Germany

Prague Under Attack By Giants

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Sacherman) — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 11:17:00 +0000

Prague by Night

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Sacherman) — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 12:19:00 +0000

The Game is Finished

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Sacherman) — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 14:17:00 +0000

You can play it here.

---PLAY---

Todays Game Update

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Sacherman) — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 16:22:00 +0000

Newest version as of now.

Controls are the same as before, except now you can press up to go through doors.

UPDATES:

-Multiple stages
-Doors

-----PLAY-----

New Hobby Update

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Sacherman) — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 12:53:00 +0000

For those who haven't read the post titled "New Hobby", read that one first!

I have decided to use this blog as a way to show the progress in my game designing process. Working with the graphics from yesterday, and some new code thank to a tutorial at This Page I have a new version of the game now.

I put a link into the tutorial because I feel it is important to give credit to the people that deserve it, finding good tutorials for Flash 8 is fairly difficult, but his worked amazingly well.

I took out the "attacks" of this version, I will put them back later.

Move Left/Right --> Arrow Keys
Climb/Descend Ladder/Boxes --> Up/Down Arrows
Jump --> Space Key
Crouch --> Down Key (when not on a latter/box)

-----PLAY-----

Another --Newer-- Version

+Background animation
+Little bug fixes

-----PLAY-----

New Hobby

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Sacherman) — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 20:30:00 +0000

Here's a random, non-Germany related blog entry for today, just 'cause I can.

I picked up a little new hobby this year, just because I wanted something to do in my free time. Programming. It sounds boring, and a lot of it is, but making a game can be fun (I am using Flash). I wouldn't suggest it to people who get easily frustrated, have trouble finishing things, enjoy sleeping at night, or have trouble writing tons of unintelligible lines of code without typos. Strangely, those are all things that describe me. I guess it's kinda like someone that has a fear of spiders taking on a hobby as a spider breeder.

I chose this little hobby because I was looking for video games (my other little hobby) for my Mac and I realized how few there are, and how expensive they are (*Windows version -> 10$* *Mac version -> 50$*). I thought if I started easy, I could maybe work my way up eventually and help out all the people like me who just want to entertain themselves on their Macs without spending a bunch of money.

Here is a sample of a days work on a Flash program, you can't even call it a game yet, but I like how it's coming along. At my current level of programming skill, something like this takes a few hours (animation and coding).

Movement -> Arrow Keys
Jump (when standing still) -> Up Key
Crouch -> Down Key
Weak Punch -> C Key
Strong Punch -> X Key

Note -- Don't expect anything to come at you, like enemies, because there aren't any, you just walk around the one part of the stage.

To start, click on the ---PLAY--- link below and then just click anywhere inside the animation box on the new page, you will need Flash Player to get it to work.

------PLAY-----

Have Fun
-Kevin

This year until now in a mosiac

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Sacherman) — Tue, 13 May 2008 13:37:00 +0000

This was just a test for a bigger project at first, but it turned out OK so I thought I would share it with the few people each day who still look at the blog. I haven't had much motivation to write new blogs lately. You can show your longing for more news by posting a comment (just writing "write more" is enough) to let me know you were here!

Every square in this picture is a picture that I have either taken in Germany this year, or used in some way in Germany (pictures of my home town, for example, to show to people in Germany).

The big picture is me in front of the Hamburg capitol building.

Enjoy.

TIP -- Click on the picture to make it bigger!

Sushi Night

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Sacherman) — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 21:32:00 +0000

Sushi Night

I decided to make some sushi today for some delicious fun. It turned out o.k. in the end, the rice wasn't the best and some of the ingredients weren't balanced right, but it was still tasty, and it was fun to make. Here are some shots from this evening.

Here is my host mom, rolling up her own sushi roll.

Here is the first of the three types we made. This one is smoked salmon with cucumber and cream cheese. The salmon gives it the nice smokey and fishy flavor, the cucumber brings a nice crunch to the bite, and the cream cheese makes everything blend together smooth, but there was too much of the latter ingredient.

Here is the North Sea shrimp and avocado roll. The North Sea shrimps are from the North Sea, which is the sea to the North of Germany. This roll was a favorite with Heiko.

Here is the last roll, simple avocado, cucumber, and cream cheese. I wasn't sure if somebody wanted something without fish, and a roll without fish can be stored for eating sometime else.

Here is the end result, 6 of the 9 total rolls made are here, and the four of us almost finished this plate,

Till next time,

-Kevin Sacherman

Weimar, in English, by day.

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Sacherman) — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 10:24:00 +0000

For the German version go here --> www.sachermanindeutschland.blogspot.com (It might not be updated for a little.

I just got back from 5 days in the city of Weimar, Germany's so-called "culture city." The city is well known for being the home of both Goethe and Schiller, some of Germany's most famous writers. The lived there in the 16th century, before the United States existed, but their houses are still standing. On a darker note, Weimar was also kind of a starting point for the Nazi party in the 1930's, and one of the first concentration camps, Buchenwald, was built just a few miles outside of the city. After the war, the city was in the DDR, East Germany. These contrasting histories make this city an ideal place to learn about German history and culture.

This trip was organized by the German side of the exchange program (GIVE, ASSE, PPP, CBYX are all abbreviations I have heard for it.). I don't want to bash the American side too bad, but the German side really seems to have their shit together, and they put on a great couple days. If anybody has read my blogs about the Washington DC trip at the beginning of the year, they will know the little issues I had with it.

So here it goes with:

Day 1

Day one was mostly traveling. I got pretty lucky with my train tickets and managed to meet up with a few friends on the train.
The train ride was uneventful, but I got to see some new scenery from the train, we went through Berlin and East Germany, and we hat the switch trains in Leipzig. Everything was going pretty well, I made all the trains in time and I brought plenty of snacks so it was looking like it was going to be a pretty smooth day, but then I did something stupid; I left my bag on the train.

Now, for travelers, leaving a bag on the train and leaving a bag on an airplane are completely different. If you leave something on an airplane, you will have about a half-hour time period where you could go back to the train and ask to go get it, but unlike an airplane, a train leaves one station after about 3 minutes, and after that it's gone, the train won't stop or turn around. I noticed it just as I was leaving the station, and even though I ran at full speed back through the station to the platform, I couldn't even see the train by the time I got there. Now, there wasn't anything too important in this bag, I had my backpack and my wallet, cell phone, and such, but 5 days without any new clothes or toiletries would have been a disaster.

The next step was that I went to the help desk with a friend (his German is way better than mine and I didn't want to screw this one up) and we told the lady there that I had forgotten my bag. Upon hearing this, she pulled out this HUGE book, which in my mind is always a bad thing, when someone needs pulls the big book out. As it turns out, it wasn't very complicated at all, she called someone who called the train, and someone on the train went searching for the bag, and they managed to find it before the train left the next station, which was Erfurt. They aren't allowed to mail people's bags, so I had to buy a ticket and take a little adventure. In the end, I was 6 euros lighter, with both my bags and a few pictures of Erfurt. Success.

That night the whole group got together, 47 of us total, 3 went home early, and watched a film. I say film because even though it was about 90 minutes, I always consider movies to be interesting, and films are things you watch in school, or on the History Channel, where the same 5 pictures float across the screen with creative zoom techniques with an old guy talking for a long time.

We also took an initial tour of the city, to get an overview of some of the things we will see later.

Day 2

After the excitement of day 1, I could hardly wait for day 2. I got a room with 2 guys from Oregon, Johnny and Ryan. Breakfast was the normal German affair, rolls with meats, cheeses, pig-based spreads, and jellies. Did you know that the direct translation of the German word for breakfast is "early piece"? Pretty funny. After early piece we headed into the city to look at Goethe's and Schiller's houses. I was pretty bummed that you weren't allowed to take any pictures inside, but that's something you readers will have to deal with. The houses were interesting, considering that they were hundreds of years old. We also got to see Goethe's traveling coach, back then it must have been the cadillac of horse drawn buggies.

Day 3

Day three was a day trip to Wittenburg, the city where Martin Luther lived during the reformation of the Catholic church. This trip started with an hour and a half on the train, then we had a tour of the city.

This is Martin Luther's house, actually one side of his house form the view of the courtyard in the middle. It was pretty giant.

This is the city church in Wittenburg, different from the castle chruch, below, where Martin Luther "hang his 95 thesis' on the door" (He didn't really hang them there, but it's close enough.)

After lunch we went to the Kennedy center for international economics (or something along those lines) for a seminar on economy ethics. Now, I'm not going to say that it was bad, but it was just extremely confusing. We had to play this card game together. Each table had a set of rules that were slightly different, and the rules were extremely vague. Because nobody could really understand it right and therefor nobody was playing right, the guy leading the seminar was getting pretty angry and he kept changing the rules. By the time the rules were settled, the game ended up to be a variation of Hearts, but stripped of all skill based elements and fun. You would deal the entire deck of cards out, and you weren't allowed to look at your cards. Then the person to the left of the dealer put their top card out, and the other players each put a card out. The suit of the first card determines which suit counts that round, like Hearts, but since you weren't allowed to look at your cards, it didn't matter. The person with the highest card of that suit (usually the person who started, because there would not be any other cards of that suit played) would win. To make it more confusing, we weren't allowed to talk with each other. The winners and losers moved to a different table, where the rules would be a little different.

We didn't learn until it was over that it was teaching us about global economics. The lead guy tried to explain that the girl who won the most rounds won because she had good leading skills, even the game was 100% (I'm not exaggerating here) luck, and that everyone else lost because they couldn't adapt to new rules or work well with other people. He had a good message, but the method of telling it was broken. In the end, it turned out to be another lesson about culture shock, which is pointless by now because we have been living here in Germany for 6 months now.

The cards.

An excited participant. (roommate Ryan)

Day 4

On day 4 we got down to some of the heavy history of the area, starting with a trip to Buchenwald, one of the first concentration camps built by the Nazi party. First some background information on the area. The city was one of the first cities that gave its full support to the Nazi party (There was a time when many people supported the Nazi party, before the war.) This city was also the first to start making Hitler's youth groups. Because the Nazi party had been in the city for so long before the war started, nobody had a problem when they built the concentration camp, Buchenwald, just a few miles outside the city. It wasn't until the end of the war, when General Patton forced the residents of the city to walk through the camp that the town knew what was going on just around the corner.

I didn't take any pictures there, under the request of our guides, even they taking pictures was allowed. All of the original prisoner barracks were gone, but the main gate, the fence, the crematorium, and a few other structures were still there.

After that, we headed back and in the afternoon we had a very awkward group discussion, nobody had much to say so we sat almost completely silent for about an hour and a half. That brings us to,

Day 5

Day 5 was also just a travel day, but because I booked my train on the safe side (later) I ended up waiting about 2 hours longer than everyone else, and I traveled alone.

Me waiting, self portrait, too bad that the weather was so nice for the travel day.

The rolling hillsides of East Germany, pretty nice view for the train ride.

Well, that's it (alot, I know). Check back for "Weimar, by night" for the lighter, social based version starring Jeff Condor and brought to you by MayO's, It's Mayonnaise for Breakfast!

Till then, write some comments and tell your friends to read this,

-Kevin Sacherman

Edit : I mixed up day 2 and 3, oops. (They are still mixed up)

Uri Geller

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Sacherman) — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 20:19:00 +0000

I thought I would explain a bit about who Uri Geller is, since I have a video or two on my blog and it doesn't need to be an inside joke with the guys from Germany. Uri is a magician, a special flavor of magician though, they call themselves "mentalists". He was really popular in the 60's or 70's, mostly because of his "amazing" ability to bend spoons by just rubbing them and thinking really hard. My guess is that his popularity waned when people caught on to the fact that it was fake, but maybe people wanted to see something new.

Back to the point, now he's got his own TV program in Germany, and oh, what a surprise, it's a game show, like every German TV show. It's called "The Next Uri Geller" and it is supposed to search for someone to replace him, from 10 of the top "mentalists" or something. In addition to the silly competition and American Idol-like long, drawn out shows, Uri says he'll do a live illusion every week, and he will even make things happen in the viewers' houses!

The first week, he fixed broken clocks and he made spoons fly off the top of televisions, which is in the video under

www.sachermaningermanyvideos.blogspot.com

To let people know, the video is completely real, I filmed with a real camera, put directly on my real computer, and loaded directly onto the real internet. Nothing about the video itself is altered, although I'm not going to make any promises about the condition of the spoon that evening.

The next week he made peoples tables shake and slide, I felt like I was watching ghost hunters on the Discovery Channel (which is a great show, if you get the chance, much better than Uri Geller) I made a video there too, but it's not worth putting on the site.

Anyway, we'll see if this magician can manage to suck a few million dollars out of this generations pockets, just like he did last time he was popular.

If you're interested, there are some great informational videos on YouTube about him.

-Kevin Sacherman

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Sacherman) — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 20:55:00 +0000

Cartoons

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Sacherman) — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 20:21:00 +0000

The German class decided to put together a class newspaper, and instead me just waiting for the project to be over, I pulled out my pen and whipped up these masterworks. Unlike the last post about my drawings, these were made during the proper homework time (at home) and with the teachers permission, except for maybe a few, but thats beside the point.

This was my first one, it was right after people found out that Iran didn't really have a nuclear program, it translates to, "No, George, no more cookies until you stop lying about the Middle East." I didn't think it was particularly funny, but other people liked it.

This is a Hamburg based joke, at the time I wrote it, the Hamburg cultural museum had just found out that it had bough fake Chinese terra-cotta soldiers, it translates to, "Hey guys, they're made out of chocolate!"

This one is about the new electronic voting machines this year in Hamburg, and how people were unsure about how to use them and such.

This one is my favorite of this bunch, it's about global warming, the newspapers say things like, "Knut is 1" and "Save the earth" and such. Take note of the irony with the airplane.

KEGELN!!

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Sacherman) — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 19:51:00 +0000

I think I have a new favored sport, it's called Kageln, and it involves throwing this little ball down a skiing bowling ally and trying to his this pins that are hanging on strings on the end. It's kinda like a party version of bowling, not so official, a little more old-school. Check out these sweet action pics!

...The open Kegelbahn (like autobahn but for kegeln). I'd compare it to a few feet of fresh pow when the roads are closed and the lifts are open.

The tension was building, as we tallied our own scores by counting how many lights went. Not pictured, the hours of stretching and warming up beforehand.

Host mother at full speed, showing us novices how to throw the ball.

This photo was taken for the sake of training, we need to work on Heiko's form if he wants to make the German Olympic Kegeln team.

My refined and streamlined style blew the competition out of their Lederhosen.

It's been a while...

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Sacherman) — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 19:39:00 +0000

It's been a while... but now its time to hear some more news!

I'll start here, the Christmas market in Hamburg, a few weeks before Christmas. This place was full to the brim, the area around the main train station and the city hall.

First is my host brother and mother, then my host brother and me, then a shot to show how crowded it was, we wanted to go down there, but that wasn't gonna happen. The last shot is from the Christmas parade that night, it was every Saturday until Christmas in December. Since it's old news, I'll keep it short and end it here.

Cookies!

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Sacherman) — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 14:15:00 +0000

It may have only been the first of December, but we cracked out the rolling pins and cookie cutters and punched out some sweet cookies. My host mother woke up earlier than my host brother an me, so she mixed up some of the batter ahead of time. I've been promising pictures for a while, so I took a bunch during the cookie day.

These first two shots are to show the sheer volume of cookies that we produced. The mountain of little ones were made with this cool little machine, one of those things you see on TV be figure they will never work. It took a little getting used to, but we were busting out sheet after sheet of these little cookies once we got in the swing, while one sheet was in the oven, we'd empty, clean, and refill the next sheet. The other cookies are made the old fashion style, rolled out with a pin and punched out with different shaped cutters. We got creative with a few, pulling out a knife and making out own designs, among them, some snowmen, a big angel, and a guitar.

Here are my teammates hard at work, decorating the cookies.

Cookies aside, I visited the Christmas market that's just down the street from me, the one I was planning on taking pictures at and writing about, but it turned out to be pretty small, at least for the moment, so I didn't bother writing about it or taking pictures. When I head to the big one in the middle of Hamburg, I will make sure to write something.

Also, I'm going to start an E-mail list for blog update reminders, if you want to know instantly when a new blog is up, just send an e-mail to ksacherman@gmail.com to get on the list!

Cooking

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Sacherman) — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 16:00:00 +0000

The christmas markets don't get going until next weekend, I found out today, so I'll write a little about cooking with my host mom here in Germany.

Sometimes on weekends or when I have time I help my host mom cook lunch or whatever she is making. Lunch is the biggest meal of the day in most German families, while breakfast and dinner are usually simple, cold meals consisting of breads and toppings, and salads and vegetables. My host mom is fun to cook with because for some strange reason she has complete faith in my cooking abilities, even with things that I have no clue what to do. Sometimes you cook with someone and one person completely dominates the kitchen and tries to do everything, but my host mom gets stuff ready for me and then says, "Here, you know what to do with this right?" It's pretty fun sometimes. She still does work on other things and tells me what to do when, and what to add and such, so in the end I am like a second set of hands for her. We end up making a pretty solid team sometimes.

This morning, for example, we baked a batch of cupcakes. We didn't use any boxed mix or anything, just eggs, flour, sugar, milk, etc. We made some plain ones, some chocolate chip ones, and a batch of marzipan-ish almond ones. Some were later topped with a sugar glaze and chocolate flakes or sprinkles, and some were powdered with powdered sugar. We ate a good chunk of the total 36 cupcakes during our families usual Sunday coffee, hot chocolate, and cake session, which I have come to really enjoy.

Anyway, expect pictures for the next post, as well as that christmas market information I hinted at.

-Kevin

The next little bump.

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Sacherman) — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 13:34:00 +0000

I have finally started to talk a little in German with my host mom and people at school. It took a long time, but now that the ball's rolling I think things will go a little faster. Before, when I wasn't talking, my main fear was that I would say the wrong stuff, or I wouldn't know the word, and then I would make a complete fool of myself. That happens, but as it turns out, it's not all that bad, as long as I laugh with them.

Now that I am comfortable enough with my vocabulary and grammar to talk I am running into other problems though. I really didn't think that my American accent would be as much of a problem as it is. I knew it would happen, it has to happen. If I didn't have an American accent, who would have one? All Americans must at some point. Anyway, I figured it would just be one of those things that would be there, and maybe later I would work on getting rid of it a little, but it has turned out to be pretty annoying.

First of all, any time I say something in German to people at school (not teachers, only other kids) they laugh. Some are worse than others (I won't name names, except Patrick). Usually it's just that one word that I get wrong that sets it off, something that seems simple like "ich" which means " I " , it's not pronounced like "itch" or as in "dish" but somewhere in between, and I can't seem to get there. Maybe Germans have a differently shaped mouth and/or throat that helps them belt it out? Back to the point, I mess up one little word, and then one person gets a little grin, and then it turns into a chuckle, and I'm lucky if it stops there. If it continues on to a full laugh, and other people join in, I have no choice but to stop talking a laugh too, even if I don't get it. It can get worse though! The only way it gets past the laughing stage is when it somebody turns around to someone else and says "Oh hey, did you hear Kevin? No? Oh, Kevin, say it again." I'll get more into that later. The laughing doesn't last long at all, and it's all in good humor so there's no problem. It usually doesn't bug me that much but I could live without it.

About the "Oh hey, did you hear Kevin? No? Oh, Kevin, say it again." thing, I think I could make some pretty good money from this. Some times people come up to me and say, "Hey, Kevin, say _______." I've learned that if I say no, it continues to, "Oh, come on, please say _______." At this point if I say no, it can go a few ways. Sometimes they give up, if the word isn't that funny or if nobody is else is there. Sometimes they just keep asking again and again. But sometimes, and this one's the key, someone says, "Hey, come on now, I'll give you 10 cents when you say it." It's hard to turn those offers down.

The words that they want me to say mostly come from two different sources. The first is when I say something and it sounds funny with my American accent, and the person that heard it wants other people to hear it. That kind isn't my favorite, cause I don't like repeating my mistakes when I know I did something wrong. The other kind is when it's a funny word in general, one example is "Syrupartiges Piswasser" (sp?). It means syrup-flavored piss-water if you couldn't see that one, and one guy (I won't name names) uses it to describe Coca-cola. I think I got 10 cents for that one. Another one is "Wanderdunen." If you know what it means, great, if not, don't worry. It's pretty funny. There is another source for these phrases and words, but my German is good enough to mostly avoid it by now, and that's when the words are racy or mean slang, but I don't fall for that trick.

The reality of my accent hit hard the other night when I stopped by McDonalds (which seems to be very popular in Germany). I order two cheeseburgers in my best German ("Zwei Cheeseburgers" for anyone who wants to know). Now, cheeseburger is the same word in German as in English, and "Zwei" is pretty short and simple, but for some reason, the lady behind the counter (she wasn't American/Brittish) said, "For here or to go?" I was pretty shocked, and I did the stupid thing and answered in English. She went on to say, "Is that all, two euros, and thankyou,". I still wonder if my accent was really bad enough on just those two little words that she noticed I wasn't a German speaker and switched into English.

I'm sure it will improve sometime!

-Kevin

A preview from the next post: Christmas markets!

I would have won the bowling match...

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Sacherman) — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 23:45:00 +0000

If it weren't for that freak high-fiving accident during the first round!

School's back.

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Sacherman) — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 21:48:00 +0000

I wrote a short blog with pictures, now its time to get down to the news from the first week back to school from fall vacation. This week we got back a couple of tests that we took before the vacation; history, politics, and chemistry. The only one which I actually recieved a grade on was chemistry, and I got a 4. The grading system is 1 through 6, 1 being the best (A+) then 2 is B and so on. The test was difficult, even for a lot of the other people in the class, so I was pretty proud of myself for getting 11.5 points out of 24.

The history test is a whole 'nother thing. Chemistry involves alot of numbers and diagrams, and the elements have similar names (well, some do, Sodium is Natrium, Hydrogen is Wasserstoff). With numbers and pictures, language doesn't really matter, even though learning it is still a problem, but history is words, and only words. On top of that, it was German history, which I don't know much about. The point is, I did bad on the history test. Most people wrote full pages of information for each question, I only hd a couple words scribbled down. For one answer, I simply wrote "Demokratie" (democracy). The funny thing is that the teacher wrote next to it, "Genauer! Was sonst noch?" (More preceise, what else?) Even though he didn't even bother giving me a grade, but he complained about my innaccurate answer.

Maybe now is a good time to mention that German tests are nothing like American tests. Multiple choice questions are only ever seen in math tests, and even then they are few and far between. So far, it seems that for alot of tests you get a couple pieces of paper and a question sheet. This makes things pretty difficult for a non-German speaker to do much of anything on tests, but I do my best.

The politics test was a report we had to write about an internship. About a month ago we went to a job fair type thing and we had to interview somebody at the company where we would like to have an internship. I did my report on Airbus. I managed to scrap together 2 pages of information, and I surprised the teacher when I handed it in. Unfortunatly, she did not grade it, and my homework for next week is to correct the crazy amount of mistakes I had (there were actually 3 whole lines that DIDN'T have mistakes).

Today we took a test in a class, I think I did OK actually, we will see next week when we get it back.

Until next time,
-Kevin

Bored of reading plain old English?

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Sacherman) — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 21:38:00 +0000

Head over to the German side of my life!

http://sachermanindeutschland.blogspot.com/

Timber!

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Sacherman) — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 14:26:00 +0000

It's been a good 3 weeks without a post, sorry. I guess I was a little uninspired for a little while.

Anyway, the other day my host brother and I took on a rogue group of trees that were taking over the area near the trashcans. Armed with a branch cutter and a handsaw, or mission was clear, and within a half hour we had succesfully eliminated all three targets.

The Target
Locked and Loaded

Moving in for the kill.

It had to look like an accident.

A more space-efficiant, German Christmas tree.

A Tour of My Notebook.

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Sacherman) — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 14:09:00 +0000

I thought that since I have not written much about my school time so far here in Germany, I would give my readers a full tour of my school notebook, complete with full color photos and even a video!

This is the first page of my notebook. You can see that I had attempted to actually take notes and understand what was going on, but I gave up pretty fast, in this case a history lesson that went right over my head. (this was still the beginning of school). One day when I was just doodling, I rememebered doing this cool designs in math class a long time ago, so I thought I would try to do it again, and it worked. I created this one using a ruler and a pen, all of the lines you see are straight! Unfortunatly, it was not perfect because someone (I won't write his name for his own protection) decided to add a few of his own lines.

This next page is a rare site in my notebook, an entire page full of writing, almost completly lacking doodles (I don't know why I had to go and highlight my name in the bottom corner, ruining an otherwise pristine page of work). The next page in the notebook is covered halfway with writing on the same subject, and without any doodles. It may look great, a whole page of writing about a Franz Kafka parable, but it is in English and it was for the most part incorrect.

This design is one of my favorites. The sheet started out as notes on the formation of volcanoes, but once I lost track of what was going on, I think I mentally gave up on the notes and started doodling. the color was an afterthought, and I didn't finish it because I am not yet sure if these drawings are better left black and white or not. I think it would make a great stained-glass window.

I sincerely thought that this was the given assignment that day in German. We were told to listen to a parable from Franz Kafka and write down pictures that we get out of it. I guess in German, the word for picture is the same for "word picture", so in the end I was wrong, once again. For a little background info, the parable was about how the narrarator would love to be an Indian, blah blah blah. (I say that only because I didn't understand much more than the title.).

This masterpiece took a few class periods to complete. It was done completely freehand. Unlike other doodles, this one has it's own dedicated page. I opened to a new page to start taking notes, but there were no notes for me to take, so I did a little doodle, then I opened to it again the next class to take notes, and again there were no notes, so I started to expand the doodle to fill the page.

This last page is a page of notes from Philosophy class. I felt bad that I was doing so much doodling, so I decided to aim my doodles towards the class subject. Because the school makes you choose between philosphy or religion, I thought evolution would be fair game. I like how my little comic strip came up, and I even made a video of it!

Go here for the video.

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Sacherman) — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 15:24:00 +0000

Who knew that Hamburg was a beach town? This weekend I went into the city with some fellow schoolmates (Kevin right and Felix left). We walked around some parts of the city, and they showed me some places. We went to the infamous Reeperbahn, although at three in the afternoon, the only thing going on is cleanup from the night before. Maybe I will go back sometime at night. From there we walked by the fishmarket, which opens on Sundays at 5, which I hear is a cool place to go, it's not really that much fish I guess, but kind of an after party for people who spent the night on the Reeperbahn. After that we hit up this beach! There are a handfull of these "beach clubs" once you pass the Harbor in Hamburg.

If you look at if from this view though, it doesn't look as much like a party. The same "beach" from the picture before is right next to the parking lot, overlooking the river and "Blohm und Voss"'s gigantic shipyard.

That's it for now, more stuff when I get more pictures!

-Kevin

A little bit about German candy.

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Sacherman) — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 19:12:00 +0000

I found something to write about this week, German candy and chocolates. I have only been here for a few weeks, but I have tasted some pretty tasty snacks. Most people know the line of "Kinder" chocolates; different shaped cookies or chocolates with chocolate cream or milk cream. One of the more popular are the "Uberrashungs Eier" (Suprise eggs). Here is a picture for you poor soles who have never had one.

The eggs have a thin chocolate shell, lined with milk cream. This milk cream is in many German candies. It is kind of an opposite of chocolate. Many people would say vanilla is the opposite of chocolate, but the milk cream seems to fit once you taste it. Once you eat the chocolate-milk shell (which is made from super delicious milk chocolate) there is a little container in the middle, like you would get for a quarter out of the machine at a supermarket. Inside the balls are little toys, here are some examples that me and Heiko (host brother) recieved. They are from a series of goodies that when placed in the sun for a while, their big noses turn red, like a sunburn. I have heard that there are some collecters that will pay alot for certain toys out of these eggs, similar to collecting Happy Meal toys or Beanie Babies.

Another brand of German candy I really like are Ritter Sport chocolate squares. They are like chocolate bars, but square shaped. Each color wrapper is a different type, so when you see the display, it presents you with a deliciously overwhelming raindow of deliciousness. The flavors range from Alpen Milch (milk chocolate with milk from the Alps), to chocolate with strawberry flavored cream and little crunchy strawberry bits, to my personal favorite of dark chocolate with marzipan.

On the line of marzipan, it is awsome. If you don't know what it is (which I think you should), marzipan is a super sweet, sticky, almond paste that is found inside of alot of chocolates and candies. It is really rich, and really tasty.

Today I found a new snack, Heiko showed it to me. It is called Koala "Kakao" or "Milch". The box is full of little cookies loosely shaped like koalas, with little koalas drawn onto them. They cookies are filled with chocolate or milk cream, both of which are delicious. The koala cookies also came with little toys, I got a snake and Heiko got a koala princes.

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Sacherman) — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 18:07:00 +0000

No new post this week......except for this one I guess, but it shouldn't really count or something. I promise (to you, my loyal reader base of about 20) that I WILL write something this week as soon as I know what I want to write. PLEASE comment on this...thing (it's not a post!)...if there is anything you (my huge reader base) want to know!

-Kevin