It's a _________ life in Germany

Well hello, folks, not sure if anyone actually reads this anymore (it's ok, I don't read it either) but I haven't posted in over one month and that is very very bad!!! In 10 years, I won't remember jack crap about the last 40 days or so! What a shame... or perhaps not.

I can say that the newness is wearing off. I spent Christmas in Ingolstadt and lived to tell about it (will someone make me a T-shirt bearing this information?) I can't believe I have been here for three months (ok, up until I wrote that sentence I thought I'd actually been here for four months, not three, I had to go back and count! maybe time's not flying that fast...). Anyway, I'm feeling at home. I've lost a lot of weight, about 16 lbs. My goal is to lose a total of 20 (maybe more) and I think if I stop eating all these Christmas cookies, that might just happen!!

Soooo what have I been up to? I guess my photo albums can tell you where I've been since I last posted. Back in early December, we went to Trier. I think I'll want to go back there sometime when it's not so bloody cold. I've since been to Bonn, Cologne, Nürnberg, and Salzburg (Austria). I do believe next on my list is Aachen, and I am planning a trip to Rome in April. Just gotta find someone to go with me... workin' on that one.

Court gave me all three seasons of The Office for Christmas; am therefore working on watching all the episodes and extra footage, REALLY FUNNY!!!!!

At the moment I am rather low on food... I need to go grocery shopping tomorrow. I also need to go to the bank because I had to borrow money to buy a 6 Euro train ticket earlier, lol... Gotta clean this place up, do my laundry, and get back into the swing of things. I also have work to do *ugh* but I am remaining calm.

Life here is somewhat desert-like... but it's cold and dark, sometimes lonely, ... basically everything a desert is not... but it feels like a desert. Sort of. I miss my friends and family... I feel as if I can attribute all the non-funness to the fact that the weather sucks. I'm not kidding about that. Over the summer it was so much easier to enjoy yourself when it wasn't dark at 4:30, when you didn't have to put on half your wardrobe just to take out the trash in the morning,... and oh, no one wants to get up at 8:00am to work out when the sun isn't even up yet. Yuck.

I know I'm complaining a bit, but I think this is confirming that I may very well seek to spend the rest of my earthly days hovering close to the Equator.

I'm reading a really good book right now, called "Where Rainbows End", by Cecelia Ahern. I'm reading the German version, and it's SUCH a good book... I recommend it! It's so neat to read in German and actually understand it.

On the Saturday before Christmas, we went to Nuremberg in Bavaria to the Christmas Market there. I have to say that that's one of the neatest cities I've been to yet. So far my favorite is definitely Bremen, though, where I went over the summer. On the day after Christmas, Michi and I went South to Salzburg, across the boarder into Austria... I made it out of Germany, wild!!

Well time to go do something productive that does NOT include sitting in this chair...!

Caitlin