visitors!

Sorry I haven’t been updating, but I had some visitors this week and I stayed in the hotel without any free internet. Before that I was just lazy. But enough excuses, I'll talk about what I did with my mom, brother, aunt Kimmy, Katelyn, Hayley, and my grandma. I took the train on Saturday morning to pick them up from the airport. When we got into Ulm we went straight to the hotel and put all their things down and relaxed a little, then we all went to Barfüßer for dinner, I'm sure I've talked about it before because it’s my favorite restaurant. Everyone ordered something different and shared a little bit. I don’t think there was ever a time where someone didn’t like what they ordered, so that is good. On Sunday we went to my host parents’ house for Easter. My host mom cooked all the food, which was really a lot. First we ate soup, and then we had the main meal which was some pork, spätzle, potatoes, and veggies. Then we ate dessert, which was just vanilla ice cream with some homemade hot raspberry sauce. My host parents called that "heisse liebe" which is "hot love" in English. After dessert we all went to a town called Blaubeuren with my host dad and host brother Christian. That is the town I went a few months ago when we all rode our bikes like 8 miles. Luckily this time we drove there. My host dad showed us around the cute little town and then we went back to my host parents’ house just to find more food for us. We had cake that my host mom made which was super good. Then on Monday my host dad gave us a tour of Ulm. First we went to lunch and then we met up with him and we walked all around the middle of the city and he showed them everything he showed me when I first got there. We went to coffee with him and then went back to the hotel and hung out and swum and stuff. Tuesday we went to Munich. We bought a special train ticket because there were 7 people and we could get it cheaper if we bought an all day group ticket. But it turned out that the ticket wasn’t accepted until after 9:00 and we took the train at 8:12. We actually knew that before we got on the train, but we ignored it and planned on acting like dumb foreigners. It didn’t really work so we got kicked off the train after 20 minutes and ended up in this small nothing town. We chilled in a bakery and played cards for two hours until the next train came. We ended up in Munich around 12 and went to lunch there. Then we looked around the city a bit and then went to the Hofbräuhaus. We could have eaten lunch there but we didn’t know that until we got there. We had a couple giant pretzels that were nothing like I've seen before. They were definitely the best pretzels I've eaten in Germany so far. Wednesday was their last full day here but we couldn’t really do anything special. We wanted to go back to Munich and go to Dachau (concentration camp), but it didn’t work out. We would have to take another 2 hour train there and back and pay for another train ticket for all of us. So we stayed in Ulm on Wednesday instead and went souvenir shopping in the city. They got to see a little more that my host dad didn’t show them on Monday. We went out for our last lunch together at Barfüßer again and then out to ice cream. Then we went back to the hotel so everyone could pack up their things and then we went out to dinner with my host family. Everyone went to bed kind of early last night, because we had to wake up at 4:00 and get to the airport. I didn’t get to go to the airport with them, because they took a taxi van that fit only 6 people and their luggage. We said goodbye at the hotel and my older host brother Christian picked me up and I went home. I had to hold back my tears until I got into my room because I didn’t want anyone else to cry and I didn’t want my host brother to see me crying in the car. Goodbyes are always hard, but this time it is only for 3 months and it will go by so fast I'm sure. Oh yeah and I forgot to say that Katelyn, Hayley, and Ryan all got to meet some of my friends because we went out with them a couple nights. Last night Julian, Stefano, Oli, and Chris all came to the hotel in suits to meet my mom, but she was already sleeping because that was the night that they all went to bed early because of the flight this morning. Me, Katelyn, and Hayley stayed up a little later and hung out with the boys but they didn’t stay long. Julian and Stefano really want to come to America in the summer and stay with me, so they decided to try and impress my mom by looking nice so she would let them come. Well, that is all I have to say for now, the muscles in my fingers hurt from typing so much.

xoxo