Borscht and protests. (updated)

Pardon me for a moment while I breathe a sigh of relief over my hot steaming cup o' Indian curry Nudeln.

...

Good, now that that's done, let's see what exciting things I can update the world with! As you may have gathered, things have been busy on this side of the pond. This weekend I had a presentation to put together for this morning in German, an essay in French (which ended up being unnecessary when I tried to turn it in half an hour ago) and nine hours of theater in Genglish, on top of whatever else with some insomnia on the side. Now that all that is done with and I have a relatively easy rest of the week, I am feeling much better.

**I completely forgot to mention a rather large piece of news when I first wrote this. As you may have heard (or not, I don't know if the States are covering this story), there are huge protests going on at universities all over the country that are against the current state of educational affairs. This includes the new BA and MA system being introduced, suddenly having to pay student tuition (500 euro a semester), and a couple other things I'm not clear on. In Hamburg, they've taken over the Audimax, the biggest lecture hall on campus that seats about 1500 people. They've been squating there for about a week now. The whole place is covered with posters, banners, and graffiti. They sleep there, eat there, have moved in couches, and hang out all day and night merrily partying, playing music, and trying to recruit more students. The problem is that the Uni currently has no president to make an executive decision about what to do with the students and if the executive board of sorts brought in the police to remove them, there would be scandal and an even bigger uprising. I understand their anger at the new educational system as it is extremely unorganized, but as someone who pays so many tens of thousands of dollars a year for college, I find tuition part of the protest hard to listen to, even though I think I get a lot more bang for my buck than they do. I don't understand the situation entirely, but I really don't understand how not going to class and making it difficult for others to go to class by eliminating the largest lecture hall is helping their education. How this affects me the most is with rehearsals, as they've completely taken over our rehearsal area and have rendered the stage unusable. This means we've been having to work out of the small, dirty, dingy basement for the past week instead of our big, beautiful stage.**

On Saturday we had a long photoshoot for "the press" where they costumed us up and took mug shot pictures. It was new and exciting to finally see what we'll be wearing and to play some serious dress-up. I've never worn so much make-up in my whole life put together. Someone looked at me when it was done and exclaimed, "You have a plastic face!" It was great. Then we rehearsed basically all day on Sunday, which was also great. And tiring.

There were also a couple gastronomical successes that are worth reporting: the first was a completely delectable pumpkin cashew curry that Sarah and I made on Friday night. We went to a farmers' market that morning to buy a pumpkin and then realized that we didn't really know what one looks for in a pumpkin to figure out its goodness. Luckily a nice woman at one of the stands was eager to help out (and eager for our business). The result was fabulous. The other success was borscht. People of the world, let it be known that Liz Chase makes the best borscht ever. Ever.

Aaand that's about all I've got to offer for the moment. Now for 2.5 hours of choir.