greetings from frankfurt!

coming at you from the lobby of our hotel in downtown frankfurt...we've spent the day acclimating ourselves to all sorts of new and different things, not the least of which the fact that the keyboard i am typing with has three extra keys than i'm used to and a Z where the Y key should be. tricky tricky.

germany is beautiful! and rainy. we walked a lot today, visited various tourist/historical locations, randomly ran into one of b's friends from the mission on the train, took a brief nap (this time-change adjusting thing is HARD) and of course ate some pastries. i have seen a total of 4 h&ms and we only went to one shopping area.

the german people are so kind. i'm constantly surprised by how helpful and willing they are to offer directions, answer questions, etc. they even switch flawlessly to english when they realize i have no idea what they're saying. i've been relying on b's translations a lot but i think i am going to try requesting english so i can personally interact more.

i will post pictures once i'm back on our computer, but today has been great notwithstanding i've been up for almost 36 hours.

and a side note: obviously yesterday was 9/11, and yes we flew out that day. i thought about it a little as our shuttle drove us to the airport and how big of an impact that one tragic event had on our lives, our country. but then we got to our terminal and were going through baggage claim at LAX and all of the sudden all the cops and security guards yelled "bravo!" like it was some code, and they shut down all the lines and everything froze. i just stood there waiting for my converse to pop out of the stopped machine and then realized what was going on. it was approx. 5:45 a.m., or the west coast time that the first plane hit the WTC on 9/11. one guard read a memorial statement, we all had a moment of silence, and then everyone went back to work. i had goosebumps. what a cool way to commemorate the day.