Wie, in the world, melde ich mich für Kurse an?

Ich habe heute schon drei oder vier Stunden vor meinem Computer gesessen, um interessante Kurse zu finden und meinen Stundenplan zusammenzustellen. Das System hier ist sehr kompliziert...oder vielleicht einfach anders. Ich bin noch nicht daran gewöhnt....

Oh well. Today was a really nice day! I had a relaxed morning: woke up and drank tea and had time to myself; vacuumed the downstairs--which I do on Saturday mornings--but this time I faced my fear of the spider-infested bathroom. Ok, maybe it's not completely spider-infested...let me explain:

There is this shower downstairs that really nobody uses. It works and I'm going to start using it, but that's beside the point. I thought that maybe when Kati was I could maybe use it and wouldn't have to go all the way to the second floor to shower where everyone else was showering.
Story begins: We open the door and proceed back down the short hall that leads to the shower room. All is fine. Phew, still alive. I'm so brave. I inch into the bathroom...still good, no problems--my heart is beating heavily but I managed to retain my composure. Ah, the shower looks pretty nice, shiny shower-head....this isn't too bad. Oh yeah, it's pretty clean, nice.
As I pear into the shower stall, quite delighted with my discovery, I completely, completely lose it for about .276 seconds, scream, and go tearing out of the bathroom--I saw like the biggest, meanest looking spider I've ever seen indoors--and maybe outdoors too. (besides Tyler Goss's pet tarantula, but that's a different story). Brown, hairy, very large. I immediately begin comforting myself with the fact that there aren't poisonous spiders in Germany--at this point in time it doesn't matter that I never checked to varify if that was true when I heard it...
After we calm down for a few minutes Katelyn tells me that she'll be brave and go conquer the spider. Ok, ok--she tells me I can't come with her because I make her more nervous. Fine, no problem. But she seems to be gone for a long time--only armed with a hard-sole slipper--I begin to be concerned for her safety. I hear a rustling "it wasn't that big" I say to myself....it was smaller than the shoe. I hear a scream and see Kati running perhaps faster than I've ever seen before--it is more than a few seconds before she can completely tell me what happened. It...yes...Ok...uh huh....IT WHAT???? Yes, my friends, as she went to squish the small beast (after seeing how slow it ran) it caught itself up on it's web and flung itself towards her face. Mission aborted.
Christoph heard us and took care of the spider. I am so grateful.
Then, as we were relaying this somewhat-traumatic event later that evening I made a hand gesture of how big I thought the spider was. Sometimes, I must admit, this is not the most reliable source of how big a spider actually is--not that I necessarily try to exaggerate, but sometimes I remember the spider in terms of how much it scared me, rather than in terms of milimeters, centimeters, or other standard forms of measurement. To my relief, Christoph varified my representation of the enormity of the spider...it was over.
Facing my fear of that room this morning was good...
I was able to take a walk today in the sun! It wasn't really warm today, but compared to the last few weeks it was fantastic.
I've spent pretty much the entire afternoon on the internet, trying to figure out what classes to take at the university and how it will work into my schedule for next semester back at WSU. It is complicated stuff.
And, as some of you already know, I--along with the whole group I am in--was placed beyond the need for intensive German this semester. This means that I can attend the university directly and choose classes that are outside the international department! That was exciting.
Plus, as some of you already know too, I finished reading my first full book in German (a real book). It was I Dared to Call Him Father but in German it is Allah-mein Vater?

Here are a couple of pictures from Aachen, where we went yesterday with a huge crowd of exchange students.

This is the throne where Charlemagne (Karl der Große) was crowned in the year 800. It's made from stones out of the temple of Jerusalem...

I didn't have my camera, because Amelie has it with her in Italy right now, so I haven't been taking very many pictures. We just thought that this was a pretty funny name for a store, and sounds like some sort of midieval ruler or something....

So, FYI: I made two posts today, so there is a new one below this too!

This mainly has pictures of my trip to Stuttgart last weekend and our hike that we took this weekend!

Well, here's the reason that I went to Stuttgart, actually to Gärtringen, a little town about 30 minutes south of Stuttgart. Nice place. This beautiful couple is Angela and Alex. It was so wonderful to be able to go to their engagement party and celebrate for them. I was also able to help with translations for Angela's parents (who are wonderful people and who I enjoyed spending time with!) and for Alex's parents (who are also so nice and generous!). I had a really good time.

Here I am with Alex's parents: Rainer and Piea. They are so loving and generous. They treated me like one of the family and were so kind to me. Beautiful people...

And this is just a picture of something that makes me chuckle. There is a new law in Germany, similar to Washington, that stops indoor smoking and smoking in public areas like train stations. So people can only smoke in designated areas. Here is one of those areas on a train platform. It's just funny because all it is is like a painted square on the platform...the air can go where it pleases, but as long as you're in that square, you're ok.

I thought this was so cool. You can't really grasp the enormity of how many people were waiting for that train. It just seemed to go on and on!

And then the train came...
And almost all of the people were gone...

This is all that I had with me on my train trip to Stuttgart...and boy am I glad that I bought them. The ride is usually supposed to be about 4 hours, and I was to arrive at 7:05. But alas! there was a problem just outside of Worms (yes, same city as the cousel of Worms, I believe) and we were stopped for almost a hour. Apparently there was a person on the platform of the upcoming station that the police were looking for or something. And they hadn't cleared the area. I definitely missed my connection to Gärtringen and had to wait until the 8:30 train came. I had no way of getting a hold of Alex and Angela because I had no more money on my phone, but because they are very schlau (clever) people, they just checked the next train that came, and picked me up on that one. It all worked out, but I was kind of hungry after that. I'm so glad i had those gummy bears!

This looks like a beautiful innocent patch of woods...but what is crazy is that like 10 minutes before this it had been snowing wildly... We went on this hike up to the Löwenborg ruins. It was a beautiful hike...

Here's another part of it...

The ruins...

A view of the Rhine River...

We had been up there about 7 minutes, and do you see those clouds coming?

This came about 4 minutes after that. Crazy blowing snow!

This didn't last too terribly long and then it was nice again, cold, but nice...

Happy Resurrection Sunday everyone!

Well, I finally downloaded some pictures. These are just random, but I'll try to explain them...

I don't know why, but I just get the biggest kick out of this sign. The kid and adult playing soccer in the road and a car driving up... I guess it means "be careful because there will likely be kids (and grown-ups?) playing in this road" but I just think it's really comical, I don't know why...Check out that kid's leg-action!

This is where I spend a good 15 hours every week...In this little room on the fourth floor of this old building. That is Margaret in the white shirt. She's from Louisiana and she's cool. She eats crawfish. The teacher sits at that bigger table and then writes on a white-board that's behind her and on the wall opposite the window. this pillar thingy in the middle makes it really irritating sometimes, because from some angles, it's hard to read them... Our teacher is really great though...

The other week when I came home Stephanie, a lady from church, and her kids were having lunch at our house. Amadeus is between Jeremias and Samuel, her sons. They were having a blast and being really cute...This picture is in the kitchen, where we spend a lot of time.

You're probably thinking "what the heck is this picture", and I'll admit that it is rather random, but let me explain...

It all started when I realized the drastic and scary difference between American and European toilets (toilette?). Ok, mostly German and Dutch and Polish, because I haven't been everywhere in Europe. Anyway... I find them rather creepy at times, not just because they are public toilets--which is reason enough on it's own to be a little creepafied--but that they are like air-tight cells! Seriously, all public bathrooms have like full-blown doors, no cracks, no way to escape if the heavy-duty-lock-with-a-key gets stuck. yeah.

Then, when I was going the bathroom at the university, i realized--to my great astonishment and relief--that this door was almost big enough so that in extreem danger I might have been able to squeeze myself out, or at least have air to breath if I were trapped. Amazing. I wonder what people would think when they saw the flimsy and sometimes almost non-existant barriers in our public bathrooms...

This is just a typical street that I walk by on my way to class everyday. It's beautiful, isn't it? I love the trees lining the street and I also love the houses. They are really, really skinny and like 3 or 4 stories tall. Also, I was walking to class yesterday, and for some reason started looking in the cars to see if they were stick-shift or automatics. I went down a city-block or two and didn't see one automatic. Almost everyone drives stick here...it's great. Even the von Bibra's big van is a stick-shift...

Children, wonderful children

I decided to put up some pictures of what happens when you let kids use your camera. I am always waiting in anticipation to see what will be on my camera after I let the kids use it. It's totally worth having to spend the time erasing tons of random pictures when you get some amazing and sometimes very interesting or clever ones...
Oh yeah, and I learned something really interesting today while going on a walk through the woods near Pech. Ready? Ok. There are wild pigs that run around these woods. Yeah. I'm not joking. And it the fields around there are random tall green towers with a room on the top...they look like some sort of watch or guard tower. So I asked Felicitas what they were, and she said that they are hunter look-outs, so that the hunters can watch for the wild pigs among the fields and hunt them without being in danger. I guess these wild boars can be dangerous....aaaaand, they eat them. Yeah. Crazy.

Leonard, self-taken...

This is Amelie. I really don't know how this happened.

Amadeus.

And I took this one. It is the underground (the underground that goes above ground a lot of the time) that I took to Wesseling, the city where the climbing wall is between Cologne and Bonn. This one is pretty old; a lot of the undergrounds, trams, and trains are substancially nicer. I was also informed by Insa that having my foot on the seat could be a costly luxury. I don't remember how much, but you can get fined a mentionable amount of money if the controller person comes by when your feet are on the seat...

I also don't think that I've been tremendously good at keeping posted what I've been doing. I'll try to upload some pictures of my trip to Stuttgart and other interesting things.

My friend Katelyn is visiting right now, which is great! Hey...

It's cold and rainy here. Did I mention that it's freezing? Yeah, it's super cold. The temperature isn't that cold, but this cold seems to chill you to the core, unlike anything I remember experiencing for extended amounts of time in March in Washington...but maybe it just seems more drastic because I'm experiencing it right now...memory can be warped sometimes. And it's not as cold as January in Pullman, that's for sure...

Happy St. Patrick's day!

Here are a few photos from when my parents were here to visit last week and from my first week at the university! Most of the pictures from when mom and dad were their are on their camera. I, unfortunately, forgot to download them before they left...

Here are Felicitas and my mother. This is on the Rhine River in a little town called Königswinter, which is across the river from Bad-Godesberg.

Dad and Leonard are looking out over the Rhine river valley from the Petersburg, which is a big palace that was used, and is still used, for a lot of state conferences and gatherings and such. Important people go there, and have for many years in the past as well. It is a windy and steep road up there, but the view is gorgeous. (Dad has a snazzy leather coat...)

I really like this picture of the the guys. This is while we were walking along the Rhine too. We stopped and got some ice cream on our walk, and then walked through the very picturesque city-center.

On Sunday when mom and dad were here we had tons of people over. I met Maria-Theresa, who is originally from Peru. She doesn't speak any English, just German and Spanish...so we talked primarily in Spanish, and sometimes in German...that really threw me for a loop, but she is a very kind and fun person. On the right is Yeon-gi, from Korea. She is studying German and Chinese at the University of Bonn. We had nice time talking. She's a beautiful person.

This here is Vincens. I don't know if I already have a picture of him. He's fourteen, and a nice kid. He also helped me get my internet running, which was awesome. Today he walked into the kitchen and asked if we needed any more help. I was totally impressed.

So, I've started classes. This was from the second day, when we had our orientation all together, before we split up into langauge groups. I sat next to Miki (left) and Ayako, who are with a group from Japan that is staying only for a month. They don't really speak any English, at all, and they know a few words in German. But we had a nice time together. Unfortunately I won't get to see them very much because we are in different classes and they are often travelling with their group.

Anyway, more over school briefly: I tested into the second highest German group (praise the Lord!), and am with 5 other American students that are all agreeable (praise the Lord again!). I'll have to take a picture of our classroom and our building. It's a tiny little room on the top floor...so tiny and so on the top that a large portion of the ceiling is slanted pretty low. Our teacher is cool, I like her a lot. It has been boring at times...I go every day from 9 to 12:15, with a 15 minute break, and we have been doing mostly grammar, but I'll survive. I'm learning learning learning.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, though, I get to have this really sweeeeet phonetik (phonetics, is that a word in English?) course. We are going over all the German sounds and the differences. I think it's totally cool and fascinating. And our teacher for that is totally into what she does, which is cool, because I love it when the teacher is thrilled about what he/she is teaching, it makes the class SO much more interesting. I just find phonetics totally interesting. That basic linguistics class that I took at WSU has been super helpful, because I know how phonetics work already, the different placements of the tongue, and so I know where the teacher is coming from with her explanations.

I'll try to regularly post now that my internet is more reliable...we'll see.

Back online!

So, my internet has started working again (yay!), and I'll have some pictures up soon...hopefully.
Sorry this is short. I've got quite a bit of homework to do today, and I'm just heading off to the farm to get some milk...