Ringhotel Drees Amp Amp Consul Hotel Dortmund

... 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 ...

... at buying some warm boots. And I might be able to fulfil Michael's wish of building a snowman after all.

A couple of my classmates are going to Neuschwanstein this weekend (It'll look amazing with the snow I am sure), and most people are going to Amsterdam. (It's only 2 hours away.) I would have been happy to go to either place, but I have worked out my own independent itinerary because of the fact that I have to go to Lauterbach on Friday ...

Hello!

Sorry that it has taken so long to tell u about my weekend. Usually I would only write one email... but I am always running off to class or to have lunch.
So I left u Saturday night and I got home at midnight. The most wonderful thing about the whole weekend was the fact that I didn't have an excursion Sunday and was able to sleep for over 12 hours!!

When I finally decided to get up I read a bit of my German teen novel ...

... But I still went. From Essen we had to catch an incredibly cramped bus to Duisburg and then from there we had to wait for over 30 mins for a train to Düsseldorf. Whilst there we walked to the Altstadt, that I have visited previously, took a stroll along the Rhein and had some lunch. Then we found a map and decided to walk to a park where we saw heaps of squirrels (they are so cute) and a playground with some pretty cool equipment. I went on the ...

Hello,
I made it. I survived the hurricane thankfully! The aftermath made my weekend a bit chaotic as all of the trains were cancelled because of trees falling on the tracks and warping the tracks too. That meant that my plans didn't go exactly as planned..... Let me take u back to Thursday night...

The wind was howling, and whistling eerily outside while the trees were swaying frantically in the breeze. 40 students sat in their rooms ...

Hi guys,
Don"t know if u have heard or not, but Germany is in the middle of a hurricane. 150km winds and severe warnings from the government to stay indoors. It was supposed to hit Essen really hard and we were all sent home from uni early and told to stay indoors. I really wanted to go online today to talk to u all like I said I would. Sorry guys!! I"ve just borrowed Tara"s laptop now. Mum, if u read this, send me a text message when u wake up so I can ...

A big hello to all of my friends who have to live through the sweltering Australian climate. 41 degrees today I believe? I would say that the weather here has been quite good in that it is an average 10 degrees when at this time of the year it is more common to be -10. However, at negative 10, although it's cold, it's also dry. It has rained most days here and is quite uncomfortable, however my solution is to stay indoors more ...

... We discussed the WiWi party that was on that night. (WiWi stands for Wirtschaft wissenschaft, in other words business studies, a faculty at uni) I went back to my room and wrote out all of my Backbeat lines, cleaned up a bit and then dressed up to go out to the party.
The party was in a big building at the uni and was great. Entrance was 4€ ($8), and the best thing was that it was sponsored by Southern Comfort, one of my favourite drinks! There were many different kinds of ...

... kitchen and house to play with), cook, and it was nice to run in the forest and swim again....as my clothes are getting mighty uncomfortable with this lack of exercise traveling routine! Very frustrating how no one knows how to swim in a straight line, follow the black line at the bottom of the pool (IF they have one), know which side of the lane to swim down or do anything but the nominated breast stroke senior citizen pace stroke making it difficult to go against the flow ...