There are now some new pictures in the pictures section. It turns out I brought four rolls of black and white film with me to Germany. Oh well, some of the pictures turned out pretty nice. I also finished making the pages XHTML 1.0 compliant, and optimized the size of some of the pictures. Imagemagick is great. I added 21 more pictures, and the total size is now 1/3 of what it was before. Yay!
I PASSED MY TEST!!!!! Woooohoooo!!! I’m excited. 
I was so nervous about the thing. I even surprised myself at how stressed out I was getting, especially since the credit probably won’t even transfer. 
Oh well. I did well, and that makes me happy. I don’t think I could have survived multiple tests with the short preperation time I had, though I might have been able to pass them. It really wasn’t all that bad. Based on the lectures and PowerPoint slides I had guessed that there would have been a lot more details and lists of facts in the exam, but mostly I just got asked how things work. Which is of course more reasonable, and much easier to answer. It was even surprising how quickly the time went. It was a half hour, one on one exam with the prof, and we really didn’t even cover half of the topics from the class. Of course I did try to make my answers as long as possible to stretch out the time.
Now I’m in the final stage of my stay. I can start thinking about going home. Until now, I hadn’t let myself think about taking care of things here to move back, because I needed to concentrate on my exam, but now I’m free to do that. All I need to do in the next week is wrap up loose ends here and get ready to be in America again. The time right before a move either to or from Germany is always a big time of reflection for me, so I’m sure I’ll be doing a lot of thinking about my time here and the future.
study study study study study study study study study study study study study study study study study study study study study study study study study study study study study study study study study study study study study study study study study study study study study study study study
kthx
So I’m going to take an exam. Yes, one. Okay, so that seems pretty weak, but it’s not completely my fault. Well, maybe it is. I should have started earlier on the whole find-out-if-calvin-will-let-me-transfer-my-credits stuff. Because I just found out a couple of weeks ago that I won’t find out until I pass the class, and bring back the transcript and syllabus. Of course they don’t have syllabi or transcripts here, so I’ll have to improvise on those. But anyway, by the time I decided to just pick a couple of classes and take the exams for them, it was too late to get appointments with the head of the department, who has to give me oral exams. Fortunately, I did get a time slot for one exam, which is on Monday morning. So I’m going to be grilled for a half hour, in German, over mobile communications, by one of the more prestigious German professors in the field. No sweat, baby.
So now my job for the next 4 days is to study. Study study study study. I’ve been going at this one class for the last week, and I’ve almost gone through the material once. Over 450 PowerPoint slides. Mostly memorization. No sweat, baby.
So I’m a little stressed about it.
The Barbecue was a big success, in my opinion. I was somewhat worried about the weather being overcast and on the cold side in the morning, but just before people started showing up the clouds went away and it warmed up nicely. The only problem of the day was that the food didn’t all finish at the same time. The grill wasn’t big enough to grill everything at once, so things kind of came after eachother. I didn’t really think that was so tragic though. That’s one of the things I like about barbecues. You just sit around for hours and things come off the grill periodically to be eaten, and you grab something to eat once in a while. And in between you can enjoy the warmth and good company. We certainly did this on Sunday, because we went from 2:30 until almost 11:00pm. All of the food was certainly good. Brigitte made these really great looking (and great tasting) American flag cakes where blueberries, raspberries and whipped cream made the stars and stripes. I also made up some pretty good cornbread. MMmmm. It was all definitely worth the time and effort.
It’s time for the Original American Barbecue. Yay! Tyler and I did some major shopping yesterday, so we’re prepared. If only the sun comes out and it warms up a few more degrees before 2:00, we’ll be golden. Well, the guests are arriving in a couple of hours, so it’s time to get cooking!