.  Then I got my swim stuff and went to the Stadtpark!

The Stadtpark Naturbad (natural pool)

Lots of people enjoying the sunshine and the water today!

Indra and I had another really nice afternoon.  We swam, sat in the sun for a bit, then swam again and then laid out to dry off before going home.  We both brought our goggles and it was so fun to dive under the water and skim our hands through the plants on the bottom or look for fish.  The Naturbad is really cool because it is like a lake and a pool at the same time.  I wished we had an underwater camera (not that the water is crystal clear or anything, but it still would have been fun to take underwater pictures).  It was hotter today than yesterday and it was also Friday, so the whole place was crowded.  Tomorrow if we go swimming again, we'll go to the big part of the lake where all the boats are, and where you don't have to pay.  The water is way more murky on that side, but it will be much less crowded there.

When we got home it was only 5:15 or so, but the milk rice was ready and we were really hungry, so we ate it right then, with cinnamon sugar sprinkled on top.  I had never tried milk rice until today and I liked it a lot.  After that we went to Indra's room and spent the next couple of hours making a recording.  We still haven't managed to find a good spot to record our church songs, but a whilke back I found another song called "Kilkelly" that I shared with Indra, and we decided it would be fun to record that one too.  So we made our vocal recordings and a guitar recording tonight.  Indra has Cubase, which allows you to select all kinds of different instruments on an electric piano, so she will add some other instruments like violin or flute later.  It's an Irish folk song and it should sound really pretty when it's done.

Before bed we watched The Iron Giant, which is an animated film by Brad Bird (the guy who directed Ratatouille and The Incredibles).  Indra and Marni had told me it was a good movie, and after seeing it I definitely agreed.  I really, really liked it!  It was cute, touching, and also super funny.

Last night before we went to bed, Indra showed me a movie called Drei Haselnüße für Aschenbrödel, which was a Czech-German collaborative adaptation of Cinderella.  It was from the 1970s and was definitely different from the American filmmaking style, but it was a beautiful movie with super nice scenery and really good character interpretations (the prince was especially well done because he actually had a personality, rather than just sort of being there like in the Disney version).  This version was set in winter, and there were a lot of pretty scenes in snowy woods.  In the story, Aschenbrödel (Cinderella) gets three hazelnuts from the stepmother's carriage driver, which turn out to be magic hazelnuts that can grant wishes.  I really enjoyed that movie too.  I would recommend both it and The Iron Giant.

Oh, and also . . . Indra and I have decided that, even though it will leave us 60 euros poorer, we are going to try and get tickets for Der König der Löwen (The Lion King) next week.  We've been listening to the soundtrack nonstop and wanting to see it so badly that we finally decided to just do it.  We can't wait!  It should be a really fun activity for our last week together!