Hello blog readers!

Quoting an exchange I recently had with Mom in an email, "No news is good news."

I picked up a few extra classes at the school because I had free hours on a couple of days, so now I am teaching English around 15-16 hours a week and not 12. I've spent the past couple of weeks just sort of going about my everyday business:

- I've been enjoying teaching more and more recently. A couple of teachers have finally branched out and gave me the opportunity to prepare some lessons of my own and teach smaller groups of pupils. It's been very fun and has kept me more involved at my school. I decided to give my pupils some say on what exactly I teach them on a week to week basis. So far I have done lessons on how America got started (Albeit it was a VERY simple version), a couple of Obama-themed ones, a little bit on St. Patrick's Day (it coincided with the teacher's theme), and then some routine grammar stuff (for example, the differences, similarities, and difficulties of "I will" future tense and "I'm going to" future tense). You would be surprise at how incredibly tricky the "I'm going to" tense can be for Germans who are learning English.

- I've been spending and increasing amount of time in the city meeting up with friends. I think we all get a mutual satisfaction and enjoyment out of meeting and being able to practice our respective foreign languages. Lot of my friends just relish the chance to practice their English, so I get the opportunities to speak a lot of the only two languages I know. (Note - I would normally use this opportunity to start a new language, since French, Italian, and Spanish are all there for me to learn from friends, but I'm still working on getting down this whole German Language thing. It's a tough one.)

- Still doing my best to maintain a high level of fitness and show-up my Mom's prediction, but have been slowed recently by an illness. I stayed home in bed on Wednesday with a cold and have been slowly recovering. (Don't worry Mom and Dad, all is well. The Mini-Apotheke I came to Germany with helped out a lot).

That's about all the update I have for you at the moment. About to start what should be a very exciting month of March, as the whole Wacker gang is coming out for a week's visit, during which is a week-long Fulbright Seminar in Berlin - my favorite city.

Also - After getting somewhat hooked on Coach Sark's twitter updates, I thought to myself, "Why the hell not?" So now you can keep even more updated on my daily happenings - check out my twitter page @ http://twitter.com/russellwacker

Tonight I'm going to a Jazz concert in the city with the family I live with! Should be a fun night. Hope everyone is doing well back home. I read that it snowed again. The weather here has been somewhat warmer as of late, in the 5-7 degree Celsius range.

Gotta run!

Russ