The saga of the Eurail pass is approaching a solution. I received an urgent e-mail from my mom, in which she told me that the package had to be picked up by Thursday, otherwise FedEx was going to send it back to the US. Fortunately, I finally got my cell phone set up today, so I was able to call Sanjay and let him know that he had to call FedEx right away and keep them from doing that. He did so, and also called my mother, who is slated to call FedEx and tell them that Sanjay is going to be picking up the package, after which point he will send it to me here at my residence in Konstanz. I will be extremely glad to see this thing finally arrive. Today was my first day of classes, and also my earliest day of the week, with my first class starting at 11:30am. On Mondays and Tuesdays, my first class is at 2pm. Today was three hours of Heat Transfer, and an hour and a half of Machine Design, both taught by Professor Echempati, one of the professors from Kettering. It seems kind of strange to have come half way around the world, only to be taught by a professor from my school, but I guess he does this every year. In those classes, there are the 11 of us from Kettering, five or six students from Hong Kong, and two from Mexico. The two Mexican girls are really nice and seem like they’re glad to have some new friends, especially ones who don’t speak German well (or at all in some cases), since they don’t either. I’m going to be working with one of them on the term project for the Machine Design term project, and apparently re-explaining what we talked about in class, since she had a difficult time understanding what Professor Echempati was saying, which is not surprising, since I have a sometimes I can barely understand him myself.
Well, I’m 21 now, at least in this time zone. If we’re working on an absolute gauge, I guess I’ve got about five hours to go, but it’s April 5th here. I mentioned at lunch in the cafeteria that today, Thursday was going to be my birthday, and the Mexican girls asked me if I was going to have a party, and when I said no, they said I absolutely had to, and that they should call all their Mexican compatriots and organize a fiesta for me. I don’t think this is going to happen, since I won’t see either of them again until next Monday, but it was a nice gesture, since if I actually had a way of getting a hold of them before then, I have the feeling that they actually do it. Did I mention how much I like the Mexican students here?
For a long time, I’d been aware of the stereotype of Americans abroad as being loud, overbearing and pushy, but I’d never actually known anyone who fulfilled this image… until now. There’s a guy from the Kettering contingent who kind of reminds me of Loud Harold from the Dilbert comic strip. For those of you who are not familiar with said character, he is afflicted with a condition which makes him unable to control the volume of his voice, and therefore is perpetually shouting. Unfortunately, not only is this Kettering fellow obnoxiously loud, he’s tends to say rather obnoxious things in with that loud voice of his, giving you an annoyance value that is proportional to obnoxiousness squared. I admit that I speak very little and probably very terrible German, but I’m pretty sure he speaks approximately zero German, but seems to think it’s cute to throw poorly pronounced German words into his annoying English speech. For instance: “Do you guys have drinking fountains in Deutschland (pronounced ‘Doychelānd’)?” or “I should have fünfundfünzig (pronounced ‘foonfundfoonfzig’) euros on my handy.” He also has a tendency to say disparaging things about Germany or Germans in his uncontrollable volume level, even though I'm sure he has to be aware that just about everyone under 35 here speaks passable to fluent English. On Tuesday morning, I, Rafal, and a couple other Kettering guys, including Loud Harold caught the bus to the university. Loud Harold was sitting next to some professional looking German guy, and about 30 seconds into the ride, asked him, “Spracken zee English?”, and when it turned out that the guy did, he proceeded to tell this poor guy all about his being an American who had just gotten to Germany and was taking classes and the university here, which was where he was going this morning, but was awfully tired, since he’d had gotten so drunk the night before. That’s exactly what one should do: find random Germans, tell them that you’re American, and that your first priority here is drinking as much beer as possible. Way to make a good impression! Not to mention that I couldn’t even hear the German guy during their entire conversation, while I could hear every work of Loud Harold’s side of it. In fact, even though most of the people on the bus were talking, I couldn’t distinctly hear anyone else. I’m trying to decide whether I should inform him that he’s coming off as being a terribly rude, stereotypical American, or if I should just try to distance myself from him.
I’m going to go to bed now and sleep in for my birthday. Talk to you all later!
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