Guten Morgen!

Finally got out of work on Tuesday early enough to go swimming with the team in Hannover; I got there a little late, and was a bit out of shape, but they recognized me and I felt good about being missed just a little bit.

Charles managed to get an internship in Austin this week for the rest of the year which is really, really good news both careerpath wise for him and financially in general.

I've become a "Stammkunde" (regular customer) at the hotel Mercure Hannover City, and they all recognize me by face now. Its kind of nice to have them give me a "Guten Morgen Herr Siegel" as I head out the door to work, and when I come back in the evening.

I've been taking the tram to work between 7-7:45 in the morning, and at that time of the morning, tons of schoolkids use it to get to the school 2 stops down from where I am staying. Yesterday a cluster of them were practicing English for a test that morning, and I was highly amused at hearing how they thought through what they wanted to say in German and how they put together the English. "I doesn't want in the school to go." I didn't help them; they were doing just fine correcting themselves on their own.

Work doesn't stink as bad, but it still stinks.