mehr fotos.

i'm completely pumped i have mastered this photo thing. here are some more.

max in yellow, tom in red. nutella. this is max. heidelberg herbst. a fall festival of sorts.

tom.

das ist mein haus.

raingear. max with the hat.

herbst.

i'm currently sitting at my computer with my head phones on looking like a huge dork. i am watching the live webcast of the head of the charles regatta. i just saw a friend from heidelberg rowing. (she is an american, but representing heidelberger ruderklub.) i told her if she saw clemson crew, that i belonged to them. i talked to jim just a bit ago and apparently they talked to her this morning. i'm jealous she saw my friends in real life. i went rowing this morning. no big regatta here, but every row is a battle when all the instruction is in german. the girls are nice and patient with me though. i appreciate this. i just saw our men's 8 come through. the commentator said: "the checkered blades, for all you college football fans, those blades are indicative of clemson university crew". haha. i don't know if that was nice or not. it is really beginning to feel like fall here. the highs have been right around 50 most of this week. something about the fall sun makes all of the colors of the leaves, mountains, and buildings look so rich. i need to remember to capture this on film if possible. last night i went out with some people from my class again. it continually amazes that we manage to actually communicate with one another. now it is sunday, this still isn't finished. this probably won't help my german, but i just figured out how to change all the instructions on the blog thing to english! so maybe now photos. i will try. yesterday was a good day. i rowed in the morning, talked to friends tailgating in clemson, talked to friends rowing in boston, watched them rowing online, then talked to more friends last night. i was able to talk to a few kids who i used to nanny for. they are so big now. yesterday i also attempted to use the intense coffee machine that nils and sabine own to make coffee for guys cutting trees here. it would help if i actually drank coffee. watching them cut trees is pretty interesting. the are super professional and have lots of gear. they climb up these trees and then cut it piece by piece; however, everything is all strapped so that the pieces do not free fall because the trees are close to the house. i'm supposed to go row in about one hour. however, it is cold/raining/gross...we will see what happens. fall i think will be a little strange here. halloween is a new holiday here (and it has more or less started for commercial reasons), they don't have thanksgiving, santa (nikolas) comes december 6th, and christmas is more celebrated on christmas eve, but then both the 25th and 26th are puiblic holidays. im not really sure about this, so i'm just not thinking about it for now. however, the purpose of this year is to experience a new culture. i must remind myself of this. here we go. these are more or less the going on's in my life. that ans spending time researching grad school. next on the list: actually completing the application. ok, i need to be useful.oh and side note: the high today...43* fahrenheit. with rain. welcome to germany.

a nice day in heidelberg. everyone comes out to the greens and lays out.

here is your typical postcard view of the old bridge, cathedral, and castle.

we look yellow, and i look gross, but you get the idea. max to the left and tom to the right.

i have a few friends. natsuki, caterina, gosia. however, both caterina and gosia are now in italy and poland respectively. and i have no clue why i'm standing out in front of them like this.

zwei monate.

i need to study, but i just realized today is the 2 month mark. this second month has gone by pretty quickly. i love max and tom, and i miss all of you. you know. same same. also, i had a relatively successful conversation with a 4 year old girl at the playground today. this means my german is improving.

hannah und sophie.

so. everytime i think i am learning something, the world puts me back in my place. tonight i "babysat" for hannah und sophie. they are the 6 year old twins that live down the street. (yes, note the name spelling and age correction from previous entries.) their 13 year old sister and 14 year old brother were both home. jan and paulina both speak fairly good english, but the twins can only say a few things. so it was more or less a few hours of charades. we played yahtzee (spelled yatzi, i think)...imagine playing this with 2 six year olds, only 4 out of 5 dice, and a made up set of rules. now take all of that and do it in german. then we played memory. luckily this is only pictures. to top the night off i read them a bedtime story in german. i felt as if i was in the 2nd grade again. it was terrible. i'm sure paulina was hearing this and cringing with every word. who knows what i actually said. and then i'm waiting for hannah and sofie to fall asleep, and jan (pronounced yan) tells me that when they are sleeping i can go. haha. this 22 year old felt younger than a 14 year old. it felt like a supervised playdate. they are super cute, maybe one day i will be able to communicate with them. i must remind myself i have been in class only for 6 weeks.

sauerkraut and bratwurst.

oh, so much to tell. i also just realized that i never mastered adding photos to this blog; therefore, only those of you who have facebook have seen what my life looks like. i will see what i can do about this. according to two of my favorites, my sentence structure is getting worse, and they are sure my english is getting worse. i would like to assure all of you, it is surely not because i have suddenly become really fabulous at german. it is because i type so often, my fingers now have a mind of their own. nevertheless, i will see if i can keep this entry somewhat coherent for all of you. i can't remember exactly where i left off, but last sunday sabine and i did take max and tom downtown to the fall festival. on monday and tuesday, wow, did the terrible two meltdowns really appear. monday the boys got new house shoes. (if you haven't read previous entires, these are like bedroom shoes that they wear around the house.) anyway, tom had a total breakdown that his didn't look exactly like max's. literally, you would have thought he was dying. so after he did finally lay down for a nap, i rode my bike rapidily to town to purchase another pair. i would like everyone to note that i did conduct this entire matter in german. and successfully returned home with house shoes in size funfundzwanzig (25). monday afternoon, i think, we visited a new playground in Ziegelhausen. it is pretty sweet and built into the side of this big hill. on tuesday i saw another new playground in handschuhsheim (kind of like a neighborhood area in heidelberg). handschuh means glove. on wedneday it was german reunification day. national holiday which =s no school, and a whole day with max and tom. in the morning it was raining so we baked a oatmeal cookies (hello america), this was of cousre my idea. in the afternoon, the weather inproved and i took the boys to the zoo. by the time i leave, i am quite certain that i will be able to navigate this place with both eyes closed. then wednesday night i took care of the boys and put them to sleep because sabine we went to a friend's birthday dinner and nils was in nyc. this is where the actual stories begin: thursday morning i caught the 5.16 bus to the hauptbahnhof (train station), where i then caught the 5.47am train to the mannheim hauptbahnhof. the ride was 12 minutes. 12 minutes of me praying they didn't throw me off the train for buying the wrong ticket and having no clue what i was doing. i of course made it through roughly 3 minutes of the ride before the ticket checker came through. the good news is she was nice and didn't throw me off the train. i defintely had the wrong ticket though. later i found out that for this kind of train you are supposed to have a reservation. oops. the other good news is it was so early in the morning that there were approximately three people on the train. in mannheim i met sabine's sister, brigitte, and we took the train to dresden. we arrived there at noon. it is not close. it is on the other side of the country. i saw many things thursday. we visited the frauenkirche, zwinger, the semperoper (semper opera), a dairy shop, ate dinner by the frauenkirche, and just looked around the city in general. dresden is an interesting city. it was almost entirely destroyed on 13 february 1945 when over 30,000 were killed in one night of bombing. so very many of the historical buildings of the city have been rebuilt in the last 60 years. dresden was part of the ddr (east germany under ussr control) during the separation of germany and still has a way to go with restoring and repairing things. the frauenkirche is a large protestant church and has been completely restored by private donations. looking at the exterior you can see some very dark stones. these are the ones salvaged from the original building. 8000 of 360,000 pieces. a nightmare of a puzzle. the zwinger is a palace that now houses museums. no, i did not go in them. no porcelain museum for me. the building is impressive though. we toured the semper opera house (in german, so i can't give you a lot of facts on this one). apparently the nicest dairy shop in the world is in dresden. it still smells gross. there are very nice tiles covering the walls though, i will give them that. for dinner we ate at a place that was looking right at the frauenkirche. nice. i let brigitte pick my dinner. it turned out to be a food from the region which means i ate some potato things, red sauerkraut, and a meat with sauce on it. while edible, i'm not dying to eat this every meal. friday: from 8-10am we waited in line for tickets to the grune gewoelbe (the green vault). i was wondering why on earth people wait so so long for tickets. then i did see this treasure. it is the world's largest treasure...larger than the queen's in england. (if you are wondering how this survived the destruction: apparently the russians took it during the war, but then wound up returning it to east germany when they were in control of it. very big-hearted of them.) there are rooms filled with incredible objects, all of which are incredibly useless in life. gold and silver and mother of pearl boxes to hold pens and sewing materials, clocks, ivory, and a huge green diamond (not the reason for the name of the vault though - that has to do with a wall that was at one point painted green). in many rooms these objects are displayed on little shelves all over the walls, just as they were when kings lived in the palace. somehow many of the rooms survived the bombings and still have their original paint. in the afternoonwe visited the volkswagen transparent factory where they make the phaeton (yes, this was at my request). the building is really architecturally interesting and you are able to see the actual production of the vehicles. we also visited the kreuzkirche which was the only church that actually felt like a church rather than a museum. they apparently have a very famous choir. it was interesting also to see the mix of the very old architecture with the plattenbau architecture from the ddr. the differences are very obvious. friday when we left dresden, brigitte and i took a train to bautzen to join 60 other germans for a family birthday party. this man and 11 year old boy came to pick us up. i could have easily imagined i was being kidnapped as we rode through some winding country side for 45 minutes with a driver who barely spoke. luckily brigitte and the boy, alex, talked a lot. this made me feel a little better. i was pretty glad to see sabine, nils, max and tom though. everyone from the family was incredibly nice, and it was interesting to be in on the family gathering. saturday: during the day we just hung out, and i played with max and tom as usual. in the evening we had the 40th birthday party for sabine's cousin's wife. (yes, this is confusing) the differences between the germans from the east and west side were striking. the hair and clothing styles were very noticably different. it seems that the east still has catching up to do in many ways after the separation of the country. communism and capitalism just don't create the same environments. max and tom saw fireworks for the first time. they were pretty excited about the so-called rockets. "rackettes, luft" (rockets, air). oh yeah, and for dinner saturday night: more sauerkraut, potato things, and meat with sauce. and concerning the bratwurst that is in the title of this, i eat it on a regular basis...twice this weekend, and monday at dinner. i like this german tradition. along with the weissbier. sunday: the ride home was 5 or 6 hours long. i saw madagascar 1.5 times and watched some new editions of baby einstein. we arrived home around 4.30 and i played outside with max and tom for a while. then nils mystery uncle, who he hasn't seen in 15 years, ate dinner with us. he lives in colombia, south america but is visiting germany with his 10 year old son who only speaks spanish. i tried to talk to him. i asked him three questions. the responses were as follows: no, diez (10), no. i gave up. also, on the way home, i rode on the autobahn. the real deal. i saw hops being grown for bier, and saw a limo version of the old bmw mini. i would drive that thing. monday: a bit of a terror of a day. we met another set of twins at the playground. i won't pretend i know how to spell their names. something along the lines of toddeaus and angoinie...they are half french, half german, and completely adorable. wednesday night i am babysitting for hannah und sofie, the 5 year old twins down the street. that's right, i'm taking the neighborhood by storm. i hoep you have found my week interesting. it has now taken me three days to finish this post. please excuse the errors. i refuse to spend time proofreading. i am behind on life. on that note, if you are expecting an email reply, i will do that eventually. i do still love you and miss you more than you can imagine. okay, i have to study this language.