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).