problems viewing the page…?

I’ve had more traffic today and yesterday, I assume because of my new layout and the extra retroactive tagging I did. I’m glad you guys are still with me! I’m trying to write something new soon. However, I was informed by my mother that she was having trouble with content overlap with the new layout (which I really love)… is anyone else having this problem, and with what internet browser, if so? I use Chrome and I’m not having any issues. 

[this is the kind of thing that, were I a fancy blog with my own blog Facebook page or something, wouldn’t require its own post, but… alas.]

you know you’re a bad blogger when….

I’m sure I have many “bad blogger” characteristics, as evidenced by the lack of activity going on here lately. But it’s especially bad when WordPress forgets who I am and I have to manually log in….

Goats/rams (?) in a Dresdner Heide nature preserve area

I’ve now been in Dresden longer than 4.5 months, which is how long I lived in Freiburg, and while I am 100% sure that 10.5 months is a more respectable and less hurried duration to spend abroad, the truth is that the blog-worthy material gets spaced out a lot more! So I’m going to go ahead and stretch the definition of “blog-worthy” and call it even.

Just an adorable fuzzy baby deer

The semester is now over! The German semester system (at least for the university calendar) is totally off from the American one, which can get confusing sometimes. The Winter Semester, which spans from October to February, just finished up.  That means there aren’t any more lectures, but the testing period has only just began… if I’m not mistaken, it continues well into March. Luckily I only had one exam, and we took it last week, so my semester is finished. Classes will start back up in mid-April.

Yesterday I visited the Asian markets underneath the train station for the first time!! That sounds incredibly sketchy, and indeed I felt sketchy taking the escalator down below the train station, but the markets were so delightful that I was happy for the rest of the day!!! They have a much more varied produce selection than I normally find at the traditional grocery stores in my neighborhood, I finally was able to get my hands on some crushed red pepper (I know it exists elsewhere but I had had no luck actually finding it), and they even have black beans! I’ll have to go back later on in the year and see if I can’t scrounge up the ingredients for some decent Mexican food.

I discovered a few weeks ago that one of the cafés around the corner from campus (or, rather, the part of campus where all my classes are/were) has free WiFi! This is the best discovery ever, because it allows me to use my time incredibly well and also to consume a lot more pastries than I had been previously. 

This Thursday is the anniversary of the bombing of Dresden during World War II, and apparently the traditional way to remember that occasion is to stage a peaceful protest. I’m told that the Neo-Nazi groups have their own protest, while the rest of the city, in response to both the Neo-Nazi protesters and the general idea of solidarity brought on by the memory of the bombing, gathers to form a human chain. I’m going to participate and have no idea what to expect (other than what I just told you) but it should be interesting!

I have quite a few trips planned during the semester break! I’m very excited. I’ll be spending two weeks in Spain, a week in Greece, and a weekend each in Hamburg and Rome over the next 2 months! I know I’ve talked about this at least a few times, but rejoice, blog readers, because that means that at least 4 different times over the next few months, I will be able write legitimate posts about things I’ve done! So look forward to that.