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Sorry I didn't post in Frankfurt, not much happened there. Kathleen, Clara, and I met up with Chris for supper and visited the church and the Roman ruins one more time and just walked around the park path back to our car.

The next morning I was out of the hotel by 5:30am and caught a train from the main train station across from our hotel and took it to the train station at the airport.  I was there by 6:15 and that was good because it took a long time to figure out where I had to go.

The plane ride was pleasant, just long.  I thought I would be able to use it as re-english-assimilation-time, but I sat next to a lady from Watertown, and on the other side of me was a German school teacher.  She saw me reading a German book and asked if I was German (in German) so I responded no but that I had been studying in Germany for two months.  We talked much of the way back about school and teaching and my travels to Germany and her travels to the US.  She meets one of her best friends every summer in the US for two weeks and they travel to different states together with her friend's husband.  We talked about the people on the plane and previous plane rides we had.  She was really nice but it did complicate trying to speak to the hostess in English... oops.

Landed safely in Chicago and will finally be returning home to my parents tonight after two days in Milwaukee.  Excited for Mom's corn on the cob.  Some things from home just can never be replaced. :)

Thanks for following.
Signing off with much love,
Eileen

Würzburg and Bamburg

Yesterday I got back from my weekend in Würzburg with Rose.  Rose is a year younger than me at WLC and is another German major.  She has her study abroad this semester too and is going through a program in her town.  It was great to catch up with her and trade stories and pictures of our times in Germany so far.  She gave me a Stadtführung (city tour), naturally in German, and we saw lots of churches as Würzburg has many. We even got to see Walther from the Vogelweide's grave! He was tiny!

Saturday we traveled with her friend Anna to Bamburg which is just a little bit north of Würzburg by a regional train.  We bummed around town as we found out some of the things Anna planned to see were closed, but we did see a beautiful garden that was part of a Residenz there and got to pick up on some southern German dialect.  These were the biggest differences we found:

Jungs = Junge (boys)

Mädels = Mädchen (girls)

and what sounded like Dooda = Tute (plastic shopping bag)

Yesterday we we spent some more time in Würzburg and climbed two mountains.  The first was to see a catholic chapel at the top of one, there was also a restaurant a little ways from there, a little more up and then a little more back down the other side of the mountain where we got something to eat.  We went back down the mountain and climbed the neighboring mountain to see a Festung which is like a fortress.  It even had a bath for horses! It had a garden too, and a really beautiful view of Würzburg.  Here's some pics of the whole weekend:

Rose and I!

We climbed up the mountain through the vineyards!

That was about all for my weekend. I had an ICE back in the afternoon but it got delayed by another train on the tracks and we got about an hour behind which was really annoying.  I still comforted myself with an ice cream cone on my walk home from the Bahnhof. Things weren't so bad then. :)

My oral exam was this morning and I got perfect scores on fluency of speech, vocabulary, interaction with other speaker/s, and had pretty good scores on grammar which is always my trouble spot. Written testing tomorrow and last day of class! It's so exciting to think about seeing everyone again and talk to them in person.  Skype hasn't been very cooperative most of the time so I've limited my calls quite a bit since I had so many issues.

Wednesday I will have some relax time in Frankfurt with Christian again, and then getting up early Thursday to catch my flight.  So excited! I'll probably update about two more times, once in Frankfurt and once when I get home to let you know about my complete trip. Thanks for following!