So I bought a Scarf…

Finished with week 1… again!  I’m back in Hamburg and into the flow of things again.  Another week of classes, another weekend, and a whole lot of fun.  I’m downloading the season finale of Mad Men right now - so I’ll go ahead and talk about my 9th week in Hamburg. 

On Monday I had to go sign up for classes again, and was excited they told me that I could be put into the A2 Lektion 7 class.  Basically that meant that I bypassed a month of classes and am now almost in the B level courses (small accomplishments in life are just as important as the big ones).  Tuesday morning I started a new class and had to get back into the flow of listening to someone teach German again.  I also am having to think at a much quicker pace than in my old class.  I definitely feel like I’m making some real good progress by being forced to think and reason in German.  I have a small vocab test tomorrow and I’m going for the max score of 1 million points on.  Actually I’m pretty sure that the best score they give out in Germany is a 1, and the worst score is a 6. 

Anyways, the rest of the week went by fairly quickly, and Friday came and it was time to celebrate a friend’s birthday.  (Ich weiss das ich habe diese schon gesagt aber… ALLES GUT ZUM GEBURTSTAG GAETAN!)  Anyways, we all went out to eat at a pretty sweet restaurant, and then went to the Reeperbahn for a short night out of celebrating.  Saturday a few of us decided to go see The Social Network.  Now, I know my German is getting better, but there is still no way that I can understand an entire film (about electronics even less) yet.  My awesome brother had actually sent me the movie, so I was able to watch it in English on Friday.  Then we went and I was able to know when it was the right time to laugh and when it wasn’t haha.  No, but in all seriousness, it really did help having seen the movie first in English, because I was able to know what words to listen for and what not.  Anyways, awesome movie, recommend it to anyone.

After the movie, we decided that it was time to take a break from the Reeperbahn and instead decided on going to a hookah lounge in Altona.  There was a boxing match going on that featured a guy from the US taking on a guy who lives here in Hamburg (The Hamburger crushed the American).  It was nice being able to relax, drink some tea, and watch the boxing match go on.  After that I came home and watched Texas beat the Yankees (should be up 2-0 arggg) and then watched Baylor pull it out against Colorado.  I honestly think I’m missing the greatest sporting time of my whole life, for my favorite teams. 

So… what else.  Oh yes, I bought a scarf today.  Yes, yes, yes I know what you’re thinking.  Really Lance, a scarf - you know you’re not actually from Europe, right?  To that I answer… yes, I know.  The truth is though, I’ve held out from buying a scarf for as long as I could possibly could.  EVERYONE here has scarfs, and it’s averaging about a high of 9-10 degrees Celsius (45-50 F) and I am freezing every morning walking to class when it’s closer to 2 degrees Celsius.  Oh by the way, quick tip on converting F to C.  Subtract 32 and divide by 2.  It isn’t scientifically correct, but it usually will get you within 2 C degrees or 5 F degrees.  Anyways… back to scarfs.  So today, I went to H&M and bought two scarfs.  I realized that I had no idea how to tie a scarf either (seriously, I don’t know if I’ve ever worn a scarf), so I did what I always do when I don’t know what to do - I went on youtube and found a video on how to tie a scarf.  Now, there a bunch of ways to tie a scarf as noted by this video here -I think I’m going to go with the Slip knot or the Perfect knot, which looks pretty sweet when you figure it out.

I also had a bit of scare this week.  On Sunday, I looked in wallet and couldn’t find my debit card.  I was running out of cash, so it was super important that I find the card.  I looked all over my room and couldn’t find it, and thought that I should cancel it.  I looked at my statements and saw that no one had used the card, and so I thought back to the last time I used it.  I remembered that I used the card to pay for my school - and so I would wait until today to see if I had left it at the school.  Luckily for me, I had left it at the school.  So, I am once again with money in my pocket!  Crisis averted!

Ok, I don’t want to end up writing another novel, but I also don’t want to make a post without any pictures.  So I’ll upload this one picture of when I went to an HSV game before I left Hamburg - and I’ll talk about it in the next few days.  Deal?  Ok, deal!

I would write a German lesson today, but I already talked about the super-crucial Fahrenheit to Celsius conversion method (über important!).  So I think I will leave it with that.  Until next time - God Bless!  And GO RANGERS!!!

18 October 2010 · Comments