köln

finally in Germany. I'll apologize straight away for the lack of personal pictures, but uploading them is a wee bit of a hassle and these past couple days have been more business and less leisure so it's no great shakes anyway.

Germany is such a relief after Paris. I had a great time in Paris, probably the most beautiful city on Earth, but frustrating with the language and everything. Disneyland Paris was amazing, but I'll bet you guessed that I'd say that already and I'm pretty exhausted so I won't go into detail.

Yesterday all of the people from UW (except one mysterious person who no one has met) met up at this hostel we're all staying at. We bonded over some stressful cellular telephone purchasing (I have a cell phone now, or as the Germans call it, a Handy) and today we climbed to the top of the Dom, which was SOOO high and scary and my legs were numb from all those stairs. But the view was incredible and so was the company. And nothing beats that feeling you get of accomplishment when you finish a climb like that! So beautiful. It was a beautiful day too, it was 7 degrees celsius (not sure in Fahrenheit) but apparently that's a pretty nice temperature to have in the winter.

Today I also got my first taste of Bonn. All I can say (well, I could say a lot more but all I really have time/effort to say) is that I loved it. It was stunningly beautiful in a serene way, but also was cute in the bar/club aspect of it. All the Bonners go to bed at reasonable hours, which is a huge plus because I won't feel like such a loser when I don't want to stay out until 6 am. Awesome.

I met my Bonn Buddy while I was there, which was so nice. Janina's awesome, she's so open and was so willing to listen to my slow German and talk to Shaina and I for hours. It was great. As far as people go on this trip, I really think I've hit the jackpot. I think everyone here is amazing, I really have enjoyed spending time with the other people from UW and getting to know the area we'll be living in for the next few months. I'm so pumped and in such a positive mood! Good times. Good times.

Bis später!
[side note: I figured out how to make those dots above the letters on my keyboard without copying and pasting. highly necessary and useful. Successful/productive enough day for me!]