immer_immersion epitome of incomprehensibility First_day_of_school: Kassel, Germany edition! In that blathe's tradition of clothes: mid-dark blue sneakers. Black dress with short sleeves and skirt over leggings with stars and comets in various shades of blue. Pale aqua hoodie overtop, slightly scuffed and dust-gruffed at the ends of the sleeves. Brown backpack that Mom lent me, which will inevitably end up roughed. Brown-based flowery fabric carry bag over a shoulder. Alexia who looks like a Natalya (high cheekbones, black hair with blue highlights) gives it a compliment. Liliana, the young and shy-ish student born in England, outrainbows and outtextures me with a similar-shaped dress in red, plus rainbow knee socks and an owl-shaped purse. Owl! We compliment the owl. We complement each other. Everyone seems suited to their outfits and that's what matters. Twenty minutes early, we mill around and talk in Deutschlish and sit on the steps warmed by the beginning sun. Our class is in a church, but a church on Kassel University grounds. The introductory assembly is in the sanctuary. Round stained-glass windows form a backdrop to the profs' information. Three circles, within which glow the alpha, chi-rho (had to look that up), and omega. The actual classes aren't so churchy. Or roomy. Cozy seminar-size, only one window. I'm in Intermediate 2, 3rd level out of 4, with 13 students. Out of everyone, I'm the oldest; the prof Lisa is a PhD candidate in linguistics a year younger than me. I like her: she seems dedicated and thoughtful in approach, casual and approachable in manner. We'll be reading a somewhat simplified version of the play Woyzeck by Georg Büchner. We go through the outline, start some grammar review. After class and lunch is a treasure hunt around Kassel, which everyone seems to complain about: the heat, the sun, the pointlessness! they bewail. I'm carrying too much and my legs are sore from walking yesterday, but I want to stubbornly enjoy it. We meet at a cafe afterwards, but I'm worried about my online tutoring student - just one, the independent one. Can I get back in time to meet her? I get just enough wifi from my Mitbewohnerin TK's hotspot to read that she wants to reschedule. Phew. My SIM card still isn't properly set up; Whatsapp, a new addition, isn't cooperating. I keep having to ask TK things because I don't know how they work. She was in the program, in Intermediate 1, last year. I'm glad that my host family accepted two people instead of one, that I can be with a 20-year old course veteran. Neu und alt. John says my phone is a "dinosaur." Today_I_learned that dinosaurs are seven years old. Contrast Lara, the host family's dog: fifteen and can still run. 230508 ... e_o_i Correction: yesterday's outing was more of a scavenger hunt than a treasure hunt. We just had to find places and answer questions about them. Nicht so schwierig, oder...? (ending_on_or) ... Today: aaaaarrrrgggggh. Okay, class went classily. I participated, but didn't overcompensate. No scavenger hunts were scheduled afterwards, just some homework time in the learning centre. The problem was after that. As I wrote, the German SIM card won't work on my phone. So I tried to find my way from the university to the Innenstadt - meaning downtown - where the card provider had a store. TK had pointed out the place and I knew it was in Königsplatz, but I'd stupidly neglected to write down an address. After an exhausting forty minutes...aha! In the store, I asked the person at the left desk about the SIM card, making myself understood despite my clumsy German and also clumsy English. We reloaded the device. Still "locked." The man concluded it wouldn't work because there was a lock on the phone itself. "Can you, ah, get a new one?" Not easily? And I was stubborn. I sat down and looked at the phone's settings. It must be in the settings. Then I waited in the other line to talk to the other technician. The first one motioned me back. Tried again. Didn't work again. But this time he gave me more information. "Ah, it's old so it has a SIM card lock. You need to contact your provider." Okay. I see. Danke. I bought a phone-to-USB cord so I could at least download my photos (my secondhand charger only connects to a regular outlet). Outside, everything seemed grey. The town square, which was really a circle, was rimmed with ugly stores and filled with stunted plastic trees. If you're going to plant a fake tree, why not make it look good? I hated these sad grey fakes with their cut-off branches. I hated the cobblestones. I hated technology. The sun heated my already hot head. So I went to H&M and bought a hat that proudly declared itself 20% recycled paper. Then to a bakery where I somehow spilled coins behind the display case. At home, I searched phone things on chatr. Hope: I found how to find a code on my phone, which would give me access to another code that I'd have to contact chatr for. But supper was ready. After supper, I managed to call chatr. We can't find your device. We'll transfer you to Rogers. Rogers couldn't find my device. They asked: do you know where you bought it? No, I realized: back around 2016, boss B. or boss N. bought it for me. I emailed them both. Important: Please let me know where you bought Samsung phone, thank you!! If you answer by today or tomorrow that would be a big help! Not_quite_truisms: Don't look a gift horse in the pedigree, unless you need to access a SIM card in Germany. Then Patricia came into my room to say I'd left too much water in the shower and hadn't opened the window properly: what_made_you_cry_today. One must always cry about improperly opened windows. Sigh. Make that a velar_fricative. I'm exhausted and I haven't even finished my writing homework for tomorrow. 230509 ... e_o_i Today I had an exhausting lunch conversation with a philosophy student about whether the idea of innate syntax relates to determinism somehow. To him, it only would if the idea of "mind" is directly linked to specific brain mechanisms. This led to me questioning the idea that preexisting physical structures cancel out free will. I came up with an example: "Okay, I think I have free will. I can decide to do this with my hands" (I made them circle each other) "and this" (I flapped them, modestly) "but I can't fly up to the ceiling. So there has to be physical limits on free will, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist." I was proud of that, but maybe it didn't make any sense in his framework. The thing is, despite talking to another philosophy student there (Lindsey) - and, you know, having a partner who's doing a postdoc in the thing - I don't really know philosophy. When he went, "Confession: I'm a Hegelian," I didn't have a clue why that was something worth confessing. Maybe he's some kind of elitist conservative. When we were walking from the cafeteria to the Lernort and I said positive things about the prof, he said she was talking too much about social issues. Why? She was talking about gender stereotypes and then national stereotypes because that's what the text was about. But that's me on the defensive. I said, "Well, well - although I do this too as a teacher, because, as you maybe noticed, I have ADHD and I can be a bit disorganized with speaking, sorry - I think she sometimes she talks too much and doesn't let the students talk. But then again, some people just don't talk in class and that must be frustrating." I can't even speak English, gah. 230511 ... e_o_i Nah, I was being too negative. I'm coherent at least some of the time; Siwon didn't want a fight but a friendly argument, and I like being challenged that way. It was just after the meal, when he talked about the teacher, that my oversensitive side flared up, putting a negative spin on the whole thing. My problem can be misinterpreting critiques and/or statements of personal preferences as attacks. 230511 ... e_o_i Also, we had most of the conversation in English. Verboten! (Well, maybe not. But there are certain times where we're only supposed to speak German.) 230511 ... e_o_i The trees in Königsplatz are real! Just strange. I'd thought they were plastic, partly because there was an art installation with a metal tree in Karlsaue Park. It was pretty damned convincing. The trees in the circle of stores looked faker. ... The good news is, I don't have COVID, at least according to the test I took. The bad news is, I have not-COVID - whatever other flu/cold is going around. Lindsey had it and I was eating with her; TK might have caught it too. It's okay to be terrible at volleyball, but I feel bad for spreading germs across Germany. Context: yesterday my German-speaking "tandem partner" - Laura, a Kassel Uni student - invited me to play volleyball with her and her friends. We started with four, but then friends of friends joined in, and there were around twenty people on a rotating basis. And we all high-fived at the end of each round, going "Guten Spiel" or "Good game." Plus, I shared a bag of almonds with two people. It was after the game my throat started to hurt. I also couldn't find my way back to the tram station because I was in a different part of campus than usual. What made it more frustrating is that I was thinking if I were more "with it" I'd have figured it out faster. That unnerved me a little, but it was only when I woke up after two hours of sleep that I started to panic, thinking that I had to call Mom and Dad on Skype (it was still a reasonable hour in Montreal). I was trembling - I felt sure I had a fever. But I turned off the laptop and calmed down after a bit of journal writing. Sleep claimed me, at first quite deeply - enough to have an absorbing story-type dream. I don't know if there was ever a fever involved. Sore throat, aches, sniffles - yup. One of the teachers had gotten COVID, so the next morning I took a test. Negative, but I didn't feel well enough to join the Kassel bus tour some people were taking. I was kind of glad that it was a Saturday so I wasn't obliged to do anything. Nostalgia indulgence: looking up two Harry Potter parody fanfics on TV Tropes (the Thirty H one and My Immortal). But that wasted too much time and I was annoyed with myself, plus a bit worried that I was still mentally spaced out. Slower than my normal slow. But I got part of a writing assignment done, took a nap, and was more my usual self towards supper. Talked to David online about Sunday "roast lunch" in England and whether that would necessitate polyamory because splitting one chicken among two people would mean lots of chicken (see "absurdities"). absurdities aufmerksam colding Yawn. 230513 ... e_o_i Today I went on a hike in the woods that I thought would last two hours at most. It took about seven total, from 11 to almost 6. People here are serious about their hiking. Patricia and Arild, their older daughter, and TK came along. The woods of hilly Kassel: tall-treed, muddy-pathed. The dog splashed around, young again. Lunch break at a beer garden. No beer for anyone, but bratwurst all around (much better than North American hotdogs, but I feel like I'm eating too much bread and meat here). A later break refreshed me with orange juice and a popsicle - which, like ice cream, is Eis. We were at the café atop the mountain holding the Hercules Monument, a different view of where we were almost two weeks ago. We saw the reservoir used for the water games, a plain rectangle of murky wetness you wouldn't expect much of. My favourite part was the grim-sounding Nekropole, called that because it has the grave of an artist. This was a path and clearing in the woods full of other art. A silver man, wrapped mummy-like, walked a tightrope. A real man played guitar in a hut that looked like a beehive or igloo, singing return_to_the_land_of_your_soul. 230518 ... e_o_i The other thing today was not so fun: finally, definitively discovering that my phone would not do what I wanted it to do, meaning that the factory reset that I did was for nothing and I'll have to download WhatsApp again, not to mention putting in all my contacts (if I can't just retrieve them from Google somehow - they *are* all there, at least the ones I wanted to keep). Basically, I have the right SIM unlock code now but it won't work, maybe because I tried it too many time first, so someone would have to fix the physical device and I don't think a non-chatr person would or could do it and you wouldn't find one here. Arrrrggghhhhh. Ich. Hasse. Technologie. On the bright side, tomorrow I'm going to Amsterdam with my host family for the weekend. Yeah. I didn't expect that either, because I thought we weren't allowed outside of German-speaking places, but it turns out if the host people are doing that, it's okay. So it's not really immersion in terms of German, but I'm excited. If only everything wasn't so schnell...and yes, my mind just did use that word instead of "fast" - if only I could speak German when I was supposed to. Schnell. And fließend, like water. 230518 ... e_o_i The Holland detour: autobahn dream_amsterdam amsterdam museums misread notes_on_a_boat_tour 230521 ... e_o_i Today: Getting an English compliment Writing about German and Dutch Working on a presentation for Wednesday, which I'll get back to, I promise This evening: Finding supper on my own, tutoring from the library (I need to find a space where I can talk) 230522 ... e_o_i Kassel_graffiti e_o_i imagines: Mom: So, what did you learn in German this week? Me: I learned how to say "Fuck the army!" Mom: Uh... Me: Specifically the current German army! Mom: Why would you want to say... Me: It's also widely applicable because you can say "Scheiß auf" whatever! Mom: Why?? Me: KULTUR. Mom: Scheiß auf Kultur! Me: There, you get it, exactly. 230523 ... e_o_i In terms of real interactions, I was kicked out of a library room yesterday, but very politely. A tall, thin man in a black cloth mask stood in front of the chair I was tutoring from and cleared his throat. It was in an open space with chairs so I thought it wasn't a silent area, but the Kassel Uni Library works differently than the Concordia one. The librarian said I could definitely finish what I was doing...just not here. I asked where; he gave directions to one of the group rooms. I let my student Alice know the situations and hurried to gather my things. The librarian apologized for disturbing me, which made me feel bad for inadvertently breaking the rule, so I returned, "Nein, nein, es ist toute ma faute." And then turned red for mixing up -es tut mir leid = my mistake, sorry (German) & -c'est toute ma faute = it's all my fault (French) I blame the congruent "toot" sound. Scheiß auf toots! The first group room had two people talking about a project. I went to the second one, where one guy was working alone. "Do you mind if I speak English?" I asked, in English, as if it mattered what language this time. He moved something off his ear. "Hmm?" I repeated. "Oh, doesn't matter to me, I have headphones on," and he proceeded to have headphones on again. 230523 ... e_o_i A very loose interpretation of my conversation with John, the program director (see Woyzeck_and_company): John: Okay, Kirsten. Good news: you're not a problem. You're not fighting with anyone in the class. Congratulations! Is anyone fighting with you? Me: Not that I know of. John: Do you have a problem with anyone in the class? Me: No, and I should clarify: when I started crying yesterday, it wasn't because people were arguing. Honestly, I wasn't listening. The crying was just because I was confused and overwhelmed because I misunderstood the thing Lisa had told us to do. I thought we had to write five thesis statements instead of five themes. John: Well, she could have made that clearer. Me: No, no! She's fine. I'm just telling you that I cry all the time. I also cried another time in class! And in the first week at the host family's when I left too much water on the wall of the shower and was mildly criticized! John: But why cry? Me: I'm not sure... I cry when I'm angry as well as overwhelmed, so possibly the government did the Ludovico Technique on me in my sleep to prevent me from slapping people in the face. John: What? Anyway, you said you also had suggestions. Me: Yes. No offense, but everyone else here is rich. John: Some people are. What's your point? Me: That I'm not. I'm just like Woyzeck in the Georg Buchner play: I can't afford a new cell phone. Well, I could, but I don't want to. John: Okay, but what's your point? Me: I think in the program instructions you should make a note that people need to make sure their phones can be unlocked so that the German SIM card works. Phones bought before 2017 don't unlock automatically. I looked it up. I'm smart, I swear. John: Actually...I wrote that people should make sure that their cell phones are unlocked before leaving. Me: Oh. This is embarrassing. Can I shrink? No, I'm incapable. Okay, I'll call it "fine print." I'll apologize for not reading the fine print. But not in a passive-aggressive way or anything. John: What is *wrong* with everyone? Me: Well, I'm also afraid of visiting Sachsenhausen, so maybe you could warn people it's a former concentration camp? Like for anxious people who cry about impromptu writing prompts? John: Oh...so you could fail to read the "fine print"? Me: Well, it's just that no one's heard of Sachsenhausen. John: Yeah they have. Also, you're pronouncing it wrong. ZACK-sen-hau-zen. Not SACK-sen-hau-zen. Me: But, but I can pronounce the velar_fricative in Dachau! John: Congratulations. You managed to turn a mass tragedy into a way to reassert your fragile sense of self-worth. Do you feel better now? Me: No, because I also want you to acknowledge that I've heard of Dachau. Isn't that an accomplishment? John: Sure. As is joking about how it's actually Gracefield, Quebec. Me: That was in a dream! John: Yes, I know your dreams. And I'm not impressed. Me: How? John: Well, they're not impressive. Me: How do you know about my dreams?? John: Because I'm a caricature you made up and not the real program director. Also, why are we being so mean to each other? Don't you love yourself? Me: No. John: Why not? Me: Because I'm mean. John: Why? Me: I don't know. John: I don't think we should be solely defined by our past. Me: Okay... John: And I think that's part of the reason why you came to Germany. You have a weird sense of comparisons, granted, but we can delve into that later. Right now you need to sleep. Me: I can't sleep. John: Yes, you can. You're going to Nuremberg tomorrow and you have to wake up at 5:30. You won't get as much sleep as you want, but you'll get a little. Anyway, the trip to Berlin is in two weeks. Parcel out your emotional crises more logically. Me: John? John: Yes? Me: Other people are worse off than me. John: I know. Go to sleep. 230525 ... e_o_i Ich bin jetzt in Nürnberg - Nuremberg in English (the unterschied is weird to me, like the whole Munich/München situation - Munich already *sounds* German). We're not super close to Munich, although Nuremberg is also in Bavaria - northern Bavaria, Franconia region. TK noted that most of the churches were Catholic here. Morning was on the bus; this afternoon was a walk around part of the wall of the old city. Our youth hostel is along it, right next to the Kaiserberg castle. And the hostel is so much nicer than the one in Hann. Münden: brick and stone, fancy dining hall, wifi that works, and a bathroom IN THE ROOM instead of down the hall. Yay! ... After supper, I took a walk around the city and went to a pub with some of the other immersioners. We crowded around a single table outside and listened, for instance, to Nolan's injunction to practice our German more. Seize the day! the course is almost half over! ...but in Deutsch. And walked down the street dancing to the German rap emanating from Tyler's speaker. And then sang "Ra Ra Rasputin" for some reason with two others (they knew the words; I hummed). Some people went to dance at a club that opened at ten, but Julie, one of the students I'm rooming with this weekend, was having cramps, so I walked with her back to the hostel...being the Old and Responsible Adult and also missing writing alone. So I'm back in the room blathing and eating a mushy banana someone didn't want. Honestly, a vibe. That's what the 20-year-olds say these days! Or at least a few from Alberta and Ontario. ... A cool encounter with music of the past: in the afternoon walk, we went into a church where Johann Pachelbel had been an organist. I had no idea about it until I saw the sign on the side of the church, and then I hurried to Thea to try explaining than in German (she, like Nolan, is serious about the immer immersion part). St. Sebald was the place's name, although Wikipedia says St. Sebaldus. Okay, Wikius. "Vielleicht er findet das annoying, dass alles errinern an Canon in D." Wrong verb order, wrong language for part of it, but we started humming the tune and laughing. 230526 ... e_o_i edits ...explaining *that* in German. t, h, a, t. I can't even English. 230526 ... e_o_i Saturday was exhausting. We took the bus ten minutes outside the old city to the Reichsparteitagsgelände - say that five times fast - but yes, it was where the Nazis built a stadium and other buildings and grounds for their rallies, as seen in Triumph of the Will, etc. The museum was being renovated, so the bus couldn't park in a regular parking lot. We parked within the massive curved walls of the old stadium. I looked up to see moss on the walls, a small bird flying up from a nook in it. Got off the bus. Photographed some flowers. The museum part was absorbing. Too much history to take in all at once, though recent dates are easier to place in my mind than anything pre-1800s. I gave up trying to read the German, but tried to look at every section - it wasn't too large - and take in all the info in English. I tarried at the part that talked about the present and recent past, the dilemma about how to use the grounds now. That's the kind of thing that grabs my interest these days. The nature park nearby had been designed over a hundred years earlier. The Nazis liked the grandeur of the view, but destroyed the lake, from what I remember reading. It's since been restored. In the park there are rock festivals. Bob Dylan was there once. This weekend there's going to be something called "Rock im Park" (when I went partway around the lake later, tents were already set up). But how to balance commemoration with usefulness? It still seemed a little weird to Grace and me to have the rock festival so close. Disrespectful almost. But then some of the former barracks for the soldiers and construction workers - and later for prisoners who were then deported to camps - have already been torn down, the land used for apartments. But apartments are something good, or can be. And open-air festivals are not bad either. But things that emphasize crowds and pageantry seem suspect there. As I was reading how Billy Graham held a rally in the old stadium, my brain flashed out the thought that the atheist strain of anarchy is right, that believing in any kind of god means accepting absolutism. I'm not sure of that now. I get carried away by feelings. As for the 1930s, one discrepancy struck me as funny, if sad: the rally scheduled for 1939 was called off because the German government invaded Poland. The planned theme? "Rally of Peace." ... I was the last student out of the museum so I didn't have time to walk all the way around the lake. That was in the nature park area - more relaxing in theory, but not when you're under time pressure and the German emphasis on Punktlichkeit means you can't take as many pictures of Canadian geese as you'd like. Because yes, there were Canadian geese. I haven't seen them anywhere else in Germany, but they were there. And then we went back in the bus inside the old stadium, and the towering, surrounding walls made me feel claustrophobic. Because of what they were, although they'd been stripped of symbols. I wasn't the closest I've been in Germany to panic (that happened when I got lost in Kassel early on) but definitely relieved when the bus started up. And it was a weird place to try eating a sandwich, as I told my journal. ... Then the art museum was absorbing in a different way, but it's almost midnight and I can't write everything. So I'll just skip in time to today, in which I... -was exhausted from studying for the quiz and staying up late to do homework, which I finished a day early by accident; -saw some Kassel_graffiti; -cried uncontrollably for a bit about my perpetual confusion, which wrong_ass_word tells and my earlier mind_gremlins foreshadow; -went to a presentation about Karlsaue and the Orangerie done by German teens in a remedial class, although I didn't know what it was going to be beforehand; -managed to lose my free tote bag intended for Kassel Uni students that I'd mooched earlier; -went to Thalia bookstore and ordered a chai latte and piece of cake in the upstairs section, getting some advance homework done and slowly regaining confidence; -buying toothpaste from the store next to it, after being a little overwhelmed by the choices; -going back to the university, LEO building, to prepare for my next tutoring class with Alice; -going home, eating supper, putting away clothes that Patricia had washed for me (Vielen Dank), und so weiter. Ich bin glucklich. Aber müde. 230530 ... e_o_i Also on that Saturday in the park in Nuremberg, there was a man playing and singing Bob Dylan's "Blowing in the Wind," as I rushed back. So it was an oddly Bob-Dylany fuck-the-nazis Nuremberg nature park experience. ... Then it was back to museums - the Germanisches Nationalmuseum. Similar to Hans Holbein the Younger, I was also having a goth phase, and for a long time I stayed in the basement photographing medieval gravestones and what used to be a monk's cloister. Some stone-cold refuge from what was turning into a hot day. The other floors - there was two much to see, at least at my pace. I went through a floor that had weapons behind glass along the walls, while garden gates and statues and fancy sleds and rocking horses were arranged in the middle. I went past most of the weapons without taking pictures, but there was one suit of armour that had a funny face on the helmet: a bulbous, prominent nose and a goofy expression. I can't explain it. I don't know why. Then a room with elaborate cabinets. Then rows upon rows of ceramics. One ceramic dish had an "odalisque" reclining. Orientation orientalist. Her breasts were exposed; I remember lines around her nipples like rays around a cartoon sun. And this I don't have to check with the photo I took: the caption said she was sleeping, but she looked a loooot more like she was masturbating. I wrote to David: "Or do I just have a dirty mind?" David: "Not just. It's pretty unambiguous." It was also pretty...despite being the 18th-century (?) equivalent of Western weaboo Asian fetishization. And the woodwork cabinets, with so many different colours and tiny precise details...aaaaugh. I can't describe everything. But after all that, I was exhausted. I went back to the hostel and wasted time reading random Internet things rather than novel-writing or blathering. Later that evening, we played a game called Werewolf, which is like Mafia but with cards. I asked TK if she wanted to play because I know she likes games, although she often prefers being alone. I think I made the right choice this time: she enjoyed it and she speaks good German. ...Thing is, she doesn't blend into the background as well as I do: I forget whether she said she has both ADHD and autism, or some executive dysfunction that's similar. But she's quite functional with those things in her own way. It's the allergies and the anxiety/depression that I worry about. So I want to make sure she participates in stuff that she likes without pushing her to be over-social. 230604 ... e_o_i Last Sunday was a quiet day. I went with my Nürnbergy roommates to the Albrecht Dürer house. With bulky altmodisch headphones, I listened to the German audio and actually understood some of it. "Immer Deutsch" is people's joke here, so this title is oddly prescient. I was a bit disappointed the house didn't have more of Dürer's originals. But it WAS his original house. And I managed to lose my classmates: I was slower and they left before me. By then, I knew the layout of the neighbourhood reasonably well and welcomed some alone time. I wandered into an art/artisan gallery that reminded me of the Windsor Artists Collective. The necklace I bought matches my magenta T-shirt, which I wasn't wearing at the time. Ich freue mich darüber, dass ich gute gewählt habe. Früher habe ich gedacht, dass ich Farben nicht gut errinern könnte. Hey! I can't guarantee that was perfect, but it was relatively painless. Maybe I AM learning something. (Translation: I was glad that I chose well. Earlier I thought that I couldn't remember colours well.) Then I ran into some other immersioners and followed them to ice cream. I felt like keeping the napkin because it was funny in English: Lust auf Eis, but_not_in_a_sexual_way. 230606 ... e_o_i Last Monday, we had the day off for Pentecost. Germans don't seem particularly religious, but more holidays come from the Christian calendar: earlier we had Ascension Day. "Himmelfahrt" at first I couldn't parse. Sky trip? Ah, heaven trip = Jesus = ascension. Then I read it the "fahrt" part Englishly and imagined a yellow cartoon Jesus, Family-Guy style, being propelled upwards a bit at a time by repeated farts: put-put-put. Jesus, we're cool, right? No offense against you personally... Ah, you don't like Family Guy? Fair enough. Anyway, the non-skyfart day saw TK and I riding in Arild's "old-timer" - the Germ-turned word for a classic car. It was a pale gold, restored Mercedes convertible from 1971. "Hold on to your hats" took on a literal meaning: I sat in the back, my hair and the speeding air dancing. Arild's main Grund (reason) for the trip was to give some glass containers to a neighbour who lived in the country - why, I didn't quite catch. Despite my earlier pride, I still don't understand a lot of stuff in German. I'd thought at first we were going to an old car show, not simply driving in an old car. But it wasn't "simply" either, because he took us to see a church that dated back to 1093. First it was a monastery. When the reformation came, it was protestantized, but the cloistered name remained: "Evangelische Klosterkirche St. Thomas und St. Nikolaus." Arild found the first two words funny: "It's like saying 'Protestant Catholic Church'," he explained in English. Oh yes, and then ice cream. Immer ice. 230606 ... e_o_i That part was in Lower Saxony, not Hesse, so I can say I've been to three German provinces. ... Not much to say about Kassel and classes last week - the grind, the Grund. ... But Thursday was movie night: part of the class saw a film called Das Lehrerzimmer (the teachers' room) in a small artsy theatre that was a puzzle to find. Gloria, it was called. I found the film absorbing, Thea frustrating - she didn't see the point, she said. What was it trying to say? I said I thought it was more of a character study showing morally complex decisions. "I liked it," I said, "because it didn't go where I expected it to. I don't really have a justification." You don't have to justify, went Thea, smiling. But I found the ending frustrating. "Me too, actually." We went through the doors of the Alex café that Owen, Emily, and Jen had decided on. "I mean, I don't mind it being ambiguous, but I felt it was trying too hard to be artsy, when the rest of the story was more straightforward." And the five of us sat down and talked about what we thought about a student in the film hitting a teacher at one point. Owen showed us a video of a student who hits a teacher, principal, and security guard in short succession. Played it again. At some point it became simultaneously scary and comical. Why persist? Why risk your own well-being to hurt others? I didn't understand why he kept at it. "But it makes me a bit...I mean, not really upset? I mean I don't have good memories, I mean I used to have a bad temper, and, and it reminds me of things that happened at my school," I babbled. "Oh?" Extroverted Owen looked up, curious but also sympathetic. Probably he was expecting me to say something about another kid being violent, a bully, a bad memory. I got to the point. "When I was thirteen, I got suspended for three weeks for slapping a teacher in the face." "You?" He was taken aback. "But you're like quiet. You're like the nicest person here." Thea looked surprised too. The others, I couldn't tell, but they looked. "Maybe you had a reason. Maybe she was mean." I shook my head. "It was a conservative Christian school, so I didn't agree with everything there, but I had no excuse. I just lost my temper." And I explained about being interrupted from working past school hours, about being always frustrated that things took longer - my ADHD wasn't diagnosed until I was 23, etc., etc. - and then being angry in the moment and slapping her. "And technically I DID hit a teacher and the principal, because it was a small school. She was also a principal." Getting into the storytelling. That part made me smile. "Oh shit," laughed someone. I remember a male voice that wasn't Owen's - was Spencer there? Spencer could have been there. Sorry if I forgot you, Spencer! And maybe Jen had gone somewhere else, because I DO remember five people. ANYWAY. "It was a stupid thing to do and I regret it, but it was a little comical at the time because the teacher got up and started chasing me out, swatting me with a rolled-up newspaper." (I said that; it was really one of our "PACEs" or answer booklets.) "Then there were two girls who didn't see what I did, so they were wondering what the hell was going on." My amusement made me feel guilty and I resumed a serious expression. Owen was curious. "So what have you learned since then about, I guess, controlling your emotions? Because you seem to be good at it now." (Does he want to be a school teacher? He sounds like one a lot. In a good way.) I shrugged, smiled. "Oh, not completely. These days I just start crying when I'm upset...in whatever way. A lot of the time. Which is less of a problem, but I still wish I could be more emotionally balanced." "I'm like that," Thea offered. "I always cry when I'm upset." "My friend is like that," said Emily. And they gave examples. ... In the bathroom, a sentence floated into my head: "See, I can distinguish myself! I'm not just bisexual; I also hit people." The floor tiles offered no comment. 230606 what's it to you? who go blather from