Hi everyone! Sorry I've been bad at writing about my life this month. I've been busy doing daily life boring things, which means that even when I do have time to write, I don't feel like I really have anything to talk about. This social psychology reading I'm supposed to be doing right now is not the most interesting, though (sample sentence: "Notably, the selective accessibility consequences of comparisons are faily ubiquitous and robust and have been demonstrated to result from different types of comparison." The whole chapter is just the author being stupidly full of himself.), so in this case blog wins out.

So, the month of April... what did I do?
-Dad came to Freiburg for a conference during my break, so I visited him for a few days (and went to the baths in Bad Krozingen while I was waiting for his train from Prague to get in!). It was cool to go back to Freiburg and try to remember where everything was, see the wurst guys in the Münsterplatz, and get a delicious vegetarische Yufka from my favorite Döner place in town. It would have been better if I hadn't been feeling sick and ended up taking a 3-hour nap in his hotel room for an afternoon, but sometimes life is just lifey like that. At the end of the week, he visited me in Tübingen for a day and we did all sorts of exciting things like eating lunch, ice cream, and dinner! Then this volcano blew piles and piles of ash into the air and he was stuck in Europe til the following Tuesday.

-Classes started 2 weeks ago, which means that at this point I have been to most of them once or twice now, because they only meet once a week. I'm taking a speech/language development seminar (here, seminars are smaller, discussion-heavy classes for people of a particular major) which has a 3-page essay due every week but is still awesome, a social information processing seminar which is less awesome, an evolutionary ethics lecture, and a lecture about European history 1050-1200. I can more or less understand everything that goes on, except in the history class, because the professor talks into his podium and is boring.

- Every so often, some of the people from my language program last month get together and cook dinner at one person's apartment. A couple weeks ago I had everyone over here, and we made chicken curry with rice and then had Belgian chocolate fondue for dessert. I don't think I'm ever going to leave Europe.

- I've been watching unnecessary amounts of Veronica Mars. But it's so good, and every episode is a cliffhanger... what else can I do?

- I went to the German equivalent of a frat party a few weeks ago, which is more like going to a club in someone's house as opposed to an American frat party. You had to buy a ticket to get in (7 euro, but my roommate gave me a free one), buy a 10 euro card to be able to get drinks, and pay for drinks at different bars they had set up in the house. These things are a much bigger deal here and need lots more preparation, apparently - all the walls of the house were covered in black tarp (to prevent damage, presumably), and they had a coat check, security, and a real DJ. It was pretty fun, but I'm glad I didn't have to pay to get in, or else it would have been a rather expensive evening.

- I finally gathered everything I needed for the "get the people at the Bürgeramt to give you a visa" scavenger hunt and gave it to them today, so I should be legal to stay here until August soon!

- Everyone from Northwestern who has been here since September is back from break now, so I've been hanging out with them a little bit since then. It's so good to see familiar faces! One of the girls, Julia, and I have made like 800 plans for the summer, including but not limited to: going to Heidelberg, Munich, the Rhein region, going on a bike adventure or hike and picnic in the forest behind my building, having pancakes and watching Mad Men on a Sunday morning, her giving me a culinary tour of Tübingen, and finding the cheapest place to buy a Longchamp purse (since they are substantially less expensive here). Hopefully we will be successful in all of our endeavors!

I think that's about all my attention span can handle right now. In summary, I am still alive and still having tons of fun in Germany!

Go 'Cats.

Frohe Ostern, or, Germans Are Really Nice!

Happy Easter, everybody! I hope you bit the head off of a delicious chocolate rabbit this morning. I personally did not, but I did have a Kinder Egg, which was almost the same.

I went to church this morning with my friend Philip from my German class. I didn't like the service so much (it was one of those song lyrics projected on a screen/we have a drumset churches), but the people were really amazingly nice. We stayed for probably an hour after the service just talking to everyone, and they were super friendly and were excited that we could speak German so well. Some people even invited us to have lunch with them, so we did - free food is always good!

After I got home, I found two notes on my door - one that I have cleaning duty this week (woohoo!) and that I should ask the girl next door if I have any questions, and the other saying that I should follow the trail of arrows and golden eggs starting at my door to find an Easter surprise! It led to the kitchen, where there was a basket of eggs on the table, each of them decorated like a person on the floor. Super cute! Then I had pancakes with my roommates, who were in the kitchen when I found my egg, and actually had a conversation with them for I think the first time ever. I was never really around my dorm this past month because of my German class, so I never really got to talk to anyone, especially because it's break and most people are gone. It was really good to talk to them today though - they're really nice! We went on a walk after that, and saw lots of neat things, like a double rainbow (worth being poured on for the 10 minutes beforehand) and squirrels (apparently they are not common here) and a 6-inch long slug (one girl said this sort can grow to be 1 meter long? ewwwww).

Later we're gonna watch Matrix: Reloaded cause it's on TV - happy Easter?

So this holiday has been somewhat untraditional, but fun nonetheless.

Also, I just want to say that German children are adorable, and I might have to find one and bring it home as a souvenir. (this statement prompted by how many there were at church this morning)