hey, at least it's been less than a month since the last post

Its funny how when nothing changes, or life gets more stable, you run out of stuff to write about. You’ll notice the last time I wrote was the fourth of March. Since then nothing really notable has happened that didn’t happen in the past month. There have been a few sort of notable events though…

Sometime this month (I’m not even going to try to remember exact dates at this point) I met another politician, Sabine Leuthausen-Schnarrenberger. Never heard of her? Me neither. I guess she’s kind of important though. She was the first female cabinet member in government as minister of justice. Today she is the speaker in congress for her political party, the Liberals. She bought the four of us Feldafing Americans drinks and said a lot of stuff. Mostly just opinions about the US. I didn’t care for her opinions of our politicians on either side of the aisle, and noting that I was the only conservative at the table I just kept my yapper shut. I wasn’t about to start any arguments with a professional talker.

Then at some point I got the flu and skipped a day of work I’m still recovering from that.

I think it might have also been in this past month that I found out I can’t go to meet the Pope with the family next month. Their audience happens to fall on the same week when I have to attend the mandatory final seminar for the Congress-Bundestag Exchange. So basically instead of going to Rome in May, I’m going to go to Berlin and listen to some more politicians talk about stuff. I’d rather listen to the Pope talk about stuff, but what can you do?

I did more random stuff with the community. Here’s a picture of us at a Lord’s Day meal. They still treat me well. I’ve got really good friends.

It snowed three feet over a day and a half and I couldn’t get to the city for Mass one Sunday. But then it all melted away at the end of the month. Now I’m just waiting on those darn mountains to follow suit so I can get back up there.

This past Saturday the boots were allowed back out onto the water, so Corbinian and I took a canoe out from the boot house. It was fun. There was no one out yet. We were the only ones on the water. Its funny that they consider this one of their biggest lakes, since I could paddle across it in a half hour at a leisurely pace. I think the Great lakes combined surface area is probably bigger than Germany. Now those are some real lakes.

The main thing I’ve done this month is work. 1½ hours there, 1½ hours back. I program sometimes, get frustrated sometimes, don’t know what I’m doing all the time, and get to talk to people far less than I would prefer. I am getting better at working with the code, but the projects I work on all seem to get canceled before completion in favor of more urgent projects. End result: I’ve gotten virtually nothing done. There have been a couple nice surprises. Namely we’ve had two new additions to the workforce. One is a PhD named Fernass. He’s a real friendly dude and really outgoing and smart. He sits at the desk across from me. Even though we don’t really talk, I feel just that little bit less isolated. Today we also got another student. Yay! He’s an Indian doing his diplom thesis. He doesn’t speak very much German, and the project he’ll be working on is unfamiliar to him, butsomething I’ve gotten to know pretty well over the past few months. In some slight way, his arrival has pushed me up the ladder a rung. Our team now stands at three PhD’s, two experienced engineers, one entry level engineer (me!), and one college student (not me!).

What’s up in the next month?

Easter! This has been a pretty good Lent so far. I took on a third 15 minute prayer time during the day and gave up drinking. Both have been successful. I’ve even remembered not to eat meat on Friday, even though its not the custom here. Easter will be fun. Supposedly the house will be even more full than it was at Christmas, this time with all of Gudila’s relatives. I’ll be bunking two guys in my room. I know its possible, since Ben and Katie survived, but maybe kind of awkward since I don’t know them all that well. I get Good Friday and Easter Monday off. It’s not quite the week long spring break that some of you get, but at this point I’ll take whatever four day weekends they give me. It’s just a shame that the snow won’t be melted in the mountains yet. Still, I’ll make sure to find some sort of life threatening yet life bringing adventure to get myself into.

The biggest thing coming up this month is that I should make a final decision about whether I go into structures in the aero department, or into rocket science at AOSS. If the aero people are going to give me money then I think they must notify me by april 15, though the decisions have probably already been made. I could be on a waiting list and they won’t notify me until after somebody else declines the offer. If they do offer me a ride by April 15, I’ll go for the M.S.E. in Aerospace Engineering (structures) and see if I become interested in a PhD over the next year. Otherwise, it’s a M.Eng. in Space Engineering with a concentration in rockets/propulsion/gas dynamics. Its time to stop thinking about it, and just see what happens.