June
2008
An all-too brief weekend… (Day 16 and 17)0
Saturday I slept in until 9am and then worked in my textbook, completing the chapters on itinerary building and the psychological behaviors common to groups on tour. The building was almost eerily empty because the 60 students here for service and cooking classes had all left for a daytrip, and my own classmates were either still sleeping or already gone on their own daytrips. I also spent some time in the computer room, trying to catch up on my blog and sending emails. The first was to thank Dr. Simonette for his wonderful tour, and the second was to the Kulturforum Würth museum, thanking them both for confirming that the garden is open even when the museum is closed and for having such a neat exhibit. Dr. Garely, Asha and I all took advantage of the empty building to get our laundry done, and it’s lucky we did – on Sunday the machines were running nonstop with the other group’s clothes.
In the afternoon Shevy, Asha, Gia, Adele and I decided to give our Gore-Tex a real workout. We explored the gravel and dirt trails behind the school and were amazed at the traction our shoes offered. The roads for the cars are steep around here, but the paths for the people are steeper still. There were a few points where I actually stopped in my tracks and looked at my feet, surprised that I wasn’t sliding back down the mountainside just from the force of gravity. We found a small herd of cows just above our host school and below another school for younger kids. Higher still, the gravel ran out. Then the dirt ran out. Even on the rain-flattened grass of the mountain slope, I wasn’t slipping. Pretty nifty. Eventually Gia and I started worrying about cat-and-tree syndrome – could we have climbed too high to be able to come down without falling? When we turned around and started back down, it was with very small and slow steps. Even as I started straight down, I was considering trying to traverse the mountain as if I was on skis and on a slope that was too difficult for a beginner, going back and forth and a little down with each pass instead of in a direct line. But taking little steps and going straight down didn’t lead to any slips. I tried to be braver and walk at a normal speed, but I didn’t manage to go much faster until we were back on the gravel.
Near the turn to SSTH we heard a strange noise. It sounded a little like a squeaking clarinet, but turned out to be a pair of mountainbikers holding their brakes as they rolled down the path. We all moved on to the grass and watched as they finished the decent from the gravel path to the paved road a ways below. When they reached the road they must’ve let up on the brakes because they suddenly went much faster. We were torn between continuing down the path ourselves and having dinner at Mühle, or returning to school and ordering pizza. Pizza won out for two reasons: it meant we wouldn’t have any hike back up after we ate, and it was something different than the local recipes of meat-and-sauce-and-starch that we’d been eating all week.
While we waited for dinner we all worked on our various homework assignments, and after eating we took a break to try out the pinball machines in the lounge beyond the lobby. Adele was a little freaked out by the Adams Family machine, because she hit the ball into a holding pocket and it didn’t come back right away – instead a red pannel raised up and a hand holding an eye popped out like a jack-in-the-box. I tried the Monster Mash machine, and the best was when I woke up Dracula – he had been sleeping in an upright coffin and slid out on a track to get in the way of the pinball.
After that I helped a few people edit their blogs, and called it an early night. Maybe it was the hike, maybe it was the hectic week, but I was ready for a shower and bed by 10.
For Sunday I didn’t set my alarm. When I felt like I couldn’t sleep any longer I got up and stumbled to the bathroom to brush my teeth and really wake up. When I looked at the clock I found it was only a quarter of 9, and I was pleased that I felt so fully refreshed – the evening before I’d been worried that I might sleep until noon. The computer lab was nearly empty, so I had no trouble concentrating on my own writing. As the day went on and more people came down, the conversations started getting distracting, so eventually I moved back to my own room. In the afternoon Sarah came over for help with her blog, and then there was dinner, and then I spent some time helping Katherine with hers before trying to finish catching my own up. …It’s now a quarter of nine as I type this, and I really feel tired. I like having a blog so that I can share what’s going on with everyone at home, but it’s so hard to write everything out.
