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I have never written a blog or diary of any sort, so this is kind of weird for me, but I am going to attempt it so that my family and close friends can follow me and see what I'm doing and I will also have this to look bag on and remember. I am writing this quickly and off of my memory so please dont just me too much if it sounds like a 3rd grader wrote it.

I have been in Ingelheim, Germany staying with a close friend of mine named Simon Ballman that I studied with in Salamanca, for a week and a half. So im getting a late start on this, but i guess its better now than never.

So I finished up my last week in Statesboro with a bang, it was 5 long years and it was hard to leave, but it was time. I packed up my house in about 4 hours with a horrible hangover, said some goodbyes and left. I then had one day to put my stuff into storage and pack my things for my trip. While standing in line to check my bags I reached out to help an old lady with a bag she had dropped and she thanked me in Portuguese. I saw her Brazilian passport and began to talk to her with the few phrases of Portuguese that I had learned in Brazil. I then met her family and friends that she was traveling with, all of whom were Brazilian and spoke no enlgish. It was at that point that the butterflies began to leave my stomach and I realized the adventure that I was beginning... I had only been in the airport for 5 minutes and I had already made news friends without even a common language and if all goes as planned that will continue happening.

After a smooth baggage check and processes I was at the gate waiting for the plane where I made a couple last calls to Zach and some other friends on the lake celebrating the 4th. When all the pasengers were loaded and the standby pasengers names were call I was still sitting in my seat. Worried, I went to the desk and found out that not only did I have a ticket, but I had a 1st class ticket. So the $500 buddy pass (thanks to Mrs. Sturgis) got me into a $5000 seat... not too bad. After a couple free glasses of champagne, jack and cokes, 3 course meal, and a 9 hour flight I was in at Frankfurt-Main airport in Germany.

Simon picked me up from the airport and on the way back to Ingelheim we stopped in Mainz where he gave me a tour of his old campus. It was interesting bc classes were in session and all the german students were walking around from class to class, it seemed different than the typical US university. After seeing the campus and dining hall we stopped to have the first of many Rattlers (beer mixed with sprite) at an on campus bar. From there he brought me to his home in Ingelheim, where he and his mom had set up a very nice room for me to stay for the next 3 weeks.

The next couple days were nice... Getting to know his parents (dad speaks a little english, mom none), signing up for a 2 week membership to a gym, relaxing by the public pool, and meeting Simons friends. The first big night was the semifinal game of Germany vs. Spain in the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. We met up with some of Simons friends at the train station and rode to Mainz to watch the game at a public viewing near the campus. It was a very cool scene... About 2,000 people watching the game on a huge projector with a couple vendors selling beer and food and this was all located in between the walls of a big pink castle next to the Rhine river. It was a lot of fun drinking wheat beer, getting to know simons friends, and pretending i was a fan. It was too bad that Spain scored the only goal late in the game, bc I never got to see the German fans get rowdy. The general attitude wa pretty depressing after the loss, but everyone had finished their share of beers so it didnt last too long. We went to a bar and drank some more beer until the next train arrived to talk us home to Ingelheim.

ill finish more later...

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