the mountain out my window.

first of all, i apologize to all my faithful readers for not writing sooner. i didn't anticipate how busy we would be here. i wanted to sit down and write after my week in berlin and weimar, but then we were right off to salzburg three days later. now i'm back from salzburg, but leave for munich tomorrow afternoon!

today is exactly three weeks since we arrived in germany, but it has both gone so fast and feels like we've been here forever. in just three short weeks, however, we have self-titled this semester "disaster semester". on only our fifth day in Germany, Jenny left from Berlin to come back to Reutlingen and then go back to the States. i suppose she had pretty severe culture shock, and she never felt at ease anywhere we went. then over the weekend another girl found out she had a cyst, so she was in surgery on monday and will be in the hospital for a few more days. our professor was diagnosed with walking pneumonia (don't worry, i'm keeping my distance and spiking my juice with vitamin c packets (thanks uncle chris and jill)). and on monday, Kalyn fell and bit through her lip. she's been to the doctor and dentist and it sounds like she'll be ok, but it's still pretty awful that it happened. hopefully that will be the last injury of the semester (i'm also steering clear of volleyball courts).

Charli, Mackenzie, and i are going to hike up one of the mountains in Reutlingen today. Reutlingen is right in the middle of the Schwabische Alps, which is a nice little cluster of small mountains. there is a ruin of a tower at the top of one, and that is the one we are planning on conquering this afternoon.

i don't even know where to begin talking about everything. i could just make a list of what we've done so far, but i don't know how interesting that would be. i've done a lot of things: visited museums, palaces, gardens, monuments, churches. i've climbed a lot of stairs: two-hundred sixty in twenty-four hours while in Berlin, not to the mention the fact that i live on the eighth/top floor of my dorm. i've had a good amount of German beer: we're going to start the Reutlingen Bier- und Weinakademie Bierdiplom tonight.

i will write more tonight hopefully, but we want to get going on our mountain climbing adventure so that we are back by dinner time. i have a feeling i'm already late!