5/15/2010 20:44

Guten nacht! I never know what to write in these here posts...
So for the past few days we have been doing lots of traveling to small cities outside of Essen for some drawing and painting! 2 days ago we went to a place called Werden which was full of cool old buildings, and a 1200 year old cathedral! Yesterday we went to Kettwig, which had a beautiful river and awesome bridges and it was all so green everywhere you looked (even in the middle of the railroad tracks! It looks so overgrown it doesn't look like its ever used, but it gets used multiple times a day! But that's just what it looks like) I love it. I've gotten some good paintings, and some not good paintings. I just need to keep puttin' 'em out and hopefully I'll get more good ones than bad ones! It has been cloudy and rainy every day, but today the sun was out for a while! But it was windy, so it wasn't so warm. I have gotten lots of sun though, so I need to pull out the sunscreen! Today we went to a museum in the main city of Dusseldorf, and it was an amazing building! It used to be a parliment/government building that they transformed into a museum, so it was very big with awesome marble staircases and a sky roof, and coolness! They had paintings by Bonnard, Picasso, Mondrian, and lots of other big names. It was a contemporary art museum, so it had some weird sculptures and art and installations in it (of course) but it was very enjoyable. So that was class for today.
I'm starting to learn how to pronounce letters and words and such in German, so hopefully I will be able to pronounce words correctly, even if I don't understand it all. I'm getting to the point where I can understand somewhat what people are saying to me. Even if they say it very quickly. Usually it's 'do you speak German?' but also when the ladies at the cash registers tell me the total, I can pick out numbers and such. I don't know, I just am understanding more, though its hard to explain.
Lots of funny things happen to me each day, usually because I either don't speak English, or because I do. Like tonight me and Emily ran to the market by our haus and we were talking in the checkout line, and the guy behind us was like 'where are you from?' because he heard us speaking English. We told him America and he was very excited to hear we were here for like 5 weeks. He started telling us about how he is from Sri Lanka, and he's lived here in Essen for like 25 years, and his 2 children were learning a bit of English, and he was showing us pictures of them and such. Next thing we know he was telling us that we should come over to his house and teach his children English and he would pay us! We said we were busy with school, but we'd think about it. So he wrote down his number and address on a receipt (he even payed for Emily's orange juice box that was .97 €!) and he seems like a super nice guy, but I think I may just turn over his number and stuff to the missionaries, and see if there is anything companionships that teach English classes or anything? I don't know, but it was just a funny story and random things like that happen to us every day.
Tomorrow we are going to church- Yay! I haven't been in 2 weeks due to traveling, so I'm very excited :) And it will be nice to just have a down day where we don't have to be anywhere or do anything. A day of rest, hallelujah!
Well that is all for now, I will write more in another few days, and hopefully I will be able to attach pictures if my package gets here! Tschus!
-Lauren