"Hier ist Farrah." "Wie hießt du?" "Farrah." "Wie?" "Farrah." "Woher kommst du?" "Die USA." "Ahhh, ok."

     Thursday was a bit of a wash of a day. I ended up skipping my language course because I napped right through it. Fortunately, Rosie is in my class so she let me know what I missed. I took a four hour nap and it was glorious.

     Friday was Ben's (Wales) birthday, and he was having a BBQ outside Inter 2 (his dorm), so I joined him, Jenny, Toni Lee, Merri, Matt, Clare, and a couple of others. We sat out there until around 7:30pm. I went home, ate, and then met up with Kalle. Kalle and I enjoyed a bottle of wine on the river before we went and met up with everyone else at a pub where Ben's birthday celebrations continued. I didn't get in bed until nearly 5am!

    Saturday was more calm than usual. I skyped with my Mom for an hour (Hey Mom! And I know you're reading this too, Dad) and we got to catch up on life. Early that evening, Clare and Marcella wanted to have a BBQ on the Rhein, so we made plans to meet up at 5:15pm at the Hbf to get some groceries and then head to the river. When I got to the Hbf, there were police officers EVERYWHERE. There were at least 30 police cars, officers in their regular uniforms, officers in civilian clothes with ear pieces, and then police officers in riot gear! Some of them even had cameras on poles so they could see further into the crowds. It was just insane. I've never seen that many total police officers the entire time I've been in Germany, and then there they all were, surrounding our Hbf. There was a soccer match of a Mainz team in Frankfurt that evening, so we figured that the police officers were there for crowd control when all of the fans returned to Mainz. I find it comical that the only times I've seen a large group of police officers is for crowd control after a soccer match (if you remember, I also saw a large group of them on my way to Rüdesheim because there was a big soccer match that day). The riot gear and the officers in civilian clothes really just put it over the edge, too. I'm also surprised by the number of female police officers here. From what I've seen, the male to female police officer ratio is fairly even. Anyways, our little BBQ on the river was quite lovely. We sat out there for a couple of hours until the sun went down and we got cold. I went home and got to bed rather early. I was exhausted though, so I needed to catch up on some sleep.

    I don't have any plans for today, aside from some homework. Hopefully something ends up happening. We'll see.