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choco_froshFulbrighters are often not what you expect to look at them, or if you hear about them. And we have LOTS of inesting characters to demonstrate this. Cut for examples…
We said goodbye in Frankfurt to:
Jackie, the six-foot-tall dyed blond from a farm family in northern Michigan, who’s going off to study the Lieder of Strauss.
Michael, the geeky-looking kid in the jean jacket, who set an adaptor on fire in his hotel room, and is actually from Texas, and smokes, and drinks more than probably anyone else on the program.
Alaina is from Missouri, went to Kenyon, and is in a long-distance engagment. We had a long reminiscence about a capella.
Andrew, the unbelievably gangly journalist who’s going to study the Green Party in Freiburg.
Also the veteran Fulbrighters: Sally, the novelist in Berlin, and Daniel, the medieval philosophy guy in Trier.
Staff: Ines Horbert and Catherina Hänsch: one blond, one brunette, one from East Berlin, one from West Berlin, one office, one unstoppable problem-solving team.
Reiner Rohr, our fearless leader: in his fifties, dignified yet informal, and, as I mentioned, in the habit of staying up past midnight plying Fulbrighters with wine.
Here in Regensburg we have
TC, another member of a farm family with five children (this time from Colorado), who as a result of his vaguely Nordic looks and predeliction for jean jackets manages to look more European than any of us. He’s also an economist, interested in questions of national identity and national pride, and spent the summer researching obesity with the WHO in Geneva. He wrote, like, two undergrad theses last year, and he’s spent long enough in Germany (he had a home stay at some point) that they bumped him up from the Kiel group since he probably has the best conversation skills of any of us.
James looks kinda like Ross from Friends, or maybe some member of the Octet, and plays the Oboe. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised to learn he was gay, but I was.
And Amanda (ex-apartment mate). Looks like she's twenty. Asks like she's twenty. Is thirty.
And then there's Clara (fearless leader number two) : quite short and in her thirties. She’s actually from Slovakia and has been to every continent except South America and Antartica (inc. long road trips all of the US, and living for months at a time in New York), and was grilling our fellow-Fulbrighter Xavier about Mexico over some beers, for when she circumnavigates (can one use the term if it’s a road trip?) after she’s done looking after us. And she got married in the Pilsner brewery. We Fulbrighters have been to an impressive array of places, but we all suck compared to her.
Of course, these are the exceptions. Alaina really is a Catholic from the midwest who sang a capella; Rolin really is an artist; Erina really does ride horses. But an interesting collection of unexpected types, all the same.
We said goodbye in Frankfurt to:
Jackie, the six-foot-tall dyed blond from a farm family in northern Michigan, who’s going off to study the Lieder of Strauss.
Michael, the geeky-looking kid in the jean jacket, who set an adaptor on fire in his hotel room, and is actually from Texas, and smokes, and drinks more than probably anyone else on the program.
Alaina is from Missouri, went to Kenyon, and is in a long-distance engagment. We had a long reminiscence about a capella.
Andrew, the unbelievably gangly journalist who’s going to study the Green Party in Freiburg.
Also the veteran Fulbrighters: Sally, the novelist in Berlin, and Daniel, the medieval philosophy guy in Trier.
Staff: Ines Horbert and Catherina Hänsch: one blond, one brunette, one from East Berlin, one from West Berlin, one office, one unstoppable problem-solving team.
Reiner Rohr, our fearless leader: in his fifties, dignified yet informal, and, as I mentioned, in the habit of staying up past midnight plying Fulbrighters with wine.
Here in Regensburg we have
TC, another member of a farm family with five children (this time from Colorado), who as a result of his vaguely Nordic looks and predeliction for jean jackets manages to look more European than any of us. He’s also an economist, interested in questions of national identity and national pride, and spent the summer researching obesity with the WHO in Geneva. He wrote, like, two undergrad theses last year, and he’s spent long enough in Germany (he had a home stay at some point) that they bumped him up from the Kiel group since he probably has the best conversation skills of any of us.
James looks kinda like Ross from Friends, or maybe some member of the Octet, and plays the Oboe. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised to learn he was gay, but I was.
And Amanda (ex-apartment mate). Looks like she's twenty. Asks like she's twenty. Is thirty.
And then there's Clara (fearless leader number two) : quite short and in her thirties. She’s actually from Slovakia and has been to every continent except South America and Antartica (inc. long road trips all of the US, and living for months at a time in New York), and was grilling our fellow-Fulbrighter Xavier about Mexico over some beers, for when she circumnavigates (can one use the term if it’s a road trip?) after she’s done looking after us. And she got married in the Pilsner brewery. We Fulbrighters have been to an impressive array of places, but we all suck compared to her.
Of course, these are the exceptions. Alaina really is a Catholic from the midwest who sang a capella; Rolin really is an artist; Erina really does ride horses. But an interesting collection of unexpected types, all the same.
