Information Overload

So many pictures. . . know that this blog was a TON of work. My hope is to move all of this and the previous reports to one cohesive post and date it for last Saturday or so, after giving you a day or two to absorb it all here.

WEDNESDAY
So I started talking about Wednesday already, and how we went to visit the mayor and some people go to be the mayor. That includes Whitney and Rose!



Casey, Emily, Mary, and I snuck out early via super-special permission from Christian, and walked forever to the U-Bahn to go meet Mary's host mom and sister and have lunch! When you're stuck waiting for the U-Bahn, you take pictures. This is common knowledge.


After we got off the U-Bahn, we ran into John F Kennedy! It was pretty exciting, and we all posed with him. I posed with him more because I don't carry a camera, so I end up in pictures more easily.
me JFK

Mary made us walk FOREVER to get to her house, and she walks really really fast and Casey and I complained the entire way. But we got there and her host mom was super-nice and none of us could believe that her host sister is only 13 and we had goulash-based soup and bagels and cream cheese and some delicious cake. Mary took us to her room, which is in the basement, and showed us what a terrible mess it was (it was bad) and then we grabbed some cake to take to Christian as a bribe in case we were late, and Mary's host mom drove us to the Haus der Geschichte! It's this really awesome museum about German history post-WWII, and we had this really interesting tour but were not allowed to take cameras in! We did take a few cool lobby pictures, though!

We found this statue when we went down to the U-Bahn after the museum. Everyone was supposed to pose all tough, but Mary has trouble with that, I guess! The statue played this "do not touch. step away from the statue." recording that was funny and creepy.

We took the U-Bahn to the center of town and checked out Mr Music, the clear highlight of our trip! We all bought Gregorian Chant versions of our favorite 80s artists- I totally have Elton John as interpreted by the Brotherhood of St Gregory now. It is amazing. We also determined that the monks' favorite song must be "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," because they included it not only on the Beatles album, but also on Elton John and their Greatest Hits. The fact that this is probably the last song monks should be singing (except maybe "Baby Got Back?") makes this all the funnier.
After Mr Music, we popped in some pub for a cola, and then ran and grabbed some hair dye, and met back wherever we were supposed to meet for dinner! Dinner was mediocre, and no one took pictures, or at least no one has given me these pictures. After dinner, we went to the train station to head back to Köln, and I stole Dustin's wrist warmers, which he made from a pair of argyle socks. Mary yelled at me for a few days for stealing them, but he actually gave them to me, and she eventually laid off. As it turns out, boy's argyle socks with holes cut in them are pretty good for keeping warm!
We had some adventures I'm not allowed to talk about (says Mary, although she was not involved in said adventures) when we got back to Köln, and they were quite delicious. Then we returned to the hostel for hair-coloring adventures, and I somehow have none of the many related pictures? Hook me up, people! The day ended late, waiting for Christian to come for room check.

THURSDAY
Thursday started off with some meeting in which we complained for a long time, and then we had to split into small groups and Mary and Casey and Christine and Emily and Whoever Else were offended that I went to Rose and Dustin and Buster and Whoever's group. But I was smart, because our Betreuer was Cynthia, and she was jet-lagged, and didn't make us really do the whole talk-about-yourself-in-the-third-person-from-the-point-of-view-of-your-host-family thing. Mostly we talked about how cool or not our host families are. Then we had some unexpected free time after lunch, so a bunch of us headed down to the Rhine (it was basically across the street) and there was this amazing hill to run down and frozen mud puddles that squirted when you stepped on them and so so so many good stones for skipping. Dustin has something like 59 pictures of himself skipping stones, and someone has an amazing video of Dustin teaching Christine to skip rocks (I want it) and someone made a video of Christine and Emily being long-lost lovers and Mary and I collected shells and Mary got more than me but mine are prettier, and Mary gave them to the Betreuers because she is a suck-up and it was my idea in the first place. I put pictures below.



I have known Dustin for three years, and this picture captures our relationship perfectly. This is basically how we are all the time.

You can see the rock bouncing off the water!

My hair is so amazing. It is simply brilliant. Be in awe.

Later, we went to downtown Köln again to take a tour of the ancient Roman sewer system! It is not as gross as it sounds?

Here you see Buster, Rose, and myself clinging to each other for warmth and listening to the tour guide tell us about how the fine people of Köln put this part of the Roman sewer system above ground so they could put their modern one underground.

This is a pretty terrible picture, but I include it because Buster is doing the Trinity gang sign. I need to tell him that he is part of the gang now.

This is what it looks like inside a Roman sewer. Acute observers will note Casey's hat in the foreground, my hat and Rose's coat in front of the tour guide, and Mike in red just beyond the tour guide. I could identify more people, but I already have a headache. The next picture is also from inside the sewer, and myself, Rose, Buster's arm, and Allyson's hair are more visible. Buster, Rose, and I had to break our link a bit because it is hard to walk three abreast through the sewer.

After the sewer tour, we had a little free time before dinner, and Some People had a desperate need for Starbucks. Normally, I would be all "Starbucks? Shuck that jive!" but it was cold and I figured a hot drink would do me good. I bought tea, though! There are much cuter pictures from Starbucks, but I don't know who has them!

Starbucks was really really full, so all of us huddled around this tiny table with the one easy chair and a weird three-legged ottoman thing. Christine got one of the Starbucks guys to give her a cup of foam, and then she was talking about how she wanted another, and he brought her one! She started talking to him, found out he was from Brazil, took a picture, and got a total of four free cups of foam! I don't know where the picture is, or if Christine ever did call him. It was pretty funny, though.

We walked around in the Dom a bit, because we love the Dom (I love it in ways I shouldn't), and then Mary, Casey, and I killed more time by going into Douglas, German perfume store! Somehow, I, specifically Dustin's wristies, became the test strip, and I left complaining loudly that I stank like girl. I made everyone smell how strong the wristies stank of different perfumes, and many people went into coughing fits. I am wearing the wristies now, and they still stink very strongly of many mixed perfumes. It is terrible. I am tempted to throw them in one of my host brother's beds for a while to try to neutralize the smell (with boy smell, the opposite).
We eventually went out to dinner again, and it was once again pretty mediocre! Mary took lots of pictures of people looking sad, I guess because the food wasn't awesome but wasn't bad either? I put a few less depressing pictures here.



Sometimes German buildings have funny signs. Rarely do you have a camera to capture them. After dinner, we did.
We bought a whole bunch of junk food from a kiosk and went back to the hostel to have a Futurama/Aqua Teen Hunger Force marathon party via Allyson's laptop- basically it was like college, except there was neither alcohol nor marijuana, just Dr Pepper (which we react to like some sort of addicts, since it doesn't exist here) and Haribos and Doritos. Mary did not understand ATHF at all, and we spent a while explaining that it doesn't have a deeper meaning, is just really, really funny. She left out of frustration. I still love Futurama so deeply in my soul. Mary wasn't very amused by that either, but I guess her sense of humor doesn't do cartoons? The rest of us enjoyed the night immensely, and felt very American again, but in a good way.
FRIDAY
Friday morning was so terribly boring that I do not remember it. There were meetings, I know, and we sang happy birthday to India, but nothing of real interest happened until we went to the ZOO. It was me and Rose and Allyson and India and Mike and it was SO. MUCH. FUN. Man, Zoos.

This camel is the coolest guy on the block and knows it. I mean, look at him.

These camels kissed and Rose did not get a picture of it!

She did get them kissing the zookeeper, though. Camel kisses are so cute!

Otters are just so great. This one even peed for us. All the animals decided to pee as soon as we came by. It was quite disconcerting.

German winter is a bit cold for meerkats, so they all sit in their little baskets under the heat lamp!

The chubby one is their king. That log is a throne in the world of the meerkats.

The cheetahs were a little bit sad because they just walked around in a circle in their enclosure, which wasn't really big enough for a decent run. They were kind of camera whores, too, though- this is such a money shot.


See how sad he looks? Just walking the circle.

We didn't take any pictures of the monkeys in the monkey house because the heat fogged up the camera lense. There were some really adorable tiny tiny tiny monkeys, and some larger, sadder monkeys that were too much like small children. One of them just gripped the bars on the door, staring out. India and I felt really, really bad for them. This drawing of a monkey asking for donations at the end of the house seemed pretty wrong to us, but it was funny!


Zebras are awesome. Don't ask me what they are doing.

This picture does not begin to capture the chaos of feeding time at the Baboon Rock. We walk over, and there are about 100 baboons running around the rock, screaming and making the most terrifying noises and generally being really weird. Then we spot the zookeepers starting to chuck apples at them, and all the baboons stop and start diving for the apples and getting vicious and it was INSANE. Some big monkeys would share with littler ones, but some were greedy and mean and some little ones got barely any. It was really strange but hilarious. Also, a lot of the baboons were in heat, meaning their hindparts swell up, and it looks really, really gross. If you look at the leftmost monkey in the above picture, you will see that he is very greedy and has 3 apples. I was happy when he caught the first one, but then he just stuck it under his foot and grabbed a second, proving pretty good catching skills. I couldn't believe that he continued to hold this one and caught a third, which he then began to eat. Notice that the two monkeys above him have nothing.

These monkeys have their apples and are thus calmer. They look really cute in this picture. It was not the case in real life. They were SCARY in real life.
We walked past the rock sometime later, and there was not a monkey to be seen. I guess they all go inside when no one is chucking fruit at them. There were seriously about 100 of them, and we were amazed that they could all disappear like that.





I guess Rose really likes penguins. Don't get me wrong, these dudes were awesome. But a picture can't quite capture the true Shaking of the Tailfeather.

These are those awesome prehistoric horse ponies that that guy made or whatever. We caught them at feeding time, too, and these things can SLOBBER. It was gross.

This picture is pretty cute, though. Pony Kisses!

The sea lions were all swimmy. I don't think there were any cool stories, but they were just cool.

They came out of the water to say goodbye to us!

The girls loved the baby llamas a lot more than Mike did. He found us pretty silly.

But look how adorable they are! Baby llamas!

I like elephants. This zoo had a whole elephant building. We were short on time, so we didn't get to see it all, but ELEPHANTS.



Rose is an animal, too, I guess.

Leopard.

I have never seen so many baby animals at a zoo! These are the baby snow leopards. The snow leopards were probably the highlight of our day- just the prettiest cats ever, and a baby, and the Mama was making all sorts of noise, and they were just amazing. Look at these pictures.





This lion wins some sort of award for being really awesome. He was just kinda chilling as we first passed, but when we came back, the lioness came out, and he got horny. It only got funnier from there. These two pictures capture it nicely, but they don't show the awesome roaring sounds he started making- it was HILARIOUS.


The tiger was in one of those moods that cats get where they go chasing after things that aren't there. I've see my cat do this so many times. Matter of fact, he looks a good deal like my cat in the last picture.



We eventually had to leave the zoo, and return to the hostel. Casey and Emily showed up with the intent to dye their hair. Emily had one of those fancy sets where you also do highlights, and it had a silly bonnet. Naturally, we played with the bonnet.

Emily is the only one of us who can dye her own hair. She is our designated colorist anyway. And she is good at it.

Later that night, Leo (one of our Betreuers) proved to me that he is the nicest person ever. I won't tell you why. Also, he took funny pictures with his camera phone, and I probably shouldn't tell Emily about them.
SATURDAY
Saturday morning brought a boring questionnaire and a more boring test of our German, and at some point Rose and Band debuted the Leo song, written from Tootlez dreams, and it was hilarious. They also played the Steffi song for the first time Steffi heard it, and did repeats of other lovely Betreuer songs. They promise us a CD for Berlin!
Later, we went for dinner at a strange restaurant that played a projected version of a VH1 special about Kurt Cobain and then Fight Club, all without sound because they had to play weird music. The food was mediocre again, and then dancing started when they brought out "Sweet Home Alabama" but I left with a bunch of people becuase Emily was going to get on a train and go to Austria for skiing with her host family!
We rode the S-Bahn and took silly pictures. Naturally, this included a picture of Leo's shoe (Mary was fascinated by it).

Mary also took some pretty terrible pictures of Leo! She loses at life.

We got back to the hostel and Emily grabbed her stuff and Leo asked someone to "borrow him €10," and also let me know that I can use the word "bucks" to refer to euros when speaking English, which makes me glad, because Germans have no slang for their money. Saturday was a late night, and Sunday came too early!
SUNDAY
I have no pictures for Sunday. We spent the day saying good-bye as various people peeled off, and there was a long period during which Jeff and Joe and Dustin and Drew and various other people told racist jokes and dead baby jokes and generally attempted to horrify Steffi and Leo. Also, we saw Leo's driver license pic and it was very funny.

So that was Köln! I have spent way too much time putting this together, so I want gratitude and e-mails and maybe presents! I will pull together highlights from this week tomorrow or so. I have a headache now from digging through all this code.