Randoms (Friday Sept 16, 2011)

I haven't been blogging much this week. When nothing exciting happens, I don't feel like it's necessary to blog, but at the same time I want to be keeping track of what I'm doing daily. School this week was Nicht gut. Not good. It was ok. But I struggled a lot. We began getting into nominative and accusative with three different articles, der, die and das (m, f, and neutral). There is also dative, but we haven't gotten there yet. Anyways, it is very confusing to understand in English let alone German. So that has been overwhelming. I am however doing pretty well with the vocab. Skye has gotten way too used to me always saying, "wie sagt man...." (how do you say...) about all the words I want to say. A few of you mentioned that I have a great attitude toward my class and my classmates. Well, I'm sorry to let you down, but I just cannot do it. I can't make myself like anyone. I have basically made my way around the room trying to make friends and it isn't working. I either actively dislike or am indifferent to everyone in there. There are some people that are nice enough, I can ask questions to my nachbar/nachbarin (neighbors). But as far as hanging out outside of school--forget it. But it's ok because the class I'm in now is just the intensive 5 week course. I'm hoping that when I begin the real semester in October, I can make friends. It is also hard to be near people that REEK! I just can't figure out what people have against showers and/or deodorant. Often times I have to hold a kleenex to my nose to breath (I'm not joking...). 

In other news we finally got paid from the fulbright! So what did I do? I went shopping of course! But only for some necessities. Our apartment is in an odd spot. We have many, and HUGE windows which is amazing, but because of all the trees in the back and the location, the sun doesn't shine directly in very much, so it's always quite chilly in our apartment. Also, as I think I have mentioned before, Klaus (who we're subletting from) is recently divorced, and obviously a man, and the apartment reflects that well! Anyways, he does not have extra blankets and I am cold all the time, so I bought a blanket. I also bought some socks and a blow dryer. I had to ditch my blow dryer in Texas because it was too heavy and they use different outlets here anyways. Guess what else I went to buy? That's right.....the shoe drama continues! I went to buy a pair of REALLY good shoes. I have been having some foot problems for the past year or so, and this last spring I finally went to the doctor about it. She said I either have plantar fasciitis or a heel spur. I have been doing hair 7 years now which means standing A LOT so it's not a huge surprise. While I have switched to flats, I haven't worn decent shoes, other than my danskos, which I hardly ever wear because, well, that's a whole other story. Something I realized last night is we don't use the thick black mats at Reprise, we stand directly on hard wood, and I have noticed my foot pain in the past year or year and a half, and this September would have been my two year anniversary at Reprise.....coincidence? Hmmm. Ok, I know I vowed to you all that I wouldn't write so much about shoes, but this dilemma is becoming quite frustrating. So I did a lot of research on Clarks and I am trying to stick to brands that I KNOW are good. And Clark shoes are made in the UK, so they are around Germany. I googled it and found a Clark store not far from where we live! I was so excited! Yesterday was going to be an afternoon of shopping in a new place! I was going to converse by myself with a German shoe salesperson and find the perfect shoe for me! I had even thought about trying to say some things in German! I went to a shopping area that is basically right next to the shopping area off the Dom, but it is different. I walked up and down and up and down the strip and followed my directions to a tee. But I couldn't find it. It was gone. I think it was replaced by an ecco (not Ecko with the rhino) shoe store, which looked promising, but I didn't want to take any chances when I was making an INVESTMENT in shoes. So at this point, my feet were killing me which made me even more disappointed. So I walked to the galleria to get my other things and on the way stopped in a few large shoe stores just to see if they sold clarks. The galleria has about 5 different styles of Clarks which were all quite ugly. So I'm still shoe-less and my feet are making me miserable.

On the positive side, in the new shopping center I found a few familiar chain stores...one of them was......SALLY BEAUTY SUPPLY!!!! I was THRILLED!!! And this one isn't full of generic crap, it has some decent brands! and all the supplies I could ever need! I even asked if they would take my american Sally card, and they will! So I was very excited about that! And though I didn't get to speak a lot with a German, when I bought my blow dryer the cashier did tell me a couple things that I didn't understand, but I picked it up and knew what she was saying. So that was good, and I need to do more of that. I just need to not let myself get embarrassed!

Skye met a friend of a friend, George, at the beginning of the summer who lives in Cologne, and we're meeting up with him and his girlfriend this evening, so that will be great! I'm very excited! We NEED friends!!! Tomorrow we're heading to Koblenz where we will rent bikes and bike around the city and meet up with a girl from Skye's program who lives there. So this weekend will be social, which is much needed.

I only have weird pictures for you today from Appelhofplatz (which is the shopping center I went to), specifically Breite Straße. And a few every day things that are just simply different in Germany. I don't think I ever mentioned the school supplies. I could not find a normal 3 ring binder and a pack of paper. Most of the binders I have found are floppy and cost about 5 euros! And a pack of paper costs about 3 euros and has less than an 88 cent pack from wal mart! It was crazy! So before school started i got this very thin booklet of notebook paper and used a folder I had brought with my documents in it. So I have been on the hunt for school supplies, and I finally found some for cheap (cheaper) on campus.

Appelhofplatz

 

This is the binder I found, it's really wide, it fits in my backpack, but barely. On sale for 1,89 euros! I found thin notepad of paper on sale for ,49 cents, so I stocked up!

No 3 ring binders in Germany! Only 2 rings, they all look like this. The paper has 4 holes and the middle two fit into here. Also, see on the binding that hole? It's so random, but most of them have that. I have no idea why. it's weird.

My European blow dryer cord vs my American curling iron cord

American (green one) toothpase vs German toothpaste. We could only find that tiny tube! I'm happy to report that it does not taste like cloves and flowers, it tastes like Mint! woo! It was about 3 euros. The colegate I use at home I typically get a 3 pack of large tubes and it costs be about 5$. So yikes. Oh well.