Shelby's Life and Whatnot

Great Birthday

I had a great birthday yesterday. And before you ask, let me tell you it feels SO much different being 31 rather than 30. I mean I'm like an entirely new person! Kidding.

The day went pretty normally, but I had a great class. We're still working on prepositional phrases, but it really clicked for me last night and I was kickin' ass and takin' names. I totally grasped the things we were practicing and was able to answer all of my questions correctly. We then broke into pairs to write dialogues and I was very relieved to be paired with Santiago, who is from Argentina. He is just at my level of German and we work well together.

After class we decided to try a new place--"Down Under"--a bar/restaurant with an Australian theme. They claim to be "Home of Chicken Wings" and I wanted to check out their wing offerings. They did have an extensive menu of wings. There were several different styles; everything from Teriyaki to Thai Peanut sauce (?!). I considered the spicy wings but they claimed to be XXX spicy and I worried that it would be too much, so I went with the BBQ. They were messy but very good and they even had blue cheese dipping sauce--the first time I've seen that in Germany.

As it turned out, there was a huge football (soccer) game between Germany and their archrivals Holland. Apparently the two countries are really competitive. We ended up getting caught up in the game and the bar served shots when Germany scored. Holland was favored to win but the game ended in a 1:1 draw. Both teams were pretty bad on offense but I thought Germany was playing some really good defense. Of course, I was the only person in the bar saying "Nice save!" and "Deeee-NIED!" Dave in Paris has a rather harsher review of the game here.

We were a little confused toward the end of the game when both teams were tied. Kevin asked "do they have overtime or something?" Consulting my vast store of soccer knowledge, I said "Well I think they have that sudden death kicking thing." Although now I think they play something like 2 regular overtimes before the sudden death thing. So here we were, expecting overtime, when all of a sudden everyone started to leave the field and people were starting to leave the bar. The timer was counting up, so it took us a second to realize that that time limit was up. But what are they doing? Aren't they going to play until someone wins? Apparently not. Kevin found out later that they get a certain number of points for a win and a smaller number for a draw. I guess that's how the tournament goes.

After two pints of beer and two shots (although they tasted very strongly of lemonade and I really suspect that they were lacking alcohol or had very minute amounts) we went home and broke out the bottle of ice wine. Mmmmmm. Unfortunately this morning I was paying the price. My first hangover in a long time.