My Second Surgery in France

Ever since my first surgery, I have been going to the doctor at least once every three days so that the doctor can monitor my finger.  On Tuesday, the doctor told me that if my finger wasn't looking better by the time I came in on Friday that I would need more surgery to remove more of my nail because the infection was underneath.  Even though I changed my bandages at least once a day, it was in the same state on Friday as it had been for a week.  Friday morning I went to the doctor, hoping that I wouldn't need surgery again since I had another exam later that day.

The doctor looked at my finger, poked at it with tweezers and then said, "Yeah, we can't wait any longer, you need more surgery now."  Then he led me to the other side of the center where they perform surgeries.  I had to make an emergency folder with the hospital and wait about 10 minutes before they took me back.  The surgeon was the same guy and so of course he looked at my finger and poked it as hard as he could just to make me writhe.

The anesthesiologist came in a few minutes later and had me lie down on the stretcher/bed thing.  It wasn't the same guy, although he seemed like he was playing the same game.  He made small talk except this time, he didn't give any clue as to when he was going to put in the Novocaine.  All of a sudden, I feel a needle going in between my fingers.  You know, that really sensitive part of your hand between your fingers.  He stuck the needle in and injected.  I whimpered and sobbed/laughed (I laugh when I'm really nervous/scared/in pain).  Then without saying anything, he goes to the other side and repeats.  I could feel my finger inflating.  It felt so gross.  Then he turned my palm up and injected another shot of Novocaine in my palm right underneath my finger.  After the third injection, I started to feel weak.  I couldn't lift my arm.  I lay there feeling sick and weird until the doctor came in.  They put on the compression thing on my arm that was super uncomfortable and turned it on to cut off circulation.  Then he started cutting.  I tried to look again but the doctor's hands were AGAIN blocking my view.  :(  Anyway, I felt the pressure of him cutting my fingernail in half and then him pulling/cutting it out.  Afterwards was the same procedure as before.  They asked me if I had any pain medication.  Is this a Godsend?! Finally!! I told them that I only had the weak aspirin and then the surgeon said, "Ok, that's great."  I responded, "...it's not very strong..." and he laughed and said, "well you don't want something too strong!"  Wrong, doctor, I do want that.

Public transportation was again a hassle post-surgery and my hand hurt so badly that I decided I shouldn't go to class.  I went home and passed out until my host family came home for lunch and I told them the story about what happened.  After lunch, I slept some more and when I woke up, I felt better but was kind of nervous about going to Prague for the weekend, but it all turned out ok.

I hope this is the last surgery I get in France.  I don't know what else they have left to cut open except to just cut off my finger...

Don't Kiss Me, I'm Not Irish! St. Patrick's Day in Ireland

One of my good friends, Meghann, is studying abroad in Ireland this semester.  Before we left, we promised to visit each other but didn't make concrete plans or dates.  Lucky for me, I visited her over St. Patrick's Day!

I left on March 16 and went through 4 countries, took a train, 3 buses, an airplane, and a taxi to get to Meghann.  I traveled for about 18 hours that day but it was worth it to see Meghann (and her mom, who was visiting her at the same time as me).  I also got to meet Meghann's friends from school, so that was great.  My plan arrived in Dublin and I took a bus to Galway but I needed to take a taxi to get to Ballyvaughan, a tiny village on the Atlantic coast.  

Ballyvaughan

Unfortunately, I spent WAY more money on the taxi than I expected to (or should have; he charged me a rate when it was supposed to be a flat fee and the driver took 2 hours to get there instead of the 1 that it should have).  I don't want to say how much I spent on the taxi but by the time I got into the bar where Meghann, her mom, and friends were, I was so tired and broke that I wanted to cry.  Meghann gave me a huge hug and dragged me upstairs where she promptly made me a drink and we talked for a while until I felt better.  

Apparently on Wednesday nights, everyone in Ballyvaughan comes to the bar and there is Irish dancing.  Meghann has Irish danced for longer than I have known her (a long time) and so she participates every week.  I got to watch her dance with the townsfolk.  She danced with this old guy a lot, it was so cute!  I wish I had thought to take pictures!

Thursday was Saint Patrick's Day!  We were supposed to go to a parade in the next town over but we got there too late so instead, the Ballyvaughan taxi driver's wife (everyone knows each other in Ballyvaughan) invited us to their house/farm to see the baby lambs that were born only the day before.  These baby lambs were a million times better than the parade would have been, I am sure.  Imagine the softest thing you have ever touched and then multiply that by 3.  That is how soft these baby lambs were.  Meghann got to hold one but the mom was freaking out while she held him so she didn't hold him for long.  It was so cute- it still had part of its umbilical cord attached!

After playing with lambs, ducks, cats, and chickens, we went back to Meghann's house and hung out for a little bit (we were still tired from the day before) before we started celebrating.  St. Patrick's Day in Ireland was amazing.  I am very cautious about posting these pictures since anyone can see them!

We toasted to so many things that night.  Mostly to friendship in Ireland

With Meghann and her mom!

with Meghann and two of her friends from school; the bar was closing

Friday morning we woke up early because Meghann had class.  Lucky for me, this class is called "Irish Studies" and it's basically a field trip every Friday to somewhere in western Ireland.  I got to go with Meghann and the other students from her school.  We went to a cathedral, old castle ruins, and a place called Coole Park (which was AWESOME, not just cool).  In Coole Park there were SO many trees- Lady Gregory had them planted when she lived there.  It was cool to learn about it!  Unfortunately, my camera battery died and I didn't have time to recharge it from the night before so I only have the pictures from Meghann.

This was the only picture Meghann uploaded from Coole (Awesome) Park :/

Friday night Meghann made a tasty dinner (per usual, she is a lovely cook) and I think we kept things mostly quiet since many people were still feeling rough from the night before (I felt terrible most of the day).  

Saturday, Meghann and I woke up feeling great and we were planning on going to the Cliffs of Moher.  We went to wake up her mom at the Bed and Breakfast but she wasn't ready yet so we walked around half worrying about making the bus to the cliffs on time.  This is a good point in my blog to post landscape pictures of Ballyvaughan.

Meghann's house!  She lives with 5 other people, they're all really nice

The church behind Meghann's house.  We went to Mass on Sunday; it was nice :)

Ballyvaughan was a definite change to Strasbourg, but it was really nice to get out into the country side :)

Fortunately, we did make the bus to the cliffs.  It took about an hour to get out there but the sight was well worth the wait.  Here are pictures!

Saturday night was both a good and a bad night.  It was our (my) last night in Ballyvaughan and also the night that the local DJ came to the bar.  He was such an awful DJ that it was great.  We had fun but I won't go into detail.  However, when Meghann and I woke up, I had lost a bracelet that my mom sent to me, she had lost her lip ring, and there were vegan whoopie pies (cookies) everywhere.  We were/are so confused but good stories came out of that night.  

Sunday, Meghann and I went to mass at the only church in Ballyvaughan and then got ready to take two buses to get to Dublin, where I was to fly out on Monday morning.  The three of us (Meghann, her mom, and myself) got to Dublin around 5 and we called up her mom's best friend's brother in law who lives in Dublin.  We met up with him and met his family and his daughter, who is really cute.  Afterwards, we ate Chinese food for dinner and went looking for a hotel.  We booked the hotel and then went out into Dublin.

I should have known that in Ireland, St. Patrick's Day is not just a day, but a week-long celebration.  It was a Sunday night and all of the bars were packed.  After Saturday night, the mere thought of drinking more made me feel sick but we still went into a bar to listen to music and hang out.  

On the way, right outside of the Temple Bar, I saw a real Irish brawl.  There was a drunk Irish guy standing outside of the bar arguing with a cop.  Right as we passed by, the Irish guy yelled, "Oh shet yer foockin' mouth!"  Before you could blink, the cop slugged him, fist to face.  Then the cop started strangling the Irish guy and then pulled him on the ground and put him in a headlock where he continued to strangle him until another cop came over and started beating the guy up, too.  The last we saw/heard was one of the cops handcuffing the Irish guy as he kept saying, "Don't foockin' touch meh!"  Lesson learned: Don't mess with Irish cops.  They will strangle you.

After midnight we were already pooped so we headed back to the hotel and passed out.  I had to be up at 7 to get to the airport and travel another 17 hours to get back to France.  I was so sad to say goodbye to Meghann and her mom but I had such a wonderful time with them.  I loved Ireland.

Frequently Asked Questions about my Trip to Ireland:

Q:  What countries were you in?
A:  I took a train in France, then a bus to Luxembourg, where I switched buses to go to Frankfurt Hahn airport in Germany, then I took a flight to Ireland.

Q: What did you drink in Ireland?
A:  Shots of Jameson Whiskey, of course.  That is the only thing I drank but Meghann's mom might have bought me a few gin and tonics on St. Patrick's Day...

Q: Did you meet any cute Irish guys?

A: No way.

Q: How was the food?

A: I don't really know- Meghann cooks her own food so she made me a lot of really yummy stuff and we didn't really go out to eat at all.  I did look at menus and the food sounded really good but very heavy.

This is Snaggle-Tooth Drooley-Cat, a fat cat who sits outside of Sparr (Ballyvaughan's grocery store) and drools all day.  I nominate her to be Ballyvaughan's mascot.

Surgery in France

I can finally sort-of type so here is the story of my operation in France.

This tale really started on Wednesday, when I noticed that what I originally thought was just a boo-boo on my finger started to get really painful and red.  I brushed it off as something inconsequential and went to sleep.  When I woke up on Thursday, my finger looked kind of swollen and it hurt to touch.  I have a pretty high pain tolerance so I ignored the discomfort and went about my day normally.  However, by mid-afternoon, my finger was starting to look (and feel) worse.  I showed it to Jill and she noticed that it looked like something that happened to her friend a long time ago.  She continued that her friend had to get her finger cut open and the infection squeezed out.  Ouch...

So to forget about school and my throbbing finger, Jillian and I took advantage of the sunny Thursday afternoon to get gelato before class.

After gelato, we went back to school to wait until my only class that day, creative writing at 6 PM.

Most delicious gelato and wind

This is Jillian with gelato.  She is very important in this story

After creative writing, I went home for dinner.  I talked to my host parents about my finger and my host mom put some sort of disinfectant in boiling hot water and had my hold my finger in the water for as long as possible.  Unfortunately, I think it only made my finger more angry.  Later, I went to Jill's apartment to organize our trip to Prague.  Jill noticed that my finger was even worse than earlier that afternoon and decided that she needed to document it.  Here is what my finger looked like around 10 PM on Thursday night.

Finger bandaged by my host mom

Jill convinced me that I needed to go to the doctor to at least get it looked at.  My host mom gave me the address of their family doctor and I decided to skip my morning class on Friday to get to the doctor early so that I could make it to my exam at 1 PM.  If only it were that easy!  Thankfully, Jillian was more than willing to skip her Friday class to accompany me.

Friday morning when I woke up, I felt my heart pounding in my finger.  The swelling had gotten even worse overnight and the swelling had increased in my finger to include not only the tip of my finger but the middle joint as well.  It was even redder and the stretched skin made it look like my finger was waxy.  I couldn't touch anything with my finger without cringing.  By 9 AM on Friday morning, my finger looked like this:

Before seeing the doctor on Friday morning

We waited well over an hour, but I kind of expected that since I showed up without an appointment.  Finally, the doctor called my name and Jill and I went into his office.  He shook my right hand but before I could even explain to him what was going on, he asked me what was up with my left hand.  He had me lie down and while he poked at my finger and examined it.  It was excruciating.  He told me it was really badly infected and that I needed to get it taken care of immediately because if I let it go the weekend it could become septic and either cause blood poisoning or infect the tendons and joints in my hand and cause complicated and severe problems later.  It was really reassuring. 

He told me he was going to try to poke/pop it open and squeeze it out but that if he couldn't get it open easily that he would have to send me to a hospital to get emergency surgery.  So he took out scissors and gauze and started poking in different places on my finger.  I wanted to scream and cry.  I think this might have been one of the most painful things I have ever experienced in my life.  Jill offered to hold my hand but I was a big girl and took it like a grown man.  Sure enough, he couldn't get it open.  He wrote out the address and called the hand-hospital in advance to let them know I was on my way for an emergency operation.

Maybe Jill and I should have gone there right away, but we were both hungry, so we stopped for lunch.  Jill thinks that my finger got even worse between the time we were at the doctor and the time we arrived at the hospital (within an hour) but I dunno.

I checked into the hospital and we only had to wait about 5 minutes before they called me back.  Jill wasn't allowed to be in the room during surgery so I braved it alone.  The doctor had me sit down and hold my hand over the operating table while he touched it and looked at it.  Again, worst pain in my life.  After a minute of me cringing and wanting to cry, he announced, "Yep, we need to operate."

He had me lie down on the stretcher/bed thing while they called in the an anesthesiologist.  When the anesthesiologist arrived, he covered my hand in iodine while he made small talk.  "What are you doing in France?  Where do you normally live?  What do you want to do after college? etc etc"  I was looking at the ceiling while he was preparing the needles to numb my finger.  All of a sudden, he told me to breathe deep.  What?  He repeated the order.  When I did, he stabbed the base of my finger with the needle and injected the novocaine.  I whimpered in shock/pain and then he laughed and said, "yeaaah, I know, I'm mean."  Then he left and came back a few minutes later to ask me if my finger was numb yet.  It wasn't.  He gave me two more shots of novocaine in the sides of my finger and left again.  My finger got numb fast after that and I had fun tapping it against the table and having no idea how hard I was tapping.  I don't know if I should have been doing that or not.  I did look at my finger again and it was HUGE.  The injection made it so fat.  I laughed.

The surgeon came in and covered my hand in iodine again and put this plastic sleeve through my arm.  The nurse put on a blood-pressure type thing on my upper arm and then turned it on.  It cut off my circulation and HURT.  I didn't feel any pain during the operation but I felt pressure and heard a lot of scraping.  I tried to watch what he was doing but a pile of gauze and the surgeon's hands prevented me from seeing what was going on.

 I wasn't on any drugs during the operation (besides the novocaine injection in my finger) but I think weird things happened during surgery.  One of the nurses asked what "alma mater" meant and I answered "other mother" and when she didn't understand what I meant, I explained to her what it meant in America (either high school or your undergrad) and she looked at me like I was crazy.  When I told this to Jill she thought I might have been in shock and  might have been hallucinating...but I felt ok during the surgery!  I'm not sure what happened.

Anyway, the doctor cut and scraped for about 20 minutes and then when he finished, he bandaged my finger up before I could look at it.  When he let circulation return to my hand and told me to sit up, he put my arm in a sling and explained to me the post-op rules: I had to keep it elevated, I couldn't get it wet, not to touch it, get lots of rest, etc.  Then I asked for drugs.  He handed me a prescription that I later found out was the equivalent of Tylenol.  No antibiotics, no real pain killers.  The doctor told me that I needed to come back on Sunday to get my bandages changed.  

When Jill and I left, we took the tram back to the city center to pick up my "prescription" and get our train tickets to Prague worked out (I had apparently booked the last ones online, but that's another story).  On the tram, I started to feel really sick and the novocaine started to wear off.  I felt like I was going to pass out from the pain in my hand.  Jillian helped me walk to the pharmacy.  The Tylenol ended up only being about a Euro, which tells you something about its strength.  We got her tickets straightened out at the SNCF so we're going to Prague in 2 weeks (woohoo!)

Jill had promised me gelato if I needed to get my finger cut open and since I did, she offered to hold up her end of the deal.  Despite feeling like I was going to either throw up or pass out at any minute, I accepted.  She walked me to our gelato place and it made things better.

Happy to have pretty gelato (which matched my yellow iodine hand)

Sad surgery face

After gelato, Jill walked me back to my host family's apartment and since no one was home and I felt terrible, she hung out with me.  We watched a movie and she kept great company.

That night I discovered that it is extremely difficult to get changed and ready for bed with only one arm.  The "pain meds" didn't do much at all so I went to sleep with a throbbing finger.  I don't know how I fell asleep that night.  

Needless to say, it was a pretty low-key weekend.

Today, Sunday, my host-mom drove me back to the hospital to get my bandages changed and I could finally see what they did to my finger.  It looks disgusting.  As the nurse was unraveling my bandages, I noticed that my finger bled a lot post-surgery and the bandage stuck to my finger and the pain was unbearable as he peeled it off.  

The doctor cut my finger at the top joint on the side and also removed about half of my fingernail.  My finger is still very swollen, very red, and very painful.  I have to go back again on Tuesday for another bandage change/check up but they're going to teach me how to change my own bandage then so I won't have to go back again (hopefully).

In conclusion, I no longer have my arm in a sling, I can type with a hand and two fingers, and I still want stronger pain medicine.  I have problems falling asleep and it still throbs.  I run fevers throughout the day.

In conclusion, Jillian is the best.

In conclusion, I hope this will not cause trouble for my trip to Ireland on Wednesday, which is supposed to be the day I make up the exam I missed on Friday.

The end...?

Geneva, Switzerland

Monday, February 28 I left to go to Switzerland.  To my surprise, I was on time and so was my train.  This put my trip off to a good start before it even started!  The trains to get to Geneva were pretty easy and my layover in Basel/Bale wasn't too bad.  I was surprised when I got into Basel that they didn't check my passport - no one was in the international office when my train arrived so we all just walked into Switzerland with no problem.

I got to Geneva about mid-afternoon on Monday.  Sabine, who I met at Longwood fall semester of my freshman year when she was an international student, met me outside the train station.  We dropped my stuff off at her apartment and went to a Tea Room for tea and an afternoon snack since I think we both missed lunch.  It was great to see her and catch up.  Afterwards, we walked around the city.  We went to Lake Geneva but it was frigid and extremely windy (Geneva should be nicknamed The Windy City, I think it's a lot windier than Chicago) so we eventually went to the grocery store to get stuff to make dinner.
That night was the first night that I was able to test out my cooking skills since I got to Europe (my host mom always cooks and her cooking is amazing).  I must say, I have learned a lot!  We made a pretty good dinner of prosciutto, potatoes, a green salad with homemade dressing, and cheese.  It tasted really good!  I miss cooking!
After we cleaned up dinner, we went out to the movies to see "Rien a Declarer" (nothing to declare).  It was about tension between border controllers on the France/Belgium border and it was really funny!  I loved it.

Tuesday morning we got up early to go to the United Nations!  We went on a guided tour and to our luck, the Human Rights Council started that day!  We didn't get to go in to see it but we did get to look into the conference room.  It was wonderful.  Our tour guide was very knowledgeable and I really enjoyed it!

Afterwards, Sabine had class and I was sleepy so I took a nap.  After her class, we went out and walked around a bit/shopped before we went to meet her friend.  The three of us had dinner together and then we went to a hip-hop dance class.  I had never taken a hip-hop dance class in my life so I didn't know what to expect but it was a lot of fun.  I think I might have been a little awkward at first but after a few minutes I loosened up and maybe I'm not as white as I originally thought...  The instructor even complimented me!  :)

After class, we went to a bar for drinks and met up with some of Sabine's other friends.  It was a great night.  Sabine is Swiss-German and so most of her friends in Geneva are Swiss-German speaking.  This means that when they talked to each other in Swiss-German I understood absolutely nothing but luckily they are all translation majors so their English is wonderful.

Wednesday, Sabine and I went to the Red Cross Museum.  It was really impressive but extremely solemn at the same time.  At one part, there were rows upon rows of records that were hand-copied by Red Cross nurses during (I think) the second world war.  It was really moving to think of how much time was spent and how dedicated the people who worked for this organization were, even back then.

Hangin' out with Henry Dunant, founder of the Red Cross

After the museum, we went to see the cathedral of St. Pierre in Geneva.  It was very beautiful but it doesn't hold a candle to the cathedral in Strasbourg.  We showed up just in time to go up the tower before closing time to see Geneva from above.  The fact that the weather was gorgeous was just the icing on the cake!

After all that walking and all those stairs, we needed a coffee break.  After coffee, we shopped a little before we were just too pooped to move anymore.  We went back home and had a light dinner and then we stayed in for the night and watched tv.  

Thursday was my last full day in Geneva so Sabine and I wanted to make the most of it.  Beautiful weather graced the city once again.  She had class in the morning so I met her at the translation building after class and we had breakfast with her friends.  Afterwards, Sabine and I walked to the Museum of Art and History.  The museum was great and the way there was so beautiful!  When we walked out of the museum, I looked in front of me and saw that the Lake Geneva fountain was on.  All week, Sabine had been telling me about this amazing fountain in the middle of Lake Geneva and we had been hoping it would turn on but I guess it was just too cold/windy.  Few things could have made this last day in Geneva more perfect.  Sabine refused to show me pictures of the fountain beforehand because she said it was something that you had to see in person.  She was right.  Here are pictures but they do not do justice.  Also, notice the lake's astoundingly blue water.

Know that you are being cheated out of the fountain's grandeur by seeing it in a photo

Thursday night Sabine and I went to her friend Catia's apartment for dinner with 3 of her other girlfriends.  We 6 ladies had a great time and one of her friends made an amazing tiramisu dessert!

Friday, Sabine and I were up early to go to the Swiss Alps before I headed back to Strasbourg.  We took a train from Geneva to Bern, then from Bern to a tiny town ten minutes outside of the capital.  Then we took a bus, a roller coaster-type lift, and then a ski lift to get to the top of Niederhorn (1958m).  It was a long trek to get there but it was worth every minute.  We had lunch with a view of the alps.  It was nothing short of incredible.  We climbed a little farther to get a panoramic view of the alps.  360 degrees of mountains.  It was one of the most stunning things I have ever seen.

When I first saw these sights that seemed completely surreal, I giggled like a little girl.  I felt intellectually tickled.  After about ten minutes of standing there, though, something strange happened.  I felt peace.  Sabine and I stopped talking and we just stood there in awe for over half an hour.  At one moment, while there were people speaking in tongues at the top of the mountain (I think it was Swiss-German and Dutch), a flock of blackbirds flew over and around me.  It was beautiful and I felt somehow changed...as though I had grown in a way.  I thought about everyone I missed back home but I didn't feel sad.  (I know, you're thinking, "that's because it's impossible to be sad when you're on top of the alps," but it was more than just that!)  It's hard to explain in a white box.

To conclude, I think it goes without saying that my time in Switzerland has been the highlight of my time in Europe thus far.  Thank you to my wonderful tour guide, Sabine and her warm friends who welcomed me! 

A note to everyone:  Go to Switzerland.  I highly recommend it.

Nurnberg, Germany

It's been a minute since I've updated but I have been busy taking Europe by storm.

Last week I was in Nurnberg, Germany.  I stayed with my friend Rob (who I met in Fall 2009 at Longwood when he was an international student) and his family.  It was a great time but just getting there was an adventure in itself.

I woke up with just enough time to finish getting ready and get to the train station.  That morning, it was snowing in Strasbourg.  When I got to the tram station, the tram was late and when it did arrive, just before it stopped it had to slam on its brakes because someone went out in front of it.  I got inside near the front but as soon as I did, a man from the back of the tram came to talk to the conductor to tell him that someone was injured when the tram had to stop suddenly.  The conductor turned off the tram and went back to see what had happened.  We were stopped for almost ten minutes.  Leave it to the French to make a mountain out of a molehill: apparently the person who was injured only bumped their head or fell over or something because the conductor walked back up calmly and we were on our merry way.  I had five minutes before my train left and we had about 5 stops to go before the train station.  Did I make it?  Stay tuned.

No.  I ran into the train station just as my train was pulling away.  The one day I needed my train to be late, of course it's on time!  I tried not to panic but I was flustered when I went to the information to get an alternative itinerary.  Thankfully I didn't have to pay extra, but my new route was much more complicated than the original Strasbourg-Stuttgart-Nurnberg.  I went from Strasbourg-Appenweier-Karlsruhe-Nurnberg.  Appenweier is a tiny town in the middle of nowhere not too far from Kehl.  Its train station consists of one platform.  I waited in Appenweier for my train to Karlsruhe for an hour in the snow while I may or may not have been harassed/laughed at by 4 Turkish guys who kept walking around me, talking to each other, then looking at me and laughing/smiling.  It was really uncomfortable and an extremely long 60 minutes.  

When I did get to Nurnberg, Rob picked me up at the station and we walked around the city.  We got coffee, shopped a little, and got a typical Nurnberg snack of three sausage-type things in a bun.  It was pretty good!  We walked to the top of a hill in the city center where there was a castle.  

After we walked around the city for a few hours, it got too cold so we went back to his house and I met his family.  His brother and dad both spoke English, which was helpful, but his mom only spoke German and Russian, so I had to use the little German I know (2.5 years' worth) to communicate with her.  Thankfully Rob did a lot of my talking for me but I somehow managed.  In the few days I was in Germany I noticed that my comprehension is really good and I have a passive vocabulary but it's sometimes difficult to express myself, which is normal in language acquisition.  The other days I was in Germany, Rob and I went into the city, went to bars, and watched a lot of King of Queens.  Even during the day it was between -8 to -10C (that's in the teens/really low 20s) and windy so it was difficult to stay outside for long. 

The first night I was in Germany, Rob and I went to a bar where we met up with his friends.  We hung out and played a game with 6 dice that I didn't really understand and consequently lost horribly.  The next two nights Rob and I went out to bars with his friends to watch soccer matches.  It was really chill and I felt like "one of the guys."

Luckily I did not have any problems with my return trip.  In brief, some things that I noticed about Germany:

1.  Beer is cheaper than water

2.  The country smells good.  It's really clean.  Public transportation, stores, even the people, they all just smell good.

3.  German women are beautiful.

4.  Their feelings towards other countries are based off of results of soccer matches.  

5.  Taxis come in the form of Mercedes Benz

When I got back to Strasbourg on Thursday afternoon, I had enough time to drop my stuff off before Harris invited me to a movie.  We went to see "Les Femmes du 6e etage" (the women of the 7th floor).  It was about a group of Spanish women who moved to Paris to work as maids for rich people.  It was really cute!  After the movie I had to book it across Strasbourg to babysit for an American family from NJ living in Strasbourg for the dad's work for a few years.  I hung out with the two kids (9 and 11, I think) and we had fun.