Today, Julia Childs Wept

Hi all,
Ominous title, no? This morning I threw myself into the brunch with the house dad. He normally doesn't cook, but his wife had other issues and so I volunteered to jump right in. We had a villager helping us (medieval giggle...) and she helpfully dragged out all the ingredients for clafoutis. For those of you who don't know what that is (like me...), it's a rather simple but delicious fruit flan. One might even say it's impossible to mess up.

They'd be wrong, by the way.
See, I thought things had gone swimmingly, and was rather proud of my first effort. The house mom looked at it thoughtfully, but praised the golden edges. She decided we should whip up some cream, and so I did it, adding a little sugar to sweeten it up. I tasted it, and then had a very bad feeling.
I approached the house mom and rather abashedly told her "We have at least one bad thing...and maybe two..." Unfortunately, I proved my worse fears were confirmed.

The "sugar" that the villager had so helpfully fetched turned out to be salt. Yup. And who knew, but apparently a full cup of salt does funny, funny things to a recipe. Not limited to, but including giving the texture and taste of playdough. Yay...

I really know how to impress people, don't I?

Anyhow, we ended up whipping up some delicious buttermilk pancakes and ate pretty much on time. Though apparently this story is going to be whipping through the village and so I may be soon known as "that" co-worker.

As for the rest of my day, it was long but mostly fun. I'm beginning to see who will challenge me and in which ways. There was also plenty of humor, as one of the villagers accidentally washed and then dried a load of clothing with floss in the pocket. Who knew that approximately 1/3 a spool of floss could make 2 inch cluster knots? You could literally grab 1 piece of clothing and the whole bundle would follow! It will definitely take some time to figure everything (anything!) out, but people seem patience, nice and very friendly. So, I'll keep you posted!

Hope all is well,
Steph

PS I found out my address and will update my facebook with it. Otherwise, shoot me a comment or e-mail and I'll be more than willing to share!

At long last...and comment this time!

Hi all...
Ok, so I finally managed to not only remember my password and switch blogspot back to English, but I also (ooooh, ahhhh) FINALLY got internet. It took about a week longer than it was supposed to due my extremely helpful friend Eric. I needed my IP address and he was very proud to announce that he could find it for me - Even on Vista. Well, he did find the IP address - for the Wireless network. However, I have to use a cable and therefore I must register with my Ethernet IP address. So. Yeah. Viola, a lifeline to the world. Actually, I thought it was going to be a red-letter day and that I might FINALLY be able to find out the phone number to my phone since I signed my lease today. Or not. There was a phone number on the lease, but apparently it is not the right one. I DO, however, know my mailing address.

Steph Munson
Goldener Turm
Wahlenstrasse 16 Zi 304
93047 Regensburg, Germany

Oh, and don't try to send me playing cards, apparently this is verboten. What I would really like at this point is baking soda. Or cornstarch. Or coolwhip. Simply because they don't exist here. Weird, huh? Let's see...was noch. See, I'm slipping in some German here - because I think I can. Needless to say, my German class is maybe helping some. Actually, I have already seen my comprehension level sky-rocket, but this helps me only a little as I am surrounded outside of the classroom with people speaking Bayernisch.
This is a southern dialect and I get shouted at a lot in it. Mostly by bus drivers and people at the supermarkets. By the way, I have found a great irony in the German food industry. People shop here either every day or every few days. So, all their food has pretty short expiration dates. Thus I was shocked (and confused, because I looked through all the coolers) to discover that their "Milch" lasts for 6 months! They keep it in an "aisle" of stacked up boxes. I have already decided that the reason that all the old people in Germany are typically short (but cute) is because they didn't drink enough milk as a child. This is due to the fact that the milk tastes like....like....well, there is no equivalent in America because we have "happy cows" and we are not afraid the steroid the heck out of them. But, I digress.

It is amazing how full my days are. Every day I have class from 8:30 to 2:30/3 with a lunch break. I have an amazing teacher who enjoys going on any good tangents. We work on written skills, pronunciation and mostly on expanding our vocabularies. I seem to have a knack for remembering the most useless words upon first utterance. So, I know button, acorn, push and pull, strange and badger. Great. Anyhow, at least the food is edible at the "Mensa" - but just barely. I am now a hard-core Schnitzel fan (breaded pork...mmmm) and know to stay away from the vast array of "pudding" desserts offered. Anyhow, after class we (all 54 of us fun-loving internationalists) trek to the "Kaffee-stunde" coffee-hour and either do fun things like register as aliens or get tours of parts of the college. The former usually includes harassed-looking and usually cranky university employees and the latter consists of much milling around. However, I am now officially a German Alien. How sweet is that?

Today I went to my friends' Eric and Christine's apartment and made a birthday cake for Eric's girlfriend Claudia. Now, I did have to only use baking powder and had to cook the canned cherries to a gel (oh, no pie filling here either...) but it still tasted great - Sachentorte/Black Forest Cake. I am missing a well-equipped kitchen and larder though. I know that larder is an archaic term by our standards, but honestly, the more I try to think in German the less capable I seem to speak in English. I figure it will even out at some point and then I hope that German will take over. Soon.

Anyhow, this was my nice long and rambling post that I am sure you have all (more or less) been waiting for.
Anyhow, I'm coming down sick and need my sleep. And no, I haven't been dreaming in German, yet.

Hope everyone is well,
Steph