All for spinning you around.

Spending a long period of time abroad can really mess with your head. It's like having multiple personalities. I live in Arkansas and I speak English. I live in Austria and I speak German. Which one of these lives is the real one? More on that when I figure out how to explain what I mean.

Eye Candy.

It's not very often I see something and think, "I have to have that. It must be mine." It's been a while since I felt that way, probably since my camping gear craze of 2002. But then, I saw this. I'm sure you feel the same way about it as I do.

"Two for good, one for bad..."

Good:
Earlier today I went for a walk downtown and found and Edith Piaf CD and the "Lost in Translation" soundtrack. I've finished all of my laundry and vacuumed my room. I'm about to upload some pictures under the "Graz" set. Today is taco day.

Bad:
My rain jacket got smoky Wednesday night so I washed it. For some reason, this time I pulled it out of the washing machine and most of the seam-proofing has come off. If it keeps raining like it has lately I'm going to have to get a new rainjacket. I like that one though so it may just be demoted to windjacket duties.

White Smoke.

Hi, so I just found out there is a new pope. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany is the 265th Pope. That's an old hat to fill.

Finn-icky. Icky Finn.

So I'm in the computer lab and I hear someone start talking out loud. That's not so unusal, people answer their phones in here all the time. After a minute or so, I start thinking about that voice, and it sounds like an Asian language, maybe Chinese or Vietnamese, or whatever, it doesn't matter. Then I look over and see who it is. It is a 6'6" Finnish girl. 1) That language is just crazy. How can those sounds mean anything? 2) If I am a 6'6" snow white Finnish girl, do I dress in black studded denim and leather and dye my hair red and black stripes? No, no I do not.

Oh, Root Beer.

On the way to the computer lab today, I passed a girl that smelled like root beer. It made me really sad. For the last two and a half months, I haven't thought about root beer at all. You might say that I forgot it even existed. But now I want some really bad. Oh, root beer.

Where in the world....

...is Terra?

Last thought but certainly not least thought.

I love Jamie very, very much.

A Turn For the Absurd.

Here are some nuggets from "Let's Drink Too Much and Try Our English Out On Our Roommate Night."

Dominic: All of the girls on the sport university are saying I am a bitch because I am sleeping with them. I don't know what they are talking about. It's Mark. I have been sleeping with like three girls (holds up eight fingers) in my whole life.

Mark: I have no more girlfriend, now I have more free time.

Dominic: The best part that we are changing the lightbulbs is that we are doing it while we are drunk and it is working.

Blond Guy One and Blond Guy Two, in unison: Tussssscalooooooooooooosa.

Jaron: Is this a Region 2 DVD?
Dominic: No, it's the same movie as in the US, "As Good As It Gets."
Jaron: Yes, but our DVD players are different, can I play it on a DVD player from the US?
Dominic: Yes, it's the one with Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt.

Mark: You should come to Austria, we are having fun in Austria.

Dominic: You are scaring me, you go to your room, you are scaring me. You are playing the game since like five minutes and you are getting all the frogs into the bucket.

Blond Guy Three: Why do you study German?

Four things I think today.

I think Michael Jackson is going to jail for a really long time. On the one hand, I think his life has been a tragedy, and not all of it is his fault. On the other hand, he makes his decisions, good and bad, and he seems to have made a lot of very bad ones.

I think Schilling gives six strong innings, gives up three runs, and strikes out seven. We'll see. At this point, I really don't care who wins, Skanks or Sox, there is still 95% of the season to be played out and April doesn't mean much except for working out the kinks. You could say that Spring Training is for working out the kinks, and you'd be right, but Boston's starting rotation is a big kink that is going to take some time. I'm not worried about it, Tito is back.

I think the weather here in Graz is ridiculous. Not as ridiculous as Arkansas, it doesn't change in a matter of minutes, which is one of the strange things Arkansans take pride in, but it is equally unpredictable and doesn't seem to care at all that there are "seasons" it is supposed to abide by.

I think Jeffri Chadiha is about a month late. Everyone else at SI.com has written about Matt Jones' impressive pro workouts and his intriguing draft possibilities, and did so starting more than a month ago. I'm not a huge Matt Jones fan, I like what he did for the program, he was exciting to watch, may or may not be a jerk, I don't know. He's a big reason the program is where it is, where it is going, and part of me simply likes reading about Arkansas in places other than the "You aren't going to believe how big this pumpkin is." type of articles. Anyway, I've enjoyed reading Peter King's theories about where Jones will go and what he'll do for the team that takes a chance on him, but I can't help but think Chadiha is reaching.

Two things I think today.

I think Derek Lowe got a raw deal. He was magical in the post-season and the Boston brass never even called him in the off-season. Raw. He's a sinkerballer, and as far as I know, sinkerballers are pretty durable. They apparently punched the numbers and found something that told them he wasn't worth it anymore. Too bad.

I think I miss Harold Reynolds.

Something to think about.

Mike has this link on his blog and it's really interesting so I stole it. Check it out and see how much the war really costs.

Cost of the War

Mmm...Cornetto. You don't even know.

Today was pretty good. My Lit class on Thursday stinks, but that's the way it goes. After class I had some Döner. Mmm...Döner. Durum. Mmm. Then I went to baseball practice, we played outside and it was really nice. I didn't hit the ball as well as I would have liked to, but I was only thrown out once, and I scored three runs. Next week I'm go to make sure the batting order is better. Philip, an Austrian guy on the baseball team, asked if I was interested in playing flag football after baseball. Curiosity got the best of me and I said yes. It was half funny and half sad. One guy was wearing these weird knee pads (it was flag football) and another guy had taped his fingers. And his knees. With tape. It was ridiculous.

I'm pretty tired. Tomorrow I'm going to get some homework done. Or at least get it ready to be done this weekend. Right now I'm going back to the apartment for a wheat beer, a Cornetto, and some sleep.

More than a feeling.

The Red Sox came back and beat the Yankees last night, scoring five runs off of the most feared closer in recent history. Everybody got to him. Bellhorn got to him. Billy Mueller got to him, again. Renteria woke up and gave him some. Edgah. It's a good feeling. I don't put any weight in Spring Training, and I put very little weight in the first three games of the regular season, 3 out of 162, but it's nice.

In other news Jamie has infected me with joy beyond measure. True, I am still in Austria, for three more months, but Jamie threw a parade for me yesterday the likes of which could never be rained on.

"Throw on a suit, get it tapered up." Jay-Z

Eureka!

So a few minutes ago I found out from Jamie that she was not accepted for the Fulbright teaching position in Austria. We are both so relieved, that answers a dozen or so questions right away. Much praise and rejoicing is to be expected.

Photos.

My flickr.com Pro Account went into action today. Enjoy.

Astute Observations.

Europeans love cigarettes.
Europeans have no peripheral vision whatsoever.
Europeans love the Pope.
Europeans love the pipe.
Europeans love bicycling.

Blogger's note: In this and every installment of "Astute Observations," every effort will be made to over-generalize and defame. Don't bother complaining about it or even pointing it out.

Standards of behavior.

So I am going to make you a promise. Most or all of the people that read this page are people I know and care about. Because I know you well enough to care about you, our lives are intertwined at some level or another. Maybe you are my mother. Or my mother's husband. Or Die Liebe meines Lebens. Or a very dear friend. Because I know you well enough to care about you, and because our lives are intertwined at some level or another, I think about you. I have thoughts and feelings and opinions about you and our relationship, whatever it may be.

You are important to me. That's what I am saying.

Honesty is also very important to me. This medium, as strange as it sounds, is important to me too. Sometimes the things I say are funny. Sometimes they are sad. Sometimes they are informative. They are probably very often boring. At the very least, the things I say are honest. If I have said them, you should know that I mean them.

Here’s my promise to you and to myself. I will not let the fact that you are going to read this change what I want to say or how I am going to say it. I promise not to write something with any motive other than to say it. I will not say something simply because I know you are going to read it. And I will not avoid saying something simply because I know you are going to read it. I promise not to change the way I write something in order to have any sort of affect on the way you will receive it. I will not speak for flattery or for harm or for influence.

I think that has been a goal of mine since I started writing here. I think so. I hope so. I just wanted to make sure you knew about it. Get it out in the open. This is still very new to me, you know. Maybe now that I know that you know, and you know that I know that you know, it will be easier to keep it that way. You know?

Manifest Destiny.

For those of you I spoke with on the phone yesterday this may come as a shock, but I need to get some things out in the open. My readers number somewhere between three and four, and I spoke with two of you on the phone yesterday. Despite all of that ranting and raving, I still need to release some. I need to type. When I was younger, in junior high, I always needed to write. I NEEDED to see a blank page in front of me, NEEDED to feel a pen against paper, NEEDED to feel the squeak and run of a ball point, NEEDED to see the ink bleed. It didn't matter what came out onto the page, what it meant, if it was legible, if it was English, I just needed it to get out of me. As long as I could take the mess that I was thinking and make a clean, crisp piece of loose-leaf paper messy with it, I usually felt better. There something to be said about taking something messy and making it clean again. One of the greatest feelings ever. Life's little pleasures, you know? The same can be said about taking something clean and making it dirty. Maybe it's changing something completely that is so enjoyable. Whatever it is, I am feeling the urge. I'm in Austria, I'm pissed off, and I'm going to fill some pages.

We’ll start with yesterday. But by starting with yesterday, we’ll have to go back to last fall. Well, further back maybe.

I study German. People always ask me, “Why German?” My response is always the same. At my high school it was and still is required that every student take two years of a foreign language. Great requirement, in my opinion, I think it should start earlier, maybe fourth or fifth grade. My high school offered Spanish, French and German. Spanish? Sure, I could have picked it up and in my part of the world, I may have used a lot of it. But in high school, you want to be different, you want to do things nobody else does. That's an unspoken requirement. Everybody takes Spanish, everybody's parents sit them down and tell them how invaluable Spanish would be when combined with a business degree, etc. And I think it's boring. I mean, it sounds lovely, of course, but would I want to speak it? No. French? Absolutely not. I'm not one of those people. Not one of those people who takes French, speaks French, talks about France, has any desire at all to see France. It's not for me. Besides, it's hard. What letters am I supposed to pronounce? Where are the rules? So, German. It fit all of my requirements. It's the mother of English. Well, one of its mothers. It's really similar. It's logical. It has plenty of rules. “Make sure you stay between the lines!” sort of rules, but rules that are always there, rules that follow a certain pattern, help you create a sentence, those sort of rules. There are no silent letters. Unless you are using a French word that German has borrowed, then there are silent letters.

At my university it is required that all Arts and Sciences students take two years of a foreign language. Good requirement I think, a different sort of brain exercise. I'd already taken five years of German in high school (I started in eighth grade). My high school German teacher made quite an impression on me. She was and is exactly the type of teacher you hope you'll get when you go to high school. She has had a lot to do with the type of person I am now (which is a good thing, right?), I respect her very much, we're good friends now, and in a lot of ways I have wanted to be just like her. In any case, suffice it to say I have learned a lot about a lot of things from her. So I decided to stick with German for my language requirement in college. This is the only part of the story I will try to shorten. I skipped the first three semesters, took the fourth semester, thereby fulfilling my requirement, but I had a crappy teacher and decided not to continue. I changed my major from Psychology to History, talked things over with the aforementioned high school German teacher and the faculty at my university and got back into the German department. So, that makes two majors, German and History.

In an effort to finish my undergraduate studies sooner, I applied for an exchange program to study at Karl-Franzens University in Graz, Austria. The plan was to take a handful of history classes, taught in the German language, which would count twice! Both as a German course for the German requirements and as a history course for my history requirements. Sounds great, right? Most fantasies do. Ok, this part I will shorten too. Classes here in Austria are worth two credits, at my home university, they are worth three. In order for my credits to transfer home, I needed to find to similar classes, to combine to cover the three hours. If you did the math, you realized that extra, fourth hour, would be lost, wasted, useless. You're right. AND those classes would have to be similar to something at my home university. This proved impossible. My hopes of finishing school this semester, also impossible. So I am here, studying German literature. But wait! I'm not studying just German Literature. I'm not reading Gunter Grass. No. I'm studying Medieval German Literature. Why? Those are the literature classes offered in the spring. Medieval. German. I can't read Medieval English Literature. Can you? My guess is no. So. We'll see if I pass these literature classes. If I do, and if they transfer, I should be finished with German. Then I will take care of the rest of the history courses next fall. Then I will be finished. Hopefully.

Where is this going? It has to do with me going home. Eventually, sooner rather than later, I want to go home. The study abroad office at my home university suggested June 3 as a good date to fly home. I bought a ticket with a return date of June 3. As it turns out, the semester here in Austria is over at the end of June. Head spinning? Yes. At this point, I was pretty disappointed in our study abroad office. Then I came here and met their Austrian counterparts, the most worthless bunch of people I have ever met. And they are only available to us two hours a day, between ten and noon. When are my Medieval Literature classes? Between ten and noon. And listen, I could spend the next three months telling you all about how worthless they are, how they have screwed me up every chance I have given them, how they have repeatedly given me information that was flat-out wrong and nearly jeopardized my entire semester. I could spend a long time telling you all about it. In fact, I probably will. Let's assume I actually stick this out or don't get arrested for murder or don't throw myself into the icy Mur. That gives me three months here. With regular internet access and no sleep, I might just be able to keep up with their never-ending bad advice and general worthlessness and be able to give you the play by play. Maybe. Right now, the point is, I want to go home. Eventually.

So I had the wrong return date. Not the end of the world. I came to Austria to talk with the foreign exchange office and find out when exactly would be a good time to go home. I don’t think I need to tell you how productive that conversation was. I thought I would come here, talk to some people in the know, and then find out when I should plan to fly home. The thing is, I have to go around to all of my professors personally and pick up my grades, which they will have filled out onto a particular form, and take all of these forms to the dreaded study abroad office and get them to compile them into a transcript which I can take home to my university.

Brief intermission. One of the things that made yesterday so incredibly infuriating is that it totally and unapologetically wiped away the post-trip-with-Jamie-glow I still had. Yes, I was a wreck when I had to watch her go, and I still am. It was a wonderful trip though and it left me feeling really positive about her, and us and my future and our future. I had something to feel good about. I would still feel really good if it weren’t for yet another impossibly aggravating, huge, lurking….thing. Now it is all I can think about. And I went to buy a cinnamon roll this morning and the woman behind the counter was really rude. All I want is to be able to think about Jamie, feel like the days are passing quickly, and eat cinnamon rolls. But if Austria keeps kicking me in the face then I can't enjoy anything.

It’s not like I can’t hack it either. I mean, I lived in Switzerland last summer, spoke their crazy German, and worked with crazy people in a grocery store. I lived with two weird parents, their weird little children, their three weird dogs, and the mother smoked constantly. That was bad too but it wasn’t nearly as frustrating. It certainly wasn’t like being kicked in the face all day. I keep thinking I am going to come back to the U.S. this 95 pound, bitter, second-hand smoke addicted, angry, bike-riding jerk. Then Jamie will leave me. Landon will think I am tense. My sister will be not yet married but still pregnant. My nephew will be completely and irreversibly corrupted by riding the bus to school. He'll be smoking. You know what I’m saying. “We’re dealing with a lot of shit here.”

So. Transcript. In the narrow window between the end of finals, whenever that is, and my preferred date of return, July 3, my tests have to be graded, final grade calculated, Zeugnisse collected, turned in, translated, compiled and made available to me. I'd like to fly home on July 3. I called the airline to change my flight. It turns out it is impossible. For an impressive number of reasons, I can't exchange my ticket for a month later. There are lots and lots of criteria my new return flight would have to meet in order for it to be exchangeable. Those criteria are apparently hard to meet. So I called the company I bought the ticket from and they told me the same thing, more apologetically, in English. My options are: cancel the return portion of my ticket and buy a new one-way ticket. Which would require me to sell a kidney or a testicle. Or lots and lots of plasma. Or I could twiddle my thumbs for the next two or three weeks and hope that somebody who already has a ticket decides they'd rather stay home. Maybe I should find their sister and arrange for her to get pregnant, thereby necessitating a quick marriage, for which they would need to be present, for which they would need to cancel their flights. It's so crazy it just might work. The worst part of it, or one of the parts of it that are tied for "The Worst Part of It," was the music I had to listen to while I was on hold. And you have to listen to it. How else would you know they were back on the line, ready and waiting to solve your problem? If, of course, they could solve your problem. It was the Lufthansa theme song. "A Better Way to Fly." “The horror. The horror.” "I shiver. I quake."

So I did what I hope any 22-year old man would do. I called Mommy. I soon realized I hadn’t told her about any of my struggles. She was the victim of a deluge of sad, sad, frustrating experiences. She took it well, obviously surprised and concerned, but well. It's probably a good thing I didn't tell her that I am also sick. She said she was going to call the airline and the travel agent and shake things up. I hope she's successful. I'd like to come home eventually and I'd like it to not cost a fortune. Or a part of my body.

So that was yesterday.

There, that's better.

Hi. Sorry for the three week hiatus. I tried to post before my trip with Jamie, but it just wasn't happening. Things seem to be back to as close to normal as they are going to be.

The trip was lovely. For the entire two months building up to the trip, I was certain something would go wrong and I wouldn't see her. I took a night train to Frankfurt and arrived at 4:45am, leaving me with 5 hours to pace around and flip through magazines I had no intention of buying. I flipped through many, many magazines. When I saw her plane on the arrivals board, I was still certain I would not see her. To make matters worse, her plane arrived at the same time as four others, so I watched what seemed like 2,000 people come through the gates before her. But there she was. Papaya jacket and all. What a relief. We could have stayed in the airport for the next ten days and I wouldn't have cared. We left the airport of course and had a wonderful time together. Wine, castles, chocolate, movies, shopping, museums, carriage rides. Pictures coming soon.