The Perfect Week

You ever have one of those weeks where absolutely nothing went wrong? Where everyone was nice to you, everything was orderly and you had no longing for anything else to happen? No, you haven't? Yikes...well just bare with me for a few minutes as I explain mine since I think I just had one of them. Plus, you can always live vicariously through me and pretend...I dunno, just trying to help you all sleep at night.  Now I know I'm speaking a bit prematurely since the day isn't over yet, but I honestly can't foresee anything going wrong at this point. Let's just hope karma doesn't come to bite me in the pie hole.

So in case one would argue with me about the characterizations of an awesome week, I'm going to identify my own. If you don't like them, then clearly you've never had an awesome week before...or you're just a hater.

The requirements for an awesome week are (in no particular order of importance):
1. Alcohol
2. Quality Time with Friends/Family
3. Deep Conversation
4. Engaging in a Passion
5. New Experiences
6. Relaxation
7. Good Weather

Let me preface this by saying: the requirement of "Alcohol" was probably fulfilled every day of this week. But for the sake of clarity I won't add it to every. single. day. Don't want you judging me or anything.

One more preface. For the purposes of this week, it must start on Monday. No questions, it just has to.

Day One: Relaxation

Definitely a Monday relaxation day. Language school has become rather routine but there's still one thing that I'm not adjusted to and that's the pendulum of a schedule they've got us swinging around on. One week it's MF (1:30-5:00) TWR (8:45-1:00) the next week it's switched. Whatever, such a small thing I'm not going to delve into it. Anyway, this week it was MF afternoons so I spent Monday morning doing things such as, pretending to do work, pretending to think of something to blog about, pretending to wake up early, pretending to work out like I should have and pretending to cook food for the day ahead.Preeetty efficient morning, of course.

This was followed briskly by school, which went by rather quickly and effortlessly. If there's anything really eventful that happened that day, it's all a blur now. I kid you not, I went back home shortly after language school and did some more pretending. Like, pretending to stay awake after school, pretending to care that I had homework, pretending that food is important and pretending that I cared that I was only watching television shows in German.

Maybe I should change the requirement to "pretending" but that would have existential undertones that I'm not getting into right now.

Day Two: New Experiences

Tuesday was one of those travelling days that I adore so much. As part of the program, we had to go to an orientation about intercultural communication or something. Didn't pay a lick of attention but there was an interesting portion where the German presenter said that she would call a person of my complexion a "colored person" not a "black person." We'll get back to that later.

No the important part of the travelling day was that we went to Bonn. I'd been to Bonn once before but not for a long enough time to experience the city as fully as I wanted to. This time we had a wonderful tour guide in the form of Jesse, one of the fellow PPPers who'd been to Bonn the previous summer. Besides hanging out in the city, and exploring the sights over a span of four hours, we also stopped at seven different places to eat. Now there was like nine or ten of us so it's not THAT bad because we all didn't eat at each place..but I could only chuckle to myself that it has to be an American thing to see a food that appeals to you and spontaneously buy it.


Gotta love the red, white and blue.

Beethoven Immortalized

Beethoven's House

Uni Bonn

Thought it was worth a shot.

Shopping Strip Where We Found Droves of Food

Day Three: Alcohol/Quality Time/Deep Conversation/Passion

Maybe the best day of the week, but I'm not sure, it's got plenty of challengers coming after it. It started bright and early at 2:30 a.m. when my best of friends so conveniently scheduled our Fantasy Football Draft (thanks guys again for that). But of course since I'm in love with football and everything competitive I couldn't leave the drafting thing undone. Didn't matter that I had class at 8:45 the next day, I was drafting Cam Newton (tune in to the Cam Newton Show very shortly) no matter the cost.

I suppose the "deep conversation" aspect could come into play during the draft part, after all, who doesn't have a little bit of fun chatting it up while drafting Cam, AP, Marshawn Lynch, Percy Harvin, and others?

Then came the really cool part after school and catching a quick snooze (since I'd been dozing off during class) we met up at my PPPler home girl Lara's guest mother's house for an awesome dinner prepared by yours truly and said home girl. Cooking is a love of mine so it's always nice to just have a chance to get fancy in the kitchen. With the entertainment and groceries provided by Gaurav the amazing conversation starter and Michelle the meal saver it was pretty amazing. Chicken Fajitas, Spanish Style Rice, Veggies and Wine galore. I'm not sure it could get any better.

More on "deep conversations" though. Remember that silly comment that lady said in Day Two? Well we had a conversation with a Lara's host lady and she seemed to agree that the "politically correct" term would be "farbige/colored" not "schwarz/black" in Germany and I thought it was very surprising to hear that but I suppose it explained a bit. Like how in the world you could get away with saying "colored" in Germany.

Certainly something I'll have to delve into deeper during my trip.

Day Four: 

We went back to Bonn this day with language school to check out the "Haus der Geschichte" a museum chronicling Germany's history from WWII on. I have nothing negative to say about the museum, it was actually pretty awesome. But for this, I'd say pictures are worth more than words.

 Day Five: Family 

Another day of pretending to be doing something throughout the day and then class in the afternoon. Then the fun stuff, a train ride that landed me smack dab in Frankfurt am Main, perhaps my favorite part of Germany, to come visit family for a birthday party. My uncle, aunt and her brother stayed up for hours discussing the gentle treading that Germans do when they're discussing race and it was really great to be back at the house I spent over a month at last summer.

Day Six: Alcohol/Friends/Family/Conversation/Passions/Experiences/Relaxation/Good Weather

That leads us to today, I've been scrambling around preparing for the party but I've got a moment's respite to finish this up. Perhaps the latter part I didn't do as much justice as I should have but whatever, hopefully I'll have something great to report after partying it up German style with the family. Can't say I would have it any other way. Hopefully it'll be the perfect conclusion to the self-titled perfect week.

Be careful though, don't think you can follow these steps exactly and have a perfect week. These things come with practice. Gotta have plenty of bad weeks before you can even imagine the perfect one.