Welp, yay!

Well, I’m a horrible updater.  Sorry.  Man, and there’s so much I should’ve written about being in Turkey, too.  Perhaps I’ll insert little stories about that time in here when I’m procrastinating.  I will probably be doing a lot of procrastinating.  The past couple of weeks have been rather uneventful, mostly just half-heartedly working on research before classes start.  Not saying that I find the research boring- it’s actually really great- but I keep getting distracted by whatever else I can find.  Having lots of work do to has made me very productive.  For instance, I did the dishes, and went for a run, and wrote some postcards, and ate a bunch more times than necessary.  So that’s good.  I think I might take a shower later tonight.

I have been learning some German, using the Pimsleur courses.  The people who make Pimsleur cds have a very cynical perspective on human conversations.  This is the order of things you learn to say (on both the Turkish and German cds):
1.  How are you?
2.  Would you like to eat something?  Where?  At the hotel?
3.  Would you like to drink something?  I would like to drink beer.
4.  What time would you like to drink?  Now?  Good.
I mean, the sequence isn’t precisely that, but it is very close.  A couple of my friends here are from Germany/Austria, and they make fun of my pronunciation after they finally figure out what I’m trying to say.

While running on the path by frozen Lake Monona today, I had the pleasure of finding an excuse to stop so I could look at the most awesome ice.  The lake is pretty big, and the ice covering it looks at least 0.5 meters thick.  And the ice has had what amounts to earthquakes!  There’s a long crack in the ice that looks like the breaks in the ground that form during some earthquakes.  Ice is all pushed up into the air, and it’s splintered and looks really really cool.  If I have time this week, I’ll go down again and take pictures.  No Mom, I won’t go out on the ice.  Not where it’s broken, anyway.

Also, I am reading what I think what might be my favorite book ever.  Which makes me want to tell everyone else to read it.  It’s called “Eyeless in Gaza”, Huxley wrote it, and it’s brilliant.  Probably I think it’s brilliant because I agree with most of what Huxley wrote.  But regardless.  It’s very perceptive, and if you’re interested in reading about human motives and the one-sided aspect of interactions, I really suggest it.  Anyway.  I’ll write more later!