It's the Weekend!

My weekend was a wonderful mix of keeping busy and relaxing after a long week.

On Friday, I got off of work a little bit early - there was not too much going on in the office (I had actually gotten some non-urgent work to do in the morning which was a good project!) and Brigitte told me to take the second half of the day off. This was a great day to have some off-time - one of my friends was going through a breakup, so a trip to Penny was necessary for some chocolate and I brought up some tea and Puffs kleeenex. They're a hit here!

I had to leave after about an hour because I had to go and tutor one of the kids. We spent our hour creating a dialogue about school uniforms in English. We would discuss things half in English and half in German. As always, I feel like I am learning just as much as my tuttees are learning during our sessions.

Once I was done tutoring, I walked home to meet up with my friends again. We decided to make some pasta together for dinner and it was fantastic! We got this bell pepper pesto sauce that we mixed with some veggies, canned tomatos, and cream. So good.

My night ended with a movie that I didn't quite make it through.

The following day was a good, but busy one. Saturday morning, I met up with some Valpo students at the Pestalozzistraße bus stop to head downtown for some bowling. I felt kind of bad that I didn't bring a German student, as the whole point was to introduce the Valpo kids to more Germans. As an international office worker and a student who takes no classes with other German students, the extent of my German student interaction is in other student's dorms and in the office when they want to go abroad.

The Germans I did invite were busy this weekend, which was too bad. We still enjoyed our day. I hung out with Daphnie, the resident director's daughter. She is adorable and full of so much life and energy!

Hanging out with Daphnie while bowling with Valpo!

I ended up winning both rounds (in what universe am I living right now?!) and got the second and third highest scores of the day (we played two rounds). I even have proof:

That's right - a 113 and a 117!

After our games were over, Allie and I went to grab some lunch at Alexandre in downtown Reutlingen. Allie recommended this chicken salad that was fantastic and we chatted over lunch.

After that, I took a quick nap and then met up with Tammi and Allie for dinner - we ended up making burgers and mac 'n cheese (a good old American dinner!). I love making burgers, so I was happy to contribute to the dinner-making. We also had our first taste of Glühwein for the season! We picked up some from Penny that was fruit flavored, which made it a bit sweeter. Warm that up on the stove until the wine is almost boiling, and you have the hot mulled wine I've been looking forward to all year.

When dinner was done, a few of us decided to go into town for the Fire and Ice night in downtown Reutlingen. A lot of the shops were open, and there were food and drink vendors in the streets selling their goods. As the theme was Fire and Ice, true to it's name, there were fire blow-up things and ice sculptors in the streets. There were so many people, and it was wonderful to see the city so alive and bustling. 

Fire and Ice in downtown Reutlingen

Glühwein and Fire and Ice

We ended up at the Irish Pub and played a few hands of group 'War.' We had to explain the rules to the international students with us, but as it's a simple game it was easy for them to understand. A 9-person game of 'War' tends to go pretty fast, so we played a few hands and that kept us busy and laughing.

The Irish Pub and some 'War'

Chris and I ended up catching the 11:30 bus back to the university.

The next day was my day of rest - I woke up at around 10:30 and went on to do not too much with my Sunday. I ended up going upstairs around 1 to hang out with Julia, Chris, and Joe. We stayed on the couches in the lounge for about 3-4 hours doing nothing but enjoying each other's company, showing off YouTube videos, and watching winter sporting games.

Being the devout Valpo alum that I am, I showed my international friends Bryce Drew's buzzer beater from '98 and the similar buzzer beater that Ryan Broekhoff made just this past year that pushed us into the NCAA tournament!

It's days like this that I will remember for forever. There is an article about the 10 things about studying abroad and the last one is particularly true - these are people that I will have to say hello to for the first time and say goodbye for the final time all within the course of a few months. I don't know how I am going to handle saying goodbye to these people who have become my family!