Germany Update

Well I have now been in Germany for a little over a week and I can't believe how fast the time is going by.

When I arrived last Tuesday, I had fun surprising a good majority of the family. After taking a nap for a couple of hours, we had a Polta Abend for my cousin who got married on Saturday. For those of you who are new to my blog or don't remember from last year, a Polta Abend is pretty much when family and friends come over with all their old porcelain products and throw them on the ground for the couple to clean up. I guess it is suppose to bring good luck, but I already told them all that when they come to the States for my wedding, if they start breaking stuff, I'm gonna call the cops and say some foreigners are going crazy and they can see another part of the US, a jail.

The rest of the week, I pretty much just hung out with family, and tried to get over the jetlag. Then on Saturday morning in the German tradition friends and family came over at 5am and shot guns into the air to wake up the happy couple. Since they live right behind my aunt and uncle's house where I am staying of course we all got woke up as well. This is yet another tradition that I warned them against trying when I get married. But after the couple gets up and comes outside, they serve breakfast which is German Pretzels with weißwurst (white sausage) and weißbier (some kind of beer which I don't really know too much about since I don't drink beer.) So after breakfast I went back to bed for a couple of hours so I would be somewhat awake for the wedding.

My cousin got married at the Justice of the Peace and then afterwards we all celebrated with a reception. During which of course the entertainer/musician played a game where the couple got to pick who plays. Of course the poor American always has to play along. To make things interesting and to see if I understood everything, I asked the guy to translate the instructions into English. Surprisingly he could. Pretty much we were all sitting there in a setup as a horse and buggy, I was a horse. He read a story and everytime he said horse or carriage, I had to get up and run around my chair and sit back down. If you didn't get up or if you went around the chair too slowly, you had to drink some wine. Unfortunately I didn't understand the directions as well as I thought I did and I thought I had to drink all of the wine out of the glass. Needless to say after doing that a couple of times, it just led to even more drinking.

Then on Sunday I drove down to Munich with one of my cousins who is going to school here. We are driving back today because tomorrow is Father's Day which is a holiday in Germany.

So I am at an Internet Cafe in Munich right now and as soon as I figure out how to get online with my laptop, I'll post some pictures.

I had alot of fun

There's Really No Excuse

There's really no excuse for my absense from the blogosphere. I guess my latest obsession with sudoku has trumped my blog obsession. I was going to try to catch up on everything tonight before I leave for Germany later on today, but that just ain't gonna happen. I think I'm over a month behind and I'm not gonna catch up tonight especially since I'm tired.

I finished all my packing and now it is just a waiting game until the plane is suppose to take off. I think I have everything all squared away, but we'll see how much running around I end up doing when I wake up.

I am going to try to get onto the Internet somewhat regularly to check emails and keep everybody updated, but I'm not making any promises.

Just as a little recap:
It was my dad's 60th birthday on Friday and we threw a surprise party for him last weekend. We all had a blast and even if my dad was a little suspicious, I think he was surprised to see his sister from Arizona and a family friend from Colorado who came in for the occasion. We are having our 2nd annual Family Reunion at the end of July this year and I'm really looking forward to seeing the rest of the family since I was in Germany last year for the 1st annual H Family Reunion.

My Weekly Wrap-Up

I just got this quote from Today's Mission Calendar Inspiration email that I get from Oprah.

"Sometimes we can't communicate well, for no particular reason except that we're mother and daughter and so different...." --Anne Lamott

That pretty much sums up my week thus far. I can't wait to go to Germany. Either that or move out of this house. Since Germany comes first, that's what I'm counting down. Only 11 more days until I'm outta here. = )

My Latest Addiction

My latest addiction is Sudoku.

I went downstairs this morning and saw my dad with this weird spreadsheet on his computer. I was like what kind of a spreadsheet is that? He said he was trying to figure out this puzzle from the newspaper. I was like I wanna try. Let me copy the newspaper into an Excel file on my computer. So after I did it, I brought the newspaper back down and said we should have a little competition to see who solves the puzzle first. He was like it's kind of unfair since I've been working on it, but I said I was younger and took off to sprint up the stairs to start on my computer up in my room. After a couple of hours, I went downstairs to see if he had solved it yet and since he didn't, the competition was still on. I ended up solving the puzzle before he did (even with his headstart). Then after he solved the puzzle, he called me down again to say that he had another one in another newspaper. So I went back up to my room and copied the layout in Excel and brough the newspaper back down so he could do the same. This time he solved the puzzle before me and I got frustrated and just quit.

However, I did find a website where you can do a bunch of them. You can even pick your difficulty level. So I'm starting off easy until I get my strategy perfected. Needless to say, I've been doing this all day. It's fun, but addicting. Here's the website.

What is it you ask. Well you could just go to the website and check it out. You have 9 large boxes (3 rows of 3) and each of them have 9 spaces inside of them. You have to enter digits from 1 to 9 into the blank spaces. Every row must contain one of each digit. So must every column, as must every 3x3 square.

I'm thinking of printing a couple of them off for my plane ride to Germany. I'm thinking it will keep me busy for the 8+ hour flight.