Walking Marathons and Finding new Apartments

The last few days have been quite relaxed, yet quite full.  I am not sure if you all know, but the apartment I'm renting now is only for the first semester, and I needed to find a new apartment from March through June.  I thought it was going to be quite a challenge; it's a short amount of time and rather specific, the odds of someone needing someone to fill their room for those requirements wasn't looking good.  However, while on a website like the German facebook, but for Marburg Students, I found an add for an apartment exactly for the dates I was looking at.  I met up with the guy renting his room out for the 3 months on Wed, saw the house, met the roommates, and decided to accept the room.  The location of the apartment isn't as central as the last apartment, but it isn't terrible either.  It is just on the other side of town from where I live now.  There is a grocery store somewhat near by, and it is near where I had classes last semester, so I dont predict a huge problem with location.  The apartment is actually a house, and I will be renting one of the 5 bedrooms in the house.  I have 3 girl roommates and 1 boy (There usually are 2 guys, but I'm renting the one's room while he is in france for the semester) and they all seem really great.  They don't speak a ton of English, which excites me even further.  This will be a great chance to improve my German speaking skills, including slang terms.  When we all met, I spoke mostly only German and we all got along great, so I don't predict a problem there either.  The house is up on a huge hill, so there are like 50 steps from the road up to the house, but I am not one to mind a little excercise.  Our house has a nice patio balcony and 3 levels of yard; one has a fire pit!  My room is quite large and he is leaving his stuff for me to use, like bed, couch, desk, closet, etc., so I won't have to buy any of those things myself.  The apartment people are all really artsy, especially when it comes to photography.  Some of the photos they have in their rooms are absolutely phenomenal; the guy roommate kayaks around the world and takes photos in places like yemen, norway, ehm.. .all over.  And they're breath taking.  Hopefully they'll share their skills with me along the line.  Unfortunately I don't have a photo to show you now of my new digs, but I expect to move in the room in the end of March, so sometime after then!

In other news, I've been doing a ton of walking.  My friend Nichola and I got tired of sitting around our apartments and being lazy, so we deicded to go walking every day; usually new paths and new distnaces every day.  On Thursday we clocked in around 10 miles minimum, the others always around 3 or 4.  And after our walks, we're always off walking around town for errands and such, so my legs are definitely feeling the burn these days.  These are some photos I took of the town during our adventures..

Those are all views of my town, and the bird graffiti says something to the effect of "I love colors" "I detest Uniforms."  The sport fields are my university's sport fields for the teams, but our program really doesn't use them.  The one time I went for volleyball we played in a building near there, but otherwise we're never there.  The castle there is the center of town, and I never truly get over how gorgeous it is.  Tomorrow Nichola and I are off to Sweden.  I'm so excited!  I've never been anywhere in Scandinavia before, so this will be a totally new experience.  I also have no knowledge what-so-ever of the swedish language, so I'm sure that element will also be exciting and a new challenge.  So yep.  Until Wednesday!