Hola! Bonjour! Привет!

Wow, I can truly say I am learning more of the world here. The coolest thing about my class - I'm now in the second level - is all the people! Most of the people from my first class also enrolled in the second, and there are four new students: one from Russia, one from Ukraine, one from Argentina, and another person from Nepal. It's so great.

I'm sure you've noticed, whether in college or just around town, there tend to be two groups of people - Americans, and everyone else. I remember when I was at St. Thomas, all the international students completely stuck together, and kind of had their own family. Now I understand how that feels! I am in that group now, and am thankful for the opportunity. Really, it's so cool. We are all away from home and are dealing with the stress that involves, we are unfamiliar with the language, we are getting used to a new culture, and we can do it together.

I've befriended an Iraqi woman - she is 26 - and it's amazing how friendly she is toward me. I was a bit apprehensive, because she has every right to be wary of an American, but when it comes down to it, we're just two people, from very different worlds, who are sharing common experiences. I said, rather naively, the other day that if more actual citizens of the world could interact - not as representatives of their governments - the world might face a little less turmoil. Idealistic, I know, but the experience of getting to know the people, and not the stereotypes has been very cool for me.

Inma, my new friend from Spain, invited Martin and me over for dinner on Friday night. She prepared a beautiful assortment of tapas:

Starting from the back: chopped oranges with olive oil and salt; fresh olives, made by her father from his own olive grove in Spain! How cool is that? Pan fried potatoes with a little salt; chorizo sausage; an onion/egg tart that Inma calls an omelet; Serrano ham; and tomatoes with a bit of cheese and oregano, heated in the oven until the cheese melts. It was all so tasty! Inma's name, by the way, is short for Inmaculada, which sounds so beautiful when she says it.

Then today after school, Estelle, from France, invited Inma and me over for lunch, along with Alina, from Ukraine. Alina is 28 and has her PhD in......astrophysics. Yes, astrophysics. I should apologize to Mom and Dad now for not making more of my 20s. Or 30s, for that matter. :)

Alina explained to me today how she has been working to see if she can detect parts of stars that are cooler in temperature than the rest of the star. She uses telescopes and spectrometers and analyzes light. I kind of wanted to ask why it matters if one part of a star is cooler than the rest of the star, particularly since she said that the stars she just started studying may in fact no longer exist since they could be billions of light years away, but before I could figure out a polite way to ask that, she said it has something to do with the evolution of the sun. And she also added that the work she is doing now won't benefit anyone now living, but might be of some use in several hundred years. Yep.

Anyway, Estelle cooked a fantastic quiche today, accompanied by a tasty salad. The quiche had ham - more bacon, really - and cheese, along with onions, something I couldn't recognize - maybe celery? - and walnuts. I wouldn't have thought walnuts would go well in a quiche, but she's French and she knows what she is doing! It was super tasty. I want to have a group of people out to Kasewinkel for dinner sometime, but I don't really know what to cook that's typically American. Hotdish is out of the question. I was thinking ribs with potatoes and cole slaw? Any other ideas? I don't even know if I can get ribs here.

Anyway, I'm blathering. I think I have one or two more photos to share, though.

Here's something I was lucky to catch on "film":

Blue sky! The sun was out for about three or four hours here the other day, which was a short but nice respite from the clouds that have been hanging overhead for about the last month. It has to stop raining at some point, right?

Okay, I just looked, and I don't really have any other interesting photos. I will do my best to get out and take some more before too long.

Hope the sun is shining on you wherever you are.