sleepy

So.. a lot has happened, and it seems really big and cool as it happens, and then afterwards I realize it wasn't really worth getting excited about. For example, today I decided to get off the U-Bahn early and take a different bus home to the stop right in front of my house, just on a whim. I got to enjoy the streets instead of the dark smelly organs of the U-Bahn, until we stopped at a stop where I would guess about 30 or 40 teenagers got on. Clearly there was a school there, and I was lucky enough to already have a seat, however I spent the next 20 minutes squished against the window as more people tried to squish on at each stop. One stop was called Grindelwald Weg, which reminded me of Harry Potter and made me happy. Then I was zoning out and staring at a Feuerlöscher, and was racking my brains trying to think of the English word, and after about 5 minutes I realized it was a fire extinguisher. Maybe it's good that I'm forgetting my English because it means I'm improving on my German! Who knows. But that was my long and rather dull story, but as it was happening I was thinking how exciting my life was. :)
Another highlight of my day: before Sprachschule began, my teacher pulled me out into the hallway and asked me in German if I wanted to move up to a harder class because it seemed like I was getting bored (which was so true, but I thought I was doing a better job hiding it!). So I joined another class, which was much bigger and quite a bit more advanced, so I had a sort of hard time understanding what the teacher said but I understood most of what was going on. I'm just going to study really hard to try and catch up... although I can't believe I just spent 25€ on books for 3 more days of class. I didn't really think it through very well. But they'll be good to have for grammatical reference, and hopefully AFS will pay for them, so I'm glad I bought them.
I will try to briefly summarize the weekend, although it was full of events. Simon, Sebastian, Daniela and I drove down to a tiny little farm town somewhere near Frankfurt. It took around 4 1/2 hours to get there, and we passed so many windmills it was like I was in windmill wonderland or something. The town was really sweet and old, and smelled like cow poop but in a good farmy way. We, along with at least 50 other people, all stayed in this little religious hotel place where we would celebrate Christa's 60th birthday. Christa is, from what I gathered from a family friend Rebecca, a member of the 'Friday Group' which was the group of young people (including Daniela I think) who had their Confirmations together and then met on Fridays for a while and became good friends. So everyone there was raised in the same religion, and Christa's husband is a priest, so there were like 5 religious services in the whole weekend... I think that's more than I've ever attended in my life. But they were pretty fun, and I got to sing loads of German hymns, and eat Jesus' blood and body. There was a ton of good food, one of my favorites being basically a hot-dog-like sausage wrapped up in a layer of tater tot. Except 5x better. And during the big Saturday night celebration, we all dressed up and drank wine (not very much for me, I didn't like it) and ate food and danced (only a couple times for me as I have no coordination when it comes to dancing) and listened to music, and everyone under the age of 30, plus a few older people, stayed up until 2:30 a.m. So that was a good time, and I got to get to know some more people who I'll probably meet again at some point this year.
Well, that was a rather long summary, but there it is. Lately it has been really cold, and I've heard that the German winters are FREEZING. Tonight I walked to the bus stop after rowing, and it was already dark out at 7:30, and I had my north face fleece on but my teeth were chattering and my fingers were tingly. Tomorrow I'm wearing my wool hat. Maybe I will find a lovely little bakery (okay, finding one is not at all a problem-they're everywhere!) to sit down in and drink something warm and delicious and study my präpositionen and akkusativ rules. Tchüss!