Do you want to kiss me?

Especially for my friend Tali, who loves my stories of awkward romance.

The year was 1994 when I was in my pick up truck with a very attractive and popular girl, the daughter of a well respected man in the area. I'm not quite sure why we were in my truck -- everything is done on such a whim at that age -- but we had gone to the convenience store or something, and now we were parked in her driveway. Arguably, she was the hottest girl in our classs -- very well developed, pretty , and confident -- but she was not really a member of the hot/popular girl clique. Too independent to be in a clique, she bounced in and out of it whenever she liked.
She had a boyfriend from the rival town, and apparently had a very active sex life with him. (Her boyfriend was two years younger and in my eyes was the king stud of all studs, Greek or dark-skinned, completely ripped, wearing a loin cloth and carrying a sword.) What set her apart from the other hot and popular girls was how carefree she spoke about sex, especially to me. She would talk about her sex life with me like our mothers would talk about gardening or needlepoint. Apparently, I was just "one of the girls". She told me her funny/embarrassing sex stories too, as if I would yawn in boredom if the story were too boring. Anyway, I'd usually just shake my head in admiration, and then high-five her and tell her better luck next time.
So we were sitting in front of her house one summer night, and I was listening to some problems she was having with her boyfriend. I tried to give her advice, but having never been in a relationship myself, it was all regurgitated advice I had heard on TV or read somewhere. After five minutes, she stopped abruptly, looked at me intently and said, "You want to kiss me, don't you?"
Now in retrospect, I should have had by all means taken this opportunity. I had kissed two girls in my life at that point, and I could have learned something. But at the time I was just confused. (Rememer in There's Something About Mary when Cameron Diaz asks Ben Stiller to the prom, and his response was "What? Oh, do you mean you need a driver or something?" Same thing.)
"What? No..." with a scrunched forehead thinking to myself "did I do something to indicate I wanted to kiss her?"
"Yes, you do." erroneously thinking she could read my thoughts. I slowly shook my head "no", and my puzzlement began to turn into anxiety. "Ok, well have a good night, then." she said as she climbed out of my truck. We waved one last time to one another, and then I backed out.
I don't remember how she reacted emotionally. Did she sigh in resignation? Was she angry?
It wasn't a rebuff, it was that it was such unchartered territory simply being in the truck with a well respected, popular girl that it simply never crossed my mind she would want to kiss me, or that I would have the option to kiss her. I remember thinking on the way home that maybe she wanted to serve as my tutor of sorts and show me the ropes. Nice, but then I would have had to expose my complete lack of sexual aptitude to her...
A couple of years later at Michigan State and with a tiny more bit of confidence and wisdom under my belt, she was over at our house for a party, and I kept hoping that after a couple of drinks, she might ask me the question again. I'd try to lock eyes with her and telepathically say "Remember a couple of years ago in my truck??"
"Do you guy care if Scott comes over?," she asked. Scott was her new boyfriend, and the question never came again.

Disturbance at Church

Yesterday I woke up before church, and the only thing I had for breakfast was a candy bar and some cookies. Not that I am complaining, but stores/cafes/bakeries are closed on Sunday, and I really didn't have much of an choice. Although I was perfectly ok with my breakfast selection (I popped a daily vitamin to even things out), my stomach started to feel really gassy on my way to church. The walk was a good 20 minutes, so I figured I got everything out by the time I sat in the pew. The first 30 minutes of the service elapsed without a peep, but that was because I was sitting down and "the pathway was blocked", let's say. When the congregation finally stood up to sing a hymn, before the song began, I let a rip ... completely without warning. I nervously shuffled my foot and SNIFFED, as if I could retroactively muffle it out. Why do people sniff? Why did I sniff? It only drew more attention to myself. Maybe it's just to add a noise to the collection of noises you are "intentionally" making. "Listen to me! I sniffed, which goes perfectly with my feet shuffling performance including one shuffle that sounded exactly like a fart. Just conducting my own little orchestra over here. Maybe I'll incorporate tapping on the pew in front of me..." *TAP TAP TAP*
Or maybe I sniff as a knee jerk reaction to show that it's no big deal that I farted. *fart* ... *sniff* "What are you looking at? I fart, I sniff, I do whatever I want to do in this church... Either way, I'll time the two better next time so that they coincide.

Cooking with Fire

Being low on cash like I am, I've become very fond of cooking. It's cheaper than going out to eat -- especially here in Magdeburg -- and like always, it's fun. Today, one thing in particular was on the menu: aspargus. The Germans love their aspargus, and it's pretty much sold everywhere you look here. Whether it be a roadside stand or a cafe, the changes are you can get aspargus there. I decided there wasn't a better opportunity to try my hand at making this odd looking vegetable (it's white in Germany) than today.
Unfortunately for me, the dish I prepared was an alarming disaster. Everywhere I looked on the Internet told me to peel the stalks. But because I've never heard of such a thing (Peeling aspargus??! Really?? Is there a peel??) , I decided to do without. Also, I momentarily tried to peel with a potato peeler, and either the peeler agreed with me that aspargus are not meant to be peeled , or it was very dull, and it didn't work. So I threw them into boiling water and let them cook for 15 or so minutes. The result was awful. Chewing on the stalks was similar to chewing on sugar cane. An extremely bland , not-sweet, sugarcane..

At that point, I had to think of something else to eat, and decided on bread with Nutella-- something I probably have had every day since I've been here. I popped two slices into my American toaster I just brought back from Chicago, went to the bathroom for a couple of seconds, and when I came back there were literally flames flaming out of the toaster. Apparently my electric converter I connected the socket to the plug with does not regulate how much electricity the toaster is getting, and it immediately incinerates anything that enters it. So now I'm sitting in my room with all of the windows in the unit open hoping the place clears out before a neighbor calls the fire department..

http://www.shelfari.com/

cool website I just found. It's a social network of bookreaders... I'm always looking for advice on what book to read next ... Maybe you are too...

http://www.shelfari.com/

Go Spartys..

The training is going well. I'm learning some Arabic, French, and a bit of Italian as the other trainers practice our lesson plans on us. And, of course, some Swahili, but only enough to say "Hi. My name is Ryan. It is great to meet you!" and then stand awkwardly until a native Swahilian ? figures out I don't really speak the language.

I moved into my hotel, and it's nice to be able to lay my stuff out and get organized. I made my first supermarket purchase -- kilo of apples, small loaf of sunflower seed bread, and a jar of Nutella -- all for 4 Euro - something. It was my dinner last night and breakfast this morning. I also purchased an alarm clock yesterday because without a cell phone or watch, my only way of waking up was keeping the curtains open for the sun. That, and wake myself up every half our or so to see what time it was.
Tonight, I'll probably go out with my trainee friends who are not going home for the weekend -- Hamburg, mostly -- and somehow keep myself awake for the Michigan State game at 2.30...

That's all for now. Time to prepare my lesson plan demo. Bis bald! Ryan

Eye Doc and Tackling the Partition

Today I took a trip to my eye doctor – one of a series of trips to doctors to make sure everything is in working order before I leave. During the small talk between the doctor and me, I revealed I was heading to Germany, trying to impress her. She was a very young, attractive doctor right out of school, with whom I realized it was easier to talk with my contacts out. When I first met her and when she led me back to her office, I stumbled over my words a lot, and I realized it was easier to talk to an extremely attractive optometrist when you had forgotten she was extremely attractive. Though she may have been impressed to hear of my sudden career change and the upcoming trip to Germany, she professionally decided to subject me to an annoying dilation of my eyes. Spellbound by her combination of blurry beauty and high level of education, I acquiesced and allowed her to drop several stinging drops of pupil-widener into my eyes.
About fifteen minutes of waiting room time later, and texts to my friend apologizing in advance for having to“see” her face by handling it when I would subsequently meet her for lunch, I was led back into the dim examination room. Once again trying to impress her (and perhaps lengthen the amount of time of my exam), I told her I didn't think I was very dilated. To which she answered, after a quick glance at my eyes and a “you're kind of retarded, aren't you” laugh, to look into the mirror. My irises had been entirely eclipsed by black. We went through the examination, during which I was a little less intimidated by her as she wore a ridiculous looking pair of binocular-type things on her face. (Still hot, but wearing also wearing binoculars on her face.) I debated for a few seconds whether or not I should tell her. The examination was over in less than five minutes, and on the way out she handed me her business card. Immediately I start fantasizing of a transatlantic correspondence which begins with a slight eye irritation and ends with her flying to Germany to christen our relationship. Then I noticed her email was not on the business card, and that fantasy fell to the wayside..
Despite being dissed by the no-email, I was in a good mood and convinced I was barely being affected by the dilation when I stepped outside and walked to the El. Off in my own world (probably thinking how a phone call about eye irritation would develop in a bubbling romance) , I boarded the plane, and as I was only going one stop down the line decided to lean against the partition rather than sit down. Only when I crossed my legs and leaned did I realized too late that I was about six inches further from the translucent plastic partition than I thought, and crashed into it with my shoulder at nearly a 45 degree angle. Brushing myself off , and glancing around to make sure no one saw me shoulder tackle the partition, I regained my composure.

Trader Joe's

I was just at Trader Joe's picking up an early lunch, and the following conversation took place betweent the cashier and me:

Cashier scanning items...
Ryan: How are you?
Cashier looks up, startled from his daze.
Cashier: Good!
Ryan: Thank you!
Thank you?
Ryan: I mean.. good!