Rachel’s Red Button

So my dad convinced me to try to plant some of the basil I bought at the market place yesterday. He says it sprouts really easily and then I’ll have a fresh basil plant. I’m not sure how successful this will be and my room smells like basil now. Not so bad at the moment, but I can see myself getting sick of it before too long. We shall see what happens. The next plant issue is what to do with all of my plants when I leave in a couple months. I’m not sure if anyone will want them, or if I should just leave them in the park to fend for themselves.

It’s amazing how quickly things can turn around. What started off as a pretty terrible week suddenly seems much much better. And I get to hang out with my dad for the afternoon tomorrow as well, which I’m looking forward to. Now if I can just manage to get a sushi dinner out of it life will be perfect…

Perhaps those of you from Houston (or at least my area of Houston) will appreciate this:

If it belonged to anyone but Jim Goode I would have to protest it’s existence.

Is there something in the water in the States these days? Why are my friends getting married? Between now and August three of my friends are getting married. In their defense, they are all at least a year or two older than I am, and for the most part I think that they are responsible and ready for marriage. But at the same time it’s a very scary thing. People, in two cases, that I grew up with are getting married. And I’m so far from being ready for that. But I guess everyone is different and I’m excited for all of them.

Alright, I admit, I can be very irresponsible. And it seems that I’ve had more moments of irresponsibility recently than usual. I realized yesterday that somewhere during my crazy night out on Saturday I managed to lose my cell phone. I rarely use it and it’s mostly a hassle so I’m not terribly distraught over this, but it’s still annoying. The phone did have moments of being very useful.

Thanks to Roman, who usually is a pretty frustrating human being, I now know how to get to the Taunus- the forrested hill region just outside of Frankfurt. I’ve been trying to figure it out for months, and he made the mistake of trying to talk me into going up there with him and telling me how to take the train to get there. The next day I woke up to find out that classes were cancelled for a national holiday and decided to use my suddenly free day to do some hiking. It also somehow turned out to be a day with beautiful weather so it was perfect. I chose a trail and set off and before too long managed to lose the marked trail I had been following and end up on an unmarked trail. I had no map and no idea where I was going so when I came across a marked trail with people on it I decided to just pick a direction and follow it to the end, wherever that may be. Luckily the trail came out of the forest not too far from where I had started, though I didn’t realize it at the time. But there was a bus stop on the road so I took the bus to somewhere it met up with the train and was on my way back to Frankfurt. It was a very enjoyable afternoon despite, or perhaps because of, getting lost and I’m very much looking forward to going back, hopefully with a map.

I really should quit going to my classes. I either can’t find them, or they’re cancelled. So far this week I’ve successfully been to 1 out of 4 classes. So I’m off to see if my afternoon class is actually going to meet.