The home stretch

Mmmm, so... that whole posting later thing... that didn't happen. Things got busy. Who knew?
I am, however, happy to report that I have two papers done!... and 3 to go, but hey, who's counting?

The next week and a half or so will be completely packed. 3 papers due plus a final (one that I actually need to study for) and then a presentation after which I'll be packing myself and Alydia for a weekend conference I'm forced to attend. Blah. That's next weekend. And the Monday after I have my final final and then I'm home free! You know, except for packing and moving out at the end of the week. --How did this happen?!--

Yesterday Alydia and I went to a grill party held by a teacher of mine from last semester for our former class. It was really great to see everyone again (this was a German as a Foreign Language class), and I got to meet a few new people too. But seeing everyone again was really enjoyable, and I realized I kind of missed that class. Ok, maybe not the class part. But the people for sure.

This weekend Alydia and I were in Belgium visiting another friend of mine from last semester. The first evening another friend of ours came by with her boyfriend and the five of us went out to dinner. It was really enjoyable and exciting to see both of them again... and I got to practice my incredibly limited French. The next day we went to a little zoo and then came back and hung out at my friend's house. Alydia had fallen in love with the dog and an IKEA heart pillow with arms, and couldn't bear to be parted from them for a whole day. That afternoon we went with my friend to her Training. She does Gardetanz, which is a lot of jumping and kicking and lifts. It's pretty cool. And I have a few new warm-up techniques tucked away :)  We also tried Rice Cake, which is apparently a Belgian specialty. You wouldn't think a cake... like, a real cake, made out of rice would be good, but it was! Very yummy!

Now to the cultural part of my entry. First -Germany 4:1!! We play again on Saturday in the quarter-finals. Ok, this time I'm going to talk about German food tendencies. Specifically, about breakfast. And I'm going to talk about breakfast in hotels and restaurants because...yeah, my experience with real German household breakfasts is limited. But in hotels and restaurants the breakfast is delicious! And very different from American breakfast. For example, the Germans always serve meat slices (wurst) and cheese with their breakfast, and they make sandwiches out of a roll, butter, and slices of wurst and cheese. They're also slightly obsessed with jelly, but that's ok by me. They do bread with butter and jelly together quite often too. What makes me really happy inside is the way they serve coffee and tea. Everyonoe gets their own little pot or, 'worst' case scenario, two people split one. It's adorable and fancy and I like it! What I don't particularly like are the eggs. The eggs are always served medium-boiled and with a spoon. For those of you who have never had a medium-boiled egg, the white is firm, but the yolk is still runny. The soon is cool, but the eggs taste nasty. Oh, getting a little off topic, they also have egg-cookers. Little machines on which you can make soft, medium, or hard-boiled eggs. Six at a time. And you can also grill veggies for omelets. It's fun. I have one and I'm totally trying to bring it back to the states. :)
Back on track, the Germans (at least in big hotels) also eat yogurt quite often and "cereal", but it's different than American cereal. It's called Müsli and it's now available in the states if you'd like to try. It's
made of oat flakes and usually has either nuts or fruit (specifically dried fruit) in it. This, however, is not as incredibly German as the wurst, butter, cheese sandwiches.  For those of you traveling and now scared, most hotels also offer normal cornflakes and some yummy pastries :)