An Update on Classes and Oberursel

I posted a post about worship in Germany (and America): I encourage you to read that also, if you haven't come to my blog in a while and first see this post.

So I noticed that I use the word "so" too much, so I'm going to try to do my best not to use it so much. I discovered it reading through some of my previous posts, felt ashamed at such literary incompetency, and immediately corrected the glaring overuse. It's interesting- I love writing and formulating quirky and poignant sentences, because it's a part of being human to want to express thoughts and ideas, and convince others to take them (what men tend to do) or to listen and sympathize (what women tend to do). And now, when I try to engage in this in Germany, I find myself severely limited; I can't use the language how I want to; I can't convince based on eloquence anymore. But it's been good, because without eloquence, one focuses much more on the facts at hand instead of wandering into side topics or questions. That doesn't mean that facts alone convince, and that doesn't mean I understand everything, which is difficult at times.

I don't know how far separated from schooling you my reader  might be, but in every class there's important and not important material. Often the non-important material is additional information, or sometimes it bolsters the prof's argument, but whatever its reason, competent students pick up pretty well on what they should be learning from a lecture. It's this last part that I have problems with. I'm still in the "learning German" phase, so I'm picking out words, and putting them together in sentences, sometimes understanding what the professor is trying to say, but it annoys me when all that is finally done to find out that it's just not important. I'm not complaining about the professors; they're doing what they should be doing. But this has probably been my greatest annoyance in the classes.

Classes for the Winter Semester are quickly coming to a close. There's only two weeks left before our two month Spring Break, during which the students are expected to write papers. The classes themselves are coming to an end as well; the professors are starting to see how much time they have left and pace themselves to conclude all the material. So, for example, in my Romans class, after getting through the important chapters 6-8, taking a few weeks to do so, we've gone at a brisk pace through 9-11. No, not September 11th, chapers 9 through 11. My Reformation History class is coming to an end as well; we just finished talking about the formulation of the Formula of Concord and other Reformed (Calvinist) confessions as a comparison and will continue through various topics to the 30 Years War. I'm not going to write a review of each classe; all I'll say is that I've learned from every class, regardless of my understanding difficulty.

I guess I've forgotten to talk about life on campus. I try nearly every evening to do something with the other students; sometimes it's choir, or brass choir, but sometimes it's just playing cards or watching a movie. There's a movie night every Sunday night, and we have a "Reading Circle" on either Tues or Thurs evening. We're reading through Werner Elert's The Morphology of Lutheranism. It's been good a good book, and I've enjoyed hearing the theological discussions. About ten of us students gather for "Mittagessen" in the cafeteria at 1pm- its the largest meal of the day for the Germans. Considering I'm not that much of a cook, the provided food is very welcome. Therefore I really enjoy it when we have brunch every other Saturday, since I can see what the other students decide to cook and/or bring. Last time I brought something very American- "Ants on a Log." It's celery with peanut butter inside, and raisens put on top. I'm not sure the Germans enjoyed it, but they were at least courteous and tried them. It's American, because it contains peanut butter, which is not eaten at all here. They tend to eat Nutella instead- it's a hazelnut paste with chocolate. It's also very tasty, but not a replacement for peanut butter.

There's chapel service in St. Johannes Gemeinde on Monday and Wednesday at 9:15 am, and Tuesday and Thursday at 6:45 pm. Some of these services have sermons by the professors- I think about two out of the four. The non-preaching services are usually Matins and Compine. In addition, the students have Matins on Tues, Thurs, and Friday mornings at 6:50 and a mid-day office after lunch at 1:30. I don't make it to all of the early morning Prayer Offices, because I don't have classes on Tues and Thurs until 9:15, so 6:50 is a bit early to wake up for, but I sometimes make it there on Friday, when I have a class at 7:30. I'm glad that we have these services; they remind me a bit of the services in Ft. Wayne. I miss our Anglican hymns (though not Timothy Dudley-Smith, let the reader understand), but I've enjoyed singing the good German hymns and seeing how we have changed the melody to make it more Americanized. Paul Gerhardt is certainly loved by the Germans (and by me), and I'd recommend everyone to sing his hymns more often. They are packed with good Lutheran theology, and he has a way of bringing biblical consolation to the soul through his hymns.

I did stay up to watch some of the Super Bowl with one other student. It started at 12:30 here, but I went to bed shortly after the power outage was fixed, about 3:15 or 3:30. I had a class the next morning at 7:30 and didn't feel like pulling an all-nighter, though the second half certainly sounded much more exciting. The commercials were German commercials, so I watched the American ones on YouTube and various websites. I've gotta say, the farmer one was pretty funny.

Probably the funniest German one I saw showed a German soccer player on the ground wincing in pain, holding his head. A trainer came over, quickly diagnosed the problem, and pulled out shampoo, quickly lathering his head and styling it. The player got up, smiled, and everything was alright.

Let's see...and that leads me to my last topic. Sports. Soccer (aka "Football") has slowed down now that there's snow on the ground. It can be a bit dangerous at times, plus we can't play at night any more due to problems with the lights, so we rarely play now. But it'll pick up soon in spring. There's been a ping-pong tournament to keep us active, though, and boy, has it been competitive. There were two groups of six that played, then a final tournament of the top 4 from each is happening now. I came in third in my group, so I played the number two guy from the other group, and lost. So now I'm playing in the losers' bracket, hoping for fifth place. Hopefully I can win the two games necessary to get that; I just need to cut down on the mistakes that I make too often.

Posted with Blogsy

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas, everyone!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas, and I'd like to remind everyone that the party continues for 12 more days! (Start singing the 12 days of Christmas!)

This was my first Christmas away from home, but it was still nice to spend it with various people in Germany. Between the two Christmas Eve services, I was invited to a seminarian's apartment with some others, and the food and wine were very delicious. I then skyped with my family a bit before going to bed; they opened the gifts that I had sent from Germany. Also, earlier in the day I got the book Broken by Jonathan Fisk in the mail (which I highly recommend to you), so I had to read at least a chapter that same evening. It's very well written and is in the same style as his video podcasts, Worldview Everlasting. I encourage you to check it out.

On Christmas Day, I played trumpet in the Brass Choir and went to two Christmas dinners, both of which were fantastic. The first one was at Prof. Barnbrock's house; we had typical German food and wine. The salmon was very delicious; it was wrapped in a pastry of some sort. That evening I went to Brent Smith's house with other Americans from the area, so I also got to eat some American food, which included ham and pumpkin pie. Afterwards it was nice to lounge around and digest the food. I talked with the adults some and played games with the Smith kids- Zachary, Katelyn, and Sophia. So it's been a good day spent with some very gracious people. Tomorrow is another service celebrating the Martyrdom of St. Stephan, then another on the 29th for the Holy Innocents.

Tomorrow I'm eating lunch with Pastor Wenz and his family, then heading with them to the "St. Paul" Oratorio by Mendelssohn in Bad Homburg. I'm really looking forward to it.

As promised, here's a photo from my visit to Berlin a few weeks ago for the baptism of Noemi Müller. Yes, my hair's longer than normal, but it's since been cut. From left to right, it's Marlon Hiestermann, Travis Berg, me, Noemi Müller, Simon Volkmar, Benjamin Müller, Sonja Müller, and Alex Rüst. All of us are or have been students at LThH, Oberursel.

An Update: Back to Berlin, Weihnachtsmärkte, and Bergfest at Oberursel

Classes have been continuing much like they started; I'm getting better at German (certainly not as fast as I would like), but the professors are becoming more and more understandable. We have three more days of school before Christmas Break, which is two and a half weeks long. I'll be staying here for that time; I'm very grateful for various families who have invited me to dinners and events during that time.

Last weekend I got the chance to visit Berlin again for the baptism of Noemi Müller; if you will remember, I stayed with Benjamin and Sonja while studying German at the Goethe Institut in September. It was very nice to see them again, this time with their new daughter. She's quite a cuttie and is nicknamed "Sonjamin," which makes me chuckle every time I hear it.

I'll upload more pictures with me holding Noemi when I get them from the Müllers.

There were six of us that traveled to Berlin from Frankfurt on Friday; group tickets make everything cheaper, which I was thankful for. We got in Friday evening and talked and chatted a bit. Travis Berg had made the trip from Ft. Wayne to be the "Patenonkel" (godfather)- he was in Germany two years ago and still remembers the language; we were about at the same level, which was comforting. He filled me in on the goings on at Ft. Wayne, which I don't hear much about anymore. There was also a secular Catholic German; girl there; she was a grade school friend of Sonja and had traveled in our group. It was interesting to talk about various issues, in spite of my broken German. We broke the two rules of conversation with new acquaintances: don't talk about religion, and don't talk about politics. It was hard to understand everything she was saying, but it was interesting to hear Benjamin respond to her concerns, until he retired for the night. After that, it was just Travis and I, but I don't think we completely got our points across; oh well. The religious points were about the Pope, tradition, Sola Scriptura, and Law and Gospel; and the political points revolved around the War on Terror and why America needed to go to war.

The next day, Saturday, Travis and I visited Simon Volkmar in his apartment; he had studied at Fort Wayne last year, and I made it a point to see him again. We gave up all pretenses of speaking in German; English theological (and political) conversation ruled. To be honest, I was relieved and eager to discuss theology and understand everything that the other people are saying. It was a treat, and one I don't have often. When we returned to Ben and Sonja's apartment (where we were staying the night), the religious and political conversations revived.

On Sunday, we all traveled via bus to the SELK congregation in Marzahn. If you remember what I said about SELK people and ordination, you should see them with a baptism. There was excitement among the congregation, and one of them even turned to me and said, "I wish we would see more of these." They just don't have many young families in the congregation, so the baptism was quite a big deal. The service was a normal Gottesdienst from their hymnal, but the baptism was in the middle of the service instead of at the beginning, as I'm used to. I don't think that having it in the middle is normal here either.

Afterwards, we all went back to Ben and Sonja's, packed into their apartment, and ate delicious food, talked, and drank beer. It was quite a good time, one that lasted the rest of the day. That night, instead of getting into politics or religion, we talked about literature and accents, both of which topics the three of us could discuss with some proficiency in German (sometimes in English). We watched Youtube videos of various English accents, and then some German accents. I learned how to distinguish Hessish, with it's now annoying "sh" sounds. Isch möschte gern nicht Hesshisch zu hören. In researching a good example, I found a hilarious video. For those who don't know English, just listen to the German's "sh" sounds. They get annoying after a while. Germans, I think you've love this.

On the way back, we traveled through Wittenberg, so I took a quick picture of the skyline, with the two churches (one is behind some trees to the left).

Moving on, Germany is known for its Christmas Markets. The best approximation is to think of a county fair but with a Christmas theme. There's a lot of stalls selling food, drinks, and crafts. There were rides at the bigger ones like Berlin, but not at the small one at Oberursel. Nonetheless all were very festive, and I heard a lot of English Christmas music. I drank some Glühwein (mulled wine), which was very tasty and did have a warming effect. I bought Christmas presents for my family, which they'll hopefully get before Christmas.

And then...Bergfest! Bergfest, which took place last Friday, was a bit like Reformationfest at the seminary. There was music, food, beer, and a talent show. I didn't take part in the last, I assure you that. The theme was "The 70s," so you can also be assured that I didn't dress the part. There were some very classy costumes and haircuts, though. (Some of the Germans told me afterward that I could've gone to an Army Supply Store, bought a uniform for cheap, and dressed up as a veteran, which would've provided some contrast to the hippies that showed up.) All the professors had something to perform for laughs, whether it was singing songs from the 70s, or giving a presentation about the sports, culture, and religion of the 70s. I was just waiting for him to make a jest about Seminex, but thankfully that didn't happen...otherwise Aaron Uphoff would've popped up saying "Seminex? What about Seminex?" (Sorry, inside seminary joke there.) The talent show was very well done, and the moderator kept us laughing.

Finally, I have a picture of the seminary for you. I realize that I don't put up many picture of myself, so I'll try to do that more often. This was taken with Prof. da Silva's camera and put on the Hochschule's facebook page. I hope I have permission to post it.

Posted with Blogsy

Thanksgiving Day

I did have an American Thanksgiving here in Germany! Although my classes weren't cancelled, I was invited for a meal at Pastor Flohr's apartment- he's the pastor of the English church in Frankfurt, Trinity. It was a great meal with all the traditional fixings. The turkey was moist and delicious- both the dark and white meat; there was stuffing, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, German bread (which is much better than American bread, a suitable change to this meal), gravy, and AMERICAN FOOTBALL. As every American knows, a Thanksgiving isn't complete without football, so we let our food digest while watching the Lions' game. And then, for dessert, we had our choice of apple pie, pumpkin pie, or chocolate chip bars (there was enough to get a taste of all three)- plus they gave me half of the apple pie and some of the bars to take back! This, of course, was graciously shared with the German students who had happened to gather outside of the dorm for beer and smoking. They all agreed that the apple pie was " sehr lecker"- very delicious. So we all got a taste of an American Thanksgiving Day in one way or another.

Then, this past Saturday, I was invited to Trinity's Thanksgiving potluck, since most of the American's couldn't get off work on Thursday to celebrate. I was a bit late, but there was enough left for me to get a plate of food and some dessert. I didn't bring anything back with me, though, which is all right.

Posted with Blogsy

Q&A Time!

After fielding the same questions from my relatives when I skype with them, I figured that you, my readers, probably have the same questions as well. So here's my answers to the oft-asked questions, sometimes with a hint of sarcasm, based on the unanswerability of the questions.

1. How is Germany?

A: Do you mean, "How is German doing politically and economically?" If that's the case, they're doing quite well; Germans are very industrious and orderly, and it's paying off in the long run. They keep giving money to Greece and Spain so the Euro doesn't collapse, but other than that Germany is going very well. There's no riots like in other cities, and everyone's pretty much gotten over WWII (and yes, WWII jokes here are appreciated among the youth- it's been neat to share them). Oh, you mean, "How do you like Germany and are you doing there?" In that case, please read all my previous blog posts. Sigh, ok. You've already done that I'm sure. I'm enjoying Germany and everything it has to offer. It's been great to visit the cities and the country and get a full perspective. Being from the country myself, I don't see how one can visit any country and not spend some time with the normal people in the country (bend your mind around my use of the double meanings of "country"). I've enjoyed traveling, but I've also enjoyed getting to know the people at the seminary here. So overall, things are going well.

2. How is German coming?

A: It's going well. I can converse with the other students, and while I can't understand them at times, I can usually follow a conversation based on the words that I do know in their context. There's much more that I need to learn, though. The professors are much harder, though, because they use more difficult words and phrases.

3. This question is more of a surprise to me, it's been asked by both sets of grandparents and various aunts who are worried about what I eat, "How is the food there?"

A: The food is very similar to America, to be honest. It's not like I'm visiting China where absolutely nothing is recognizable. Our diets are different, but the food is almost the same. I eat more wurst (like hot dogs and sausages) but less beef and chicken. Pasta is a staple, as is rice, and there's lots of soup. One thing I've never seen before is wurst in soup. One cuts up the wurst and eats it with the soup. All considered, the food is quite delicious, even if they do use less sugar, which is one complaint I have of American food- we put way too much sugar in our food. Finally, one difference I've noticed is in the prices- bread is much cheaper here, as is food in general I think. Clothing is very expensive though.

4. How's the beer?

A: Haha...this would follow the question about food. I have two answers to this question. If you only drink the light American beers and are used to watered-down beers, German beer will strike you as heavier and tastier, and it is. But if you're somewhat of a beer-snob (which I am, admittedly), there's not much variety here. Everyone drinks pilsners, and only pilsners. I'm used to buying good beer in America, and by "good beer" I mean stouts, porters, IPAs, and a few brown ales. (In that way, American beer tastes are closer to the English than to the Germans.) My dad brews beer, and I often go to micro-breweries to sample their taste. So in a way, German beer has been a bit disappointing. It's cheaper, and I like that, but there's just no variety, at least, not much variety between the 20 different brands of pilsners that one can buy. I did go to an Irish pub, though, and had a Guinness from the tap- it's almost making me want to go to Ireland myself and get one there. It was so delicious, and much better than the bottled Guinness in America.

Side comment, while we're talking about alcohol- their hard liquor ("Schnaps") is very, very sweet- almost sickly sweet. I'm used to a bit of a kick when drinking straight whiskey or other drinks, which is why Americans often need to combine it with Coca-cola or juices to get them down. I remember a quote from someone, but I can't find it online- it goes like this, "How do you know that it's bad for you, if it doesn't hurt going down?"

5. How are classes?

Honestly, see my previous blog post on this- not much has changed. Understanding the profs is still a bit difficult.

6. What's travel like there?

A: Germans are known for their punctuality and order, and it pays off in their train system. The network is fairly fast and quite punctual, so I've never had a problem getting to a place on time, given that I've planned my trip out beforehand with the Deutsche Bahn app on my iPad. And even if I get lost somewhere, I just need to look for the (H) sign nearby, get on the bus, and find my way to a train station. That's in the cities. Traveling between cities is very easy with the IC (inter-city) and ICE (express). If it's not too far away, I take the RB (regional bahn), because it's much cheaper. I miss my car and the freedom it provides, but I'm adapting here just fine. There's a lot more walking, though, which is good.

Those six questions just about cover more frequent questions I get. Feel free to comment below and ask more.

Posted with Blogsy

Dies Academicus, Cup of the Brothers, an Ordination

Whew! What a busy weekend it was!

The Hochschule offered their yearly conference with the theme of Hermeneutics. A booklet had been prepared which was to serve as the basis for the conference. It was only one day and featured four presenters, two professors from the seminary, one pastor from the SELK, and one professor outside the SELK to give a different perspective on the booklet. I understood a little bit at the beginning of the conference, but as the day dragged on, my mind wandered, and I didn't understand as much. This tends to be a repeating occurrence: I can only hear so much German before I'm not even listening. Luckily I don't have so many classes per day that this would happen. Nonetheless, there was a very nice lunch provided by the seminary, and it provided some discussion questions among the students. It seems that Hermeneutics is just as much of a question here as it is at CTS, considering it was stricken from CTS's course catalog totally, when it had been formally a required course. And no, it's not being taught in the OT classes as was promised. So whether or not I agree with the presentations here or CTS's decisions, it's been good to talk about it with students.

Also, I got this mug (but not the book) at the Dies Academicus. They go well together though.

A group of us woke up early Saturday for a soccer tournament with other free-church seminaries and hochschulen around Germany and Switzerland. It took us maybe two hours to get there, in the town of Wölmersen (which I thought was ironic). There were ten of us, which was quite enough for one team with a few subs throughout the fast-paced 6-min games. The atmosphere was full of excitement and activity- some of the schools had brought a large group of fans to cheer them on. While we didn't have a cheering section, we did quite well, at least initially, going 3-0-1, assured we thought of a place in the quarterfinals. What was better was that we only allowed 1 goal throughout those four games, though we didn't score much to boost our goal differential. There were seven teams in our group, and little did we know that we had beaten the 3 easiest and tied with the hardest. Because the last two teams had scored grossly large scores against the easiest teams (even 6 goals in 6 minutes), we needed to have decisive wins against both to proceed, but we ended up finishing with a disappointing loss and draw, meaning that we placed fourth in the group with 11 points (3 for wins, 1 for draws, and 0 for losses). Had we won the one we lost, we would've made the cut, but that's just the way it goes sometimes. Anyway, it fun, I had a great time with the other students, and I got to see some pretty sweet goals.

Then, on Sunday, there was an ordination at St. Johannes-Gemeinde! It was exciting, and there was a bunch of special music all day- the brass choir played in the Sunday morning service, and the choir sang in the afternoon ordination service. I guess I never really realized the size difference between our two church bodies until many of the seminarians said that this was the very first ordination they've witnessed. The very first! I mean, in Fort Wayne alone in any given June or July, there's at least one or two ordinations, and it's fashionable to go to various ordinations of one's friends around the United States. I can't honestly say how many ordinations I've been to- probably 3-4 in the past two years though. And as we all know, just like single seminarians have their entire marriage ceremony planned out (whether or not they're dating/engaged), both single and married seminarians have their ordinations all planned out at least by the end of their vicarage. No comment on the status of my plans. So the day was quite special for those at the seminary and in the community. The ordination was well-attended and quite the service. Congratulations also to Pastor Andreas Berg, and God's blessings on your service in Bonn!

Also: I saw Skyfall last night. It's an awesome Bond movie, better than most, but it's not the best, as many are attributing to it. Crait does an awesome job again, and I absolutely enjoyed the setting in London and Scotland. I encourage it if you're into action/suspense movies.

 

Posted with Blogsy

My Classes Here at LThH

I've been putting off this post for a while, but it's about time that I told about my classes this year. Unfortunately, for various reasons, I still haven't been to all of them yet, but I'll tell you about the ones I've attended so far.

So here's a post with a lot of text and almost no pictures. Es tut mir leid...

The class structure here is such that almost all classes are 2 hours per week, and occur in a 2 hour block, once a week. 4 credit classes meet twice a week, as do 3 credit classes, but only for 1 hour on one of the days.

Also, all but two of my classes are "lecture" classes, which means that there's no homework or reading, unless one is particularly interested in that topic. Then, the professor does provide other materials that one could read or look into. The other types of classes are "exercise/practice" and "seminar." In the former, we work through a given text- translation if it's from another language, and deeper understanding if it's in German- and discuss it as a class, with the professor's guidance. The readings are done in-class, and we usually don't read it beforehand. On the other hand, while the seminar classes are similar, there's a lot more reading beforehand. We discuss the readings, usually much longer (~40 pages), and talk with the prof about them. Both also have student presentations throughout, which I may or may not participate in (it's not required for exchange students, but I might try some next semester when my German is better).

So my week begins with Practical Theology in Overview by Prof. Dr. Barnbrock. It's a bit early (7:30am), but is somewhat understandable, with help from my iPad's dictionary. We spent the last two class periods on the history of practical theology, and today we started the overview of some of the different divisions- homiletics, catechetics, and liturgics. Looking at the syllabus, we're going to continue with the divisions before going through various theologians who have been influential in various ways. I can't say I recognize any of them, though. This is a class for those beginning seminary.

I have two classes with Prof. Dr. da Silva: Church History 3 (from the Reformation to the Peace of Westphalia) and History of the SELK. He is probably the easiest to understand, because he's actually from Brazil. Both classes therefore have been easier to follow, not only in language, but also in substance. In Church History 3, we studied the societal and political influences on the start of the Reformation; the times and thoughts were changing and were ripe for Martin Luther and the Reformers. Just last week we discussed Martin Luther's early life, through his posting of the 95 Theses. Tomorrow we discuss the conflict with Rome and the Emperor. In History of the SELK, we've been discussing the Prussian Union, and I think today we'll get to the Saxon emigration. So it'll be interesting to hear about the history of those who stayed in Germany, albeit separated from the State (Lutheran/Reformed) Church. After today, it looks like we'll spend each class studying a different synod which eventually joined the SELK instead of studying history chronologically. Considering the number of independent church bodies and the long process towards a unified church body, this is probably the best way to study the History of the SELK. It certainly doesn't have a clear leader (like Martin Stephan had been) or founder (like C.F.W. Walther) in the LCMS. Nonetheless, it looks to be an informative class.

With the OT professor, Prof. Dr. Behrens, I'm taking Hermeneutik OT/NT. This is the hardest class to understand, because Behrens talks extremely fast, and his German is garbled at times. "At times" here means "all the time." I have a hard time picking out what he's saying, and the only words I pick out are the ones I know. What compounds this is that it's my only seminar class, so I have to read (and try to understand) 40 pages of German before the class, which is never fully completed by class-time. So I'm pretty much lost during those two hours, but hopefully it gets better. I'm not too worried.

I'm taking the Book of Romans with the NT professor (and director of the exchange program), Dr. Salzmann. I'm enjoying this class so far, because we're interacting with the Greek text (which I understand!), as well as the German translation (which is significantly easier to understand than conversational German). Salzmann's pronunciation is fairly clear, and I can follow his reasoning and presentation for the most part. So far we've gotten through Romans 1:17, and we'll continue today for an hour on Romans 1:18 and following. This is my 3 credit class and is a lecture class, so we don't have a lot of discussion over the Greek text with Dr. Salzmann. There's room for questions, but not our own translations. Not that I'm really interested in translating Greek into German.

Finally, I have two classes (Apology of the Augsburg Confession and Dogmatics 1) with Pastor Wenz, who is the pastor of the nearby St. Johannes-Gemeinde in Oberursel. For the first two weeks of classes, he was in America, first in Atlanta, then in St. Louis, for the International Conference on Conference Leadership. Last week, after he came back, we had the first meeting of the Apology of the AC class. It's an "exercise/practice" class, and we go through the Apology in detail, studying primarily the Latin text. It's been good to get back into a bit of Latin.

This past Friday was "Dies Academicus," in which some professors and pastors presented papers on the theme, "Biblical Hermeneutics." It was informative and good, but it also prevented Dogmatics 1 from meeting, so we'll meet for the first time this Friday morning.

More on Dies Academicus and this exciting weekend later. (And hopefully a post about my travels around Frankfurt.)


That's about all. Feel free to ask questions in the comments sections or by email. I like hearing from people.

Sheepshead!

Last night I learned how to play the card game Sheepshead. Not only is it an awfully confusing game to learn, but I had to learn the German terms for everything; the Queen is Dame (pronounced Da-me), the Jack is Bube (boo-be), and the Ace is Ass. Their suits are different names too: Karo for Diamonds, Kreuz for Clubs, and Pik (peek) for Spades. At least Herz for Hearts made sense. To make things worse, one says the suit first. So the Queen of Diamons is really Karo Dame. Other terms were easy enough to pick up; Trumpf for trump and Farbe for suit, as well as geben when dealing and mischen when shuffling.

I kinda wish I had picked up Sheepshead while I was in Wisconsin; I remember Mark Pfenning and Lori Schneeberg playing it with other employees at Concordia University Wisconsin, but I never really got the chance to play with other students.

There was some beginner's luck, but also some silly mistakes. I'm looking forward to playing it again.

Advice of the Day: Speak before you think.

This come from Professor Salzmann, who is in charge of the international student exchange here at Oberursel. I met him for the first time today and had a nice but short conversation with him after chapel. He encouraged me to always speak in German with those around me (which I do) and to speak before I think; otherwise I'll get bogged down in trying to form my sentences grammatically correct and never actually get to say them, which I've caught myself doing from time to time.

So far it's been wonderful here at Oberursel. I'm not doing as much sight-seeing as I did in Berlin, but I'm also making more friends and spending time with them, playing soccer and volleyball, as well as drinking beer and talking. I've only made it to Frankfurt once, but I hope to visit more this weekend, and maybe see a museum or two. Mathias Hohls, a former exchange student to CTS, told me about a museum that has some ancient papyri of the Bible. And I also see an Icon Museum that would be interesting to visit.

But yeah, I've come to the realization that I'm probably the worst player on the soccer field, though I can run, and have scored one or two goals by happenstance, mostly by being in the right place at the right time, which, you may argue, is a large part of playing soccer. I would agree. Basketball is where I dominate; we've only played once, but it's pretty obvious that I know where to go and how to dribble and how to get by someone (including dribbling the ball through someone's legs to get past them).

In local soccer news, Germany plays Ireland this Friday in a highly anticipated match; there's going to be a gathering on campus to watch Germany cruise to an easy victory. Also, I learned last week what the Champion's League is; apparently the best soccer teams from Europe play throughout the year in different groups, the top two of each group advancing to a 16-team tournament. The two German teams are Borussia Dortmund (who most recently tied against Manchester City FC) and FC Schalke 04 (who tied with Montpellier Herault SC). Both teams were leading late until the last 10 minutes or so of each game, when they were tied. So, Germans weren't too pleased about either game.

It's been a good time here so far. Classes don't start until the 23rd (another 2 weeks!), but I continue to work on German and put it into practice. I might sit in on the Greek class, since I know Greek better than German. But for now, Tschüss!

Posted with Blogsy