November 6th

Hi everyone,

uhm... when I try to think about what's been on these past days, it's hard to think of something concrete. I came across a drunk guy who threatened to kill everoyne, because he didn't care whether he was going to prison or not (met three or four really weird ones since I've been here), put adds on gumtree, offering lessons in HTML and drawing, and got only one reply asking me if I'd like to join an online network for teachers and students, which I did, because I like the concept very much and I might make money out of it... but can only tell you closer in time.

Took a cookery class for "Seafood" and it was awesome, again. It's the same cook, he is a young ex-chef, now baker at Heart Buchanan. I had a wonderful soup there too, decided I should eat more soup. Went to the gym for about 2 hours today, tried every training machine for about half an hour + cool down. Decided that I should drink less White Mocha from Tinderbox, because I have grown quite addicted.
Love Glasgow still... If only things weren't expensive and the water didn't taste like chlorine...
I could even ignore the constant rain (which does give me a slight headache...it's getting dark early and you're always cold and wet). I'd love spending the rest of my life here. It really feels more like home than any other place I've been to in my life.

Yesterday was Guy Fawke's Night, a lot of fireworks everywhere, but I missed the big one on Glasgow Green. Wanted to go, but after I gave the regular French lesson, I found I was quite tired and went home straight away.

I have been Scuba Diving this Monday, which was a fabulous experience. My first time and the instructor said, I was a natural. No panic breathing under water n stuff... I would've liked to make my license, but it costs about 350 GBP to do it here. The first session will last me for one year, maybe I can carry it over to the next time.







I still enjoy contemporary a lot. We're dancing to songs like "Ellie Goulding - Guns and Horses". Next week is officially the last class, then I'll change to Burlesque. I'll also do Tribal Fusion Belly Dance in the near future. Got myself a voucher for a "Three-Hour Static
Trapeze, Acrobalance, and Aerial Silks
Course " ... can't wait.

Went to a very posh restaurant to see what it's like (the sisters...I'd had a latte there before and enjoyed it so much that I wanted to come back... self-indulgence and decadence all over...that's what I'm doing here...because I might never get it again or not get it again so soon at least...must grasp the opportunity) with Krys, had a very nice day out together.

Started eating even healthier, and am currently cooking a great recipe from a cook book I bought (bought too many books, dammit!!!)by Sophie Dahl. It's a delight just to look at the book. And I normally don't even cook with recipes. I also bought a Scottish dictionary and a book about Scottish Wisdom and Wit :D



Not going to the CS meeting tonight, I think. Enjoying myself here, finally having some more time for Ziran as well. Need to do something for uni anyway. Will probably finish watching Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland", as I'd bought it yesterday and still haven't watched it.

Will probably be going to see the new Harry Potter with my friends Maurice and Pooja, and apparently loads of other people.

Met a blind girl at a bus stop near Central Station. Asked her a random question, turned out she studies at my uni and that she is from Mainz too. Her name is Bianca. Gave her my mobile phone number. Still waiting to get a text from her. But that was just a really awkward coincidence.

Ah yes, also, I managed to finish my essay in time, though I had nobody read over it, so it is probably full of mistakes. I did it just in time, ... handed it in half an hour before the deadline.

Vocabulary of the day (or those, I finally found the time to look up):
- putrefy
- fathom
- bonkers
- haddock (Schellfisch)
- monkfish (Seeteufel)
- to galumph (trampeln)
- snorkel
- lug (Nase, Ohr, a. o.)
- potassium (Kalium)
- sodium (Natrium)
- buoyant (aufnahmefähig)
- buoyancy (Auftrieb, Schwimmfähigkeit)
- ophthalmologist (Augenarzt)
- tyke (Lümmel, little tyke - kleiner Racker)
- dyke (Lesbe)

October 27th

Just when I was thinking that I might - due to all the stretching and my cautiousness not to overdo it - have been spared the aching muscles, ... o yes, just when I was getting up after chatting with Tom, to go back to my room and do some work on my philosophy essay, there it is... muscle ache deluxe. Hello...nice that you're back again. I almost missed you! ... Can't wait to do contemporary tonight.

October 26th - Parkour

Parkour, thou art amongst the most beautiful and invigorating pieces of poetry I have ever experienced!

How wondrous it is to be crawling along the floor, feeling the stone of the ground still wet from the rain, moss and tiny pebbles beneath my bare hands - right next to the tramped-in chewing gum and bird shit - and becoming one with nature, where I thought nature had long ceased to exist.

Thou teachest me the most graceful ways of crossing even the highest walls, and walking along rails, as if it were a mere child's play.

And behold! 'tis through you that I land on my feet as if I were a cat-like creature, striving through the urban forest at night, seeking prey, seeking adventure, seeking freedom.

Dost thou never get tired of feeding even the most untalented of mankind with inspiration? But no! Thou art a neverending cyrcle of movement and in you lies the spirit of grace.

Not even my torn hands, bruised knees and aching muscles shall keep me from loving you.*

Why, should I get killed by you, it shall be a most painful and not at all unanticipated death. XDDD


_____
*ah yeah, and contemporary dance,... I love you too! :)

Here we go, I've been to Parkour again, obviously. This time it wasn't as hard as last time at all. I'd been practicing a little at home and done a lot more work-out in the gym. The contemporary and the Stretch 2 Harmony classes in the Sports Club at uni might have helped as well. I mean, I'm still clumsy and a beginner, one can tell, I still lack strength in my arms and legs, but it's gotten much better. And again I've been carried by one of my tutors...Zenon...on his arms. Freakin shit, how do they do it?

Other than that, I purchased a reading lamp for my books (cuz I don't have a normal desktop lamp) in the Oxfam shop for £6,99 and got a Pizza Express voucher for purchasing something at Oxfam that costs over £5. So the value of the voucher I got for a Pizza is £5 ... interesting...nice :-) I love vouchers. Got myself one for diving classes again. Will go for Paintball with Sébastien Sunday 7th - we'll be joining a larger group. Hopefully that'll be fun.

My Houeswarming Party was great, as I have probably mentioned before...I got a bottle of bubbly bath stuff from Krys (very thoughtful, given that I had told her I now have a bathtub) ,...failed to mention that. Really great, can't wait to use that for my bath.



I think, I'm gonna need a bath soon, when I consider my muscle ache from last time. But I've been trying real hard to strech better this time. Fingers crossed!

It's reading week by the way, so I'm more flexible, because I don't have to attend lectures, but at the same time I have finally had a look at my deadlines and decided, November 2nd for my philosophy essay really isn't too far away...darn!

October 24th - Housewarming Party

Today I went to Byres Road with Krys, spent some time and voucher+money in Little Italy and had our pizza in the Botanic Gardens. I introduced her to Peppa Pig and the Mumins and we spent an awful lot of time discovering the wonders of Waitrose (not that I bought anything there...not this time).

Went to a cookery class on 'Just Deserts' on Wednesday, I think it was... have I told you? The most amazing deserts ever. The lightest scones (blueberry, raisins) with butter and jam I've ever tasted, an almond, pear and apple tarte, chocolate dip with chili and pepper ...

I am now taking contemporary dance classes, as I told you. But I am now also taking master classes in the same dancing school. Those are longer (2h) and more demanding, you learn things from the start, but when you're not used to picking dance moves up quickly, it's going to be hard. Nonetheless, I enjoyed contemporary master class...a cheerful, bubbly woman from the famous dancing company smallpetitklein taught us a coreography they had recently performed on the Fringe Festival... it was about war...super demanding...a lot of screams in the music... great! I got nauseaous after a while though, because it was all so fast, got a little concussion from my head hitting the floor rather hard, then I hadn't had a propper breakfast (coming from Jessica's where I'd spent the night and just had a coffee) nor lunch and just couldn't go on. Don't think I remember much of the coreography, it was really so much in such little time and so fast... I'm hoping to be able to grasp and learn faster with time and practice. As a child I used to be able to pick up dancing moves and such like so much quicker *sigh*.

Nonetheless, still gut bruises and bumps everywhere from the canyoning. Had my first full-body and facial massage the day before yesterday, which I got with a voucher...awesome...really good. It was all female staff there...I found that men can do massages better...nontheless, it was really relaxing and I was sad when it was over. Nice relaxing music in the background. you could just close your eyes and imagine you were on an island in the caribbean or something. That was so necessary after all that's been going on.

I have now different options, but none of them involves staying here as a student for one more semester. Dammit!...will list them all later.

And yesterday I also had my housewarming party, which was a huge success and there was yummy food...all cooked by me, of course :-P
This is Sébastien with my wig. I laughed so hard, it was hilarious!

October 17th - Indian Food

Yesterday, I went canyoning, which was great, incredibly cold and tiresome, but great. Now I have aching muscles and haematoma everywhere again. Started aching much later though. Cannot move my head properly.

In the evening I went to the couchsurfer meeting. Met a guy from Germany - Martin - who works as an electro-technician (for lack of a better word, I don't know whether that's the right term). He might have guitar strings for me - the busker finally got back to me to tell me that I might get the guitar soon. We went to karaoke in the same bar again, but this time too many other people wanted to sing and it was 11pm already, we didn't get to sing at all, because the bar closed at midnight. I didn't get any bus that drove directly back to my new home so I spent most of my time taking one bus after another to get as close to home as possible and then realised that I was stuck on Great Western Road, which was close to my Mum's hostel (btw, my brother stayed at Luca's place, where we had an incredibly good chicken...Luca, you're the best cook). So I decided to pay my mum a visit and stay in the hostel over night. She therefore decided to sleep in the living room while I got her bed (feeling only a little guilty, because she'd already gotten home early and slept most of the time anyway), so noone noticed and we didn't have to pay extra.

Today my family and I went to the Science Centre, which was not that great at all. It looks great from the outside, but it was super expensive and if you went to the Science Mall only, there was hardly anything that you wouldn't get in a good German science museum or exhibition for free. We could have paid for the planetarium or the IMAX dome, but I really had been to both in Germany too and felt like if the mall had been a disappointment, the rest couldn't be much better.

The main theme was Wallace and Gromit - it was largely for children. I learned something about copyrights that might come in handy for my homepage in Arts and Media Informatics and Multimedia Analysis and Design. Also, after that we went to the Exhibition and Conference Hall, which was really not impressive from the inside, but I found a flyer of something I might go to, that includes Gordon Ramsey and is mainly about cooking...

When we came back to my new place we were invited to dinner by my new flatmate Bhaskar from Dehli, India. He treated the entire family to some very expensive, really delicious food in a super fancy restaurant...and I thought 'so that's what it's like when you have money'... I felt super lucky. He even called a taxi for us. Great evening.

October 15th

Whoa!!!! Guys, I don't even know how to communicate all that's been going on in such a short time again. So basically, what's going on is that I had to cancel several appointments, especially today, because I'm moving out again. About a week ago I've been having serious issues with one of my flatmates again and it's just been too much for me, so I decided I'd go for something else. I'd rather spend two days moving out than one hour debating with her, because that's what makes me miserable for the rest of the day. Can't really say what it was all about, basically we have different opinions on human interaction in general. I found another flat which is the most gorgeous I can think of (my own bathroom with bathtub, washing machine, internet, only one, mature, male, uncomplicated flatmate - as it seems...and my family's met them and says so too), and it is in West End. Today, I'm gonna take the coach to Aberfoyle and from there go to Easterhill Farm and tomorrow there'll be canyoning. :) My family's been here since Wednesday.

October 10th

Finally! Yesterday night was my first karaoke night here.

(I sang: Norah Jones 'Don't know why', Alanis Morissette 'You outta know', Travis 'Why does it always rain on me', Vanessa Carlton 'A thousand miles', LeeAnn Rimes 'Can't fight the moonlight' with Krys, Monthy Python's The life of Brian: 'Always look on the bright side of life' with Séb)

I knew several karaoke bars from just walking around the city, collecting them and putting them onto my map. I didn't have the map yesterday, but more or less knew where they could be found still.

Spontaneously decided to do this after I had 'cappuccino' with Séb. 'Cappuccino' in quotes, because I infact had two (or 1 and a half) huge Starbucks Lattes, while he had two cappuccinos. He had ordered two cappuccinos for us (treated me to one *gg*) and the staff at starbucks put two lattes in front of us instead. Nobody else claimed them and they were not aware of that, Séb asked for the cappuccino again and I took the latte in the meantime. So we had more than we could actually drink. The lattes were so huge.

Actually, we were supposed to go to Jessica's Thanksgiving Party, but Jess cancelled it, because she felt sick and Séb decided he wanted to at least go to the city and just do something other than hanging out at home with his flatmate whom he doesn't like too much.

I'd been thinking of going to karaoke ever since I came here. And it was really cool. There were soooo many people singing (till midnight, when the pub started closing...no alcohol after midnight) and it was a cozy little pub, people were dancing between the tables and cheering you on and all of them were clapping and singing along with songs they knew (mostly songs that I didn't even know).

The day before yesterday, I had spent the night at Séb and Andy's place on their sofa, because I'm currently experiencing a few problems with my flatmates and they have a very nice, slightly remote flat (in Mosspark - 10 minutes from Glasgow Central by train). So yesterday morning I went from them straight to the Beatston Pebble Appeal Abseil in Fallkirk, which was really cool and fun (just a little expensive, because of the extra transport costs). I was really glad I made it there in time all on my own by train and bus. Busses in Fallkirk are even more expensive - 2 pounds - and you don't have to hail them...for a change. As for the abseil, I wasn't too excited, but all the women around me were totally edgy and shivering, before, while and after the abseil. I'd done some climbing before and this was just like it, except that it was higher and there was no wall you could do it along. Just a huge edge where you had to push yourself away from and then you'd just dangle in the air. Got a nice picture of me, all harnessed and hanging over the bridge, but it's not yet digital.

Finally, today, my muscles stopped aching so terribly from Parkour. :-)

I should maybe add, that I spent two nights in a row at Séb's and Andy's, because of those flatmate problems. Really don't want to talk about it too much. It's little things that piled up and made me feel so uncomfortable that I couldn't even talk about it to her...basically, because I knew it wouldn't make a difference. And then the sad climax came when we were cooking in the kitchen together.

Séb told me, he's thinking of moving out and hiring his own flat and we've been thinking that I might move in with them, in case I am looking for something after December.