The Second Birthday

Today I woke up between eleven and twelve, when our cousin E. from Switzerland came to visit. It's rather awkward hearing visitors come in, then getting up and creaking on the wooden floor as one gathers one's clothing and furtively scampers to the bathroom in order to make a respectable appearance. Anyway, I did the necessary scampering, wandered over to the corner room, then (when E. was about to leave again) returned to the kitchen where I started reading the newspaper (I read all of the first section today, minus the advertising).

J. needed help with his homework; he was trying to sketch characters from Dorothy L. Sayers' Murder Must Advertise, which he must discuss in a poster for his German class. He was stuck trying to draw a not unpleasant and attractive, but worldly, woman who was becoming involved in the drug scene; he did one sketch, which looked (he said) as if she were a witch, and then another that looked right, but was difficult to copy on a larger scale. We also spent a long time (it made me slightly grumpy) looking for proper quills so that J. could go over the lines in ink. J. was in a good working mood today, and the fact that it is his birthday did nothing to disturb it.

After that I shopped for, and cooked, dinner. The menu was broiled chicken (from yesterday, but still tender), chicken broth, white asparagus soup, potatoes (which were done too late), romaine lettuce with tomato and vinaigrette, and cherry pudding with whipping cream and ladyfingers. The broth and vinaigrette were Papa's and Mama's contributions (well, Mama did also take care of the chicken). The cherry pudding was really just "Sauerkirschen" out of a jar, brought to a boil without additional sugar and then thickened with cornstarch. It was a little sour indeed, but I had put a package of vanilla sugar into the whipping cream, which made the combination subtly sweet. It really is a challenge, though, to make nice, well-rounded dishes from scratch, with good ingredients, without having to buy twenty million different items, without making the same thing all the time, and without having to slave away for hours.

J.'s birthday has altogether been a modest one. The main ceremony took place over dinner, when we sang "Happy Birthday" (J. joined in to good comic effect with his "opera voice") as well as this German song:

Der (J.) hat Geburtstag,
Wir wünschen ihn viel Glück,
Wir wünschen ihn viel Glück:
Alt soll er werden,
Kugelrund und dick.

Then there was a phone call from Aunt L., and just now T. and Ge. are trying to set up our North American VCR and beamer in order to see Limelight (which T. borrowed from the Amerika Gedenkbibliothek, and which J. is about as eager to watch as she is). I'll probably stop writing now and play the piano as quietly as I can . . .

What I should be doing is writing an e-mail to the student advisors at the Uni Heidelberg, asking for more information about transferring from UBC, but I'm a little fearful of taking the responsibility of formulating it properly and so on. Yesterday I saw that a provisional list of the BA and MA programmes has been put up, so I made a shortlist (not nearly short enough, in my opinion) of twelve programmes I'd be interested in. The problem is that, whenever I see lists of fields, I usually feel like taking them all, but then I have to concentrate and consider what I'm really unquestionably interested in and good at. It's more difficult since I never, for example, had Philosophy classes in school or university, or had a unit on Ancient Egypt since Grade 7; I'm sure that everyone has that problem, but it still doesn't make much sense to me to have to choose two fields and two fields only in such a situation.

So, here are the choices:

Ägyptologie
Alte Geschichte
Englische Literaturwissenschaft
Englische Philologie
Englische Sprach, Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft
Französistik
Klassische Archäologie
Klassische Philologie; Gräzistik
Klassische Philologie; Latinistik
(Lusitanistik; I only put that down because I found the name interesting, and I'd forgotten that "Lusitania" refers to "Portugal")
Ur- und Frühgeschichte
Vorderasiatische Archäologie

At UBC I already took three English Literature courses, an Archaeology course, one year-long Classical Studies course, two French Literature courses, one year-long History course, and one year-long Ancient Greek course. So that's the relevant experience I have to work with.

-- I just heard a soft sizzling noise, saw a flare of yellow-orange light, and heard the sounds of Ge. and T.'s dismay. I went to the living room door, and saw narrow plumes of grey smoke rising steadily from the VCR, with the two culprits regarding it unhappily from either side. Fortunately the videocassette wasn't inside.

T.'s comment: "That was such a waste of effort."
Ge.'s comment: "You did learn something from all this," (with a rising and doubtful inflection).