Thursday 9-10

Hello! Today is Thursday! Woo hoo! Unfortunately I caught myself a cold overnight, and I woke up with major sinus congestion and a sore throat. It was pretty nasty all day. I got home from school today and took a nap, but it was one of those sick naps where you're on the brink of a fever and are kinda tossing and turning. So anyways my host mom made me some peppermint tea, and after dinner some really good hot lemon carbonated stuff that had some medicine in it. I'm feeling a little better. I'm gonna take a nyquil soon and sleep it off.

Anyways, it was a pretty good week so far. I went to the Gruen Guertel on Monday which is a big park that goes around the city, and I went there Tuesday in between classes too. I also went to Happy Doener Monday for food and I went shopping in Neumarkt, but just bought a book. Wednesday I went to Campus Doener and the guys let us behind the counter to "help" make the Turkish Pizzas so I got some cool pictures of that.

Tuesday my line 9 train was down so I had to walk from school to Neumarkt Platz to grab the 1 train that would at least get me halfway home. I got off the train in Kalk Post because I knew there was a mall there. I figured I'd kill some time and see if the 9 would be running again. I ended up finding another book there that I wanted, and I also saw some cool FC Koeln tshirts, but they were too expensive. I went back down to the subway to find that the 9 still was out of commission, so I figured I'd take line 1 to a stop parallel with mine and maybe take a cab. Turns out this train stopped a little earlier than I had planned and we all had to get off. I decided to go to a little newsstand and ask the guy if Rath Heumar was too far of a walk. He didn't understand me at first, because apparently he was foreign too, but I got the message across and he let me know that there was a bus stop right across the road, and that bus would take me pretty close to my house. So I definitely lucked out. It would have been a pretty long walk. Anyways, the bus came like 5 minutes later, and dropped me off at Koenigsforst, and I walked home from there. All in all my little adventure took 2 and a half hours. I was fairly exhausted when I got home.

Last night I went out with my friend Emily and her host brother Kai, and we walked over a bridge to the Dom. It was really cool because there was some play going on and the Dom was all lit up in different colors. They had a stage and they were singing some song about how cool Cologne was. After that we grabbed a beer and walked to Rudolphplatz to go to a little pub. It was really nice and a lot of fun, but I didn't get to bed until really late and now I'm pretty tired. Come to think of it, I was running around in short sleeves yesterday and it was cold out so maybe that in addition to sleep deprivation is what led to me being sick!

Today we had a brunch with the German students learning English. The University of Cologne didn't have enough room for our program, so we actually rent the classrooms at a nearby high school, so the kids we were eating with were high school students. Their English put our German to shame I must say, but it was still a lot of fun, and they were all really nice kids. Actually I think that some of them are taking us to the bar tomorrow (the low drinking age continues to amaze me).

So anyway, tomorrow is Friday, and Friday is excursion day! Tomorrow we're going to see Schloss Bruehl, which is a palace between Cologne and Bonn. Bonn is really really close to Cologne and was the Capitol of West Germany during the split years. After that we're gonna visit the Hard Rock Cafe in Heumarkt and possibly eat there (because I'm dying for a legit bacon cheeseburger).

I'm not sure what the rest of the weekend holds really. I'll probably do some studying cuz I have my first test on Tuesday. Other than that, I got my whole fall trip booked and ready, so I'm definitely off to Mykonos, Athens, and London in just over a month! I'm really excited. I also found this really cool thing on Germanwings.com, which is a German airline, and it's called blind booking. Basically it's like a surprise vacation for the spontaneous (like me!) and you choose what you want out of your destination, such as culutre, party, shopping, beach, metropolis. Then you pay for your plane ticket (39.99 euro round trip). THEN they tell you where you're going! I think it's so cool! They give you a breakdown of possible destinations, which is nice. If I were to choose party for example, the possible destinations would include Barcelona, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Istanbul, Dublin, Budapest, etc. I think it's pretty neat. We are free Thanksgiving weekend so depending on how the rest of the trip goes I might talk to some of the other kids in the program and see if they'd be interested!

Anyways, that's about all I have for you today! I'm gonna curl up with my book in about 10 minutes and go to sleeeeeeeep. Goodnight!

Jess