Overdue Update

Wow, it's been so long since I had a post I don't even know where to start.
Well, first of all, it's been so long (what, 3 weeks?) because my time at the Goethe Institut ended on February 26th. My dorm room here in Tubingen wasn't available until March 2nd, so I was fortunate enough to find a family to stay with for those 4 days. The Feederle's were nice enough to come pick me up at the Goethe Institut, so I didn't even have to buy a train ticket and mess with my luggage on a train again. Their daughter is a high-school exchange student at Ripley who lives with our neighbors, and rides with my parents to basketball games a lot, so that's how we got in contact. Anyway, they picked me up and drove me to their house in Esslingen (next to Stuttgart, like Edmond and OKC, practically the same city). In my time there I spoke all German to them (Mr. Feederle speaks a little bit of English, but Mrs. Feederle none), and Mrs. Feederle showed me around the city. We saw the Old Town, including the church, and under the church there's another church that's 1,300 years old. It was discovered in the 60s when they were looking at doing floor renovations. Now it's excavated and open for tours. We happened upon a tour getting ready to start and were able to add on at the last minute, which was neat, so we actually heard the history and stuff. She also took me up to the Fernsehturm (TV tower) in Stuttgart, which was the first one in the world, and has a fantastic view of the city. Then on Saturday we went and saw Dicker Turm (Thick Tower), so named because its walls are, by my estimate, 5-6 feet thick. There's also a wall attached to it, from the watch when it was a castle, which has another good view of the city and the vineyards covering the mountain below. On Sunday, they both took me to see Burg Hohenneuffen, a castle about halfway between Esslingen and Tubingen. If I remember correctly, it's about 700 years old.
Anyway, during this time I had limited internet access, so I couldn't post a blog.
Mrs. Feederle drove me to Tubingen, helped me get checked into my dorm, find my building, and buy sheets for my bed, and then she went back home. I had a meeting to fill out paperwork and stuff. I found out then that I didn't get internet until some paperwork got turned in and processed. We would be turning that paperwork in on the following Monday, and it would probably take several days to go through. So for 2 weeks I was stuck using Internet Cafes (not cool. I don't like them. They are not private, and they cost money. Bleh.). Not wanting to spend more money than necessary, I just stuck with some e-mails. I didn't get my password for internet before we left to spend a week in Blaubeuren (a little town about 1 1/2 hours away), so that meant another week before internet. It was waiting in my mailbox when I got back yesterday afternoon, so now I finally have internet. Yay!
The adjustment here has taken a little longer than in Schwabisch Hall, but I think I'm finally getting there. After the week in Blaubeuren I'm feeling like I have a group of friends from my class, though it took a while, and the weather finally looks like it might be clearing up. It has been cloudy, cold, and occasionally drizzly since I got to Tubingen, so that doesn't make for a very good picture of the city. Today was sunny though, even if it was still a little brisk.

During the week in Blaubeuren, we visited a monastery there (now a boarding school). It houses one of the best examples of a Catholic high alter (I guess that's what it's called in English), and another interesting feature was graffiti from the 1700s. Immediately after visiting that, we hiked up the mountain to some castle ruins, stopping twice along the way for a good view. Oh, we also saw Blautopf, which is a natural spring and the beginning of a river, that gushes out from under the mountain. Apparently it's normally an incredible deep blue, but unfortunately now, due to recent snowmelt, it's a murky green/brown. I will have to go back to see it when it's actually blue. There's a legend that a mermaid was sent to Blautopf to learn how to laugh, and there's a statue of her ("die Schoene Lau") by the spring.
The next day we took a trip to Ulm (a larger city only 10 minutes away by train). The highlight of that trip was the Ulmer Muenster, the gothic cathedral in the town. It's the second-largest gothic church building in the world, after the one in Cologne, and it's beautiful. Also, it is the world's tallest church tower. We climbed to the top of it, all 768 steps. That's a rather neat thing to be able to claim. Also, there was a great view of the city. Oh, and interesting fact, Ulm is in Baden-Wuerttemburg (the German state with Tubingen, Stuttgart, etc.), but New Ulm, on the other side of the river, is in Bavaria (German "Bayern", the German state with Munich). This division was made by Napoleon and has stuck ever since. So we were able to see across the border into Bavaria.
Today I went on a little mini-shopping spree, most of which involved simply walking around the old town in Tubingen. It was a sunny day, so everything looked much prettier, and I think it will be absolutely gorgeous come springtime and summertime when everything is blooming.
On a side note, I love street musicians. On the weekends especially, there are often street musicians playing guitar, violin, or accordian (what I heard today) on the street corners, and they are actually very talented. Having that music in the background really makes it feel like I'm in Europe; it's just so typical of what somebody would expect walking around in the city centers of Europe, and yet something that's still hard to believe is real.
One of the next things on my to-do list is planning my travelling during the break between April 4th and 20th. I would like to go to Spain, but I would rather travel somewhere else with people that go to Spain alone, so I need to ask what my friends from Schwabisch Hall are doing, and also find out what the poeple here are doing. A good possibility might be to go with Adi (from Colombia) and 1-2 other people to Berlin and then to some other as-of-yet-undetermined location. She has offered to help me practice my Spanish!

Anyway, I think that's quite enough reading for now, and I think I've hit the most important points in the last 3 weeks. There will be pictures soon!