Busy with life

Meine Damen und Herrn-

Its been a while, hasn't it? I've been busy getting back into the swing of every day life here, so I haven't had time to post in a while. These two weeks have actually been pretty slow, as far as school is concerned. The entire 11th class is doing a Praktikum (something like a mini internship/shadowship) starting next week and going until the end of January, so these two weeks in between have kind of been do-nothing weeks. We recieved our grades in all of our classes, and unsurprinsingly mine where considerably lower than the ones I usually recieve in American, but higher than I expected in some cases. I got a '2' in art, which is the numeric equivilant of a 'B', but not quite. Here, a 'C' or '3' is actually average, not a '1' (or 'A'). I was actually at the top end of my art class, which was gratifying. I also managed a '2-' in Religion, which was equally as gratifying.

Judo started up again last week, and we've wasted no time getting back up to full speed. Steve, you asked how good I was at judo now in your last comment. Well, I threw 25 people in 30 seconds last night. The average was 15 in 30 seconds, if that gives you any idea. I have a tournament coming up this Sunday, and I'll see what I can do about getting video. Uploading video onto this blog is actually quite difficult, while the internet here isn't all that fast, so I'll post a link to the club website, where video will probably be posted.

Last Sunday I hung out with some other people from the Baptist Church, and that was pretty cool. I finally got to go the the 'Junge Stunde' or Youth Program of the church as well. Needless to say, it was quite small, but that made for a very personal atmosphere that I enjoyed. We talked and played Jenga and ate. It was all very easy-going and relaxed. There's some sort of gathering of the Youth from my church and a few others going on tonight, but its not looking like I'll be able to make it. Moritz's friend Jan is having a birthday party tonight and Moritz said I should come along, so I'll probably end up doing that.

Nothing much else to report. Been playing through the Prince of Persia series in my spare time, gearing up for the arrival of my copy of the fourth installment. I'll be sure to post pictures of the tournament and my Praktikum when I have them. Here's the link to the club videos of the last tournament:

http://www.staderjudoka.de/videos/index.php

I'm in the first and the fourth. The man I'm fighting is named Mirko, he's one of the club black belts- good fighter, very funny, and generally a cool guy. I loose both of the matches, I believe, but I won two others against other people, so its no big thing. Hope everything is going well over there. Leave a comment if you have the time.

-Elliot P.