ready to go, sad to leave.

all packed up. room is clean, objects not belonging to me have been returned.

my bedding is gone. not happy about this.

leaving at 7:30 for the stuttgart airport. i'll be back in detroit at 9:40 pm eastern time.

germany was amazing. i'll reflect more in the coming days when i'm up at all hours due to jetlag.

let it snow!

it's been snowing in reutlingen for over 24 hours. it's beautiful! but it reminds me of home, and how i really wish i had my boots... even though we're only here for five more days... five more days that it's supposed to be snowing!

p.s. family: i think we should see "the curious case of benjamin button" on christmas (BRAD PITT). i've only seen the trailer in french, but it looks great. watch it here: http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/thecuriouscaseofbenjaminbutton/

i also really want to see "australia", but i might just go alone. that's the movie i entered the contest for.

after that, we should have a family game night.

the results are in...

...and paris is still the winner. however, my current top ten is now as follows (with photos for added cities).

10. nice

9. athens

8. london 

7. prague

6. venice

5. amsterdam

4. barcelona

3. berlin

2. rome

1. paris

the first photo is from london's regents street at night, all lit up for christmas. the second is taking from the second level of park güell, a crazy park designed by the surrealist architect (i have a thing for those guys) guadi. that blue stuff in the background... that's the OCEAN. our hostel, while being AWFUL, was right on the beach.

i could probably write an entire blog just about our hostel in barcelona. it was the second worst hostel of our semester (after the mice, bedbugs, and affectionate couple sleeping above me in amsterdam). in barcelona, at the sea pointe hostel, you must rent blankets. also, the rooms are 7 bed mixed dorms. there were three of us girls (mackenzie, emily, and i), and the rest of the people in our room were guys.... no, men. one of them was around 45 and i'm pretty sure he lived there. he had a garment bag and put on dress pants and a button down shirt in the morning... and he had dreadlocks halfway down his back. also, my bed was not in the room. nay, it was above the bathroom. that's right, above the bathroom. the as in, the bathroom had a ceiling, and my mattress was on top of said ceiling. so i had to climb this tiny metal ladder to get up to my bed, which was roughly 10 feet in the air. and i discovered, from my perch in the air, that this hostel didn't have walls, perse. the 7 or 8 feet above the top of the bunkbeds was open, and i could see FOUR ROOMS DOWN into people's beds. creepy. and it was so cold at night that we had to put emily on my shoulders and mack had to boost her up so we could shut the windows, which only opened about 12 feet in the air.... other than that, i loved barcelona. the weather during the day was 60 and sunny, and we went to the beach no less than five times. it's a beautiful city, and rightfully deserving of a place in my top five cities in europe.

i should go back to studying the european union (twenty-seven member countries, thirteen use the euro, etc.) before my exam this afternoon.

italy: a quick tour.

rome, day 3: vatican city, papal audience (he looks like darth sidius), sistine chapel (loud but the tour we were on was great), stayed with friends i made in prague. went out to the bar with a kid from california, two from boston, and one from philadelphia i had met less than two hours previous. they were nice. day 4: st. peter's made me glad i'm lutheran... one statue from that place wouldn't fit inside good shepherd (maybe if it was laying down). train to florence. long, long train to florence.

florence: amazing hostel (15 euros a night, hot breakfast delivered to our room every morning), not impressed by the accademia gallery (where David is housed) at all. David is impressive, his museum is worthless. you can't even look at any other paintings because the lighting is so poor that there is always an awful glare on them from any reasonable distance. i was more impressed by the ufizzi, but i was so sick of religious paintings (i wish i had counted the number of "annunciation to mary" paintings i saw in europe). Botticelli rocks - the Birth of Venus is one of my favorites. also in florence, rough roads with the traveling buds, ended up spending parts of two days with the boys of group, which made me nearly homicidal. they literally had an hour long conversation about doing a study on which kind of beggar earns the most money. of course, then you'd have to choose several different locations and probably be each kind of beggar for a week, and another variable would be if you were walking or sitting, and "sometimes business men do this sort of thing for a rush", and all i added was that he'd have to do something to benefit the homeless with the money afterwards. no answer.

venice: LOVED IT. the weather was beautiful, the city is amazing and didn't smell at all bad when were there. i had to concentrate really hard on not getting seasick, but other than the boats it was great. we visited St. Mark's and St. Mark's Square, and tried to visit the cemetery island (from Vivaldi's Ring of Mystery fame (thanks, Dad)), but it was closing as we got there. i navigated our way all around the winding sidewalks and paths and we had a grand ol' time except when the we tried to visit the Biennale Park (home to a biannual (you could have figured that out) contemporary art festival with really interesting buildings for each country that participates), but it cost 8 euro to get in. thwarted by being a poor college student yet again. the last thing we did in venice was ride boat 1 down the Grand Canal with Mackenzie and i narrating the way.

sorry for my erratic use of capitalization in this post. it's 1:33 am here, and i'm going to sleep for a few hours before awaking to cram my head with economic facts. and the correct spelling of Baden-Württemberg. (that's it).

eight days a week.

beginning of our last full week in Germany.

i already took an art exam this morning, which was sort of a joke. i have an econ exam tomorrow, which i have all the information for, but it's actually going to be difficult.

i know i promised i'd write more after break, but that hasn't happened. our internet is awful and controlled by an awful awful man. it's working better now, though. i had to deactivate my facebook for the next month because of sorority recruitment, though, so maybe i'll waste the time i would have wasted on that on here instead. i should work on writing a short paragraph about each of the places i visited. i'm sorry this blog was not at all what i (or probably most of you) expected for the semester. i was far busier than i thought i'd be, in general.

i'm looking forward to being back stateside and seeing all of you!