Boxen

I just got done signing up for my next semester courses: German grammar (with Germans, not for non-natives), Syntax (not limited to just German language), Beginning Spanish, Beginning Latin and Advanced German as a foreign Language. In addition to my academic courses I signed up at the Student Gym and I am going to take a course in Boxing. I am happy that school is about to start again: I am about out of things I can do to entertain myself. On a side note, I am almost out of money. I have to make sure that my savings holds out until my first check from Penn State arrives. I don't have a lot of expenses, but I am worried about books costing a lot for this semester, but I might be able to get away without having to actually buy them if they are all in the library. On a side, side note: libraries here SuUuck! The Roseville library is better than the best one here in Berlin, and they cost a lot of money and are super Germa... I mean bureaucratic.

Loss of Control

I go away for a week, and you people stage a mutiny. Don't you know that this is supposed to be all about me? Aaanyway. I just had a bunch of guests going in and out of my apartment, and now I am finally all alone. I hope you all had a good time over the Holiday. I was at the Berlin Cathedral for service, and the German President was also there. I was disappointed because when he got up and left only about half of the people there stood. I think that I am as much of a rebel as anybody, but I like formalities like that and I think it is a shame when people are to obtuse or lazy to adhere to them. If people were sitting as a form of protest or civil disobedience, fine. But I don't think that was the reason. It is totally warm today, and I am so happy. Spring is finally here to stay! Today is a big holiday and everyone has the day off. The same thing goes for Good Friday. Most people don't go to church in this city, so those two days off of work have become a bigger deal than Easter itself. I saw a book store that was closed on good Friday, that was open on Easter Sunday, and it is normally closed on Sunday anyway. Well, I don't have much more to say, but I thought I better post something before you people take over. (Just kidding, it was nice to hear what you said to each other)

Quality Control.

This is the point where I am going to check in with my 'audience'. What stuff do you want to hear more about? What stuff have I beaten into the ground? Which links have been your favorite? And most importantly, who is reading this, but hasn't posted anything yet. I am writing a lot in this thing, and it isn't always my forte, so I would really appreciate it if you would tell me if you are at least reading this or not. I am also writing this entry to get the painting off of the home page so that the paragraph lines up right.

Geometheology

Here is what I don't understand about god: people think that god is some perfect entity, but then they have bible stories and church decorations and even visions of the virigin mary in every corner of the globe. those things don't seem perfect to me. If god was really perfect, we wouldn't be able to interact with it, because we aren't perfect. Perfect things can't have tonsils that burst, miss three-point shots or have bad taste in music. God would need to be some kind of spherical, perfect form that we would never be able to comprehend on our plane, because we are screwed up. People always look at the god that their parents gave them, and then they compair it to the gods that other peoples have inherited and they judge them. The old gods, Loki, Anubis, Anansi, Zeus, Shiva, the Earth-Mother, Mars; they are all deemed primitive ways of interpreting natural and social phenomena. I look at the current religions and see the same thing. Floods that destroy all but the last vistages of humanity exist in Judeo-Christianity as well as Greco-Roman mythology. God's son as the saviour of mankind born from a worthy woman exists in Egyptian mythology as well. We have whole university departments that are dedicated to the study of how cultures morph and evolve, including their stories and language. It baffels me that most people don't think of religion as a part of that. They are right because they are right. they just happen to be lucky enough to be one of the small percentage of the worlds population that was introduced to the only True religion. Of all the things that these people are thankful for, they should be most thankful that they weren't born before 1 A.D. or that they weren't bron in India, China Pakistan, Nigeria, Northern Canada, North Korea, Japan, Athiest Russia, Athiest Germany, Egypt, Palestine...

...ended up inside

Today is finally a warm day! I am going to go out and play some cage soccer. Here in the city they have these cage soccer 'fields' about the size of a basketball courts. It is way better than regular soccer. I am listening to the Inaugural Address of JFK right now, and it is so inspiring. Along with the good weather, it is really inspiring. I don't think that I am going to get anything done today. Maybe a little shopping, but not much more. I do, however have a good movie recommendation: Sophie Scholl. It is a German movie, but I bet it will be in the artsy theaters there. I saw it without knowing anything about it, but I really liked it (even though the projector broke about 5 minutes from the end, and we all had to go into the next theater to watch the end, and then I just missed the last train and had to take a taxi home) .
Man, I wish you could listen to this speech! I wish politicians would talk like this today. On an unrelated matter, I found a cool pool hall in my neighborhood. I think I am going to start going there pretty regularly.

Relativity.

There are three things I want to talk about in this entry: #1. god #2. clothes #3. the cold

God: (before I talk about this topic, I need to say that I am going to argue from the point of view that Christianity is correct. I remind everyone of my happy status as an atheist now so as to be able to write more fluidly later on) I really like it when people who I know say "God bless" or other things in that strain. I don't believe that any cosmic force is going to help me out, but I do enjoy the sentiment and think that it does make a difference. It makes a difference because that person is thinking of me. God's favorite creation of all was human kind and I think that people forget that humans are the only doers of evil or good on Earth. We are god's instruments. If you pray to (G/g)od, you are really praying to those around you to do good. Words won't stop a bullet in mid-flight, but there is hope that you can convince someone not to pull the trigger. A positive attitude, comfort, aid and love can do so much to shape the world around us. We find ourselves in a world that we, and those before us built. We need to see the chain of cause and effect, and that if we aren't good to each other, god isn't going to intervene on our behalf. I feel as though Prayer is the love we have for each other bubbling to the surface. We love our common man so much that we say out loud or silently, in a group or alone, all our hopes and dreams for our fellow man. I love prayer, but I challenge everyone to write down their prayers. Make them a matter of permanence, not spontaneity, and do what you can to make them come true. Maybe god doesn't answer prayers, because the goal is for all of us to be each other's answer. Look across the table, or into the car in the next lane and try to think what that person's prayers sound like.

Clothes: I just got a new jacket. It is awesome. I am wearing it right now. That is about it about my jacket, except that it is the culmination of a long day shopping for the first time in a long time.

The Cold: It is starting to slowly get warmer here in Berlin, and the weather is getting nicer all the time, but that is not what I want to talk about. There is a guy in Germany, who has created colder temperatures than ever before. The way he did it was with heat. Well, not exactly...

(Matt Style Science Lesson)

All light has a bunch of waves that move all over the place. We see different colors because we interpret those waves on an analogous scale. Lasers, however, are a little different. Because of a light filter (like a ruby) lasers contain only one wave, so all the light coming from a laser is exactly the same color. If you aim this wave at a particle in a vacuum, then eventually it will move in the same rhythm as the wave itself. Imagine a pool with a bunch of people playing in it making waves: that is normal light. Now imagine everyone going to one side and making waves in a uniform and rhythmic pattern: that is a laser. Now imagine floating in those two pools. Floating in the first one would be pretty calm, because all of the waves would cancel each other out. Being in the second pool would be less calm: you would start to move with the waves as they crossed the surface of the water. Shooting a laser at a small cloud of particles in an otherwise empty vacuum would, after a while, make them move in rhythm with each other. Heat is caused by the constant friction between any two surfaces, be it two sticks or your soup molecules bubbling around. This goes for our group of particles as well, but if you get them to move in unison, they never rub each other. They are just like the Rockettes; they move a lot, but they never kick each other, because they move in unison and there is no one else on the stage. That makes the particles form what is called a 'Super-Atom', and they get really cold. You have to do this in the dark and in silence, so that nothing else moves the particles around. So far we can't create total darkness or total silence, so this guy can't reach absolute zero. I think that this is an awesome idea. It is thinking outside the box. This guy achieved something that others thought was impossible simply by nottrying to fight the laws of physics, and setting them to music.

Not Fishing.

Thanks for all of the kind words everybody. I wasn't fishing for nice comments, but thank you all the same. I guess I just felt like I am never with the people that are closest to me, and for you all it is one guy that is not there, but for me it is everybody who isn't here. On the up side, I am about to go pick up Suzi from the train station in about an hour. She just called me the other day to see if she could visit. So I will have her here for a while, and then two other girls are coming to stay with me on the 19th, so I won't be alone that much for a while. In my last blog I talked about how I am like my dad, but I also want to mention that I am a lot like my mom (on a side not: alot and everyone should be words). She moved a lot as a kid and taught us that you have to be your own best friend and that you have to make sure that you are happy, not to rely on others to do it for you. I think that it is a really healthy outlook. It doesn't mean that you should keep people from making you happy, but you have to know that in the end it is something that you have to work at yourself. I think that I got really good at it. I am the champ of doing nothing. I can entertain myself for a long time, and I am just afraid that I am becoming my own best friend for good. That can't be good. So maybe I should do what my mom has done to keep that from happening. She has a pretty close circle of friends: some women from work, a neighbor, an aunt of mine, in the last few years my sister, and a handful of others. They have been there for each other through so much. So, since I have to wrap this up, I send this rock'n blog entry out to mine and my mom's friends!

New and old friends.

I just got an e-mail from the woman who I will be working with at Penn State. I had a few questions that she was answering, and she signed the e-mail with her first name only. Up until now her e-mails have been signed with her full name, and she wrote very informally this time. It is a really small sign, but a sign none the less, that I am going to have a lot to do with this woman. She seems very nice, and I am not worried about anything like that. It's just that I am going to have to start building a social network all over again. I am going to have to meet her and a bunch of other faculty, along with my colleagues in the department and roommates and friends. I am sure a I will make friends, but I also realize that it will be a long time before I get to really live around anyone I know right now. Everyone that is in my life right now will have very little to do with anything I am involved with in for the next 5 years, and the people that I meet in the next 5 years probably won't have anything to do with me after that time is over. It isn't depressing necessarily, but I do feel a little sad. I think I feel that way, because, as far as I can tell, I don't seem to leave a big impression on anybody. I am friendly, and I think a lot of people like me, but I know for sure that I am no one's best friend right now. All of my friends have deeper friendships with other people. I am sure that everyone feels this way a little, and I am over-reacting, but it bothers me just the same. I am sure many of you know that I compare myself to my father a lot, and I think that in some ways we are very alike. After he died I realized that he made everyone he met feel like they were his best friend. People he worked with, clients of his, old neighbors, family and college buddies. His best friend was really a guy he saw less than once a month (although I know that he was one of those guys who also thought of his wife and kids as his best friends). I am happy that people like me, and that I make a good first impression like my dad did, but I am not exactly like my dad. I am afraid of 'growing up' and not having close friends that I see often. There are so many people who thought they knew my father, but even the blinders that I had, because I was so young, let me see that he wasn't who they thought he was. I feel sometimes like I do the same thing. I have an 'on' personality that is old fashioned, charming, polite, sarcastic and outgoing, but I also have a different personality that I am not sure everyone knows is there. Even now there are times when I hear a story about my dad and then I look over to my sister or mother and we know that whoever it is doesn't realize that they are talking about the Mark Schneider they saw, not the one that we knew. I guess I just haven't been 'off' in a long time, and I am starting to get worried that I will get stuck with the 'on' version. I miss my middle of the day movies with Pat, or building something/solving something with Matt, or Suzi noticing my little ticks and knowing my secrets. It is times like those when I am really me. I miss that.

DONE!

As many of you know I just made my final decision. I will be attending Penn State next fall. I know I am giving up a lot, but when I looked over the acceptance letter and saw that I only got in to the Teaching English as a Second Language section of the department, I realized I wasn't going to go there and get a degree in something that I didn't want that badly, if it was going to cost that much Money (capital on purpose). I was really glad to get in to Georgetown, and now that I have decided I fell a lot better about going to Penn State again. I will just have to concentrate on make new friends right away since I am not going to know people there. For those of you who noticed a now commenter: that is Ryan Voss a great friend of mine who lives in the DC area. I was really looking forward to living near him, but I will just have to accept his offer to visit and let that be enough.

Good news, bad news.

I got in to Georgetown! They gave me no money! I don't know what to do. I guess I will have to figure it out soon. I just really want to live in DC with my friends. I know that there will be options to get scholarships down the road, and maybe even if I get on the ball now I could get some lined up for the fall. I just want it sooooo bad. I didn't realize how much I wanted to go there until I found out I got in. I am now sitting around waiting for my S-Bahn buddy. I checked last night, and there are 297, and it has taken us 2 days to go to 9 stations. I guess we just have to start going to more things a day. Suzi is going to come visit me on Monday. She just called me and told me she wanted to do something before she has to get back to work, so I hope she has fun. Yesterday, I went to a station that was next to a playground (that was really cool, and had a Buckyball style rope thingy and a bunch of exercise equipment/kiddy playground stuff) and a cemetery. We went inside and found out that the Brothers Grimm are buried there. We also found a haunted house made out of an air-raid bunker.

New people are here. I am exploring Berlin.

Yesterday a bunch of new people came to the program that I am in here. They are going to study here this semester and leave at the same time as I do. I met some of them and hope to get to know them and make some new friends. A bunch of them are from GW in Washington, so if I do end up there, I might know some more people in the area. I also started working on my goal of visiting and exploring the area around every subway station in Berlin. A girl in my program is doing it with me. Yesterday we went to a couple places, and decided to pick up something from each station. It was really fun, and I am looking forward to doing it again today. I thought I would also share something with you all about Berlin that I love: the Museumsinsel (Museum Island). My mom and sister didn't get to see it while they were here, but it is one of my favorite things about Berlin. There are a bunch of Museums on this island, and they are building and renovating more all the time. In few years it will be all done. I really envy the people who will live in Berlin in 2007. So much will be done by then, because the World Cup is here in 2006, and the tourists will be gone after a while, so the people will have this really cool city just for themselves for a while before the next wave of construction starts.