july 14th

hana! (and halfway through our trip)

we had an exciting day today... and i knew it would be (if one could only know) as soon as bruce joined me for breakfast. yep, he actually got up sometime after nine and met me at our table (which was the second weird thing because our table set for two could easily sit 8-10 people) where i was eating and reading some german bible. we ate and talked a bit and decided that we would play tennis before our friend hana would arrive (more on hana later).

we went upstairs, got our stuff, jumped on our new bikes (lean), and rode to our courts for the almost-daily tennis match. we warmed up and started to play... and even though on the clay i hit like a girl (sorry duck, i dont mean girl in a bad way), the third exciting thing of the day happened. i won (i=ben)- 4-6, 6-4, 7-6(4). lean... comeback king. i am sure that it is because bruce got a bit frustrated because, as i said, i wasn't hitting the ball super hard as i was more worried about keeping it in. but it worked!

tennis was over at about 1 and we still had time before hana was to arrive. we expected her around 3-4, but as with anyone... that would probably be sometime like 4:30-5.

now, we haven't talked about it on the blog, but bruce is in the process of job hunting and was given an offer at our old high school to teach some advanced math classes. well, he is also holding on to a position at his other high school where he would teach guitar. interesting... what should he do? he wasn't (or still isn't) quite sure yet either and he must let lake mary know by tomorrow (thursday). he wanted some advice so at this point we split up; bruce went to the room to skype and write our family members for their opinions and i rode to penny markt for the normal lunch stuffs. i went in a hurry because we both wanted to be sure that we had time to go swimming again and try again our awesome idea of somehow making these german drinks cold. oh yeah, another thing, before i left, bruce was speaking with the nice woman that runs our place and found out that she can and will do our laundry. we have a german mother! she told us that she has two daughter (one of them is the other woman that helps run the place) but that she also has a son so that we need not worry about being embarrassed over our incredibly dirty and stinky clothes.

i returned with the goods and bruce had talked with a few of the family (including bonnie) and we headed to hawaiisee. well this part was not very exciting. we've been trying all of the meats and cheeses that one can buy at our lovely penny markt and we are almost through them all... all but one. it is called esrom. so i bought it... naturally, we hadn't had it yet and it is cheese, it must be good. wrong! it tasted like trash, filth, like the manure stench that we have described in previous posts. i, ben, the kid who eats everything, could not and would not eat more than my half piece. absolutely gross. bruce ate a piece or two... but that was it. at least the meats were good- turkey and some salted ham that was almost prosciutto like.

alright, for the next not-so-exciting part, our make shift "drink-cooler-downer", didn't work. we tried it again using bonnie's idea about not sinking them into the muck at the bottom only to pull up our fanta and beers to find them just as warm as they had started. great. at least fanta doesn't taste bad when it is warm, so we drank it and left the beers for another day. the idea is simply brilliant... we really cant believe that it didn't work. but here we are again- beerless. jam.

alright, so to hana. hana arrived at about 4:30 and after we unloaded her fully packed car, we all decided to again go swimming.

flashback: hana is a friend of our family's who originally met bruce while he was studying abroad in freiburg. she is from the czech republic and she was also studying there at the time. since then, she has visited our family's house in lake mary for a month long trip where we traveled around florida and whatnot. brent and i stayed with her in prague and throughout the czech republic for a week and a half during the world cup 4 years ago. and also, my parents and sister stayed with her in prague sometime a few years back. she's been a great friend and we were excited that she had overlapping vacation time and decided to drive to flintsbach for a visit.

we went swimming for a bit, caught up, and just relaxed after our tennis and hana's 5 1/2 hour drive. it was nice, the sun was out, and the water was not too cold at all.

alright, the next and probably most exciting thing, dinner. we cleaned up and went to our regular falkensteiner's for our delicious german meal. and, if you remember, wednesday is when the polka band plays... and even better, today there were dancers. awesome...and that's not all. we ordered two large beers (and a small one for hana which she took nearly 2 hours to drink), a salad with grilled turkey (again, naturally for hana), and two man meals- grilled fish on a stick! fantastic- way better than that poop-cheese that we'd had for lunch, these fish made up for anything bad that we'd eaten yet... except they were not quite so filling. no problem... we ordered a jägerschnitzle after our fish. very american... not so german. double meal! our dinner was perfect and we sat around and talked (in german, of course) until almost 11 where we then came back to zimmer 1, relaxed, and prepared for bed.

tomorrow, who knows what we'll do. i'm just glad that i won tennis.