Oh my goodness. It has been just over two weeks since I had a chance to update this thing, and so much has happened. My Internet just decided to be lovely and basically just.. die.. on me, along with block the ability to blog. Ugh. Whatever. My wireless should come tomorrow or Tuesday, so, problem solved. Good byeee crappy Internet stick. I'm contemplating throwing it off my 10th story balcony to show my true feelings towards it. However, I'm still trying to fly under the radar as not the crazy, brash American. So. Yeah. Anyways. Language class still blows, but oh well. We have a new teacher on Thursday and Fridays named Andreas and he's basically awesome, so the weeks are now slightly more tolerable. He's funny and can actually teach, so I feel like Thursdays and Fridays will be my not so new, but never the less, favorite days of the week. I actually skipped class last Friday (sept. 23rd) because I went to.. (drum roll please) HAMBURG! :) I was so excited to go and visit my host family and friends in Hamburg; I was like a little kid waiting for Christmas or the tooth fairy or at least something with euphoria attached. After class on Thursday I literally ran home, grabbed my bags, took a bus to the Hauptbahnhof (main train station) and caught my 5:50 train to Kassel, and then from Kassel to Hamburg. Sarah Fuchs was there awaiting me on the platform when I arrived at 9:50 pm. I felt like I was home, it was so great. Hamburg truly is like a second home to me; i absolutely love being there. I was able to see my host family (all of them) for the first time in two years which was great. I missed them so much, oh my god. They're hysterical. My host dad just recently returned from Chicago and was sharing his new found love for American Eagle, the Hyatt hotel, and, wait for it.... Beef Jerky. He was so excited about Beef Jerky and its magical deliciousness, again with the kid on Christmas analogy. I hope you're all as excited as I am about this. I found it hilarious. Ahhh have to love him. Awesome. Maybe I'm the only one who finds it this amusing. eh. oh well. But yes. Thursday I just watched a movie with Sarah and Timo (host brother) after my late arrival and caught up on the last 2 years. My other host sister Steffi eventually came home from work around 12 and talked briefly but I didn't see much of her. She's working a ton at a sandwich shop somewhere in Hamburg, and mostly on the weekends. So yeah. But oh well. Sarah works there too actually, and their sandwiches are amazing. Hmm. Anyways. This is my crazy awesome host family... (minus steffi..)
Oh wait.. here's Steffi...
To keep things short, the weekend basically consisted of shopping, partying, relaxing at home and just catching up with the family after 2 years. It was really awesome and I can't wait to go back on the weekend of Halloween. Next time I'm bringing my friend Carissa from the program here with me, and she hasn't ever been to Hamburg so it should definitely be a great time. Here are some quick photos from the weekend.. 
Most of the pictures I have from Hamburg are just pictures with people since I've already done the tourist pictures gig twice before. But if you want to see the whole album.. click here...
I hope that works. I finally managed to get the Picasa to attach itself to my "online" web albums.. so.. ideally that should show you my time in Hamburg. Otherwise we're back to the drawing board.
Random note.. French music tends to be amazing. I'm listening to the radio right now, and all the French "clubbing" music is always amazing. At the moment they're playing some random Indian music.. its kind of like a chanting. I'm not sure what its doing on my radio, but I guess I'm all for new cultural experiences? The radio is really quite diverse here- Music isn't just in English and German. Kind of awesome.
Ok so, this last week was kind of dull, not a whole ton going on here. Just class and rain. The usual. But yet the week flew by. It's crazy to think that I've already been here for 5 weeks, almost 6, and I'll be in home in about 9.5. Time is flying. In two weeks (from the 21st through the 23rd of October) I'll be in Prague. 6 friends from the program and myself decided to try a new promotion which one of us had heard of previously called "Blind Booking." What this is, is one books a ticket for really cheap, however, you don't know your final destination until after you pay. Sounds totally ridiculous and scary at first, but just let me explain. Basically, you choose a "package", in which there are approximately 10 cities. When you purchase a ticket, you purchase one from a package, so you know that you will at least be going to one of those 10 cities; it isn't a complete shot in the dark. Our package included cities like London, Madrid, Barcelona, Milan, Dublin, Prague, Rome, etc. We only paid 40 euros for the round trip and we got Prague. I was at first a little bummed because I've already been there, but, what the heck. It'll be a blast, and it's one of my friends birthdays. Should be great. I plan on using the Blind booking for a few more travels in the future. Other groups got Milan, Dublin and Zurich as destinations. I'm honestly quite excited for this experience. I predict it will be something I'll tell my children about; their mother's "flying by the seat of her pants" adventures in Europe. Yep. Thrilled. That is, if I have children.
So, speaking of travels, this past weekend I spent the weekend in a town on the Rhine River named Ruedesheim; part of the main German Wine Country. It is definitely a tourist destination; no doubt about that. Souvenir shops and expensive restaurants with "authentic" German music and meals lined all the cobble stoned streets, merely awaiting their victims. I thought the town was cute and quaint, but I probably wouldn't recommend it to anyone under 50. Just how I felt I suppose.
The vineyards surrounding the town were beautiful; I took a cable car ride over the vineyards in the early morning fog on Saturday. Now that was an experience. One can see for miles and miles up and down the rows of the vineyards, down the Rhine river, over the rolling hills of the country side; it was really quite awe inspiring. I could have honestly stayed in that cable car for well over an hour and not have been bored one bit. It was so quite up there that it was also kind of relaxing. You really just were given a chance to completely take in all the beauty of the area. Best part was, it was free! Our program picked up the tab for it :)
Other than that though, I felt the trip to be kind of dull. Oh well, still a life experience. We went to a medieval torture techniques museum and a museum on self playing instruments (don't those just sound so worthy of traveling across the world to see?... that's what I thought. no.) and we went to a wine tasting. I'm not a huge huge fan of wine, so the tasting was slightly lost on me, but oh well. Quite a few laughs were shared, and they had some damn good cheese cubes. Can't go wrong with great cheese cubes. It was freezing though, so the wine was a slight relief from the cold. We tried 4 different types of wine; 2 dry and 2 sweet. All were white wines from the region. I'm generally a white wine fan, so this worked out quite splendidly for me.
After the wine tasting we went on a 5 hour boat tour up and down the rhine river. It was pretty views, especially since the trees just recently started changing colors. I've never been in Germany during the fall so this was a new experience for me. I had to sit in the restaurant for the majority of the boat ride due to the cold weather and my not so thick and poor jacket choice, but I still managed to get some good photos and enjoyed myself. There were castles scattered every couple miles along the river, so that was also pretty rockin. A few were just old rubble ruins but others were such elaborate, archictectual masterpieces that you would expect Rapunzel or Cinderella to pop out on a balcony at any moment. They were legit. I'd add pictures of it here, but I have so many, that at this point I'll just post the link for the album.
For some reason I ate an ungodly amount of bratwurst this weekend. Just a random note for you I suppose.
Oh aren't I just so cute. Anyways, the evening after the boat tour I basically just crashed from being exhausted (in order to get to the cable car I literally had to hike up a mountain and like 800 steps... rocky can kiss my butt after that..). This morning we visited a monastery somewhere just outside of the city. It was pretty, but also freezing. I can definitely tell you, I would never survive being a monk under St. Benedict's law. That stuff is crazy strict. Plus they were crazy freezing ALL THE TIME. Definitely would not work with me. The average life expectancy of the monks who lived in this monastery was 30. Clearly the conditions were quite intense.
So yes. You can find more pictures from this last trip at the last link I posted; there are literally like 450 of them. I know, I know, I need to take a chill pill. But hey. I am picture-taking-button-happy, which I don't think most of you would find a problem with. Now for the random culture points of the day:
Germans (and most Europeans) wear their wedding rings on their right hands
German mothers (so I'm told through my own observations and a very limited supply of genuine German citizens) generally don't make their children home baked goods such as cookies, brownies, etc. Then again why would you when there is a bakery on every single corner. I'm beginning to think carbs are more important to them than vegetables. Eesh.
You can give up on your schooling, your marriage, your mother, your job, and your future, but you can't ever give up on your loyalty for your soccer team.
I bought boots and am beginning to take on a European clothing style. I'm quite fond of it. Not that this is a culture point or anything, but I just felt the need to share this with you all.
Children's menus are for children. There is no fuzzy area.
Apparently, so I'm told, you don't refer to someone in Germany as "your friend" unless you've known them since you were about, oh, eight. Now, what I mean by this is, you recognize them as a friend, yes, but when you would introduce someone to someone else, instead of saying "this is my friend Lisa" you'd merely say "this is Lisa." I hope this makes sense. To me, it's fascinating. I keep calling everyone my friend. I'm starting to be known as the SUPER "friendly" American. haha. Oh well.
When you buy Internet, your modem and router and whatever come in the mail. Hence my recent issues. Thank you Germany.
My Grandma and Grandpa wrote me letters!
Ok, I'm so tired. Only two weeks of language class left and then I begin my politics and finance class. And then I also begin my traveling. Extensive Traveling. Watch out world, here I come.
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