Dieckmann's Hotel Dortmund

Bin bei meiner Tante auf Verabschiedungsbesuch in Dortmund. Die letzten 3 Tage waren bestimmt von Terminabsprachen, und der Überlegung, ob ich mich nicht einfach für 3 Wochen in Hamburg anmelde, um den ganzen Schwierigkeiten bei den ganzen amtlichen Beantragungen zu entgehen. Unglaublich wie unterschiedlich die Ämter solche Beantragungen handhaben. Bei den einen braucht man notariell beglaubigte Unterschriften, bei den anderen dauert es 5 ...

... pretty tough for everyone, especially yesterday. I have said goodbye to all of my friends. Tara has left for her host family, Santiago has left to his host family, Trevor went to visit his fiance and son before flying home today. I think that Rafael from Chile might still be around but he is travelling around seeing Karneval all weekend in Düsseldorf and Köln.

I went on Thursday ...

... It'll cost a fair bit, but at least then I will have everything at home (I can't pay the excess baggage fee at the airport! It's absolutely insane!!!)

And so I will leave u for another day. If I have time to tell u about my other adventures before I come home I shall. If not I will give u an outline of what my week holds:
Tonight I am going to see the opera 'Don Giovanni'
Tomorrow we have our last official classes at uni and we have bought a bracelet to ...

Hello everyone in the warm country back home.

It is now officially Winter. Yesterday the highest temperature was -3 and today on the way to Uni it snowed! Only slightly, but never the less, there was snow. This weekend it is supposed to snow quite a lot. I am looking forward to it. I will be in Lauterbach, Wurzburg and Rothenburg, and all will look so romantic covered in white. My teacher warned me that if the snow persists, I will have to ...

... I bought at Mayersche (the German version of Borders) for only 50 cents and then made brunch for Trevor and myself. Eggs on toast. Because I am the only one who owns a toaster it was a luxury.

I then recruited the help of Rafael to help me work on Backbeat, he has no objections coz it helps him with his English pronunciation and he gets to hear me sing, which he thinks is 'perfekto'

After that I got ready to go out the Opera. I ...

... there had white hair and looked at us disapprovingly. The only 'young people' were couples of aybe 30 or 40 who were obviously there on dates and some of those ladies wore exquisite ball gowns. Guess what I was wearing...sneakers, jeans and a jumper!! Ooops!

La Boheme was really good. It helped to have the storyline of Rent in my head as we went. Some parts were a little confusing. The sets were amazing, costumes very simple for the artists and ...

... for their freedom, longing to be outside and know what was happening. The TV wasn't working, a static screen unable to abate our curiosity. One laptop managed to connect to the internet but took 15 minutes to download the German news page. "was ist passiert" ask the students. They crowd around the screen, brows furrowed as they translate the German text into their own language. 8 people have been killed in Germany during the hurricane. It has ...

... sure that I go to my room and then give me a call at the hotel. I have to be there because I am not allowed to go out anywhere. Thanks so much for ur message! It makes me miss u even more!
Don"t worry about my safety. Luckily the hurricane changed direction and will hit the eastern states worse than here.
So I"ll go now. Still cooking dinner and it's 10pm. I will try and leave another blog entry tomorrow if I can to let u know what I get up to.
Sarah

... 41 degrees is probably hard to escape from. My deepest sympathy for those who do not have an air conditioner at home. How are u guys sleeping?
Before u do go to sleep, you might be interested in chatting with me online. Most weekdays I come on line at around 1pm (11pm for u), if it's too late, then u can catch my next edition the morning after, but if u have instant messaging and would like to chat, I usually can for around ...

... There is a giant park with gardens and rides and a lake that we found on Sunday. Spent the whole day there wandering around and exploring. Ate a traditional, which means rather heavy, German dinner on Sunday night. We had to get a cab to the train station at some weird hour for our flight back. Amusingly Tracey forgot what country we were in, she just knew it wasn't an English speaking country so she needed to get ...