Petty things first: again, Facebook refuses to work from my host parents' computer. And now, mobile Facebook (the alternative suggested by my friend Dave) doesn't even work; everytime I try to get to m.facebook, the computer asks me if I want to save this website, and then does nothing. I am now completely cut off from what is going on at my university, my karate school and in my town. ~rawien and ~PokeTheWolf, could you two please start keeping me up to date on everything, because I have no way of finding out about the GSA anymore. Or NU Alliance, whatever it's called.

And I'm pretty sure I'm not going to be able to post any more photos on dA because I won't have time or Internet access. All my classes are done now and my internship starts on Monday. I'll be working 40 hours a week like it's a normal job and I will not have time to visit the one Internet cafe where I don't have to pay to get the password because I've spent the last two months flirting with the boy at the counter and he lets me into their network for free.

I could go to the nearest Starbucks for Internet, but that's a ten minute walk, a ten minute bus ride, then I'd have to buy something to even get the password. And, I don't really like the Starbucks in Europe, they're... different, yet still the same. It's hard to describe. First off: everyone in there speaks English because it's "the cool thing to do." I'm here trying to learn German and everyone distracts me by speaking English as loud as they can (because Americans are loud and we all want to be like them). And, the Starbucks here always has some crappy American rap station playing, because it's American. Then there's the large group of twelve-year-old girls that every European Starbucks seems to have, and they all scream as they drink their coffee and speak in English. They're not even old enough to drink coffee! It all distrubs my peace and quiet that I usually have at the Starbucks in my town. And now I've gone off on a tangent... where was I?

Right, so no more Internet access for the foreseeable future, no more photos on dA and no more updates on my laptop, which is already bitching at me for not updating. "You must be connected to the Internet to recieve this update." Well sorry, Zven, that's not gonna happen. I just hope he doesn't outrightly refuse to work because he hasn't been updated in so long. It's happened before....

Didn't I say something about good news? Yes, I did. I registered for classes yesterday and finally got into the photography class at NU, so that was highly exciting. And, for the previously mentioned internship, I'll be at Haus am Waldsee. It's an art gallery and I get to be there while they're switching exibits. Very cool.

Okay, I think that's pretty much it, though I am sad that the bad news was longer than the good.... 'til later, everyone!

I'm warm! I can feel all my extremities! I can feel my toes!... Woah! I have toes! All this time I just thought they were painfully cold, throbbing nubbins at the end of my feet, but now I can feel them! I can't remember the last time I could feel my fingers and my toes at the same time! Granted, I'm wearing like five layers, but I don't care: I have toes! And they're warm!

Also, Steamy update (which probably only ~rawien will care about or read). When I was out today buying lovely warm things, I was looking for a long-sleeved shirt that I could wear under my t-shirts to make the warm more perminent. I found this shirt that looked like a turtle neck (which is even better because that means it's warmer!) and when I looked closer, it turned out that it has a high collar with buttons going up the back. Can you say vintage? And, it came in a cream color, which is very, very good as the colors I'm going with are shades of brown, cream and red. I might throw some grey in there too, but that'll be when I'm actually home and looking at the stuff to see how things fit together.

~rawien and ~PokeTheWolf : as soon as I can, I'm going to post a photo of the hat I got in Munich. It's a traditional Bavarian hat and I want to make it a bit more Steampunk; since you two are so good at fabrication of cosplay/other wearable items, I would like suggestions. Please and thank you. Danke schöne und bitte schöne.

Oh, unrelated bit of sad news: apparently, I have lost the ability to spell because. Everytime I type it, the computer yells at me with the little red line of death and I realize that I've´switched the U and the S. No matter what I do, this always happens now... very saddening.

At my house in Berlin, my host family doesn't have very fast Internet. It's 64k and goes so slow, I can feel my hair growing. Also, since I'm in Germany, Facebook is pretty much my only contact to most of my friends from back home (because not all of them have a dA account, only the smart ones do). So--though I am loathe to say it--I do need Facebook when I'm here so I can keep in touch with, not only my friends at home, but the other students here. We send directions, meeting times and pretty much everything through Facebook, because that's the best way to do it; we all have cell phones, but they're on a pre-paid card system. Facebook is free, another draw.

So, the point of all this? My host family's Internet sucks so badly that sometimes, it won't let me do anything on Facebook! I can go for days at a time looking at Facebook, seeing that I have three messages in my inbox (three sets of directions to get somewhere important) and know that I can't read them because the page loads with a massive amount of errors. And I can see people's comments to me, but it won't let me reply; I can't even update my status! It's all very frustraiting and I feel cut off from the world, both here and at NU.

I know this sounds very stupid, but it still makes me mad.

Just got back from my October break on Friday. I didn't get as many photos as I would've liked (due to weather conditions and crappy batteries) but I got a lot of nice shots.

First, I went down to Munich. I didn't really know what was there, but I was going to find out. What I did find there was wonderful; a statue of Bavaria (the patroness of, you guessed it, Bavaria) that was so big, I could hardly get all of her in the frame. And there was the Royal Residence--basically the buildings that made up the palace--and the treasury museum. So I have photos of old statues, shiny crown and clocks. How could I go anywhere and not find cool clocks? And lots and lots of old, beautiful German doors. You'd think I'd be sick of them by now; no such luck.

Next stop was Freiburg to go into the Black Forest, but there was so much in Frieburg to see too. And, as I found out, one can't just walk into the Black Forest. I had to go up a mountain. So I brought back pictures of the Black Forest and mountains; sounds good, right?

The last town I went to was Trier, an old German town that still has Roman ruins (which was the big draw for me). But Trier is also a Renaissance town, so I have photos of Roman ruins right next to Renaissance architecture! So cool!

There were a few snags on my trip, crappy weather and some periods of extreme boredom while I waited for my train to get in, but overall, everything was fun. Photos will go up very soon! Some today, but others later.

I'm terribly sorry if my massive, sudden deviation uploads is spamming everybody's inboxes, but I don't have much time to visit dA more than once or twice a week. And I just found more pictures from my previous travels that I forgot to post... but I won't do it today, promise.

Just giving everyone a little update, saying that I'm still alive. Despite my incredibly bad, bad luck, and horrid sense of direction, I've managed not to get lost and end up dead in a ditch. Yay! Though the group of students that I'm with is driving me steadily mad, and that's not good at all.

Thus far in my travels, I've been to Potsdam, Dresden, Weimar, Erfurt and Prague. I have more pictures from everywhere that I want to post, and I'm pretty sure that I'll put myself over three hundred deviations very soon.

I have break coming up in a week, and guess what I'm doing: taking pictures! I'm doing a little photo tour through the South of Germany and I expect to come back with over two thousand photos. I'm going to buy an 8gig memory card, so we'll see if I can fill it up.

I'm going to start in Munich, then go to Freiburg to see the Black Forrest. After that, up to Trier, one of the few German cities that's still playing host to Roman ruins. It always fascinates me to think that the Romans got that far to the North.

I'll post another update journal after my break (along with a hundred new photos). 'Til then!