The Legend of The Dude

This is a shout out to my best friend and one of the coolest dudes around: My brother, Niko aka The Dude.

I may be his older (albeit smaller) brother, but I sure do look up to this kid. The Dude has been through a lot this past year and I was unfortunately away, out of the country, living in Germany the whole time.

This is a guy who persevered through all of my "big brother antics" when we were younger (when I still happened to be the older AND bigger brother) and several other hardships to develop into an intelligent, strikingly handsome, athletic as hell, lovable, competitive, and endearing individual. I don't think my parents could have asked for a better 3rd child, the perpetual 'baby' of the family.


When I was only a Sophomore in college and The Dude was going through his college search and football recruiting process I received a phone call from him. He wanted to tell me about an essay he wrote for a college application. The prompt, or theme, for this particular essay was to say who his hero was and why. He was so excited to tell me about it because, as it turned out, I happened to be his guy, his hero.

At the time, I didn't know what to say to something like this. I didn't even know if I liked having this type of hefty responsibility bestowed upon my already faulty shoulders (I had shoulder surgery just a short year before). But, it was, and to this day it is still such an honor to have had my little brother tell that to me.


Well, Dude, here's to you. I truly and sincerely admire the relentless work you have put in this past year.

I couldn't ask for two better role models than our kickass father and you, Dude. I really mean that.

So, thanks for being one of MY Hero's too.

I love you and can't wait to see ya in about a month!




-russ

*tweet tweet*

Before I actually do any real blogging, I want to take a moment to remember a great friend of mine, Beau Jacobson. Beau was a great friend and teammate for three years while I was in college. He was found dead, after having drowned, out off of an island in the South Pacific. He was there, doing what Beau did best, pursuing and achieving a goal of becoming a successful pearl farmer.

Beau lived life with a zest that was to be unrivaled. He did everything full-bore, 100%. Whether it was loving his family, playing football, hanging around drinking beers with his best friends, or being a student - Beau did it to the best of his ability. Anybody who knew Beau would tell you the same thing. I, myself, might not even have been a UPS Logger had it not been for him. He was a central figure at a recruiting lunch and an overnight visit me and 5 other high school friends took. He was obviously a very persuasive and positive man, for I made a firm commitment to UPS. My friends who didn't even end up going to UPS still remember Beau Jacobson from that one, single night. That's the kind of impact a man like Beau will leave on you.

I want to thank you for being such a great friend and tremendous positive influence to me, Beau. It's no wonder that writing this brought a tear to my eye. A guy like you will never go away. I miss you.
_____________________________________________________

Beginning of real post:

I know what you’re thinking, and I’m sorry. Okay? It’s been far too long. I know, I know. I’m not going to sit here and pump you full of excuses about how much fun I was having out in the beautiful weather instead of staying cooped up inside all day long to blog on “the internets”. Instead, I figured I would jump right into things…

So, I have quite a lot to write about; so much, in fact, that when I look at it, it just seems too daunting to me. That got me to thinking. You see, I want to keep you filled in on the things I’m lucky enough to be able to do – and some of the stuff that still needs telling is some of the best (i.e. the whole Wacker gang coming to visit). However, with so much to write about so many separate escapades, I felt I needed to come up with some kind of creative theme to help paraphrase everything.

And now, my (hopefully) entertaining, blatantly satirical, “easy-way-out” blog post theme – Twittering. Or tweets. Whatever the heck you like to call them. (Please refer to www.twitter.com to better understand this nonsense)

You may remember me telling you all about my setting up a twitter account a little while back. At first, I was into it. It was such a thrill to be able to update an entire clan of followers (last time I checked I had, like, about 2) so quickly! - But not so fast - After a while, I found that the act of actually spending time to think up ways to best screw up my spelling and grammar to fit my message under 140 characters is an incredible waste of time. I mean, I’m just about to finish up a full school year of being an English teacher! How can I just stand by and let myself butcher my favorite language like that? I am ashamed, people. I am ashamed. Enough time spent thinking about it got me to the point of boycott.

And now for my last “tweet:” A chronological collection of pictures and descriptions, arranged in “tweets,” of everything from my last post up until now. Hope you enjoy.

A "tweet" Story, by russ:



1st stop: Berlin 4 my Fulbright Conference! Excited 4 a fun week and to see my family!! This is the view from my hotel room. woo hoo!




Here's the whole Wacker fam! I was on my way to a function for the conference, they were on vacation! It was so great to see my fam in DLand




Me and some other Fulbrighters at a dinner. There were open bars all week, wow! This one had nothing but wine. They made sure we had fun!




We even had time to explore the city-we rented bikes! heres us hanging out on the river. ian rocks! http://www.myspace.com/ianhooper




heres some of my friends on a really big bench! we found a strange garden w/ many random things in it. it was actually kinda hard to get on!




next stop: sachsenhausen concentration camp w/ the fam. 'arbeit macht frei' - 'work is liberating.' it was sad, but i its important to learn




an actual uniform worn by a prisoner. they also had an officers uni, some huuuge rolls of barbed wire, and many artifacts on display.




heres niko on a toilet in a dorm bathroom. they would force up to 200 inmates in here at a time, with only 5 minutes to do potty and wash!




remnants from a human furnace. you can imagine what youre looking at. those are roses on the rack. they were everywhere in the camp...



next stop: fehmarn - where the wacker clan hails from. fehmarn is an island, here is the bridge leading to it! it was really big!



wisser's hotel: if not for this little place i wouldnt be around. the meeting place of oma and opa. thanks for the 'short' genes mom! :-/



next stop: eckernfoerde, moms home-town. here's 4 generations of family, germans and americans mixed in there. holy cow! great to see ya'll!



heres mom and dad at a birthday dinner in Eck. they had a great time during their week in germany. hey, theres Lutz in the back filming!




everybody at dinner on the first night. what a big group! the food was tasty and the company great. it was fun to speak in german w/ them!




all the younger relatives went out to the bars after dinner. heres niko and our cousin lutz! we were lucky: one night was '40 beer' night!




heres me and my sis, eva! we had a great time together even tho she missed her fiance , trevor. she plans to get hitched in 2010!!



the dude and i doing a 'prost' with some whiskey. it was gr8 to be back w/ my bro for a while. hes hulked-out ripped now but not like manny!

____________________________________________________

Phew, okay. That's the end of my Berlin/Fehmarn/Eckernfoerde Journey. A couple of notes/facts to leave you with:

- All of those stupid little "tweets" all qualify under the '140-Character or Under' rule that twitter has. They're legit. Count if you like.

- I said this was an idea to streamline and make it go fast. This method actually turned out to be waaaay longer than normal. But it was fun, so I persevered.

- The blogging doesn't stop here! I still have to write about my way fun trip to Heidelberg to visit my cousin, Hannah. There are some pretty good pictures to accompany that post.

- Also, for the near future, my plans for the Month of May: This Sunday I am going to Hamburg to watch a St. Pauli football (soccer) game with my aunt, Anna-Maria. Then, immediately afterwards, I am going up to Elmshorn to visit the Baumann Family and celebrate their son Philip's confirmation. THEN, on the following day, a week long class field trip with the 5th graders to a pony ranch starts. This lasts till Friday, a week from today. The following morning, I'll be hopping on a train back over to Berlin to meet up with two college teammates of mine, Drew Watkins and Steve Martin. So, more blogging will be necessary!

Hope you liked this experiment. I really am done twittering - I'm sticking to the blog. I'm going to try to get my Heidelberg post up tomorrow, before I go on this field trip.

Thanks for reading!

russ.