Hi folks. So in keeping with my usual trends, here is a much belated post for your reading enjoyment..

Well, what a great time to be an American! This past Tuesday, as I'm sure you are fully aware of, was the inauguration of Barack Obama. I've already written about what the magnitude of Obama's accomplishments mean to me, but I don't think a person can talk or write about something like this enough. This type of thing only happens once in a person's life. I am sure that there is a lot of excitement back home in the States, as many people here in Germany are quite excited themselves. Many people, including colleagues and friends, have been asking me questions regarding Obama. And, from the sound of it, Obama hasn't been disappointing - he has been busy at work in the White House in his first week on the Job.

Now, with that said, I did note some pretty funny things during the inauguration ceremony (while I was using the internet to watch it live, thank you world wide web!).

- The first was the look on George Bush's face as he was making the long and ceremonial walk to the stage where the inauguration was taking place. I remember thinking that I wanted to make it a point to notice his face whenever they showed him, and I just could not quite place his look. It appeared to be a mix of confusion, pleasure, and fear. Confusion, maybe, because he just wasn't quite sure which way he was supposed to go during his approach to the stage. Pleasure because of the knowledge that he would no longer have to make so many difficult and hard decisions, and act like you know what you're doing. And, finally, fear - because of the realization of not knowing what the heck he is going to do now. I don't know. I just thought it was a really funny look. Plus I was just happy to see him making that walk :)

- The second funny thing happened during Obama's speech. Throughout the speech, the TV station, I believe I was watching FOX News, would switch between shots of Obama and people in the crowd. On one of these particular crowd shots, I happen to see a black man yawning and dozing off! At the inauguration of the first black president in the history of the United States. One of the most important moments of your life. You are there in person. And you fall asleep. Man, the the irony of seeing that got me laughing out loud by myself.

- Lastly, how about that poor lady that had to follow up Obama's speech with that poetry? I am not taking away from her poetic skills, but honestly - they want follow up entertainment for one of the best speech givers of recent history, and they pick the poem lady? Anybody is going to have trouble following Obama and the poem lady was no exception. I felt bad for her.

So, all-in-all, I was pretty excited about the whole inauguration scene. I'm happy and I'm hopeful for my country. It's a great time to be an American.

On a completely different subject, a couple of weekends ago I made a short trip up to Elmshorn to visit the Baumann Family. The Baumann's, if you remember, are the family I did the bike tour on the Mosel River with. It was both a fun and relaxing weekend. The Friday that I arrived, I ended up hanging out with Anne and Philip and watching movies. The highlight, I would say, was watching Terminator 3 on television. I got to show the two Baumann kids a little bit of American culture, hehe. Saturday was a cool day. The whole family and I drove into Hamburg to do some sightseeing around the harbor. We were still in the middle of a big cold chill in Northern Germany, so a good portion of the Elbe River (the main river that makes Hamburg such a big/busy port city) was prozen over. It was so cool! I had never in my entire life really seen a river as major as the Elbe with more ice than water at the surface. We checked out some other things, including climbing to the top of a ship-shaped building that had stairs on the outside of it. It was a good day spent in the harbor area. Funny enough, after dinner that evening, the family and I capped off the night watching Terminator 2, which they happened to have on DVD.

Lastly, I have a little something to grip about. This may not come completely as a surprise, but there are different driving rules over here in Germany. Now, this doesn't make driving a completely different experience over here (I don't drive, this is just from a passenger's perspective), but it is a big enough change to where you would have to do some studying should you want to drive on a vacation to Germany. So now to my grip. One of the rules here, apparently, is something called "right before left." What this means is that at unmarked intersections of streets, the car on the right always gets the right of way. Example: I am making the long, 40-minutes bike ride home from work this past Thursday. On the home stretch. I am on the main drag in a smaller residential area, so there are so traffic signals. A dude on a motor bike approaches my street, wanting to turn onto it, as I am crossing. He quickly does his best to communicate his frustration with having to wait 5 seconds for a dog-tired biker and drove off. This is one situation where I do not miss America's rules at all. I definitely prefer our rules of the first one to an intersection with stop signs gets to go first and when turning onto a road, you must yield to traffic already driving on your desired road. Small, but still, it bugs me.

This weekend has been a lazy weekend for me. This past week I felt like I had a cold the whole time. Particularly on Friday and Saturday. So I stayed home this weekend, saved money, and got healthy. Luckily, I came to Germany with a small doctor's office-worth of stuff to help stave off disease. Thanks Mom!

I am a little behind on updating my computer with pictures, so when I get the Baumann weekend pictures uploaded, I'll update this post with some pictures of our day at the harbor. That's all for now!

russ.