Friday was a pretty relaxed day. Earlier this week I had been invited by one of the neighbors, Wibke, to have coffee with her on Friday morning at 10 while the kids where at Kindergarten. She just had a baby 4 months ago, and she has a son in Gustav's group. After I helped Esther get the kids ready and took Amelie for a walk, I walked over to Wibke's to hang out for a little bit. We just kind of talked about what my plans are while I'm still here in Germany and that sort of thing. She had been an au pair in America, I believe near Philadelphia, when she was in her early 20s, and she's an English teacher here in Germany (at least that's what she was doing before she went on maternity leave). She also told me that she plays with the B team of a women's club not far from here, in a part of Köln called Junkersdorf, and they train twice a week on Monday and Thursday evenings. She invited me to go with her at least once a week so that I can start training and get back into playing, and I think I'm going to take her up on that. I don't have class in the evenings anymore, so that shouldn't be a problem, and if Esther or Olaf are home before she leaves then I can go with her. I'm really excited about the idea of playing again.

Yesterday I played a little bit of soccer in the city, too. A couple of weeks ago I met this guy on the train because I woke him up with the sound of my boots while I was walking to the back of the car, where he was sitting. Ooops. Anyway, we started talking, came to the subject of sports, which of course leads to soccer, and I mentioned that I used to play. He sent me a text on Thursday or Friday of this week asking me if I wanted to meet up with him this weekend and play, so I did. We didn't play for very long because I'm ridiculously out of shape, plus the grass was really long, so my legs were exhausted. Since we were right next to Aachener Weiher we walked over there and hung out at the Kneipe for a little bit. Afterward we were going to check out this Biergarten in Hansaring that he had heard good things about, but he needed to go to his apartment first to put on something warmer because it was starting to get cold. While we were at his apartment he had asked me about California food and what we typically eat that's unique to our region. So I told him about burritos. Then, while I was telling him what's in a burrito, and how much I love breakfast burritos, we both got really hungry. We found some miscellaneous ingredients in his kitchen and I threw together some sauce-like concoction for the spaghetti noodles he had in the cupboard. It was really delicious, actually, and he immediately said that I'm now hired as his cook. The only thing that sucked was that I put chilies in the sauce, and this morning the chili on my fingers still burned when I touched my mouth or my eyes.

Yesterday was also the first meeting of the new test-prep course. Last time I kind of felt like I was more or less in the right spot, maybe slightly below the level of everyone else but fairly equivalent. This time I still feel okay in terms of my abilities, but there are some people who simply do not belong there and have no chance of doing well on this test. We did a reading comprehension exercise, which they give you one hour to do, and it's 30 questions. A significantly large number of them panicked when they were informed that there were only 10 minutes left, and they declared that they could use the whole day to finish this exercise. Really?! Out of the 30 questions, most of the people in the class got less than 20 right, and I think the lowest score was 10. This is one of my strong points, though, so I got 27. Reading and listening are definitely not something I need to stress over when it comes to this test.

Today was a lazy day, because I was so tired from yesterday. I slept until after 10, took a nap between 12:30 and 2, and have done almost nothing else in between. I did, however, go to another neighbor's house this afternoon at 3. It's a friend of Güner's, and she has been in need of a babysitter since her husband works on Berlin during the week and she has no one to take care of the kids when, for example, she has to go to the school in the evening for parent night. Güner had told her about me, and had nothing but good things to say, so this woman (her name is Elvan) asked if it would be possible for me to help her out. I went over to their house today to get to know the family a little bit and so the kids could meet me before I simply show up to take care of them on Tuesday. The kids are a 7 year old girl named Ceylan (pronounced Jaylon) and a 3 year old boy named Kenan. I hung out with them for a little bit, we took a walk so that Ceylan could deliver thank-you cards to the kids in the neighborhood who came to her birthday party last week, and Kenan showed me his cool light-up Spiderman shoes. They were both a little shy and quiet, but that's to be expected. Plus, when I was walking out the door I heard Kenan ask Elvan if he could play soccer with me, which is always a good thing. So I'm going to be there Tuesday evening from 5:30 until probably about 8 or so, and then again on Wednesday from 7 until 8:30 or 9, and then we'll see from there how things go.