Trip to Heidelberg

The other night Taylor and I were watching the Colts game against the Jaguars with Seth and his significant other Ashley up in their flat. We got talking about if we wanted to do anything the next day (so really yesterday by this post date). They through out a couple of ideas, but we eventually settled on traveling to Heidelberg and walking around seeing the castle there :) A lot of people in our group are there today and they're going to spend the night so they'll have the whole New Year's experience there. But Taylor, Andy, and I all hopped on a train with the supremely wonderful guidance of Seth and we set out. Trains....are ok with me as long as I'm not too hot. Again, it's something I've figured out with my car sickness. If I get too hot then it all just goes downhill so I have to try and keep cool.

But yea this was another new experience for me! I wanted to pull out my camera and try and get some pictures as we went by in the train but I felt that would be too "tourist-y" to do that, so i refrained, at great cost to myself. Oh my gosh the landscape we saw as we traveled into Heidelberg. We drove through valleys where the trees seemed miles above us, we drove passed the most adorable/quaint villages, and finally into Heidelberg. We passed Andy the map and we were off. It was a beautiful day for this adventure. The sun was bright, there was a good breeze, and the city was bustling. Andy built the pace and Taylor and I quickly got into step with him. I was usually behind though just because I pretty much always had my camera out. That plus the fact that it's hard to walk 3 abreast in a busy city, especially one that has narrow streets anyway. But oh my gosh, this city was gorgeous. I didn't even take all the pictures I could because I just wanted my eyes to drink it all in.
I tried my first real bratwurst on awesome! bread. It was so delicious. I couldn't finish it all because we immediately started our trek to the top of the castle and I passed it off to Andy to finish.

Here's the full view of Heidelberg from a bridge in the distance. Didn't want to pay for a post card, so I got the picture myself :P

And here's Andy and Taylor as we walk down this gloriously beautiful street. I didn't check the name of it, but I'm sure it had Strasse in it lol

On the right is a cool shot I got of the castle looking up from our pathway walking back down.

And here is my favorite picture that I took yesterday.

I heard this clarinet from across the street and instantly my ears perked up. Full What's that?? face and all. We're walking by and Andy and Taylor just keep walking but I just had to stay for a bit longer and listen to him. I tossed him a couple euros and left the hustle and bustle with a stupid grin on my face :)

I made it here in one piece!

Hey all! I'M IN GERMANY! Crazy right? Yea I can't believe I'm actually over here :D

For those of you who don't know, I'm currently involved in Student Teaching this semester. A group of 12+ me and our professor are placed in the elementary, middle, and high schools on Rammstein's Air Force Base. I've been placed in a 9th/10th grade classroom. I'm not sure if it's a mixed class or if I get 9th graders for half the time and 10th graders for the other half.

My colleague Isaac Field went and composed a blog as well and gathered information from every student and our professor for a reference. It has our names, where we're from, and our content area. If you want to see who all is here with me go to this blog here

I'm gonna go ahead and get you a coverage of my trip over there and what that was like...

Anywho! The flight over!

This was my first time ever on a plane. And, yes, I mean EVER. Got my suitcases checked, had to move some articles between bags so it would meet regulation. Then I managed to get through customs without feeling too violated. Then I noticed that on my boarding passes it said I was in seat 31E for both flights. How weird is that??? The first flight was to Dallax, Texas where we could then hook up with a larger international airplane that could take us over into Frankfurt, Germany. The first flight definitely felt like a hazing experience. I was stuck in like the next to last row of seats I'm pretty sure, did I mention I get motion sick?, I couldn't hardly look out my window because of the turbine right beside me, and there was a screaming kid in the seat behind me. Perfect! Yes, just what I wanted. When the kid started screaming I looked up and Andy Roets was looking back, smirked at me and said that it was a right of passage kind of thing. Yay for me. But in all honesty it was pretty good.

I had so many colors of emotions flying around in my chest I couldn't grab on to any one of them for very long. I was freaking out when I saw that I'm literally walking into a big metal tube, did I also mention I have a dad bit of claustrophobia?, and how close we all were to each other. This plane had 3 seats on one side and 2 on the other. Tight. Walk back to my seat, deal with my carry on, and traded seats with this lady so I could get the window seat. We're driving around getting ready to take off and I'm just thinking to myself, how on earth are we going to do this? We need at least 1.21 gigawatts! And then we start going and going and we're going faster and faster and then we're off the ground....I felt the earth drift away and as soon as we were in the air I teared up. It was such a beautiful feeling for me. I can't even explain it. Whenever I'm on a rollercoaster and I the ride goes so fast that you're pulled out of the seat, that feeling multiplied by a hundred. Like there was nothing keeping me in the air except the sheer power of the plane. My siblings will get this if they read this, but there is a character in the book series Codex Alera by by Jim Butcher where he talks about he doesn't like flying because he has to put his trust in others completely. He can't do anything. If he was falling to his death he couldn't stop it. And that's how I felt. But as soon as we were up and kept going up it was breathtaking. At one point we went so high as to be among the topmost clouds and I felt like I was in the heavens. I wanted to walk outside and step across the clouds around us. My breath was caught in my throat...I couldn't believe how beautiful it was. Looking out of my window I could see all the farms and the ways that the woods and the roads cut between each other. I then immediately grabbed my sketch book and set out to try and draw what I was seeing. It was a mini experiment to see if I could focus on something while in motion on a plane. And it went pretty well :) I didn't get sick. I only felt very mildly uncomfortable. And my 2 hour sketch turned out pretty good. I worked on it later on in my next flight to Frankfurt and redid it all in pen.

What I was so overcome with was how we have this battle of organic shapes and masses contradicting with the neat geometric lines that we're trying to create. From above it looked like the woods, those blob-like shapes, were encroaching on the organized farmlands and the order that we're trying to create. So this sketch is something that I would love to work with later and create diptychs and triptychs with watercolor backgrounds and then have line drawings over them. Probably smaller scale at first to figure it out and then I would love for these to be wall pieces. But ULTIMATELY I would LOVE to bring this idea into my preferred medium, ceramics, and create even larger triptychs and possibly a larger series. I could give this 2D a breath of life and make the woods and lakes rise and fall, create dynamic lines in the cornfields, and create a more cohesive representation of what I saw and what I felt. So this was what I thought about on my first flight :) lol

The second flight was....more/less better? It was a larger plane so there was less turbulence, which was great and much more comfortable. We got dinner and breakfast and those were pretty good. Poor Taylor got food poisoning from the chicken I think :/ But other than that it was great trip. I watched a few movies on the lil screen in front of me. I finished up my sketch in pen ^ and I tried napping. I fell asleep, but it wasn't really a good sleep....like it sucked trying to have my legs all the way stretched out and then also having them pinned up against the seat in front of me. Bleh. Not my fav part for sure.

Tell you what the first 4-6 hours weren't really that bad. It was the last haul that I was just like, ok I've been here long enough can we just be there now. When we were over Europe I kept looking across the aisle to the one window that was open. I kept looking for the sun. I wanted us to crawl out from under this black blanket that enveloped us and finally step into the warm embrace of the sun, and I had to wait until 8 in the morning for it. It was beautiful though from that porthole sized window. We gently fell from the sun though and into the dark clouds over Germany and into the gentle rain that gave us welcome to this new country. I must say though, the only time I was ever actually motion sick was when we landed and we were just driving around trying to get to a parking spot so we could all get off.

And then we were in Germany :)

We all hopped up, some of us looking more like 10s than 5s ;) and waited in line for customs. I got my first stamp in my passport! Woot! Then we waited around for our bus service to take us over to our apartments. Tell you what our driver was fast! Yikes. I was dying lol Stepped right off the plane and then I've got this she-devil driving like maniac. Again I managed to be in the backseat. And I didn't know how long we were going to be driving so I didn't really think to just pop some Dramamine. Dumb. But we got there in one piece. 9 people are living in one apartment. 4 in another. And Taylor and I are living in a flat by ourselves under Seth's apartment :) He is actually from Muncie and was in the first swath of people in this program. He somehow swindled his way so that he could stay and teach here on the base so he's been here for 10 years! Definitely getting a list of names of asses that I can kiss so I can try for the same deal.

But Taylor and I are Super Happy in our lil apartment, even though we're a bit further away than everyone else :/ I've got quite a few pictures of our apartment posted on Facebook so feel free to peruse through those. It's my GERMANY album.

So I'm here. I'm in one piece. I'm getting pretty settled in. And I'm ready to start having more adventures :)