Hi all, It's been a long time since an update, but whatever.
Well, the semester is well underway, and it is actually almost half over (!!!), well, it's at least 1/3rd over. But this semester is not nearly as bad as the last semester, so it's not so important that it ends instantly.
I have finished applying to graduate school, and I have taken the GRE. The GRE wasn't as good as I had hoped, but that's not so bad, since the universities that I want to go to aren't actually the highest rated ones, but I haevn't decided where I'd like to go the most. It will probably also depend on my stipend, since I'll have a small family to support.
But it looks like the Raleigh/Durham area is the place for us. It has the population of a big city, which Nadja wants, as well as the advantages of a nice suburban area (which I want). All of the California universities are either located in big cities, where even appartments are expensive (starting around $1000/month), or in really rice rural areas, where apartments only exist for students, and are thus expensive, starting at around $1000/month. Considering I could get a 10-year mortgage on a decent house in the Raleigh/Durham area for less than that (then add property taxes to make it match), then that seems like a clear choice for me:-)
So, if all goes as planned, I hope to buy us a house. I am currently working on getting a credit rating. I recently got a credit card. It is a secured credit card, which (for those of you who don't know) means that I placed a security deposit in the amount of my credit limit. I am currently reading up on strategies to make my credit look as good as possible (of course one should always pay on time, but for example, what percentage of the credit limit should one use? 100% is probably too much, whereas 0% is certainly too little). I also applied for a student loan to pay my tuition for next semester. The loan is interest free until 6 months after I finish college, so I'm not actually losing money. I am, however, losing time, since it turns out not to be as simple as one could hope, when one has no direct personal contact to the university.
Since I am planning on/hoping to buy a house, I've been doing some research into being a cheapskate. I've decided that planting a garden correctly can be a way to get towards this goal. The thing that I hated about gardening at home was all the freakin' weeds - gardening was just non-stop weed picking, and I didn't even help that much. So I decided that making a raised bed would probably be a good choice, and I found a relatively famous gardening guy who supports my idea. His idea is called "Square Foot Gardening" (see http://www.squarefootgardening.com/html/body_how_to___.html) and it has been significantly revised since he published his book who knows how many decades ago. The way he organizes his plants allows for a decent-sized garden to fit in a 4'x4'x6" bed, which is really, really small. The soil used in the garden is completely independent of the native soil to the area, and is thus rock-free and weed-free. It seems like a good idea, and it's small enough that I could realistically build a small greenhouse to house a couple gardens for the few months of Winter in the Triangle area. Ah there are so many great ways to be a cheapskate.
It's starting to get wintery in Freiburg, which means it gets down to around 35 degrees, it rains, and the wind blows. It's kinda yucky, but in the mountains area Freiburg, you can see a lot of snow. I'll be spending Christmas in Munich with Nadja's family. Munich tends to be a little snowier than Freiburg.
Anyhow, that's it for now...
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