meine Freizeit

I'm sure you're all wondering "What do you do with all of your spare time, Colin?" Well, hopefully I can answer this pressing question (j/k all, of course).

1) Read - Thank you, massive, labyrinthine UoK library, for having an enormous English-language section! I found The Third Policeman at the U's library with ease (well, relative ease - it took me about an hour to find the physical book, but I found its listing in the catalog in mere seconds). I also checked out ("lieh aus") The Road by Cormac McCarthy, which looks interesting as well. I'm already about finished with Policeman.

2) Doodle - I brought crayons, pencils, markers and paints with to Germany. It's therapeutic, so my insurance should cover the airline's mulct for my luggage's weighing too much, right?

Still Life


Mater Dolorosa

*I forgot to mention, three paintings I submitted to St. Olaf's other magazine, The Quarry, were accepted for this year's edition (Sadko, Mona Lisa, and The Sudan).

3) Experiment with this foreign concept of "cooking" (in the sense that "cooking" is equivalent with "heating things that I also unwrap") - The waffles and whipped cream were a very wise purchase.

yum!

4) Hike - I think you might have already figured this one out from my last couple of posts ;)

near Mainau

5) And naturally schoolwork/homework/studying… NOT! But seriously, though, I do have a decent number of lecture hours a week.

So that's it, just a brief post.
And Anna, enjoy your grad party! Wish I could be there; they're loads of fun! Con-gradu-lations again :P

Ciao amici!

SO COOL! but SO HOT! - في الأقصر

First off, happy belated 50th, Mrs. Toft!

"So, just how hot is it in Luxor these days?" you ask. Well, today it was 110°F - painful. Tomorrow it's only supposed to be 97°, tho. Being basically in the middle of the desert if you step more than five feet away from the Nile, it's also pretty ungodly dry.

And now, PHOTOS! (way too many, just to warn you)


Breakfast at the Nubian Oasis Hotel is included in the approximately $3 I spend a night staying here! This is about the best breakfast I've had in weeks. The hotel, however, isn't air conditioned, which kind of sucks.

Today we saw some of the coolest things so far, which is saying a lot! First we went to the Valley of the Kings.


It's a good way into the mountainous desert (in order to prevent grave robbing, tho it didn't do a very good job), so we had to take these little carts to the different tombs.

We saw the tombs of Ramses I, III and IV, but couldn't take photos inside. They were amazing! This is the stuff you see in movies and on archeology TV shows (what? you don't watch archeology TV shows?!). It was covered in hieroglyphics and paintings of the gods.


Next we went to Hatshepsut's Mortuary Temple. It was really cool. And here you are allowed to take photos. (For those of you who were wondering, Hatshepsut is the pharaoh who married her half-brother, dressed up like a man, and sort of usurped the throne from her son.)


hieroglyphics in Hatshepsut's Temple


sphinxes around Hatshepsut's Temple

Next up we went to the Valley of the Queens. Here we also went into a few tombs, but they weren't as cool as the King's tombs. And again, no photos allowed.


doorway to one of the Queens' tombs


Next we drove to the Colossi of Memnon. They were huge. But I was so hot in the car, that I'd taken off my shoes (thinking we were done with the trip already). So when we had to jump out of the car, I had to skip across the burning tar to the comparatively cool sand in order to get a good view.


the Nile at Luxor


This was my lunch. It cost less than $2 and was delicious. (tomato soup with lemon and falafel - delicious!)


Luxor seems like it's a lot poorer than Cairo to me, but it might just be that we're living in a low-income area. For example, there is a flock of goats that lives near us and wanders the streets.

Beobachtungen zum Leben in Deutschland

I don't really have much news and, sorry guys, no photos this time, but I do have some (hopefully) interesting observations about life in Germany that I thought I'd share. But first I want to make sure you all know I am actually finally taking classes at the university. Classes in German are tough, but I'm sure I’ll get used to it.

So what makes Germany Germany?

#1. Lots of English (Tandem Team, Locker deposit, Research Center). Normally it's shockingly good English, but bad English is funnier. For example, the following quote I took from a sign hanging in my house's bathroom:

To this badly drawn boy who never flushes the toilet after he used it:
Please get used to it, that in Germany it's a well habbit flushing the toilet after using it no matter you used it for peeing or something else:
Always flushing the toilet after using!! [sic omnis]

#2. Bureaucracy. Labyrinthine bureaucracy. In order to get anything official done, you have to go to about seven different places that are spread out over the city. Each office is only open one or two hours a day (four days a week, if you're lucky), and most of them are open only during the same hour.

#3. An irrational fear of spice. I feel like I'm pretty well known for having a very dull palette, but I can eat even the hottest German food. Curry, for example, tastes basically the same as ketchup. For the most part, "seasoning" is construed as either "salt" or "more salt."

#4. You never cross the street on red. Even if no cars are coming, and it's the middle of the night. Germans will wait for hours until the little green man shows his face.

#5. Business hours. Everything closes around 8pm and basically nothing is open ever on Sundays. The same goes for holidays.

#6. You don't wear bright colors. In fact, it is preferable to wear only black. Kirsten and Amelia have neon green coats. They get glares. Other popular fashion includes maroon hair for middle-aged women, large horizontal stripes, tight jeans with bright white words and designs, and the mullet (as I mentioned in a previous post).

#7. Everyone bikes, even middle-aged people. And bikers are dangerous. Walking to the U each morning is a bit of an adventure, because every five seconds a biker zips past, within inches of taking off your head.

#8. You "klopf" after class, which means you knock with your knuckles on the table as a sign of appreciation for the lecture.

#9. Germans love to sort trash. Depending on what type of garbage you’re throwing away, you use one of about a dozen trashcans. Glass gets divided into three bins based on color. Plastics, cardboard, paper, etc. also get separate canisters. Foodstuff gets thrown into a lidless bin, apparently to rot until someone gets stuck with “Mülldienst” (trash duty) and has to throw it into the dumpster.

#10. Germans are more interested in American politics than Americans are. The first question every German will ask you after the obligatory incredulous "You're American? But you speak German!" is "Who will be the next American president?"

So those are some of the many nuanced differences between America and Germany. Life here is overall very similar, but as I mentioned, there are certainly some differences. I definitely don’t mean any of the above to sound harsh (except the bureaucracy comment – that really irks me). Germany is hands down my favorite country outside of the US at this point, and the people here are basically all unbelievably nice, friendly and helpful.

But guess where I'm going to be all of next week? So I'm kind of skipping out on class - ah, probably not the best idea, since it's just the second week, but oh well, I already have the tickets…
-MOSCOW!
Now if you're the stereotypical American, you're probably sitting there, eating your 10lbs McCheeseburger after a long day of plowing your cornfield, and thinking to yourself, "Moscow's the capital of London." Well no, that’s wrong. Moscow's actually in Russia. You can learn loads about Russia from my blog from last year, or you can simply wait for sweet updates throughout the upcoming week!

Viel Spaß und bis dann!