I have so much work right now for the end of the semester (5 papers and an exam before Wednesday of next week and 4 more exams next week)...and I don't have a computer to be able to write my papers on at night when I am most productive....and the books in the library are primarily in German and not too practical to use...and I just want to enjoy the rest of my time in Europe....and I am feeling a bit homesick.....

....but at least I have the imfamous Peter Dahlberg aka Petey Pablo.

More pictures....I know I need to get better at just posting randomly too....

Last week I spent 4 days in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia and 2 in Riga, the capital of Latvia.  Estonia is medieval and a lot of people liked it, but to me it was kinda dirty and rundown.  Riga on the other hand was mad cool and very modern with a lot of culture and things to do.  Overall, it was a good trip....except for the snow and the 4 papers I now have to write...and the problems with boarder control....eh....(haha)

Tallinn first...

A tower, now museum, which is part of the fortifications of the city...

A Russian Orthodox church....a remnant of the Soviet Union....

Parliament building...

A Protestant church....

Palace built by Martin Philip Gropius...

A view of the city with the port in the far ground....

Another view with the more modern downtown area in the far ground...

Part of the city wall...

More of it....

How cute....James Carl, Spirit and Naomi....

Natalie and I caught a traditional song and dance performance in the market square...

More of the performance...

Natalie not looking too pleased to be married to me....

James Carl being his usual creepy self....

Spiced nuts!

The Baltic Sea on the way from Tallinn to Riga

Declan after his polar bear swim....everyone else was wearing heavy coats and freezing on the beach....

Now to Riga:

One of the courtyards in the old town portion of Riga...

One of the many Presbyterian churches...

Tower of one of the reconstructed (after WWII) churches...

Main square in the old town....

Another church, which shows both the cultural layer (the church is much lower than the rest of the ground) and almost all major architectural periods....

The 'Polish Church'...

Me and Nat...taking the tour...aka. freezing to death....

And as always the random picture at the end...  My roommate Daniel broke his nose last week when he fell due to random bad circulation in the middle of the night.  He had to go to the hospital, but is in very high spirits.  He can't get it wet until it heals which makes washing his hair a difficult task and so our other roommate Caro washed it for him.  Needless to say, it was pretty funny....

I am so glad to be back in Freiburg.  It has been a great, but exhausting two weeks of travel.  I don't have any pictures right now, unfortunately of the second half of the time spent traveling, but I do from Turkey....

Going to Turkey has been, quite possibly, the greatest experience of my life.  I guess it is better to have loved and lost then never have loved at all.  Not that I really fell in love with Turkey, but coming home I had that feeling.  I know that I could never live there, because there are a lot of problems with the social system.  Turkey so culturally different from everything that I am used to that the vacation was quite an experience.

We stayed in Side which is near Antalya.  We were on the beach in a little cove.  It was amazing because you could see the mountains covered in snow on the other side of the cove from the beach.  Side has a lot of ruins, which were fun to explore.  While we were there, the weather was amazing...

On the way from Antalya to Side...

The weather the first day was a little cloudy, but cleared up for the rest of the week...

The cove from the beach with Side in the background...

The view from the hotel:  yay sun!

Side...

The pool and hotel from the room...

Hotel Prenses...

Walking to the beach...

Our group:  Anna, me, Noah, Jordan, Leah, Nicole

More beach....

Me and Noah....

Ruins...

The entrance to Side....

A sarcophagus, one of the most treasured pieces of Side...

The ruins of the library...

More ruins...

Still more...

The ruins just went on forever...

Its amazing that nothing is being preserved or excavated...

But its fun to guess what the ruins once were....

More ruins...

Apollo Temple...

Me at the temple...

Me and Noah on our way out...

The waterfall we saw during our boat tour of the area....

The girls who took the boat tour:  Leah, me, Nicole and Anna

Women on the beach making flatbread...

Quite possibly the cutest boy in the world selling orange juice...

The view from the boat...

Anna looking not too pleased about the whole fish she was given for lunch...

The very sturdy boat dock...

The market we visited; Side had more knock-offs than any other place I've ever been...

But also lots of amazing produce...

So, there are still a few more pictures that I have to get from other people's cameras, but that was the basic run-down and there are still pictures to come from Luxembourg, Brussels and Paris.  I leave you with pictures from Imke's, my roommate, birthday...

Me and Imke on her 23rd birthday with our old roommate Simon...

Me and Declan...

I'm going to Turkey in less than 24 hours!  And since I will not be able to post for a while...and most likely the next time I do post I will have 50 things to post about, I'm going to take the time now to put up the pictures from the last few weeks.....

Okay....first, we went to the European Parliament in Strasbourg a while ago.  I was told that you can't take pictures in the building, so I didn't take my camera, but wish I had because the building is quite amazing (especially in comparison to the UN buildings in Geneva.)  I did however, take some pictures of Strasbourg....

Another astronomical clock....The angels and the figures at the top moved when the clock struck on the hour....

Next....Geneva.  We spent pretty much all our time in Geneva in the UN buildings and so unlike the pictures I have from Strasbourg, there are none of the city....and all of the pictures I do have all look the same.....so here are just two of them....surprisingly (well to me), the vast majority of the UN work is done in New York and the buildings in Geneva are not that big and impressive....

Yesterday was my first rugby experience in Germany.  It was a lot of fun.  I play with the women's team in Freiburg.  We went to Konstanz, which is on the Bodensee and Rhine to play in a tournament.  There were 5 teams there (Munich, Heidelberg, Konstanz, Stuttgart and us).  We played 4 games and won 3 out of the four, putting us in second place behind Heidelberg.  Rugby here is completely different from rugby in the US...all women's teams play 7's and not 15's...because its just not as popular. I actually got pretty beat up yesterday...just in time for the beach in Turkey...but it was so much fun! 

Our team....

They told me this is not the real Rhine....its just the beginning, so its not as big and beautiful as it is farther along....

But I still think it was pretty....

And now a few random shots....

Finally, a pic of the Münster, Frieburg's most famous landmark!!!  I still promise to get more pictures of Freiburg up.....

The Münsterplatz....

And the last picture of the day....

A happy Ashley, proudly displaying the first batch of cookies she has ever made.....  :)