Alive and Kicking

Hey Team,

Well World Cup 2006 is well underway and life in Berlin is crazy. The city has been one big party for the last two weeks and it will keep on keeping on for another two. I must admit that I was never a big fan of soccer but the culture around it is pretty fun and the athletes are very good looking…I mean talented. I have taken it upon myself to cheer for the underdog African teams now that the US is out.

Sorry I dropped off the face of the planet. A lot has happened this last month. Hum, where to start. First off, my parents came to visit. We did all sorts of fun touristy stuff: Potsdam, the Checkpoint Charlie Museum, the Ballet, the Zoo to learn about poisonous animals, and of course we ate out at a ton of rad restaurants. I think the following graph pretty well summarizes my time with my parents. Shoot, I can't import in the graph. My battle with technology continues. Anyway, you would see from the graph that "fun with parents" is a curve and that started out high at birth, dipped around 13, and is now exponentially increasing. Needless to say, we had a great time hanging out.

Speaking of me being a really big nerd and making graphs for fun, I just finished my diploma of tropical medicine and public health. Yahoo. So what this means is that I am done with the first three months of class and my next three months will be scattered through summer, fall, and winter. I will be taking classes in Amsterdam, Stockholm, Berlin, and perhaps somewhere else. It's good to get those first 3 months done, but it also means that a lot of my hommies left Berlin which is a bummer. After the diploma tests, I had a two day break before starting a short optional Travel Medicine course. Now this week I am on to Advanced Epidemiology. Lots of statistics, and a little revisit to AP Calculus. Oh yeah.

But don't worry, I am finding plenty of time to goof around. This week my friend David, a childhood friend who was also coincidently in DC with me last fall, and one of his buddies from UCLA, Jason, were in town. We went to a sweet concert, http://www.culchacandela.de/index2.html (you can hear some of their songs); went out dancing; and checked out the Fan Mile. The Fan Mile is this huge section of the city from the Brandenburger Tor to the Groser Stern (see tour of Berlin by bike pictures from March) that is lined with huge screens, biergartens, and crazy fussball fans. David and Jason took off yesterday but I will see them again in a week when I meet up with them in Nice, France. Yeah.

So, as you see life is still treating me well. Actually, really well as I just got some more big news this week. Adrian, that handsome and athletic boyfriend of mine, just got a pro-cycling contract to race in Hungary for the next year plus. (There are a couple negotiations to work out but for the most part it’s pretty well set.) The team wants him here in 3 weeks so that means I am going back to the States just as he is coming over here. But, it’s cool because I am planning on moving to Hungary in August to write my thesis. So pretty much life is great. I get to keep hanging out in Europe but I loose the long distance relationship. Although, I do trade learning German for Hungarian. Hum.

Well I hope this blog entry finds all of you well. I apologize for the lack of graphics as that makes blog reading a little more exciting. At least you have a little flavor-flave of Potsdam.