Back to the scholastic grind

I miss having an mp3 player :-( For those who don't know, mine finally bit the dust a few weeks ago and my warranty has long since run out unfortunately. I don't understand how memory can be so cheap, yet mp3 players continue to be so expensive. 4gigs was barely enough for me before and yet a decent 4 gig player is still $100+, although I would like t have more memory. Grumble grumble bahhhh. I miss listening to music on the way to class.

This morning when I woke up it was raining really hard, so I thought it might be a good day to debut the waterproof trenchcoat Jay's mom got for me for Christmas. Lightweight, packable, but waterproof... perfect right? Well by the time I finished breakfast, it was blue skies and sunny. What?! Oh, no worries, by the time I put my books in my backpack it was pouring again and gray. The weather is really strange here.

As I made the trek to campus this morning for the first time in what seems like forever (but was actually about a week and a half), I was experiencing a great deal of pain in my chest as I struggled to breathe. Normally the air is humid and thick, but today I was literally breathing water, and it made it all the more difficult to climb those hills without good old fashion oxygen. I'm not sure why I seem to have so much trouble with it still, but I suppose I am still getting used to it.

I am in the computer lab right now and I had brought in my practical (homework) assignment for International Public Law, which honestly, I'm not sure if it is due today or if today they are assigning it officially since break started right after the last class. I did it anyway, just in case. Better safe than sorry. I plugged in my new flash drive that I got from MediaMarkt (4gigs for 16 euros I think it was... and yet a 4 gig mp3 player costs how much?!), made a few last minute grammatical corrections, and went to print out my 2 pages worth... nothing. I finally go to the printer to see what the dealio is and the guy monitoring the room tells me that it is out of paper.

I stood there waiting for him to refill it, and then he informs me that they are no longer giving "free paper" to students, in fact, we can't even just pay for it... we have to bring in our own paper from now on. Seriously, for a city that is so anal about recycling everything, it seems like they could invest in some cheap recycled copy paper and just keep another recycling bin nearby for the rest. The guy graciously provided me with a couple of sheets of paper and told me to remember to bring in my own next time. Sheesh. Order a shot of vodka in a bar for 1 euro and you'll get 3 shots and some snacks to go with it... but you can just forget about a free sheet of paper. I guess I shouldn't be surprised... I have to pay to have the copy-center print out my one page homework assignments for me. Heaven forbid an email attachment instead.

I'm getting over the culture shock a bit, but sometimes I just can't help but get a little frustrated with things here.

I miss 7-11 slurpees and high speed reliable internet.