In the Kuche

After school today, Clara and I made pasta with lecker tomato sauce- it had corn, onions, pepper powder (or something like that), salt, pepper, and another mysterious powder. But dang, it was delicious! I wonder at what point in my lunch-cooking career I can cross off "learn to cook" on my bucket list. When do you know that you've learned how to cook? I believe it's a combination of three things.
1) You're not afraid of your food. (That's what Mom always tells me when I'm stirring cookie dough. But when I try to stir like she does I end up with flour all over my face.)
2) You have a little creativity. You feel confident in adding an extra ingredient or adding more salt than the recipe calls for.
3) You know what you're cooking and where it comes from. Hence, sticking prepackaged stuff in the microwave doesn't count as cooking.
4) (Bonus item) You have mastered the art of cutting onions without completely shutting your eyes and chopping blindly. Either that or you have purchased swimming goggles for this exclusive purpose.

Another list for y'all:
-something I've noticed: It's acceptable to eat out of the serving bowl with your own spoon. Multiple times.
-something I'm excited about: Going to see New Moon with GERMAN GIRLS on Saturday! Not so pysched about the fact that it's New Moon, but since my company is DEUTSCH I'm completely fine with that.
-something funny: I learned that there's no German translation for the word awkward. How handy that would be if there was one- it could describe so many moments of the last few months. Although I will say that there've been a lot less of them!
-something rather blah: it gets dark at 4:15 and doesn't get light until 8:15 in the morning.
-something cool: the daughter in the family who lives on the other side of our duplex just came home from a 3-month exchange to Canada! She's my age, and speaks relatively good English (for a German kid) and she adores the language so she speaks it to me and I speak back in German. I think this is a pretty good compromise. She's really nice and already asked me to go shopping with her and some of her friends sometime.
-something fun: Yesterday I had a skype party with a bunch of other CBYXers! It was really fun to talk to them all and see how they're coming along, and hear that we all have a lot of common problems or have noticed a lot of the same things.

Now I have to go start my homework... do as much as I can understand... tonight I only have Mathe and Latein, though, so it shouldn't be too bad. Tchüss!