I'm Really Into Vampires Right Now

Tonight I go to Zurich for my second German lesson. I have just completed my hefty load of homework and even listened to a little bit of the CDs that come with the textbooks. There's this really sweet rap song all about German greetings that we listened to in class last week and I was dying to hear it again....;) I also acquired a CD of the Rosetta Stone for German, which is basically a teach-yourself-a-foreign-language program, before I left the States. I am going to try to start using it more because it's supposed to be a really good program and I definitely need all the help I can get. I forgot to mention in my last post that there are actually two other au pairs in my class. One is from Canada and the other I am not sure about, but she did have an accent so I'm fairly sure she is from another European country. There are also quite a few Indians in the class, as well as someone from Portugal, Chile, and a few other countries, so it's quite a mix of nationalities. The teacher generally speaks German of course but when he is not speaking German he switches to English. Which I am rather thankful for.

Heidi and I have been trying to meet some new people here. I think that we have been doing fairly well so far considering that we don't know very many places to go to meet people or know German. However, last night we met in Zurich to meet up with another au pair from Latvia who Heidi had been talking to online. Well, Heidi and I show up where we say to meet but no Latvian au pair. We were stood up. Maybe she had a good excuse, who knows. The place we chose to meet was the Hauptbahnhof, or the main station. We were surprised to find tons of people gathered around an area with a large dance floor and a bunch of musicians. As we walked around the area we found two long lines of people, all with their hair done up, all wearing fancy clothes, all carrying large bouquets of flowers, and - now this is the kicker - all wearing long black capes! Heidi and I decided they were either there for a vampire graduation or they were teachers at Hogwarts. What other explanation was there? We took a few pictures of them, as did tons of other people since there was a huge crowd curious to see what was going on. As we watched, the lines then filed onto the dance floor and the vampires/Hogwars professors started doing some kind of waltz or other fancy dance I can't do or name. The musicians all started playing and there was a conductor waving his baton. They were also being filmed. Heidi and I were a little confused as to what was going on there in the train station but Jana told me later that it was a big symphony. Random? Yes, very.

One more thing I wanted to mention. Monday night is one night of the week that a group of English speakers get together in a little church in Zurich to read through a play. Heidi and I decided to see what this was all about. We actually tried going the week before but could not find the place because the directions given to us were not very good and it's a little ways off the main streets. But this week we found it. I was surprised to see that a good number of people were there. They were all very friendly, too. The reading started at 8 but people got there a half hour earlier to drink some wine and chat. Most of the people were British but there were a few Americans, too. The play that was performed/read was a little different - I can't remember the name of it but it was something about 2 violas and it was set mainly in Milwaukie. At the end of the play, there was a short discussion. I thought that all the actors were only mediocre excluding one man who was really great. He was one of the main characters and I could tell that he definitely knew what he was doing. This club was something that reminded me of my talented extended family of performers and I plan on attending another session.

This weekend is my trip to Munich for the Oktoberfest! Heidi and I are going together and we plan on camping out (pray for nice weather for us!!). We will be there from Friday to Sunday evening and are traveling by train. I am very excited because this will be my first official trip!