Weinachten

Phew, now that I'm finally caught up on my travel blogs, I can tell you all a little bit about my past 2 weekends in Heidelberg! It's been lots of fun just staying at the house because we've had friends visiting from other programs. This past weekend one of my suitemates from last year who's in the London program surprised me with a visit! She ran into my room around 2am on Friday morning and it was fantastic. Although I had taken 2 Tylenol PMs around midnight (MISTAKE. lesson learned) and felt really drowsy and expressionless, so I was repeatedly apologizing for not acting more excited, because I actually was, but just lacked the capacity to show it. One of my other suitemates was here this weekend too so we had a nice little suite runion. It was a great weekend with schnitzel, coffee, thai food, shopping, candy, and lots of laughing and reminiscing.
The main street is getting all set up for Weinachtsmarkt (Christmas Market) which open tomorrow. Everyone in the house is so excited for it to start. There are a lot of food booths (my favorite are the candied almonds and feuerwursts and gluhwein) and craft things (handmade ornaments, santa clauses, wooden toys, etc.). The street is also getting all decorated with big stars that hang between the buildings and garlands around every lamp post. There's also an ice skating rink!
It's freezing cold out here. Literally. It SNOWED this weekend. Maybe coming from Southern California it what made this a grand novelty for me, but it really was a big deal. Everyone who was in the house ran outside screaming and taking pictures. It was so much fun. And Sunday a few of us went to a Christmas tree farm and picked out the biggest tree for Moore Haus! The farm was run by this little old couple who served us cookies and homemade schnapps (hijole!) after we'd picked out our tree. It's floor to ceiling in our reception room waiting to be decorated!
Every time I look out the window and see the town of Heidelberg lit up below I can't believe how incredibly blessed I am to be here. Love you and miss you all!

Lesson Learned

Rome was quite the adventurous trip! And it was by far, the most fun I've had traveling yet. My travel group was 6 people (Amanda, Lisa, Janay, Phoenix, Mark, and myself) but we all got to Rome in pairs. Because our plane left at 5am from Frankfurt we had to take a shuttle from Heidelberg to the airport at 2am. We had the nice surprise of running into some people from the Lausanne program and took up most of the bus (which was extremely overheated). So we get to the airport, get on the plane and start taxi-ing.. We're all pretty exhausted and just as I'm falling asleep this woman starts screaming, "Zu heisse! ZU HEISSE! IT'S TOO HOT!!!" Then she stands up, but we're about to take off so the flight attendants are screaming at her to sit down and it was a mini-panic on the plane. It was pretty scary because we were all jarred awake by the yelling, but she sat down and was quiet for the rest of the trip.. Also, it's true what they say about everyone clapping every time a Ryan Air flight lands safely.. Just a little celebration for surviving the sketchy airfare. haha.

Rome itself was amazing. It was supposed to rain the whole time we were there but it only rained the last day--the rest of the days were gorgeous. We visited all the tourist-y places: the Colosseum, the Roman Forum, Palatine Hill, the Mamertine Prison (where Paul was held!), St. Peter's Basilica (including the dome which took about 600 tightly winding spiral steps to get to), the Vatican, the Trevi Fountain, the Spanish Steps, the Catacombs, the Arch of Contstantine, Trajan column, the Tomb of the Unknown, the Pantheon, etc. Even the downpour we were caught in was something to marvel at. We ended up seeking refuge in a small chapel with about 100 other people. None of us were really wearing waterproof clothes so we were soaked but it was so much rain that it was past the point of annoyance and simply became amusing. We laughed and ran and played in the rain, letting it refresh our attitudes and wash away our stress, even if just for a moment.

Aside from the teeny tiny mishap of getting my passport, credit cards, IDs, and cash stolen, the trip was perfect. It might seem weird to say that losing my money and identity was a blessing, but in so many ways it was. I was able to see what amazing people I was traveling with. They came through for me and Amanda (who also lost all her documents since we both had all our things in her purse and that's what got stolen) in more ways than lending us money (although that was a HUGE help and I'm still in debt to most of them!). We also could feel a strong presence of God over us through the entire trip. Even when there was chaos around us we all felt a serene sense of calm enveloping us. And there was definitely enough chaos! With the theft, getting emergency passports at the American embassy, being harassed by a drunk Italian on a bus, watching Phoenix buy 30 Euro Dolce and Gabana man panties, almost losing Janay to a waiter who wanted to take her as his wife, taking pictures of a Canadian couple as the man proposed to his girlfriend, eating too much gelato and pizza, and seeing many many sites, we were exhausted and ready to come home at the end of our five days.

We joked about how this trip was a test of whether or not we'll survive over Christmas break, and about how we were Oh-so-much-younger before embarking on this 5-day journey, but actually both hold a lot of truth. We learned a lot on our Rome trip, and not just that you should never leave your purse on the ground, but about ourselves, each other, and the Grace we continually receive, even when we aren't aware.

Lausanne-yuh!

I spent the weekend of Halloween in one of the other Pepperdine programs in Lausanne, Switzerland. i loved getting to see all my missed friends! It was a pretty relaxing trip and lots of fun. We had a Halloween party here in Heidelberg on Thurs. night and then 5 of us left for Lausanne early the next morning. Two of the boys in our program dressed up as Derek and Hansel from Zoolander and acted out the "model walkoff" scene. It was hilarious. Our program had some really great costumes including Mona Lisa and Da Vinci, and 2 girls dressed up as presents with tags that said "To: Earth From: God" (they were God's gift to earth. hahaha).
The Lausanne house had a Halloween party too. I dressed as Where's Waldo and spent lots of time jumping into the back of pictures. At first people didn't get it and were just looking at each other like 'who the heck is this girl and why is she creepin in the back of all our pictures??' But then someone caught on and we all decided it was funny. Haha.
The Lausanne house is about a 10 min. walk from Lake Geneva and they all have beautiful views of the lake and the Swiss Alps from their windows! It was one of my favorite trips so far and I'm planning on going back to Switzerland in Jan. Up to Gimmelwald and Interlaken for snow!

Ich bin ein Berliner!

Note: A Berliner is a donut. Sorry, John, but I don't think you were a jelly-filled pastry.

Berlin! What an experience! First off I took a 2am train and was so paranoid about sleeping through my stop that I set 3 alarms for every connection I was supposed to have but didn't really sleep anyway. Berlin was fun, mostly because I got to travel with friends from another program, all of whom I miss so much! The weather was nice and we spent some time in the Teirgarten, which was beautiful. Berlin was also the only place with a Mexican restaurant. The first night we were there we were wandering around the city trying to find a place to eat, but we were all sold as soon as we saw the cacti painted on the walls and the sombreros hanging from the ceiling. We heartily enjoyed out quesadillas, burritos, taquitos, rice, beans, and salsa. Ohhh it was so good. Of course, not as good as real Mexican food, still tasty. We also tried these strange Berlin beers that had flavored syrup in them. Red, which tasted like raspberries, and green, which tasted "like green" according to my friend's French professor. haha. They were really good though. I liked the green flavor best. mmm.. green.

One night we decided to go to a club that was on our map the hostel had given us. We set out determined, but after walking for a while a couple of us were getting tired and the town wasn't lookng so promising anymore. But we persisted. All the way into Sketchville. We finally found the "club" which ended up being more of a ghetto outdoor house party so we just turned around as soon as we got there. There were enough Ladies of the Night and people crouched over and shaking on steps for us to not regret the decision. Not to mention be really grateful for traveling with boys.

We saw the sights (Checkpoint Charly, Bradenburg Gate, The Wall, The Jewish Museum, etc.), but the best part was getting to spend time with good friends.

WIENerschnitzel in WIEN

So all the Pepperdine International Programs have a week-long Educational Field Trip (EFT) each semester. Ours was Vienna, Austria (next semester we're going to Madrid!) and it definitely had the most E of any of the other programs. So while some programs we're on 8 day cruises around the Greek islands and others were climbing the ruins of Macchu Picchu, we were exploring museum on top of museum in Wien. Not that I'm complaining, because I for sure loved the Van Gogh exhibit at the Albertina. It was a great experience to see how his work progressed from his earlier days to the ones nearer his death. And the Hundertwasser and Belevedere museums were great too. I was not, however, a fan of the Third Man museum, which was really more of one man's collection of everything he had ever found related to The Third Man movie.

The first night we got there we all went out for real wienerschnitzel since "wien" is Vienna in German, so it makes sense to eat a food that originated there. Ha. It was sehr lecker! We also tried gluhwein, which is hot spiced wine.. But I'm still sticking to my favorite neue wein which is cold and sweet. Mmm.

We went to a monastary and the best part was the amazing library. It looked like the one from Beauty and the Beast. It was awesome. We also went to a palace that had gorgeous grounds to walk through and the Hundertwasser museum was really interesting too. I'm pretty sure the fancy tourist-attracting toilets I saw in New Zealand were designed by Hundertwasser. We also went to a Bach/Mozart concert one night. It was fun to get dressed up for once. We all joked about how nicely we clean up since we've all seen each other looking pretty rough (one of the side effects of traveling with and sharing a house with 51 other people).

Sketch Republic

I just got back from Prague (3 hours later than intended, but I'll get to that in a sec.)! It was so much fun. We toured a gothic Cathedral and some old Jewish Temples and cemetaries. Then, at night, we went to a five story club (each level had a separate DJ and different kind of music) and danced until we could dance no more. I don't think I've ever sweat so much in my life. Sexy, right? ha ha.

Moving on to the 3 hours late part.. So yesterday Lisa and I decided we were going to go home on the Sat. night train instead of the early morning Sunday train. But we had no idea how to get to the train station to make reservations. With the much needed help of our friend John, and a map of Prague we finally figured out where we needed to be--on the other side of town. The 5 of us piled into a taxi and get to the main station which looked like it could have been a subway station in the Bronx, complete with flickering overhead lights and grafitti on the walls. As we stand in front of the ticket booth with our map out, obviously lost, a girl walked up to us and said, "You guys look like you need help." Turns out she was from Houston, TX, and out in the Czech Republic doing mission work for 7 months. She assured us that yes, this is the main station, despite it's haggard appearance, and helped us figure out what tickets we needed to buy. We walked back to the main square, crossing under a bridge-tunnel thing which had enough needles littered on the ground to keep any addict busy for a while, and henceforth decided the Czech Republic was now the Sketch Republic.

Five hours, one subway ride, and a WHOLE LOT of walking later, Lisa and I were back at the train station, and all of a sudden, panic hit. Our ticket said 7:50 on it and we had thought our train wasn't leaving until 8:30. So, off we go, running around the station like a couple of crazy people (me, with a backpack as big as my own body strapped on), and after leaving the wrong platform, we found the right platform and discovered... Our train was leaving at 8:30 and 7:50 was the time we were supposed to arrive at the border of Germany. Wow.
We get settled into our compartment, the whole time praying that no one else will come in so we can stretch out and sleep the 11 hours it takes to get back to Mannheim. We ended up having the compartment to ourselves for most of the night and were able to get a good 11 hours of sleep in.. which turned our to be an hour too much because we eneded up sleeping right through our stop. I woke up first and realized we weren't in Mannheim (where we should have been over an hour before). I wake up Lisa who immediately starts to panic and we jump off on the next stop, which ends up being some podunk little town neither of us had ever heard of. Offenburg?? What the Off?! We find the train that will get us to Mannheim, scarf down some bread, and pick-up our journey where we had left off. An hour later we arrive in Mannheim, (finally something familiar!) take a train to Heidelberg and literally kiss the ground when we get there. Then we hoofed it back to the house and enjoyed a hearty (and much deserved, I think) breakfast.

Oh, I do love a good adventure.

This map shows where we left from Prague (A), where we first got off after realizing we had missed our stop (B), and where we finally managed to make it back to as orignially planned (C).

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I Survived Oktoberfest

Family members reading this blog: Don't worry! I promise I was completely safe and completely not drunk at Oktoberfest! Scout's honor :]

After taking a 3 hour train to Munich we arrived at the ever popular Oktoberfest. There were a lot of families and rides (although I chose to avoid the ride section of the festival because I kept having flashes of that one scene in The Sandlot where they ride the barf ride after chewing tobbacco. I definitely did not want to end up like that one girl who gets off the ride covered in someone else's puke.) which I wasn't expecting. Then there were the tents. This is where it pretty much looks just like the movies. Packed full of drunken Germans, Italians, Belgians, Aussies, Brits, and Americans. Women in durndels (those Heidi dresses) walk around carrying up to 10 huge liter beer steins at a time and sell them around the room (I managed to stuff an empty one in my purse. Later I found out it was a 50 Euro fine if you got caught trying to take one. Good thing I didn't get caught!). It was loud and smokey and every so often someone would start singing a German beer drinking song. We even saw one guy throw his beer (at 10 euros a pop I def would not have been wasting any of that) on a guy across the table from him, causing a fight to break out (we observed from a safe distance of course). All in all, we all had a lot of fun chatting with the cute Germans in their liederhosen, catching up with people from other programs we hadn't seen in a while, and eating crepes, gelato, candied almonds, and bratwursts.

Ah, this video here is from the soccer game we went to. It was Hoffenheim vs. BVB. We were cheering for Hoffenheim (the team that totally won! 4-0!). This video is a bunch of die hard fans chanting "shisse shisse BVB." Take a wild guess at what that means.

What I Miss

Top 10 Things I Miss Most About Home (aside from friends and family, of course):

1. My super comfortable bed, complete with Pakastani blanket and a pillow that isnt just a folded sheet stuffed inside a pillowcase.

2. Mexican food (including, but not limited to: carne asada, tortillas, queso fresco, horchata, rice, enchiladas, pan dulce, and pozole. Most of those I didn't even get to eat that often but just the fact that it's not even an option anymore makes me miss it more.)

3. Homemade Mom cookies (peanut butter, almond shortbreads, oatmeal raisin, etc etc)

4. Homemade Mom cake (double-layer chocolate with chocolate frosting and strawberries on top!)

5. Spanish/Spanglish

6. All the lotion I left at home (my skin is so dry!)

7. Warm weather (The past few days were freezing and it's only September!)

8. Being healthy (everyone in the house is getting sick! I plan to not follow that trend. I refuse to get sick!)

9. Ghetto parties (ha)

10. Decent coffee (with lots of cream, sugar, and cinnamon)

But don't think I'm complaining about being in Germany! I'm not! Just a little homesick for home-y comforts..

How To Survive Essighaus: A 10 Step Process

I'm lucky enough to be in the room that has what is known as the "Cat Cave." It's a big walk-in closet where every girl who's ever stayed for a Heidelberg program leaves her own mark on the walls or ceiling at the end of the year. The majority are about boys and how dense they are, but my favorite one says:

"How to Survive Essighaus: A 10 Step Process.

Steps 1-9: Get Drunk.

Step 10: Go to Essighaus."

Essighaus is the restaurant where we eat 5 days a week and it's definitely not known for it's delicate dishes. Everything is either breaded, fried, or drenched in gravy. Or a combination of all 3. The bathrooms in the house are also testimony of the effects of German foods on our digestive systems. We'll just say the door needs to remain closed at all hours. Especially since my room is located right next to die toiletten.

This weekend we went to a little festival/flea market in Ladenberg. There were some awful jr. high and high school dancers (made me miss my awesome Chaffey dance team) and German rock bands doing covers of Nirvana and such. I bought some delicious candied almonds (and just remembered I still have some left in my purse! Mmm.. sticky); and when it started to downpour on us we sat inside a little cafe and drank neue wine (it's not completetly distilled yet), which was delicously sweet and made us all flushed in the face. One of the guys in our group made friends with one of the waiters and invited him back to our house to play some games after he got off work. So we all walked to the bus stop together and met up with the rest of our rather large, rather loud group. After about 5 mins. of waiting German Waiter decided he was just going to take his car to the house later.. Of course he never came. I think we scared him by bombarding him with questions and playing/posing for pictures with a big elk hoof that someone had bought at the flea market. I'm sure we left a perfectly stereotypical American imperssion on him. Ha ha.

Laid-Back Weekend

So now that I've learned how to use the bus system and how to order food (I'm quite fond of Flamkuchen, which is basically pizza on a cracker-crust with sour cream instead of cheese and other various toppings. Ser lecker!) I feel adequately prepared to take on the rest of Europe. Ha. Yeah right. My current goal is to try every flavor of gelato served on the Hapstrasse(I know. I set the bar really high, right?). So far I've had three. Nutella, hazelnut, and rice milk. All quite delicious. The milchreis flavor made me miss home and horchata. Waa. Another goal of mine is to find as many Spanish-speaking folks as I can.

Today a couple of us went to the church our director attends. The service was completely in German so I mostly played with a little girl, Angelina (our little angel), who was a complete sweetheart. After church there was a big pot luck with a lot of foods I'd never seen before but were all very good. My favorite was this strange noodle-ground beef-pineapple-rice dish. Delish. After that we had some amazing desserts including plum pie and tiramisu (all homemade). Then, because we'd taken a taxi to church (and taxis are expensive) we walked aaaall the way back to the house. It was a nice walk. Long. But nice. One I'll definitely be doing again, only next time not in boots and a dress that relentlessly rides up and clings to my tights.

Das Autobus

Today the weather was beautiful and warm and sunny (76 F according to the weather report) and consequently the buses all contained a certain odor of body that became more pronounced as the day went on. As part of our "Headstart German" project we were split into 3 groups and today my group had to learn how to use the bus system. They assigned us one of those "learning scavenger hunts." We wandered around the entire city of Heidelberg, never failing to stand out as tourists. We stopped by the bank to exchange some money and I made sure to leave American amounts of personal space while standing in line (The people behind me were obviously not American). We finished up our bank bidness and got back on the bus to find the aisle blocked by a bar. The 3 of us stood in the front waiting for the bar to swing forward or for the driver to tell us we had to use the other door. But instead his response to our confused faces was to close the doors, trapping us between the door and the bar. Since we were lost as to where we should be going we just stood there until the bus driver loudly said something at us and when we didn't really respond he gave an exasperated sigh and pushed the bar lightly, making it swing forward with ease. So once again we were left the Stupid Americans, but we laughed out loud at our own inability to figure out this difficult task of pushing a bar.

Later on I stopped to look at a necklace stand outside our classrooms. The man who owned the stand (although it was more of a small pop-up table than an actual stand) told me how much the jewelry cost in German, then quickly repeated himself in Spanish, then followed that with "Habla espanol?" To which I happily replied, "Poquito," encouraged by the fact that he thought I looked like I spoke Spanish. We chatted for a little and I finally felt a little more comfortable in Germany.. Speaking Spanish.

Next time I see him I plan to ask him where he's from, and basically make him my new BFF so I can practice my Spanish. Yay.

Journey to Heidelberg

Here's Moore Haus. The place I will reside for the next 8 months with 53 other people!

Ahhh.. I love the feeling after a good long travel. I feel so blessed to be able to enjoy all these opportunities I know I don't deserve!

I guess this blog will mostly be about my travels.. things that stand out.. Amusing anecdotes. haha. Here's my first one:

The other day when we were getting on the bus to go to the wine festival I tripped over some guy's foot (because he had it way out in the aisle like a stupid). But I didn't know how to say "sorry" or "excuse me" in German (it's something long.. something along the lines of "estut mir li" or something.. i have no idea..) so I just kind of put my hands up and made some apologetic noise in my throat and made sure my face looked really sorry. Then I sat down not too far from him. So the tram gets amovin and the man starts talking to his friend. And he's completely AMERICAN. So I looked and felt like an idiot because I had made this awkward apology grunt at a man who spoke English.

And next:
The other day I tried to order an ice cream cone from a little stand on the street. After practicing the phrase "eine kugel zitrone, bitte" a couple times I mustered up the courage to actaully say it to the vendor. Only, when I try to hack it out in the most hackiest of ways, the lady can't understand me. Apparently my "zitrone" sounded more like "schokolade" which is chocolate and definitely not the lemon flavor I was looking for. Luckily, Kadie came to my rescue and told the lady the correct flavor I sought, with the correct pronunciation. Once the woman understood what we were trying to say she switched to English and told me, "Oh, zitrone! I thought you said schokolade. You are hard to understand."
So, maybe my German is needing a little more work, yeah?