Middleman

Meine Damen und Herrn-

How's everyone doing? I'm alright myself. Been sick this week, but thats to be expected with all the stress and such. Nothing too serious. Just some minor aches and pains. The German is coming along well. By Christmas I will probably have started double-posting - Once in German and once in English. Not much has happened this week. Went to a party on Saturday with a couple of my classmates. The Germans might be hard to get to know, but once you know them, man, they're an interesting lot. The rest of the week has been decidedly slow, what with Mortiz concentrated on his finals and me skipping out on Judo today (still not feeling well). There's more fun on the way, though. Going to a gathering of classmates on Saturday. Main event: Super Smash Bros Brawl. A little taste of home to take the edge off.

Speaking of taking the edge off, I found myself actually wanting a beer the other day. Don't be alarmed. I'm sure you know drinking is quite common here, and I've only had maybe four beers since I've been here, but still. It was an interesting realization. I've never really been all that interested in drinking, and now I actually want a beer. Anyway, we've got the next two weeks off of school. 'Potato Holiday' Heide calls it. Then we all laugh. Its become a joke with us that most of the German diet consists of potatos and meat. Unfortunatly, its not that much of an exageration... During the second week of this wonderful holiday, Moritz and I will be heading to Berlin for some sort of AFS party. Should be fun. All of the AFS people here are very younge. For example, Esther, my AFS contact person, is nineteen, and she just returned from her AFS year in the Dominican Republic a matter of months ago. She's really cool and fun to spend time with, but not exactly what you'd expect a 'contact person' to be. I think I like it better this way.

School right now is ganz einfach (totally simple). I'm actually a year ahead of them in most subjects, and everyone is impressed that the American understand German schoolwork, when he can't even speak the language fluently. I took an English test earlier this week. Yeah. That was a joke. The math test I took today was challenging, considering the directions were in German, but I think that I did well on it anyway.

Faith, once again, is a struggle for me here. In Religion class (don't let the name fool you), a classmate asked me 'Who is God?' I choked. I couldn't believe myself. I had nothing to say to this. I know who God is. I know that He is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the Creator and Redeemer, the Almighty. But the challenge of expressing that in broken English-German to someone with a completely secular point of view was to much. I also started reading my Bible in school, which has gotten a lot of interesting questions. Everyone is so interested in what I believe, but thats the thing with the German culture. They want you to be middle-of-the-road. Wishy-washy. They want an answer like 'I believe in freedom' or 'I believe in science'. They are completely taken aback when I say 'I believe in God and ultimate Truth'. They don't like that they can't talk me out of what I believe.

Anyway, I must leave you now. I'd like to end on a happier note, so here's something fun I dug up from ancient Internet history. Hope you like it.



-Elliot P.