Guten abend!

(This will be true on two counts and false on one. False, because it isn't, for anyone in the States reading this as I post it; true, because it's very much evening for me, and most of you won't see it until this evening at dinner. Either way – )

Guten abend, my family and friends! I made it safely to Lüneburg last Wednesday, and only now have internet access to contact all of you. It's been an exciting week, chock-full of orientations and classes and settling in and wandering around town. I've lost track of the times I set out to get myself lost, only to find myself right back where I started.

Lüneburg isn't very big, as we reckon things, but it is a thriving university town. This ought to seem a little strange, given that the architecture is older than the United States. My apartment house, for instance, was built in the early 1600's! Everywhere is old red brick and tile, beautiful, with trees and flowers – and buses. Lots of buses. Lots of bicyclists, too, and either set will run you down quite noisily if you don't get out of the way.

We've started classes already. There are 43 international students all told, including two from Mexico and one from New Zealand (none from Canada, alas.) Less than ten of us are staying for the year, though; the rest are going home in December.

We've also attended our first cultural events. I think all of us, or nearly so, wandered over to a Renaissance Faire on Sunday, and the farmer's market on Saturday and Wednesday. This Saturday we're all going to Hamburg for a short tour and history lesson, as well as a quick run-down of German politics.

I have an apartment all to myself, but there are three other USAC students staying in the same complex. It's good to have some people near with whom I can actually speak; that shouldn't be such a problem next semester, when I'll have learned at least some German, but it's quite convenient for the time being.

I promised you all pictures, I know, but I couldn't find my camera to bring with me, so until I get another you'll have to make do with letters!

Peace,
Breeann

The only surviving photos of me at Saturday's Celtic Faire:

Meme: set your music collection to shuffle. The first lines of the first twenty songs make up a poem; the first line of the 21st song is the title.


She Said She Wanted Me

My canoe lies on the water
I was standing
when the sun goes nova

Got no social graces
every breath you take
Oh tell me what was on your mind

Look out the window, what do I see?
Billboards promise paradise
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
all that you touch

This is me forever
praying mantis on screen
I'm a cold heartbreaker
Look in the mirror and tell me
for whom the gun tolls

I never had anything happen so fast
body lines fluid in static heat

Up on the hillside
they're pickin' up the prisoners
all alone, or in twos


Hm. That almost made sense -- in a weirdly disjointed and depressing sort of way. I think it's mostly Cockburn...

India Foxtrot Yankee Oscar Uniform Charlie Alpha November Uniform November Delta Echo Romeo Sierra Tango Alpha November Delta Tango Hotel India Sierra, Charlie Oscar Papa Yankee Alpha November Delta Papa Alpha Sierra Tango Echo India Tango Tango Oscar Yankee Oscar Uniform Romeo Lima India Victor Echo Juliet Oscar Uniform Romeo November Alpha Lima.

(Whiskey Oscar Whiskey, India Romeo Echo Alpha Delta Tango Oscar Oscar Mike Uniform Charlie Hotel Sierra Charlie India Foxtrot India.)

It's remotely possible that I've been listening too much to Scarborough Fair and other old tunes -- not to mention reading too many faery tales. At least I didn't actually intend to start something like this.

------------
If you would win my love again
then go and hunt for me
the dragon who with glittered wings
soars through the evening sky,
and trap him in a net of dreams,
and make him, by and by,
to plow the land between the strand
of golden sand and sea.

So you would twine your life with mine?
Then fetch for me the furs
of full one thousand breathing beasts,
and with them you must sew
a cloak for me without a seam
or single stitch below --
then make a gift to me, and I
will weave my life with yours.

--------------------

It's rough, I know, and it needs I think another stanza, perhaps two. I'm not sure how I feel about the rhyme scheme right now, either. Comments?

NaNo eats your brains....

The Faeries Dance
(William Butler Yeats)

The wind blows out of the gates of the day.
The wind blows over the lonely of heart,
And the lonely of heart is withered away,
While the faeries dance in a place apart,

Shaking their milk-white feet in a ring,
Tossing their milk-white arms in the air:
For they hear the wind laugh, and murmur and sing
Of a land where even the old are fair,

And even the wise are merry of tongue;
But I heard a reed of Coolaney say,
"When the wind has laughed and murmured and sung,
The lonely of heart is withered away!"