I am aware that it has been some time since my last post but I make no apologies for this. Life has been busy: new things are being discovered, new friends are being made, and new ideas are being explored. My mastery of the German language has been something of a slow uphill climb, everyday a little better but sometimes barely noticable. I feel as if I have exhausted all my German vocabulary and have nothing new to say, but as I keep meeting different people, I can fool them with my improving sentence structure. :)

My language intensive at the Sprachencentrum began about two weeks ago. My teacher is a very beautiful red-headed German who always looks like she stepped out of a magazine. But then again, many Germans do so I guess it's nothing too out of the ordinary. I tested into one of the middle levels of German, although I think I could have been placed a little higher. I'm learning things but don't feel it will be adequate to prepare me for university classes. A few other BCA students in my group and I are challenging ourselves with vocab lists and conversing in German as much as possible. Conversing in German is sometimes a tricky thing to maintain; they are a lot of Americans (Canadians and Staters) in Marburg and many of the Germans speak decent English so it is easy to want to switch to English instead of challenging myself with German. But I think I am keeping a decent balance between the two and will continue to improve in my German speaking abilities. On Wednesday night this past week, Josiah, another BCA student, and I entertained two Italians from our Sprachencentrum course and enjoyed a night of food, wine, and good conversation even if we didn't always understand each other. It has been also interesting to hear German spoken with Italian, French, and Spanish accents. In someways, though, it makes me feel behind the rest of the world as I am definitely not as fluent in multiple languages as some of my classmates are.

The weather here has been as varied as the people within it. Somedays will be absolutely beautiful with the sense of spring in the air. Others bring a cloud that rests upon the city all day. Sometimes it rains. Sometimes it snows a little but never enough to cover the ground. Sometimes there will be blue skies with the sunshining but it will be raining. Go figure.

My tours of Europe began this weekend; a four hour train ride brought me to Strasbourg, France and one Colleen Hamilton. One of the first things to take me by surprise was the way men and women greet each other with a kiss on both cheeks. I can see why Colleen has gone through so many romances since getting here! ;-) The next may have been the differences in archtecture despite a lot of German influence in this town and being so close to the boarder. The history of Strasbourg in amazing! The catherdral here is bigger than Notre Dame and has a clock that has been working on its own since sometime in...well, a long time ago. John Calvin also had a church here. Where does BCA come up with these locations for us to study?! You read about these people and events in history books and then when you go back, you're like, "There? Oh, I've been there. It was just down the street from this little pub I would go to on Saturdays. No big deal."