Radfahren

Apparently I should remember that it is not a good idea for me to drink a lot of caffeinated tea before bed since it is now 1:30 am and I am not even remotely sleepy. Also, I shouldn't start watching Season 1 of Twin Peaks (which I have never seen before) right before bed. Probably if it had been in German I would have fell asleep a long time ago.

The exciting news of today was that I bought a bike. A Trek 3900 hardtail mountain bike. It cost €349, but I think it will be well worth it. I was so excited that I decided to go for a ride and ended up riding for six hours and about 50 miles. Unfortunately, it has been a month since I have ridden a bike so now I am a little sore from sitting on a bike seat. There's a Radwanderweg that passes through Ilmenau and goes all the way to Weimar and a little beyond, as you can see from the map. I rode to Kranichfeld, had some lovely German Pflaumkuchen and then rode back. It was a lovely day, probably the nicest weather we've had. Good thing I didn't have to work.

Afterwards, I was laying around in the apartment and the doorbell rang. I answered the phone thing and a random English voice came over the intercom. It so completely floored me that I didn't know what to do. It turned out that it was another English Teaching Assistant from London and his Betreeungslehrerin. I had written him an e-mail, but he never replied. I forgot that I put my address down so I was completely freaked out for a bit that he knew where I lived. They came in and we talked for a bit. Apparently he has nowhere to live and they had spent the entire day looking at apartments. He seems like a nice guy. I think he is quite a bit younger than me (most of the British ETAs are only 19 or 20, but that's fine with me. It will be nice to have someone to hang out with. I really enjoy hanging out with Achim around the apartment at night, but he's always so exhausted from this super intense course he is taking that he doesn't want to go out at night or anything.

I was going to go start looking around for part-time job opportunities and visit the people at the university today - but it was such a gorgeous day that I decided to take advantage of it. Who knows when it will be this nice again? Of course, now that I gave in and bought an umbrella, I'm sure it will be gorgeous every day.