I can only say that I used to be a much better correspondent but that the last two years seem to have gotten busier and busier, and when life's not busy, it's dramatic. Quite frankly, I'm not really a drama person, but I seem to get more than my share of it these last couple years, so I'll just stock all of it up as stories to tell when I'm old and gray to make me sound wise and understanding.

Anyhow, I believe the last time I actually sent out a mass update was...sometime around Thanksgiving. So I'll start there. Our international student colony organized our own Thanksgiving out here in Germany, and I made a "pumpkin" pie with a nutmeg squash, no pie pans, a fork as a pastry cutter/squash masher, and a paper towel to drain the squash after mashing. I hand-ground my cloves, at the expense of my poor finger-tips, and I came up with ingenious ways of actually getting the poor thing to look like a pie in the end (I cooked it in a deep-dish foil pizza pan).

A few weeks after Thanksgiving, I had my first trip back to the States since leaving for Russia at the end of May 2004. Between various delays and airport changes, it only took me 26 hours of traveling to get to Springfield, IL, where I spent the holidays with Mike and his family. My dad came out to the Midwest for New Year's, and my mom and I talked on the phone almost daily. Funny thing is that my brother didn't go home for Christmas this year either because he spent it with his finacee's family in Washington (he's getting married in July to a girl from his college; she graduates in May). I suffered a good deal of culture and language shock when I went back to the US after being away for so long, but I somehow semi-adjusted.

When I returned, my life became a mad dash towards cramming and finals. Because my economics professor was beginning a new job, we finished the course in double-time, which meant we had our last meetings the second week back from Christmas holidays (2 weeks), and our final exam was at the beginning of February, while my other exams were 2-3 weeks later. I read an entire 741-page textbook as well as studying 40-60 hours a week (and still going to my other classes!) for the last few weeks before my exam. I should probably mention that that got me a D+, which is not too bad, considering the average grade was a C, there were only 2 As in a class of 220, and 18% of the people failed the test with an F. However, my home university doesn't understand that I took this exam in German at the number 1 economics faculty in Germany...Anyhow, I then studied for and took all my other exams and proceeded to get incredibly and entirely sick.

In fact, I got so sick that I had to put off my meeting my dad in Europe by 2 days because I was too sick to get out of bed, so I missed getting to see London again and met him in Munich instead. This is probably when I should mention that this has been the coldest winter in Europe in 50 years, and it was an incredibly mild winter back at Valpo. Since I spent the summer in Russia, I haven't had a break from gray and cold rain or cold snow in nearly two years now, so I'm getting a good amount of experience with seasonal affective disorder, but as long as I keep up on my vitamins and sleep, I'm ok. Anyhow, it was about 12* F the whole week my dad and I traveled around, but at least I saw a bit of sun.

Traveling with my dad was neat. We went out to Nuremberg for a day. It was so strange to walk around the Nazi parade area because it now has trees all over it, and it's a kind of public park, with reminders here and there about the history of it. There were children sledding down the bunny hills, and others building snowmen in the flat areas. From Nuremberg, we spent a couple days in Regensburg, a gorgeous Bavarian city halfway between Munich and Nuremberg where I am hoping to do graduate studies to get a M.A. in East-West Studies, studying Eastern and Western Europe. With this program, I would finish with fluency in a Western and an Eastern European language (probably French and Russian) and probably chooose history, politics and law or economics as my areas of specialty for my studies and thesis. I am hoping I can win another fellowship from the German government that would cover the entire duration of my master's studies.

From Regensburg, my dad and I headed east by train over the Austrian Alps into Slovenia. We stayed a couple days in a town called Bled and went cross-country skiing in the Slovenian Alps. The best words I can use to describe the Slovenian Alps is lumpy. They certainly have a distinct look that is quite different from the Austrian or Swiss Alps, which are far pointier and more imposing. Anyhow, we enjoyed the beauty of the countryside before we headed into Ljubljana (the capital of Slovenia) for the last couple days of our trip. We had a peek around the city ourselves, and we met up with an exchange student we hosted for a few weeks during high school whose family lives in Ljubljana. It was so unexpected for both of us to see each other again, much less in her home, but we had a nice time chatting a bit, now that we're both in university studies.

My dad and I spent one night in London, then he headed back to the States, and I flew to Barcelona to stay with a high school friend I had not seen since graduation. Bizarre that we never saw each other in California, but fly halfway around the world, and it's easier to meet up! Barcelona was a beautiful city, and I thoroughly enjoyed the Mediterranean and felt that 50* was so warm that I walked around without my jacket all week with a smile on my face. Of course, the smile got me into some troubles because I then looked friendly instead of glaring, as I usually do, so I spent 4 hours one afternoon trying to get rid of a Pakistani man from Paris who wouldn't leave me alone after I answered his inquiry about the time. Other than that, I had a great time chatting until the wee hours of the morning.

And then I headed back to Tuebingen again to finish off my term paper for politics. Whoever thought of making a term paper due in the middle of semester break must be quite familiar with human psychology: what student is actually going to start during the term if he can push it back to break? But then he spends his time cursing himself that he has to spend his break working on it...Anyhow, I finished it, and then I left for my 4 weeks in the States, back at my home university.

I don't think I've ever felt four weeks pass as quickly as they did while I was at Valpo. They were not easy weeks by far. Mike and I broke up, which will take me a very long time to heal from, considering it still hurts as much today as it did a month and a half ago. But I also had many blessings in my time at Valpo because some of my friendships were strengthened, and I was able to let go of others that I have lost. It has been hard to let go of how things were when I left last May because they are not the same a year later, as I would wish them to be. I do not adapt well to changes but wish that my friends and friendships would always stay the same. Unfortunately, that is not the way of life because, while I can control how much I change to a certain extent, I certainly cannot control them at all. I've been learning a lot about prayer and trying to let go.

Now I have been back in Germany for a couple weeks. I had my first week of classes, and then I skipped the second week to go to Budapest with the kids from the other program my home university has out here in Germany, about 10 km from Tuebingen. It was a fantastic week. I experienced my first spa: we went to the oldest spa in Budapest. I also went to a few museums and the zoo and had fun wandering around the city, learned to play rummy and spent many hours a day getting to know some people much better. One evening, I had one of those fantastic, intense conversations that ends with each person telling their whole life story and realizing that you have so much in common with this other person who was only a nodding acquaintance before. Even more fantastic is that this person is living in my building next year, so we'll have many, many more opportunities for such conversations. In fact, I'm not sure that I'm ever going to get anything done when I'm home next year because I'll have one of my best friends living in my suite and this girl down the hall...I think I will have to find someplace else on campus to study.

My classes this semester seem that they will be really good. The investment of time is a lot more evenly spread between my classes this semester, and I have more hours of German and (maybe?) less linguistic confusion. While I had classes in 3 languages last semester, I have managed to cut it down to 2 this semester, lol. I am continuing to study Russian on my own and meeting with two Russian girls during the week to practice and learn. I also learned this week that I have been officially approved to write an honors thesis next year in my major, so I am starting that work while I am over here as well because I am supposed to complete research the summer after my junior year. I am writing on immigration in Germany and France, comparing the historical backgrounds and then the current economic and political effects, finally turning to an evaluation of the EU and how much France and Germany's experiences are shaping European-wide law.

This semester is a short semester because we've only got three holiday weekends and no long breaks, but there's going to be a crazy lot of traveling ahead of me. Last weekend I was out in the countryside with Campus Crusade for a retreat, and I went to Stuttgart to see Mozart's "Magic Flute" yesterday for one of our May holidays (Ascension Day). I'll be going to Prague for a few days, and I have a conference for my fellowship in Mannheim. One of my best friends got a summer internship in Marburg, and she'll be arriving in late May and spending over a week with me. I'll go visit her at some point in Marburg, and I've also got friends who will be in Heidelberg, Goettingen and Mannheim during the summer, as well as my cousins in Cologne and Freiburg. In addition to all that, I have to take a big test of German as a Foreign Language for grad school while I'm still here, and then the usual supply of school work and term papers, presentations, homework, etc.

My parents are moving as soon as the house sells; we're heading for Truckee. I will still be down in Grass Valley a couple times when I finally get back to the States to visit and go to the doctor, dentist, etc. I will be flying at the end of July straight to my brother's wedding in Seattle, and after that, I'll be home (wherever home is) for about 3 weeks. I think I'll be heading back to Valpo around the 15th of August. All in all, I have only one month from when things finish in Germany and when classes begin again at Valpo, so it's not much of a break this summer. That's ok because I'll be very happy to be back at Valpo.

At some point, I will manage to update my website with pictures from my travels during semester break and Budapest, as well as all my upcoming travels, but considering it has taken me nearly 6 months to write an update, I don't have any guarantees about when that will happen. I will say it's more likely now than before because I finally have a stable internet connection, since the tech center finally did some repairs to the internet over semester break.