Problem Solved...

Well, I at least was able to fix my train tickets. Unfortunately I could not fix Denise and Melissa's since we bought our tickets online with credit cards. Sorry, Denise and Melissa. :(

Also most inconvenient was that since I bought the cheap fare, I couldn't exchange my tickets and so now I have two train tickets for each ride. *fumes* And I can't sell the tickets because I bought them online with a credit card. darn. From now on I buy my tickets directly from the Hauptbahnhof and never online again! It's much easier to get what you want directly from people because you can explain it to them. So, all in all, I've had to spend a large amount of money that I didn't want to spend in the first place. *sigh*

But this weekend was nice. Friday evening my class and others from Goethe went to a Tanzkurs (dance course) at this Bier Garten/Ballroom place. I learned how to waltz! It was super fun, but we waited over an hour for food and drinks afterwards, which was not fun. No one wanted to leave a tip except Tanya and myself because it wasn't the waiter's fault, really. In Germany, tip isn't really mandatory, usually you just round up the bill for a tip if everything was pretty good. After that we went to a little concert with a modern Balkan band who was exceptional fun to see and their music was awesome.

Saturday morning a bunch of us went to the zoo! Weeee!!! That was fun! After the zoo we had a party at Shigeyoshi's flat all the way in West Berlin (I live much closer to East Berlin). A bunch of us met at Goethe Institut to go together, and that's a little east of the city center. It took us about 40 minutes by train to get to Shigeyoshi's flat. lol. We left super late (and luckily I can get back to my place with just the SBahn [street train] and don't need the UBahn [subway..."under" train]...SBahn runs almost all night on weekends, while the UBahn stops I think around 1am). And the trains run much less often on weekends. I had to wait for 10 minutes at the first SBahn, and 8 minutes when I switched. Ugh, I wish they ran a little more often. Oh wells. So I didn't get back until like almost 3am.

People wanted to go to the Flomarkt yesterday, but I just slept. lol. Then I went to the Hauptbahnhof to get my tickets fixed and checked my various emails (because the information desk couldn't find my tickets, so I went to make sure I had the correct order numbers...I just went to the ticket counter then instead...) and I saw that Heather, my sweet lovely roommate, had invited me to dinner with her and a few other people from the May Term, including Dr. Cagle! I was enthralled, but I noticed I had an hour to fix my tickets and get there in time to meet them! It's about 20 minutes from the Hauptbahnhof to my stop, and they were two stops further. So I RAN to the ticket counter, got my tickets fixed in no time flat, and strolled along to meet up for dinner.

We ate at this super awesome Kurdish place. I must go again. It was absolutely delicious. Next time I'm going to get the hummus! yummmm. And speaking of Middle Eastern cuisine, the Israeli in my class Eran has three restaurants in Tel Aviv, and I told him he has to tell me where they're at so I can go with a couple people from the dig and see just how delicious his restaurants are. haha. He was very excited to hear I'd be in his lovely country for almost 6 weeks and is only too happy to have me in one of his restaurants! Yay!

Also, Soeren talked to me Friday morning and said that if I'd like to, he and Suzanne would love to have me stay with them again when I come back in August! I was only too thrilled! So today I'm going to talk to the people who take care of the roomings and let them know. It's the perfect location because it's fairly centrally located and it's quite peaceful in this area with still lots of stuff to do.

Oh crap, I have to leave now for class. Tonight I'm going to the theatre with Tanya to see "The Good Person of Sezuan." I expect it to be very good!

Ok, sorry, still no pictures...soon, I promise!