klettern :)

i've been slacking a bit on the blog posts, but things have gotten busy. last week i was with erin and brandon quite a lot, and we all made no-bake cookies on thursday night. friday was erin's last day and she took some to work. friday was the day of our group outing with everyone that works with the regional development and spatial planning faculty - professors, doctoral candidates, student workers, and american interns.

we went climbing on a high ropes course. it was fabulous. my muscles were totally sore the next day, and i managed to get sick this weekend after we went, but it was still a great activity. i'll let the photos tell the story.

just to help you get a scale of things...see the girl in the background? she is on the ground. see those logs above? that was the highest level to climb.

flying through the air...

...into this.

PHOTOS ARE HERE.

this is the last week of my internship with the tu kaiserslautern lehrstuhl regionalentwicklung und raumordnung...and i'm proud to say that (unlike the beginning of the summer) i actually know what all that means. tomorrow and wednesday, i'm off to listen in at a conference. test of the summer: will i understand? it is titled 'moderation and mediation' (the words are the same in both languages). thursday will be my last day at work, and friday will have me back in heidelberg by lunch time.

die Zeit geht schnell.

photos.

photos from heidelberg weekend are up if you are interested.

heidelberg.

over the weekend, i showed erin and brandon (both from university of louisville) around heidelberg. on saturday, we checked out the market, made a picnic on the philosophenweg, walked through the old town, had cake in a cafe, saw the castle, ate dinner at brauhaus (my favorite spot to take visitors), and went out in untere straße to my favorite bar.

as a tourist, you can see more or less all of the sites in heidelberg in one day. brandon left early sunday morning because he had to move apartments here in kaiserslautern, and erin and i just took it easy. we played with the boys and talked with sabine and nils. then we joined joined rachel and two friends for lunch at the monastery. we played with the boys again after lunch and then went to the straßenfest (more or less the neighborhood block party) that occurs once each summer. it was actually my third consecutive appearance at the barbeque. the first summer that i arrived to heidelberg, they had it quite late in the summer, which means i was able to attend it twice last year and then again last night. i'm sure the neighbors wonder why i keep appearing.

i have two weeks left of my internship, and then 8 days or so in heidelberg. the summer is flying by.

pulp fiction.

i forgot to mention that last weekend, rachel and i saw a movie in german! i understood most of it :)

so yesterday, when my friend from work asked if i would like to see the theatre group's presentation of pulp fiction, i decided why not? i thought it would be something different and a test of the german skills. i just got home from that. i understood enough, but i think now that i should maybe watch the actual movie as well.

i've been hanging out with my friend erin and we cooked dinner twice this week, but other than that, all is normal.

if the weather is nice again tomorrow, i may try to make my second visit of the summer to the swimming pool. man how life has changed from the hickory hill days. i miss that suntan.

richmond city guide.

my old roommate caroline told me about a website called design*sponge. they have some great before and after projects and whatnot. they also do a city guide. last week or the week before was berlin. i just looked at the website to discover this week is richmond! so for those of you living in richmond, have a look. actually, everyone have a look, then when you see how fabulous it is, you will want to visit me :).

trier and luxembourg.

over the weekend, i traveled with rachel to trier (oldest city in germany) and luxembourg (which is both the name of the city and country).

click here for the photos.

they were both nice cities and one day was about enough for each of them. trier has a bunch of roman ruins. luxembourg is super nice, and it was quickly clear that it is a wealthy country. the most confusing thing was all the languages. there are 3 official languages (french, german, and luxembourgish), and most people also seemed to speak english. they must be proficient in all 3 official languages in order to graduate high school. oof. in trier we did a lot of walking around and perusing little shops. for dinner we ate korean (i think). it was soup, and it came with chopsticks, a fork and a spoon. we made a huge mess courtesy of the long noodles and the fact that it had curry in it, which meant we were sending yellow spots all over the place. and it was delicious. in luxembourg we ordered a vegetable salad to go with our pizza. we assumed that was a normal salad. nope. a plate with little piles of different vegetables like corn, beets, green beens, carrots, tomatoes.

luxembourg.

trier.

erin, my american friend, is back in town and we cooked dinner together last night. she is also going with me to heidelberg this upcoming weekend, so i think i will be playing tourguide.

work is a little slow this week. i'm writing this blog while sitting at work. no one really seems to have things for me to work on. i worked on a report for a bit this morning. whereas we use commas to separate thousands and periods to separate the decimal points when writing numbers, the germans do it exactly backwards. it kind of messes with my head.

i have about 4 more weeks. it is going pretty quickly now.

the germans love carbonated water. wasser mit kohlensäure. i was recently informed that they think still water tastes like eingeschlafene füße. feet that are falling asleep. interesting.

vierundzwanzig.

sunday, i turned twenty-four. in this country, they call that vierundzwanzig.

i just kind of celebrated here and there all weekend. on friday, i went out with some other american students. not necessarily for my birthday, but it was fun. saturday, i went to mörlenbach with my friend carina from work. her twin brother now lives in ireland, but he was home for the weekend, and his american girlfriend (teresa from chicago) was also there. so, they decided to have a party/grill out. a lot of german friends were there, as well as 4 more american friends from teresa. carina's parents were really sweet and put up an american flag on the pole and found a few fireworks (which are technically illegal except for new year's eve). carina's dad wanted the americans to sing the national anthem (don't worry, i didn't sing very loudly). we had watermelon as well.

at midnight, carina brought out sparklers (wunderkerzen) and sekt and had everyone sing happy birthday to me. they sang in english and then german. it was really sweet of her to have everyone do that. she was the only person that i knew when i arrived.

yesterday, i went to heidelberg. it was a more annoying trip than normal because it was super warm out, and someone's dog had pooped all over the floor in the bus in which i happened to be riding. (didn't know that when i climbed in.) the boys made great paintings for me and everyone sang happy birthday and then the boys unwrapped the paintings for me :). then we played in the garden and ate cake, then later grilled out. it was sabine, nils, max, tom, me, rachel, and sabine's mum and sister. the weather was perfect.

today at work, we ate cake at lunch time and everyone told me happy birthday. and laughed when they found out i was only 24, because they think it sounds so young. i, on the other hand, remember turning 21 in richmond, and i feel in some ways like it was about 3 weeks ago.

little did i know when i turned 23, that i would also be spending birthday number 24 in germany :)

roommate number three.

man, finally when i thought i roommate free, i once again have a roommate. and once again, it is a man at least twice as old as i am. nice enough as usual. but the fact that i am living with a man twice my age is awkward. no way around it. his daughter apparently went to uva now lives in charlottesville. it would guess he is from india, but he didn't mention it, he said he lived in the usa most of his life but is now a computer science professor in england.

he is "only here for three....weeks". super.

kp, tal, nat, & whit: i miss you.

fashion.

i officially saw one atlanta braves hat today, one los angeles basketball jersey, one ridiculous huge fanny pack, and quite the selection of dumb looking sandals.

das ober mittelrheintal.

also known as the upper middle rhine valley. that would be the river rhine in germany. the upper middle rhine valley stretches from koblenz south to bingen and rüdesheim.

the rhein at the loreley.

over the weekend, i took a last minute trip to the area with rachel. yesterday, i went on a field trip with some other american students and two germans. the weather has been super warm since about friday, which means i managed to get sunburned on sunday (the weathermen predicted rain) and sweat a whole lot.

rachel and i started at the south of the valley in bingen. the town is small but really cute and typical german. within in the last few years, they have quite obviously redone the waterfront and have one of the best playgrounds i've ever seen. there was a skatepark, a small climbing wall area, a bunch of water features, mazes built through the shrubs, a giant chess board, soccer and sand soccer fields, and the normal playground stuff. they were also having a jazz festival. later on saturday, we took a ferry across to the river to rüdesheim, another small and cute town. we rode a chair lift up the top of the mountain (weinberg) where they grow lots of grapes for wine (wein trauben). there was a statue at the top that was far less memorable then wondering back down the mountain through the vineyards. we also made some friends on the ferry over. four old german men. then we kept seeing them around because the town was so small. in the evening we wondered around bingen because they were having a jazz festival. saturday night, we stayed in one of the nicest hostels i've seen.

playground in bingen.

sunday we headed up the river to koblenz on cruise boat. there are 30 castles or something ridiculous along the valley. the boat told us what we were passing with each one...in german, english, japanese, and chinese. and possibly something else, i forget now. then rachel and i explored koblenz and caught the trains home.

yesterday, i went along with 6 americans and one canadian who are taking a sustainability course here at the university. swaantje and michael also went along. swaantje works here at the lehrstuhl, and michael is currently working on his masters. we first had a meeting with some people from unesco. starting in 2002, the valley applied to be a unesco world heritage site. they finally were awarded it a few years ago i believe. the valley is working to bring more tourists into the area which means they are planning a lot of updates and renovations in the area. because while the landscape is beautiful, and the towns are charming, the towns look like they haven't been touched in about 50 years. we stopped at the loreley for lunch. this is a giant cliff exactly at the halfway point of the valley. there is a myth about a beautiful girl brushing her long hair, and the ships were watching her so closely that they crashed into cliff. there is (i believe) both a poem and a song about her. after that, we drove to koblenz, where we learned about bit more about the development in the rhein valley and its standing as a world heritage site. one major topic is that there are very few bridges across the river, and they wish to build a new one between st. goar and st. goarshausen. first, unesco has to give approval of the bridge. dresden (beautiful old city in east germany that was badly damaged in world war two) has apparently in the last week or two lost its world heritage status because of making the decision to build a bridge without having unesco approval. koblenz is also preparing for the BUGA 2011 (Bundesgartenschau - National Garden Show), so everything is currently under construction. there is a BUGA every year in a different city, which puts a lot of money and focus on that particular city.

for work, i'm still helping on project ACCESS, taking a lot of field trips (no complaints there), and i just went to class (sociology of the city more or less). we talked about housing today, and i understood fairly well; however, i couldn't really takes notes at the same time. i have to put all my focus on listening.

this weekend i'm going to a small town near heidelberg on sunday, and then to heidelberg on sunday.

here are the heidelberg street festival photos.

here are the ober mittelrheintal photos. (lots of them.)