Motrin is an addiction. Probably not the best thing for me, but there are ceratinly worse things.

One of the bones in my hand is broken. The fracture didn’t show up on the x-rays they took last week, but a very annoying MRI today did show it. The doctors keep giving me weird looks as to why I waited 6 weeks to figure this out. I don’t know. Monday I’ll have the answer to the next big question: what are they going to do about it?

Geez, that was harder than I thought. I don’t think I’ve done any creative writing since maybe sophomore year of high school and I really don’t like it very much any more. I just had to write a (very) short story for my Irish Short Stories class and it took forever. Maybe that’s saying something about my writing skills in general at the moment…

I know it’s been a while, but here is the lastest installment in the Kyle saga. He is a self-proclaimed drug user, and abuser, and pot head, and we’ve seen plently of evidence in the last few months to believe that’s completely true. His experience with drugs, however, does not seem to extend to buying them, only using them. In a city like Frankfurt- the drug capitol of Germany we’ve been told – pot and hash are for sale on practically every corner and all of us have been offered drugs at some point. All of us except Kyle, apparently. Which is funny, because I don’t think I come across as much of a drug user, and I’m certainly not. But anyhow, there was another comical night when Kyle was trying to buy hash from some Turkish guys at a Döner Kebap stand who definately had it, just wouldn’t sell it to him. And he was so pissed off after that night that he must have gone out a couple days later determined to buy some. He found some guy on the street somewhere who said he had hash and led him into a dark alley. The whole time the guy was acting really shady and nervous and he said there were police around so they had to be quick. He showed Kyle some stuff, which he said he couldn’t see very well. So Kyle paid the guy 30 euros and brought it home. Back in his room he took a look at it and thought it looked a little funny. He smoked a little and said it didn’t get him very high. So he called Dave and Justin over to check it out. The minute they walked into his room it was obvious that Kyle had bought a pile of granite rocks and pebbles. He bought 6 grams of rock. And paid 30 euros for it. And smoked it.

As predicted, Christmas was fun, but not at all like Christmas really. On the 26th, Aaron Heckleman came through for part of the day. It was fun to see him and hang out for a bit, even though there wasn’t much to do around here because the entire city was still closed down for Christmas. But he did get to order a beer from McDonalds, which made his day. He was supposed to spend New Year’s Eve with us, but unfortunately for him, that didn’t work out and he was in the middle of nowhere.
My parents flew into Frankfurt on the morning of the 31st. I spent the day walking around with them and again everything in Frankfurt was closed after about 2 pm. We went out to dinner and then they headed to their hotel and left me free to celebrate New Year’s. Dave and I bought some fireworks (which they sell in department stores here) and went down to the river around midnight because we’ve heard that’s the best thing that happens in Frankfurt all year. And that just might be true. There are thousands of people along the banks of the Main, and though there’s no official firework display everybody has their own and there are fireworks everywhere for 45 minutes straight. It’s pure insanity: drunk people everywhere with explosives that they can’t or don’t care to aim away from the other people. There were big party boats on the river and people were shooting fireworks at the boats. I don’t know how people don’t die during this every year, or at the very least get seriously injured. That was all pretty crazy, but the most entertaining part of the night, by far, was mischief with fireworks in Dave’s kitchen after we got back. I have some really good short videos of that, and some day if you’re lucky maybe you’ll get to see them.

Do you ever feel like you just need a break from life? That’s the way I felt pretty much all week. In other news, I got hit on by a man at a bus stop yesterday; that sucked. The Christmas market is open here in Frankfurt and that’s one of my favorite things about Germany. I intend to waste many an hour just walking around there, watching the people, inhaling the wonderful smells that come from every stand. The whole pedestrian zone downtown is decorated for the holidays and when I can get down there on a nice day with a camera, I will take lots of pictures. There are a few more trips in the works here, including a seminar in Mainz next weekend. But for the most part the plans are under wraps at the moment so I’ll let you all know later. My dad is coming back through town once or twice in the next couple weeks and my sister is coming over in about 2 weeks also. It will be good to see both of them.
Ok, it’s time for me to get down to work. My first assignment for any of my classes is due on Tuesday morning. All 500 words of it! I really can’t complain about the workload for classes here. Now, to the writing.