Here Goes Nothing

We're starting a new week.  I have t-minus 2.5 hours till my medieval German seminar and I still haven't translated this poem (which was our homework).  I probably should do that.

Another week, another 7 days of the good life.

I need coffee.

Guitar is coming along WONDERFULLY.  I can now switch between the 4 chords without looking, although I have to go very slowly.  I have also learned that in order to play guitar you have to be the type of person who can tolerate playing and hearing the same thing over and over and over again. 

Fortunately, I am just such a person.
Unforunately, the people living next to, below, and above me are not. 

--edit--

I feel a need to keep writing.  So how exactly IS the good life going, you may ask?  Well, it's how the Germans describe something when it's "good" -- they say it's "okay."  And it is.  It's okay.  It's life.  I really don't know what else to say.  I mean.....it's just...the daily grind.  Sort of.  Life is so much slower here that it's hard to feel like it's "the daily grind."  I do less, but I think I the focus here has been more on quality than quantity.  For example, I've been learning guitar, which is something I never would have had time for at ASU.  Schoolwork has, thus far, occupied so little of my time that I'm getting worried.  But I'm beginning to see why everyone has no homework during the semester and then is M.I.A. for the two weeks leading up to exams and papers -- all the work comes at the end.

The majority of my friends are still Americans and other internationals, and I am still not quite comfortable with this, but I'm getting there.  I have loosened my priorities and my goals so much.  I had originally intended to go cold turkey 100% immersion, but I've realized that's literally impossible here.  I will be speaking at least some English every day whether I like it or not.  Furthermore, it's simply more likely that I'm going to be closer with the other exchange students, partly because we're all sharing the same experience and partly because the Germans are so ridiculously hard to befriend.  One of the DAAD people said that American friendships are like peaches.  They're soft on the outside and thus easy to penetrate, but the core is a hard seed that is difficult to bore into.  Germans, he said, are like coconuts.  The outer shell is hard and seemingly impenetrable, but once you get through that, it's soft and juicy.  Or milky.  Whatever.

At any rate, I would sure love to know how the heck you crack open the coconut, because I'm not having a lot of success so far.  I'm about ready to just ask a German, "Excuse me, but how the hell do you make friends here?"  It's sure not like in the States, where I can spontaneously call up someone and say, "Hey, you wanna get coffee/food/whatever?"  Germans seem to want to have planned appointments beforehand, and I have yet to see any German friends doing anything one-on-one.  Just some observations.

Anyway I had a long thing after that about the whole politics subect, but sorry guys, I deleted it.  I'm going to chew on that a little longer myself.