Now that it's February...I'll tell you about New Years!

Hey-yo!

So let's talk about last month! I spent the first few days of the new year in Berlin with my bffl Katie chilling, exploring, cooking, and enjoying ourselves. Our friend Courtney came to visit the night before I left for Amsterdam, and we enjoyed some real Californian Mexican food courtesy of Katie's mom. Basically, it was just a few days of nothing which was welcome- I got to enjoy Berlin, as well as the company of one of my favorite people!

On the 5th, I woke up early and headed to

Amsterdam via train-about a 6 hour train ride. It ended up being really nice, it was almost empty, and I was able to sleep for a while, so the fact that I had to get up at 4 was mitigated. In Amsterdam, I met up with Haleigh, Anne, and two of Haleigh's friends from her college in the States-Harry and Chris. We were in Berlin together, but they went to Prague while I stayed with Katie, and then we just re-met up in Amsterdam.

We stayed at a hotel(!) in Amsterdam, because with all of us, it ended up being cheaper than a hostel, something we were okay with. Having a hotel was like living in the lap of luxury- we felt really classy and rich. While in Amsterdam, we went on a city tour, went to the Heineken Experience (read: brewery), the van Gogh Museum, the Rijksmuseum, and walked around a lot. We took a walk to try to get to the Rijksmuseum at

one point, because riding the public transportation was something like 2.70 per one-way ride, and we thought we'd be clever and just walk. We followed the maps (well, we

thought we followed the maps) but ended up on the direct opposite part of the city than we wanted to be. After that, we decided next time we'd take a tram.

As you can see, we eventually found it, and also found the Iamsterdam sign that is in front of it.

We stopped and took a few pictures. Amsterdam is a beautiful city. I loved all the canals and row houses. I think it would be a cool city to live in.

Haleigh and I returned to Heidelberg on Sunday (Anne left on Friday because she had orchestra stuff to do) and then school started on Monday. The semester is now over: it finished on the 4th, and now there is a two month break until the next semester starts in the second week of April. In that time, I'm going to be hanging out with people coming to visit (people like some of my family!!) and then in March I'll be taking a German class.

The picture of the castle is in Heidelberg, just to be clear. My friend Krista and I took a walk one night, and probably spent 20 minutes trying to capture the beauty of the moon and the castle- I'm definitely pleased with the result!

Christmas Stories

Hello everyone!Sorry it's been so long (again) but I was busy celebrating Christmas and then travelling, and then school started again, and this is the first time I've had to sit down and update you all.

Let's start with Christmas:

My friend Becca who's teaching English in Spain this year came and visited me for Christmas! It was wonderful! We enjoyed a really nice time of just hanging out, watching some Christmas movies, cooking and baking, and walking around a beautiful

snowy Heidelberg. We headed to

Mannheim the day after Christmas Eve (Heilige Abend) day, Haleigh, Anne, Becca and I made a

big lunch and opened presents before Haleigh and Anne went to their Gastfamilies (host families for Christmas) and before Becca and I went to church. My church had a service and then a really nice dinner afterwards full of real American dishes! We had stuffing! and sweet potatoes! and green bean casserole! and pumpkin pie! It was amazing, and so nice to have for Christmas.she got here to check out the Weihnachtsmarkt there because Heidelberg's had shut down the day she got here, which was sad. We got some Glühwein (see Becca's smiling face to the side!) and it was a nice day

Christmas Day after breakfast we took a walk around snowy beautiful Heidelberg before heading back inside because it was so chilly. Later, Brian and his girlfriend who was visiting him for Christmas, Anske, came over to make dinner- Christmas pasta (which was our way of jazzing up spaghetti and meatballs)! We also made some pumpkin pies because Becca was looking for the pumpkin fix she hadn't gotten from her Spanish Thanksgiving, and because pumpkin pies are delicious and traditional and homey. I got to skype with my mom and stepdad who were in Canada in the early afternoon, and then later at night I skyped with my dad, stepmom, grandmother, and sister in Georgia. We wrapped up the evening with "A Charlie Brown Christmas"- a new favorite and an old friend.

The next day Becca left, and for the next few days, Haleigh and I hung out around Heidelberg and got ready to leave for our New Years trip to Berlin (she also went to Prague) and Amsterdam! Those stories to follow in a different post.

Below are some pictures from Christmas. The snowy ones are from our Christmas walk- the photo at the top of the page is the patio/deck of my building, the one above is of the Neckar and some swans (the building I live in is barely visible on the other side of the river) and the one to the right is of the Alte Brücke (the old bridge).

Becca brought a sleeping bag with her, and in order to justify bringing it, used it for tasks where a simple blanket would never have sufficed, like watching movies, or checking her email :)

A Long-Overdue Update

Hello everyone,

I'm sorry I've been so absent these past few weeks- it's been a busy month. At the beginning of the month, I had a million things due (and by 'a million', I mean two papers and a presentation), then I was in Prague with my bffl (best friend for life) Katie, and then I had an oral final for one of my classes, then I had a performance for one of my classes, and then everyone left.

I'll break it down for you:

Prague

Katie and I hadn't seen each other since our birthdays in September, and we decided to meet up somewhere, and we somehow (after entertaining the idea of just about every other city in Europe) ended up deciding on Prague. We were in Prague in the summer of '08, so it wasn't a totally new experience for us, but it was still a lot of fun. We didn't do so many touristey things, and instead wandered around their Christmas markets, drank tea, found bagels (!!), ate Indian food, and went to a museum about Communism.

It was a good weekend, if stressful- I flew, and my flight was delayed, and finding Katie at the train station was a struggle, and then we found out I had booked our hostel for thursday and friday, not friday and saturday, so our reservation had been lost. Thankfully we were directed to another hostel...across the river, not 10 minutes from where we had just come from.

Bagels were a huge success, in that we found them and then ate a bunch of them and then came back the next day early in the morning to buy some to take home with us. The Communism museum was also something I would (and have) highly recommend- hearing the Czech version rather than from the American point of view was very interesting.

Oral Final/Performance:

My oral final was in the class I have with Herr Dörr- it's a reading, listening and understanding course where we write a lot, and practice reading articles and such things that increase our proficiency. So the final consisted of picking two of the articles we had read during the semester and reading them aloud to him, and then he would ask us questions about the Inhalt- the content, and the Vokabel- vocabulary. I was very nervous and prepared for it as such. I thought it went fairly well- he told me that my reading was very nice (I tried to hard to use all I had learned in both my phonetik courses) and, I'm warning you right now that the next sentence is me bragging: I was told by Herr Doerr that Dan and I had the best oral finals of the class. I felt so validated!

The performance was for one of my Phonetik classes I'm in- it was a performance of excerpts of Mark Twain's "The Awful German Language" or "Die Schreckliche Deutsche Sprache"- which is really funny, especially if you've ever tried to learn German. We were all assigned parts to practice and then we performed it in front of Heidelberg alumni on Friday. I also sang this little ditty here. That was most nerve-wracking for me, because it was an a cappella solo. We did well, I think.

Everyone leaving:
After Mark Twain on Friday, Haleigh and I headed to Annika's to make dinner, exchange Christmas presents, and then bake cookies before heading to Aaron's for a good-bye party. It was surreal, the whole weekend, saying goodbye to everyone, even when we were helping Annika pack up. After dinner, presents, some baking and some cleaning/packing, we headed to Aaron's where we met up with Aaron, Stefan (his roommate), Mattheis (Aaron's Sprachpartner, my and Dan's friend from church), Brian and Dan. Megan and Anne were in Paris for Megan's birthday, so they were unfortunately unable to come.

We ate pizza and drank beer and then at the end of the night said bye to Aaron and Stefan Mattheis and Brian, and headed back to Ringstraße with Annika and Dan to spend the night with Annika finishing packing and cleaning and all that needed to be done. After waiting outside her apartment for a while since she forgot her keys and it was two thirty, we got in and packed and cleaned with Annika until four, when we went to bed for 45 minutes in order to get her up and to the train station to meet Aaron and go to the airport.

I forgot to mention earlier that I fell down some icy stairs Friday morning (I have some great bruises). This will come into play in a few seconds. We gathered all of Annika's stuff up, including the bags of things we were taking from her and a box that was our Christmas present from her, we headed to the Hauptbahnhof, booking it because we were a tad late. In our hurry, I slipped down some stairs outside of the Ringstraße building (like I said, awesome bruises) and fell, meaning I had to limp power walk the rest of the way to the station. We got her on, and then found out which car Aaron was in to go say bye to him. I may or may not have cried as soon as the train pulled away...

Haleigh and I got home around six, and immediately went to bed. Later that day, Brian and Dan and I hung out since it was Dan's last night- watched Flight of the Conchords, went to Yufka's for dinner, and talked until it was time for him to go back to his apartment to get picked up. Mark left the next day, as did Megan- Mark and Haleigh and I hung out on Sunday night, and then Haleigh and I went over to Megan's in the morning to say bye to her.

All in all, a sad weekend. It was really not fun to say goodbye to my friends I've made here- it feels like I've known them forever, but it's only been three and a half months! It's pretty insane. The upside is that now I have friends all over the country and have more of an excuse to go travel to the Midwest and East Coast now. See how positive I'm being?

Christmas is coming!

A Story About How...My Life is Like an Action Movie

Here's a story for you all:

I nearly die almost every time I try to do anything in my room. I cannot tell you how often I nearly fall off my bed or out of the window. It's a death trap. Much like the Heidelberg Hauptbahnhof, but that's another story.

This morning I decided to be productive and do some more laundry, as our washer was recently repaired and it is now a viable option as opposed to the sink. I did the cycle, and as I usually do, decided to hang it to dry in my room. This is because a) it's easy b) it makes my room smell good c) it's good for the environment d) our dryer is a piece of crap and e) the dryer takes forever and I don't have that kind of time.

As I was hanging my sheet across my curtain rod, balancing on the edges of my bed so it doesn't collapse again, I lost my balance and fell into the window. Thank goodness a) my bed didn't crash and b) the window wasn't open/didn't break. I don't actually think I could have broken the window, but it's still unnerving, especially since this happens often. Every morning when I, half-asleep, balance on the edges of my bed to crack open my window, inevitably, I teeter and catch myself just in time not to fall and give myself a concussion.

Point is, I live my life on the edge. I do no-excuses laundry...

A True German Thanksgiving...er, what?

Well, as I'm sure you all knew, yesterday was Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is probably one of my most favorite holidays of all. Don't get me wrong, I love Christmas, it's awesome, but I also really love Thanksgiving. I love that all my extended family gets together in Berkeley to spend time together and be loud and rambunctious, and I love that I also get to have a Thanksgiving with my other side of the family that is smaller and I love that my mom, stepdad, brother and I now have a tradition of serving Thanksgiving in the City (San Francisco).

Enough about how great my family is, let me tell you what thanksgiving is like in Heidelberg: anticlimactic. I got up, went to work, went to my internship (where I got to make a bear hand puppet out of a brown paper lunch bag and I got to color and it was really fun). I watched the Macy's Day Parade online with Haleigh which was awesome because it was so traditional and

American, and we laughed at the cheese factor of Matt Lauer and Katie Couric. Matt Lauer actually said "what's more American than Pizza?"- there was an actual pizza team! What did they do? twirl pizza dough.

Our program had a dinner for us at a restaurant in the area (fun fact: they've had Thanksgiving in the same restaurant for 24 years), which was a lot of fun- we dressed up a little, and got to talk in English with our professors who pretend like they don't know English the rest of the year. My table was especially fun- Aaron, his parents and his Pfarrer, Frau Heckmann (our resident director), Herr Doerr (the most amazing German Professor ever), Brian and Dan.

Dinner was pretty good for it being a German Thanksgiving, but it was nowhere near as good as a real Thanksgiving dinner!

It snowed on Thanksgiving, although it was only for a little while, and it didn't stick. It was still really exciting for me. As you can see from the pictures, it's Christmas in Heidelberg! The last one shows the show on the top of a mountain in town. It's unbelievably beautiful here right now. I'm loving the snow!

France again and Harry Potter

So last Friday Dan and Brian and I were going to go to France, but Dan got sick on Thursday night, so Brian and I went alone. It's free for us through our semester pass which lets us use public transportation for free within a certain area, so it became a premiere destination :) It's about two hours by train, and I created a handy-dandy googlemaps image to show you how you'd get there if you drove.

It was a ton of fun! Wissembourg is a pretty little town, but we knew nothing about it, so we spent a few hours walking around. I guess you could say we got lost, but because we had no idea where we were going, we didn't count it.

Brian had been craving a Big Mac, so we looked for the McDonald's that we saw as we were pulling into Wissembourg from the train. It became a game of "Find that McDonald's!" We found it, so yes, I ate McDonald's in France. It's not my proudest moment, but Brian enjoyed it so

much that I don't regret it!

We kept walking around after McDonald's, trying to find the Old City. Thankfully, Wissembourg has a bunch of handy maps of the city all over the place, so we were able to check our progress often enough that we eventually found it, and it was very cute!

Funny thing about us wandering around...we eventually wandered into Germany. No joke. It was awesome! We hopped the border a few times for pictures, and to be able to say we walked to Germany from France and back. It wasn't a particularly warm or good day for tourism, but it's cute and free, and I'd go again!

On Wednesday, Harry Potter 7 opened in Germany, and you can bet (especially because I'm telling you) that I was there! A group of us went to Mannheim to see it, and it was totally worth it. Not only because it was fun to be out with friends, but also because we got the bragging rights of seeing it two days earlier than those plebeians in the US!

Overall, it was a good week, even though yesterday I had to spend 6 hours at a choir practice for our show next week. The choir that

no one wants to be in anymore...but hey- joy, right?

Catch up!

Hey guys,

Sorry it's been so long. Some of you need to cool it and calm down about my 3 week hiatus. I've been busy, and I wanted to stay chronological with my posts.

A few weeks ago, I got to go to Wiesbaden which is near Frankfurt to visit with some friends from home: The Osiers (who are from Folsom but are living in Wiesbaden), my friend Michelle and her husband Daniel (they live in Cologne, but I know Michelle from middle school youth group where she was my small group leader) and another friend, Diane. We all know each other from Folsom, and joked that we were having a Lakeside reunion, since we all went to Lakeside Church in Folsom. It was a great time! I also got to visit the commissary which was nice, where I got some (and by some I mean a lot) of American food.

We also found a great Mexican place! It was seriously so delicious

The week after that was Halloween, and I worked at the DAI's Halloween party, which was a blast. I got to work the pumpkin carving table, so I was up to my elbows in pumpkin guts all night, but I got to hang out with some cool kids, practice my German, and meet some Germans, so it was a success. I made friends with a family I met there, which was really fun, and we spoke in a mix of German and English which was an added bonus.

I visited my friend Ashley in Mainz the next day, where she's teaching English through a Fullbright there. We played some Tischtennis (okay, she played some Tischtennis) and wandered around Mainz and went to the Gutenberg Muesum (GO THERE! I'd completely go back, we didn't get to see it all because I had to catch a train). It was great to see her, and also fun to be shown around a town by someone who lives there, as opposed to touring with a guide, or alone without any real idea of what's up.

The same day, when I got back to HD, Dan and I went to a game night at the church we go to, which was really fun. I didn't necessarily get to know as many Germans as hoped, but I definitely had a good time (I even made it into the message the next day).

Halloween was the next day, and Haleigh, Anne, Annika, three other girls and I (although really, everyone else did a lot more work than I did so I can't take credit) made some delicious pumpkin soup and had a mini Halloween party.

My grandparents came the next day, and my week got super busy! Monday my grandma and her friend Diane got in, and then my step grandparents got in on Tuesday night so I didn't see them until Wednesday. On Thursday, they all cooked dinner for my friends and me at my building, which was really nice; everyone got to meet everyone else and eat delicious food. We spent Friday shopping (I got a very nice coat from my grandma, but was unable to find shoes. It seems large footed women are prejudiced against even in Europe) and then I met up with some friends later to try (operative word here) to go bowling.

Ah, bowling. In German, Bowling, or Kegeln. We knew where a place was, so a bunch of us met up and walked there, but since it was a Friday night, the lanes had all been reserved. Megan remembered a different place in a different part of town, so we walked around HD for about 3 hours looking for a place to go bowling, and ended up stopping at Rewe (a grocery store) to get chocolate, and then heading back to the Wartburg (my building) for leftovers and talking. We talked for a long time, and it was a lot of fun, though bowling never was achieved. We have plans to make it happen though.

The next day my grandparents and I went to Baden Baden which was a nice town, and we basically just spend the day at the baths. It was certainly an unexpected and interesting experience for me. We went to a Beethoven concert the next night, and it was a really good decision. The room was beautiful, the orchestra talented, and the tickets were reasonably priced. On Monday I had breakfast with everyone and said goodbye, which was sad, but I had a good week with them!

Stay tuned for my adventures in France!