I almost missed breakfast again today, but I just made it in time! For breakfast, all the Mensa has is Greek yogurt (unsweetened, not refrigerated = nasty), some granola, some rolls, and a cheese and meat tray. The roll with a slice of meat and cheese was actually pretty tasty, but I foresee myself quickly becoming tired of it after a couple weeks.
After that, we had really long meeting in the Kartause's library, met the faculty, and people told us about a lot of stuff, the majority of which I've already forgotten.
After this meeting, Mr. Pipp (the director of Student Life in Gaming - very funny, reminds me of John) took us on a short walk around Gaming. Gaming is known for its banks and hair salons - I think Mr. Pipp said it had four banks and five hair salons, which is rather ridiculous for a town of its size.
Some of the little shops looked promising - there was a pizza/kebab shop run by a Turkish man and his sons (Mr. Pipp highly recommended the kebabs), a toy/office supply store, and a bakery. I really like bakeries, and this one sells some kind of deep fried pastry on a stick, which sound DELICIOUS! I'm predicting this treat will be a big highlight of my stay in Gaming.
After the tour, we had lunch. Pork, carrots, noodles, and a meat sauce for the noodles - everything was strangely super bitter, so I ended up eating a bowl of granola for lunch. It was also pretty tasty, but I'm not sure if I used milk or half and half with it, because they keep the glass kegs with the dairy next to the coffee machine, and they don't label them. Because of this, I ended up drinking half and half instead of milk last night at supper, but I like half and half, so it all worked out!
When I finished my super yummy granola and milk/half and half bowl, I came back to the room and slept solidly for an hour, so that I almost missed the next meeting (noticing a trend here?)
This meeting was all about housing rules and was long and Krista was freaking out during its two hour duration because she STILL hasn't gotten her suitcase from the airport yet. After the meeting, Krista immediately jumped up to talk to Mr. Pipp about the suitcase, while I got in one of six groups led by RA's for a tour of the campus itself.
The tour was helped orient me (though I've already forgotten all the room's official names), but it was longer than it needed to be because we had to wait on other groups to go through.
When we finally finished, I went back to the room to check on Krista. She got her suitcase thing figured out, but didn't have any respectable clothes to wear to eat supper with me, and our LCI roommate (who's actually Bosnian, not Slovenian) had to go to a meeting, so I was on my own. I almost chickened out and waited 45 minutes for Monika (the LCI roommate) to finish her meeting, but I decided to be brave and talk to some people on my own since my nose has FINALLY stopped dripping!
So I got to the Mensa, and the main food line looked nasty, so again, I went for the roll with meat and cheese. After retrieving my small morsel of food, I looked about the crowded Mensa for the least intimidating place to sit. There were some really crowded tables, some super long tables with a couple scary girls sitting at one end, one table with only one person sitting at it, and one completely empty table. I almost went with the completely empty table, but remembered I was there to be brave, so I actually asked the loner if I could sit with him. He seemed kinda surprised, but said yes.
After I finished praying, he introduced himself and started talking to me about Gaming and asking me about my flight. He was really nice, had a good manner of speaking (at least compared to most of the other guys I've met so far) and he's apparently really good at soccer because his high school team went to Europe for a soccer tournament thingy, and won more than two games/matches (which he said was a first for an American team, since Europeans are so in to soccer). He was quite impressed when I told him about John wrestling for Wisconsin, and he said he liked wrestling too (he's from Ohio, and was talking about the place where they hold states, and how they have sixteen mats out and it's huge and amazing and I couldn't help thinking about Dad disparaging Ohio wrestling so I just played super ignorant and smiled and waved, boys!)
We were talking about wrestling for a bit when five or six people came and sat with us, including the guy's girlfriend, who is an RA and pretty nice (I had to laugh at myself, because now I understood the guy's slight confusion when I asked to sit at his table - what kind of hermit was I that I didn't know he had a girlfriend?! Craziness!)
The guy that sat next to me (he has an identical twin that was in my campus tour group the hour before) started talking about wrestling too and how it's so fun and fun to watch, to which I said it was nasty for girls to watch, and he had to agree with that. A girl, named Audrey, sat on the other side of me, and I mostly talked to her for the rest of the meal, since she had spent the week before in Ireland.
She was super nice, and I had a lot of fun talking to her. She told me how Cork, Ireland was really nice, but Dublin wasn't so much. However, she and her group were trying to figure out which pub to try one evening, and an old man was watching them. When he sad them heading into one pub, he called out "you don't want to go to that one, unless you want to get beat up tonight", and then he recommended a different pub. They followed his recommendation (it turned out to be a really good pub) and as he walked about, he called out "good choice!"
Basically, since the big crowd of people came over and sat at the table, I couldn't help snickering to myself about how I accidentally picked a popular people table, of all tables, when I was being such a chicken before.
So, that was a pretty fun/ny dinner, I felt extremely proud of my social "success" and now am rewarding myself by dedicating my last couple hours of today to being a recluse in the room with Krista, eating Milka, and reading a book on Krista's tablet.
Btw, here's Krista's blog.
After that, we had really long meeting in the Kartause's library, met the faculty, and people told us about a lot of stuff, the majority of which I've already forgotten.
After this meeting, Mr. Pipp (the director of Student Life in Gaming - very funny, reminds me of John) took us on a short walk around Gaming. Gaming is known for its banks and hair salons - I think Mr. Pipp said it had four banks and five hair salons, which is rather ridiculous for a town of its size.
Some of the little shops looked promising - there was a pizza/kebab shop run by a Turkish man and his sons (Mr. Pipp highly recommended the kebabs), a toy/office supply store, and a bakery. I really like bakeries, and this one sells some kind of deep fried pastry on a stick, which sound DELICIOUS! I'm predicting this treat will be a big highlight of my stay in Gaming.
After the tour, we had lunch. Pork, carrots, noodles, and a meat sauce for the noodles - everything was strangely super bitter, so I ended up eating a bowl of granola for lunch. It was also pretty tasty, but I'm not sure if I used milk or half and half with it, because they keep the glass kegs with the dairy next to the coffee machine, and they don't label them. Because of this, I ended up drinking half and half instead of milk last night at supper, but I like half and half, so it all worked out!
When I finished my super yummy granola and milk/half and half bowl, I came back to the room and slept solidly for an hour, so that I almost missed the next meeting (noticing a trend here?)
This meeting was all about housing rules and was long and Krista was freaking out during its two hour duration because she STILL hasn't gotten her suitcase from the airport yet. After the meeting, Krista immediately jumped up to talk to Mr. Pipp about the suitcase, while I got in one of six groups led by RA's for a tour of the campus itself.
The tour was helped orient me (though I've already forgotten all the room's official names), but it was longer than it needed to be because we had to wait on other groups to go through.
When we finally finished, I went back to the room to check on Krista. She got her suitcase thing figured out, but didn't have any respectable clothes to wear to eat supper with me, and our LCI roommate (who's actually Bosnian, not Slovenian) had to go to a meeting, so I was on my own. I almost chickened out and waited 45 minutes for Monika (the LCI roommate) to finish her meeting, but I decided to be brave and talk to some people on my own since my nose has FINALLY stopped dripping!
So I got to the Mensa, and the main food line looked nasty, so again, I went for the roll with meat and cheese. After retrieving my small morsel of food, I looked about the crowded Mensa for the least intimidating place to sit. There were some really crowded tables, some super long tables with a couple scary girls sitting at one end, one table with only one person sitting at it, and one completely empty table. I almost went with the completely empty table, but remembered I was there to be brave, so I actually asked the loner if I could sit with him. He seemed kinda surprised, but said yes.
After I finished praying, he introduced himself and started talking to me about Gaming and asking me about my flight. He was really nice, had a good manner of speaking (at least compared to most of the other guys I've met so far) and he's apparently really good at soccer because his high school team went to Europe for a soccer tournament thingy, and won more than two games/matches (which he said was a first for an American team, since Europeans are so in to soccer). He was quite impressed when I told him about John wrestling for Wisconsin, and he said he liked wrestling too (he's from Ohio, and was talking about the place where they hold states, and how they have sixteen mats out and it's huge and amazing and I couldn't help thinking about Dad disparaging Ohio wrestling so I just played super ignorant and smiled and waved, boys!)
We were talking about wrestling for a bit when five or six people came and sat with us, including the guy's girlfriend, who is an RA and pretty nice (I had to laugh at myself, because now I understood the guy's slight confusion when I asked to sit at his table - what kind of hermit was I that I didn't know he had a girlfriend?! Craziness!)
The guy that sat next to me (he has an identical twin that was in my campus tour group the hour before) started talking about wrestling too and how it's so fun and fun to watch, to which I said it was nasty for girls to watch, and he had to agree with that. A girl, named Audrey, sat on the other side of me, and I mostly talked to her for the rest of the meal, since she had spent the week before in Ireland.
She was super nice, and I had a lot of fun talking to her. She told me how Cork, Ireland was really nice, but Dublin wasn't so much. However, she and her group were trying to figure out which pub to try one evening, and an old man was watching them. When he sad them heading into one pub, he called out "you don't want to go to that one, unless you want to get beat up tonight", and then he recommended a different pub. They followed his recommendation (it turned out to be a really good pub) and as he walked about, he called out "good choice!"
Basically, since the big crowd of people came over and sat at the table, I couldn't help snickering to myself about how I accidentally picked a popular people table, of all tables, when I was being such a chicken before.
So, that was a pretty fun/ny dinner, I felt extremely proud of my social "success" and now am rewarding myself by dedicating my last couple hours of today to being a recluse in the room with Krista, eating Milka, and reading a book on Krista's tablet.
Btw, here's Krista's blog.
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