"Keep waiting, I'll be right on time," or "Even if you cannot hear my voice, I'll be right beside you dear"

This Post is dedicated to David Rosentrater, Skype, and borrowed music.

So I think it's about time to update this thing. A number of things have come to pass which are noteworthy, and so I note them:

-My classes for Marburg are officially chosen
-My classes for Messiah are officially chosen (unless I decide to change them)
-I am a second-week-victim of Hausversammelung
-I have a roommate! (almost)

Now to expound.

Classes at Marburg run as follows: Monday I have a Pronunciation class, in hopes that in a couple weeks I will be able to introduce myself to a German without getting the immediate response, "Du bist Amerikaner?" Actually I haven't had that happen to me a lot, but I do have some trouble making myself understood at times, and already after only the second class, I feel more comfortable with pronunciation. All this to say, I'm excited about the class. Also on Monday I have Introduction to German Linguistics. This class is absolutely awesome. I am already familiar with a lot of the stuff we are learning, having taking a Linguistics class at Messiah (thanks Chuck!), and so now I am learning the German terminology for things, and also getting to review a class that I wished I would have been able to go more in depth with! On top of all that, one of the Italians from my Sprachkurs, Sylvia, is in it with me, which means I'll have a way to keep connected to her, Elias, and François.

Tuesday I have 3 courses almost right in a row. The first is a good old fashioned Grammar course, with amazing Frau Biedebach. The second, also with Biedebach, is a literature course that is probably going to kill me with all the reading we have to do. Actually, as I write this I should probably be reading for it, but whatever...
After my Biedebach marathon, I have an hour or so before "Theoretical concepts of Foreign language learning." Those of you who know me will realize that just reading the title of this course online made me drool. The class is even more amazing, and again, I am being re-introduced to many concepts (only now auf deutsch) that I learned last semester with my TESOL class (thanks Michelle!).

Wednesday, I just have Fencing in the evening, which is starting to pick up a little more speed. So far we have just been practicing posture, footwork, etc. Hopefully in the next two weeks we'll get to don the mask and glove and toucher each other.

Messiah classes are looking fun too. I managed to procure a prerequisite waver for 300 level Spanish courses, since I haven't taken 206 yet. The goal is to hit the Self-learning center at the Sprachzentrum once a week for an hour or so to brush up on my Spanish while here in Marburg, so that I can come home and jump into mind-watering classes like "Applied (Spanish) Phonetics," and "Topics in Spanish Pennsular Literature."I'm also taking a German literature course, a medieval Philosophy course, and, just for fun, French 102! I'm pretty begeistert, to say the least.

Life at the Collegium Philippinum is getting better, and also worse. Ok, so that was rather confusing. I am connecting with my housemates more (now that everyone is back from break) and that is awesome. Many good times eating together and playing an up-the-river-down-the-river hybrid called "Wizard." Fei, a chinese student, and Jan, a German student are my two fellow Wizard addicts, and also some of the coolest people I've met yet in Germany.

In addition to Fei and Jan, I got to meet my room-mate-tomorrow-to-be. That is, he is moving in tomorrow. I'm really excited; even though this Dave is shorter than me, and considerably more bearded than my Dave back home, he still seems like a really nice guy, and I'm looking forward to many good times, both couth and uncouth, hanging out with him. I am already anticipating how much my German is going to improve having a roommate to speak it with. In any case, it is nice to have a stand in Dave, as a Dave-less existence is hardly an existence at all.

Life is not all Daves, Sonnenschein, and Blumen though; in every Leben must fall some Regen.

The rain of which I speak falls every Monday night from about 8:15 and persists until around 11:30 pm. This is the dreaded "Hausversammelung." A direct one-to-one translation would be "house assembly," but this doesn't capture all of the fine cultural points and nuances of the thing. Here is a more semantically accurate Übersetzung:

Hausversammelung 1 |hous-fehr-zam-mell-ung|
noun
1 ( Hausversammelung) A late meeting in which Germans argue heatedly for hours over petty things, through which people who have no idea what is going on are forced to sit, praying that either someone will set of the fire alarm, or Christ will return and save his children from the awful tribulation.

that captures the true spirit of the thing, I think. Needless to say, it is not much fun, but I am learning vocabulary in a way that I never would do otherwise: pure context. Last week, I learned the word for Mildew--"Schimmel" (shim-mell)--simply by hearing it talked about in context for almost an hour. This week, I learned "Bewerbung"--application, after hearing people bicker over when, how, why, and from whom the Collegium Philippinum should accept residency applications. Viel Spaß, Baby.

Enough schimpfen though. All in all, life is going pretty well, even despite the fact that I have finally gotten sick. Everyone else has been sick long before now, and I managed to hold out until this morning I woke up with a sore throat. I think I'll break down and buy some yummy herbal tea.

This weekend (aka, today through Sunday--I love my schedule!) promises lots of homework, but also some fun relaxing. Saturday has plans for a visit to a Schloss in a town a train ride away, and tonight I'm going to get to talk to Kathryn, which pretty much makes today Christmas, or at least Kwanzaa. Until then, I am going to apply myself diligently (maybe) to read some for my Literature, take a nap (almost certainly) so I am not tired tonight at 11:30 when Kathryn calls, and listen to sweet music from Ruth Rosentrater (which I am in the process of doing).

And that brings me full circle to the end of this post, and the explanation for its title(s).
They are the main lines from two awesome songs that I just listened to. The first is from "Keep waiting" by Stavesacre, the second is "Run," by snowpatrol. Both come highly recommended by self and co.

Well, the credits are about to roll, and so I follow suit. Tschüß!