Haven't written for a while again..wow...Well lucky for everyone, you won't have to deal with it anymore because this will be my last entry. I'm writing from the amsterdam airport since I ended up with a long lay over. Wednesday night, I couldn't believe that Spain beat Germany...I guess Germany can recoup since Spain ended up winning the World Cup, but regardless, it's ridiculous. Thursday my class presented out creative projects. One group did a student's travel guide to Berlin, one of the guys presented his top five favorite parks in the city, Kris and Nathan made a rap video in German..pahhahaa, Lauren's group made a drama called "Oh Wie Schoen ist der Doener"..ahhahahaha, and we did a sketch about our class full of our inside jokes including...Vitamin K, "In Spanien...", "Sag waaaaaaaaaas???", spaaaaaeeet, schmutzig Tafel, and many more! That evening finally visited Marienkirche and realized that I'd walked by it at least 100 times before. Also went "shopping" with Natalie and Emilia and then we ventured to Curry 36 on Merringdamm for the "best" currywurst in Berlin...my stomach didn't agree but it was the best mayo that I had in 6 weeks :).
Friday was the last day of the course with our final and then a little party. Had a huge German breakfast equipped with schrippe, cold cuts, cheese, and too many spreads and juices to count. Epic. Afterward a few of my classmates and I sat in a park area near the main campus and waited until the farewell ceremony with FUBiS. Ceremony was a little sad but had a magical buffet. Following, Emilia and I went to the Ethnology Museum. Hands down the best one that I went to on the trip. A few kids from the house had a barbeque that night to say goodbye. Lots of good food and company as always. The next morning I realized that my train had left at 3am instead of leaving at 3pm. Went to exchange my ticket and did so successfully in German :). But at my first connection had a delay, got confused and missed my connection. Ended up back in Berlin. All of that took about 6 hours and I managed to exchange my ticket again but with a few added connections...Left around 5pm and got to Koeln to my hotel about 5am on Sunday...so hot and so uncomfortable for 12 hours that I dont plan on repeating that episode ever again. Slept a bit and took a copious number of cold showers since my hotel didn't have a/c like the rest of my accomodations. Went to revisit the Koelner Dom. Very pretty of course. Went to bed afterwards and visited with family yesterday. It was a lot of fun and I think that every embarassing and/or frustrating moment that I've had while learning German was worth it just to have finally had a patchy conversation in German with my great aunt. Think she was pretty excited about it too :).
Anyway..I guess that leads to me to now...better go and double check my flight time. See everyone soon, I'm sure!! Tschuessi.

For the record, didn't have internet all weekend and its been fairly unreliable the last few days, but otherwise..my bad for not writing. Went out Friday night with a few friends to a bar and a club. Bad music, but the first place was pretty cool. Saturday was the Germany-Argentina game. Watched it at Brandenburger Tor with quite a bit of Berlin's population. AWESOME. It was outrageously hot out and I nearly threw up, but it was still worth it for the enthusiasm of the crowd...poor Argentina, though. Sunday was a little bit more chill. Saw the apartment building from Lola Rennt and went to a market. Ate a Hawaiin hot dog in celebration of the 4th lol. Some kids from my house had a party on Monday to kind of close up the program with. It was so much fun!! The next wasn't so much, though...Ended up missing school and eating some meat that had gone bad...not a winner. Todays been fairly uneventful. Had a stomach ache all day and just came home after school. Wanted to go to Schlachtensee but I can't get good directions :(. S'pose I'll just hang around the house 'til the Germany-Spain game tonight. Poor Spain...

Tuesday was wonderful. Saw my first opera, Carmen, in French of course..but with Italian accents and German subtitles overhead. It was a pretty good test for my reading, though. I actually understood a lot :)...much more than beforehand, during which I was completely unaware of the subtitles...and I know no French. Imagine how that went haha. Afterward was a pretty long commute back home and test number two of German went exceedingly well also :). Ordered a train ticket to Koeln online and then Wednesday morning, booked a hotel room for a few days. The day was spent going out with my class. We went to a museum about the Stasi regime and then visited Hohenschoenhausen, which was one of their prisons in the middle of Berlin. It really shocked me that water torture surfaced at all in a place like contemporary Europe, but I guess that says a little bit about how sheltered I am. That afternoon was a little bit of shopping at Alexanderplatz and then went to Ghost Writer with Emilia at the Cinemaxx with Emilia. I didn't really like it, but be your own judge, I guess...Yesterday was a very fun class..not that everyday isn't fun anyway..but we made waffles from scratch with ice cream. The girls' team made much better waffles, of course. Yesterday night was mainly watching German soap operas and chatting with a new housemate. Her name's Katelyn and she's from New Zealand. I'm a bit sad that I won't be here longer to get to know the people that are moving in for other classes. It's getting a little bit late for me to have no Friday night plans, but I'm content watching play backs from the Brazil/Netherlands game right now. If there's an adventure later, you'll be sure to hear about it in a couple of days :)