Ouch! How stupid!

The past few days have simply flown by. It is hard to remember everything I've done, but I will try...

I went to Cologne on Thursday. Our program director here, Hartwig, is one of a small group of official, certified tour guides of the Cathedral there. He is so proud to be from Cologne, as are the rest of its native residents.

It truly is beautiful. The entire Dom is a work of art. The stained glass, organs, paintings, and statues are breathtaking.


Then comes the task of climbing to the top. There are some 500 steps, about 4/5 of them are in a single spiral staircase you must climb. There are tiny windows all the way up, so you can see every so often how high you really are. Once you're done with the spiral stair case (the way up AND down I might add, so you sometimes need to be a traffic cop with people trying to descend) there is another set of metal stairs, and then yet another metal spiral staircase. Once I exited the stone spiral, I saw the first set of metal ones, and said, "You've gotta be shittin' me." Little did I know that there was a woman sitting there with her 13-year-old daughter (or so) and they started laughing hysterically. I was serious though... going up is really a pain... It is more than worth it though, as anything difficult is. The view is amazing, and you can see for miles.

Going down is no piece of cake either. First, rather than go down the metal stairs, you have to descend using a teeny-tiny stone one. That one is scary, because the spiral is sharp, and the stairs are really, really small.

After that, we got to taste more typical German bakery treats. We did this also last time we were in Cologne. This time it was much better in my opinion, as I don't really like cooked fruit. There was a lemon cake, and a pretzel type thing covered in nuts and chocolate. I don't remember exactly all of the names... but the BEST thing I had was some kind of plum dumpling. Not too much fruit, but it kind of was like a pound cake, with a plum fruit glaze. I want to have more of them.

(WHOA! Off topic, but weird! John Stewart has a Daily Show type show on CNN International... but it comes with a disclaimer! It explains that the show is a news parody, its opinions aren't thought to be true, and its reporters are not actual reporters... He is hilarious on this show... dunno how different it is than in America... but he curses a lot more... surprisingly it is censored.)

Then, yesterday, we watched a hilarious German TV show in class called Türkisch für Anfänger (Turkish for Beginners). It parodies and shows problems between the Germans and the Turkish immigrants. A German woman with two kids, buys a house with and moves in with a Turkish man and his two kids. We only watched the first two episodes, but it was hilarious and I want to see more. The episode titles mimic the Friends style; for Friends, "The one where..." In this show they say, "Die, in der ich meine Freiheit verliere," or, "The one where I lose my freedom."

Last night we had a party/barbecue in a park in honor of one of our kid's host sister who is going to Ecuador for two months. She also works at our school, the AIB. She didn't come though... dunno why, I guess something came up, but the party was still very much fun. We were in the middle of a field with trees, woods, bushes. It was very secluded and it was a good time. I fell down though, coming back from going to the bathroom... there was a ditch... my hands are scraped.

Tonight I am going to hear the Klassische Philharmonie Bonn Orchester. I am so excited! There are going to be two oboe concerti, one of which I have played before!!!