Wednesday November 18th

Hi guys,

I'm feeling pretty homesick today. I really just miss the comforts at home at this point. I really took for granted a lot of the stuff that I have in the States that I don't have here. Things like pizza delivery. Free refills on pop. Free water. 5 subject notebooks. Notebooks with lined paper and 3 holes, instead of graph paper and 4 holes. Notebooks that cost less that 7 dollars. Free toilets. Outback Steakhouse and really all other forms of chain restaurants that serve cheap American food. I miss lunch meat. I miss spaghetti-o's. I miss driving and not having to rely on the subway system. I really really miss Wal Mart and things of that nature - there is a separate little store for everything here and they're all privately owned and everything in them costs a fortune. We're talking 15 dollar day planners and things of that nature. I heard a rumor that there was a Staples in the area. I was so excited that I almost planned a trip there. I miss places like Eat-n-Park where I can get a meal for less than $7. They even give you free refills on coffee there! It's fantastic! Granted the coffee here tastes better, but it's over $2 a cup and it's just a tiny little cup, and that's all you get! No free refills. No free anything. Nothing is free in Germany. Not even bathrooms are free in Europe!

Ok well now that I got that out of my system I can tell you all about the week I had. It was a pretty good week, today is just kind of a bummer kind of day. I'm not normally like this actually. Anyways.

Wednesday last week was 11/11 which here in Cologne is a massive big holiday. It's the start of their Karneval season which comes to an end right before Ash Wednesday with a huge party from Thursday to Tuesday. The 11th is a giant party in preparation for the giant party in February. We all met downtown around 10 and it was already packed. Everyone is dressed up in silly costumes, and a lot of us wore our dirndls and stuff like that. 11/11 is a big drinking day, so I stocked up on beers and we went to Heumarkt which is jam packed with people. We hung out there for a little while, I'd say an hour and a half, then we walked to Zulpicherplatz to have some lunch. We ended up hanging out there and eating pizza and NOT drinking until about 2:30 or 3 PM when the others said that they wanted to go home. Which sucked in my opinion, because we really hadn't celebrated Karneval at all. So I met up with Nick and Andrew and their friend and hung out with them for a little while, about an hour or so. At this point I was kinda tired, but I didn't feel like going 40 minutes home for a nap, so we went to hang out at Nicks, and then we were gonna go back out around 7. Around 7 no one wanted to go back out. Defeated and sad, I went home to Rath Heumar, which took an hour and a half. When I got home I was very sad that I didn't get to properly celebrate Karneval, so my host sister Yvonne told me she would take me out! 15 minutes later she's dressed as a scottish girl and we're ready to go! We met my host brother's girlfriend Marsha at Subway in Friesenplatz with her friend and the 4 of us went to a club nearby. We had a great time and we celebrated really late. Needless to say I didn't make it to my first class the next morning.

Thursday after class I came home early because I wanted to get ready to go to Paris on Friday morning. I got all the Paris stuff figured out, and woke up really early again on Friday morning. I really hadn't slept well in a couple of weeks, because I'd been doing lots of traveling. I met Lauren at the Hauptbahnhof at 7, and by 1 PM we were in Paris! We went to the Nord train station to meet up with Brittney, and the three of us made our way to the Etap hotel that we were staying at. None of us really knew anything about the hotel, and we were a little leary, but it ended up being great! It was really clean, and it was just the 3 of us in a room so we didn't have to worry about sharing it with 10 other people like in a hostel. The hotel was a tiny bit out of the way, but it wasn't bad at all when we took the metro. That first night we did walk everywhere though. We first walked up to the Eiffel tower and we got to it just in time to see it sparkle! It was gorgeous! After we hung out with the tower for a while we went and got some food, then walked to the Champs de Elysees or however you spell it. We saw a famous bridge on the way and the beginnings of some Christmas markets. We went in a Disney store and saw a huuuuuge Louis Vuitton. We walked up to the Arc de Triomphe and around it too. This doesn't sound like a lot, but by the time we were done it was almost 11 or something and we were exhausted! We took the metro back home and crashed.

Saturday we woke up and went to the grocery store to get food for the day, since it's cheaper than eating in restaurants. Then we got on the metro and headed back to the Eiffel tower for day pictures. Lauren and Brittney sword fought with their baguettes and that was pretty funny. There was some sort of large protest gathering in front of some military building, so we decided to get out of there. We walked for about 20 minutes, then hopped on the bahn to Saint Michel. We stopped and got a coffee and then we went to the Notre Dame. It was really sweet! We didn't see the hunchback however, which was disappointing. We then made our way over to the Louvre and we walked around there for a couple hours and saw the Mona Lisa along with some other paintings that we learned about in Art History which was exciting. After a while our legs were tired so we found a bench and wound up sitting on it for an hour and a half til the Louvre closed! It was pretty rainy and miserable (as usual in Europe) so we went and found a place to eat. Afterwards we went and found Moulin Rouge, which was covered in scaffolding (like everything else in Europe including the Eiffel Tower). After Moulin Rouge we made our way back to the hotel to watch a movie and go to sleep. The next day we found the train and it took us 8 hours to get home which sucked. Either way though, Paris was cool! I enjoyed it a lot!

Monday we only had History class which was cool, then we all got to visit 1Live, a radio station here in Cologne. That was pretty cool, we were able to see a lot of the radio personalities and also watch people doing radio while listening to it! Yesterday was pretty low key, we ate pizza after class and that was it. Today I have to give a presentation. Not fun!