heidelberg regatta.

before i forget today's classically three year old stories: today after riding bikes, i asked max if he could please take his bike inside. i generally say things like, if you leave your bike outside, some other kid is going to ride it home. today, he immediately put his hands behind his back, makes a classic max face, and tells me, i have no hands. that would be a legitimately good reason that he couldn't take his bike inside. i was trying so hard not to laugh because they obviously need to learn to clean up their toys, but that was pretty clever. moritz came to play today. he is obsessed with soccer. i was helping him put his shoes on so we could play soccer in the garden. i asked him what he did this weekend. he replies with, i don't know. then something about being in holland (true story). i asked him if he speaks dutch. he tells me no. i say okay, only german? he says no, i'm not german, i'm a soccer player. tom, max, and mortiz as of late often say, du bist mein freund. (you are my friend.) they will randomly be playing and just say, max/tom/moritz, du bist mein freund. yesterday, tom also also informed me that i am his friend. thursday was once again a holiday. i don't know what holiday, but may in germany has a lot of them. i spent most of my afternoon/evening at the boathouse. (sounds familiar huh?) thursday was regatta aufbau. aka regatta setup. i helped from 3-6pm or so, then we rowed. i carried fences, i carried metal pieces that anchor the buoys, i carried anchors, i carried a little of everything. i kind of enjoyed it though. i felt useful, and i got to be around a lot of people from the rowing club whom i'm not normally around. i even chatted (in german) with some of the other kids (mostly high school aged) and joked around a little bit (it feels good to be able to do that again. i miss that part of life). anyway, we rowed about 18k after that, and i had run in the morning. i was pretty tired thursday night. friday was a normal day full of playing. saturday: regatta day. i love that regatta environment with so many people and boats bustling about. my activity of the regatta: french fry cook from 10am to 1 pm. nils and sabine found it funny that the american was cooking french fries. this was my first time. they even came to visit and eat lunch. i picked up some new german vocabulary concerning things like deep fryer. i cooked mostly maultaschen on saturday. this is a bit like a ravioli that is then sliced up and mixed with some vegetables. it looks pretty good, but i haven't tried it. and after cooking it for 2.5 hours, i had no desire. then i went with the other rowing girls to buy matching shirts. they need them at the regatta this weekend for some reason, and i got one in case we need it later. one girl, anna lena, lives near the boathouse, so we went and made a spaghetti lunch. then back to the regatta to watch the boys race against kyoto university. it was pretty cool to have a team from japan. they were apparently making a little tour and rowing a few regattas in germany. then we raced. sculling (for the rowing illiterate, that is two oars per person). i was also in charge of turning to look and make sure we were on course. i was slightly less scared than my first race in mannheim, but i was still nervous. after the race we went out to practice again, then we had a dinner that evening. heidelberger ruderklub has a partnership with a team from perreux, france, and we all had a big dinner together. i don't speak french. that did not seem to deter the french coach from speaking to me. sunday: round two. i didn't row on sunday, but i watched. i arrived at 10.30 or so to watch a few of our girls race a double (two people with two oars each). then we hung out and ate cake. totally different from american cake. from 1pm-4pm, i was once again on french fry duty. i actually cooked french fries most of that day. it got pretty busy for a bit and we had four people working. so, i met a few more of the high school aged kids. it is less intimidating for me to practice my grammatically incorrect german on them when they come one or two at a time rather than 10 or 15 at a time. after french fry duty was finished and i put some fresh clothes on (essential, believe me), i hung out with another rower's sister and we ate ice cream while we waited to watch the girl's race. the weather has suddenly gone from mid-60s or so to 80s. i may sweat to death. however, perfect ice cream weather. as i was standing around, this guy i met on thursday, mattias, comes and asks me if i want to help clean up some of the fences. do i want to? no. will i? yes. while we were working, we talked a bit. i think i would even go so far as to say i acquired a new friend. (granted, this is the first time i've seen him in 9 months, so i may not run into him again.) i think it is pretty clear from my german, that i am not a german; however, he didn't ask me where i was from until i told him my name. haha. alison seems to always be a bit tricky when i first introduce myself. i doubt i'll ever meet a german with such a name. then later, this older guy comes to talk to me. he always talks alot. he proceeds to tell me that my german and rowing are much better. i tell him thank you. he continues talking. he tells me that people said, well, that hollander (my other friend marije who has now returned to holland) can row, but that new american, she can't. um thank you. how do i respond to that? could he not have simply given me a compliment and stopped at that? i don't think i want to discuss rowing with jurgen adler anymore. after some more cleaning up, we ate bratwurst, drank beer, and hung out with the team from japan. i think we stayed until 11pm or so. communicating with japan was interesting as most of them spoke worse english than i speak german. granted, they can't rely on the fact that when they get stuck, everyone also happens to speak their native language. not to mention, my native language and german at least use the same alphabet. monday, i was back at the boathouse for zelt abbau. tent takedown. this consisted of some more cleaning, lifting and joking around with mattias, anna lena, and katha. considering my german isn't superb, i think i was surprisingly useful this weekend. somehow it is almost june already. time is suddenly flying by, much as i thought it would. may has been a great month. a busy month full of friends, good weather, parties, barcelona, and a regatta. here are some photos. i don't really have any people ones that you would be interested in:

flags flying from the rowing club.

the bcn.

so the big party was last weekend, monday was a holiday, and on wednesday, i was off to barcelona. it was just as fabulous as i remember. it also had plenty of the same repulsive smells. i flew from frankfurt to barcelona, where my friend johanna met me at the airport. she is also in the clemson architecture program, but two years younger than me. so we could look at all of the same nerdy architecture things together. it was only me and 4 other clemson students left in town. everyone else had returned to the states or was off traveling elsewhere. on wednesday night, we had tapas and sangria. i think that was the only proper thing to eat on my first night back in spain. then we wandered about town for a bit, which was mostly due to the fact that i thought i remembered where i was going, and i really didn't. thursday, we went running, saw a great exhibit about Occasional Cities and the area where my studio was a few years ago. the location of studio has since moved, so my 4 friends weren't really familiar with the area i knew so well. we happened to run into my very first clemson professor ever while we were out walking around. her husband is now teaching in barcelona. we ventured into the spanish grocery store and cooked ourselves dinner on thursday night before we went out. friday we wandered about and in and out of markets and shops. we also made our way to the top floor of an office building where an architecture firm (oddly enough) occupied the top floor. they allowed us to use their roofdeck to take photos of the top of the santa caterina market. it is pretty fabulous. before that, i had only ever seen the top from photos. i can say that was far cooler than the chocolate museum that didn't even give you chocolate. we wandered all about and photographed graffiti that day as well. i love it. i want to learn how to be a graffiti artist. i doubt there is any sort of course i can sign up for on that topic. friday night we babysat for sophia. she is the daughter of my first professor. the whole family is living in barcelona for the year so the father can teach the clemson class. sophia is now 9, but i've known her since she was 5, and i happened to volunteer in her kindergarten class. saturday we did a lot of messing around, shopping, and finding souvenirs for the clemson kids to take home. barcelona has good shopping. really good. of course though, most of the really awesome spanish stores don't have online shopping. we also visited a few more markets, grabbed an early dinner from wok to walk. they cook your food in a wok, then package it to go. also good. we went to the magic fountain which is a fountain that has a choreographed light/music show. then off to dow jones. a bar based on the stock market - when more people are buying a certain drink, the price goes up. when less are buying, the price goes down. occasionally, the whole market crashes and prices drop. it is a fun concept. in true spanish style, it was a late night and we went dancing after the bar. when we left the club sometime after 5am, it was still packed. as you can guess, sunday wasn't the most productive day in history. we had a nice lunch though, and then we visited the olympic area of barcelona. the weather was nice, so we did a lot of laying around in the grass and hanging out. sunday night, we visited the home of one of the professors for a final dinner. i did not have her while in barcelona, but my studio professor was there. juan carlos. more commonly referred to by our group as don juan. he introduced himself and said, "nice to meet you." to be 100% percent honest about it, i never thought i would see the man again after leaving barcelona, and i was really okay with that. however, he was a lot better outside of class (even though once he remembered me, he told me the project my class had was so much easier than what this semester worked on) and his wife and kids were really great. i made it to two professors' homes in 3 days, which is two more than i went to during the 4 months i lived in barcelona. sunday night we visited the torre agbar (it is an office building) to see it all lit up. monday was woke up relatively early, made our way to the bakery, then did a bit more wandering about barcelona before i left around 1pm. the trip was great and relaxed. since i have already lived in barcelona, we didn't have to rush around to see the sights. i have forgotten almost every bit of my spanish, and accidentally answered a few waiters in german. i'm not sure how people pull off the tri-lingual thing. we ate a lot of ice cream and everything else, and it was so good to see other clemson people. next on the agenda for a big trip is stockholm in late june. max, tom, and nils came to pick me up at the train station. i was happy to see them, and they seemed happy to see me. i walked to the car and they were yelling alison, alison, alison out of the window. they are so cute. 6 august will be a tough day. in german news, the local soccer team had a big win, and is now in the erste bundesliga. the first national league. they won enough games that they are now grouped with teams like bayern munich. it is pretty impressive considering that this team is in a town that i believe is about the size of mocksville. for you few curious soccer fans, they are called hoffenheim. there is also a regatta in heidelberg this weekend, so that is what i will be up to. while in barcelona, i hit the 9 month mark. and this week, i hit the 3 months until i start classes again mark. this is turning out to be an incredibly fast year. in no particular order, here are some photos of the action:

with jo mac at dow jones.

calatrava telecommunications tower at the olympic park.

die madels: shannon, lauren, johanna.

torre agbar at night.

some graffiti.

top of santa caterina market.

more graffiti.

on las ramblas with a street performer. he can do amazing things with that soccer ball.

at the magic fountain. we all look ridiculous. barcelona's next top model anyone?

party time.

last sunday i went hiking (i use this term loosely. it was more of walking in the woods.) with my friend, ahmet, to the Thingstaette. it is a giant amphitheater that was built by the nazis. it holds about 8000 people and has astounding acoustics. i feel kind of strange saying that something built by the nazis was very impressive, but it was. i liked the amphitheater. it is at the top of the mountain and was built from 1934-35 or so. as far as i know, it is used about once a year. however, i think it looks like it would be a pretty amazing place for concerts and such. one day early last week, we were driving home from the playground or somewhere. we are driving up the street to our house and pass a few people on bicycles. one girl's pants weren't quite covering everything. sabine and i were discussing that this didn't look very nice. we are speaking in english and to each other. then max pops in at the perfect time with, "ich finde das gut." i find this good, i think this is good. hahaha. we weren't really talking to him, we didn't ask him about it, but he chimes in with that perfectly timed sentence. at three years old, he is already telling us that he finds it good when a girl's pants are a bit too low cut in the back. i think that is one of my favorite things the boys have said in a while, but they really are so funny everyday. yesterday, i told tom it was tough to get his shirt over his head, that he has a big head. he told me he needs to get his hair cut. the weather has been fabulous, so we have made a lot of playground visits this week. we even found a new playground. on thursday, the madness begin. sabine and nils had a large party this weekend for nils birthday and their 5th wedding anniversary. thursday morning and friday there were all kinds of appointments and what not to get things prepared. so, i spent a lot of time chasing after max and tom or taking them places so sabine could have a few moments to think. also, on friday, sabine and nils' good friend kristen flew in from california, so sabine had to pick her up at the airport. on friday afternoon, the boys and i were off to play with moritz and do a bit of swimming. i don't think i was on tom's best friend list on friday, he was mad at me more than once that day. the good news is that i had plenty of time to earn my way back onto the list on saturday. friends starting coming in saturday morning. the first family arrived with a 12 year old girl and 8 year old boy. so i went with the 4 kids to the monastery, and we petted the cows and such. the kids were so sweet. the boy, also named tom, was so good with max and tom, he even read them their bedtime story saturday night. then nils' best friend and his family arrived from london. we all went to lunch to get out of sabine's way for a bit. max and tom were exhausted, so i drove around for a little while to get them to fall asleep in the car and avoid the pre-nap time fight. they are hard to fool, they asked me where we were going, and i tell them we are taking a new way home. max tells me no, we are going to the swimming pool. he was exactly right, that is the way i was driving. after nap time, kristen was over to visit (she delivered the boys). kristen and i took the boys for ice cream, and then max and tom and i took her to her hotel. then it was time for party clothes. i even wore a dress. naturally, when max saw my dress, he wanted one too. people begin arriving around 7 or so. i had about 15 kids to look after, but most of them were old enough to take care of themselves/watch out for their siblings. they played really well together, then we ate, then we had a kid's disco in my room. the girls danced. the boys played portable nintendo, or whatever is popular with the 9 year olds these days. most of the kids spoke some english, but a few only spoke german. it was interesting to watch them all interact. after they were all too tired to move, i put in ratatoullie. a 5 year old was still awake at 1 in the morning. i was shocked. after all the kids left/fell asleep, i went upstairs to see what the grown ups were doing. i was paparazzi for a bit, then i talked with some of nils and sabine's american friends. it sounds like everyone had a great time, and it sounds like no one slept very much. the weekend ended with sunday morning brunch, and the kids all played in the garden. sunday evening there were a few people left in town, and we went to eat dinner on the market plaza where max and tom could play in the sandbox. tomorrow i am off to barcelona, so i decided i better catch this up before i left. a lady from canada asked me where i was from, then told me i didn't sound american. hmm, i think i sound the same, it just happens that words like "nein" sometimes make their way into my vocabulary. there were lots of photos taken this weekend. i will see if i can get hold of some of those in the near future.

thingstaette.

view of the castle from heilegenberg.

remains of an old monastery. i think it dates sometime before christ.

clemson guy.

i have a few random things to share, but mostly everyone i would like to share them with is asleep. so here they are: i'm famous. well, not really, but i made it into the heidelberg newspaper. the Rhein-Neckar Zeitung to be exact. if you read the earlier post, i mentioned it was a holiday on thursday with a lot of parties on wednesday night. i was out with my friends at one of the market plazas where there was a band and such. i remember thinking it was strange that when we were all taking a photo together, another man with a really huge camera was also taking our photo. however, it didn't cross my mind that it was for something like the newspaper. i just assumed he was excited about taking photos with his big camera. the photo is me and 5 or 6 of my friends. i find it a little bit funny that all but one of us are foreigners....and the one that grew up in germany is turkish, so he doesn't look like a german either. i sang a lot of the wheels on the bus yesterday. max and tom really love that song. so cute. they also have a book with it. well, last night, max told sabine that we are not allowed to read it upstairs in their room. only downstairs in the living room. or the policemen would get us. he had all kinds of details to go with the story and some really great faces. i wish that was on video. i have no idea where kids come up with this stuff, but it is wonderful. this morning i rowed. the actual row was pretty terrible, but i warned the girl first. i also warned her about my german. anyway, we rowed. i was in charge of looking to see where we were going, attempting to follow the girl in front of me, and giving directions about where we needed to steer. in german. let's just say it was more of a mental workout. so after rowing, i was running some errands in town. i haven't worn my clemson crew sweatshirt in public in a really long time, but today, i just felt like it. for those of you that haven't seen it, it is nondescript navy blue with white block letters. no orange obnoxious or giant tiger paws. as i was finishing up, i was walking down the street and this man kind of stepped in front of me and pointed at my sweatshirt. you know, that two handed pointing with the thumb up, pointer finger to me kind of thing. his mouth started opening...my face involuntarily turned red. it hasn't done that for a while. anyway, he asks...umm um, is that clemson, like clemson in south carolina? then he asks if i go there. we talk a minute, he asks if i'm american or german. haha. i guess that means i don't have some huge southern accent. he asks what i'm doing in germany, etc. he said he was here for work for 2 weeks. not the military guy i thought he might be. he graduated in the early 90s. anyway. totally random. kind of fun to find a random clemson fan on the other side of the world. similar to the newspaper photo. but in the newspaper, i'm the only one looking at the camera. ha.

nice weather =s less blogging.

i think that is a good thing. i was about to go out of my mind with all of the rain and cold weather. i was sitting down to write this because it is raining, but now i think the sun is coming out once again. anyway though, let me catch you up. last tuesday, we played with eugenie and thaddeus at their house. they live in an apartment in the city center, so that was kind of neat to see. they are also totally cute and sweet. last wednesday max paid a visit to the emergency room. we were playing at moritz's house, and three three year old boys playing together somehow led to max getting bonked on the head with a wooden stick. it turns out the wound wasn't so terrible - he didn't require stitches - but because it was on his head, it was bleeding like crazy. he and tom were both standing in the yard screaming, i walked outside to check on them, and they walked off. i decided i should check on them just in case. i asked if everything was okay, and then i see blood running down the side of max's head. he was fine until he saw my reaction and realized he was hurt. then he cried. he was apparently a champion at the hospital though, and he didn't cry at all. friday and monday we went to the construction site that is nearby. we are friends with the construction crew. they now wave when they see us climb out of the car, and the older guys are really sweet. they let max and tom push some of the buttons that operate the crane, and they let us look in their little office. clearly the crane was the bigger hit. i love going to watch "the diggers." i think i enjoy watching the construction site as much as the boys do. on saturday, i went to stuttgart to be a tourist. it is about one hour to one hour and a half by train, and considering i have been here over 8 months, i decided i should probably pay it a visit. within 30 minutes of arriving, i met stuttgart's finest. i was walking around taking a few photos (camera in hand obviously), and some guy said to me, oh nice day. yeah, it was a nice day. i thought he was being friendly, so i smiled and said yes. dumb move...that gave away the fact that i understood german. then he comments on the fact that i'm alone. he asks if he can ask me a question. i'm assuming i either won't understand it or won't know the answer...so i say okay. he asks if i will get a coffee with him?! no way. what a sleaze. not to mention he looked about 35 years old, about 5'5" tall, and rather round. he kept walking the same direction i was walking, so i ducked behind a tree and hid from him. no joke. on the upside, stuttgart is a nice town. i did a lot of walking around because the weather was nice, i saw an art museum (as usual the building and the view from the building were far more interesting to me than the art), and i saw the mercedes benz museum. it is very impressive. nice building, nice exhibit. sunday morning was the heidelberger halbmarathon. those people are nuts. it is one thing to run 13 miles. i think it is an entirely different thing to run most of them up a mountain. i was leaving home to go to the rowing club to watch our friends that were running in the race, and i bumped into my neighbor. we were both leaving on our bikes at the same time. this is the neighbor that is 18 or 19 who told me that i can speak english if i like when i was taking something over to his house. then told his dad in german that he had to speak with me in english because i don't speak german...i understood. haha. we normally say hallo, then ignore each other. but i thought why not? so i asked him what he was up to. he was on his way to run the half marathon. we rode our bikes together and chatted (in mostly german) for about 10 minutes. for some reason this made me really happy. i think because now maybe he can see i'm not a total moron. watching the halbmarathon was pretty fun, and i did see him run by. then we rowed, but we had to wait around for our boat, so we just hung out for a while first. my face was pink from being in the sun. woo hoo. i'm desperate. the weather in the afternoon was super nice, so i played with the boys in the garden. i was playing with max in the sand box, and we were building frog houses. (i used to make these when i was little on the farm across the street from my house. you cover your hand or foot with sand, and then a little cave is created when you remove it. i was told that frogs came to sleep there at night. haha) so anyway, we built a frog house. then a wall around the house. then max tells me he is feeding the frogs. i ask him what they are eating. bratwurst. of course, what else would a german 3 year old feed a make believe frog? on monday, nils boss came for dinner, so max and tom and i watched ratatouille in my room so they could hopefully have a bit of a conversation. cute movie. so tuesday moritz came to play. the three boys played really nicely together. no problems...until max fell down 4 or 5 of the stone steps. he was rushing down them to meet sabine when she got home. little bit of crying, but all was okay. i was so scared that he was going to open the spot from when he visited the er. then yesterday, max bumped his head again when he fell off of his bobby car. his head had a rough week. today is a holiday. i can't really remember what holiday it is, but i like it. last night there were parties in town with bands and lots of people. then today at the rowing club, they christened the new boats. there are a lot of really cool looking flags hanging up that i need to go attempt to take a photo of now that the sun is back out. i heard the flags are only there for today. we also lined up about 15 boats and rowed a bit. it was total chaos, but looked pretty cool. i'm hoping they put a photo on their website later. i talked with a two ladies today that i rowed with in august or september when i first arrived and spoke zero german. i haven't seen them for a long time, so it was kind of fun to be able to speak a little german with them. i think i may have gotten a little bit of sun today too. woo hoo. okay, i'm going outside again. :) spring is finally here. oh, and i booked a trip to stockholm for late june with my friend gosia. she lives in poland, but i met her when she was studying here in september. i'm excited to see her again.

obviously the mercedes museum.

view of the castle plaza in stuttgart.