Yeah for Country Music

I know I have been terribly negligent in my posts since Christmas break. However, I no longer have any excuse as the internet is finally working in my room, woohoo. So as I sit here listening to the Windows Media Player Country station I will give a brief recap of what has happened this semester in reverse order.
Last night Avi and I went to see "The Barber of Seville" at the English National Opera with my music class. The costuming was excellent; waistcoats, harlequins, robe d'anlgais, it was beautiful. The opera was very entertaining as well despite being unable to understand them even though they were singing in English. That's opera for you.
Last weekend Avi, Widge, Rali and I took one of our famous 48 hour trips to Frankfurt. Where we landed there was about 6 inches of snow, joy! We found our youth hostel but were surprised that it did not look at all like the picture on the websight. After dropping our stuff we headed off to wander the city. We started with a vast outdoor market that ran along the river. There was an awesome jacket that was made out of draperyish fabric with a faux fur trim that I really liked but it was 50 euros so I passed it by. Maybe I'll make something similar for myself, I'm thinking green. Well continuing, we were rather cold as it had been snowing lightly the entire time so we found a cafe to get something warm to drink in before continuing our wanderings. After this we stumbled on an early civilizations museum that had a beautiful collection of greek, roman, mesopotamian and early germanic artifacts. The roman stuff was cool because it was the artifacts from the roman presence in germany. We ended up staying there until it closed at 5, just in time to swing over to a nearby church for their 5 o'clock english service. It was the most contemporary catholic service I have been to and, except for the eucharist and a few traditions I wasn't familer with, I felt quite comfortable and very welcome which was nice since we had been in the air during church that morning. When the service ended we wandered a bit more and found the building that had been on the hostel's websight, it was the government building, one of the few remaining prewar buildings, go figure. We soon decided to head back and crash at the hostel so that we could get out at a decent time to Georgenborn the next day. Georgenborn is where Rali used to live when she was little so she got to see all of the places she remembered. Just before we left she went to see her old kindergarten and found that the italien restaurant she used to go to was open. We proceeded to enjoy an wonderful meal before heading back to Frankfurt and the Airport.
Four weeks before Frankfurt we took the train to Stratford-Upon-Avon and stayed at a quaint little bed and breakfast. We saw Shakespeares grave, his house and found a wonderful farmers market. Well, I found the farmers market and proceeded to get bread, cheese, heather honey and homemade apple cider to surprise the rest of the group who had gone to the butterfly farm. We were supposed to go to Warwick Castle on Sunday but lack of regular trains made that less than desirable due to the little time we would have there. So we shall do that some other time.
Hmm... memory is running out of things to add. Avi has started chronicling our smoker moments in comic form which you can get to via our joint blog smokezone.blogspot.com
Oh yeah, Vala is coming to visit me in may, woohoo. Granted it isn't final but I am still quite excited as I haven't seen him since I left in August. I get to show him around London and various other places and it gives me a travel companion for my end of the year travel. And I've just missed him terribly. Mom, dad, I've missed you too but I've seen you and will be seeing you again in two weeks. Well off to aerobic.