Schlechtes Wetter

So May started out beautiful (sunny, mid 70’s) but the last two weeks have been terrible. It’s rained almost every day and has been unusually cold. It seems like whenever the weather fluctuates like that I get sick and indeed I’ve been fighting a nasty cold for the last few weeks. At the same time I’ve had a strange pain in my side for a few weeks. Normally it’s been pretty mild but one day a couple of weeks ago it was unbearable. It felt like every step I took someone was punching me in the side as hard as they could. I was a little freaked out, especially after I checked online and the only thing that matched my symptoms was a kidney stone. Luckily the guy that lives next door to me studies medicine and is almost a Dr. At first he said it did sound like a stone but after he did a few tests trying to locate exactly where the pain was he said it was definitely something else -- especially since the pain wasn’t moving but staying in the exact same place. He said it could be any number of things -- most likely a muscle or vein got pinched or caught on a rib somehow. Apparently it’s nothing serious just annoying because he said it could last four or five weeks. So needless to say, between the weather, my cold, and my side pain, I haven’t done much in the last couple of weeks -- and certainly no traveling. Although I guess I did pick a good time to get sick. I’m hoping the weather will be nicer and I’ll be feeling better next week so that I can do some more traveling.

In other news, the World Cup (Fi Fa WM) starts in a week and a half and I’m curious to see what it will be like here during it. It has been hyped up like nothing I’ve ever seen before. It’s all people talk about and they keep telling me that it’s crazy here whenever there’s a world cup, but when the world cup is actually in germany it’s going to be completely insane. I have no idea what I’m in for but I’ll be sure to report. Fyi, the US is in group F with Italy, Ghana, and the Czech Republic, and Germany is in group A with Poland, Equador, Costa Rica. Should be exciting. By the way I am actually starting to enjoy Soccer a little bit. It’s more fun when you watch it with fans who live and die by it. But I do miss American sports... no ESPN here just CNN international sports. All they cover is Soccer, Golf, Cricket, and Tennis. Over here nobody cares at all about American sports. By the way, the other night I was talking about The Barry Bonds scandal and Babe Ruth and nobody knew who either one was. I asked about 10 people that night and no one had ever heard of Babe Ruth. But, to be fair, I could only name maybe 4 or 5 Soccer players.