do you know how much that costs?

well, speaking of kids, i just overheard a classic exchange between two young kids (presumably on their way home from school)

one kid tried his hand at rapping and this is a portion of what i heard: (translated for you -although it does not rhyme in english, it did in fact rhyme in german, which kind of impressed me)

"...yeah yeah yeah. yeah. who knows what will happen. we're gonna be rich. and ... buy ... ... ... the whole world..."

at this point, he was interrupted by his companion.

"hey, wait. we can't do that. do you know how much the whole world costs?!"

here

i wish i could have heard the answer - i've actually been wondering what the going price is on the world. ~love~

that jolly red man remains illusive

one of the many benefits of my job is experiencing first hand the "kid perspective" of life. on wednesday, i overheard a group of first graders (6 and 7 year olds) having a very serious discussion about santa. as i missed the beginning of the conversation, i'm not sure what brought on this discussion - perhaps the coming of st. nicholas next week? - regardless, there were some very strong opinions being thrown about.

kid 1: well, i don't know about you, but i have seen him. he is definitely real.

kid 2: i have seen him too!

kid 3 (who i am willing to bet has older siblings...just saying): that was just someone dressed up like santa. that doesn't mean he's real.

kid 1: well, how do they know what he looks like, then?

[pause for deep thinking]

kid 2: yeah, maybe we did see people dressed like him, but that must mean that there is a real one somewhere

kid 1: yeah

kid 3: can i borrow your glue stick?

i am constantly entertained by my glimpses into "kid world" - as adults, we tend to project adult thinking and reasoning onto kids, but the reality is, they just don't conform. they adhere to a different kind of logic, which is often baffling and sometimes quite frustrating, but thankfully often entertaining. ~love~

tastes like christmas

as i have lived in germany these 3 + years (i can't believe its been that long!), i have integrated things that i love from home and life in the states with new things that i have fallen in love with here. of course growing up in the nock family (where: "if you're bashful, you starve!") i have a great affection for all things food! for me, the holiday season begins when i smell pumpkin bread baking in the oven. my mama's pumpkin bread is the taste of thanksgiving and christmas and all the good stuff in between and when the holiday season approaches, i can't resist making a few batches.

here

this year is no exception. as germans have failed to develop an adequate appreciation for all things squash-realated (spaghetti squash, acorn squash, pumpkin pie...) it is difficult (and expensive!) to find canned pumpkin anywhere. my solution this year was to buy a jar of pumpkin chunks, heat them up on the stove and puree them. i think i have done this before, but for some reason, my pumpkin bread turned out much differently this time around. even though it doesn't taste like home, it still tastes good - good enough for me to share with my work collegues and a few students.

here

with nothing to compare the bread to, the bread recieved rave reviews. my very favorite was from a work collegue who took one bite, grinned and said "wow, it tastes like christmas!" that was all the confirmation i needed - the holiday season has begun! ~love~

snow bet

its no secret that i much prefer spring and summer to the cold, dark days of winter. as a result, i am forced to create reasons to be excited about the onset of the winter season. this year, burdened by the looming deadline of my thesis and feeling like i had missed most of summer whilst typing away in the library, i needed a particularly good reason to get excited about the looming dark, cold season. most of all, i needed some teammates. so, i devised the snow bet.

in early october, with the first deep chill, i asked 5 students to predict the first day that we would see snow on the ground in Heidelberg. the snow bet was born.

here

you may be interested to know that i have already lost. by a lot. my guess of november 8 came and went, without so much as a flake. also the 15th has faded into memory - with sunshine and blue skies. that means 4 students are hoping for the fame and glory of winning the snow bet, although almost all of them have tried to change their guess in the past few weeks - they don't apprecite, apparently, that the point was to guess when we had no concievable notion of snow or feeling for winter. ah youth.

thanks to the snow bet, i look out my window with anticipation every morning. last night, as i was closing the blinds, i noticed thick fog and a light rain. normally, this kind of weather (affectionaly known to some as a form of "wintry mix") makes me cringe, but the anticipation of the first snow has me a bit giddy with excitement! ~love~

Back in blog - land

well, after my (not so brief) hiatus, i have returned to the land of the blog. i have a few post ideas brewing, as well as some old drafts (written during the fog of my thesis) which will hopefully be ready for this small forum soon.

so, what have i been doing, you ask?

thanks for your interest. this is the answer: lots.

1. i flew home with that boy of mine and rang the doorbell (of my childhood home...that was a first) and surprised the heck out of my dad for his 50th birthday. this was remarkable because a) i'm horrible at surprises...i always want to spill the beans b) my mom is horrible at suprises...she also wants to spill the beans (wonder where i got that from?) it was perfect though, like a movie, but better, because it was my real life.

2. i finished my thesis. amen and praise the lord! i had to take 2 days of my precious time in the states to accomplish this task. blasted procrastination, my lifelong enemy! it is not perfect. i had to come to peace with the fact that i would not be able to write everything that i knew or even everything that i probably wanted to write. it is what it is, and i still felt a little tingle of pride as i held the 63 bound pages in my hands. i accomplished what at times seemed like an insurmmountable task. take that, german grammar!

3. nothing. i think that is the reward of finishing a thesis. all of the books that i have not read, all of the movies that i have not seen, all of the coffee dates with friends that have been pushed to the side for the last few months - they are my reward for finishing. currently i am 100% sucked into the stieg larsson books (very late on that one, i am well aware) - i cannot stop reading! also, i have never wanted so badly in my life to visit sweden.

4. teaching. i have jumped back into teaching all of my old courses plus a couple new ones. i have a lot of new students (due to turnover from kids leaving to go to elementary school) and i still have to get a rhythm down, but i love it. i wish i could remember all of the things that make me laugh every day, but currently i'm drawing a blank. sorry about that.

so there you have it. i am alive and well. i had my first mug of glühwein at the christmas market yesterday and can hardly believe that this is my 4th christmas season in germnay - how time flies. in the mean time, i am feeling especially thankful and blessed by an incredible network of family and friends. ~love~

A love letter to technology

Dear technology,

I know I complain a lot - about your intermitent "difficulties" - but really, I love you. Dear youtube, thank you for having very helpful video tutorials so that I now know how to make a table of contents. Dear Word, thank you for having a feature in which you generate a table of contents. Dear zotero, at first, we really struggled - English, German, weird formatting defaults - I'm glad we're over that now. You make footnotes so easy, and save me from that pesky black hole that is a straggling ibid.

You are beautiful and I love you.

Yours truly.

it occurred to me that I could be hand-writing my thesis onto paper to then type out on a typewriter. i am so glad that i do not have to do that. my brain is so chaotic -  i cut and paste, insert, delete. i currently have 10 word documents and one excel file full of tables and graphs. if this was all hand-written, i would have been crushed under a mountain of books and paper a long time ago.

here

you are probably tired of hearing about this craziness - but i honestly don't have much else to write about. thesis. books. newspapers. library. its my life right now. i mean, i could tell you about the tourists i overheard in the library... (i would spare you the explitives of course) and how they determined (loudly) that the way to determine what is a *real* university is the swanky-ness of the library. it went something like this: "woah...now this is a library. this is a (expitive) legit school. i mean look at this. this is (explitive) marble." i could also tell you how i resisted the urge to point out the things that drive me crazy about the library:

-dust and weird smells

-under construction (aka loud, sometimes closed off, and recently, areas that smell strongly of paint)

-one bathroom in the basement

-not allowed to bring bags and/or laptop cases

-books arranged according to date purchased by the institution (i miss you and your beautiful decimals, dewey!)

-tourists.

here

i could tell you about those things, but it might be a mis-representation of what my days actually look like. a two-minute trip downstairs to the bathroom is a small fraction of the time i spend bent over books.

i.am.almost.there.

~love

this is the perfect time to panic!

indeed it is. and i am. but also:

1. listening to argueably the best movie soundtrack of all time: Garden State. and dreaming of the day when i have free time and i can watch it.

here

2. making friends with the resident spider. we share a workspace. i only freak out a little when it comes too close and acts like it wants me to be a support for its web - i take that as a sign that i haven't moved recently enough and its time to take a little break to stretch my legs

here

3. channeling the little engine that could.

here

~love~