I like Dresden.

Today I wrote the rest of my lesson plan.

Pretty simple.

Hopefully not TOO simple.

Then I went to church and got there on time and a random man sat next to me on the tram because he didn't want to fall over on the left turn which he explained in English after I said that I spoke only a little bit of English and didn't understand (someone tried to talk to me last week on the way to church but didn't continue when I said I didn't speak Deutsch). When he asked, I told him I was going to church and managed to get across that it was a church in an apartment. He was going to the AC/DC concert.

And then church was rocking awesome as per usual and all 5 "members" of us were there and I stayed after Ke and Dominic left and we played guitar--meaning, this time, that I actually played guitar. I never noticed before that it has plastic strings! They work pretty well.

AND Priska let me help her clean up so I got to dry dishes which was just so homey and I started telling her random stories and stuff just because that's what you do when you're drying dishes for someone.

PS: Dinner was peppers stuffed with rice and tomatoes stuffed with meatloaf! Delicious!

And on the way back I saw a dad and little boy playing at the fountain at Albertzplatz--walking along the edge and the boy jumping like he was going to jump in, but the dad basically swinging him towards the water and away. And I also saw a couple women who were speaking heavily accented Argentinian Spanish--I thought it was Portuguese for a little while.

And I thought, I love living in a city.

I love seeing people from all over the world.

I love seeing little kids riding their bikes without pedals and getting picked up to push the buttons on trams and smiling at strangers from their strollers.

I love seeing the old ladies with their hair dyed crazy colors (think purple and bright blue) and I love seeing the older couples where one moves forward to get the tram door open and make sure the tram waits until the other one gets on--and the older people who still have it totally together and dress all nice--and the little old ladies in their headcoverings doing their shopping.

I love never knowing what language you're going to hear in the elevator (I mean, it IS the international dorm).

I love having all the signs in a different language that I'm slowly starting to understand.

I love living on the 13th floor of a building in a room that faces West--the sunsets are unparalleled.

I love seeing fireworks in the distance on weekends.

I love shopping for under 20 euro(s) a week and being able to carry it all back.

I love looking at amazing old architecture as part of the daily grind.

I love that they grow ROSES EVERYWHERE. Forget boring old grass, America, mow once a month and invest in roses!!

I love hang-drying my clothes--now that we have fabric softener.

I love cooking random stuff. And trying new foods.

I love having bakeries on every corner that sell the most amazing bread...maybe not in the world (my research is not conclusive) but in all the places I've ever traveled! (I'm still partial to Mom's wheat bread though...too much sentimental value to be beat...and when it's straight out of the bread machine with some homemade strawberry jelly....mmm, too much flavor to be beat!).

So, to sum up, I love living in a city, and specifically, I love living in this city, right now, in June, while the roses are blooming and it veers from 80/90 degrees to 50/60 degrees.

Life is good.

Satan's bad.

God's the best.

:-D