More Misadventures

Hi again all,
Well, it's been a while since my last post but not a whole lot has happened. I found out that my placement test put me into UNICERT 1 which is a B1 level (it goes, A1 A2 B1 B2 C1 C2) which was right about where my class was. I managed (somehow) to enroll in classes, this was actually quite amazing since it's more complicated than UND. I ended up with 3 German classes in the German as a Foreign Language dept, a Phonetics course on Mondays from 1:30-3, a Theater course on Wednesday from 6:30-8 and a basic course on Friday from 10-1. I also managed to contact an English teacher and will hopefully have a class on Tuesday as well. I found out (with some help from Christine) that I missed the deadline for classes by a measly 2 months. Apparently the sign-up for the levels I was interested in happened between the 23rd and 28th of July. Nice huh? Anyhow, the instructor I contacted was willing to try to fit me into one of her classes, so that will be nice.
Let's see, ah, how about more culinary mis-adventures? One night it hit me that I really wanted sugar cookies. Mmmm. Well, it turns out I had all the ingredients for the recipe except one. (my mom had bought a cookbook software program with about 50+ cookbooks in it) which I found in "Recipes for over 50." That should've been a first clue, since it was the simplest cookie recipe I've seen in quite a while. However, I didn't have the oil, and decided to go for the good old applesauce switch. Well, the first batch came out, and they definitely weren't cookies...but they tasted like them. They ended up being dubbed "cuffins" because they had the consistency of muffins and cookies together. After we found some expired (but still tasty and unopened) "chocolate drops" they were pretty darn edible. Then, 2 days ago I made an attempt at cornbread. However, I used a round cheesecake pan (making do with what we had) and had to guess on the baking powder since the only measurement was "enough for 500 g flour." I then used the convection setting (wrong....) and ended up browning the top with goo still in the middle. However, with a few more adjustments, it eventually came out close to perfect and perfectly edible. At least I haven't been able to screw-up noodles yet.
Sight-seeing / events...
I went with the Colorado group to Walhalla, which is a large building that resembles the Greek Parthenon. It's an hour and a half riverboat ride downstream that's kind of plopped down in the middle of nowhere. There were some pictures recently tagged of me there with some of the people from Colorado that live in my floor and building. We took the "scenic" path on the way back down to catching the boat and ended up WAY out of the way, so we had to run back. Thursday night I went to the play "Endspiel" (End Game by Samuel Beckett) with Claudia, Eric, Laura, Ingrid, Kim (from Korea) and Katie. Niamh was supposed to come, however, she can't seem to figure out the German bus schedules to save her life and ended up going to the opposite end of town. She ended up getting there with 10 minutes to spare, but went up a wrong set of stairs and ended up at a Nietzsche lecture...in German. Meanwhile, the play had started and was both hilarious and utterly depressing. The two best parts were inadvertently so. The first was at a part in the play where they script mocks the British and the Germans had to speak with a British accent. Beckett was an Irish expatriate and wrote his plays in French and English. So hearing a clearly British accent in German was hilarious - not to mention that Katie is British, so that was funny as well. (Oh yes, of course the play was in German.) The second funny part was completely by accident. One of the main characters is blind and in a comfortable chair with wheels. He has a helper (a man kept on only because the blind man has control of the food stash - this is a "end of the world and humanity" play) who he makes push him over to the window on stage. However, the stage is divided into 3 levels, the basement (where the blind man keeps his parents) which is the bottom 3 feet, the blind man's rooms, about 5 feet high, and his helper's rooms, above his rooms that go up to the top of the stage, about 5.5 feet. Anyhow, the helper is pushing him over to the window, and by accident, two of the casters on the chair go over the edge! The helper literally jumped off stage laughing almost hysterically and pushed and shoved for a few minutes in order to put the chair back up. You could tell the other actor was sitting VERY still and was ready to bail at any moment. It was only funny because it didn't happen.
Well, I realize that last part was long and I hope I haven't left out anything too interesting. Anyhow, I start lectures tomorrow so I better finish up and head off to bed.
G'bye all and take care,
Steph