ok no pictures, blogger is being weird. i promise some later...



so we went to frankfurt on friday/saturday for dancing and shopping. its like a newyork city.



then tiina and kristi and i went on a river boat cruise (half off for students! we always get the deals) and we saw a ton of castles from the middle ages, got really awful sunburns, and enjoyed the breeze.


then we went to the game.



germany lost. but we are still fans. check us out...



and then hopefully this video will upload. this is the reaction of the germans... hahah

pictures.... finally

yay pictures...

MUNICH....

empty beer glasses. beer is like water there.. YUM. Chinese pagoda in Englisher garten...
grace stuck in the crappy hot train...
stuck in Igolstadt... crap... then we were riding first class..






sex and the city girls.... we love eachother..
at the Germany vs. Austria game...
walking down the street....
smoking kills. duh.
At the airport training area...

sorry for the lack of pictures. i have a bunch but it wont let me up load them... so be prepared for a bunch in a few days when i will try again.


we went to the Lufthansa headquarters yesterday and it was awesome, but the pictures do much better than I could with words... i will try later.

byeee

Sex and the City.... Munich

Wow. Not only was this weekend a ball of hilarious laughs and side aching chuckles, it was full of surprises and upgrades. Haha me and the “Sex and the City, International Version” went to munich. Me, Kristi are from the states, Tiina is from Finland, Grace from Singapore and Thera is from Germany/America. We encompass all corners and many languages. It did not stop up from laughing at almost everything. Man, its been awhile since I have laughed so hard. Haha anyways, so we first traveled to munich there and back from about 25 Euros. This is unbelievable and we did it very well. We had to take slow trains and switch a lot, but it made it so funny. We arrived in munich around 4oclock and headed to an apartment that was Thera’s relatives. We freshened up and headed down town to shop and eat and drink beer. During dinner at a cute cheap Chinese place a guy walk past with an “akron “ tshirt. I was like, “hey I am from Akron” and we ended up talking for a bit, needless to say I met someone who went to Litchfield/firestone/walsh while I was in Munich. Haha small world. We went to the hofbrahaus and drank amazing beer and watched the Germany Portugal game. IT was a big deal. After that we headed back to the apartment. The next morning we woke up and had breakfast together, Nutella (spreadable chocolate) and bread of course. We then headed back to the city center for a tour of the city, FREE!! Even though this was my third time in munich I still learned so much. We ate then headed to the Englisher Gartens to see the Surfers and Chinese Pagoda, plus the naked part of the park. We died laughing at them. So funny. Oh yeah we were sitting on the grass and these two older men walk by and I whisper to Kristi , “those guys have to be America, you can tell by their tennis shoes and khaki shorts” The guys heard me and said, “You can not!” “We are not wearing tacky shorts” we of course died laughing! Haha oh American Tourists. Haha After that we went to Munich university and saw this small memorial about the White Rose Society, which was a group of students who wrote these pamphlets against the Nazis propaganda, but they were found and beheaded. One copy was found and sent to Great Britain and GB printed almost 5 million copies and instead of bombing the cities with bombs they dropped leaflets from the sky. It was crazy. And really cool.

After that we headed back to the apartment and made ourselves a huge great dinner. It was nice to relax and chill. Saturday we headed to Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial site, again I had been there before, but it was different this time. I remember last time, I went into one of the religious memorials and found a bible. I loved it, because it had been almost 2 weeks without mine because I left mine in America, I def remember sitting in that church and just praying so hard and god revitalized my soul. This time, I focused more on the people’s testiomonies throughout the camp with the audio tour guide. It was really cool and different to hear American, German, British and other perspectives of liberation, beatings, newspaper journalism and everything inbetween. One thing is for sure I had goosebumps the whole time.

Now after Dachau we jumped on the train to head back to our lovely home in Oestrich-Winkel, literally a very very very small town outside of Wiesbaden. On our first connection train, we got stuck, they made everyone get out of the train and then we sat around and was going to wait for a bus, obviously one bus couldn’t fit everyone in the train so we just waited. Then they piled us back on the train and we headed backwards to the station we had just come from. We were told to get another connection to get to where we needed to go. Frantically, we were missing all of our connecting trains as the time went on. We then found a train that went directly to Frankfurt and it was an ICE train (the bullet trains) and we made sure we could get on it because if we didn’t we were going to be stuck. Here are some of our excitement for our fast train ride (which cost anywhere from 50-90 euros on up for a ride, we were for 7 euros each!) then we arrive in Frankfurt and planning on going to stay with Thera’s other relative (thank god for her connections around here) we headed up to the service point to make sure we could still use our same ticket in the morning because of their mistake we couldn’t get to our final destination on time. The guy said, oh well we can pay for a taxis to get you back home ASAP. We almost died. So we arrived back in our own beds around one oclock with a taxis paid for by the german trains. We were def riding first class, all for 7 EUROS! No lie, we were lucky and god was providing for us.

Ohhh crazy times.

This week agenda- Monday we are going to visit the Lufthansa Headquarters and then we have some lectures and then we are playing a computer stimulated game like selling and marketing a product. It counts as 50% of our grade. Next weekend, not sure but we want to go on a boat trip down the Rhine, hopefully we can work that out, students get such good deals around Europe, its so nice. Then next week we are going to Luxemboug for a day to visit the European Court of Justice, for the EU. Its big deal. I am so excited.

European Business School

SO i am now in Wiesbaden studying at the European Business School.

www.ebs.de its one of the oldest private universities in Germany.
There are 14 students from Singapore, Canada, Finland, UK, Chile, Uruguay, Illinois and Iowa and some from TOLEDO! :) here are some photos of our apartment and our first days here. Its so gorgeous here, I fell in love with Germany all over again. I have two videos that I might try and post too. its soo awesome.

okk my pictures wont load. I will try again tomorrow... they are really cool. BUMMER. our internet is so weird sometimes.


allison

wow, i have had a lot of visitors pass by.
updates updates updates..... and pictures too.

here are some shots of our celebration at work with the new car! Beer, snacks and getting off work early! Who can beat that? haha ONLY in germany.


then jessica came to visit! we went to high school together, she was studying in the eastern side of germany, in Leipzig. She was doing a music and theology course there.
we had a really relaxing and fun weekend. we ate alot and rode bikes. haha it was really fun to have her here. and crazy too.



so i cant concentrate right now because the dogs outside of my window wont shut up. they bark ALL the time. at nothing. i want to punt them (wow i havent said that in a long time)


on saturday, i will be traveling to Weisbaden to study at the European Business school for three weeks. I cant wait! I am really excited. i am living in a studio apartment with two other girls from toledo. i am pumped to see them! I will update more when that comes.


PS the dogs are still barking.


ok thats all for right now, i am really tired. up late the last few nights. thanks for the comments, keep them coming. :)

so i am kinda of sick of writing everything down of what i did each day. i mean sometimes its good, but it doesnt really express much, then its more like a diary. and really, i dont even want to read that myself.


sometimes when i am bike riding or walking or running (which i have taken a fond liking to again, probably because i have been eating so much bread and chocolate again) i think about things to blog about, things i want to share with you. and then, of course i forget them. but today thats not the case.

these past few days, 14 to be exact, i started reading Purpose Driven Life. and i have just really been searching for what the purpose of my life is. i dont know if everyone just knows their purpose, or once you get past a certain age you are just too old to have a difference purpose than you set out. or at what age do you have you, AHA! moment and go, ive got it. thats it. i am waiting for that and trying to discover what my purpose is. one question that i really want to know, from you, is what do you think is the driving factor of my life?

i also have been thinking of what metaphor my life so far can be compared to. and i cant quite put my finger on it. i dont think my life could be compared to like a race, i am really slow with most things. i wouldnt say my life is like a building with a stone foundation or like a roller coaster, with lots of ups and downs and i am just "there for the ride" i am experiencing things and learning so much.
i would right now my metaphors of my life are two things
a book. or a classroom.
a book- because i always feel like i have a new begining and endings to many different things. one thing ends another starts. just like chapters, but there always seems to be a common theme or a common struggle or conflict within through the whole book. in germany i think its called "the red thread" the common thread throughout the whole book.
a classroom- with each new adventure and journey that i am taking there is so much to be learned. remember when you were a little kid, and every day you learned something new, something always fascinated you. whether it was you learned your times tables or how to write in cursive, i was always so excited to see what new lesson i could learn.
right now i feel like my lesson is communication. communication with people who are so close to me but right now so far away and communication with people who dont even speak the same language as me. i have to be careful with clues from their motions, tones and facial expressions and everything in between the lines, since i cant ever know every single word. I have to be creative in expressing myself and its been really challenging. through blogging, words, letters, actions and making time for people even when i am so far away its been hard. but yeah.


ok so i just watched the first german futball game and whoohoo germany won! its the european championship!

ANNd with this championships, there is so much german paraphernalia, which is crazy because last year there was NOTHING. and i had to search everywhere. and now its like even at teh grocery stores, flags, key chains, hats, shirts etc (if you want anything let me know)


OK this post is too long. but in the next few days i will update again with jessica and my weekend! it was so fun! BYEEE

i know i just posted yesterday


but i have to tell you this, and I will explain after it acctually happens.
but according to a german tradition, or just maybe a JOWO (the company i work for) tradition... anytime someone buys a new company car, everyone in the firm is invited to enjoy a beer together. during work. tommororw. hahah i have to take pictures. ONLY in germany can you drink beer at work.

thats all.

yesterday and today i went running. it feels good. motivate me to keep going.

right now my host parents are practicing Swahili, its so funny to listen to them. i love their enthusiasm for traveling for and enjoying the world for everything that its worth.



i have been doing so much translations lately, its really hard... ah. but good because its challenges me all the time.

So Grandpa wanted some more pictures of my daily life. so i guess a picture is worth a thousand words. or in this case just a few... haha

i need to go run/walk/bike ride right now but i am so full from dinner. (YUM- fish and potatoes and greenbeans and strawberries and yum) but i ate two icecreams today and havent rode my bike in a while because the weather has been soo unpredictable. weird.





A typical day..... Bianca and Veronika at our desks. This is florian. he is a goof ball...



here is some of my work. check out the differences even with the BINDERS.
that is JOWO-systemtechnik. the outside. The man, is Mr. Schenk. He is the one I work under most of the time, in the Sales/Purchasing Dept.

And here is the house...

This picture is from the back yard, looking to my porch.
the front yard.
in side, see the winter garten room. its so warm in there but so great.
this is where we eat most days.
oh these are the cows i was talking about in the other post. hahah love them.

and here is my room!

my bett. i mean bed.
one angle of room
above this is the sitting room. those windows are acctually doors and then under is the porch. i need to get flowers for my vase. (send me flowers? hah)


this weekend, jessica, my friend from dayton will come to visit me here. there is a city festival, plus we might go to the pool if we can find it and its hot enough. it cooled off a bit which is wonderful....


till next time.


PS I AM SO PROUD OF MY SISTER. She is awesome. BUT I cant wait until we are together again in TOLEDO! WHOOHO! TOLEDO here we come... they are soo not ready for us.

New room...

here are some pictures from this weekend LUNEBURG visit! :)

more pictures of my new place to come when my computer starts working.. weird.