At the reception last night, Riza Osteurk, the new business int'l coordinator (from Turkey!), spoke with one of the main campus int'l coordinators. They invited me to join a German class this morning (intensive, 8:30 - 2 each day this week and next) and also were looking into whether I could accompany the students to Berlin. Henrich and Ulli are not available to keep Brandi, and at this point, I don't want to move her to someone else's house to be cared for. Henrich suggested I ask if Brandi could go and looked at the schedule. He said she could not go to Parliament or the theater (imagine that!) but he didn't see a problem with the rest of the schedule. I e-mailed Riza, as he requested, explained the situation, and Riza has nicely worked it out that Brandi can go with us. I'll take her in her airline case, and then I'll also take her fold-down crate. The kids will be in a hostel, which is full, and Brandi and I will be in a nearby hotel. I hope to be able to otherwise have all my things in my backpack. I'll pay 55 euros for the trip (which would normally be 250 or more euros for a tourist), and somehow since I'm an "official" university faculty member, I'll pay for the hotel and be reimbursed. This surprised me, but that's what Riza told me quickly today. He pulled me out of German class to let me know that Brandi could go, things were set, etc.
For about the 99th time in my life, I am again in the cracks between German classes. I was told last night to simply join the beginners class. In 4 hours, I picked up one thing that I either didn't know or is different here. When you are formally asked your name "Wie heissen Sie?" you reply with only your last name. I know verb tenses, counting and numbers, and so forth. There is again a problem that there are only 2 true beginners, our NMU students Dana and Nicole, and we were joined today by 2 young women from Singapore who appeared to know a little German already. They are from another university and will be in the class just this week. Meanwhile, there are about 15 in the more advanced class. I gather there is some discussion of that class being split into two, so maybe I can move up a class. I greatly appreciate being "allowed" to take German since I wasn't in Vienna, but I don't see the point of spending almost 6 hours a day (if I attend the entire class) doing things I can already do. We'll see what happens. I haven't spoken German in awhile and I know I"m making some mistakes, but my goodness....Nicole will be gone next week since her father is coming to Paris. I have mixed feelings about this; she'll learn something either way, but missing out on 4 days of 6 hours each of German, at the beginning....
Henrich mentioned a larger grocery store today, and it turned out to be an Aldi store!! I found mango juice combined with passion fruit juice, and a much larger selection of items. I will go there again, though my grocery bag had gained considerable weight by the time I got home again! It was probably 5 blocks away, and Netto is 1.
Linda Storms (teaching the event planning class for me this semester) and I had a conversation over an hour in length when I called her phone via Skype. I'm able to call all US landlines and cellphones via Skype. So, if you'd like to chat, let me know when a good time is, and hopefully, we could have a nice visit. Linda and I had a good visit and got a lot done!
Tonight is evidently trash night. I got the paper out into the paper barrel correctly, but I don't know whether milk cartons qualify for that or not---I suspect not. I am not totally sure which plastic bottles are throw away/recycle and which have a deposit and should go back to the grocery store. There is no pop in cans here; someone told me that was outlawed for environmental reasons. I think other trash has to first be put into a plastic bag. Henrich and Ulli seem to be "in for the night" or something, and I don't have much trash, so if I miss this week it's probably not a tragedy.
No pictures today. Dana has just written, from her phone, asking if they could come use my computer. I don't think they get computer access until school starts, which is too bad. I've e-mailed back, which I assume goes to her phone, that I'll meet them at the ubahn stop if they want to come, but that we'll have to be somewhat quiet because my houseparents (landlords?) go to bed somewhat early. I haven't heard back from Dana whether they're coming. I had invited them to the apartment today after class but they had a previous engagement with one of their "buddies" to set up their bank accounts.
More tomorrow!! I'll take my camera to class, and/or take some pictures inside the apartment. I saw Nicole's room today----interesting!
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