anniversary of sorts...

Hi everyone!
Guess what today is...give up? It is the one year anniversary of Sam and my FIRST DATE!!! Isn't that crazy? One year ago tonight Sam took me out to the Dairy Queen in Bloomington where we ate ice cream and talked for hours...and now look where we are! It really is amazing to think about this incredible journey we've had in just one year's time.

We are trying to think of some fun (and inexpensive) little way to celebrate. Maybe a bottle of wine up at the castle to watch the sunset...maybe ice cream and a paddle boat ride down der Lahn (the river going through town). We'll see!

Let's see...

Sunday morning we went to church here in Marburg! There were 3 other Fulbrighters who went too. The church was beautiful! It was really just a huge white house/mansion they turned in to a church. Of course the entire thing was auf Deutch so I didn't understand a DARN thing but it felt good to be in church anyways. They did do one English worship song at the end. The people were very welcoming. We plan to return next Sunday. It was a non-denominational called Trifft-Christus Kirche (Meet Jesus Church).

Sunday afternoon we took a group excursion to a Museum- It was a reconstruction of a Roman camp. None of us quite understood the exact intentions of the Museum. Created by King William II in 1897 he just wanted the Germans to see where their history came from, I believe. So it was not actually a Roman camp although there were some materials (stones and such) that came from an actual camp. We got the official tour which was interesting but nothing too amazing. THEN came the fun...we got to throw javelin and do archery! Javelin throwing was much more challenging than anyone expected. I was one of 3 girls who got their javelin to stick in the ground. Sam's stuck once but the next time he won for distance! Then we went out to dinner to a very nice place and Fulbright paid : )

When we returned home Sunday night we had no electricity!! It was kind of late and we had no idea what to do or who to call. We went over to a friends and realized that all of the dorms lost electricty! Luckily someone had a number to call and a crew came out right away to fix it. There were a couple hours in the dark though. Only the light of a lap top screen!

Yesterday in culture class we learned a little bit about German history. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall! We learned that the colors of the German flag (Black, Red and Gold) were representative of the soldiers' uniforms (black uniforms with red decorations and gold buttons). We saw a very interesting documentary (in German) about people who escaped East Germany and told about what life was like there. Very fascinating, I had no idea!

Well, we are about to start the process of looking for an apartment in Mainz. Wish us luck! We have no idea what we are doing. We have about 4 weeks.

Bis später (till later),

Sam and Jam : )