Saturday, February 6

On Saturday, I hopped on a bus with a dozen Goethe students and went to Munich for the day. Just as we arrived in the outskirts of Munich, the driver pulled into the King of Bavaria's Summer Palace. It had been snowing all morning and, we discovered when we exited the bus, the snow was perfect for snow balls. So we spent a few minutes throwing snowballs at each other.

Here Matt took a picture of Sarah (left) and Myriam (right) standing before the Palace. Unfortunately, he forgot to tell Sarah and Myriam to jump in the air so their feet would get in the picture too.

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Here's a picture of much of our group posing in front of the Summer Palace. The only ones missing are Matt, who was behind the camera, Elena, who was still on the bus talking to the bus driver, and Wolfgang, the bus driver, who was talking to Elena.

From left to right: me (California), Betsy (Missouri), Myriam (Spain), Bjorn (Sweden), Yuko (Japan), Sarah (amazingly, from my hometown, Indianapolis, Indiana), Jason (Colorado), Alejandra (Mexico City), and Marcus (Sweden).

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After we arrived in Munich, the bus driver led us to a nice (less touristy) place for lunch. This picture shows me trying to decide what to order. I settled on two Weisswurst, which I ate with bread and mustard that was half spicy and half sweet, and a Hefeweizen beer. All was good.

Across from me is Yuko (on the left) and Alejandra (on the right). They are patiently and politely waiting for me to stop hogging the menu.

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When the beer arrived at the table, I suggested to Matt that he take a picture of the beer. Of course, I was thinking of the beer and the Fraulein serving it.... Nevertheless, this picture shows one of the prime reasons to come to Germany.

The Japanese lady eagerly eyeing the beer is Yuko. At the table in the background is Betsy (in the magenta sweater) and Myriam (in the beige). Betsy isn't really possessed, that's just the flash bouncing off of her retina.

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Matt did pretty good on this shot, although he squished me against the wall while taking it.

On the boy's side of the table are (near to far) Jason, Bjorn, and Marcus. On the girl's side are (near to far) Betsy, Myriam, and Sarah.

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So that you don't get the false impression that I'm just here for a good time, here's a picture of me hard at work in my room.

This is actually my first trip to Europe in which I'm not on vacation. I enjoy working here and my German is indeed improving, but I still have the day to day stresses and pressures of work.

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This first batch of photos were taken by Matt in the low-resolution mode of his camera. After we saw these, we decided we'd always use the high-resolution mode.