Hey!

The family I'm staying with is incredible. They are so nice and generous and treat me basically like one of the family. They have been feeding me all my meals and even took us out to a biergarten last night (aka beer garden if you couldnt translate that one). Antonia is a 7 year old girl who speaks only the english she learns in school (think core french... counting, days of the week, that kind of thing) and what Steph has taught her in the last month, but she's lots of fun. The weather has been really hot and sunny since I've gotten here so pretty much every day we go swimming in their 'pond' (it's a swimming pool in their backyard that they built to look like a pond). I'm hoping she learns while I'm here so I can see. So far it's just sort of slithering along the floor.

Steph and I spend most of the day hanging out and taking care of the kids, but a couple of nights ago they drove us to the train station and we went into Stuttgart (about 10 minutes away) for the evening. We didn't really know our way around, but we found a busker (speaking all german) and then just went to a bar/patio and had a raddler (beer mixed with 7up I think... kind of strange, but not bad). Today Steph got the afternoon off so we could go explore Ludwigsburg (where she lives). We were going to go to the Ludwigsburg castle (apparently pretty famous) but we were too late for the only english tour, so we're going to go on the weekend. Instead we spent the afternoon shopping and just sort of wandering. I'm contemplating buying a bit of new clothing, but I don't know if I can afford it. I think I might just buy a skirt or something because I'm getting everything else sent to me from my lovely parents :-) I can't wait! One of my favorite things about being here is getting to wear real clothes!! I've been wearing lots of Steph's clothes and boy does it feel good!! I wore jeans for the first time in 2 months a couple days ago!!

Anyways, tonight it's just me, Steph and Pia (who is already sleeping) home. I guess we should start getting used to that because that's all there's going to be all weekend! It'll be good because Pia can come with us pretty much anywhere. We want to check out the town market, the castle again and maybe a little more shopping.

Anyways, I guess that's all for now! Talk to you soon!!
Kaila