Birkenstocks, Movies, and More

Hi all!

Once again, sorry for the lack of updates. I was going to write a post last night, but by the time I got home I was just too tired.

Friday in the lab was actually pretty fun, because we didn't have anything really to do. So, for the most part, we just sat around talking about different things (including some of the differences between Americans and Germans....it was quite interesting). Apart from that, it was a relatively quiet day. David left after lunch to go on vacation with his family, Robert had left on Thursday to go on vacation for a few days, and there really weren't too many other people around. Pingkalai and I spent a lot of time playing around on Google Maps. That is so much fun!

Saturday I got up and walked down to the Innenstadt to go to the Wochenmarkt, where I bought some amazing apple cider. I actually spent a lot of time wandering around and popping into the various stores that were open. I went into one of the many tea shops and very nearly bought a tea set until I realized that it would be nearly impossible to get it home intact. I also went into one of the yarn stores here and bought some yarn so that I can make something neat when I come home. I've discovered that I really miss my knitting and crochet. I wish that I had brought some of me needles with me. Oh well.

Then I wandered into the Birkenstock shop and bought these:

Hee! They have stripes! I love them....

I also stopped by one of the many vendors that had set up his stuff along the street and I bought this:

That's right folks, it's a fork. And it is awesome.

After all of this, I ran into one of the people from my program, and we went into one of the cathedrals to take a look around. It was pretty nice, but the really odd thing about it was that they had these statues set up all over the church. They were very modern, and crazy odd. For instance, one of them was a girl sitting in a pew holding a cell phone. Another one was a man staring up at one of the stained glass windows with a camera in his hands. We found out that it is actually a traveling art exhibit designed for churches. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera with me, so I wasn't able to take any pictures. But trust me, it was weird....

Jonathan suggested that we get a group of people together for the evening to go see a movie at the open air kino. I thought it sounded cool, so I agreed, and I walked back down to the Innenstadt to meet everyone a bit later in the evening. The movie that we saw was called The International, and it was, of course, dubbed over in German. I was able to follow it for a little while, but the movie was one of those political thrillers that is nearly impossible to follow in English, much less in another language. Plus, it was really cold last night and I was more focused on trying to stay warm than on following the movie. It was still a lot of fun, though.

Anyway, that's about it. There's a market of some sort right outside of the MPI this afternoon, so I think that I may go out and see what is there. Talk to you all later!