what a jam packed day. for starters, i could barely sleep last night, adjusting to the 9-hour difference...waking up suddenly at 3:30am. later on, jumped on the 9am train up to Bielefeld to visit Tanyel...what a great train ride. i love riding the train in europe..despite the kinda icky, rainy day it was, it was so beautiful to ride along the Rheine and pass through places like Cologne and Bonn. I freaked out briefly while changing trains in Mainze as my next train was 20 minutes late...but I wasn't sure of that..and I ran around the place asking people "sprechen zie English?!" with a "neine!" in return most of the time....I finally arrived in northern Germany about 5 hours later to the greeting of Tanyel, whom I haven't seen in FOUR years, now that I think about it. It's amazing...I never thought I'd ever have this opportunity to see him again, in his own country. We went back to his apartment where he cooked me a fantastic meal of duck salad, an eggplant dish and home-made tiramisu...and then we took a nice walk around the city, going up to some fort to get a nice view of the town....a short but pleasant and worthwhile visit. He pointed out old parts of the city that weren't destroyed by WWII...sadly, most of the city center area was destroyed so the architecture there is all very new. It amazes me still how a war that seems so distant in the past and known only to me by history books continues to reverberate in all of Germany. Tanyel mentioned to me how it is only now, with our generation, that the Germans can say that they are German to foreigners without feeling any shame or guilt. I wish we had had more time to just sit down in his living room, sipping wine and enjoying each other's company and conversation....so after all that, took a 7pm train back to Idar-Oberstein...where I got back close to midnight...and now I have to prepare for the long drive over to Prague tomorrow...can't wait. It should be a beautiful drive.

I'm in Idar-Oberstein, Germany right now. oy...I haven't written here in awhile. quick summary before moving onto europe...

fun fun leo party last weekend where all sorts of friends from all sorts of social circles appeared at todd and olke's house. i took lots of pictures but haven't uploaded them yet online..you'll see it soon. took jon out for dinner for his bday at a yummy place on queen anne called sapphire on wednesday...and on friday, headed to george, wa at the gorge to see the area:one concert where moby, outkast, new order, paul oakenfold, timo maas, rhinocerese, the orb and the roots performed/dj'd. went with gary and had an amazing amazing time. saw eugene and party briefly but lost them.

and on saturday, i got on a plane for a long 15-hour journey over to frankfurt where Wil picked me up and took me back to here where he's stationed at the Baumholder U.S. Army Base. what a surreal world this is...not only being in a foreign country but also seeing a military base in another country. There's a whole community here so that one can feel like they're still in the U.S. I couldn't believe how cheap all the food items were in the grocery store...all subsidized by the government. he lives in this amazing apartment in the country that's huge...and the army pays for it. so this is where our tax money goes... Idar-Oberstein is a small conglomeration of several little towns just a little bit west of Frankfurt...quite peaceful actually. I love the view from his balcony, overlooking a bunch of hills with some houses nestled within. Tomorrow, I going to take a really last minute random trip up to Bielefeld where my friend Tanyel is studying law. I met Tanyel the summer of 1997 at summer school and that was the last time I saw him. I'm not going to have that much time with him...only about 5 hours...but it'll be worth it. I would've ended up just sitting in Wil's apartment watching TV or sleeping anyway...might as well make use of that time by....oh...traveling all the way to northern Germany for a day. And then on Tuesday is the long haul road trip (6 hours) to go to Prague, which is my primary reason for coming here in the first place---to attend Peter and Klara's wedding on Wednesday. Quite exciting.

grrr...i hate email viruses. my home account is getting spammed by the latest "W32.Sircam" virus which sends email out to every person in one's address book, randomly attaches a file from someone's computer and says Hi! How are you? I send you this file in order to have your advice. See you later. Thanks" What a dumb message. Of course, I--like many other dumb people--happened to open up the very first one that I got and was suddenly reading someone's cover letter to get an acting gig. That teaches me not to check my email late at night when I could care less about what email I get. Anyhow, I think I'm safe...mostly because, well, my computer's not always online...but I don't know if that means anything. And I'm too cheap to run out and get anti-virus software at this time. i know i know. well, i guess i'll find out from friends soon enough if indeed, i'm sending out similar ridiculous messages to them and they're suddenly reading some psychology lab i did in college. furthermore, i think i'm safe because the virus supposedly resides in your recycle bin if it's found its way into your computer...and my recycle bin is clean.

getting really excited about going to europe. apparently, i'll be driving through this part of the czech republic called the West Bohemian Spas where there are literally hundreds of spas all over the place....hmmm...massage? anyhow, i have so much to do before i go...like...PACK...and prepare for MOVING when i come back. ack!

i finally found a place to live. after a year of living with a roommate, i'm venturing back into the world of living by myself. i think i read a statistic somewhere saying how more and more people in america are living by themselves now as compared to a few years ago. anyhow, i'm really excited about my new home...it's one of four units in an old house built in the early 1900's (that's old for seattle). the landlord is really nice and awesome, which is so important to me. i've got one month to move now...can't wait.

last weekend, i went on the salsa cruise with a few friends..and it was so much better than last year: bigger boat, more people that knew how to dance, etc. I absolutely love the salsa community here...I'm determined to get better.

saw my surgeon the other week and she removed the surgical tape surrounding my incisions. i'm recovering well though every once in awhile, i feel a small pull in my navel muscles. i feel so lazy as i cannot do anything until august...can't lift anything more than 15 lbs., can't work out, etc. i'm so out of shape now.

last night, i hung out with my friend alex and saw startup.com...whoa. it's a documentary following the lives of 2 guys who got into the whole dot-com boom, succeeded immensely and then crashed harder than they ever imagined. i really enjoyed this movie...i'm sure the producers of the documentary had no idea what kind of drama could happen when they first started...and all sorts of things happened...from the CEO meeting bill clinton to one guy having to fire his best friend and co-CEO from the company only months before it goes under. i would love to see the reactions of friends of mine who went through all of this in the last 2 years...traveling to meet VC's, staying up all night programming and eating pizzas, etc.

i forgot to mention that my friend gary is back in town! i'm so excited! he was the only person i knew in seattle when i first moved here as we had studied abroad together in spain...then last summer, he decided to move down to florida for a year just to check it out...and he finally moved back to seattle last week. i'm determined to hang out with him more this time.

ah, the weather has been absolutely beautiful. to celebrate independence day, james invited me to go sailing on a boat with his friend goldie from work, her boyfriend and some other people down in tacoma--my first time on an actual sailboat. we went down there around noon and were on the boat until midnight--->see my pictures. mount rainier looked incredible down there and the air show was tons of fun to see. i just sat back, soaking in the rays and enjoyed the gorgeous day.

i'm starting to feel much better and am able to move around a bit more. i even made it to salsa class with jon on thursday. friday, i saw the symphony again where bobby mcferrin was the guest conductor...enjoyed it very much. at one point, he asked the audience "are there any sopranos in the house who can sing bach's ave maria?", and 4 women leapt up on stage...and bobby proceeded to vocalize the background as these 4 women burst out into a gorgeous rendition of this aria. i was mucho impressed. and on saturday evening, headed down to pier 62/63 with eugene, christina, robert and some other people to see Buena Vista Social Club presents Ibrahim Ferrer...great Cuban, salsa, rumba, etc. music. afterwards, we headed over to wild ginger to get some late night munchies...here are some pictures i took along the way.

i decided last week that i'm definitely going to head over to prague in august to attend my friend peter's wedding. i'm incredibly excited as my bestest friend from kansas, sara, will be there for a chamber music festival. not only will i probably be able to hear her play violin but i get to celebrate my birthday with her and wil in prague (my bday is only 3 days after the wedding). now i have to find a good plane ticket and start booking the hotel....

i'm alive!!! i survived the surgery!!! my recovery hasn't been too horrible. the procedure went well despite some complications---it was only supposed to be 45 minutes and it turned into 2.5 hours...giving my parents quite the scare in the waiting room. my lil' incident in hong kong had actually caused a fairly large gall stone to slip out and lodge itself in the bile duct, making it difficult to remove the gall bladder initially. what perfect timing...that gall stone could have started up an infection and caused some serious damage. so my surgery came at the perfect time, removing what we were trying to avoid. it took me a really long time to wake up from the anesthesia and i didn't get home until the late afternoon. when we got back, i found these beautiful white roses from meg sitting at my doorstep..what a sweetheart. since coming back, things haven't been too bad with the exception of yesterday morning when i actually threw up bile. i didn't know that was possible....very disturbing. i've been slowly walking around the apartment today, with the help of some very strong painkillers. I'm hoping to take my parents down to the Market today because it's such a beautiful weekend...and olke's having a bar-b-q because his dad is in town.

The night my parents came in, we had a dinner with some friends that they've never met: eugene, eric, christina, ryan and james. We ate at Top Gun, the usual, and had a fabulous dinner. it was nice for my parents to finally meet all these people.

i wonder when i'll be able to return to work. the only pain right now is from any activity using my stomach muscles. it feels like a combination of getting hit in the stomach really hard and having done 2000 situps. plus, i get a little whoozy from the painkillers. my diet has been rather mild so i have yet to test what i can or cannot eat.