oh, of course! now things are like college
Even though i'm nine time zones away from school and in the heart of central europe, classic bits of the college experience have somehow intruded on the term. The first of which is midterms (i have one tomorrow and one thursday). The problem i have with these midterms has little to do with their existence and everything to do with the fact that they count for an enormous amount of the semester grade (which means, basically, that failure will make me feel lousy), but my confidence in my ability to demonstrate any competence in number theory or real analysis is not great. So aspect of college the first is: 1. spending like twelve hours a day studying for a whole weekend and not feeling any better about things.
i have had the good fortune here so far to stay in good health, which is remarkable considering the amount of food- and drink-sharing everyone does here (just as people our age do everywhere), that most people have been out for at least a little while, and that bird flu is just a few hundred miles down the Danube. "have had" is a misleading verb tense, though, because i awoke saturday morning to one of those stupid head colds that never goes away. Today, i went to a hungarian pharmacy for the first time to get a cold medicine one of my profs recommended with my friend Laura, managed to butcher some Hungarian--the pharmacist asked if i wanted the kids' version or the grownup kind, and i pointed at myself, and said "the I" in a perverse misuse of the Spanish personal a . According to the box, the Citronal por Gyrekeknek [kids'] is for children under 14. Since i don't exactly look under 14, my conclusion was that the pharmacist thought i was buying medicine for my kid(s)... Anyway, aspect of college: 2. getting sick exactly at the time when you can't afford to get sick, and then not having time to take it easy and get fully better.
On the plus side, i went with some friends to the (very exciting and definitely meriting a return visit) West End Mall [west end mall] to see "Goool", the subtitled (thankfully) english-language movie about an illegal immigrant from Mexico (who grew up in LA) travelling to England to live out his dream of playing professional soccer, and utilizing every single sports movie cliche ever made along the way. Actually, i take that back;
*spoiler, in case anyone can't figure out how it will end*
the goal he scores in the final game is in regulation, instead of some sort of overtime or shootout. In the film's defense, though, by the time we made it to the final game, the movie was so long, there was no way they were getting away with an overtime, so i don't hold that one against them. It was an excellent film in most other aspects, though, including terrible acting, fake-sounding dialogue, great montage music, chaste love interest, tough guy on team who doesn't take kindly to new guy but is eventually won over by the kid's heart, etc. Best of all, it was definitely set mostly in England, about soccer, and featured large portions that were Spanish with Hungarian subtitles (thank god for high school foreign language requirements), making it still feel like a movie that would never make it back home. Aspect 3: watching really bad sports or action movies with the guys (although it wasn't as good as Man Movie Night, since Europe refuses to import such staples as Natty Light).
Other than that, though, the weekend involved a lot of sitting around and doing math in order to prepare to do more math. And sleeping. Oh, and listening to Pavement (credit for the referral is entirely cartersr's, btw), which i put onto my iPod from Toby's computer (he works at the radio station at his college, and really likes them), which has for whatever reason become a favored soundtrack for traveling alone through the city. Helo!
sam
i have had the good fortune here so far to stay in good health, which is remarkable considering the amount of food- and drink-sharing everyone does here (just as people our age do everywhere), that most people have been out for at least a little while, and that bird flu is just a few hundred miles down the Danube. "have had" is a misleading verb tense, though, because i awoke saturday morning to one of those stupid head colds that never goes away. Today, i went to a hungarian pharmacy for the first time to get a cold medicine one of my profs recommended with my friend Laura, managed to butcher some Hungarian--the pharmacist asked if i wanted the kids' version or the grownup kind, and i pointed at myself, and said "the I" in a perverse misuse of the Spanish personal a . According to the box, the Citronal por Gyrekeknek [kids'] is for children under 14. Since i don't exactly look under 14, my conclusion was that the pharmacist thought i was buying medicine for my kid(s)... Anyway, aspect of college: 2. getting sick exactly at the time when you can't afford to get sick, and then not having time to take it easy and get fully better.
On the plus side, i went with some friends to the (very exciting and definitely meriting a return visit) West End Mall [west end mall] to see "Goool", the subtitled (thankfully) english-language movie about an illegal immigrant from Mexico (who grew up in LA) travelling to England to live out his dream of playing professional soccer, and utilizing every single sports movie cliche ever made along the way. Actually, i take that back;
*spoiler, in case anyone can't figure out how it will end*
the goal he scores in the final game is in regulation, instead of some sort of overtime or shootout. In the film's defense, though, by the time we made it to the final game, the movie was so long, there was no way they were getting away with an overtime, so i don't hold that one against them. It was an excellent film in most other aspects, though, including terrible acting, fake-sounding dialogue, great montage music, chaste love interest, tough guy on team who doesn't take kindly to new guy but is eventually won over by the kid's heart, etc. Best of all, it was definitely set mostly in England, about soccer, and featured large portions that were Spanish with Hungarian subtitles (thank god for high school foreign language requirements), making it still feel like a movie that would never make it back home. Aspect 3: watching really bad sports or action movies with the guys (although it wasn't as good as Man Movie Night, since Europe refuses to import such staples as Natty Light).
Other than that, though, the weekend involved a lot of sitting around and doing math in order to prepare to do more math. And sleeping. Oh, and listening to Pavement (credit for the referral is entirely cartersr's, btw), which i put onto my iPod from Toby's computer (he works at the radio station at his college, and really likes them), which has for whatever reason become a favored soundtrack for traveling alone through the city. Helo!
sam
posted by sam at
12:20 AM
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