Monday to Saturday.
This week has been pretty hectic.
On Monday, our lovely Madam Favrot FINALLY came to school again - we’ve only had one French lesson since October because she had been ill for so long, the other group had their very first lesson this Monday. I had Project Management class before French - and there someone told me that Favrot wants to teach the other group first and our group should start at 6:20pm, which meant that I would have to wait for two hours after my Project Management class in order to go to the French lesson. I - along with several other people from my group - decided not to wait and attend the other group’s lesson instead. She bitched about it at first but then resigned.
The good thing is that we persuaded her to change her mind about the project we have to write for her stupid class - we don’t have to write at least 15 pages anymore, now we only have to write 7, which is a huge improvement. When I use the margins that are officially required for dissertations at our university - 5cm left, 3cm right, and write the project double-spaced, the seven pages become even shorter. That was such a relief.
I still despise the woman, she’s such a pretentious bitch - she tries to persuade you that everything’s going perfectly well, that she’s all motivated and that she works really hard for our (the students’) good… while in fact she’s just lazy and unreliable and arrogant.
I want to talk about the excursion to Leipzig on Tuesday, which was doomed to suck right from the beginning because I had to get up at 4:55am. :( I tried to go to bed early on Monday. Having spent at least 20 minutes searching for chewing gum that I could take - I only had one piece left and that is not enough for a whole day in Leipzig, considering that you have Sarah for a friend… she never brings her own gum and always asks me to give her a piece *lol* - I finally went to bed at 10pm. I am not used to going to sleep this early, so I spent the 40 minutes tossing and turning. Then I went to the kitchen to make myself a warm vanilla milk - because as I had been advised by a certain lovely person, drinking something warm before you go to bed helps you fall asleep. (I think there’s some truth in this.) I returned to bed, tried to make my mind shut up, which proved to be very difficult - even more difficult than it normally is. I “counted sheep”, well actually I got bored by the sheep and at first I imagined fairies flying over my head and then I imagined all sorts of animals marching over this narrow bridge instead of the sheep - I remember that I counted up to 57 or something and believe me, my animals had to walk slowly because you can’t run very fast over a narrow slippery bridge. It was quite late when I finally fell asleep - not late for my normal standards but late in the sense of ohmygosh, I only have 5,5 hours left to sleep. Then at 3:15 I woke up again and couldn’t fall back asleep for certainly at least 20 minutes - usually it only takes me five. At 4:55, my stereo started playing: Waking up this morning, thinking: this can’t be real was a very appropriate opening line for that particular morning. I didn’t laze away in bed for the whole 4 minutes 47 seconds of Underneath (L&E) like I normally would because I didn’t want to wake up mom… I got up and switched the music off right after the but they say there’s nothing love can’t heal line.
I wonder why I’m going into such detail about a Tuesday morning - I guess the sole purpose of all this rambling is to show you that getting up at 4:55am was a huge shock for my system.
I had a dream somewhere between 3:30 and 4:55 and it was rather interesting, so let’s talk about that for a while before I move on to the incident on the train to Leipzig.
The first part of the dream was nothing special, I wanted to buy some postcards but couldn’t decide and there were random people passing me by. But then suddenly I was at some place (a club maybe?), standing in front of a row of boys/men seated on chairs in front of me. I checked them all out, then went to one of them - who turned out to be Marshall Mathers (aka Eminem). I leaned down to him and said something about him being quite okay, quite good looking. My commentary was like this: He’s got nice blue eyes… Blond hair… although it’s obvious that he’s a fake blond… I ran my hand over his short hair at this. I think I’ll take you, I said as if he was a stray pet.
Next thing I remember is that I hugged him and pressed him against a wall, his body felt warm and nice against mine… And next thing we were rolling around on my bed, fighting for who will be on top.
Then somehow some people started arriving, I know that Nici was among them - she asked me some silly things like what do you do when you don’t have enough waste every week? I told her that one can tell the garbage people to only pick up your waste once in two weeks… And then somewhere there was Eminem doing the laundry, I was so shocked when I saw him carry my wet pyjama.
In case you’re wondering - yes, I do consider Marshall Mathers fairly good looking. His eyes are very pretty, as are his lips and his hands. He should stop wearing clothes that are 10 sizes too big for him, that would certainly be helpful. He could wear baggy jeans with tight tank tops or shirts of some decent size, and he should get rid of those ridiculous rapper hats. Haha, here I am giving advice to possibly the biggest hip hop star today. Basically I just want to see all boys dress into fairly fitting clothes, so that we girls can see what they have to offer - muscles and asses and crotch bulges… (Now you know why I like these Hanson boys so much.)
Sooooo… I got up at 4:55in the middle of the night - yes, I had to repeat this fact, so that you can fully grasp how completely outrageous it is. Quite surprisingly, I was relatively awake. I ate my breakfast in semi darkness, dressed and left the house in order to catch my train to Dresden. In Dresden I switched to a train going to Leipzig and met the rest of my “Management in Non-Profit-Organizations” class. I was getting drowsy by that time. Kathrin told us that she could buy a cheaper ticked after all and that we’ll get back € 2.70 from the € 9.70 we had already given her. She bought the so called Sachsen Tickets for us, which are tickets for up to 5 people that are valid in the entire Saxony - a lady at the info-counter had told her that it’s the cheapest way of getting to Leipzig.
The train conductor arrived and wanted to see our tickets. We actually needed no tickets up to Riesa because our student cards are valid in the whole area - so we showed her our student cards. Then we also showed her our other tickets, the ones for the whole journey to Leipzig… She told us that the validity of a Sachsen Ticket starts at 9 o’clock. We were all totally enraged because the lady at the service counter KNEW that we wanted to take a train at 6:23 am - and she still advised Kathrin to buy the Sachsen Tickets. We tried to negotiate, we were polite and tried to explain the situation to the conductor - but in the end we had to pay additional €10 each for Riesa-Leipzig. I got all teary because I was sleepy and I didn’t want to go on the stupid trip in the first place - like the majority, I only went because I didn’t want to offend or disappoint Prof. Wald, for he had already planned and organized it all… I feel stupid about crying (even though it was just a little). Fortunately, it was just Sarah, Nici, Nicole and Anne who saw me. Anyway, we want to go to the executive of the station in Dresden, explain the situation to him - because it was the stupid service of Deutsche Bahn that failed and gave us incorrect information, which led to us buying the wrong tickets - and then we want the additional money we had to pay back.
Yeah, this made the trip enjoyable right at the beginning. :/ When we arrived in Leipzig, it was pretty cold. And there’s one more thing - sometimes I really hate being a girl; my stupid body works against me on the days when I need it least… It’s always only the first day that hurts really bad… and so my belly and my back kept aching all day, despite the Ibalgin I took.
Prof. Wald picked us up at the station - well, he told us which tram to take and where to get off, then he went back to his car to drive to the place. Haha, the problem was that the station he named didn’t exist… We called him but it was too late and so we got off one stop too far - that wasn’t so bad, though, we walked back.
We went to MDR first - that’s a quite big regional TV station. A guy showed us the studios and some other things - it was okay, but it would have been MUCH more interesting if our guide was more enthusiastic and if there was something going on in the studios we visited, or if there were at least some interesting decorations, if he switched on a camera and showed us how things work… but no. Then we went up to the 13th floor of the building - one of the elevator walls was made of glass and we would have had a fantastic view of Leipzig if it hadn’t been so hazy. :(
The tour through MDR didn’t take as long as expected and so we went to a nearby café for a while. Most people bought some sandwiches or coffee - I did not because I had eaten a sandwich a while before that, because I’m not much of a coffee fan, and because I thought and hoped we would later have a lunch break in which I could go eat a pizza or something proper with Nici.
We went to the next place by bus; it was quite full, I couldn’t sit down and it was awful, ouch ouch - you know how on certain days you just need to curl up in your bed, endure the pain and wait till you feel better? This was one of those days.
We arrived at a really nice house - it turned out that to be the “office” of a media/advertising agency called MinneMedia (check them out at their website). I went to the bathroom and when I came back, the rest of my class was already seated on chairs in one room and there was no space for even more chairs left. I and Nathan (an exchange student from “down under”) were the only students who were left standing. Prof. Wald asked me whether it was okay for me to stand… I nodded - I couldn’t say NO, it’s not, could I. I leaned against the doorframe and hoped it would be short. Fortunately, after some 15 minutes Prof. Wald asked Carsten - one of my male classmates - to let me take his seat… I was REALLY glad and could actually focus on the presentation that one of the bosses of the agency showed us.
It was pretty interesting and some of their campaigns were just great! They are a small company - these two guys who did the presentation are the founders and bosses, they have 15 more people working for them in Dresden and Leipzig.
Now let me tell you something about one of the two bosses, Mr Gabriel. He seemed very nice (they were both nice but I liked this one more) and I liked him from the very start. He was quite good looking - if he was some 10 years younger, which would make him maybe 20-something, I’d maybe even use the word cute. Blue eyes, brown hair… but the best thing was the way he talked! Not only did he have a nice voice; you could tell that he’s really passionate about his work, about graphic design and all the related stuff. He even looked like an artist in his a little funny black-squared pants, black shirt that wasn’t formal like the shirts business owners usually wear and red suspenders. Haha, nice voice, talent, passion and red suspenders - ring any bells? He seemed to be a very nice person, too… I immediately wondered if he was a Christian (also because his company sometimes does media campaigns for NPOs which don’t pay very well or almost at all) - with some people you just know because the Light is so obvious in them! It turned out that he really is a Christian, as well as the other boss - Sarah clearly thought along the same lines as me and asked them after the presentation. Well, it was really exciting and interesting, esp. the Q&A after the presentation… this is a job I would LOVE to do. One of the last questions; I think it was Anne who asked that; was whether their inspiration, their creativity doesn’t… you know… just fade away, how do they always come up with new exciting ideas… Mr Gabriel’s immediate answer was: I think that creativity… never fades, it never dries out, it’s like a bottomless well. (or something like that) So so cool!
They even prepared some refreshments for us, fruit and drinks and cookies = we all loved the visit at MinneMedia. :D
After that we headed to the house where Mendelssohn-Bartholdy had spent his last years. (So no break for lunch.) It's a museum nowadays and we met the leader of the Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Foundation. He told us about the functioning of the NPO and the problems it has to face, he also talked about Mendelssohn - it was obvious that he's very intelligent and a huge fan of Mendelssohn. It was quite interesting.
Some of my classmates went to the Christmas market in Leizpig afterwards but me and a group of girls headed right back to the train station. We took a train at 4:50pm and arrived in Dresden at about 6:30. I was SO exhausted.
In case you didn't know - Dec 13th was my namesday… and I spent the whole day on a silly excursion. :/
On Wednesday, I was supposed to meet my Marketing project team at midday in Dresden. So I got up at about 9:30, went to check my emails… and suddenly my cell-phone is ringing. It's the same wicked number - starting with a +22 - that had already called me the day before (I missed the call). So I pick up… and it's this guy from the German Chamber of Industry and Commerce in Morocco. I had applied there for an internship, we e-mailed, and a day before he wrote that he was probably coming to Germany in January of February, so maybe we could meet for an interview. After a few moments of confusion we started talking… and of course he wanted to test out my French, as Morocco is a francophone country. My French wasn't any good, considering that I haven't really used the language for months. :( At some point he asked me something and I wanted to say "yes" but somehow I ended up stuttering the word in all languages but French (from German, over English to Russian - then FINALLY came a OUI)- ssflajflsjlflsfl so embarrassing! The signal was so bad, too, so I'm not even sure if I understood him correctly. Le sigh. He noticed my lacking French skills and we went on talking in German… He told me that he's coming to Berlin in Jan/Feb and that in March he'll come to Cologne with a whole delegation from Morocco and that maybe we could meet then, talk, maybe I could help with the group, and maybe I could work on my French until then. :( It would be really cool to go to Morocco for my internship, this guy is the only one who's shown real interest so far… But I've lost all motivation to learn French quite a while ago… I know I should probably go to a special language course and DO something to improve my sucky French.
So of course when I was done with the phone call (I hate phone calls, btw), it was already high time to get something to eat and go to the train station. But of course it took me too long to finish with my emails and eat and then to decide what to wear and put on a bit of make-up… I ran out of the house late and hoped that I would still catch the train. When I was a few meters away from home, my cell phone started to ring AGAIN! I almost panicked - lfjalfjlaf even more French speaking people or what?! It was just Sarah and she told me that we have to postpone our meeting to 12:30. Oooohkay. I went back home, decided to wear something else in the end, and then left the house again. AND MY CELL PHONE STARTED TO RING! It was Ksenia, she just wanted to let me know that she's ill and that I should e-mail her about the outcome of our meeting.
I made it to Dresden in time, met my team, taught Sarah some Czech (she really wants to learn some Czech, as she's going to the Czech Republic for New Years Eve with her b/f to visit some relatives or friends of his)… I fled from my Project Management class half an hour early in order to meet dangerouss, who came to Dresden on a trip with her class. I also got to meet Mary (juicy_fruuit) - she's such a doll, too. It was niiice. First we had to find the place where the girls were supposed to meet the rest of their group a little later - I had no idea where Café Am Schloss is in Dresden, but it proved pretty easy to find. We still had some time left when we got there, so we went to have a cup of hot chocolate in Dresden's smallest café. Yum. An hour is too little to catch up with "old" friends and meet new ones - it was over far too quickly. I said hello to tuyet_nhung, who had also been in Dresden with the girls and the rest of their class - I haven't seen Marketa since camp and although I only had like a minute, it was nice to see her again.
In the evening I received a text message from Mary, and its content seemed highly amusing to me for some odd reason. In the message, she told me that my perfume was really nice and wanted to know which one it was. Haha. I was so amused by the fact that she noticed the fragrance at all… I don't usually notice how people smell - well, except for those who smell exceptionally bad, those who smell exceptionally good, and those who are exceptionally attractive and thus make me pay attention to them with all my senses. (At this point I considered mentioning the story of how I fell in love with CKbe… but I won't bore you with that. Just know that I was 15 and like every 15-year-old Hanson fan I knew all the "trivia"… and that's how I heard about CK for the first time.) So yeah, I thought the text message was funny and also sweet in a way. DID YOU GIRLS (Mary and Dangie) DISCUSS MY FRAGRANCE ON THE BUS OR WHAT? XD XD (It was my mom's Cool Water by Davidoff, btw.)
Thursday is a horrible day because I have way too many classes on Thursdays, both in the even and the uneven weeks. This Thursday my team had to do a presentation of a project in Marketing class… Our project was about IKEA and so we all dressed in blue and yellow t-shirts and taped IKEA signs to them and then we were ready to present our results. Ksenia bought some toys at IKEA (the product we focused on was the furniture and accessories for kids) - she's going to give them back, it's pretty easy to return IKEA stuff and get your money back.
Anyway, Prof Stöhr loved our presentation - she praised our team to no end. Haha.
When I went home in the evening, there were two girls who at first spoke German… and then they switched to Spanish, probably to practice. I gave them an amused look. I always get too distracted by someone speaking some language other than German on the train… and then I'm tempted to listen. German I just ignore, but when someone speaks another language, I find it hard to concentrate on my book. So I listened to these chick practicing Spanish and of course I did not understand much - I did pick up a few words, though, even though I don't learn Spanish and never have. :D Then one of the girls got a phone call on her cell. She picked up the phone… and started speaking Czech. With the typical German - but still Czech. I couldn't help but give the girl another look, haha. She told the person on the other end of the line (in Czech) that they are on the train, blah blah, that they spoke Spanish a while ago and now she's speaking Czech and that people are starting to give her odd looks, wondering what will come next… In that moment I looked up again, I smiled. The girl smiled, too. "And there's one miss who understands Czech.," she said to the person she was talking to… And I just had to look at her - I laughed and she laughed as well because now she knew that she was right and that I indeed do understand Czech. :D I felt a little embarrassed to be caught listening to other people's conversations but at the same time I was very amused - and so was the girl, obviously. I then returned to my book and tried to ignore them for the rest of the journey...
As for my book… I am currently reading A Short History Of Time by Stephen Hawking - yessss, it's a physics book, and noo, I'm not crazy. It's pretty interesting, actually, I've always been fascinated by things concerning the universe. It's not exactly easy to read, but hey! I sort of understand it and I'm not a physics-person!
Oh and guess who's got Photoshop again?
(this was me testing some brushes)
I downloaded a 30-days tryout of Photoshop CS2 and I still need to explore all of its wonderful functions before the tryout expires… and by then I'll hopefully have another version installed. I realized, though, that I have no ideas for wallpapers (a wallpaper was the first thing I wanted to do after installing PS). I guess I will have to wait till I have some time to browse through my entire Taylor-pictures-folder because I am positive that looking at all the prettiness will give me the needed inspiration. I no longer have the stupid yellow tulips on my desktop, by the way, I now have a neat wallpaper with a very beautiful baby!Tay - merci, Kath!
On Friday afternoon me and Sarah went to see Mme Favrot to talk about our "plans" for the French project. We had to wait for quite a while before she was finally done with whatever she had been doing. Basically she told me that my plan is wrong and that I have to do it differently and blah blah blah. She was quite nice all the time, though - that's always like that, she's often nice when you come to see her personally but there's something so fake about her. I also asked her a few things about the foreign partner unis. She promised to bring me information about the double degree that I could do if I went to Moscow next year - we'll see if I actually get something from her! I'm still note sure where I want to go… Moscow would be cheaper and it's a more interesting city than Rouen. On the other hand, I need to learn French. (The question is - will I actually learn any French in Rouen if my classes are in English and if the most students in the residence are foreigners, too?) But there are about 9 people who want to go to Rouen, so maybe I wouldn't even be able to go there… or maybe I would, because if there are more applicants than places, they just look at the grades and I am among the best in my class.
The Czech version of HBP will be released on Dec 19th. We got our copy of the book on Friday. How come? The friend who bought it for us is good friends with the owner of the bookstore (because she shops there all the time!). The bookstore owner knows that she's a huge Potter-fan and she had ordered the HBP books for several people at his store. So when he received the books, he called her and she got them earlier - it's secret, so don't tell anyone. ;)
Anyway, I flipped through the Czech version - and the translation is even worse than I feared it might! :-[ The U-NO-POO joke is almost lost in the translation. (Hahahaha, lost in translation. Yes, I'm easily amused.) My favourite Draco-scene - when Harry finds him crying in the bathroom - sounds awful. The translation of Slughorn's and Scrimgeour's names is just stupid. BUT THAT'S NOT THE WORST THING. The worst thing is the way our lovely translator translated horcruxes. UGH! Viteály. The word horcrux sounds scary and dark - viteál is so idiotic it hurts! I refuse to use this word to refer to horcruxes in my fic. I wonder what other surprises I'll discover when I read the entire book 6 in Czech, eventually.
And finally… Saturday, aka today. I WOKE UP IN THE MORNING AND IT WAS STRANGELY BRIGHT AND I LOOKED OUTSIDE AND EVERYTHING WAS COVERED IN SNOW!!! YEAH! It's been rainy and windy in the previous few days and this… this is heaven. I jumped out of my bed and ran out of my room and ran to my mom (who was already awake - it was about 8am) and squealed: Guess what we've got? Snoooow! :D
It kept snowing all day, big white fluffy snowflake. I went to a store in the morning with my mom and it was great to walk through the snow and feel the snowflakes on my face and in my hair. It's cold and it finally feels like WINTER! This is what I've been yearning for, this is why I love winter. Also, this is what I needed for my Laeren-stories… even though by the time Fae gets to Winter, it will probably be summer here in the real world.
I bought really cool paper embossers, which made me even happier, and I found shoes that I'm going to buy (not boots, which are the shoes that I really need). Oh and a scarf and new gloves to go with the pretty white winter jacket mom bought for me two weeks ago. :)
In the meanwhile, we have about 25cm of snow here and it's AMAZING. Have you ever noticed how the world suddenly seems much quieter when everything is covered in snow? Gosh, I love winter!
I made a Christmas graphic for my mom, so that she can send it out to all friends etc. It was fun to make and turned out quite neat, lookie. Have I mentioned that I love Photoshop brushes? By the way - does anyone of you have a font called CARPENTER? I had it before but I lost it when our computer died… I don't remember where I got it and the only downloads I can find are for money. I really liked the font… anyone knows where I could find it?
So this was my super-long "a week at one glance" entry and I bow down to those of you who are still reading at this point - you're either crazy or… crazy. I've been writing this entry throughout the week, I guess I started on Wednesday.
On Monday, our lovely Madam Favrot FINALLY came to school again - we’ve only had one French lesson since October because she had been ill for so long, the other group had their very first lesson this Monday. I had Project Management class before French - and there someone told me that Favrot wants to teach the other group first and our group should start at 6:20pm, which meant that I would have to wait for two hours after my Project Management class in order to go to the French lesson. I - along with several other people from my group - decided not to wait and attend the other group’s lesson instead. She bitched about it at first but then resigned.
The good thing is that we persuaded her to change her mind about the project we have to write for her stupid class - we don’t have to write at least 15 pages anymore, now we only have to write 7, which is a huge improvement. When I use the margins that are officially required for dissertations at our university - 5cm left, 3cm right, and write the project double-spaced, the seven pages become even shorter. That was such a relief.
I still despise the woman, she’s such a pretentious bitch - she tries to persuade you that everything’s going perfectly well, that she’s all motivated and that she works really hard for our (the students’) good… while in fact she’s just lazy and unreliable and arrogant.
I want to talk about the excursion to Leipzig on Tuesday, which was doomed to suck right from the beginning because I had to get up at 4:55am. :( I tried to go to bed early on Monday. Having spent at least 20 minutes searching for chewing gum that I could take - I only had one piece left and that is not enough for a whole day in Leipzig, considering that you have Sarah for a friend… she never brings her own gum and always asks me to give her a piece *lol* - I finally went to bed at 10pm. I am not used to going to sleep this early, so I spent the 40 minutes tossing and turning. Then I went to the kitchen to make myself a warm vanilla milk - because as I had been advised by a certain lovely person, drinking something warm before you go to bed helps you fall asleep. (I think there’s some truth in this.) I returned to bed, tried to make my mind shut up, which proved to be very difficult - even more difficult than it normally is. I “counted sheep”, well actually I got bored by the sheep and at first I imagined fairies flying over my head and then I imagined all sorts of animals marching over this narrow bridge instead of the sheep - I remember that I counted up to 57 or something and believe me, my animals had to walk slowly because you can’t run very fast over a narrow slippery bridge. It was quite late when I finally fell asleep - not late for my normal standards but late in the sense of ohmygosh, I only have 5,5 hours left to sleep. Then at 3:15 I woke up again and couldn’t fall back asleep for certainly at least 20 minutes - usually it only takes me five. At 4:55, my stereo started playing: Waking up this morning, thinking: this can’t be real was a very appropriate opening line for that particular morning. I didn’t laze away in bed for the whole 4 minutes 47 seconds of Underneath (L&E) like I normally would because I didn’t want to wake up mom… I got up and switched the music off right after the but they say there’s nothing love can’t heal line.
I wonder why I’m going into such detail about a Tuesday morning - I guess the sole purpose of all this rambling is to show you that getting up at 4:55am was a huge shock for my system.
I had a dream somewhere between 3:30 and 4:55 and it was rather interesting, so let’s talk about that for a while before I move on to the incident on the train to Leipzig.
The first part of the dream was nothing special, I wanted to buy some postcards but couldn’t decide and there were random people passing me by. But then suddenly I was at some place (a club maybe?), standing in front of a row of boys/men seated on chairs in front of me. I checked them all out, then went to one of them - who turned out to be Marshall Mathers (aka Eminem). I leaned down to him and said something about him being quite okay, quite good looking. My commentary was like this: He’s got nice blue eyes… Blond hair… although it’s obvious that he’s a fake blond… I ran my hand over his short hair at this. I think I’ll take you, I said as if he was a stray pet.
Next thing I remember is that I hugged him and pressed him against a wall, his body felt warm and nice against mine… And next thing we were rolling around on my bed, fighting for who will be on top.
Then somehow some people started arriving, I know that Nici was among them - she asked me some silly things like what do you do when you don’t have enough waste every week? I told her that one can tell the garbage people to only pick up your waste once in two weeks… And then somewhere there was Eminem doing the laundry, I was so shocked when I saw him carry my wet pyjama.
In case you’re wondering - yes, I do consider Marshall Mathers fairly good looking. His eyes are very pretty, as are his lips and his hands. He should stop wearing clothes that are 10 sizes too big for him, that would certainly be helpful. He could wear baggy jeans with tight tank tops or shirts of some decent size, and he should get rid of those ridiculous rapper hats. Haha, here I am giving advice to possibly the biggest hip hop star today. Basically I just want to see all boys dress into fairly fitting clothes, so that we girls can see what they have to offer - muscles and asses and crotch bulges… (Now you know why I like these Hanson boys so much.)
Sooooo… I got up at 4:55in the middle of the night - yes, I had to repeat this fact, so that you can fully grasp how completely outrageous it is. Quite surprisingly, I was relatively awake. I ate my breakfast in semi darkness, dressed and left the house in order to catch my train to Dresden. In Dresden I switched to a train going to Leipzig and met the rest of my “Management in Non-Profit-Organizations” class. I was getting drowsy by that time. Kathrin told us that she could buy a cheaper ticked after all and that we’ll get back € 2.70 from the € 9.70 we had already given her. She bought the so called Sachsen Tickets for us, which are tickets for up to 5 people that are valid in the entire Saxony - a lady at the info-counter had told her that it’s the cheapest way of getting to Leipzig.
The train conductor arrived and wanted to see our tickets. We actually needed no tickets up to Riesa because our student cards are valid in the whole area - so we showed her our student cards. Then we also showed her our other tickets, the ones for the whole journey to Leipzig… She told us that the validity of a Sachsen Ticket starts at 9 o’clock. We were all totally enraged because the lady at the service counter KNEW that we wanted to take a train at 6:23 am - and she still advised Kathrin to buy the Sachsen Tickets. We tried to negotiate, we were polite and tried to explain the situation to the conductor - but in the end we had to pay additional €10 each for Riesa-Leipzig. I got all teary because I was sleepy and I didn’t want to go on the stupid trip in the first place - like the majority, I only went because I didn’t want to offend or disappoint Prof. Wald, for he had already planned and organized it all… I feel stupid about crying (even though it was just a little). Fortunately, it was just Sarah, Nici, Nicole and Anne who saw me. Anyway, we want to go to the executive of the station in Dresden, explain the situation to him - because it was the stupid service of Deutsche Bahn that failed and gave us incorrect information, which led to us buying the wrong tickets - and then we want the additional money we had to pay back.
Yeah, this made the trip enjoyable right at the beginning. :/ When we arrived in Leipzig, it was pretty cold. And there’s one more thing - sometimes I really hate being a girl; my stupid body works against me on the days when I need it least… It’s always only the first day that hurts really bad… and so my belly and my back kept aching all day, despite the Ibalgin I took.
Prof. Wald picked us up at the station - well, he told us which tram to take and where to get off, then he went back to his car to drive to the place. Haha, the problem was that the station he named didn’t exist… We called him but it was too late and so we got off one stop too far - that wasn’t so bad, though, we walked back.
We went to MDR first - that’s a quite big regional TV station. A guy showed us the studios and some other things - it was okay, but it would have been MUCH more interesting if our guide was more enthusiastic and if there was something going on in the studios we visited, or if there were at least some interesting decorations, if he switched on a camera and showed us how things work… but no. Then we went up to the 13th floor of the building - one of the elevator walls was made of glass and we would have had a fantastic view of Leipzig if it hadn’t been so hazy. :(
The tour through MDR didn’t take as long as expected and so we went to a nearby café for a while. Most people bought some sandwiches or coffee - I did not because I had eaten a sandwich a while before that, because I’m not much of a coffee fan, and because I thought and hoped we would later have a lunch break in which I could go eat a pizza or something proper with Nici.
We went to the next place by bus; it was quite full, I couldn’t sit down and it was awful, ouch ouch - you know how on certain days you just need to curl up in your bed, endure the pain and wait till you feel better? This was one of those days.
We arrived at a really nice house - it turned out that to be the “office” of a media/advertising agency called MinneMedia (check them out at their website). I went to the bathroom and when I came back, the rest of my class was already seated on chairs in one room and there was no space for even more chairs left. I and Nathan (an exchange student from “down under”) were the only students who were left standing. Prof. Wald asked me whether it was okay for me to stand… I nodded - I couldn’t say NO, it’s not, could I. I leaned against the doorframe and hoped it would be short. Fortunately, after some 15 minutes Prof. Wald asked Carsten - one of my male classmates - to let me take his seat… I was REALLY glad and could actually focus on the presentation that one of the bosses of the agency showed us.
It was pretty interesting and some of their campaigns were just great! They are a small company - these two guys who did the presentation are the founders and bosses, they have 15 more people working for them in Dresden and Leipzig.
Now let me tell you something about one of the two bosses, Mr Gabriel. He seemed very nice (they were both nice but I liked this one more) and I liked him from the very start. He was quite good looking - if he was some 10 years younger, which would make him maybe 20-something, I’d maybe even use the word cute. Blue eyes, brown hair… but the best thing was the way he talked! Not only did he have a nice voice; you could tell that he’s really passionate about his work, about graphic design and all the related stuff. He even looked like an artist in his a little funny black-squared pants, black shirt that wasn’t formal like the shirts business owners usually wear and red suspenders. Haha, nice voice, talent, passion and red suspenders - ring any bells? He seemed to be a very nice person, too… I immediately wondered if he was a Christian (also because his company sometimes does media campaigns for NPOs which don’t pay very well or almost at all) - with some people you just know because the Light is so obvious in them! It turned out that he really is a Christian, as well as the other boss - Sarah clearly thought along the same lines as me and asked them after the presentation. Well, it was really exciting and interesting, esp. the Q&A after the presentation… this is a job I would LOVE to do. One of the last questions; I think it was Anne who asked that; was whether their inspiration, their creativity doesn’t… you know… just fade away, how do they always come up with new exciting ideas… Mr Gabriel’s immediate answer was: I think that creativity… never fades, it never dries out, it’s like a bottomless well. (or something like that) So so cool!
They even prepared some refreshments for us, fruit and drinks and cookies = we all loved the visit at MinneMedia. :D
After that we headed to the house where Mendelssohn-Bartholdy had spent his last years. (So no break for lunch.) It's a museum nowadays and we met the leader of the Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Foundation. He told us about the functioning of the NPO and the problems it has to face, he also talked about Mendelssohn - it was obvious that he's very intelligent and a huge fan of Mendelssohn. It was quite interesting.
Some of my classmates went to the Christmas market in Leizpig afterwards but me and a group of girls headed right back to the train station. We took a train at 4:50pm and arrived in Dresden at about 6:30. I was SO exhausted.
In case you didn't know - Dec 13th was my namesday… and I spent the whole day on a silly excursion. :/
On Wednesday, I was supposed to meet my Marketing project team at midday in Dresden. So I got up at about 9:30, went to check my emails… and suddenly my cell-phone is ringing. It's the same wicked number - starting with a +22 - that had already called me the day before (I missed the call). So I pick up… and it's this guy from the German Chamber of Industry and Commerce in Morocco. I had applied there for an internship, we e-mailed, and a day before he wrote that he was probably coming to Germany in January of February, so maybe we could meet for an interview. After a few moments of confusion we started talking… and of course he wanted to test out my French, as Morocco is a francophone country. My French wasn't any good, considering that I haven't really used the language for months. :( At some point he asked me something and I wanted to say "yes" but somehow I ended up stuttering the word in all languages but French (from German, over English to Russian - then FINALLY came a OUI)- ssflajflsjlflsfl so embarrassing! The signal was so bad, too, so I'm not even sure if I understood him correctly. Le sigh. He noticed my lacking French skills and we went on talking in German… He told me that he's coming to Berlin in Jan/Feb and that in March he'll come to Cologne with a whole delegation from Morocco and that maybe we could meet then, talk, maybe I could help with the group, and maybe I could work on my French until then. :( It would be really cool to go to Morocco for my internship, this guy is the only one who's shown real interest so far… But I've lost all motivation to learn French quite a while ago… I know I should probably go to a special language course and DO something to improve my sucky French.
So of course when I was done with the phone call (I hate phone calls, btw), it was already high time to get something to eat and go to the train station. But of course it took me too long to finish with my emails and eat and then to decide what to wear and put on a bit of make-up… I ran out of the house late and hoped that I would still catch the train. When I was a few meters away from home, my cell phone started to ring AGAIN! I almost panicked - lfjalfjlaf even more French speaking people or what?! It was just Sarah and she told me that we have to postpone our meeting to 12:30. Oooohkay. I went back home, decided to wear something else in the end, and then left the house again. AND MY CELL PHONE STARTED TO RING! It was Ksenia, she just wanted to let me know that she's ill and that I should e-mail her about the outcome of our meeting.
I made it to Dresden in time, met my team, taught Sarah some Czech (she really wants to learn some Czech, as she's going to the Czech Republic for New Years Eve with her b/f to visit some relatives or friends of his)… I fled from my Project Management class half an hour early in order to meet dangerouss, who came to Dresden on a trip with her class. I also got to meet Mary (juicy_fruuit) - she's such a doll, too. It was niiice. First we had to find the place where the girls were supposed to meet the rest of their group a little later - I had no idea where Café Am Schloss is in Dresden, but it proved pretty easy to find. We still had some time left when we got there, so we went to have a cup of hot chocolate in Dresden's smallest café. Yum. An hour is too little to catch up with "old" friends and meet new ones - it was over far too quickly. I said hello to tuyet_nhung, who had also been in Dresden with the girls and the rest of their class - I haven't seen Marketa since camp and although I only had like a minute, it was nice to see her again.
In the evening I received a text message from Mary, and its content seemed highly amusing to me for some odd reason. In the message, she told me that my perfume was really nice and wanted to know which one it was. Haha. I was so amused by the fact that she noticed the fragrance at all… I don't usually notice how people smell - well, except for those who smell exceptionally bad, those who smell exceptionally good, and those who are exceptionally attractive and thus make me pay attention to them with all my senses. (At this point I considered mentioning the story of how I fell in love with CKbe… but I won't bore you with that. Just know that I was 15 and like every 15-year-old Hanson fan I knew all the "trivia"… and that's how I heard about CK for the first time.) So yeah, I thought the text message was funny and also sweet in a way. DID YOU GIRLS (Mary and Dangie) DISCUSS MY FRAGRANCE ON THE BUS OR WHAT? XD XD (It was my mom's Cool Water by Davidoff, btw.)
Thursday is a horrible day because I have way too many classes on Thursdays, both in the even and the uneven weeks. This Thursday my team had to do a presentation of a project in Marketing class… Our project was about IKEA and so we all dressed in blue and yellow t-shirts and taped IKEA signs to them and then we were ready to present our results. Ksenia bought some toys at IKEA (the product we focused on was the furniture and accessories for kids) - she's going to give them back, it's pretty easy to return IKEA stuff and get your money back.
Anyway, Prof Stöhr loved our presentation - she praised our team to no end. Haha.
When I went home in the evening, there were two girls who at first spoke German… and then they switched to Spanish, probably to practice. I gave them an amused look. I always get too distracted by someone speaking some language other than German on the train… and then I'm tempted to listen. German I just ignore, but when someone speaks another language, I find it hard to concentrate on my book. So I listened to these chick practicing Spanish and of course I did not understand much - I did pick up a few words, though, even though I don't learn Spanish and never have. :D Then one of the girls got a phone call on her cell. She picked up the phone… and started speaking Czech. With the typical German - but still Czech. I couldn't help but give the girl another look, haha. She told the person on the other end of the line (in Czech) that they are on the train, blah blah, that they spoke Spanish a while ago and now she's speaking Czech and that people are starting to give her odd looks, wondering what will come next… In that moment I looked up again, I smiled. The girl smiled, too. "And there's one miss who understands Czech.," she said to the person she was talking to… And I just had to look at her - I laughed and she laughed as well because now she knew that she was right and that I indeed do understand Czech. :D I felt a little embarrassed to be caught listening to other people's conversations but at the same time I was very amused - and so was the girl, obviously. I then returned to my book and tried to ignore them for the rest of the journey...
As for my book… I am currently reading A Short History Of Time by Stephen Hawking - yessss, it's a physics book, and noo, I'm not crazy. It's pretty interesting, actually, I've always been fascinated by things concerning the universe. It's not exactly easy to read, but hey! I sort of understand it and I'm not a physics-person!
Oh and guess who's got Photoshop again?
(this was me testing some brushes)
I downloaded a 30-days tryout of Photoshop CS2 and I still need to explore all of its wonderful functions before the tryout expires… and by then I'll hopefully have another version installed. I realized, though, that I have no ideas for wallpapers (a wallpaper was the first thing I wanted to do after installing PS). I guess I will have to wait till I have some time to browse through my entire Taylor-pictures-folder because I am positive that looking at all the prettiness will give me the needed inspiration. I no longer have the stupid yellow tulips on my desktop, by the way, I now have a neat wallpaper with a very beautiful baby!Tay - merci, Kath!
On Friday afternoon me and Sarah went to see Mme Favrot to talk about our "plans" for the French project. We had to wait for quite a while before she was finally done with whatever she had been doing. Basically she told me that my plan is wrong and that I have to do it differently and blah blah blah. She was quite nice all the time, though - that's always like that, she's often nice when you come to see her personally but there's something so fake about her. I also asked her a few things about the foreign partner unis. She promised to bring me information about the double degree that I could do if I went to Moscow next year - we'll see if I actually get something from her! I'm still note sure where I want to go… Moscow would be cheaper and it's a more interesting city than Rouen. On the other hand, I need to learn French. (The question is - will I actually learn any French in Rouen if my classes are in English and if the most students in the residence are foreigners, too?) But there are about 9 people who want to go to Rouen, so maybe I wouldn't even be able to go there… or maybe I would, because if there are more applicants than places, they just look at the grades and I am among the best in my class.
The Czech version of HBP will be released on Dec 19th. We got our copy of the book on Friday. How come? The friend who bought it for us is good friends with the owner of the bookstore (because she shops there all the time!). The bookstore owner knows that she's a huge Potter-fan and she had ordered the HBP books for several people at his store. So when he received the books, he called her and she got them earlier - it's secret, so don't tell anyone. ;)
Anyway, I flipped through the Czech version - and the translation is even worse than I feared it might! :-[ The U-NO-POO joke is almost lost in the translation. (Hahahaha, lost in translation. Yes, I'm easily amused.) My favourite Draco-scene - when Harry finds him crying in the bathroom - sounds awful. The translation of Slughorn's and Scrimgeour's names is just stupid. BUT THAT'S NOT THE WORST THING. The worst thing is the way our lovely translator translated horcruxes. UGH! Viteály. The word horcrux sounds scary and dark - viteál is so idiotic it hurts! I refuse to use this word to refer to horcruxes in my fic. I wonder what other surprises I'll discover when I read the entire book 6 in Czech, eventually.
And finally… Saturday, aka today. I WOKE UP IN THE MORNING AND IT WAS STRANGELY BRIGHT AND I LOOKED OUTSIDE AND EVERYTHING WAS COVERED IN SNOW!!! YEAH! It's been rainy and windy in the previous few days and this… this is heaven. I jumped out of my bed and ran out of my room and ran to my mom (who was already awake - it was about 8am) and squealed: Guess what we've got? Snoooow! :D
It kept snowing all day, big white fluffy snowflake. I went to a store in the morning with my mom and it was great to walk through the snow and feel the snowflakes on my face and in my hair. It's cold and it finally feels like WINTER! This is what I've been yearning for, this is why I love winter. Also, this is what I needed for my Laeren-stories… even though by the time Fae gets to Winter, it will probably be summer here in the real world.
I bought really cool paper embossers, which made me even happier, and I found shoes that I'm going to buy (not boots, which are the shoes that I really need). Oh and a scarf and new gloves to go with the pretty white winter jacket mom bought for me two weeks ago. :)
In the meanwhile, we have about 25cm of snow here and it's AMAZING. Have you ever noticed how the world suddenly seems much quieter when everything is covered in snow? Gosh, I love winter!
I made a Christmas graphic for my mom, so that she can send it out to all friends etc. It was fun to make and turned out quite neat, lookie. Have I mentioned that I love Photoshop brushes? By the way - does anyone of you have a font called CARPENTER? I had it before but I lost it when our computer died… I don't remember where I got it and the only downloads I can find are for money. I really liked the font… anyone knows where I could find it?
So this was my super-long "a week at one glance" entry and I bow down to those of you who are still reading at this point - you're either crazy or… crazy. I've been writing this entry throughout the week, I guess I started on Wednesday.