The Halfway Week

So, here we are again. Another week gone, and less than a month to go before I see my parents again. I would probably just need to consult my local Newton Kansan to see how many shopping days are left before Christmas. It's gone pretty quickly. If my calculations are correct November 18th was the halfway point of my time here in Germany.

I can tell you Without calculation that the 17th of November was my (21st) birthday. That was on Monday, probably my busiest day of the week. 8:15am-1:30pm I have my tedious German course. Then at 3pm I have a piano lesson, and at 6pm until about 7:30 I have orchestra rehearsal. The highlight of the German course was having happy birthday sung to me in Chinese, Polish, and Turkish, among other languages. On Mondays the International Students Team has established a tradition of meeting at the University bar at 8pm, so that's where I celebrated my birthday. It closes at 11pm, so after that people came to my dorm to celebrate a little more.

On Wednesday, since I didn't have any classes, it was my goal to find and buy a winter coat. I should never shop alone for clothes. It took me forever to, number one, find a place to buy the coat, and, number two, decide on what coat I wanted to buy. I spent essentially the whole afternoon shopping. When I finally found a store that had a lot of wool overcoats, (which was what I was looking for), I spent probably another hour looking at prices and trying on different coats. They were all pretty expensive, so that made it a bit easier to narrow down the field. But still I had a difficult time deciding between the 3 or 4 coats that were in my price range. What made it worse is that there were sales associates there who were asking me if I needed help. I hate that. If I need help I will ask, but I just wanted to search for coats in peace. After they asked me if I need help, I felt like the they were watching me struggle to decided on a coat. They probably watched me try on a coat three times, and wondered why I had spent 40 minutes in the coat department. Eventually I settled on buying the least expensive one, even though there was another one I liked a bit more. It's just a coat.

And I bought it just in time. On Friday we had very strange weather. It was very windy and rainy the whole day. Then, as I was playing my trumpet in a practice on the top floor of building S, I could see the rain turning to snow outside. The first wave of snow melted immediately on the ground, but wave of snow later that afternoon began to stick to the ground. We have been having at least a little bit of snow every day since then. I much prefer the snow to the rain that it would be if it were warmer.

On Saturday I went to Cologne with some other Americans whom I met here in Wuppertal. First we went up to the top of the Cologne Cathedral, and went walking a little bit downtown. Here are some pictures:

Cologne Cathedral

Inside

A view from the top


A view of the yet-to-open Christmas market

Going back down, featuring: my foot

Not in Cologne, and not on Saturday. This is the view from my room of the snow on Friday. This snow storm happened to include lightning and thunder too.

Well happy Thanksgiving, and eat some ham and turkey for me,
--Austin