Its getting close to midnight. But i had sooo much to write about today. sigh. here it is in dotpoints (please ignore spelling errors..i am writing by the light of the screen - room mates...)
- Caught the tram to heidelberg at 8.30AM. only weird people are up at 8.30am on Sundays in Germnay.
-met Vitali at the station. Then he took me on an awesome tour of heidelberg for 8 hoursl it was amazing. A city in a valley, with a river, and lots of old buildings. What more coould one want? We went to the Philosphers path, saw a house where the person is in a secret society (how exciting!), crosed the aptly named "old bridge". wandered the cobblestoned paths. went up to the castle (took the stairs), looked in a church (whilst the service was on), had a coffee at Witali's fav cafe, walked passed shops (all closed on sunday) and Witali gave me some great info on the area and german history. He also has a good sense of humour (which is clever when you can make jokes in another language). So many of the facts about black birds and metal pipes i know to be false. Had mexican for lunch (traditional german...). Everyone here has german flags hanging up. I found out this is only during the soccer, because when th soccer isnt on, handing up flags has bad conentations linking to WWII. I thought that was interesting. Thy are obviously trying to get their moneys worth from the few weeks world cup is on! Then after walking for 4 hours i said good bye and headed back to mannheim.
- it seemded i had boarded the tram-spotters dream tram on the way home. There were men in fields taking photos of it, and some getting off to take pics then jumping back on...very funny. I got a pic to in case i ever want to take up the noble hobby that is locomotive watching.
-got back to my hotel room and met my roommate. Nice to have company, sad to lose my space. I was meant to do washing, but we went to watch the world cup instead. So glad we did. The clerk (Alex - he will be my friend on the friendly clerks list) told us to go to the old ice hockey stadum. Cost = 3.5 euro and my beloved pump drink bottle. oh well. The experience was worth it. The noise was amazing. They all knew chants, and different hand clapping routines clapclapclapclapclapclapARMSINTHEAIR. That was my favourite. Then every goal - the roar was amazing. Beer splashed in the air. electric vibe! Even the replays of the goals got cheers. Beckham got boos. I laughed. Even more funny was when we left. the celebrations continued. I joined in to try and get some people going - it didnt take much. Then the cars started appearing, a constant stream past our hotel of pople honking their horns and shouting and waving flags. They were driving to the centre of town where everyone celebrates. This went on for 40 mins at least before we had to leave again for our welcome dinner. Im sure it went much longer than that (some cars will still driving around when we arrived back at 11pm..)
- Before we left i put on a load of wash - 5euro. ouch.
- dinner was aweesome. The company, and the buuffet. I finally at sourkrout - welcome to germany.I was a little (well maybe a lot) hyperactive. Everything was funny. I met another girl from uni who is hilarious and has very similar sense of humour (and tastes - eg. gelati - so i took a group of them to a gelati shop afterwards). Also met a guy from india, and a girl from germany, and two guys from norway who i think thought i was crazy. Especially when sarah and i started talking about seeing hannah montanta the movie...hehehehe. Michael the guy leading the program is also very funny. Im glad people have a sense of humour. Also, anothr bonus, the casee study is a group project - WOOHOO. Awesome.
- got home (after gelati). Then had to put my wash in teh dryer. Took me ages to get the machine open, funny since i had told Alex in the afternoon that i knew how to use a machine!
- now its waaaaaaaaaay past my bedtime.

I really havent been able to do today justice. Hopefully some of the pics on facebook help.

I'll keep you posted!