The Continuing

Monday, April 16, 2007
9:06:56 AM

Well, I’m back with the cast and we are on the road again. My host mom dropped me off at the Bilthoven hockey club just before 8:30, the traffic was pretty bad and I’ll be the first to admit, I was a little scared. Our bus here in Europe is a double decker bus, and although we had some trouble getting out of the parking lot this morning, we are now under way on our 600km plus voyage to Leipzig. The traffic is still a little heavy but we’ll be there.

2:19:23 PM

We entered Germany shortly before 11am and we stopped soon after at a McDonalds for lunch. I walked over to a nearby “Jet” gas station and bought some Vanilla Coke (please don’t hold it against me) then headed over to McDonalds and ordered a Big Mac. I must say, it was a little on the expensive side at 3.19€ but it was probably the freshest, best tasting big Mac I’d ever had. The Vanilla coke was refreshing as well. I don’t want to be sleeping for this part of the trip. I’m sitting on the top level of the bus near the front and the view is pretty sweet. For the first time in 3 weeks I’ve seen hills! There are fields covered in yellow flowers, probably mustard plants. There have also been a number of nuclear power plants and vast numbers of wind turbines. The temperature is warm, but not as warm as yesterday. In the Netherlands yesterday they broke the record for the all time highest April temperature at 30°C. While we are not on the autobahn as of yet, the posted speed limit is 120km/h. We’re just passing Eislen and there are literally hundreds of wind turbines and the fields on all sides are bright yellow. We’re coming up on Berlin and soon we’ll be able to see the change from west to east Germany that was up until around 20 years ago, under communism.

10:58:32 PM
Well, I’m here at my host families house at last! We arrived into Leipzig around 5pm. We unloaded the luggage and “hunted” for our allocation cards and schedules as if they were easter eggs in a room. As I am just coming off of advanced work, I have a room mate this week; and this for the first time since New Orleans. We conducted several preparation sessions for CI and the city itself. The mayor of the city came and addressed us before we met with our host families and left to our new homes. My room mate for the week is Greg from Belgium and we are staying with a family with Many children aged as early as 11 months. He and I are sharing a bed this week on the third floor of their house, the same floor that their grandmother lives on. Its certainly a change from the last 3 weeks.