Okay, okay, this is a cruel world and while I have vacation, my dearest Claudia is still schlepping to Frankfurt every day for her internship, but in about three weeks, I'll start classes again and then she'll have vacation, so I guess it all evens itself out in the end. But seriously dumb timing!
And, of course, what you've all been wondering - how did my exams turn out? Well, I passed all of them. ALL of them. Some with a very tiny tiny margin, some by a more comfortable amount and let me tell you, I am just thrilled. I have never studied so hard in my life for exams and I could not have studied any less and done alright on the tests. This is a serious college system here. Hours of flashcards, hours in front of the whiteboard writing a theorem and an example, erasing it, writing it again from memory, sitting in the library redoing homework problems until my brain threatened to turn to mush -- but it was all worth it.
And now, it's about 70 degrees in Mainz every day, you can get ice cream on every other corner, and I'm indulging my total new love for cooking while I'm at home these days. :)
More on the cooking in a bit. The other thing I did was have my lovely father here for a visit! He was a real sport about being around at the time when I was just waiting around for the grades of my exam, waking up from nights or naps in which I had had multiple dreams that contained various scenarios about why I had failed, etc, etc. He calmed me down so much, we played a bunch of Cribbage (a fantastic game - do you know it? You should!) and had some wonderful conversations. We also took a day to go to Boppard (a small town along the Rhine from here a few miles where I actually went with my high school German class a lifetime ago) and found an amazing hike through the woods on the hills above the river. Actually, at times along the path, you could choose to do the harder "cliff walk" part of the climb instead of the normal hike, and of course, we took the harder way each time. And it was HARD. But fantastic!
There were completely unnecessary ladder rungs driven into rock walls that you would climb down only to have to go up a ladder a few minutes later, moments holding on to cables and the stone where you thought "Actually this isn't that bad," until you looked down and saw how far the river was below you. It was great. We walked for about two and a half hours and then sat on a bench and had some lunch and looked over the beautiful scenery, and then walked for another hour and a half or so and eventually made it back to the train station and we both fell asleep in the train on the way back to Mainz.
However, in that last hour and a half, we also came across the Boppart Jump Parachuting Team. Now, I don't know if what they were doing was actually called "jump parachuting" but that's what I've decided to call it. They were standing on this hillside above the river ( waaay above the river) and unfurled parachutes from backpacks that made them look like human turtles when they had them on, hoisted the parachutes into the air with help from other folks when the wind was right, saw them catch and hold in the air like a kite that's caught the right breeze, and then the daring soul attached to the parachute by many, many tiny strings would turn downhill, run, and jump into the air. It was incredible to watch. In the air, the turtle-pack would turn into a seat that they would sit on, and with delicate hand and arm movements (with all the strings connecting them to the parachute) they could go up, or down, or sail in circles, or even (in the case of the one grizzled old man who looked like he was completely at home in the air) sail around for a good five minutes further and further away from the take off point, then circle expertly around flap his parachute like the wings of a bird to clear the last stand of trees, and alight on the ground from where he left. Amazing to watch!
Now, in Mainz, I also had an adventure last weekend with a few friends. I'm not sure how many of you are at all familiar with the idea of geo-caching, but just in case you're not, I'll explain. Geo-caching is a new sort of game that has come about where you can go to a website (here), type in the post code of the place where you want to play this global-hide-and-seek, and then you'll get the coordinates of something(s) hidden in that area, and a tiny clue. If you are "old school" you can use a map to try and find the exact location of this thing and find the tiny, film-container sized object. Or, you can use a GPS device to find the location. We did the latter and believe me, it still didn't make the actually finding of the "cache" that much easier. But find them we did (3 out of 4, anyway). Usually it's a small tube of some sort (no bigger than the palm of your hand) in which is rolled up a list where everyone who has previously found the cache has written down their name and the time they found it. The crazy thing is to realize as you're writing your own name that the last people to find it were there just a half hour before you. The world is so interesting!
That's how I spent my last Sunday afternoon, and I encourage other people to try it! Now, finally, back to cooking.
I've gotten really excited about cooking this year. In short, I've been planning on making some exciting things in the next few weeks while I have the time. Tonight's plan: homemade ravioli. Yes, including the pasta dough. Oh man. This is gonna rock! :) I'll let you know how it goes!
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