A fun-filled day

Yesterday I finally got the chance to go on one of those hiking trails I´ve been wanting to check out for so long. It was really nice. I went on one that takes you to a really old tower known as the "fox tower". I´m not sure what it was used for way back when, but I assume it was a lookout point for enemies because even though the tower isn´t that tall by today´s standards, it´s location on the top of the little mountain lends way to a great view. I took some pictures at various points. Conny´s friends Basti and Susie came to visit from Dresden, so all five of us went on a little hiking tour.

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I also finally went and bought a winter jacket yesterday. It still is only mildy, fall-ishly chilly, but I saw one that was a great deal and couldn´t pass it up. Granted it´s bright green and yellow and making people feel like a giant moving stoplight is probably the reason it was marked down so much, but I digress...I kind of like it anyway.

Last night was also Jorjé´s birthday dinner. I had an amazing time. We ate salad(greens and an egg salad), cheese, this fried dough made with pumpkin and squash with this feta-tomato dip(there were a couple of different bowls of it with different spices that added a nice variety). And for the main course there were bread pockets that looked like giant bread pierogies or calzones. They were stuffed with meat and hard-boiled eggs and these awesome olives. Everything was really tasty. There were also some kind of yummy pastry and brownies made with coconut and cherries for dessert. I didn´t know there was coconut in the brownies, so I took a piece and took a huge bite out of it. Eeww. They were actually really tasty if you like coconut, and tolerable for me even though, as most of you know, I don´t like to touch the stuff, which was a good thing because I didn´t want to be rude and go spitting it out saying, "Oh my god! There´s coconut in this! Blacgh!" Oh, and wine...lots of wine. I slept like a baby last night, let´s just leave it at that.

After dinner, we broke out instruments-a guitar and a bunch of little hand instruments like a triangle, wooden castenets, marracas, etc. First we sang happy birthday to Jorjé in Spanish, German, and English. Yeah, sometimes my mind feels like it´s going to blow up because there will be conversations in German and Spanish happening and me thinking in English, too, and my brain just wants to say, "Dammit! Pick a language already!"

After the birthday medley we sang all kinds of different songs. We also shared songbooks that they had-both spanish and german ones. It was really interesting because every song that was sung was known by a few people here and there, so we made a little game of trying to find a universally/internationally known song. We found two: "Glory, glory Hallelujah" and "Jingle Bells". Actually, I think most people knew "Guantalamela", too. So I guess the tally comes to a total of three.

You can check out the pictures here.