sunset.

here are some more sunset photos. i'm slightly unhappy they are a little blurry. i couldn't tell on my camera screen. still nice though. and my life is the normal...row a little, learn a little german, play. to be perfectly honest, i'm too lazy to type much else.

the towef on the left is the big church.

sun :)

i took these from my front door around lunch time today. it was nice out.

so big.

this morning i rowed, went to some new years deal at the rowing club, was lazy for a while, went outside to draw. you know, the normal. nothing good to tell. max and tom are growing so quickly. that is what this is about. they are getting more independent. they down run up and down the stairs between different levels. and they come to visit me all by themselves. haha. my door closes automatically and is pretty heavy, but they can open it now. especially if they are together. they have to try a few times, but they can do it. i always know they are coming because the door handle is going up down up down. apparently max managed to get in my room by himself this morning when i was at rowing. however, then he was stuck. he couldn't pull the door open. sabine didn't know he had come downstairs until she heard him screaming. haha. they just came to visit me again after i returned from my walkdrawing. it was 5.20 in the evening. max had on his pajamas. he probably refused to change them after nap time. then they wanted to see my bed that folds into the wall, and then they pretended to sleep on it. they are cute. and here are a few photos from my walk. that's it.

if you look closely you can see the river and a few bridges.

you get the idea. it was nice.

thomas the train.

i think it is about that time again for another blog post. however, i'm not so incredible exciting. you may have noticed this is titled thomas the train. that is the new latest obsession. when i use the word obsession, i fully mean it. tom says he cannot go to kindergarten, he cannot eat, he cannot sleep. he must play with the train, or watch thomas the train videos on tv. which by the way, they are horrible boring and narrated by ringo starr. yesterday we went to moritz's house for his third birthday party. he even talked to me a little yesterday! lots of times he is kind of shy and doesn't say much to me. well, moritz has the same train we have here. only he also has a thomas the train to go with it. this was fine for a while as tom was the only one who wanted to play. the trouble arrived when max realized there was a thomas train, and also wanted to play. so naturally the 5 minutes for tom, then 5 mins for max system kicks in. this went over far worse than you can imagine. there was a lot of kicking and crying and screaming. we have had some serious emotional breakdowns lately over thomas the train. this system went on for a while, and then we put the train away. well, it somehow reappeared later and the madness began again. tom was on the steps twice yesterday (this is their sort of time out/punishment spot) and max was there once. some days i don't do a whole lot, but then days like yesterday, i feel like i earn my keep. today they are gone to visit their grandparents and i have the afternoon free. for all of you who have any sort of countdown or countup going, yesterday was 5 months. as for the next step after this, i finally sent in the rest of my grad school applications. if you missed the list, it is: vcu in richmond, va; portland state university in portland, oregon; univ of minnesota in minneapolis, mn; univ of illinois at chicago. a few people have asked me if i have a preference, but i'm really just waiting to see what happens. naturally, i would prefer someone wants to give me some huge scholarship or fabulous assistantship that practically pays for school. in all seriousness though, i have no idea where i would like to go. i can see plus and minuses for each of the locations. however, i do plan to be back in the states, so i will at least be a little closer to you all. anyway, i will keep you updated when i know something. rowing is picking up a little bit, and i have let the girls team know some dates which i am able to go to regattas with them. this could potentially be quite scary. it could also potentially be absolutely fabulous if i am to make friends so wonderful as the ones from clemson crew. not to mention, i would be able to travel to a few different places. the other american girl had people over for her birthday this past weekend, so that was nice to be around the rowing people a bit more. i'm beginning to feel more comfortable around them. the fact that i'm understanding a little of what is going on around me doesn't hurt. i went by heidelberger paedagogium today, the school where i took language class, to see about signing up for a night class a few times a week to continue my german, but they have only one and it is too advanced. so, i need to make myself study on my own and meet with my teacher, ana. i don't really make new year's resolutions, but those are the things that are going on. i'm working on more rowing and learning more german. see i'm not so exciting. hopefully soon, as it gets warmer, i will begin traveling around a bit more. however, when it is cold and only light between 9am and 4.30pm, i have no desire to do any sight-seeing. okay, i'm off to attempt being useful. love, me.

suedafrika.

i've been informed by a few people that i need to hold up my end of the deal with this blog. they are checking it...so i need to be writing in it. here is a bit about south africa. we left for south africa on the 28th of december. it was a night flight, and the boys did very well on the flight. granted, the individual televisions definitely helped. we flew from frankfurt to johannesburg. then from johannesburg to port elizabeth. then we had a two-hour car ride to plettenberg bay. now everyone can look at a map. there with met with south african friends of sabine and nils. summer in south africa was gorgeous. i haven't been overly miserable with winter in germany, but this trip reminded me of how much i truly love summer time. the area of south africa that i saw was every bit as beautiful as i had been promised. it wasn't overly warm, and we only made it to the beach a few times. so, i'm still lacking a tan. one day we went to an elephant sanctuary. there you are able to walk with the elephants, feed the elephants, touch the elephants, and ride the elephants if you are over 8 years old. max and tom were pretty mad that they weren't 8 years old. they loved the elephants. when it was time to leave they were getting upset and saying "meine elephanten haben" (i want to have my elephants). when you walk with the elephants, you stuck your hand at the end of their trunk and they hold it. imagine sticking your hand inside of a large nose that is breathing warm air all over you - that is exactly how it felt. i will spare you the elephant facts i learned, and just tell you that is was neat. another day we went to monkeyland, or something like that. it was also neat, but not nearly as impressive as the elephants. the highlight of max and tom's entire south african holiday was our trip on a rainy day to george (another town about 1 hour away) to see a train museum. (not necessarily my idea of the perfect south african day.) they walked around the museum yelling, "polar express." we watched the polar express EVERY single day we were gone. i can quote it. i can go the rest of my life without every seeing it again. the boys like to stand with their hands on their hips and yell, "poooolar exPRESSS." it is really funny. they yell it at random people. they would walk around the house while we were in south africa saying, "toot toot, die eisenbahn (the train)" over and over and over again. also, when we left the train museum, i think tom cried for at least 20 minutes because he wanted to take the train with him. sometimes i just want to laugh about how worked up he gets over trains. on our last afternoon we went to rhino base camp. it was a game park with rhinos, zebra, elephants, giraffes, lions, hippos, springboks...you get the idea. it was actually really good, and not too little kid cheesy. i think my favorite is the giraffe. they are just so tall and elegant and appear to have all the grace i do not have. the zebra baby was also very cute. and i really liked watching the spring bok run/jump/hop. i don't know the technical term there. the family we stayed with has two daughters and a son. it was fun to live with older kids again and to joke around with them and hear their sibling arguments. even if they were sometimes in another language. oh yeah, and i guess i knew this but had forgotten - nils is trilingual. his joke, that i have heard at least twice (and is more or less true): there are people that are trilingual, there are people that are bilingual, and there are americans. apparently this also applies for australians. in some ways south africa was what i imagined, but in some ways not at all. the area in which we stayed was a holiday town and looked like it could be found anywhere usa in the respect that it was majority white upper class. but then you would travel a few kilometers out of town and see these large shanty towns where people have created homes out of scraps of metal and wood and any other things they can find. i saw shopping centers and an abundance of KFCs that are a part of the world i am so familiar with, but then i saw people walking along stretches of road where i hadn't seen anything for miles, or carrying baskets on their heads, and i would remember i was in africa. i loved how everything still seems a little bit wild and totally relaxed. i saw kids running around suntanned and dirty from playing without shoes on. that seems like the perfect way to grow up. i need to do some more research into the country. my interest has been stirred, and i have questions about these shantytowns and plenty of other things now. of course, those of you who know me well, know that i'm interested in housing and community development and planning sorts of things. so you probably aren't so surprised. i want to visit again sometime and see it from the perspective of a semi-grown-up rather than a 2 year old. overall, it was a nice relaxing holiday with lots of time doing nothing important. at night, i often watched some tv series with the family we were visiting about a cop in the uk. i also got a lesson about cricket. it lasts 5 days. kill me. see, nothing too important. on new years eve, i was totally lame. nothing glamorous. if anyone ever asks me what i did new years 2008, i will most likely say i was in south africa and leave it at that. i won't tell them i was sitting on the couch reading a book because i was too scared to mess with the complicated tv while everyone else was at the beach building a bonfire and drinking champagne. (i was staying with max and tom, which i figured was the least i could offer to do since sabine and nils were nice enough to take me along to south africa.) also, some giant flying bug came in. considering it was my first trip to the continent, i had entirely no idea how scared i should be. so i caught him in a plastic box and left him for a boy to pick up. on the trip back we went to the farm where nils grew up to visit his father for a few hours. it was nice to see a bit of a different area of south africa. and a good way to kill a 6 hour layover. there are of course more funny max and tom stories, but i would say you probably had to be there for them. i will spare you the details. closing note: i think the stars in south africa are the best i've ever seen. love you all, and i hope you had a great beginning to 2008.

plettenberg bay.

studs. check out those sunglasses.