This last week wasn't bad at all. It had a nice end last night when Jakob invited me to go to a student play at the university. It was some weird British story about a psychiatrist, that was written after some censorship laws were revoked. Which made for an interesting play. But it was still pretty funny.
In other news, I might have found a little side job doing translations. Which could potentially pay much better than my "real" job, but money isn't really the point of an internship anyway. The neat thing about this translating gig is that I could feasibly continue doing it from the US. And, translating doesn't take up TOO much time. I figure it's also a pretty good way to maintain prolonged exposure to business German, and work on business English skills. Anyway, I sent off my test-expose, and we'll see what they say.
My real job (aka. internship at Varengold) is holding its annual Grill Fest this Friday. Our hedge fund might reach an all-time high this week too, so this week should be a pretty good looking week at work. Jakob is planning his Abschiedsparty, or leaving party, for this upcoming weekend, so that's another thing to look forward too.
Parents are coming to Europe in August sometime, but it's sort of unclear whether they're going to make to Hamburg, or whether I'm going to have to take the train out to Amsterdam. If I book now, I can get good prices. The Deutsche Bahn (and seemingly other train systems over here) works so that if you buy tickets way in advance, you can get them for like... 75% off or so. For my upcoming trip to Freiburg, I was able to book some tickets for about half price, including 1st class for my return trip. I've never really had a 1st class experience before, so it should be neat. In the Bahn, I don't expect it to be too much different, like it would be in a plane, but it should still be fun.
So since Germany (and Europe as a whole) has state-sponsored media corporations that produce tons of informative content in good German, I've started downloading podcasts and video-podcasts from iTunes. There are also a few "commercial" ones that I've found that are interesting. I managed to find one podcast that's done in Plattdeutsch, or low German, which is (or was, it's been dying out for a while) the regional language around here in northern Germany. I can't really understand it without reading along, but it's still sort of fun.
I'm thinking about asking to end my internship a week early, so that I can have a week to go on a bike trip, or visit Freiburg, or something along those lines. On the other hand, if the U.S. political and economic situation gets too much worse, maybe I'll just stay here in Germany. Hehe. Kind of farfetched, but it's a backup plan.
We'll see what today has in store for me. Tomorrow, I'm maybe meeting up with Jakob and Antonia after work, and after that, I'm going to swing dancing. Granted I've only been at this new place for a week, but I really like it there so far, and seem to be doing pretty well.
