Hanne

8 May 2009

You know that uni has really started to kick in when I start to procrastinate. And you can tell when I am procrastinating because suddenly the kitchen is filled with cakes. Yesterday it was apple cake, the day before it was scones, the outlook is very dim for my dwindling supply of flour…

The baking spree actually began on Saturday when Holly (from NZ) and I decided to organize a champagne breakfast. We were jealous of the Finns you see, because they spent all day Friday celebrating the 1st of May. So we decided to have a pikelets morning, and it was just what all little children dream of. Pikelets for breakfast, with golden syrup and pineapple, then afterwards icecream. And no mummies and daddies to tell us to eat our peas.

Actually, the past week and a bit have been completely crazy, almost psychadelically so. Particularly in regard to vegetables… Who would have ever imagined walking through the woods and seeing a giant asparagus, dressed a Tarzan, courting an ugly cucumber? That is what I spent Friday the 1st of May doing, traipsing through the wilderness in pursuit of actors dressed as giant vegetables. An evil slug had stolen the heart of the carrot princess in order to clone her and the pea army had to go to her rescue, along with some tomatoes, beans, spinach and a reggae banana. The whole performance lasted 4 ½ hours and we walked from scene to scene then took a bus to the second half… it was crazy, I would like to know what the author of the play was on at the time!

On Sunday evening we watched another mystery, called Tatort. This is like the CSI of Germany, 1 ½ hours long, a new episode each Sunday. And apparently it is incredibly rude to ring somebody up at 8.30pm on Sunday night because pretty much all of Germany is glued to their TV screens. They screen it here at the MENSA projected onto a wall and serve hot soup halfway through, so the event is called ‘cold murder, hot soup’. It was cosy.

I also gave a talk about New Zealand last week to students interested in studying abroad. Holly studies in Christchurch so I had to battle quite hard to salvage Auckland’s name! Showed pictures from our South Island tour and also from the Paeroa Street races. Plus a few of various parties just to assure them that we do not all live in grass huts and eat coconuts all day, as the childrens’ atlases here would have you believe.

And that is about all the news for now, except for the fact that my Dad is coming to visit in 2 weeks time. So I am super excited to see him again! Will be sending my wish list back home this weekend. Marmite and Sunlight soap FTW!

I have also decided to add a few new German vocab words to the end of each post.
Make what you will of them…

Bis Später,

Hanne

der Spargel = Asparagus
die Schnecke = slug
der Mörder = murderer
aufschieben = to procrastinate
der Weihnachtsmann = Santa Claus