The World Ain't Slowing Down

Sorry, I've kinda ignored you guys recently, but I've been busy. I have an hour and a half before I need to run out the door again, so I think I can give you a run-down of the past two weeks.

Wednesday, very very nearly missed my train (as in, if it hadn't been 5 minutes late, I would have missed it) but did make it to Wittenberg to see Mary and Casey and also that church that Martin Luther nailed some theses on or something. It was Casey's birthday yay Casey! We took millions of pictures of that and other things, and then got ourselves on a train and went to Berlin, where we found every single other American person who was with us in Tübigen and also in Cologne (well, Jesh wasn't there that day but he came later) which makes our group awesome for not getting anyone sent home. Um, lots of talking and whining that night? The next day, we went to the Amerika Haus, where a Jew from England told us that Germans "moan" too much, among other things. We then let Allyson, whose host sister lives in Berlin, show us around the city a bit (yes, more pictures, will upload sometime) and there was shopping for silly things and we found a Mexican restaurant! You know we ate dinner there, and it was Rose's birthday, so they made it happy hour early for us. That night, we chilled at the hostel and tried to write a song for the Bundestag and gave each other massages. Friday was Bundestag day! Rose and I were handcuffed to each other the whole time because handcuffs are awesome and we wanted to make sure we would have an appropriate reputation. We met all sorts of new people who are also C-Bers in some way or another, and then they chose to not let Buster do the original song that we made but instead had some other group do a cover of some pop song translated (badly) into German. We were slightly peeved. There were many politicians doing what they do best, including a pretty awesome dude who looked like Trotsky. After Bundestagging it for a while, we hopped on a bus and went off to set foot on American soil at the Embassy! The real Ambassador was not there, but some other dude was, and we mostly enjoyed our Bratwurst and potato salad and danced around on the grass and tried to have fun, although the DJ was pretty terrible and the party got boring fast. It was nice of him to play Sweet Home Alabama, though, so us few crazy people from below the Mason-Dixon line could scream it and dance in the rain. When the sun came back out, we discovered that paper plates make really terrible frisbees, and they eventually decided we could leave because we were going on a boat tour. Proof of Experiment's amazing organizational skills: they did not buy any sort of public transportation tickets for our large group to go on this required boat ride, so we all had to shell out on our own to get there, and also no one thought about your average public bus's ability to handle a group of, oh, 120. I hear there was some illegal riding and some €40 tickets handed out, and we ended up having to take two buses (one coming half an hour after the other) and it was a fiasco. Somehow, we all made it to the boat, where Rose and I promptly went to the bottom level and fell asleep. I hear there were pretty things to see, but we were exhausted. We were left to our own devices to get home from the boat ride, and we all had a good laugh as we watched Mary and Katelynn get on the subway in the wrong direction and ride away looking scared (they got off at the next stop and caught the next train back- they hopped on before we figured out which train we needed to take). Saturday morning brought paperwork and more paperwork, and a pretty neat alum named Dillon or Dylan or some spelling of that idea who told us not to begin sentences with "Back in Germany" or "One time in Germany" or "Germany" and also not to yell at our moms for buying gross bread because America does not have good bread. Bustin Roses decided to finally get some of their many awesome Betreuer songs from the year on hard disk, and me and Mary and Emily and Christine and maybe some other people hung out and listened to them be awesome. (Bustin Roses is Buster, Dustin, Rose and Tootlez, for ye unintiated.) It was rainy and Mary and I went into the city to buy hair dye and hope to sightsee, but we ended up cowering in the mall because the weather was gross. The Betreuers had told us to meet up at 7 at a Biergarten, and Mary and I ran into the members of Bustin Roses in the train, and the 6 of us tried to find the Biergarten, and eventually asked a snarky newspaper stand man who told us where, and we arrived to find Swantje and her boyfriend and nobody else. We waited a while and then a giant Bero-led troupe of Americans showed up and it was raining and the Biergarten had no space for us, so we went and got on a train and rode somewhere and stood on a corner for half an hour until someone told us we could go to the bar across the street, where we ordered drinks and hung out and Rose and Dustin and I talked to Alum Dude Dyllan (who is from Virginia Beach and goes to William and Mary) and he eventually offered to head back to his place but Rose and Tootlez and I were tired and cold so we went back to the hostel and mooched internet and my Roomies came home and there was post-midnight wishing of Mary a happy birthday (her birthday was Sunday) and it was super-cute when the South American dudes brought her a birthday beer, which she may or may not have actually drank. Emily dyed my hair at 3 in the morning and we slept nowhere near enough. Sunday was all good-byes, which my brain doesn't even begin to understand because I have to many of them and they are rarely real, and then I hopped on a train and listened to wonderful travel music and I love the café in the train where I can get a cup of tea and sit and watch the countryside- THE way to travel. Got home, my host parents had some guests over so there were drinks and desserts with people I barely know, and also sweet sleep. I went to school on Monday, went to school on Tuesday, went to a football (soccer) game in which I saw the WM (world cup) team from Togo beat the Bayern All-Stars or something of the like. Went to school Wednesday, picked up Mary from the train station on the way home from school, Thursday was Ascension, so no school and I gave Mary the Grand Tour of Augsburg (there are pictures of this, too) even though everything but Burger King and Subway and McDonalds was closed. Took Mary to Munich on Friday in the pouring rain and Munich is a pretty nice city to hang out in, actually. Pictures pictures pictures, found the best non-used bookstore ever, had the best beer ever, got really wet. We chilled on Saturday and went shopping in my city (which is the second-oldest city in Germany, by the way, having been founded in 20 BCE) and I bought pretty things for way cheap at H&M, as usual. Yesterday was Confirmation Sunday and church was full and there was a praise team there that even played a song I knew, and we met Mary's British friend Jim that afternoon and then Mary got on a train and I came home and crashed. School today was uneventful, and I'm leaving in one hour to go see a play with my German class and stay and Berni's house because we will get back late and there is no train.

I guess it's Memorial Day, too, isn't it? Hmmm. My upcoming schedule: art Schulaufgabe Wednesday, Ambassador Project due Thursday and I still haven't written that paper, lock-in at church Friday-Saturday, then comes 2 weeks of Pentecost break and I am thinking about heading to Rome the second week of that because there is a future Hampster down there and she is willing to show me around yay! Still trying to figure out if I should go somewhere the first week- anybody want me for a few days?