Endlich eine Deutschnebenfachin!

I finally declared my German minor!  Right after the German class during which I spent the entire time with a low blood sugar.  It wasn't one of those nice low blood sugars either; it was one of those that makes me get all emotional about everything and starts me crying.  Thankfully, my professor and classmates are awesome.  One even brought me a bottle of orange juice, and a couple asked me what they could do if that happened in the future.  (I did tell my professor about my diabetes, by the way, so she knew at least some of what was going on.)

Anyway, just thought I should share that.  Yay German minor!

Wow, I actually did something Halloween related! And it was awesome. Thanks, D!

I think I mentioned in an earlier post that I would say what I did on Saturday night.  So, here we go.

One of my best friends in high school, D, decided to go to UVA instead of Virginia Tech.  She really seems to love it there.  One thing I did not expect was that she would somehow get interested in swing dancing.  But she did.

Virginia Tech's Swing Dance club decided to hold a Halloween party the day after Halloween, and they invited the UVA Swing Dance club to come to it.  D decides to go and emails me about it.  We're both excited, but I don't dance, so we decide to hang out, and I thought I might just go sit and watch everyone dancing.

That worked for about half a song.

Anyway.  D and I meet up, and we are both ecstatic to see each other.  She and I get supper, as neither of us has eaten yet, and we sit and talk for a while, just catching up on everything that wouldn't fit in our emails.  Then we head to the dance, where she says no one will mind if I watch, or I could try dancing if I want.  She dances a bit, and I can tell she's enjoying it.  D really is a great dancer.

I'm sure you can see where this is going.  I ended up dancing.  Very badly, but several of the guys with whom I danced were very good dancers and did not mind giving on-the-spot lessons.  Most of them were pretty nice about me having no idea what I was doing, and I had a lot of fun.  And my calves were aching a bit afterward.  Yay exercise!

I had been kind of thinking about maybe getting involved in the Ballroom Dancing club here, and now I think I just might.  Swing dancing was a lot of fun.  (Yeah, they're pretty different.  But I feel more drawn to ballroom for some reason.  And there's no reason I can't learn both, either.  Except time constraints.)  Or maybe the Swing dancing club is more for me.  We'll see; I'm still planning to wait until next semester so I don't have to go to a lesson only to have to study for finals afterward.

Well, D, you might have gotten me hooked.  You are a fantastic dancer.  As always, it was great to see you and hang out!  And thank you for letting me crash the dance party.  I had a blast!

Test tonight! Dun dun DUN!

I have my second big Engineering Explorations test tonight.  I've been studying quite a bit, so I feel pretty prepared.  One thing I am not going to let happen this test is to let the nervousness of everyone else taking the test make me nervous.  Last time, I went in confident, sat down, and then there was some confusion with filling out our Opscans.  (I've grown up; those are called ScanTrons in elementary-high school, but Opscans here, for the most part).  Plus, people were talking about how much they studied and how much they wished they had studied more, etc.  I started to freak out and wasn't as focused for the test as I could have been.  In comparison, over the summer when I did the Student Transition Engineering Program, I went into our tests feeling confident, ignored other people's worries, and took the tests.  The first time, I got 94%.  The second time?  99%.  Of course, there was less pressure since those grades did not count, but still, if I can maintain the same attitude, I will probably be fine.

After the test, though, I get to watch a movie.  S was telling me last night how a certain friend of hers had never seen a certain movie, and I got a funny look on my face.  I think she noticed it, and then proceeded to ask whether I had seen it.  I said no; I always seem to be the person who has never seen any movie ever.  She got excited and said I have to go watch it with her and her friend.  I would usually avoid things on Thursday nights due to Stammtisch and Campus Crusade for Christ, but I'm not going to Stammtisch because it is right before my test, and Cru tonight is pretty much out of the question, since this test runs an hour and a half, which means it has more questions.  And that it ends at 8:30, 30 minutes after Cru begins.  So now I have a movie to look forward to.

In other news, I'm trying to think of non-orange and maroon Christmas/holiday gifts for my friends.  I think I'm the only one out of my little friend groups to come to VT, so I don't think the people going to UVA and Hollins and Mary Washington and other schools would appreciate orange and maroon.  Any ideas?  Especially for a college student on a budget?

Yay! And, housing arrangements.

I got to spend yesterday and the day before with my oh-so-awesome parents.  They are probably home right now, asleep and tired from the car trip, but I'm glad they came, despite the (non)-fun of long car rides.  We hung out, shopped, talked, saw Wall·E, saw 1964:  The Tribute performed in Virginia Tech's own Burruss Hall (which was a LOT of fun; I haven't seen my parents both singing along with music at a concert until last night), and just generally had fun.  It was awesome.  It was only icing on the cake that they brought me food, a suitcase (to make coming home for breaks easier), and other stuff.  Thank you, Mom and Dad!  xoxo!

We also discussed something very important:  where I am going to live next year.  I have to decide before Winter Break whether I am moving off campus next academic year or not, so my parents, S (the fellow woman engineering student with whom I will more than likely be rooming; she's awesome), and I met and talked apartments.  S had obviously done much more research than I had had time to do, so she knew most of the details about housing around here and had already focused on a couple nice apartment complexes.  We both want a quiet community, and we both miss having the privacy of our own rooms (or at least a near 100% guarantee that there will be somewhere in our living space where we can "recharge" alone, as we are both introverted).  We discussed stuff we need to be sure to ask while taking tours of the candidates, and we will be working on priority lists for what we can't live without soon (aka as soon as I get my dormwork done, I'm doing mine).  However, I don't think we've entirely removed the possibility of staying on campus.  But, if we do go off, Virginia Tech has an excellent bus system, and most of the apartments we are looking at are within easy walking distance too.  I wouldn't have to drive unless I had a giant tri-fold board or prototype model to transport, pretty much.

But Virginia Tech is having a bit of a housing crunch.  More and more incoming freshmen means less and less upperclassmen housing, so we may be "strongly encouraged" to do our bit to help next year's freshmen not have to live in study lounges or room with RA's (because some, over halfway into the semester, are still being forced to do that!)  I've been thinking about the possibility of going off campus for a while, and while it is nice to live right in the middle of everything, it would also be nice to have a room or quiet space of my own, and to live with someone with a similar sleep pattern.

Anyway, if anyone has any sage advise for apartment hunting or a definite reason to stay on or go off campus, please let me know.  I would definitely appreciate it, especially since I don't know everything involved or what to take into consideration.

Stammtisch macht Spaß!

Every Thursday evening, anyone who speaks German and feels like eating out or just sitting around and talking goes to Stammtisch, which means going to Gillie's (very good restaurant,  by the way, and cheap) and speaking German.  Always the big rectangular table on the left as you walk in, starting at 6PM and going until a bit after 7.  It's fun.

Yesterday, there was pretty much no one there.  My professor and one other person showed up, but we still had a great time talking.  I discovered that the other guy (M) is fairly involved in Intervarsity, so we told Dr. M (my professor) about IV and Campus Crusade for Christ, which was really cool.

And, as always happens when speaking a foreign language, hilarity ensues from trying to find the right word.

M the student mentioned a time in his German class that he didn't know the word for "deer" in German, so in a class discussion, he called in a Waldkuh (forest cow).  Makes sense, doesn't it?  The professor corrected him, but the entire rest of the class period, his classmates were using the word Waldkuh just for fun.   During Stammtisch, he and I noticed that the words we don't know in German always seem to translate directly from English with very little spelling or pronunciation difference.  "Deer" in German is actually "Reh," which makes sense if you think of the word "roe" for deer.

But etemology isn't as funny as what happened later.  I was trying to explain what I usually have for breakfast to Dr. M, as she has never really  tried the campus food (which, if you are looking into coming to Virginia Tech, is very good!).  I could explain that I got coffee from Deet's, but then I tried to think of the word for the food I usually eat.  The dictionary I had with me did not have the word, and I was at a loss and about to ask her for the word when I realized that Google Translator might have an answer, and I could text message Google SMS and access the translator.  (By the way, Mom and Dad, thank you for the unlimited texting!  I put it to good use, as you will see!)  So, a few seconds after my inquiry, my phone vibrates and I get the translation:

"muffin" in English is "muffin" in German.

Oh.

I read the text aloud, and we all burst out laughing.

Stammtisch is usually a lot of fun, and sometimes there are nearly a dozen people there, speaking German and hanging out.  But this time, I stayed longer than I usually did.  Somehow, I broke through my "I don't understand social dynamics or the art of conversation" problem and enjoyed myself.

Well, I actually have German class in 30 minutes.  And then, I get to go to the Health Center to verify that I don't have tuberculosis.  Oh joy!

Walk!

I just did a Walk to Cure Diabetes today in Roanoke.  It was about an hour away from the VT campus, but it was still a lot of fun and I didn't get too lost (only going to Coldstone afterward...).  It was at the Virginia Museum of Transportation, which was really fun because my tiny team and I wandered around, looking at trains and taking funny photographs balancing on railroad ties and such.  (To be posted eventually, hopefully.)  They also had food, which was very good.  Mmmm... Chick-Fil-A brownies!  I love CFA...

I have to say, after all the research I've been doing about Continuous Blood Glucose Monitoring Systems I've done and the blog entries I've read, it felt really good to see so many people show up to support Type 1 Diabetes research.  CGMs may take years to be deemed "medically necessary" and there might not be a cure for a while, but there is support.  And the more support we have, the more it seems possible to live life to the fullest as a diabetic.

Well, even though it was only two miles (and two-and-a-half-ish hours in the car), I'm exhausted.  I should get the rest of my dormwork done and go to sleep.

Last Minute Walk-a-thon

Hi!
I'm doing the JDRF Walk to Cure Diabetes here in Roanoke on Sunday.  If you want to donate to my team ("Hokies for a Cure"), I would be very happy.


Here's the link:  http://walk.jdrf.org/walker.cfm?id=87177414


Of course, if you wanted to come and walk with us, that'd be awesome too.  But donating to help aid Type 1 Diabetes research would be greatly appreciated.  


Thanks!

Week 1 = Over!

Hi!

I survived my first week of college! I did a bit of schedule shuffling this week, too, which was a bit confusing. I may have already mentioned that I used my AP Calculus credit to get out of Calc 1 and 2 and just do Linear Algebra and Vector Geometry at the same time. Neither are reported to be really hard, so I'm not worried. And since I was really bored in German 2105, I switched into German 3105, where they're analyzing films and stuff. I'm still a little nervous about it, since it's a class full of non-freshmen and you actually have to talk about stuff in German pretty much the entire time... even new words are usually defined in German, not English. But I'm excited; this looks like exactly what I needed. And the people in the class are genuinely interested in learning German. Which rocks. The only bad part: I had a week's worth of German 3105 work to make up (still not 100% done) since I missed the first two classes. Oh well.

Anyway, I have to admit I'm a bit freaked out about my meal plan. I have *finds receipt* exactly $390.69 with which to feed myself until December 18th. I guess it will help me not gain the Freshman 8 (The seniors in my church were told that "Freshman 15" is an exaggeration, and that usually freshmen gain only 8 pounds. But still.)(Man, I really should ban the parenthesis keys on my keyboard. I commentate parenthetically waaaay too much. Ending comment... now.) if I have to watch how much I'm eating, but still. I didn't realize how much food cost. And students even get half-price on nearly everything in the dining halls, unless the cashier forgets to press the "student with meal plan" button. Which has thankfully only happened to me once. Well, I guess I now know why college students can be won over by free food!

Ooh, I should mention my favorite food place. First of all, I like coffee and baked goods. It turns out that there is a coffee shop, similar to Starbucks (but it serves ice cream as well) that uses Dining Dollars. And the prices are *gasp* reasonable! It's also a great atmosphere; I did much of my Deutsch homework there this afternoon, and while I was there, there were people playing chess, having what looked like a first meeting for a small club that was just starting up, having coffee with a professor, and some people I'm pretty sure I saw at nlcf this morning discussing the Bible. It's great. <3

And I'm not just doing academics either. I'm already in InterVarsity and Cru small groups (I'll try both organizations this semester, and if I feel like God wants me to drop one, I will) that have their first meetings this week, and I can actually remember the names of the leaders! They have had a lot of mixers, and I've tried to go to pretty much everything. ("Tried" meaning that when I got lost going to the large IV group meeting on Friday because I accidentally ended up on the exact opposite side of campus, I actually tried to find the building for about an hour before giving up. And yes, it was an accident. I keep accidentally mixing up the academic and residential sides of campus on the map...) And I'm probably going to try to get involved in the Society of Women Engineers and maybe even the Society of Women in Computing. And hopefully a design team of some sort. Ooh, and there's a group that meets at a certain restaurant on Thursday nights and has dinner conversations in German. =) There's so much here.

Not everything is amazing, sadly. It doesn't look good for me getting private violin lessons right now, since people who are either music majors or in the symphony get top priority (and I am neither) and there are a lot of those people. But that's okay. I can always just work at my own pace. I still think the director was a bit miffed that I didn't bring my "good" instrument (I really don't think dorm rooms are secure enough to keep one's expensive instrument from being stolen. And bothering insurance companies isn't my idea of fun.) Oh well. Oh, and I heard that the internet security software everyone is supposed to install messes up the brand of computer I got, and mine has seemed a bit slower and more temperamental than it was before I installed the software. Maybe I'll take it to SWAT soon to see what suggestions they have. But it's usable. And it is pretty fun having a tablet. Even a Windows one. (Yeah, I still use my Powerbook for stuff too. Sometimes I'll have both computers up and running for some reason, and I think of this:



EDIT: Oops! At least on my monitor, the last panel is cut off. If you click the comic, you can see all of it on the Dilbert website.

EDIT: My spontaneous change of layout fixed the problem. w00t.)

=)

But I did get a ticket to the first home football game! I'm excited about that. The one we watched on TV yesterday (and by "we" I mean I watched it with Intervarsity) looked like a lot of fun, even though we (narrowly) lost.

Now, to finish the rest of the homework.

18!

I am 18 today!  Thank you to all who have emailed me; I appreciate it!  

I don't feel very different being a legal adult, but that's probably a good thing.  The only real difference I have noticed is that I am now allowed to drive as many people as the car I am driving can hold, not just two people who aren't related to me.  It almost makes me want to drag four of my friends off to dinner, but I'm too busy.  Oh well, I'm sure I'll get my chance to peruse my latest legal privilege soon.  

Ooh!  And a lady came to my Government class yesterday to register people to vote.  I should be getting my voter card soon, which is cool.  Although I guess that means I should actually research the candidates sometime between now and next November.  Teacher work days, anyone?

Anyway, on my last day of being 17, one of my favorite school Christmas—er, Holiday Season— traditions was carried out again.  Every year a few days before break, my school's Madigrals walk around during the lunch period in full Medieval/Rennaissance/Old Timey regalia singing classic Christmas carols.  I'm not exactly the biggest fan of my school's chorus (Orchestra, Guitar, Chorus, and Band all seem to have a bit of an ongoing rivalry), but these guys are the cream of the crop and sound amazing.  Entire classes will stop as the Mads drift from one hallway to another, singing.  People crowd the doors to watch and listen.  It's awesome.  

One of my friends and I left a few minutes early from lunch yesterday, but neither of us knew the Mads would be caroling.  The hallways were nearly empty.  We both walked upstairs to go to our respective classrooms when we heard the singing.  Other than the chorus and the chorus teacher, we were the only people in that particular hallway.  Since the Mads were blocking the way to my classroom (I still had several minutes anyway), my friend and I stopped to listen. We were unsure at first whether we should run off to class or stay and listen—it's really weird to have over twenty people singing really well to you and one other person—but we stayed for a little while and even followed them until it was time to go to class.  That made my day.  

Happy Thanksgiving!

Yes, it's late. But happy Thanksgiving anyway! I ate waaaay too much good food today. We shared thanksgiving with a couple of families; one we were friends with, and the other we just met today. (Both are very nice.) I hope everyone enjoyed their meals, etc as much as I did!

Today reminds me of how much I am thankful for. Of course, since it is Thanksgiving, but also that I have so very much to be thankful for. I have more than I need of everything, a lot of what I want, I'm healthy, I'm getting to think about my future. I live in a country of freedom, and so many brave men and women are overseas fighting to defend us. And most important are friends, family, and God and the sacrifice he made to save me. I could easily go on. If I wrote everything I could be thankful for, Blogger would have to block my account so I wouldn't flood their servers.

After we got home from our thanksgiving linner (lunch + dinner), Thanksgiving didn't feel done. Since we all have the day off tomorrow, we decided to watch some DVDs my dad had (especially after going to the grocery store to rent Rattatoille and finding out it had just closed. Oh well. Those poor employees deserve to go home early—especially after working on a very family-oriented holiday.). On those DVDs were two episodes of The Prisoner and Stephane Grappelli. Now, the main question: Does anyone have a box set of The Prisoner I can borrow (or at least the first couple of episodes, so I get more than just the intro montage of background information)? It was really funny. (Okay, no one has to lend me their stuff. I'll track it down eventually.)

Enjoy the last couple hours of your Turkey Day!

Finally!

Okay, I've got about five minutes before I fall asleep in my computer chair, slide back on the chair mat and hit my nose on my desk. We went to a water park today—my favorite, so of course I wore myself out swimming and going down slides.

Various things I did in Germany since my last entry:

Visit the Technische Universität at Darmstadt. I happened to mention to S that I wanted to major in Engineering and that I was considering studying abroad some in college. She and her mom were able to arrange a college tour of one of the five or six schools with Computer and Electrical Engineering in Germany for me. Oh man, I love that place. The school has great programs, great opportunities, and it is in a great location. Darmstadt has a medium-sized city feel, but it still feels German. When I visited Frankfurt (look down) I heard a lot of English…and a lot of other languages. All the tourist shops were a little distracting. It was in some ways a bit too international for my taste. I liked both cities, though.

Anyway. Darmstadt was beautiful. All of Germany is beautiful, actually. I enjoyed the parks I saw. One park had a little library in it. Since no one keeps track of the books in the library, people are free to take books out and keep them or to donate their own books. I have a book from the library inside the Prinz-Georg-Garten. Do you?

The Library in the Garden

I may write a more detailed trip log later. Right now I'll just say that we took a trip to the Rhine River (beautiful) and a trip to Frankfurt (beautiful in a different way).

Pictures:




A view of part of the Rhine from a nearby memorial




A beautiful view from the chair lift. Rhine, wine-grape fields, and pretty little houses. Ahh.





The Römer in Frankfurt. With stadium seats in front. (The Ironman was the day before. Grr. Stop messing up my picture, marathon runners!) = ) (And why is my finger in front of the lens? Drat!)



S and I about to eat our Americans. Americans (Amerikaner in German) are puffy sugar cookies with frosting on one side. They are surprisingly good. (By the way, if you say "Ich bin ein Amerikaner" you are saying you are one of these cookies. If you say "Ich bin Amerikaner" you are saying you are an American. It's the "Ich bin ein Berliner" thing. If he had just said "Ich bin Berliner" he would have said what he meant to say. Thankfully, all of the German people I have met are nice enough that, if I just happened to say that I was "ein Amerikaner," they wouldn't think I was about as smart as the cookie I mistakenly identified with. Such friendly people!)




Die alte Oper (The Old Opera). So pretty. I'll have to see the inside someday. Unfortunately, on Monday we were kind of rushed due to various reasons. Plus, it is nearly impossible to see an entire city properly in only one day. I guess that means I have to go back someday. <irony>What a pity.</irony> Until then, I have a t-shirt with this building on it.

That's all for the moment. Hopefully the next time I try to blog, I will be used to American keyboards again. I keep typing z's instead of y's and double quotes instead of apostrophes. Ugh.

I will get to that meme eventually. It might help for me to be awake when I write it!

The Awesomeness of Germany!

Ky: I'm in Germany right now. With my penpal. It's really cool. I may or may not have mentioned it before, mainly because I didn't want to keep blogging every day about how excited I was.

Anyway, almost everything is a bit different here. I'm in a small town with narrow streets and narrower sidewalks. Frankfurt is only an hour away driving, and Dieburg can be reached within fifteen minutes. Darmstadt is also nearby. I would upload pictures, but I don't think my penpal's computer has the drivers and I forgot the CD-ROM. Oh well; maybe when I get back.

I'll be here for two weeks from this past Tuesday, speaking Denglish (German-English for those of you not familiar with the term; check it out on Wikipedia), going to school with my penpal (her school ends July 4th), and even going to her prom (Der Abschlussball; for graduating students only. She goes to a Realschule, so she graduates at the end of 10th grade and gets an internship.). The keyboards are different here, so don't be surprised if I type a z instead of a y or a \ instead of shift. Heh.

Germany is really cool so far, as I wrote a couple of paragraphs ago. I'm still a bit jetlagged, and waking up at 6 AM to go to school has not helped. I keep nodding off everywhere. But this is Friday night, so I should be able to sleep in tomorrow. At this point in both countries' Daylight Savings Time programs, Germany is 6 hours ahead of EST.

Anywho. Things are a bit smaller here, from the houses to the road lanes to the cars themselves (SmartCars aren't the only tiny cars! They're all tiny! I could probably count the number of SUV's I've seen on one hand.). It's cool, though. One can walk nearly everywhere in the town, and to go much farther, there is an extremely convienient, extremely comprehensive bus system. Driving is sometimes neccesary, for sanity's sake (taking a bus to Frankfurt would probably take twice as long as driving, due to all of the stopping.)

Some things are not smaller. My penpal (I'll call her S) showed me a department store. I didn't even try to count the floors. It was HUGE. (S just said it has 5 floors. Wow.) And there was so much there! Candy, clothes, postcards, school supplies...everything. And apparently it has a restaurant on the top floor. The only stores in America that are comprable are those huge expensive New York stores. Maybe.

Today, I heard my penpal's choir rehearse. It was soooooo pretty--I have never heard so many kids/teens sing in tune! We also went on a tour of the building, but I had a bit of a meltdown because so much German was coming at me so fast I didn't know what the guy was saying. I could only pick out individual words, and by the time I had figured out any of the sentence, he was discussing something else. But Americans speak quickly as well. I just never realized it before.

I'm running out of things to say. So.....

S: Hi @ all I'm the penpal of Ky.She is a nice girl and she is very good at german if she is speaking it. I was very happy when she came to me , because i counted the days till the arrival.
Most things are very different here in germany than in america.
we were at a big city and there it was great to go shopping whit someone who didn't know the language very very well (She can speak german)!!!!!!!!!^^ <(^§^)> <(°§°)>
That's all for the moment!
I like to do some more things with her.
Bye

Ky: Cool.
Oh--by the way, for those of you who don't know, almost ALL drinking water here is carbonated. All of it. Tap water is not carbonated, but S has a machine in her kitchen that carbonates it. I haven't decided whether I like it or not. = )

Hol&J: I started that meme. I just have to finish it. Maybe when I get home... It's a good one, so it's taking me forever to perfect. Ha ha, Ky the perfectionist.

I'm logging off now. Tune in next (undetermined) time for more News From Deutschland!

I'm baaaaack!

Sorry for the dearth of posts. All of my teachers seem to think they should all give us projects now.

Anyway, I just saw Pirates 3. Make sure you stay after the credits.

And to ruin it:

The undead monkey goes crazy and turns into a clown. He hijacks the ship, knocks over the cameraman, and all of the characters start singing. Ummm… and the fish turn into tennis balls. The end.

Yeah. Kidding. I think you could guess that. But it's good. Go see it. Just be sure you know that it is 3 hours long before you go.


In other news, I just switched my computer's interface into German. It's cool. I already did that with my gmail account a few months ago.

I really should go. I still have stuff to do.

HAHAHAHHA

I'M NOT LAURA! HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA I HAVE KIDNAPPED HER BLOG.

I'm not Laura either but I've got the computer now. Here's Laura:

Okay, so some friends came over to explode soda with me. And they kidnapped my blog, apparently. At least they don't have my login info.

More pirateness…but at least it's sorta patriotic

Okay, maybe I should have stopped at the tricorner hat. But I remembered a toy sword that has been in my basement probably since I did an oral report on Jacques Cartier in sixth grade. So now, I look like a pirate, minus the eye patch and earring. Just in time for my friends and me to explode sodas. (see prev. post)

It's too early…

…for the SAT II World History test. Yet I will be taking it in an hour. Technically, I am supposed to take it this time next year, but I don't want to forget everything I crammed into my head in my AP World History class this year. I've eaten a banana (they calm nerves) and there is a little bottled Starbucks frappucino for me in the kitchen for enough of a caffeinee boost to keep me awake, in addition to that which I got from the Diet Coke at McDonalds. And since I usually try to keep my caffeinee to a minimum, it should work.

Anyway, wish me luck.

In other news, some friends (same ones who had the conversation that started with "can a vampire get drunk off of a drunk guy's blood") and I went to our town's festival last night. We rode some of the fun rides, one of my friends won a little stuffed gorilla in a game, and a couple bought some stuff from the vendors, like pewter figurines and glassblown animals. Me? I had seen a vendor last year who sold oil lamps, one of which was shaped like a dragon. For the record, I like dragons. I collect dragons. And I name most of the dragons I collect. I thought about this vendor's products off and on all year and came to the conclusion that, if the vendor was there and it wasn't too expensive, I would get one. He wasn't there last night, but Friday night is always the least busy because there is no "unlimited rides" bracelet you can buy for thirteen dollars for the rides, and Saturday is always busy, no matter where you go. So my mom said we might be able to stop by the festival again today to see if the guy is there. I think I saw his stand on the vendor list, but we'll see.

I want my frappucino. I'm signing off.

Food, etc.

I mentioned at the end of my last post that I would be going out to eat Ethiopian food with some friends. It was a very interesting experience.

They give you a plate of squishy, porus bread that is very thin. You rip a piece off with your hands, and, using your right hand (using the left hand is impolite for a reason our hosts did not want to explain), you dip it into one of several sauces, or pick up chunks of the sauces. The sauces are in a giant basket plate thing that has more of the special bread on it. Around the edge are things like peppers, spinach, beans, and cottage cheese. It was very good. Especially the lamb.

Anyway, after the restaurant, the friend who invited us's parents mentioned that they had desserts at the house, including cheesecake and chocolate cake. We went back and ate. Parents started arriving, but they got to talking with my friend/host's parents, leaving us with time to goof around.

Let me just mention that all of us read a lot. Especially fantasy and sci-fi.

It started (innocently?) enough with a question posed by the girl sitting next to me. "Can a vampire get drunk if he sucks the blood of a drunk person?" We discussed that one for a while, deciding that it was possible. Then, things moved on to issues such as would a troll bitten by a vampire be a vampire-troll after it died, or if a vampire bit a werewolf while it was in wolf form, would it be a vampwolf after it died, or if a fairy, troll-vampire, and werewolf were riding on the back of a drunk unicorn, and all of them were eaten by an owl, what would happen to the owl. By the time our parents stopped talking long enough to look at their watches, we were laughing very hard. The friend/host's brother came in and talked with us for a while, saying that our conversation was much more interesting than the one being had by our parents.

Anyway, it would make more sense if you were there. Maybe.



Darn. Spell check isn't working again. Please forgive any and all misspellings. They are only partially my fault.