Dezember und Adventszeit

Thanksgiving in Paderborn

On the Saturday following Thanksgiving, I went to visit my friend Lauren in Paderborn (a nearby city) and we cooked a huge Thanksgiving feast! It was my first time cooking a whole Thanksgiving meal and doing it without the help of family.

I showed up with cranberry sauce and pumpkin cheesecake already prepared. We worked all day on Lauren's bread stuffing, green bean casserole, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, gravy, baked apples, and, of course, our Turkey. We searched high and low for a turkey, and once we found one, we decided to purchase it despite how embarrassingly expensive it was, because we wanted a real Thanksgiving. Everything turned out wonderfully!!! All of our guests were experiencing their first Thanksgiving. We hosted 2 Germans, 2 Brits, 2 Russians, and one Frenchman. It was an exhausting day of cooking, but tons of fun, and I can't wait to do it again next year!

Lauren prepping our bird for its long day in the oven

In her quiet apartment without a meat thermometer we wonder how this bird will end up tasting. We also wonder if it will even matter because at this point many of our guests have not confirmed that they'll be joining us to eat the feast.

Our French friend, Thomas, carving the finished bird (which was cooked perfectly: browned exterior, moist interior). Thomas went to a trade high school for cooking and was therefore the most logical person to have carve the turkey.

A full table of international guests enjoying a truly American tradition.

Looks like Thanksgiving dinner! Tasted like it too! So proud.

Christkindlauf

The following weekend Lauren visited me here in Rheda-Wiedenbrück. Friday night was the annual 10k race, Christkindlauf, that circles around my beautiful town, which is fully decorated for the Christmas season. (The race route actually goes right in front of my house). About 1,000 people run in the race, and at the beginning all of the spectators line the race route holding sparklers and cheering us on.

It was fairly warm, with a slight drizzle, which was nice running weather for my first 10k race. Lauren and I ran together, and although we didn't get a spectacular time, we were both pleased with our race time of 54 min. My friend Carina made me a medal for crossing the finish line--so sweet. Afterwards we enjoyed the Christmas market and then went to a party held by my running group. The next morning we enjoyed some relaxed recovery time and some homemade pancakes for breakfast.

pre-race smiles

Wiedenbrück TV Lauftreff--my running group all excited to race

This is a pic of people warming up, but it gives you an idea of what our race route looked like.

Christkindmarkt & Nikolaustag

Every town in Germany has a Christmas market (Weihnachtsmarkt or Christkindmarkt) during the time of Advent (3-4 weeks leading up until Dec. 24). I've been hearing about the one in my town, Wiedenbrück, ever since I arrived. It is very charming, and because I live in the center of town, I walk through it just about anytime I go anywhere. Despite rainy weather most days/nights, there always seems to be people wandering about. We drink lots of Glühwein (spiced wine, basically) at these markets.

I've also been to the markets in nearby cities of Gütersloh, Bielefeld, and Münster, and tomorrow I'm taking a one-day trip to Berlin with a friend of mine, another teacher at the school, to see a Christmas market there with many organic/handmade goods. I took some photos of my market in Wiedenbrück to share it with you (and especially for Maggie Fick who wanted a glimpse of December in Germany).

There are carousels at many Christmas markets, but I haven't found another one as large and as beautiful as this one.

The markets are mostly made up of stands that sell small gifts, ornaments, Glühwein and other drinks, and food (crepes, Christmas cookies, roasted chestnuts, candied almonds, wurst & pommes--french fries, etc.)

In Germany the Christ child (instead of Santa Claus & reindeer) brings presents on the evening of the 24th of December, which is the first, and main, day of 3 days of Christmas! They also celebrate the entire time of Advent. At home many families have a wreath on their table with four (traditionally red) candles in it. A new candle is lit on each Advent Sunday. Also, many have Advenstkalendars. On these calendars you open one door on a small card each day of the month to reveal a small picture, a piece of candy, or another small gift.

St. Nikolaus (the character most like our Santa Claus in German traditions) comes on the 6th of December and brings children sweets (cookies, candies, small gifts). My host teacher and my landlady both gave me gifts for St. Nikolaustag, which made me smile!! Those, along with a package from my grandma, have kept my kitchen full of Christmas cookies and candies.

It's time to move on

The big news of this month is that I decided to move. There are a bunch of reasons why I finally came to this decision.

1) Going broke in Nov. really helped me realize that I can't keep paying as much for an apartment as I am currently.
2) Talking to other foreign language assistants who have moved to Bielefeld and have a daily 1-hour long commute made me realize that it is doable.
3) I've been feeling pretty lonely this month and want to move into an apartment with other Germans so that I can meet more people my age and so that I can use German at home more.
4) Along with point 3--there is nothing going on in my small town (nichts ist hier los), so I need to get to a bigger city where I can go out more, enjoy museums, go watch movies or concerts, and meet more German students.
5) It's a pain in the ass to go anywhere from/get back to my apartment with public transportation most of the time--living in a bigger city would be easier.

Sooooo....I have spent a lot of time this month looking at apartments in Bielefeld, and I found two which I really like. I'm waiting to hear back from them about where I will definitely end up living. I won't be moving until February, which is actually okay because I have a lot of things I need to do here to move out (German bureaucratic stuff). Also, I haven't told my landlords here yet....gotta get around to that soon :(

I've loved living here in Wiedenbrück and am glad that I will be splitting my year between this town and a bigger city. I think it was really important for me to become familiar with the community where my students live and to be a member of this city for a short time. It helped me integrate well into my work environment, but now it's time to move on and do my own thing.

I'm very excited about the move!!! The one thing that has been a little surreal about it all is that I have never searched for an apartment in the US before, so it was my first time with this whole process--and I did it in German!

Coming up next

The last week of school before our 2-week long break is next week, and there's lots to be excited about. Tomorrow, like I said, is my trip to Berlin, which will be a nice change of pace.

On Tuesday I'm going on a field trip with a 6th grade class and two of my favorite teachers. (Many of the students are in my English club) We're going ice skating!! Then, on Tuesday night, I'm taking a group of 10 students from the 13th graders who take English conversation classes with me to Paderborn to see Dickens's "A Christmas Carol" performed in English.

And finally, on Friday I'm taking the train to Frankfurt so that I can be at the airport bright and early when my parents and Max, followed by my grandparents, arrive early on Saturday morning!!!! After a month where I have been feeling pretty lonely here, I can't wait to have some excursions to break up my typical schedule and to have my family visit.

Have a Happy Winter Solstice & New Year!

I'm thinking of you all and hoping that you have a nice Holiday season, which you get to share with your loved ones. For those college students out there--good luck on finals & just remember that in less than a week you'll get that much needed month-long rest! In case I don't write again until January, I wish you all a happy and healthy new year, and I hope that our paths cross sometime in 2008 :)

A slightly artsy pic to wrap it up. This kind of shows my impression of Wiedenbrück: charming, sweet, and lovely Christmas atmosphere with traditional, well-restored buildings, but too much of my life is controlled by the bus schedule and waiting at bus stops like the one seen on the right-hand side.

The arrival of winter, luggage, friends, and family

I guess my blog is becoming a once-a-month tradition--I hope some of you are still tuning in. Here's an update on the latter part of October and first half of November.

The map on the left is of Germany, and the red dot is Rheda-Wiedenbrück. You can see how Nordrhein-Westfalen is the most populous-concentrated state in Germany by the many brown dots (cities) to the left of Rheda-Wiedenbrück.

First, my BIG news:

After 8 weeks, Lufthansa finally located my lost bag. I was shocked, SHOCKED when they called and told me they had found it. Apparently it had been sitting in JFK the entire time. Lesson learned: I will never again be paranoid about the threatening loudspeaker announcements at airports regarding leaving your luggage unattended. Nothing was damaged, and within 24 hours of locating it the bag was sitting at my doorstep.

There she is, safe and sound.

Upon the return of my bag, I really noticed how regular my life has finally become here.

My Teaching Life:
I am participating regularly (once or twice a week) in a 5th, 7th, 8th, 10th, 11th and 12th grade English class. Sometimes the teacher prepares a lesson plan for me, which I then work on in a separate room with a smaller group of students, and other times I just lead one or two activities in the hour with the whole class. I also have the opportunity to bring some of my own ideas/class projects to the classroom. For example, to close a unit on love poetry in the 11th grade class we analyzed the lyrics to the song "Such Great Heights" by Postal Service. Next week I will be playing Alphabet Bingo with the 5th graders and teaching the 8th graders about Thanksgiving. I'm also starting a newspaper project with the 11th graders. (They don't really have student newspapers here so my mom is sending me copies of Clayton's Globe and Pomona's The Student Life to share with them as examples).

I also run 4 classes a week that are all my own. One of these is an after-school English club for 5th-7th graders. It is an interesting challenge to work with students spanning these English levels because despite the fact that they are all beginners, some have learned English for less than half a year and others for 2 years, so there is a relatively large difference in their abilities. They are all (15 students) really sweet, and they told me that the best hour of the week at school is my club! (I gave them candy and let them bob for apples for Halloween...maybe that had something to do with it.)

My other 3 classes are conversation classes for the 13th graders who are preparing for their huge high school exit exams (Abitur), which they will be taking in May or June. We have been talking about Globalization and the United Nations. All these students chose to work with me, and there are about 30 in total. It is also hard work to prepare for their classes because I have to keep them engaged and find appropriate teaching materials. I can't really resort to playing silly English games with them like I can with the younger kids. But I really enjoy it anyway!

My colleagues continue to be wonderful. I socialize with a few of them regularly, and the others are just generally warm and welcoming. One teacher invited a big group from the English Department over to her house for Raclette (Swiss dinner party style food).

They're mostly women my mom's age, but it's an important community for me here nonetheless. Lilo, my host teacher, who I adore, is third from the left.

My Learning Life:
I take a night class for foreigners learning German two nights a week (Wed & Thurs) at the University nearby. I'm in the highest level they offer and there are only 7 of us in the class, so it is really great! I commute for about an hour each way, but I really enjoy having an excuse to get out of Rheda-Wiedenbrück and go to Bielefeld regularly. I also enjoy being surrounded for a few brief moments by a crowd of students going to and from classes--I definitely still have a fondness for being in an educational setting and surrounded by my peers.

My Social Life:
I've started to make friends! Actually, to be more specific, I've made two friends. But they introduce me to others as well... I met both Carina and Julia through my host teacher's daughter, Anna. They both study at Uni Bielefeld but live at home here in Rheda-Wiedenbrück. I hang out with them a lot and am totally grateful that they have included me in their lives. I probably see them 2-4 evenings a week and we have all kinds of grandiose plans for the year including a trip to islands on the North Sea and a ski trip. Having people to spend time with is also invaluable for helping me improve my German. Anna is back in town from Berlin this weekend and last night she told me that my German has improved since last month, which is largely due to the time I have spent hanging out with her friends!

I also went to a regional meeting in Düsseldorf of all the foreign language assistants in my area last weekend. It was great to reconnect with a lot of the Americans I met at our first orientation and to see Lauren again (who I went to Munich with). I also met people from Russia, France, Australia, and Britain who are all teaching in the area.

Here's a bunch of Americans on top of a tower for a museum about
coal mining in Nordrhein-Westfalen (Ruhrgebiet area to be more specific),
which was the major industry in this area throughout the 20th century,
but the mines are mostly empty now.

We also saw this cool old industrial area that has been converted into a huge public park. It's hard to describe this place because it is SO crazy (and our tour was at night in the rain with the park dimly lit by flourescent colored lights everywhere--we all felt like we were in some surreal, fantastical movie). One crazy example: they took the old huge gas tank and turned it into a diving site where local diving clubs come scuba-diving to see everything that has been intentionally submerged there for their entertainment, including a small airplane. It is also really a popular park with climbers who scamper up all parts of the old industrial-site. I wish I could describe it better. Just know that it is an incredibly cool and odd-ball idea that was imagined to celebrate the industrial character/history of this part of Germany while also reusing the structures that were already in place. It is completely open to the public 24 hours a day and not always well-lit. Many of us were surprised by that because it could never exist in America...there would be too many fears about accidents and lawsuits. Here's one pic that doesn't even capture the place or experience, but is maybe a start:

My Active Life:
I take a yoga class on Monday evenings, and I always wish that it was held more regularly in the week after finishing with my hour and a half practice. I've also joined a running group, which is awesome. It is a group of anywhere from 7-30 people who show up 2-3 times a week, regardless of shitty weather, to run for an hour. They welcome all running levels, and currently we are all training for the Christkindlauf, which is a 10k race through Wiedenbrück the night of November 30th. The race attracts a thousand runners from the area and is the official start of Wiedenbrück's Christmas market. I'm stoked. Since daylight savings time, our weekly runs have become a very dark evening runs through a partially lit park trail. We are a charging force of reflective vests and shining headlamps--what a sight! It's good for me to learn that cold weather shouldn't be an excuse to avoid physically activity. I'm also planning on trading Carina English lessons for tennis lessons in the near future. I wish I had more chances to go hiking, but I'm still looking for companions who want to go with me on day hikes, who know where to go, and how to get there (with public transportation or have a car to offer).

My Culinary Life:
I'm cooking all vegetarian for myself. I can whip up some pretty tasty things on my electric hotplate and mini-electrical oven. Some highlights include eggplant caponata, homemade applesauce, mushroom barley leek soup, homemade hummus, and raisin-sunflower seed scones, and fresh pumpkin-apple butter.

German culinary things I'm most addicted to: everything from their bakeries. There are these great bakeries everywhere in Germany. They have tasty sweet pastries, my favorite pretzel-breads, and the indisposable German roll (brötchen), but most importantly they have a million sorts of wonderful whole-wheat breads often made with rye and a variety of seeds/nuts. I'm also a fan of the German coffee & cake tradition, which is always on Sunday and often any other day of the week around mid-afternoon. They also have wonderful yogurts here. My favorite so far is poppy seed-marzipan flavored, but all of the limited edition winter/christmas varieties just showed up in the supermarket (fruitcake, pear cinnamon, candied almonds, etc) so there are more to try.

Next Saturday I'm going to visit Lauren and we'll be preparing a Thanksgiving feast (albeit three days late) for our friends, so that should be fun!

My Winter Life:
Earlier this week it snowed. Not a lot, and nothing stuck, but there was precipitation and the temperature was below freezing. Needless to say, Germany is definitely a predominantly Christian country, so culturally Winter pretty much means the Christmas-season. Stores have been filled with Christmas decorations since November 1st and every town will have a Christmas market for the entire Advent time starting Dec. 1st. I even baked my first batch of Christmas cookies with Carina and her boyfriend, David, last weekend.

My whole family, including (drumroll please) my grandparents, are coming here for Christmas and New Years, so I am very excited about the end-of-the-year holidays and I'm planning fun activities for us to do. (Such a wonderful way to celebrate family after last winter, which was a time of struggle for all of us to help my dad heal.)

Despite the fact that I like to complain about the cold regularly, after four years in California, I am loving the return of seasons. It's great fun to see people bundle up and bustle through town--something about it explicitly shows the relationship between nature and urbanized society. And the return of Spring will be a notably festive occasion!

Have a HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!

Brezeln, Bier, Bratwurst: Bayern...und danach, Berlin

I spent the last week of September and first in October on a great vacation in Munich and Berlin. Really weisswurst is more typically Bavarian than bratwurst, but my alliterative title wouldn't have worked with that. I only went to Oktoberfest for one day, but I soaked up plenty of the atmosphere (including the beer & pretzels) since we stayed for a whopping 11 hours! Breakfast began at 9 with weisswurst, sweet mustard, two pretzels, and a bottle of beer. Then we headed to Oktoberfest. I swear the last three-four hours spent standing on a bench in a tent full of drunken Germans dancing to music didn't feel that long.

But let me start at the beginning...I started the vacation with an exquisite weekend (partly due to the summerlike weather and partly due to my gracious hosts) at Starnberg See, which is a lake just south of Munich and is apparently the most expensive area to live in all of Germany. My SERVAS hosts were great and took me on Saturday to tour Bavaria. I saw the Alps, lovely hills coated in colorful trees, two castles (including Neuschwarstein, which was the model for the now classic Disney castle), and even slipped into Austria for a bit and dipped into an Alpine lake (freezing, yes, but I was bad-ass and just swam really fast and then drank lots of hot tea when I emerged). The young sons in the family felt that the highlight of the day was our trip to McDonalds--I ordered a garden salad.





By the time I met Lauren, another foreign-language assistant in my area from US who I've befriended, in Munich, I had already formulated a grand analogy in my head that described Bavaria as the Texas of Germany--largest state, strong accent, their culture is often portrayed as typical German culture in foreign countries, diverse ecology, traditional costume (dirndls & lederhosen) that people still wear seriously, and friendly people. I was pretty proud of it, but apparently I'm not at all the first one to make this comparison.

Lauren and I stayed with friends she had made when she studied abroad at the University in Munich. They were really hospitable and showed us around despite the weather which had now turned rainy and cold. Although going to Oktoberfest (and recovering from it) took a bunch of our time, we also fit in a lot of other good Munich sites including the Englische Garten and Chinesiches Turm, the Hofbräuhaus, an art museum filled with paintings from der Blaue Reiter and Wassily Kandinsky, and the Olympic Stadium.







I had a great week, but by the end felt like it had been gluttonous for some reason (maybe the wienerschnitzel, brezeln, and biers that were all as big as my head contributed to that...) and I was excited to see a Pomona friend, Joanna Schenke, and some of Berlin.

After getting on the wrong train to Berlin, which took me on a 9-hour long scenic tour of all of Germany, I arrived at Joanna's late on Friday night. We walked around all Saturday, again despite the rain, and I became well-oriented to some of the central areas of Berlin including Alexanderplatz, Museum Island, the government buildings, Brandenburg Gate, and great shopping in the Mitte (which is near where Jojo lives). We also enjoyed the best falafel Berlin has to offer.

Sunday started with the Berlin Marathon! Jojo and I were spectators for an hour and saw the majority of the 40,000 runners pass us by around the 10k mark (including the fastest woman!) We've agreed that the three most impressive things we saw were: 1 blind runner, 1 runner with no legs (artificial limbs), and 1 runner with a pretty quick pace that was juggling perfectly as he ran. Other interesting notes--huge group of runners from Denmark for some reason and one man dressed up as scooby-doo. Then the touristy stuff continued with a boat tour and my first museum stop to see the Greek/Egyptian museum and the famous bust of Queen Nefertiti.







The next few days while Jojo was at work I wandered around on my own and really became familiar with the city, which was fun. I went to a bunch of museums and my favorite was probably Museum Berggruen--a small private collection filled with works from Klee and Giacometti, but they also have had a large Picasso collection on loan for some time. I seem to always lose myself for hours in Picasso exhibits... Mostly I just spent hours walking around, exploring, shopping, and seeing some sites. I stayed with another lovely SERVAS family during the middle of the week in Kreuzberg (an area of Berlin)--their apartment building was even listed as the starting point of a walking tour in the Lonely Planet!

My last night in Berlin I decided to get my final taste of its vast multiculturalism before returning to Wiedenbrück by enjoying a California style burrito (with guacamole & black beans!), fresh squeezed beet-apple juice, and some ben & jerry's for dessert while reading a trashy gossip magazine. I guess I was a ready for a dose of America and more specifically something to remind me of that crazy city called LA. Joanna even sent me home inspired to find NPR podcasts and the latest of my favorite TV-shows online--yeah, its a lot more English than I was hearing before, but now that the operator of tv-links has been arrested my indulgence can't be satiated quite as easily.

I returned to a lovely Autumn here in Wiedenbrück, which I can't wait to tell you more about in my next post.
Hope you are doing well! xoxo, Alex

p.s. The last picture is intended for everyone, but Mica's "you are beautiful" stickers were its inspiration.

happily settled in

I've been here in Germany for almost an entire month and am finally ready to start my blog. Nordrhein-Westfalen (the German state I am living & working in) began their 2 week long Fall Break today, so after only 2 weeks of working at the school, I'm heading off for vacation tomorrow! I'm terrible at staying concise, as all of you who have ever read an email, IM, letter, text message, etc. that I had written certainly know, but I will try my best to keep these posts short, sweet, and full of details.

(pic @ left: the street I live on)


1) Rheda-Wiedenbrück:
My home for a year. You can find it on a map of Germany by drawing a straight line between Düsseldorf and Hannover and I'm around the halfway point. It's actually two cities, like Dallas/Ft.Worth, but MUCH smaller. I live in the center of Wiedenbrück, which is filled with all old historic Fachwerk buildings and cobblestone, one-way streets. I see groups of Germans daily taking tours of all the old buildings, which have been incredibly restored and are all home to active businesses. All the stores close down for the middle of the day, Saturday mornings, and all of Sunday. The church bells nearby act as my snooze button by letting me know how close it is to 7 a.m.

My apartment has 2 rooms, a small bath & a small kitchen. I'm in the basement of a Familie Buck's home in one of these "Denkmal" buildings, meaning it is preserved by something like our historical societies. I look out over their garden, which is beautiful and often filled with pigeons (that detail reminds me a bit of Manhattan patios filled with potted plants--an effort to find private green space in the city). Some pics...







I ride around town in my bike! The other day I laughed out loud at how typically German my environment was--I was cruising 10 min. away from my house on a bike path with corn fields on one side, cows grazing on the other, and a moped passing me on my left. My bike is below (no gears, back-pedal breaks, soon to be outfitted with baskets to carry my groceries in):

Right now they are having a cool exhibit throughout Wiedenbrück, which I will be sorry to see taken down at the end of this month. There are lifesize sculptures of people engaging in normal everyday activities all over town. I'll show you a few here:





2) teaching
I'm working at a Gymnasium (track of education that those who eventually go to University in Germany pursue). I haven't really started yet, but all of my colleagues are extremely nice--many have taken me out in the evenings and weekends. I've been at the school for two weeks, and have mostly introduced myself to students and observed classes. Today I did mock job interviews in a 9th grade class. I've also corrected some 11th graders homework. I'm going to have 3 clubs/afternoon activities (called AGs) which will be games/theater for the younger students and a film club or debate club for the older students. I only have to work 12 class periods (45 min) a week, so that's pretty sweet. I'll probably never do a first period class and I'll have at least one free day a week.

3) Lufthansa...
...lost one of my bags. I don't want to talk about it. I get upset. I lost a lot of stuff. Thankfully none of my really expensive stuff was lost, except for all of my jewelry, but regardless, more than half of my wardrobe (including all shirts, shoes & exercise clothing) is gone, as is my year-long supply of contacts, my backpacking pack, my sleeping pad, and lots more stuff. It's just material stuff, but it is a real pain-in-the-ass--especially since I was really trying to live on a budget to save money to travel and now I have to buy all this basic stuff to stay warm, clothed, and comfortable. It really is too bad because after the 3 rounds of free drinks on my trans-Atlantic flight, I was starting to think it was the greatest airline ever...

4) travels
My host teacher, Lilo, is incredibly nice and has really welcomed me into both her home and family. She also arranged for & outfitted my apartment and helped introduce me fully to the school and city. Her older daughter, Anna, is 23 and wonderful. Of the German's I've met sofar, she's probably the closest to being what I might call a friend. Unfortunately for me, she is doing an internship in Hamburg now and then will be in Berlin at the Uni for all of winter. I got to visit her in Hamburg last weekend though, which was beautiful and fun! (we forgot to take a pic of ourselves however)







Tomorrow morning I'm heading to Starnberger See, just south of Munich, which is supposed to beautiful (my mom recited a bunch of fond memories she has from visiting her Grandparents there when she was a kid). I'm visiting a Servas host family. Servas is this cool travel organization that Maya, Max's girlfriend, introduced our family to, and I'm hoping to visit many Servas hosts throughout the year with my travels. Then on Monday I'm heading to Munich for the first time ever--and, of course, to enjoy some 9 a.m. beers while watching German women adorn dirndls and men in lederhosen at Oktoberfest! I'm going with another ETA from the U.S. who lives pretty close to me in Germany, Lauren. We were assigned as roommates at orientation and got along really well. She lived in Munich for a year when she studied abroad, so we have free housing setup and everything. The second weekend I'll be heading to Berlin to see Joanna Schenke from Pomona (and maybe I'll squeeze in another Servas visit)!

5) the language
Well, it isn't as fluent as I'd like it to be, but most of the Germans in Rheda-Wiedenbrück say that they're impressed with how well I speak and understand. Conversly, I feel ashamed by my german in all the classrooms where I see German students speaking English at a level that I presume to be much better than my german. With time I'm sure it will improve--having a TV in my room helps me hear german even when I'm alone in the evenings (CSI, House, Desperate Housewives, Greys Anatomy, Brothers & Sisters, oh my!)

6) friends/the Uni
I haven't made many German friends yet, but I hope that will also come with time. There are two students in the 13th grade at my school who I have hung out with some (one, Laura, is the daughter of the family I rent my apartment from and the other, Nicole, spent a year in San Antonio and her mom teaches my yoga class). I'm looking forward to hopefully meeting more people, like Anna, who are my age however. I enrolled in the University at Bielefeld (nearby bigger city) this week. The entire university is contained in one huge building. It is the ugliest, most depressing building I have ever seen--it has a real socialist look about it. I'm not sure if I'll take classes there yet, but maybe I can try and meet some people there through some standard student life activities. I may even find myself living in Bielefeld later in the year...who knows.

7) one last thing
Well, as always, there is probably more I could talk about, but I've already taken up enough of your time with this long post, so I'll sign off now. The last thing I want to say is that I would love to take advantage of this more:

That is a german "mail truck". The postage is excessively expensive from Germany, but I still love writing (and receiving *wink *wink) letters, so please email me your address!!!!

Wishing you well for wherever you are in the world today. Bis später, tchau.