So, this might be a few weeks behind schedule, but it’s once more blogging time! “American in Montpellier” doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense right now, but... Deal with it. I’m not feeling clever enough to come up with another blog title right now.

Anyways, so, summer trip to Germany to improve my German and see Manuel! AKA, Emily wants to avoid the real world for a while longer... Either version works pretty well :)
So, I left for Germany on July 5th. Gotta say, Aer Lingus is wonderfully cheap, but not really the best airline ever. But, I got to Ireland without incident (Finally! Ireland!), and then off to Frankfurt. It totally felt like cheating to break the trip into 5 and 3-hour flights, instead of 9 hours straight. Much easier that way. Manuel met me at the airport which was exciting and a little terrifying, and we headed home to Heidelberg.

Our first few days were very lazy, with some walking around the city and spending time with his family. On Friday the 8th, we went to Mannheim to borrow a boat from his father (which he had made), and went boating on the Rhine!

But first I had to play on the trampoline with Juri. God, I love those things.

The Rhine goes right by Mannheim, so all we had to do was put the boat on a little cart-thing, and walk it down to the river! We definitely got some weird looks, though.

Heading up river with a motor! He taught me how to control the boat which was cool, although kinda scary. Although it makes your hand go numb rather soon. Also, what’s with the coal plant? I thought Germany was all for clean energy? Or, does that only count for nuclear

Manu driving :)

It was apparently all too easy, so the boat decided to start leaking. A lot. So, we had to try and sop some of it up with a towel and wring it out. But, we didn’t sink so it worked out all right.

Pretty..... We went to an island, and camped for the night :)

We got back on Saturday afternoon, went to dinner with his Aunt, Uncle and brother that evening. It was cool, because, although I couldn’t really participate in their conversation, I could follow it (mostly) which was a nice improvement :)

p.s. My apologies if the photos aren't great - I don't have a fast connection, so I had to reduce the size of the pictures so it wouldn't take all day to load