Thursday, 21 May 2009

The next morning, Thursday morning, I had coffee with my neighbors. It was again tough because we were unable to communicate to each other. After many feeble attempts of trying to have a conversation, I left and headed to class. Today, I had to ride my bike because I was going to go to the lake again with my mentor Kathleen, Adam, and two of Kathleen’s friends. I got to class real early because it takes me like 5 minutes to ride to class in the morning because I am allowed to ride down all the streets. After 11:00, some streets are cut-off to pedestrians only. You could technically still ride down those streets as long as you don’t get caught by the Polizei. Also, you could walk around with your bike, but why walk when you can ride?


As far as I can remember, class was nothing special. It was essentially a “normal” day of classes if there could be something that would classify as such a thing. After class, Adam and I waited for Kathleen outside of the Ring Café. It took awhile for her to arrive because she had two bikes to handle; Adam didn’t have a bike. The five of us headed out to the lake. On the way there, I saw a ping pong table outside in a little park-ish area. Shortly after that, the break on the front wheel on Kathleen’s friend broke when turning the corner, so she ended up having to jump on the tram while the rest of us headed to the tram stop by the lake. The stop was by a forested area which separates the lake from the city center. Once we got near there, we decided to get ice cream while we waited for the friend to show up. I would say her name, but I don’t remember it. When she finally showed up, we made our way to the lake. She rode on the back of Kathleen’s bike where the basket would normally sit on top of the rear wheel. It was rather funny watching Kathleen struggling to pedal her bike with the extra person causing the rear wheel to flatten out. We found an ice cream place along the lake to sit, chill, and take in the view of the area. There was talk about riding around the lake but that is as far as that went.

On the way back from the lake, we saw some guys about to get in a fight because one guy probably ran into another on their bikes. It was quite amusing even though I could not understand what any one was saying. I would have liked to have sit there and watch it play out and see if anything would have actually happened, but we didn’t because we needed to get to dinner and needed to stop at Kathleen’s place first for something. I ended up watching an episode with Sandra, Kathleen’s roommate and the other girl that went with us to the lake that day. It was a pretty good episode. Both Kathleen and Sandra are big fans of the show. They own all the seasons and watch the shows in English because some of the jokes are lost in translation from English to German.

We had dinner at a Mexican restaurant because Adam is a big fan of Mexican food. We went to Enchiladas. I ordered a Coconut Mojito to drink and then a combo meat Fajita dish. The food and drink, sadly, was subpar. Sandra said it used to be a really good place to go where you got a lot of food with what you ordered. Apparently, times have changed. O well. We ended up being there from 19:30 to 23:00. We were just having a good time hanging out and talking. Also, we had to wait a long time for both our dinner and our dessert. I had to go back Kathleen’s apartment to pickup my bike. That ended up being a bad choice because the restaurant was right next to the apartment that I have been calling my home for the past week or so.

Some of the guys from the program had gone to the TV Club that evening. I had planned on going out with them to the club, but since dinner had gone so late, I decided to not go out and just go to bed after getting a shower.