7/5-7/7: my dreams are haunted by armies, armies of ghosts

Thursday 7/5:
At Heiko's birthday party, after a couple hours of not understanding and not really talking with anyone (it was a long party) I finally managed to get people to speak slowly enough that I could understand what was going on for a bit... and totally astounded my Oma with how much I could understand. I also read several things in German, because I can read much better than speak or listen--I can go as slow as I want and see the word and say the word and take it apart and read the sentence three times until I figure it out with context. I guess my German isn't so bad after all, as long as I can go slowly. Oh, and I also got to try some raspberry vodka that Angelika raspberried with fresh ones from the garden. It was sooooooooo good.

Friday 7/6:
I didn't sleep at all Thursday night. I decided, though, that if I wasn't going to sleep, I had to think in German, so I spent the night digging around in my brain for German words and making sentences. I had a moment of triumph in the middle of the night when I made some fancy sentence work, and then was sad that no one would ever hear it. I got out of bed around 4, had a snack, looked out the window, sat on the couch, decided I'd go back to bed at 4:30... sleep still never came, though, so I had breakfast at 6 and then had a bit of time to fuss with my photos. The internet here is slow (it goes through something like two wireless points before becoming wired here... weird country internet), so I haven't uploaded too many yet.

Anyway. We (we being me, Oma, Angelika, Mareike-the-baby and Monika) set off for the day. First we went to Gummi-Baeren-Land and bought lots of gummy bears and candy. Then to Wallberg, a Truemmerberg (a mountain made of debris from WW2) in Pforzheim (the closest small city... the village my family lives in has less than 2000 people). Anyway, we climbed up this little mountain... there's a memorial on the top of the mountain, pictures of bits of the city before 1945, after the war, and then reconstructed. From the top, we could see sooooooo far. So many little red-roofed towns and trees. Everything is beautiful here. Angelika speaks excellent english, so she pointed out to me where many things were. It got windy and cold but it had finally stopped raining. I was really tired when we got back, from the whole not sleeping the night before thing. But then Monika's walking partner came over and they and Oma and I went for a walk. I forget her name.... she is from Ireland and thus speaks english, which is nice, and she's very nice, and we walked the scenic tour of Engelsbrand (this village where my family lives) to see what is here. And I took a zmillion more photos. We came back to the house and had some wine and chatted some more and then went to bed.

Saturday 7/7:
Friday night I slept a bit finally. However, I am sharing a room with my Oma, and she snores. And I am such a light sleeper. So I slept a few hours solidly from the wine and then was awake off and on the rest of the night from the snoring. Night was short, too... I was out of the house by half past seven in the morning to go to the farmers market with various family members (it was like a big vocabulary lesson and the smell of all those fruits and vegetables made me hungry). I woke up so grumpy and spent my shower grumbling to myself half in german (I decided if I was going to just rant, I had to do it in german). Of course, I'd been so frustrated with my Oma and she made sure I had something special that I'd like for breakfast.

Anyway. Then we came home for a wee bit and I futzed with my photos... I didn't write anything because all I was going to do was complain about being tired. Angelika showed up to take us mountain climbing. We went to Bad Wildbad and took this wee little train up the steep part of the mountain and walked the rest of the way through the Black Forest to the Gruen Huette (how do you make umlauts on here?) and met up with Monika and Jurgen, who took the car around to the other side, and had lunch there. Then we walked the rest of the way out of the woods, past a lake, through swampness, to where they'd left the car. I took so many pictures of trees. The way we walked after lunch was full of wild blueberry bushes with big, fat wild blueberries. We picked a whole bunch and brought them home. Wild blueberries! Free for the eating! And a few early raspberries, too. So much yum! My fingers are still a little bit blue. Everything was just so awesome and beautiful there. We walked 8 or 9 miles at a high altitude... man was I tired when we were done! I kept almost falling asleep on the drive back.

THEN we had dinner at Heiko and Angelika's, and THEN Bianca and Norman picked me up to go to a Fest (Fair? Party? thing) in Stuttgart, about 45 minutes-1 hr away. I finally met Julia (who I wrote letters with about 10 years ago when she was learning english) and her husband Daniel. Julia is 6 months older than me and just spent 3 months in Africa. Anyway. We saw a light show on a tower and some fireworks (to make up for not being in America for the 4th of July) and ate some fried dough (fair food is the same everywhere?) and stopped at McDonalds for french fries on the way back to Engelsbrand. When I got back here, it was about 2am. Oh man. Bianca had given me some ear plugs to combat the snoring, and I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow and slept until 11am without waking or moving.