Meets and Exceeds the Hype

While my mom and I were watching The Holiday last Christmas (2006), she commented that she would like to take a vacation to a quaint English town, something that has rolling hills and a beautiful landscape. Yesterday I was taken to the perfect spot for this vacation. Dean has lived almost his whole life outside of Dartmoor and for the past two months has been talking about its beauty. Of course, I believed that it would be a lovely place, but I never imagined that it would be like all the movies show it to be. His dad and stepmom picked us up and we all drove out to the country together. The first place we went was just so we could climb a moor and take a look around. Magnificent! All over there are sheep just roaming around we also got to see some ponies (and even a little baby pony (a foal)!).

After this, we headed to Princetown, and there I discovered that my cheap €10 sandals were falling apart. We also visited the tourist information center. We first thought it was one sign with a map and a little information on the town. But 10 steps further there was a real tourist information center, complete with interactive displays for all ages.

Our last stop was Tavistock, the cutest, most cliché English town I have ever seen. There were stone buildings all over. I bought new sandals there (adorable pink and black sporty sandals for £15) and we also walked in and out of cute little shops (like a butcher's place that had jars and jars of typical English toppings. What is chutney? I never really got the best answer, but I guess will have to experience for myself at sometime). After enjoying some ice cream, bought from a truck that had Devonshire written across it (I was told a few years ago, that 1. it isn't pronounced Devon-SHYRE but "sure" and 2. it is just Devon, no shire), we walked along the river, which apparently has wild salmon swimming in it.

The end the afternoon, we headed back to Michael (Dean's dad) and Pam's place. The day had ended up really sunny, and we enjoyed a relaxing afternoon in their garden drinking tea and eating homemade cake.

Today, I get to see Plymouth, take a picture by the sign where the pilgrims set out from, and eat a pasty.

Really, I tried!

In two days it will be exactly one year from when I got my tattoo. Although, I was told that Germany had different standards about giving blood, that it was either 4 or six months. Over the weekend, one of the Frisbee players lost my pen, but then gave me a pen from his bag (after I hasseled him jokingly about it). And on the pen was the number and hours for the blood bank in Greifswald. Perfect! And while we were waiting for the U-bahn (kinda like the metro), another player, Ali, said he was going to go in this week to give blood (you get 20euros in Germany for giving blood).

After working it out, we met up today at 4pm and headed to the hospital. We filled out our forms, and I even got to write that I was born in America and grew up there, and in case you were wondering, it is 4 months from when you get a tattoo until you can give blood again. I had enough iron in my blood, am healthy, everything seemed fine. You have to go into three separate rooms. The first is the iron and verifying you are who you are. The second is where they ask you questions about how you are feeling and about medication you are taking (why they don't combine rooms one and two is beyond me, hey, it's Germany). Then you finally give blood. Well, I only made it to room 2.

The doctor asked when was the last time I had been the states. August. All right, and I grew up in the states. Yes. So am I now living in Germany for good, or what? No, I will be returning home in about 5 weeks. Oh well, then, because you aren't staying in Germany, we won't be taking your blood today. Something about the blood being successful or something, maybe then they can follow up if they needed to. So, sorry, you won't be giving blood today.

Hey! My blood is just fine! I thought there was a blood shortage! Maybe it is because they turn down perfectly good applicants!

BUM (Beach Ultimate Mitte)

"Yeah, I am pretty stoked for the upcoming beach tournament in Berlin."
"Lori, you do know that there isn't actually a beach in Berlin, right?" My friend, Matt, kindly pointed that out to me a few weeks ago, a fact which I clearly knew. Berlin may be land locked with no big lakes, but they do like their sand volleyball in the middle of the city. This past weekend was a long weekend in Berlin, again, and got to play some Frisbee on the sand.

The weekend actually started on Thursday, when I caught the train into the city and went to Rob's. We had a good chat and made icing. It was then time for me to meet Dean at the airport, woo! It was his birthday, and what a great present. That night, the three of us went out and got some delicious, American style cheeseburgers. They were huge, and I was even able to get it cooked medium rare (they like to cook all meet to well done here). When we walked in, I asked if the kitchen was still open, in German, but after sitting down, I heard the waitress speaking English with a typical American accent. Almost everyone in the place was a native English speaker. But I don't care, because it has been over 8 months since I have had a decent burger.

We slept in the next day, lounging around and enjoying the quiet morning. But we were still able to get out the door by 1pm to do our small walking tour of Berlin. We went to the basic sites, Alexanderplatz, where the TV tower is, down the Brandenburg gate, and then the Reichstag. That walk, with stops all over the place ending up being about seven hours, but it was sunny the whole time and I was wearing shorts!

After a terrible night's sleep, because we opted to stay in the gym, it was time to play some ultimate. Dean met up with his pick-up team, and they were all a bunch of really great guys, and I met up with Dresden women's team. It was their second tournament as a women's team, and I think they are going to be great after some training and getting some more girls. We were 10-11 players all weekend, which is a great number for the beach. We weren't expecting all that much, but we ended up winning 3 games, but also getting demolished in two others. I handled a lot more than I would prefer, but it is good for my playing, just keep getting better at everything.

The sun was out the whole weekend, which really makes a beach tournament. We met a lot of new people. I took Dean, Robert (another Fulbrighter) and his friend Sebastian out to the great Viatnamese place. That had been my 5th (and final) time there, but because of the specials, it was still spectacular! The Sunday night party was great, some dancing and a lot of socializing. I didn't spend as much time with the team as I normally like, but I don't regret that. Katy was also there, which is always a fun time. We spent a little bit of time with the Frankfurt team on Sunday night, and they brought their own freeze master hat, and I am pretty sure we freaked out the women running the ice cream stand. But what would you think if about 10 people just stopped moving/talking in front of your kiosk?

Dean and I watched the open final together (oh Monday, it was a 3 day tourney), and we were just sitting there, watching frisbee and playing fantasy frisbee (I lost pretty badly) with the sun shining down on us, perfect.

Well, dang it

Fiddling: (from the unabridged Random House Dictionary) 6. to make trifling or fussing with the hands (often fol. by with): fiddling with his cuffs
So when someone says that he is "fiddling with the remote" it is, in fact, proper grammar.

The weather continues to be fabulous. I haven't really done all that much in the past couple of days. On Saturday I went to the beach, and they have started charging people to enter, bummer. After deciding that I haven't spoken enough German lately, I paid the 1.50 entrance fee. We were going to try to meet up with some Frisbee people there, and Martin was there, hooray! He also brought friends, then Lutz came, and more friends came (some left, well, one), and I ended up spending about seven hours at the beach. We were throwing a frisbee, lounged around, and grilled, wonderful!

And Sunday I went for another really long. I keep pushing myself, this time I was out for 70 minutes, yes! There is a half marathon in Crystal Lake in September and I would really like to run it.

And now it is only 2 days until I leave for Berlin! Hooray! It is Dean's birthday, plus seeing all of those wonderful frisbee people, plus a three day tournament on sand in the middle of Berlin.

Happy May Day!

The weather this past week in half has been incredible, sun every day, and it continued to get warmer and warmer. We had some showers last night, and I enjoyed the moments of riding my bike home through a light drizzle and enjoyed the smell of a spring rain. During Frisbee practice, one of the girls said that she had to leave at 8pm because a friend of hers (who I also know) was coming to her place to watch a soccer match, Chelsea vs. Liverpool. I made a comment about how I like Chelsea because I really like the player, Michael Ballack. So I basically invited myself over, but she and her boyfriend said they were more than happy to have me over. Chelsea won in overtime, and the night was half English/half German, which is always funny. Then I enjoyed the rest of my evening with my window wide open and chatting on the phone.

So quite a few weeks ago, I got to spend the week in Berlin with a whole bunch of Americans, and that was great! Katy and I roomed together. Maybe I have blogged about this already, but she put my name down to room with, and I put her name down and we hadn't even asked the other person before doing it. We all arrived in Berlin on Saturday (all being me, Katy, Rachel and Aine met us up there). After a night out with Rob and some other Frisbee Fulbrighters, we checked into our hotel. What a place! It was a four star hotel, and we were on the 33rd floor and we had a view of the city, at least the west side of the city. After looking through all of the material given to us, we called up some bath robes and slippers and had a fun photo shoot. The week was filled with meeting lots of new people, learning about different projects people have done, being surrounded by academia, and appreciating musical talents of others. There are many different types of Fulbright grants, you can do research, be a visiting professor, study music under a great teacher, and teaching assistants. They had our evenings planned for us, but never too late, and we were able to meet up and relax with other people. One night we were able to enjoy listening to the musical talents of some scholars, there was opera, piano, tuba, and even a modern piece where the players had to use 3D glasses to read the music, which they didn't even have to follow. The last night they pretty much threw a party for us at a local club, and of course we danced the night away. I was able to dance about 15 minutes of pretty intense swing, and even got flipped a couple of times (it was great dancing with someone who was a great leader). Katy decided to stay in Berlin until Sunday, but I had to get going because I was meeting Dean up at the airport on Thursday.