New Moon On Monday!

Just as I promised, in this post you'll find the pictures I took on my last excursion to the shopping mall, including all the international, completely irresistible and absolutely unnecesary stuff I bought! :D

But first, let me tell you that we had our weekly German Stammtisch yesterday, and we basically mobbed our teacher and asked him as many questions as possible about this idea of going to Germany next year. The basic idea is to spend three weeks there, and visit around 4 or 5 cities. We'll definitely be in Munich and Berlin, and now we're discussing which other cities to visit - Leipzig, Stuttgart (or somewhere closer to the Schwarzwald), Dresden, and some other destinations I don't quite remember right now. (I'm hearing suggestions, if you have any! XD)
We need to gather a group of ten people if we want to make this trip happen. The idea is to go around May or June, when it's already warmer but airline tickets are not as expensive as they are during the summer.
These are all the details I have for now, but I'll keep you posted as we start defining more things. :D What scares me the most is actually getting a group together. I mean, people always get excited about these projects, but when it comes to actually making it real and, above all, paying for it, things can get complicated. So I'm really hoping we'll be able to find people who are able to commit to this project so we can all have a great trip. :D

Our Stammtisch is getting more international! :D A girl from Germany (she's from Fulda, to be exact) joined us yesterday. She's a 16-year-old exchange student who's a friend of one of my classmates. She was lots of fun to be with, and I was really surprised to hear her speak Spanish. She had never studied the language before (although she did study English, French and Latin), but after a month and a half in Argentina, she speaks it wonderfully. She's got an accent, of course, but it was amazing just how easily she picked up conversations. I mean, we were in the middle of a completely informal gathering, where you don't really watch your language, but this girl joined in conversations with almost no effort. O____o Truly amazing. (We ended up speaking English too, which felt very international! XD) I guess immersion is a great way to learn a language. I'm hoping three weeks in Germany will help me open up my ears to the German language! XD I was surprised today by a letter from a penpal in Belgium who also writes amazing Spanish after only three months of learning it. WHAT IS IT ABOUT PEOPLE LEARNING SPANISH SO QUICKLY WHILE I'M STILL STRUGGLING WITH GERMAN? O___o I feel diminished now. XD

Anyway

ENOUGH

and let's move on to what really brings us here:

FOOD!

( PICSPAM AHEAD! :D )

I used to have no culinary skills whatsoever. But I decided I might as well learn to cook, mainly because I need to keep myself from starvation if I ever want to live in an apartment on my own, right?

So, well, I bought a cookbook for total dumdums like me and, what's the first thing I prepared? Coffee cheesecake. XD Like THAT's something you eat every day. XD

Anyway, it proved useful. I made some cheesecake for my coworkers (after all, the best way to get to people is throught their stomachs, mind you) and brought it to the office last Monday, and it was an absolute success. They actually think I can cook. XD

The recipe is as easy as it gets, but it actually does taste awesome, if I may say so myself.

( Here's pictures to celebrate desserts! )

And now, enough pictures of food... Let's move on to something I love even more than cheesecake:

( My DANKE DEUTSCHLAND T-shirt! )

Well, enough for now!

CHEERIOS!

-V

You know how LJ has suddenly become the greatest defender of children against pedophilia and all kinds of abuse. Even to the point where our right for free speech was absolutely violated, turning their supposed crusade for innocence into a witch hunt.

An LJ user has written an open letter for LJ to be fair - if they're against any activity that promotes hate or abuse crimes, then they might as well stick to their own policy and start keeping an eye on communities that promote self-harm, such as communities that encourage anorexia.

You can find the open letter here. Please give it a read and make up your mind. I really believe this girl is right - LJ believes in reviewing fanfiction for its potential for inspiring readers to commit a crime, but they keep and even protect communities that blatantly encourage self-harm?

There's something wrong here.

Sorry, too good not to be shared! XD

Berlin Zoo Puts Media Darling Knut on a Diet

Poor thing. XD

There's a supermarket in my city, called Jumbo, that imports lots of products from abroad. They're ubber expensive, but it's really nice to go shopping for international weirdities once in a while.

That's what I did a couple of weeks ago, and I always like to take pictures when I buy international stuff. This time was no exception.

So here's pictures of the German stuff I bought and ate for dinner that night!

( Don't you just love food? )

My city has declared May 17 as the Municipal Day Against Sexual and Gender Discrimination.

On a day like today, in 1990, the World Health Organization finally stopped considering homosexuality a disease. Right now, people all over the world are pushing to declare May 17 the International Day Against Homophobia.

Can you believe that, according to a poll conducted in my city, 56% of the people living in Rosario still believe homosexuality is a disease? *facepalm* There's a good side, though - 67% of us believe we should legalize homosexual civil unions.

Here's to hoping someday we'll finally stop imposing labels on people!

YOU GERMAN SPEAKING PEOPLE HAVE A

WEIRD

WAY OF COUNTING.

XDDDDDDDDDDDD

(No offense, it's just that it's so different from the two languages I already speak, and it's giving me quite some work, so I'm lashing out, but I'm sure I'll love it once I get how it works! XD)

Still, one of the things I love about being able to count from 0 to 100 in German is the fact that I can FINALLY understand Nena when she sings

NEUNUNDNEUNZIG LUFTBALLONS!

YYYYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!

That stupid song has been playing in my mind all day, ever since I realized I could sing along to it. XDDDDDDDDDD

STILL

I need to practice die Zahlen. I'm trying to catch the Lotto numbers on the German channel on TV to see if I can actually understand them. XD If any of you would be willing (and has the time, of course :P) to record a few numbers in German for me to guess, I'd owe you and love you FOREVER. It'd be a great help, and it'd make a great anecdote for my German class too. :P

By the way, now that we can count, MY TEACHER HAS FINALLY CONFESSED HE'S 44 YEARS OLD! :-o Twice as old as I am, but still...

I dig him.

*hides*

ANYWAY

Nothing else is new with me.

I missed a test today at my uni because I forgot to take my bus card and any money with me. Which means I basically had no way of getting to college, except for walking. *facepalm* I have this class at uni right after my German class (which I take at an institute downtown), and I basically have to FLY LIKE THE WIND to catch a bus and get to uni ASAP. I had no way to take the bus today, so... This test didn't really matter anyway, because it doesn't influence my grade (it was just a diagnostic test), but still, GRRRRRRRRRRR. It makes me angry. IF I GOT PAID TO BE A DORK, I'D BE A BILLIONAIRE. XD

And just in case that wasn't enough of a *facepalm*, now I have another reason to claim I LOSE AT LIFE: I get depressed on Sundays. XD To drown my depression, I went to the supermarket with my family last Sunday. Lots of people shop when they're sad - they buy clothes, books, anything. I shop too. But, what do I buy? FOOD. XD Danish cheese, to be exact:

( Photos courtesy of my brother )

OH, AND, BY THE WAY, nadiamdq, LOOK WHAT I FOUND ON THE SUPERMARKET!

( XDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD )

ENOUGH FOR NOW!

NEUNUNDNEUNZIG LUFTBALLONS!

Cheers!

-V
(361 unanswered emails!)

WHO COULD POSSIBLY WANT TO KILL KNUT???

O__________________o

ETA - 307 unread emails!

4. Since I'm in the whole YouTube wave today, I got another awesome video: how an Airbus A380 is built, in 7 minutes. I swear I was all teary-eyed after watching it. Then again, I cry with Moby's videos... I know, I LOSE AT LIFE. XD

( Watch it here )

But I still wanted to post at least something, because, even if it doesn't seem like it, I really hate it when my LJ goes unupdated (??? XD) for too long.

SO

ANYWAY

Nothing new. I still lose at life just as much as last week. XD

But, still, there are a few mindless things I wanna share with you.

1. Did you hear/read/see Boris Yeltsin died? O___o I'm one of the most apolitical people in the world, but it kinda shocked me when I read about his death, because I grew up watching his white hair and his red nose on the news! He was a part of my childhood! So I feel old now that he'd dead. :-/

The newspaper where I read about Yeltsin had this little YouTube video of what seems to be a press conference with Yeltsin and Bill Clinton (back in the day when they were both presidents), AND IT WAS ABSOLUTELY HILARIOUS. XD

( Watch for yourselves )

2. Now that I finally have a salary, I've been indulging in certain little luxuries that I couldn't afford before, like buying two CDs in one week. XD I bought Arvo Pärt's Da Pacem last Thursday, and today I got myself a CD of Chopin's Etudes and Mazurkas performed by Leif Ove Andsnes. (I'm FIXATED with Leif Ove... I'll never be able to enjoy anybody else's version of Rachmaninoff's 3rd Piano Concerto after listening to Leif playing it. The guy is plain genius. Plus he's Norwegian and he's hot. And, yeah, I lose at life. XD)

I'll probably make a post with a list of AAAAAAALLLLLLLLL the classical academic things I should listen to and still haven't. I'm a music major and I can't even recognize a Mozart symphony... which is kind of unacceptable. So, I'm gonna start culturizing myself! Don't get me wrong, I have my culture - I can discuss Philip Glass, Arvo Pärt, Piotr Tchaikovsky, Frédéric Chopin - I've listened to their works, but I really need to expand my horizons even more, and listen even to those composer I don't really dig that much. So, that's the mission.

3. Did any of you watch Children Of Men? Wow, maybe I was feeling rather sensitive, but it really got to me, in a very bad way. It's a very dark film, so try not to be in a black day if you're about to watch it. It's very well done, though. Very well filmed. I have the book, but I read it a million years ago, so I can't remember a thing. Maybe I should read it again.

OK... I guess I've said enough nothing for now. :)

Take good care of yourselves!

-V

(PS: I still have 319 unread email messages, including LJ comments/posts, so bear with me. XD I'll read and/or answer them all soon!)

...but looks like it FINALLY stopped raining today.

I was just browsing through La Nación, a newspaper from Buenos Aires, and there's a big heading saying there were 3 dead and 26,000 evacuees in the entire province of Santa Fe due to this neverending storm. :-S All 3 dead and 6,000 of the evacuees are from Rosario, my city. But the capital city of Santa Fe got the worst part, with 20,000 evacuees. There were also storms in the provinces of Entre Ríos (with 3 more dead people and 3,400 evacuees) and Buenos Aires (with 700 evacuees).

No one was ever seen such a thing before. I swear I've never seen so much rain in my life. I was lucky enough to deal with only 12 hours without electricity on Wednesday, but I really can't help thinking of all the people who've lost everything because of the storms. :-/

...but this post is actually a little belated. :)
I should have done this yesterday, but I was in quite a cranky mood since I hadn't taken my everyday nap (yes, my habits are me...), but now that I'm well slept, I think it's time for me to share some pictures I took yesterday. :)

Yesterday morning I was having some free time (well, not really, but I forced my time to be free :P), so I went to the post office to drop a letter to a penpal, and then I headed for one of the two local shopping malls / supermarkets / theaters / great places to waste spend your money.
Anyway, I decided to go there because my brother, who isn't married but certainly looks like he is, usually goes with his girlfriend / future wife to help her do her grocery shopping (married, I told you...), and they generally go to the huge supermarket in this huge shopping mall I was talking about.
Thing is, he told me he had found an entire hall filled with import products. It seemed it was quite well assorted, so I decided to go and check for myself. :)
So I did... And, yep, definitely well assorted. :)
They pretty much have stuff from all around the globe. Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, France, the UK, the US, Brazil, Ecuador, Mexico, and even Kosher food and some other products with packages written in Arabic (which of course I couldn't undertand a word of :P).
My brother had mentioned something about Swedish cookies, and that was the first thing I looked for. :) It turned out they weren't Swedish cookies, but Danish instead. I bought them all the same. :)
I also bought a little bottle of coconut milk, a Brazilian product. :)

Of course I got all excited about this, and I took pictures of everything. :P
Honestly, think about it - These things I bought, and the other thousand imported products there were in the supermarket, are surely very common for somebody. Somebody buys these things in some corner of the world just as naturally as I buy Fortuna milk (that's the brand we buy here at home). But these products are totally weird for me, because I'm not used to buying them. For example, I found bottles of cranberry juice. I had never seen it before here, because we don't drink cranberry juice in Argentina. Nevertheless, it must be totally natural in the US to go to the market and buy a bottle. :P
To put it the other way around - I have a Finnish penpal who collects teabags. He asked me if I could send him some teabags of local brands of tea. That's when I started thinking - how many of these bags have I thrown away to the garbage can in my life? Thousands! (I don't drink tea, but my brother does.) However, in the meantime, somebody else is collecting them.
I don't know, I just think it's funny and interesting. :) You know I love everything about travel, foreigners and customs. :)

So, well, enough chat - let's get to the piccies. :)

( Brazilian coconut milk + Danish cookies! )

I don't see what's the point of destroying and burning down banks, Mc Donald's and several other stores just to show George Bush that Argentinians are not happy to have him in this country.

Protesting is fine. Bush is a terrorist, and somebody should kick his sorry ass.
But, violence against local stores owned by people who work and try to earn a living just as much as anybody else? NOT fair.

I found this on a local newspaper, La Nación. The author is a local artist, Nik.

( Very thoughtful )

I spit on the assholes who did this. Someone should hang them by their balls and let them die of gangrene.
I'm sorry for the lives taken and for those lives that have been changed forever.

( Where the fuck is this world going? )