Anything New in Germany?

Hello Folks,

Well, I've been here over four months, and the time has gone by like a flash of lightning. Does all of life go by this fast? I have a feeling that the next 6 months are going to go by even faster because it's summer soon and I might actually want to do some things that don't involve putting on 10 pounds of additional clothing before leaving. Really, it puts a damper on things! Right now, I'm sitting in my room and it is 9:12am on a Wednesday. I need to go grocery shopping and I don't even want to do that, ha! I suppose having less food in the house makes it harder to eat the wrong things. I don't even have any tomato sauce! I guess after my workout + shower this morning I will pack up and go to town for a bit, get some stuff to eat and such. All I have here right now is rice, pasta, granola bars, bread, frozen veggies, a bit of salad, skim milk, sliced cheese and salami... peanut butter?

Yesterday I spent time just getting stuff DONE... I had a boatload of homework left, well, a bunch of tedious things. Got that all done, washed a ton of laundry, got in a 90 minute super-sweat fest, finished a book, and ate healthy all day! I was happy about that. Viktor left Koblenz on Monday evening, and he's a guy and loves to eat a lot, often. Since he's not here, it's easier for me to eat healthier. I miss him, though. I think I'll go to Spain in April. Fitting in that trip's gonna be tight, that's for sure. It looks like I'll get back from Rome eeearly on a Wednesday morning, have to re-pack my things that night to catch the bus back to the airport at 8:40 the same morning. It'd put me at the airport at 9:50am and my flight doesn't leave until 1pm... maybe I can get a ride a bit later than 8:40 so I can have a little extra, oh, TIME! Ha ha... oh well, it'll be fun and exciting!

Last Friday I helped Viktor with his going-away party at his house. We got a bunch of baguettes and cut them in pieces and in half to make little frenchbread pizzas. We had a bunch of sauces and toppings, like corn, salami, fresh mozzarella, fresh tomatoes, pesto, ham, cheese... set out on his kitchen table and everyone made their own little pizzas. We put them in the oven and let them bake. They were delicious! We had about 12 people or so come in total and were worried that we had too much food, but we barely had any leftovers! It was quite the success.

The next morning we got up before 6am so we could catch a train to Frankfurt! We wanted to check out the city like regular tourists. We made a few little pizzas to take with us for breakfast :-) It was SO COLD in Frankfurt. The sun came out though, eventually :-) Our first stop in Frankfurt was the Senkenberg Natural History museum, which was HUGE and I loved it!! We actually left early without seeing everything there because we were so hungry. We spent over two hours there just looking at everything. I am pretty sure they have a stuffed version of every type of bird that ever existed at THAT museum!! Even flamingos! Every type! Viktor didn't like the bug exhibits, but we looked at them anyway, WOW there's lots of different horned beetles out there. I think one of my favorite parts of Frankfurt was a bit out of the way-- we went to this quaint little English-style park because on the map it said there was a castle there... it took us a while to find the castle, ha ha, but when we did it was worth it. It was a small, house-like castle with a little moat around it surrounded by ducks and lots of shady trees. We also made a special trip "off-the-beaten-path" to the Jewish cemetery. I've never seen a cemetery quite like that one. Jewish people put stones on top of grave markers instead of flowers on the grave, so there were rocks and pebbles all on top of the markers. The markers were very old and tattered looking and the whole cemetery just had a different look to it than others around. I've never seen so many grave clustered together as in that cemetery. The walls had small markers in it as well, each with names, dates, and places of death of Jews that died in the Holocaust. So many of them just said "unknown".

This Saturday, a few friends and I are splitting a weekend ticket and heading BACK to Frankfurt to visit the ZOO! I am psyched because I love zoos. It only costs 4 Euro to get in for students. Tonight I am going to a game night with some friends, and will probably have to learn how to play a bazillion games in German, fun, fun, fun. But it's something to do, right!

Well, time to get started on my day: on today's "menu" is of course, exercise, getting laundry put away, uploading pics to Facebook, and grocery shopping!


Caitlin