And so it goes.

Yikes, it's been a while again! Thanks to folks (specifically Beto, Mike, Kara, and Bryan) for the recent spate of comments... Venting into an unresponsive computer is well and good, but it's really nice to be reminded that there are people who love me somewhere on the other side.

So what else is new this week? Classes are classes. Somehow I'm the diva of my writing class. I'm slowly learning to be more brave and speak up, even though it sometimes takes a painfully long while to find the right words. It's been an uphill battle so far...

Now for the downhill, though. That's right, I'm past the halfway point. Six weeks in Kiel is just long enough, I think, to start to feel at home... but in less than three more I'm packing it all up and striking off on my own for Göttingen. Scary!

I do like the fact that instead of a mid-term exam we had a party! Wednesday night was the "Bergfest," a logical enough name for the midpoint. We've hit the peak. It was a great night; our teachers and program directors brought the beverages, and we were responsible for the food.

Hmm... how do I always end up talking about food?? Anyway, homemade pasta and sauce, salad, hamburgers, fruit salad, apple pie, ice cream, s'mores, and yours truly made the brownies. My world-famous, hand-made-from-scratch, fabulous brownies. With almonds. And nutella frosting. (Yes Jen, I thought of you.) They came out more like cookie bars since the pan was too big, but they were no worse than usual... and I'm slated to cook for everyone on Sunday! I'm thinking pasta. We'll see how it turns out.

After dinner we went inside for a presentation by our performing artists... Abi read a theater piece, Amanda played trumpet, Jennifer sang, and Jacquelyn sang and played piano. We heard a truly amazing trumpet solo by Allen Vizzutti called "Cascades." So many notes, so fast, in such a wide and wild range... and Amanda played with total poise and control. Mind bogglingly awesome. We heard a couple of pieces from Schumann's Dichterliebe, Handel's "Let the bright seraphim," "Spring can really hang you up the most," "Summertime," Hoagy Carmichael's "Stardust," and of course Abi's scene. It was from a play she'd written in collaboration with some German artists, centering on a young girl who is dying in the middle of a field during the war. Very. Intense. I came away from the whole show feeling like I'd just seen something magical. I love that feeling.

Must... find... musical... outlet!

We went back out on the lawn for dessert. (Nerd alert: Of course I wrote messages on my brownies with the frosting. One said "Fulbright Kiel 2005" and the other said "Deutsch macht spaß!") Herr Langer, one of the program directors, had brought a guitar and started strumming away, and somehow it turned into a few of us singing Beatles and Rolling Stones songs... total flashbacks to Friday Guitar at Kenyon! I think I impressed folks with my encyclopedic memory for obscure song lyrics. Unfortunately I had to leave a bit early (hitched a ride with Jan rather than walking all that way at night) but hopefully we can do that again.

Tonight I'm helping with dinner, and then going over to St. Heinrich's for a choral concert at 8pm. The church choir and four other local groups will perform. Yay a cappella Christian music auf Deutsch! I'm going to try to introduce myself to the choir director before next week's "Chor-Schnuppen-Samstag."

And then tomorrow is the day trip to Flensburg and Denmark! I'll bring my camera.