Richtig Hiking...

Well here's my update for this weekend:

Friday evening I went to a basketball game in Cologne with some people from the International Office. We'd gotten free tickets (woo!) which made the game even more fun! Our seats were decently good, and we had a lot of fun cheering on the Cologne 99ers, as they are called. We heard lots of particularly familiar cheers such as "Let's go Cologne, let's go!" (In English of course.) There was a group of guys in the fans from each team who had drums and beat them along with the cheering. It almost felt like a high school basketball game or something. It did make me miss cheering for my Golden Knight basketball boys team. We won (of course) against the team from Goettingen, I think the score was something like 70-50 but I'm not positive. Friday was a long time ago :) Our colors are red and white, so should I go to another game, I will certainly come prepared. It was kind of funny though, the building they play in is called the "Energy Dome" but it's about the same size of my high school gymnasium with maybe a bit better seats instead of bleachers. The rules appeared to be the same though. I was surprised to see that the Cologne 99ers were actually the German National Champs last year, and have won their Regional Championships just about every year for the past 6 years. Impressive.

Saturday was spent on an outing with Sophie's family (she's the friend of mine who's German and works at the Intl Office here). Her parents are in town since her birthday is this coming Wednesday. We went with her parents and older brother to a nearby vineyard town called Dernau. It's quite close to Mayschoss, which is the place we had our Wine Tasting near the beginning of the Intro Course last month. In fact, we actually hiked through the Dernau vineyard through the large hills/small mountain sides on which all the grape plants are planted from Dernau to Mayschoss. I think there was a total of about 10 kilometers that we hiked. On the way there it was lots of up and down between the rows of grapes. At one point or another, we were cutting across mountain side with sheer drop offs to one side, or up and down stone steps cut into the mountain side that were quite difficult! However, we were rewarded by a lovely meal at an awesome restaurant in the middle of it all. I tried Federweisser for what I believe is the second time. I think I had some when I was at Claudia's that summer when I was 15. It's a wine that's made fresh (not aged) and is most popular (tastes best) in September and October, early fall, I'm guessing when the grapes are freshly picked. You can have it in either red (Federroter) or white (Federweisser). See, I'm becoming quite the wine connoisseur!

Sunday, today, I'm working on homework. I picked up my room this morning, and attempted to do laundry, but since there's only two washing machines for an entire building of probably about 130-140 students, and one is currently broken, it's always in use :( So I pulled out my homework for this week and am getting a head start. I already finished what I needed to do for tomorrow which is read The Importance of Being Earnest. For Tuesday I have to read some German lit article and do a worksheet on it (I hate worksheets), for Wednesday I have to read some Longfellow poetry (more likely to get done today than the german lit), and for Thursday I have to read an article on Otto von Bismark and answer some questions about him. So nothing too hard. I'm also still working on recommendation letter drafts to give to professors so they have good stuff to write about me to the grad programs to which I'm applying. I'm also working on "Personal Statements" to send to each school as well. Basically, it's just a statement saying why I think I'm qualified for graduate work, and what in my past history supports that claim.

Well I will try to keep you all better updated. This week I have a concert on Tuesday evening that I'm attending with my host family. Other than that I don't think there's a lot going on. Okay well, back to that homework.... Much love to all!