Stealing Cherries and Sweating to Death

     Cherry season is in full swing up here on the hill above Esslingen and it seems impossible to go for a walk without seeing a cherry tree lush with dark, juicy cherries, waiting to be eaten. I know that it's very illegal to go onto other peoples' property and take their produce, but the Witch From Next Door (an Into The Woods reference) hasn't caught me yet. We have a cherry tree in our backyard here too, but the cherries are smaller and only turn red instead of the ultra-delicious lip-staining dark wine red of the tree not but a three minute walk from the house. I mean, how am I supposed to help myself when I find myself hungry, out for a walk and there's this gorgeous, lush tree just waiting to be climbed and share its fruits with me. I don't think any person would be able to resist that without keeping their sanity.

     Cherries aside, school is back in swing after Pfingstferien (Pentecost Vacation). To recap, we went to Italien (Italia, Italy) for the two weeks and saw enough cities, landscape and mountains to last me a while. If you would like to know more about what happened in Italy, do what I always tell my family when they ask me and, read my blog. Anyways, Joern seems to have Arbeit (Half an American exam, I would say) after Arbeit after Arbeit and I feel totally helpless because it is very difficult for me to study for them and impossible to receive a grade that is even on a measurable scale. There's about four weeks of school before our 10-day trip to England and then Joern's six-week summer vacation kicks off and I am kicked out and hop on a plane back to the USA. And no, it doesn't seem like my time here went fast or slow because time is time and it will always go the same speed. But back to school. Despite my inadequacy in the German language at the moment, I can get by day to day in German and make normal conversation. I can definitely see myself one day being more proficient in German and I definitely would like to pursue it because when it comes to the real world, German is pretty much useless unless your German is better than the typical German's English, which I must say is pretty good. 

     We've been going through a little bit of a heat wave down here in southern Germany too. This whole past week has had highs of 32+ and it's been quite miserable. I guess the fact that air conditioning is foreign to German schools and houses has contributed to the heat being so oppressive as well. However, the nuclear-ready cement walls of our house and the space curtains that can make it feel like night in here, do a good job of keeping the heat out and the cool in during the hottest hours. Our school (Schelztor) is not built so well; however, and today we got Hitzefrei (heat free, directly translated) which means that we got the afternoon hot so we didn't roast to death inside of the school. Thinking about it now, I should have taken the temperature inside the school to see how much hotter it really was inside there than outside. Anyways, the heat might not have been so bad for us, as our main classroom is on the first floor, but anyone on floors two or three was getting burned out and I definitely understand why it isn't possible to conduct class when everyone is only focused on leaving the building.

     Today I also gave a presentation for the 8B English class about Sheboygan and the differences between the US and Germany. I made sure to include that the US is much more than just New York and L.A. and also that, indeed, not all Americans like President Trump, as these two are things that I feel are very often confused as being things that all Americans are on board with. I mean, I've never even been to New York and I've been in 40+ states. Other than that, the presentation was very well received and I enjoyed giving it.

     Also, in my presentation I listed how many fast-food restaurants Sheboygan has and I must say that it took me quite a while to list them off. Thinking about it now, I think that we might have a few too many Subway's in Sheboygan. I mean, Esslingen has 90,000 people, no McDonald's, one Starbucks, two Subway's (compared to Sheboygan's seven) and one Burger King and that's IT. It took me a while to count them up and I'm not going to share what I got, but I can definitely say that Sheboygan has way too many and I would encourage everyone to count up the number of fast-food restaurants in their area because chances are, it's probably way too many. Anyways, as I was listing them off, I can definitely say that 8B couldn't help but smile at the obscene amount of fast-food that my hometown has to offer.

Today is 22.6.2017 and I just listened to The Book of Mormon

Nat