Thursday 10.05.12: Day 5

4 hours of sleep sucks, especially when you spend the next day walking for hours at end. Angela and I had our alarms set but turned them off as soon as they started to make noise. Finally Annika woke us up at 9! I still had to walk home and get ready. I tools quick look at the bus schedule hoping and praying it would get us there just in time to catch the train to Stuttgart. Well there of course had to be a huge back up of buses at marktplatz. We got to the train station as the train was loading and it pulled away as we were crossing the tracks. Thankfully we weren't the only ones that missed it. There were 4 of us (that we knew of, nick missed the train too but we never saw him). We bought a ticket for the next train, got some food and finally exchanged some of my $$. It was kinda nice. We felt awful about missing the first train, but there definitely was a silver lining. We got to Stuttgart, found the group and got on with life :) we walked to a garden, seeing some great things along the way. We had a picnic at the garden.
I totally forgot to mention the American professor who is also here right now. He is teaching a class at the PH. He is from GV and he has a wife, Molly, a 4 year old daughter Elle and a son Cody but we haven't met him. Elle and I hit it off immediately and I might end up babysitting her a few times while I am here! So when you see pictures of an adorable little girl that is our Elle. She is a silly girl who loves all the attention we give her. She goes around and spends time with just about every girl in the group, but she says she can only spend a certain amount of time with each person before she has to "go meet a new friend". She is pretty stinking cute. And it kinda helps with my withdrawal from spending at least 3 hours every day with my little kiddos. But I do miss those kids a ton!
So back to Thursday. Scott (the American professor), Molly and Elle were with us Thursday.

After lunch we continued to walk around Stuttgart. It was hot, we were all tired from the party the night before, our feet hurt and all we were doing was looking at the city. All of those factors made for a cranky group of young people who didn't really know what was going on, where we were or anything of the sort. So I have a lot of pictures of buildings, but I am not 100% sure of what they are or where exactly they are. I don't think any of us really know.

Eventually our crabbiness got the better of us and we found a nice pond/park to relax at. There was a nice little castle to look at and tons of ducks! Jason started feeding them nacho chips and suddenly there was a swarm of fish, ducks and pigeons around us waiting to be fed!

 Then a little girl came and fed the ducks bread. I got video of it cause it was so stinking cute and the number of ducks that came was crazy! The best part is when the little girl asks Elle if she wants to feed them too! It was sooooo sweet!
Some people were tired and went home after we watched the ducks. The rest of us met up with Annika, Sarah, Timo, Felix and Toby and headed to Frühlingsfest. It is like Oktoberfest but a little smaller. We walked to the big beer tent/hall where there was absolutely no room for us. We found  couple tables outside and ordered a round of beers. HUGE beers. Like 1 liter.

The group sans Kyle

My brother/son Jason and me :)

Jason was roasting so I put his hair in pigtails :)

Just a little tuckered out...

 After our beer and plates of fries half of the group decided to stay and head inside while the half I was with decided to get some real food and walk around. So we got some currywurst and bratwurst and then much to my dismay, rode on the ferris wheel. I pretty much just sat in between Katy and Jason staring straight ahead not looking outside the whole 5 times it went around.

Before the ferris wheel started moving...

 After the terrifying beautiful ferris wheel ride, we headed to the train station and went home. I slept and recharged for class at the butt crack of dawn 8:30 am Friday.

Lots of love from Germany

Katy Jo