It's not just Homesickness

For the past several days, I've not been feeling too well. I'd not like to say that I'm sick, but I'm certainly not what I should be. I'm congested, coughing off and on, having from headaches from time to time from the congestion, and suffering from itchy/irritated eyes every now and again. It's a cold, I know, but I hate to say so. I wish that my symptoms would get on with it and go away, but these things will take their time before they "run their course." As is my luck with any race involving running, it seems that I'm also doomed to have the worst time in the race to lose the cold - so it goes.

The first week of classes is in, and I don't have much to say for it. I went to class on Monday for the "Greek for Beginners" and found out that it didn't start until Wednesday. Thankfully, I wasn't the only confused person wishing to take the course, for I wasn't the only one who showed up on Monday for the nonexistent event. There were five others. On Tuesday, I should have had two classes, but the first one won't start until next Tuesday, and the second one won't either. At least the first professor indicated as such by putting message on the door of the lecture hall, though. The second class was full when the gentleman at the podium in the front of the hall said that the class wouldn't be happening this week because the professor was in Canada. Interestingly enough, the professor provided information on Ilias (the online "learning platform" that is used at the university, probably to cut down on the volume of physical paper used in the classroom) about the course, outlining the exact topics to be covered in each lecture on which specific date, and this past Tuesday was listed as "Organisatorisches," which would translate to "organizational." Thus, my assumption was that this first class was just going to orient us to what was coming up. Obviously I was mistaken. Wednesday was the day that I actually had Greek for the first time, and I wondered if I should be sitting in the room – I was beginning to get a scratchy throat then...Luckily, I'm taking the class to get basic knowledge of Greek, and my friend Kate - who has taken the theological course that I'd like to take in the spring - told me that basically all I need to know is that a few words in the German language in the theological field come from Greek. The fact that basic Greek knowledge is "wünschenswert" is really a bit overplayed, I seemed to have gathered from here. The fact that Greek language influences theology is not something that I didn't already know and that the university thought it necessary to make this known before the outset of the course makes me ask how much confidence it has in its would-be theologians...Later in the afternoon on Wednesday, I had my Latin class. The professor went on for about twenty minutes about the Latium, a test that students in Germany must take who need to show some kind of proof of Latin knowledge before moving on in their academic or working careers. I don't need to take this test, but the professor took a huge amount of time to talk about it before he went on to rant for the next 40 minutes about the history of Julius Caesar. When the lecture was over, I talked with him, and he suggested that I not take this course because it was designed specifically to ready students to take the Latium, and since I didn't need to take that test, I could take another course that would be more generally oriented towards reading and translating Latin. That course takes place on Tuesdays and Thursday, but he said not to worry that I missed the first lecture - it was just a test day for him to get an idea where everyone is. I went, therefore, on Thursday to the class, and with my congested head, itchy eyes, and tight chest, I'm happy that I even was aware that he was talking, let alone what he was talking about. Afterwards, I lied to him and said that I understood most of what was going on, only that I didn't know the German terminology for the Latin grammatical constructions. The only thing I was thinking about during the lecture was my nose and throat - they were killing me - and how I was going to deal with them that night whilst trying to sleep.

Today was much better as far as my illness - my throat didn't hurt, but my cough and tight chest were still there and my eyes watered from time to time and my nose was constantly stuffed up. This condition really hasn't put me in the best of spirits, and it's hardly made for the most benevolent judgment call for Germany thus far in my stay, but I keep it in the back of my mind when I think about things that make me irritated, lonely, or homesick. I'm hoping this goes away in the next couple of days. Monday, my orientation group wants to go to the movies, and I'd like to go along, but I'm not going if I feel like I do today, and Friday, I'm supposed to go to Kassel for the weekend to meet a woman and her family who writes in a forum that I've written in for three years, and I'd hate to be feeling horrible for that. Those of you who really know me, know that I hate being sick. But again, let me reiterate, I not really sick - I'm just "not what I should be."