I know...I know...It has been too long.

I'm sorry to all my many thousands of faithful blog readers, yea ok...mom and dad plus a few. It has been almost a month. I promise it won't happen again. Also another note: I changed the setting so ANYONE can leave comments. So any questions or comments are greatly appreciated! Do not hesitate!

So.... (they say that a lot here in Germany)

So. This past weekend I went to the Czech Republic. It was a place I really wanted to go to. I've never been so far East. I was determined not to go to Prague, since that is where everyone goes. But I ended up there nevertheless. My journey started at midnight when I was picked up by my ride, arranged by a carpooling website. The trains were striking plus the guy on the train back from Italy screwed me over so that I only had 3 days of travel left on my Eurail pass. Yes it sounds a little strange hitching a ride with a complete stranger-but the arrangement worked out well and it is cheaper than a train and I was picked up at the house and dropped off in front of the hostel in Prague at 3:30 am. They told me the hostel was booked but I lucked out because someone never showed up. So I headed off to my room. In this full hostel there was one person sleeping in a room of eleven beds.

The next I headed off to the Museum of Communism. A place which I had heard about before I went and vowed to myself to go to if I ever went to Prague. In the afternoon I took a touristic bus with an audio guide to provide the history and details of the sights I was seeing. Then rest of the time was spent walking, shopping, and looking by myself.

I made it back to the hostel around 7 pm. In my room I met a girl from Slovakia,Lucia, her brother and her Spanish boyfriend. We joined the rest of the hostel crowd hanging out in the lobby. I love meeting people from everywhere. I talked a lot with a guy from Dartmouth U spending a semester in Rome and a German so I could use my German which is otherwise pretty useless in Prague. Around 9 I tagged along with Lucia to a club where she was meeting her cousin who is living in the city. That night was hip hop night, so I got to hear Slovakian rap. I enjoyed the night. I don't know about Czech people but the Slovakians I met were really chill. And 20 years ago they were one in the same, so they were practically locals. The Spanish was cool too and he said I pronounced "joder" good so I haven't lost all of the little Spanish I knew. I've been a lot of places now, but the Spanish culture and people have got to be on the top of my list :)


The next day I took the train to Cheb. I could take a train from there to Nuernberg at 7 so I went earlier so I could see something besides Prague. But unfortunately, like Germany, there isn't much to see on a Sunday since everything is closed. I arrived in Cheb around 2 and I was really hungry. I decided to go to a restaurant I saw in the train station. I wanted to try their dumplings and sauce that I saw was a popular food in the country. I pointed to what the guy in front of me ordered. If I based my opinion of Czech food solely on that dish, I would say that the country has the WORST food I have ever tasted! I won't though. However, if that is how their food normally tastes, then the Czechs are 100 percent justified in their heavy consumption of beer. The dumplings were weird and hard and I wish I was exaggerating when I say the sauce tasted like stomach acids. I would have killed for McDonalds after that. But as luck would have it there were absolutely zero fast food chains to be found in Cheb. I spent my time there looking around in a grocery store and a large amount of time reading in the train station, which actually turns out not to be such a strange place to hang out in that town; old men were in the corner playing cards, while young men were rolling joints. I took my train home without a hitch.

This was the first trip by myself, I'm pretty sure in my entire life. Part of me does not like to do such a thing alone. But I was determined to do it anyway and I'm glad I did. I think its healthy.

So that was my weekend in the Czech Republic.

Wednesday was a school holiday for the kids and Rolf and Sonja were away at some seminar thing for 3 days. I only had to clean the upstairs and then in the afternoon we went to the waterpark with the grandparents. The kids spent a lot more time in front of the TV when the parents were away for these days. Thursday and Friday I went to Ruths. Friday I went to youth group and then went with Katarina, her sister Julia, and the 2 youth leaders to a pub in Ingolstadt. We sat with a group from the Baptist church. Most of the time I was bored because I don't know what is going on. However, these people from the Baptist church were at times entertaining...strange...in a good/funny way strange, but nevertheless strange. Friday night ended up being just about the most interesting thing from the weekend. Saturday I was terribly bored. I did a few things with the girls-we went for a bike ride, played UNO for like 10 min. until the girls decided they would rather watch tv. In the afternoon, 2 of Mirjam's friends were over. She wanted me to bake chocolate chip cookies with them and while they were baking we played trivial pursuit. In the evening I felt irritated since I wasted a Saturday. If I'm not busy I want to work so I can have an extra weekday off. I didn't work. On top of that, the kids were being fussy with each other. The annoyance carried into today slightly. But I did talk to Danica on the phone, to plan our trip before Christmas which I am super excited about. So that was a positive point along with a few others so the weekend didn't leave me completly insane.

In Die Stadt

Yesterday I went with my host family to München for the day. We took the 8:30 train. Practically every shop in the city was closed for the holiday which kind of sucked. But then again if it weren't for the holiday we wouldn't be there. So I can't complain.
The morning was spent seeing sights by foot-Marienplatz and going to the St. Peters Cathedral tower. Then we took a touristica bus. We ate lunch we had packed on the bus before it went anywhere then we got a nice spoken guide of the sights we were seeing. We went to the Olympic Park where coincidentally the European Mtv Music Awards were being held that night. Unfortunately we didn't run into any stars. haha. Then we stopped to see the surfing in the English Gardens. If you didn't know there a river with fake waves and surfers. I think it's pretty sweet. Everywhere we went in the afternoon was with the Sbahn or Ubahn. It was a little ridiculous as I'm pretty sure we could have gotten to places just as easily on foot. I asked Hanna what her favorite part of the day was and she said the trains-kinda funny.
As our time winded down, Sonja and Rolf knew I wanted to go to the Hofbrauhaus. And they wanted coffee. The kids however really wanted fast food for supper and were begging thier parents to go there. Toby said to me, "You can get beer in Denkendorf, but we want to go McDonalds!" hhmmm....world-famous beer hall or mcdonalds-seriously. Kind of remindes me of my own brother... Luckily we were able to go the Hofbrauhaus and then to the Burger King at the train station before heading back. I really enjoyed spending the day there with my family.
Today I spent the day cleaning the upstairs and the downstairs. I also cleaned my room which really needed it. I always love a clean room so I'm not sure how it always goes back to being dirty...
Lately when I'm on the computer for a while I get this really bad pain in my shoulder and I have it now so I'm going to stop.