Diane’s World

Guten Tag, Welt!

Wie gehts?

It’s time for Diane’s weekly update.

I had quite the weekend. It started out with a dance on Friday night at the Mormon church. Yes, mormons dance… how come Presbyterians don’t dance? Anyways, Friday night was absolutely hilarious. I wish I took pictures to show all of you the wonders of people semi-ballroom dancing to horrible 90’s music, but I will resist. Don’t get me wrong though, I absolutely loved it.

On Saturday morning, Narja and I went to the Berlin zoo. It was AWESOME! I loooovvveee the zoo. I took over 100 pictures.

First we saw the big cats. Every time I saw one, I thought directly of my mother’s cat, Katze, and wondered what would happen if Katze were in the cage with the other cats. Sorry, Mom… I don’t think Katze stands a chance.

And then there were more animals!

Some black bear was just hanging in the tree (if you look closely enough, he has his tongue sticking out )

And I got to sing the Kookaburra song to a Kookaburra! And it didn’t attack me! (haha, Mom!)

Find the monkey in this photo! (She stayed like this for a looonnggg time… it was kind of creepy.)

And here is the famous “Knut”! The polar bear that was born in Berlin!

And I discovered very weird ice creams… like BumBum. My friend Narja titled this photo “Do not feed the animals” Gee thanks. :

and then I discovered the most amazing animal of them all: The Brazilian Female

Yup… she’s in Front of the elephant. The elephant is pretty cool too.

It was a great day.

Besides that not much else is new. I am going to München this weekend, so good stuff in my next week’s post!!!

Much Love,

Deeds

Hello world.

I am playing A Perfect Circle “The Noose”. Enjoy – this is one of my top 10 bands. If you didn’t know and if you care, the lead singer is also in the band “Tool”, and other members are former members of the bands “Nine Inch Nails” and “The Smashing Pumpkins”. So yes, it has to be good.

Sorry I haven’t written for a while. I ended up giving my parents their own personal email last week of what I was doing because I unfortunately had no time to update my blog.

So I guess that means I owe you all a mega post.

(Prepare for this one, kids!)

I have started a new course. New teacher, new classmates. The only thing that stays the same for me is that I am living in the same house with my wonderful Chilean Gästgeberin (hostess).

My class this semester is very young. Most of the people are college aged, and it’s nice to have a youthful class. My classmates come from Brazil, Thailand, Japan, Switzerland, South Africa and America.

There is a large group of students from Brigham Young University… which is in Utah. Which, yes, means they are from the Mormon religion.

Being a non-Mormon Christian, I have been spending a lot of time with the BYU people. They are very fun to be with, and I am attempting to learn all I can about their religion, including attending their bible studies and reading this book:

It has been entertaining so far, but I am not prepared to share my mind about it quite yet.

Well, except to also say that I have also been studying the Bible right along side of it, and I never realized how rich and deep the Bible was until I started reading the book of Mormon. I guess what I mean is I read 1 Nephi (the first book of the Book of mormon) and then read 1/4th of Jeremiah and large chuncks of Isaiah in the Bible right afterwards… the language expertise in the Bible never seemed so rich and exquisite until now.

One things I give HUGE credit to the Mormon Church is their use of Water Fountains in the church buildings:

Yes Ladies and Gentlemen, for some reason Germany doesn’t believe in Water fountains. And didn’t quite notice how much I missed it until I used this one.

Anyways, I prefer not to comment more about the religion just quite yet. I hope to become a lot better at apologetics and strengthen what I believe. We’ll see what the next month and a half brings me. Prayers are very welcomed.

Anyways, on a lighter note.:

I was walking down the street the other day, and some girl stopped me and asked me if I would be a hair model for her. So, I got a free (yay!) haircut that usually costs 59Euros just because the girl was finishing her training as a hairstylist! Yay!

Here is the new ‘do (a better picture than the one above a least. And I JUST took this picture… you are so lucky… or something:

and another:

Short hair… I know. Oh well, it grows back.

Also, Last week was Berlin’s Karneval des Kulturs (Translate that yourself, non German Speakers)

It was good. I went with three Brazilians. Here is me and two of them -Paulo and Narja:

Me love Brazilians.

And Brazilians love me:

Hee hee!

They have a funny culture that includes sporadic dancing in the streets:

Ok…

Yes, I will remain a boring america.

I’ve had quite the cultural week. On Last sunday and monday alone I had Swiss Chocolate, Indian lunch, Greek dinner and wine, Italian Coffee, Turkish Tea, Spanish Wine, German Breakfast, Arabic Lunch, French water, Brazilian alcoholic drink that I can’t pronounce… and I think that sums it up. I enjoyed celebrating the multi-cultural atmosphere of Berlin.

Anyways.

I might travel this weekend to Düsseldorf… I haven’t decided yet.

And I am definitely going next weekend to München…

So I have a lot of exciting things happening in the future.

But for now, I must study my book of Mormon and my German… I have wayyyy to much to do.

Send love, people, send love!

Deedles Marie

Song of the week “Müssen Nur Wollen” You can find the lyrics with an English translation HERE. (“Muß ich immer alles müssen was ich kann” means “Must I always do everything that I can?”)

So on that note… Helllllllo world! I am back from a one-week fun-filled trip of West Germany and Zürich, Switzerland! Yayyy! I didn’t die!!! !!!!! I mainly decided to take this trip so I could relax and forget about German lessons before having to start another rigorous and stressful two months of even more difficult German. Oh and did I manage to mention that I’m taking an EXTRA class in the next course? Along with my 5 hours of only GERMAN classes every day Mon-Fri… I am going to be taking an additional 2 hours ever Wednesday night. The course is called “German Art and Culture”, and I’m mainly taking it to advance my struggling art vocabulary.

So I guess this is the equivalent of about 27 credit hours for an American university? OH wait! What? It’s summer? Why am I working so hard on a summer course? Yes, folks. I am doing a very slow but effective way of committing suicide! Whee!!! Achem.

Well anyways… What was I talking about? OH yeah! What I did this week. Well…. I left my apartment early Sunday morning, very narrowly escaping my landlady who wanted to scold me on proper door locking techniques. (geez whiz, Deutschland! Is five locks on every door really necessary?) A few hours later, I was in the house of my absolutely wonderful friend Arras… and his owner, my uncle Herbert. Here is Arras: And here is Arras and my Uncle Herbert: My visit with Arras and Uncle Herbert was great! We did quite a few things, including a visit to a nearby castle: Hee! I know you are all jealous! We also went to a bookstore. I would really like to read a German book, but unfortunately I don’t have enough patience to even read a full book in English. (I know I know… Children of my father should have genes that makes them mega-readers…. but then again, maybe I’m adopted?) Just kidding I love my parents. Anyways… I FOUND A SOLUTION! COMIC BOOKS! Yeah, sounds silly. Well, one of them I got is nothing but silly: “Angry Little Girls” are originally American books… but I bought a few in German. (I had never read them in English, so no, I wasn’t cheating!) But here is an example in English: The other one was a recommendation from my friend, Michaele. It’s called “Maus”, and it’s a comic novel of a jew’s struggle in the Halocaust. Click here to read what Wikipedia has to say about it. It’s two books in one, and I’m already done with one half! (Each animal represents a different nationality – the mice are jews, pigs are polish, cats are nazis, dogs are american, french are frogs….etc, etc) Dad – if you want to read this book, let me know and I’ll send it to you when I am done! It’s a very fast read, but very interesting! Anyways… my Uncle gave me an absolutely wonderful present as well…. YOGA FOR COWS!!! Yayy! It even comes with a wall poster with some of the best moves. Now every morning I can do yoga with my cows. WHat cows? Oh I’ll come back to that later (tee hee hee!) Anyways, I had a lot of fun with Uncle Herbert. He bought himself a new toy that was quite entertaining to watch him try to get used to. Everywhere we went, he brought his new mini-computer with him trying to find internet hot spots. Here it is : Oh and on a walk, I found the world’s coolest mailbox. I took a picture so that if I become old and senile someday, i can recreate it!: Ok anyways! On wednesday, I left Herbert to go to Würzburg so I could spend the night with two complete strangers. (Aren’t you proud of me, mom? hahah… ) Anyways, they are friends of my uncle Herbert, so I figured it was safe. It ended up to be a very good idea. Here are my new friends Katja and Hannes: We had a wonderful dinner of Fish Soup (that’s actually a joke, people… ) and a good long conversation in German! It was a wonderful evening, and I hope to return someday to their house for another stay! Their town is beautiful. Here is the wonderful view that I got to wake up to right outside my bedroom window: They also showed me around Würzburg (a town that is not too far from Frankfurt). It’s a nice place… and as Katja pointed out, absolutely filled to the brim with churches! We spent some time walking around and having coffee at the Würzburger Residence. (I stole this next picture from online) The back gardens had many beautiful and colorful flowers and very green grass and fountains. Well it was finally time to go, but I wasn’t leaving empty handed. My wonderful hosts sent me on my way with chocolate, gummy bears, and yes, more cows. I now own four cows. I think I may be going crazy. Here they are!!! I love cows . They make me smile. And now I’m happy… because there are way too many cows in this post already. It’s finished! I promise! Anyways, I’m pretty sure I know the nicest people in Germany now – Katja, Hannes, Uncle Herbert, and his sister Hilla. Boy am I spoiled. Anyways, I spent the last three days of my break in Zürich, Switzerland. I wanted peace and quiet, and oh boy did I find it! Anyways, I spent most of the time sitting, relaxing, chatting online, and window shopping. I didn’t really feel like being much of a tourist, so I didn’t even look into any museums there. Oh and someone vandalized the City hall while I was there. I thought it was kind of funny… most of the tourists were taking pictures of the vandalism even though there was a GORGEOUS view right next to it. Aye… well I caved in and took a picture as well: Hee hee! However, Zürich is the most expensive city I’ve ever seen. Ok, so the Swiss Franc is worth considerably less than the Euro, but really – after you convert it, it is still quite expensive. Trying to find a hotel was probably the funniest thing – I was finally able to find a hotel/hostel that was relatively cheap. It was the funniest hotel I have been in my life. IT’s called the “ZicZac Rock Hotel”. Every room is “decorated” in the style of a certain 80’s rock artist. To one side of my room was Bon Jovi… the other side had Kiss. I missed out, and got Kate Bush. Don’t really know who she is, but hey, It’s a place to sleep, I’m not complaining! Anyways… what they meant by “decorating” the room, means placing a framed record in the room, and a very creepy painting of who I assume is Kate Bush wearing bat wings on the wall: I’m very lucky I didn’t have nightmares. Anyways I took the night train back to Berlin (I think it was a 12 hour ride? I don’t know… I actually did sleep the whole way.) I think that’s all I will talk about today. I’m sure you all are already bored with my adventures Anyways, much thanks to the people who gave me a wonderful weekend! I start school again on Tuesday, wish me luck! Signing out! The Deeds