Happy Happy!

So I spent increasingly larger portions of Thursday, Friday and Saturday in Stuttgart shopping. *sigh* oh the joy to be had. I did good too. I got a long sleeve shirt, a short sleeve shirt, a tank top, two scarves, a shrug, a pair of jeans and a pair of shoes. And I got good prices too! Yay me! However what really irriates me is that I can't pick out clothes based one the styles I like. Nope, I have to choose my clothes based on if I can get the shirt to close. I really like the preppy button-up look. But I just can't find them in my size. I like the striped look- but I don't fancy looking like a watermelon. Ah well.

But I had fun anyways. The weather has been beautiful and sunny. There were so many people out the last few days that it was just crazy. But it was lovely with the sun, eating large amounts of ice cream, and going to this little sushi restaurant I found. That's right, I found sushi!!! I'm sooo happy. It's one of those sushi bars where the stuff goes around on a conveyor belt and you just take off what you want to eat. It was realllly good!

So. I learned something

So do you want the good news or the bad news first?

The Good News?

Okay, the good news is that yesterday we began the de-lice-ing of the family. Turns out Carola brought lice back with her from America.

The bad news? The bad news is that last night I had a date with a tall blond hair blue eyed German guy.

Confused? Let me explain.

So recently I have been thinking about how sad it is that I'm about to turn 23 and have never had a boyfriend... guyfriends, yes. Dated, yes. Kinda boyfriends...yeah. But not a real long term relationship- which would be a month or two. So I got to thinking and it started bothering me a little. Soooo late monday night I was up til 2 am, couldn't sleep. I was sitting in my room surfing the web when I kinda ran across Match.com. (Still not sure how). Out of curiousity I surfed around on the German version's website and wound up signing up for a free trial membership. (don't ask) and kind of surfing through the guys on there. Well, with one thing and another I kind of ran across a German guy started emailing him and on Thursday night he asked me if I would like to go to dinner with him this weekend. Maybe Friday night. I thought, okay sure. I've talked with him a bunch online, and I can see his picture, he doesn't look half bad. And on top of that he mentioned a really fancy and expensive restaurant to take me to in Stuttgart. I figured what the hell and accepted. <- This is where I went wrong.

Waiting outside of the train station at the appointed time I began to really get nervous. Here I was all nicely dressed up to go to a really nice posh Italian restaurant and I am essentially waiting for my blinddate to show up. So with visions of abducted young idiots dancing in my head I texted him to let him know I was standing outside the trainstation. He then texts me to let me know he's wearing a blue shirt and a black jacket. Okay.... so I text him to tell him that I waiting outside of the DM (like the German version of Walgreens). I then see a guy matching the previous description walk past the DM.... Yep, black slacks, blue polo, black jacket... but it wasn't until he looked at me that I noticed the hunchback and lazy eye.

I don't want to me one of "those" girls who judge people by their appearence... but I'm afriad I am. I really wanted to turn and walk away before he noticed who I was. Maybe claim I didn't know who he was and I wasn't the girl from online. But I am just not the kind of girl who could leave a guy walking around looking for his date. I shook his hand and we took off in the direction of the restaurant. I could feel everyone's eyes on us as we walked down the busy walkway.

It was a looooonnnnggg date. Although the food was nice, the restaurant was nice, and for the most part Hartmut (that's the guy's name) was nice. I had a couple things I had trouble getting over.

1.) He brought like 200 pictures from his last vacation with him to show me. Then he described them to me... in detail...ALL of them!

2.) He never actually Looked at me. He spent the entire time looking over my left shoulder. It was driving me nuts! Finally I turned and looked over my left shoulder and glanced out the window and back at him. "I was just wondering what was so interesting out there that you were looking at."

Two and a half hours later I declared it was time for me to go home. I told him I still had to catch a train and then take a bus back. So he walked me to the station and I departed. I got home at about 11:30 or so. Dorothee, who I had called previously from the station and who I had told how the date went, came down stairs. "Dorothee, first thing tomorrow I need you to help me get off of that website. I thought I was sad me cause I've never had a boyfriend. Now I think I'm okay. At least I don't think I'm so far gone that I need a website."

So today we got me unregistered for the website. We (Dorothee, Carola, Paula and I) went shoe shopping then to Ikea. And with some more wisdom, experience, and retail therapy I think I can now laugh about my experience. One I don't want to repeat any time soon.

Day of a million errands and First Trip to Stuttgart

Here are some pictures of the girls and me. I like to call the swing we are in in the picture the "Big Bird Swing". I think if fits. How about you?

Today Dorothee and I went and opened a bank account, registered me in the village, went to the post office, and went to the market. Their market is awesome. (Jessica, you will LOVE their cheese selection! I told Dorothee as much.) It was a lot of fun. Sadly, Cheerios do not exist in Germany. I did find another cereal that looks sort of like Cheerios, but I haven't tried them yet. I'll let you know how they go.





FYI- The cool outfit I am wearing in the picture is one I bought today while in the city with two new friends, Lisa and Kyra. Lisa works at Paula's Kindergarten, and Kyra is a friend of Lisa's. It was a lot of fun. We went to Stuttgart where we walked down a road that is lined with fashion stores. Lots of fun. There were three H&M's along the road, and Kyra is obsessed with H&M. After a few minutes I could see why.

After we finished shopping we had to go back to Lisa's parents' house because she was going to babysit her brother's girlfriend's baby. I got to meet some really cool people and hang out. Lisa made me a tradition swabische ravioli like dish. It was really good. :)

And really cool tonight. My dad got his webcam up and running. Woo hoo! That was nice. So I got to have a nice long talk with dad. Here's a picture of him. The real him. (no, he's not playing with the camera, that's his real face ;))

I will be loading videos onto the site tomorrow as well as some pictures of where I'm staying.