And further on (mid March).

(<---Newbie)
Tomorrow will mark three weeks since leaving the states. Because Germany’s academic calendar is so different from ours, it is mid March and I have yet to start my classes, and won’t, in fact, for another three weeks. By that time I will have spent nearly four months outside of class. Yikes! I feel bad for my friends back at the ‘Bash studying for midterms right now, most likely without sleep or food. That is definitely not the case for me.
Because...I’m learning how to cook! You can see I'm very proud of myself. I feel this is the best way to eat on one’s own, and, yes, the cheapest. I take pride in such culinary accomplishments as self-seasoned pasta sauce, Kartoffelpüree (instant mashed potatoes sound much fancier in German), and obtaining good bread. I have been very impressed with the German bread. Extra wheat is always a plus, they say.
I'll try to list a few highlights. A couple weekends back my program (about 20 American college students) went on an excursion deep into the Black Forest hills/mountains around us. We ended up on a mountain named Feldberg, the highest such peak in the German Alps. We strapped on snowshoes and hiked up and all around it, pausing along the way to listen to our guide explain the various curiosities before us: a special tree, animal tracks, how to avoid being hit by skiers, etc. At the top we rested for Schnitzel and hot tea in an old inn before turning around to head back. The view there whacked me in the face (literally, the wind was quite whippy up top). Hill after wooded hill on all sides, with the Swiss Alps shimmering on the far southern horizon. By the day's end we were red faced, exhausted and thirsty, but filled with a good dose of satisfied winter wanderlust.
On March 10 I celebrated my sister’s wedding anniversary with friends at a local Irish pub. At the end of the night I let slip that it was also my birthday. “Well gee wiz,” they said, “another round of nachos for the birthday boy!”
Well, okay. We didn’t actually celebrate my sister’s anniversary, but nevertheless it was a rich experience I heartily enjoyed. Am besten, I was able to enjoy it with a carefully clean conscience. And that I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

Settling In (late February).

One week gone, and already all but removed from everything I’ve always considered home. A new language and new places, and new yet-unfamiliar faces. I don’t think it should take long, though, to either find or fashion a new sense of home in this city. Already Freiburg is beginning to feel familiar, outsider as I am. I look forward to doffing my alien mind and melding in with the daily flow of the place and the people, perhaps even finding a sense of belonging, which I crave most of all.
However, just now isn’t the time yet for carving out my place in society. Right now I'm content to focus on the basics of bachelorhood survival: getting places and getting food. Specifically, navigating the public transportation system; crossing the street while avoiding literally thousands of determined German bicyclists; discovering which grocery stores have the cheapest pasta; finding the best Wurst in town; and most important, landing upon the real treasure--the cheapest Döner Kebap.
Sadly, it’s true: right now these are my main priorities. I look forward to having other things on my plate as time goes on, both food- and schedule-wise.
The language aspect of life here has not yet played a critical role, either yay or nay. I consider myself in a listening stage, trying to tune my ears to the strange new sounds around them. This first week I've lain low on the speaking part, having yet had to navigate nothing more complex than ordering lunch or carrying on small talk with my suitemates.
On a weather note, it’s chilly out and a light snow lies around, but in the high noon sun it's really not that bad. Some are saying it should warm up soon. Others say a cold front is moving up from the mountains. I say, "Wenn kommt der Schnee, wenn kommt der Regen, wenn kommt die Sonne: so ist das Leben." (Whether snow, rain or sun, such is life.) I do look forward to June, but as long as I must endure an easily endurable Freiburg winter, I'll be just fine.
Transportation, food, language and weather: all the greatest and least of my first week worries.

Hiking across an open field.

Inhaling deeply
I take joy in
Great big globs of greasy grimy gopher guts.


p.s. I'm searching for the right last line. Any ideas?

This season was made for laughing out loud.

Every morning I awake to church bells across town wishing me good day. I lie in half-darkness behind drawn curtains and drowsily whisper hello in return. This morning there's a quality in them I'm not sure I recognize. I feel I am catching cheer--I don't remember cheer in these morning bells.
Sunlight pours in once again through my now thrown-back curtains. I sip my coffee under the tree outside my front door. It's true. There is a new cheer. The rain is gone.

Foreword the Second

To go on from my previous post, though, I should confess that I am terrible at this type of thing. Keeping track of my daily activities has never been easy for the ole' thinker up there top my neck. The process always seems to turn out much harder than I anticipate. A casual daily journal should be easy: "I woke up at such and such a time and ate such and such for breakfast. I went here, here, here, oh, and there, too, and did such and such a thing with these people. I ate lunch. I ate supper. I brushed my teeth. I went to bed." Shouldn't be too difficult. Thing is, for one reason or another it’s always no-go for me. When I get to reflecting back on a day, I first of all can't remember half the things I've done, and secondly, the half that does come to mind does so as a bundle of meaningless details. The stuff’s there, but why? And all this outside the third half--that is, everyday's jungle of random thoughts unattached in the consciousness to anything at all concrete.
I'm left trying to form tidy evening reflections based off hundreds of disconnected memory dots crazily splayed all over my hippocampus over the previous 24, 48, 20,000+ hours. I sit down to catch my mind’s nightly news, but always end up flicking through a thousand channels a second: "What a great weeken--Referat morgen über etwas in Geschi--Call the folks!" It takes me a good while to connect everything together, the minor details with the meanings behind them, and by the time I figure it out, it’s a new day, week, month, semester…
But every hour of real digging through the mind’s files is an hour well-spent. I consider real personal investment the main goal anytime I sit down to think or write in earnest. Without it am I doing anything more than organizing a mere afternoon travel log?
And not that a daily journal which leaves out personal meaning is altogether useless (depending on the audience); it's just not something I'm interested in keeping. When my five months abroad are over, I want to have a record of what I was thinking, how I was growing, the realness behind what I was experiencing—not simply what I ate for breakfast.
I should confess now, however, that I have to be a hypocrite for a while: I can't promise any meaningful personal commentary in these reflections any time soon. I have thankfully been recording little notes and the like every now and then throughout my whole time here so far, but it will be a good while before any of that sneaks its way onto this page. For one, that kind of reflecting, let alone writing, as I said takes me ages to do, and secondly, for concision's sake I really ought to stay away from it in most of these entries. It’s fun to ramble, but I don’t want to bore anyone.
But speaking of rambling, I need to bring this to a close. So, all in all, as I probably also spent too much of your time saying in the first of these needless Forewords, welcome to the as-yet-mostly-meaningless-but-in-due-time-infused-with-deeper-significance telling of the little details I’ve been up to since March, 2010. I hope you find it a pleasant read.
Yuppers.

Kurzes Vorwort

If you look up “study abroad” in the dictionary you’ll come across this definition: “The extended experience of either pleasant surprise or necessary life-lesson from knowing neither what one will be doing next nor how it will turn out.” I think that sums it up just about right, even if I did come up with it myself. Since February of this year I’ve been experiencing just that every moment of every day in and around Freiburg, Germany. Through ups, downs, gems and duds of all sorts, this always-adventure-filled life has been all in all fantastic for me, and I very much look forward to whatever may come in my remaining two and a half months.
Though I can rightly define my semester so far as knowing neither what I’ll be doing next nor how it will turn out, I should include in that definition the foundational faith that the Lord who has my highest good in mind has been directing all my foggy footsteps from the start. There's a proverb I've had memorized since the wee stages of my life that has truly come to define my personal philosophy since I arrived in Germany: "Trust in the Lord with all of your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all of your ways acknowledge the Lord, and he will make your paths straight" (Proverbs 3:5). Perhaps I am mistaken, and perhaps over the course of my life I’ll learn to significantly alter how I understand this verse, but I find in it a key freedom for everyday living that I've accepted more so this semester than ever before. If I leave my heart and mind in the right hands, which I pray to do everyday, I have the freedom to walk with unbridled joy heel to toe, toe to heel or however else my feet may fall, wheresoever my heart and mind may lead. I make choices and I trust them—because I know they are engineered by a higher power.
When I combine that faith with the peace from the promise of Galatians 5:16--that if I live according to the Lord’s desires I’ll be rescued from the deceitful desires of my own sinful nature--I find an incredible license: to grab the vim and vigor out of everyday and every circumstance, whether I'm in Germany or back at school, whether in the middle of nowhere on my bike or the middle of a rich conversation after class. No matter where I am or what I’m doing, if I’m following the right instructions I’ll reach the right destination.
Now that I think of it, there’s a better way to define the study abroad experience, and this written by an author far wiser than myself: “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart” (Psalm 37:3). As far as I can tell, that’s no bad way to make the most of a semester abroad, even a life altogether.
If I can hold myself to it, this blog will be about the little things I come across living by that glorious definition.