august: cleveland county

Did you know that you can get a refund on some beverage containers in 10 states + Guam? Oklahoma, why can't we be next?

In case you are wondering, PONS and Leo are my go-to online German dictionaries. (Some people prefer this one from TU-Chemnitz (Karl-Marx-Stadt, whatup?!), but I haven't used it.)

I went to German Club again last week and had a good time chatting with some people. Then I went home, where I was awakened by the sound of a new roof being put on our house. It looks the same as the old one, but it should work much better! Mom & I went to see The Maze Runner as well. It had a really diverse cast, but they were all guys, besides the one girl who made Bella Swan look like personality of the year. It was also mildly terrifying, but that may be because I can't remember the last time I saw an intense movie in the theater. (Maybe The Hunger Games? Or Paranoia? Was that even a movie?)

Finally, I thought this video from the Heute Show (the German version of The Daily Show) was hilarious.

Earlier tonight President Obama spoke to the American people about the situation in Iraq and Syria and about how the United States is going to deal with it. A few weeks ago, I would've been confused and thought "Okay. That seems like a good plan." Now, after a scant four weeks of graduate education, I know far too much about the situation in that area!

The president really didn't say anything in his speech - he said we must support the opposition. Which opposition? There're about 4 major groups that are in opposition to the Syrian government. One of them is ISIS...so maybe we won't choose to support that one. I assume we're going to be supporting the Free Syrian Army (which may or may not actually be a cohesive organization), but we could also be supporting the Islamic Front or al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda! What fun!

Why are we choosing to intervene in this situation? Is it because of the executed journalists? As my professor pointed out today, people die in shady ways in foreign countries all the time, and this would be a dangerous precedent to set.

Then the president just kinda said 'MURICA! for five minutes. (I was counting. I needed to get to the public library before it closed at 9...which I did.)

Also, I would like to say that Bob Schieffer's tie was excellent.

AHHHHHH! I GOT ALLEGIANT FROM THE LIBRARY!!!!!

There was a lunch for all the Master's Degree students and faculty from my department. We ate Panera and all had to introduce ourselves. It was pretty nice - I got to see the Diplomat in Residence, which is a State Department program that puts former diplomats at universities for a year. There's going to be a reception to welcome him tomorrow, which I'm planning on attending as well.

This week has been pretty nice since I only had one class! Fear not, loyal readers, this did not prevent me from having a boatload of reading concerning the Syrian conflict and spending almost all day Thursday in the library as well as a half day on Friday.

I'm excited because I went to talk to a professor about a class and he suggested that I research the German perspective on the situation for one of my short papers. I think this will finally be a way for me to feel less like a novice about the Middle East! I also got another book to read about Syria from him so I can better understand the situation.

The most exciting this this week was trying to set up our internet. Brettlyn and I battled our various modems and routers (this involved 3 trips to Wal-Mart and the returns guy remembering us since we returned two different things in an hour) before finally giving up and going to the Cox store, where they sold us an extremely overpriced modem/router combination. Then after buying the cord that connects that to the wall (which wasn't included), we thought we were in business. But of course, nothing is that easy when you're setting up your internet, so I tried calling Cox support. Our situation baffled the nice lady on the other end, so they're sending a guy out to help us. On Tuesday. So our internetless existence continues, and I'm at the library despite the dreary downpour in order to check my email and post my homework on our discussion page. I look forward to one day writing this blog from the comfort of my own room, but that seems like a pipe dream at this point....

(Can we take a moment to think about how I'm fine typing up my random thoughts and publishing them on the internet for anyone to read, but I'm terrified about putting my short reading response up on a course website for the other 6 people + the professor to read? It's odd.)

This is old, but still interesting - and in English!