The Group from Eutin

Thursday the 18th I returned to class and found that I had missed essentially nothing. I'd say that it was probably Thursday that Derronnie and I started to click a bit more. Derronnie is from Michigan originally but now lives in Germany with his life partner. He's an artist, painter to be specific. Maybe 25. At first he seemed stand off-ish but I think we connect on just being Americans and our humor is very similar, party because as said, we're both American, and partly because we are the only one who catches the others cultural or idiomatic cracks.

Classes work like this
Begin 9 am (but more like 9:10 or 15 everyone is ALWAYS late including the teacher)
10:30 pause
11:00 resume
12:30 pause
12:45 resume
1:30 dismiss

So during the first big pause I'm drinking some coffee in the main hall and Marco comes rushing at me. "Want to go to Berlin?!?!?!" His eyes are huge. "Um, yeah." I say. He returns to the culture office counter pointing "She'll go she'll go!"

They were trying to collect five people so we could get a cheaper group ticket. In the end, Marco (Costa Rica maybe... 30-33), Adrian (Mexico, 20), Sinzi (Romania, at the time 19 now 20) and me are buying a ticket on a train to Berlin! We wanted to leave Friday, but the group ticket was only good for Saturday and Sunday. But hey, WE WERE GOING TO BERLIN!!

Also on Thursday, I had been in touch with Dr. Rex Clark from KU. He is in charge of the KU study abroad program in Eutin (Lawrence's sister city). On Thursday the group was coming to Hamburg. I have only met Dr. Clark once in my life for 10 minutes and knew absolutely no one in the group but... they're from KU. HELLO!!! I agreed to meet them out front of 'the Michel' (Me-kay-el) as the Hamburgs say [St. Michaelis Church]. I biked over after class and met the group. They were about 7 boys and 5 girls. The girls were very very shy. vvvveeerrrryyy shy. One of them I got to talk to me. She is 20, studying accounting and very good friends with Heather Dietz from Hays ever ever and tiny world. A handful of the guys spoke to me off and on but for the most part I spent my time talking to the other teacher. Honestly, don't know his name but I had him as a sub once this past year. We saw the church, then went to another and then took a ferry up the Elbe. After that I bed them goodbye and sweet travels. It was a nice enough little rendezvous. Why not?

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