I want to have a job I enjoy. 
I want to be able to get good health care & live relatively free of physical pain. 
I want to live relatively close to the water. 
I want to spend regular time with close friends.
I want not to produce children. 
I want be able to visit/enjoy my family, especially my dad.
I want to help take care of my nieces and nephews.
I want to hike Mt. Kilimanjaro. 
I want to swim across the biggest swimming pool in the world in Chile. 
I want to finish a triathlon.
I want to fly an aircraft. 
I want to make a big, long kayak/canoe/rafting trip.
I want to sail boats and visit tropical islands. 
I want to fly fish.
I want to take a horseback trail ride.
I want to sky dive in a "squirrel-suit". 
I want to always try new foods, beers, and restaurants. 
I want to cook delicious meals.
I want to enjoy interesting conversation.
I want to make inappropriate jokes and outrageous quotes.
I want to do puzzles. 
I want to play the piano for relaxation. 
I want to read books that challenge how I think. 
I want to dance badly to fun music.
I want to listen to instrumental music and appreciate nature around me. 
I want to swim, kayak, and ride my bicycle. 
I want to enjoy soccer.
I want to hear live music often. 
I want to enjoy cinema. 
I want not to waste my life in front of the TV.
I want to learn Latin and Swing dances.
I want to visit museums and enjoy art regularly.
I want to keep studying sociology my whole life.
I want to see the Astros win a World Series. 
I want to see a game at every MLB stadium.
I want to attend a soccer on every habitable continent and GB.
I want to visit every country on Earth. 
I want to learn to speak a couple of different languages (ex. German, Spanish). 
I want to be able to be traveling or on vacation at least a whole month per year. 
I want to live as a nomad for at least one period of my life. 
I want to to live 10 to 30 minutes outside a city with a population 0.5 to 1.5 million.
I want to have a couple dogs.
I want to live in and fix up a "fixer-upper".
I would like to be single and free to move around every 6 months.
If not single, but in a relationship (INS/IR) I want to be passionate about who I am with. 
INS/IR I want to be spiritually- & emotionally-inspired & challenged by her & do likewise for her. 
INS/IR I want to be physically challenged by who I am with. 
INS/IR I want to find my partner attractive. 
INS/IR I want to be uplifted from a positive partner and do the same for her. 
INS/IR I want to be romantic and appreciate her. 
INS/IR I want us to have a playful and fun love-life.
INS/IR I want her to think of things to want that I haven't thought of.
INS/IR I want to be with someone I can respect.
INS/IR I want to be with someone whose independently strong.
INS/IR I want to be physically able to make love a couple times a week. 
I want to be a mentor to younger people and INS/IR possibly adopt or be a foster parent. 
I want to give at least 10% to God. 
I want to do worthwhile things for God. 
I want to support worthwhile ministries and missionaries. 
I want to feed the homeless. 
I want to be involved with Christian community.
I want to have friends who love Christ who I can study the Bible with.
I want to feed the homeless. 
I want to use engineering to help poor peoples.
I want to be productive. 
I want to work in the integration of different technologies. 
I wanted be well-mannered and worthy of people's respect. 
I want to work hard and play hard.
I want to dig deep, facing & overcoming every fear & obstacle head-on.
I want to be myself regardless of situation or circumstance.
I want to love my friends more than myself.
I want to die fairly young.
I want to leave only love and some financial provisions for loved ones behind me.

…here is a little update on what I've been up to since I escaped the evil clutches of the ELR and made my way back to the real world here in Texas two months ago.
As soon as I got back I started gearing up for a month of adventures with my buddy Ivan (who some of you might remember as the marine buddy of mine who visited me in December on his way to Thailand).  These adventures started out by going with our friends Kevin, Meg, and Jeff on a beer cruise.  A beer cruise?!! "What's that" you say!  St. Arnold, our favorite microbrewery in Texas arranged with carnival cruises to take a group on one of their Caribbean cruises all the while providing us with endless drinks, pub crawls on the various ports, poker tournaments, and general shenanigans galore.  We went to Jamaica, Grand Cayman Island, and Cozumel, all the while having ceaseless Nerf gun warfare and becoming the undisputed Cornhole champions of the ship.  Good times!
The next adventure a week later was a camping/hiking trip out in the Gila National Wilderness out in New Mexico with Ivan's old friends Luke, Marcus, and Jeremy.  What an experience!  For those who don't know, a national wilderness is different than a national park in that there aren't roads or park rangers to give assistance if you get hurt and the only things there are what you (or you pack-mule, which we didn't have one) carry in.  We ended up hiking 30+ miles hiking up through canyons and doing over 50 river fords wading up to our waists in icy cold water, all the while with 45+ lbs packs strapped to our backs.  It was beautiful but a real challenge – I had a rough fall the 2nd day and hurt my knee fairly bad, had I not spent the previous year hiking around the Kramer and the Wank, I probably would not have made it.  And despite see lots of tracks, we never saw any bears or mountain lions.  It was a real personal accomplishment, but after our 5 days there in New Mexico, Ivan and I immediately headed back to his home in Uvalde and started gearing up for the next leg of fun.
So two days later we went with Jeff and Ivan's dad and spent several days fishing and camping out on Matagorda Island State Park.  We had fair luck gigging flounders at night while we were there (just delicious grilled over an open fire right out of the water), but it seems the redfish and sea-trout just weren't biting while we were there.  Nevermind, I saw a lot of wildlife as I explored the island and the weather was beautiful our time there, except for the morning we went back to the mainland from the 10-mile-out-to-sea island.  The wind was blowing so hard you could hardly stand up and the little boat speeding up back just bounced from crest to crest on the rough waves, spraying us good – it was better than a rollercoaster.  The day we went home (Easter Sunday) was exactly one month since Ivan had flow into H-town for the cruise and so our month of adventures was complete.
I've been doing a lot of research into nursing programs because I'm seriously considering getting back into school very soon to try and do that, but you would not believe how difficult that is proving!  Hopefully I can just find a field of work I can find enjoyable and fulfilling and can survive off of.  Lately, I've just been picking up a lot of random jobs (pressure washing, performance auto-parts assembly, wallpaper stripping) that have been keeping me busy.  And since I no longer watch TV, I've managed to run quite a bit in my awesome Vibram FiveFingers (thanks for telling me about them, Connor) and bike a lot so my calves are getting huge.  I was hoping to get in good enough shape to travel out to AZ for some biking with Zak, Chels, and Whit but it turns out that our favorite extinguisher-wielding, always scharf cook has injured his leg skateboarding (even had to have surgery) and will be out of commission for several months.  Feel better, bro!
Other than that I have mainly just been doing a lot of hanging with my niece and nephews and my close friends around here.  My birthday was last week and so I finally went and got the tattoo I'd been planning for so long (a thanks to Haf for helping photo the design template).  I couldn't be happier with it!  When the corner of it peeks through an unbuttoned button-up shirt it looks like I finally took everyone's advice and had some chest-hair tattooed on, haha.  I'd like to thank Brett, whose skill and speed with a tattoo needle were dazzling.

Time for another blog, not quite as dramatic as my last few, but one just to let everyone know some of the more interesting things I've been up to.
-OKTOBERFEST, that's right Oktoberfest 2007 has come and gone, and I was there!  I made it up to Munich about 5 times to go to the fest and had a great time.  I ate 2 whole grilled chickens, the spike-grilled fish, a few giant pretzels, lots of candied almonds, and who knows how many Maßen of sweet, sweet Oktoberfest specialty beers from the 14 awesomely decorated tents from the various Munich breweries.  I tried to do the swing-over-the-bar swing and almost but didn't quite make it.  I rode the ferris-wheel, and Whit and I checked out the mouse-circus and laughed our butts off.  VanSickle and see Sabrina took me the first day, I got a pipe as a souvenir, and then we went to see Daywatch and the next day I went back and then finally got to see HarryPotter 5.  Despite both being awesome films, it is a struggle to stay awake after a couple Maßen.  While there I also saw an advertisement for and went and found an awesome ENGLISH second-hand bookstore, from which I has acquired another David Brooks books (score!).

-Recently, I had to go to Murnau for a doctor visit and saw an advertisement and, long story short, Ann, Lauren, Hannah, and myself went the annual Murnau KunstNACHT (art night).  They released hundreds of Chinese hot air balloons into the sky after sunset.  Then there was a fashion show out on the marienplatz, a ballet demonstration, a Japanese drumming group, and 12 bands in 12 bars.  The best one we saw was a rockabilly band (in Bavaria, who would have guessed!) that a bunch of people came to see and swing dance to.  I chatted one of the better dancers up and, long story short, I'm going to be taking lessons in Munich in November to learn the balboa bal-swing.


-A couple weeks ago, I decided it to go visit the fairy-tale Black Forest and pay the Boettigers another visit on my weekend.  I made it over to the town of Triberg, home of Germany's highest waterfalls, right in the middle of the Schwarzwald.  The Black Forest is gorgeous, easily the most beautiful woods I've ever seen – I can totally understand why fairy-tales are set there.  It is incredibly green and thick with trees and is made up of high hills with drastically sudden and steep valleys and ravines.  Plus there are cuckoo-clock shops everywhere.  I hiked around the falls before going and picking up a birthday present for my mom at the House of 1000 Clocks.  Then I drove over to Tübingen and stayed the night with the Boettigers - seriously, they are the best.  It is like having another set of parents right here in Germany that I can go visit.  The next day they referred me to Burg Hohenzollern castle outside of the town of Hechingen.  It is a masterpiece of defense - the mountain it is on is too steep for most attacking equipment and the entrance into the castle goes through 9 gates and entrance-ways that twist around on themselves as they ascend so that at each gate attackers would be bottled in the entrance-way completely vulnerable to the positions above.  It reminded me a lot of Stirling Castle in Scotland, one of my other favorite places that I have visited.

I have just finished the best book I have ever read.  I got it from my good buddy VanSickle and it is the only non-scripture book that I would genuinely describe as freeing.  I would summarize its premise as this: God is love and no one really believes that or has any idea what that entails!  I have been in what I would describe as a "funk" for nearly 2 years now waiting and looking all over the world for something I wasn't even able to describe, some unknown revelation and this is finally it.
Seriously, I have bought 10 copies from the author and have sent them to several of the more important people in my life or people who I just thought it would bless.  If it interests you, feel free to pop me an email and if another 10 people want a copy, I'll buy more and send them to yall.

-to translate websites in German, simply go to Babel Fish and copy in the URL-



"YOU'RE GOING TO DIE, YOU STUPID SONOFABITCH!"
This was scream I heard yesterday as I realized that I had, thanks to my own idiocy, gotten myself into an actual life-and-death survival situation.  I am alive here and now to tell of it only, I believe, by a miracle from God.
It started when in the middle of the afternoon when I found out about a gorge outside of Garmisch that I hadn't known about before, the Höllentalklamm.  Now I know that when you go hiking/climbing you should (a) go early in the day to have plenty of light and (b) go with someone else for safety.  Being worried about wasting my day off, I just took off over to Hammersbach to hike the gorge without doing either of these things (a mistake I promise not to repeat, mom).  The hike and the gorge itself were gorgeous (no pun intended), but it had been very slippery on a lot stairways going through the gorge and the paths were very rocky.  So when I made it to the hut at the top end of the gorge, I decided that because I had seen signs the said Zugspitze (Germany's highest mountain that the gorge leads up to) and Eibsee (a mountain lake in the west side of the range that we go to all the time), I would continue (now shown by the red line in the above pic) upward in the hopes of finding the path over the ridge to the Eibsee.  What I did not realize at the time but now know is that the only way to the Eibsee is to go all the way to the summit and take the cable-car down.  So proceeded up the "Leiter" and "Brett" to the edge of the Höllentalferner, the glacier that goes to the top of the Zugspitze.  This was a very bad idea as you see that the "Leiter" and "Brett" are parts of the Höllental Klettersteig (a section of climbing up a mountain holding onto metal pegs because it is too steep/sheer to grip… wise people usually will have climbing gear… I was in shorts and t-shirt… did I mention that I'm dumb?!!!).  By the time I got up past the top of the Hoellentalkar (where my red line ends), I grew anxious for several reasons:  
(1) It was raining/snowing and in the little clothes I had was cold and wet and beginning to shiver as I went over the precarious terrain
(2) I could now see that there was no side path to turn onto to go down toward the Eibsee
(3) As I had not been paying attention to time the sun reflections were disappearing over the ridge and it rapidly got very dark.
I now knew I was in a dangerous situation as I was poorly dressed in dark harsh night with a steep snowy summit above and steep wet cliff below.  I would never survive the night if I just stayed where I was.  Trying to ignore the fear, I trudged on, not wanting to have to turn back, telling myself my best bet was to try to reach the summit cable-car station 3 to 4 hours in front of me.  Suddenly the aforementioned scream rung on the mountainside, coming from my own mouth but feeling as if it were someone else words.  I realized I had to go back and proceeded back toward the cliff, starting to pray very hard as I knew it was going to take a miracle to get home.  Little did I know I would get several before the night ended.  
As I got back to the edge of the cliff, I was wondering how many days it would take to find my body.  Climbing had been real work when I had the light of day to warm my dry body and could see well enough.  As I wondered how far down the cliff I would get before my cold tired shivering muscles would make me miss one of the pegs I couldn't see and I'd fall, I asked God if I was going to have to freeze to death at the top of this cliff.  MIRACLE 1.  I looked beside me and there, on the side of this huge mountain range, were two jackets just sitting there for the most part dry beside a bush.  As I took the jackets I knew that God was going to get me through this and started down the cliff in the dark.  MIRACLE 2.  Squinting to see footing and grips as I went, the rain stopped but the lightning flashes continued, illuminating the dark gorge so I could see my next moves till I made down it all the way down to the bottom of the cliff, having prayed the whole way and never really feeling alone or afraid.  I knew had I not had enough light to keep moving down my muscles wouldn't have remained steady enough to get all the way to the bottom.
But now I was back at the bottom in the complete dark with the whole twisty, slippery gorge to go back down for several hours without a flashlight or anything.  I had never realized when hearing fairy tales mention being lost in dark woods just how pitch black it is till now.  I racked my brain as I walked, trying to remember every detail of every turn and switchback that I had gone up several hours before.  Somehow after what seemed forever I had made it through the gorge and to the bottom of the dark gorge valley and as I walked back into Hammersbach I felt something in my leg and realized something.  Anyone who has played any sports with me and especially people who have hiked with me know one thing – my knees are shit!  I usually can't go along any sort of downward grade for more than a couple minutes without own knee going out and having to limp very slowly in horrible pain.  MIRACLE 3.  I had made it all the way down through the slippery rocky gorge and down the dark valley trails at a decent pace for a couple of hours and my knee didn't go out until I walked back into town.  Finally I made it back home to the Abrams, telling my story and hugging my friends Whit, Kelly, and Rita cause I was so, so very happy to just be alive and not freezing to death at the top of a cliff.

If there was still some part of me left over from my more solemn days that didn't know if I wanted to bother going on living life, I do now.
If I didn't believe God really loved me specifically before, I do now.

... I decided to hop in the car with a friend and take a roadtrip for the day to the Bodensee on the Swiss border to hopefully swim and do some kayaking. It was a beautiful drive through Bayern and upper Austria but by the time we got there and ate lunch in Wasserburg, the weather had turned cold and overcast. It kills me that summer really ended right on Labor Day! So we decided we would turn our swim trip into a 4 country road trip and went from Germany to Austria to Switzerland to Liechtenstein and were still
home before 8p.m. Next time we'll shoot for 7 countries in one day!
A also finished Chuck Palahniuk's lastest novel Rant... I can say with pretty much complete certainty that it is Chuck's best novel yet. I can't wait to see it turned into a film!

Also this past Tuesday I went into Munich to see Rilo Kiley in concert. It was the first concert I had managed to see in Munich despite being here for eight months... it was certainly not a disappointment.  Rilo Kiley just gets better and better everytime I see them.  It was actually just part of a lot of driving I've done this week.  The day before Whit and I went to visit Thien and his gf Keri on their European tour.  It was great - we walked around Munich, swam at the Sternbergsee, and went and drank at the Andechs brewery.  It was pretty much one of the best days I've had in Germany!

Time for a massive blog update since I am now halfway through my 13 months here in Garmisch, Deutschland working for the Edelweiss.  Things are going o.k. – better in a lot of ways.  Let me catch you up on some of the more exciting things that have happened since my last blog.
At the end of April/beginning of May I managed to squeeze in a few bits of travel.  I managed to arrange a 3 day weekend to go to Croatia and took the night train to Zagreb.  Wow, what a great place, Croatia is not part of the EU yet so the exchange rate was a dream.  I walked all around the city and was just amazed at what a secret gem Zagreb is.  Plus, Croatia is the place in Europe that every American lad pictures in his head where each and every girl looks like a model.  From there I went to Rijeka , a costal town, so I could swim in the Adriatic Sea (supposedly the bluest water on earth) – it was pretty good!  The next weekend I went with a tour to Cesky Krumlov (pics) in the Czech Republic, one of my favorite towns ever.  I went there before when I lived in Prague and it has always held a place in my heart because it is just like New Braunfels, Texas but with a castle.  This trip was great because I got to get one of my favorite foods, ovocne knedliky (Czech fruit dumplings) and see the bears in the castle moat.
I also ate lunch in Passau on the way back to Garmisch.  I always try to see different old churches as I travel around and I have to say that St. Stephan's Cathedral in Passau, Germany is easily the most impressive church I've seen.
The week after came my best trip – I went to Ireland.  I found a cheap flight and car rental and went for 5 days, doing a road trip around the parameter of the island and fulfilling a life-long dream.  Ireland is beautiful!  I found the new Explosions In The Sky CD while in Dublin and regained the joy of a long drive, learning to drive the British way, on the left side of the road and shifting with my left hand.  My first day in Dublin I stayed in a hostel literally next door to the Guinness brewery.  The first night of my road trip I slept on a magnificent seaside cliff on the northern coast of Ulster.  From there I went to Dingle on the west coast which is old Ireland where they still speak primarily Gaelic.  I went to church there on Sunday, after which everyone walked out, went ten meters on the street, into the pub, so as to get a pint and watch soccer on TV.  I absolutely loved it!


At the beginning of June, I got to go on a staff retreat day of whitewater rafting the Inns River in Tirol, Austria.  I always say a day in the water is better than a day doing anything else.  I don't know which was more impressive that day – how well I was able to raft or how well I sported my Speedo!
A few weeks after this I un-expectantly received a email message from my good friend/hetero-life-mate/brother Brandon with a video referencing a party I once threw that shows just how well my friends back home know me. 

You rock, B!  Since I can't go there myself, I was so happy to get to get this video of yall in a real KwikEMart after reading about them being actualized!


Later that month, I decided to take advantage of a reasonably priced opportunity to go and paraglide from the mountains around Garmisch, which is so fun that the ten minutes it takes feels like an instant.  Here's video of one of the other people doing the exact flight I did:

Since the weather was warm and clear enough finally, I went and swam across the Eibsee, one of the many gorgeous mountain lakes in our area (words ending in "see" in German are lakes).  It took so long that by the time I got back across, everyone had left for the day which reminds me of the time I went snowboarding and my parents had to send the ski-patrol to find me (ask them if you want to here the story).
Since the weather was nice enough for the water, I finally broke down and bought a car so I could use a kayak I had acquired some months back.  That has been great and very therapeutic.  In addition to the Eibsee, I have kayaked the Staffelsee, Walchensee, Kochelsee, and Plansee.   I have been working at learning Eskimo-rolls and hopefully will have them soon.


At the beginning of July, my friends Zak and Chelsea finished there time here and went on a trip to India before heading back to the United States.  Zak leaving meant I received a promotion to running the employee activity center with a general store and cyber café.  The nice thing about this is it meant that I got my own room, which I have made very nice.
I have been trying to take advantage of my new schedule and channel my strength into more outdoor activity.  I have been loving the kayaking and the other day I hiked the Kramer, the mountain I live at the base of, in 5 hours & 15 minutes when it usually takes over 6 hours.  I finally got to sign my name in the book at the highest peak, noting by my name that I was a Texan.
The last weekend of July, I drove to Tubingen to see my friends Aaron and Claudia Flannery and their daughter Luca while they were there visiting Claudia's parents.  The time I got to spend with them has been the best since I have been here.  It was so refreshing.  Claudia's parents have an amazing house on a hillside overlooking a sun-drenched valley.  We walked through the fields playing with little Lu and Claudia's mom made so much good home-cooking that I had been missing so much.  It was great to finally get to see some friends who know the real me beyond this depressing military environment.  I could have happily stayed with them for weeks but I of course had to get back to work.   I may try to visit Claudia's parents again in not too long.
About a week ago Zak got back here to Garmisch for a visit before going back to the U.S. from India.  It has been really awesome to see him again and on this past Tuesday him, Whit, Schultzy, and I went to the Therme Erding, a sort of healthspa/waterpark.  The place has over 20 saunas (one with a planetarium in it and another with fresh bread baked inside with you), a lazy river, and an artificial waterfall cave just to start with.  After a couple of minutes it wasn't even that weird hanging around with a few thousand other naked people.  We relaxed so hard that Whit and I were tired from relaxing the next day.  We were severely disappointed that they did not have season passes for sale!
And that is about the jest of the last several months, not including the normal BS of this job I work, of course!  I miss you all back in the States!

I think I have done a fairly decent job of chronicling my travels since I have moved to Deutschland but I have not really had time to jot my random thoughts down here, so here are just a few:
For years I have been tormented by the decision of what profession I should spend my life doing, what profession will give me a sense of fulfillment, what profession I will continually find challenging and interesting yet be able to work with confidence, so that (as my father always said) I will "never really work a day in my life".  I have often considered the medical professions as I think I could feel good about any work I might do and they would provide me with continual mental stimulation.  But I've never really enjoyed biology, so that presents a problem.  I've always been more interested in physics and chemistry; the areas I enjoy are more mechanically inclined.  So as I was riding the train home from Vienna it hit me like a baseball bat to the face: Bionics!  I will build the six-million-dollar man!  I exist at just the right point in history to contribute to the field, especially with the continual state of warfare we seem to be in.  It would let be contribute medically like I want to while working mechanically like I enjoy!
While bionics was my great discovery in Austria, my great discovery in Italy (aside from that Italians don't make very good Italian cuisine) was a bit more blasphemous: cousin Graham is Jesus!  Before you start throwing rocks, let me explain – in Venice, there is a very good art museum called the Academia, and in it, without much fanfare, is a painting by Marco Marziale called La Cena in Emmaus(Supper at Emmaus).  Look it up!  If you know Graham, you gotta admit that Jesus in the painting looks like him.
But my greatest revelation came in Vienna as I walked outside of the Church of the Votive.   There the best commercial ever suddenly sprung upon me.  To start your imaginations with the right references, begin by thinking of some famous runningback, like Sanders or Bettis and think of Willow or LOTR.  The commercial plays our kind of like a movie trailer, giving the outline of the story through quick clips while also establishing the other characters.  These other characters include Coach the Wizard (think Vince Lambardi in a grey cloak), Towelboy the dwarf, and Cheerleader the elfin-princess who are on a quest with the runningback-warrior to take a prophesied child, a baby, to some temple to defeat the evil forces over the land.  The climax of the commercial comes when the group on the quest stands in despair with an army of Oakland-Raiders-fans-orges between them and the temple.  At this point, said runningback-warrior says, "Coach, give me the baby" and then proceeds to rush up the temple steps with the baby tucked under one arm as orges bounce off of him as they attack.  Upon reaching the top, he yells victoriously, spikes the baby like a football on the ground, and throws his hands air before the screen jumps to black with the word REEBOK simply printed across it.  That would be the greatest commercial ever, and I thought of it!

Well, I'm another year older, and despite being an ocean away from most of my family and friends, I had a pretty good birthday.  
I started it all out by taking a vacation day off work to give myself a three day weekend and then took the train to Wien (Vienna).  The train trip there was very beautiful.  I shared a cabin with a friendly young Austrian student and a German teacher from Madagascar, making the conversation very interesting.  Wien was great once I got there also.  I had forgot that it is probably the most magnificent of all the cities I've been to, despite being smaller than many others.  I went on The Third Man walking tour, which I have been interested in doing for years.  It was really neat to find out just how much history of the city after the war is wrapped up in the film.  I stayed in a great hostel where I met a young English bloke who had biked all the way from Britain to China.  I went to some historical sites and museums that I had not been to before, including the Arsenal Museum, a lesser-advertised site but one of the best history museums ever.  It even had the car and suit of clothes (with blood still on it) from the assassination of Franz Ferdinand that started WWI.  I also went to the famous Saturday Nach Markt, the hugest, dirtiest, and most ghetto flea I've seen in the downtown area of a big city – it was so cool, everything the Turks had, from the food to the merchandise, seemed freshly "hot".  Also, it seems where ever I go these days, the cliché mobs of Asian tourists with cameras crowding everywhere are being replaced with really annoying crowds of Italian kids dressed in poorly done emo-goth fashion crowding everywhere.  On my way back to Garmisch Sunday, I stopped, toured, and ate in Innsbruck, Austria which surprisingly had better Italian food than I had found in Italy itself.
Then my actual birthday on Tuesday was great.  My boss and coworkers took me out to a traditional Bavarian restaurant for lunch, which was delish!  Then my boss gave me the rest of the day off and since it was such a beautiful day, I decided to try out my bike that I had recently had put together.  I had a really great long hard ride – when I looked at a map after returning home I found I had actually biked as far as 10 km into Austria (I hadn't even noticed the border)!
That night my roommate to me out to an even better traditional Bavarian restaurant where I a schweinhaxel (fried leg of pork), possibly the best thing I've ever eaten.  Then we went to the pub to watch the soccer game over dunkels with a Turkish convict and a crazy cook from Kosovo.  The whole day I didn't pay for a thing!  In addition to that, I got presents including KettleChips and homemade cookies from Texas (Thanks, Mom, thanks, Mimi), an Oreo pie, and a broccoli quiche.
It definitely was a birthday that I didn't have to worry was too much like any I've had in the past.  Thanks to everyone who made it special.

   Well, I forgot to do a 2nd month blog so here's two and a half months in Deutchland.  In February I was supposed to take a road trip with my roommate and some others down into Italy to take advantage of a 3 day weekend, but unfortunately I had to cancel it because I got tonsillitis which meant I got exposed to our wonderful health care that we have over here (sarcasm).  To get medical attention, we go to a German military post as part of some exchange of services program between the Deutch & American militaries.  To get there, I walked 20 minutes to the train station, took a 30 minute train to another small mountain town, and then walked through town and out of town along the river for almost an hour.  I was very thankful that I had tonsillitis and not something like the flu that would take my strength because I'm not sure I would have made it.  I guess you get what you pay for.
    About this time I was discussing with a friend about fairy tales and it suddenly reminded me of Shelley Duvall's Faerie Tale Theatre from the 80's which no one seems to remember but this one particular friend I happened to be talking to did, so I looked up online where I found the entire 5 year, 26 fairy tales series for a very reasonable price.  So long story short, my roommate Pete and I are often found either watching my fairy tales or his seasons of Grey's Anatomy.  I'm sure we'll have finished them by the time Bella and Holden's birthdays roll around so I'll send the fairy tales to them to enjoy.
   Well, by the time I got healthy again the weather here in Garmisch practically screamed springtime so one day I decided to climb the Kramer (pronounced "cromb-or"), the mountain that I live at the base of.  It seems that every time I try to climb one of these Bavarian alps, it turns out to be much more interesting than a simple climb.  As nice as the day was in the valley, it turned out that the top third of the mountain (the rocky, steep part) was covered in ice and snow.  But I pushed through and made it to the lower peak, which was much cooler than the Wank because the peak was as small and flat as a dinner table which gave me a complete 360 degree panoramic view, where I was able to enjoy a nice lunch of crackers and tuna-fish.  Then I proceeded to slip and slide down the mountain and finally reached home very bruised and resolved to wait till genuine summer before any more mountain climbing.
    At the beginning of March I decided it was time I got out of Garmisch again so I took a trip up to Magdeburg, Germany to see a concert of one of my favorite bands Cursive.  The concert was great and Magdeburg is a city I would recommend to anyone, but the trip itself was terrible.  I took a night train for which I used my Eurailpass but paid extra for a sleeper-car, but was given some new type of crappy sleeper-car and arrived in Magdeburg at about 7am for a 10pm concert after about 4 hours of sleep.  After walking around that beautiful city for the entire 15 hours and then going to the concert, I was unpleasantly surprised to find no hostels or hotels I could afford open.  Magdeburg had turned out near freezing this weekend and so, when I was on the verge of passing out standing, I found an all-night disco club packed with about 400 people and tried to sleep in a corner.  Unfortunately, about every 45 minutes a drunken German kid would wake me up to find out why I was sleeping in a club and want to talk once they found out I was American.  So at 5am they kicked me out and I went to catch a train home.  But my 7 hour trip home turned into 10 hours after I got stuck in Naumburg because of missing a train connection due to some poorly marked signs.  I am still debating whether the concert was worth the horrible trip because it was the first live music I've got to experience since being here.
     The other trip I've managed to take this month is to Venice and Verona in Italy, and it was great.  I went with a group with Paul Dutro, who is like Garmisch's own personal Rick Steves.  He know everything about all the art in the museums of Venice (amazing and awesome, b.t.w.) and about the architecture in Verona.  Venice is truly one of a kind, but I think I liked Verona better.  It is a city that started out as a Roman military outpost, expanded in medieval times with a new wall, and expanded in the Renaissance with even another wall.  Since it is "Little Rome" it even has a gladiator coliseum.  There was even a really hilarious billboard with the logo for this clothing company.  In addition to great locations, I enjoyed the trip especially because of some cool foreigners who went along that I made friends with: Yuri the Russian, Anahit from Armenia, and Dana from Kazakhstan.  I thank them for the photos.
    Other than that, I just have been working.  I have started wearing a back-brace which has helped with some back pain I had developed through my work in the Abrams.  Pete and I have bunked our beds and finally finished with our room setup with a chair, a futon-loveseat, and an entertainment center.  I finally managed to get myself a bike built (Thanks, Zak) yesterday, which is cool since, except for a freak snowstorm we had early this week, we are definitely already into Spring. And today I went to a German church, were I was surprised to understand a lot despite not understanding the words.  That was cool!

Alright, so I've been here in Deutschland one month now working for AFRC.  It has been interesting & exciting from the get-go!  Here's how it has gone down:
I woke up on Monday, Jan 8th in the worst squeezed seat in the back a jumbo airplane that in a few minutes landed in warm beautiful Munich.  This was a surprise to me who had traveled in warm clothes due to an expectation of much snow and frigid temperatures where I was going.  I, along with the other arrivals of the day, was met by Jay and Calvin, who it turns out are my supervisor and main co-worker respectively.  They drove us from Munich to Garmisch, explaining along the way the reason for the lack of snow is because it is the warmest winter in Bavaria (called Bayern here) in recorded history (1300 years).  The warm weather has had a lot of the ski people around the area pretty annoyed but I love it.  The drive into Garmisch and the Alps was awesome like traveling back in time a bit.  There are little old men in wide-brimmed hats and long beards driving their carts of hay and mature through the stone streets the same way they've been doing for hundreds of years.  
Monday through Thursdays had us very busy with a very intense orientation of who/what the Edelweiss is and what are roles were to be in it.  There were tons of people to meet and names to remember.  I was placed as a custodial worker in Resident Services, which means I work at the Abrams complex, the apartments where all the American Edelweiss workers live.  Everyone think I am very lucky for this because it means I don't have to make the 45 minute walk to work like everyone else working at the hotel, but I find it annoying in that I get cabin fever since I live where I work.  But I really like the group of four guys I work with – they are all a diverse, friendly, and helpful bunch that have been very accepting of me (based in no small part to my familiarity to playing the video game Halo).  I am also lucky because I am a full-time (at minimum) Mon-Fri employee when most people here only get part-time.
At the end of the week, I used my day off to hike the parameter of the town, which took several hours and had me freezing when the sun went down, but really gave me an idea of why it is such a popular tourist area for nature-lovers.  On Sunday, I visited the American church on the military base and met by chance a YL guy who Kevin back in Colorado had told me to look up.
I had a very productive second week.  Still trying to learn so many names and get a feel for Germany I went on a free trip to Munich to see The Departed at the kino.  Little trips like these for the employees will soon be part of my job in Resident Services and I look forward to them.  So on Wednesday I went and did the class to receive a military driver's license so I could drive in Germany for my job (I was required to do this but still had to pay for it out of pocket).  I used this to later also get an International Driver's License.
By the time my second weekend rolled around I decided it was high time I climbed one of the surrounding mountains so on Sunday I morning I got up and went to hike the Wank (prounced "vonk"), the mountain on the northeast edge of town.  I went in short-pants with a backpack and my infamous blue Pepsi vest because all week had been sunny and pleasant.  Just my luck, I had decide to spelunk up the steep side and was about a third of the way when it started to rain.  I pushed on in the cold and wet, but about two-thirds the way up a snowstorm engulfed the mountain to where I could see more than 10 to 15 feet in front of me.   I pushed on and finally made it to the first series of crosses that sit along the edge ridge that summits the mountain and leads to the restaurant at the top.  Rarely has a sight been more welcome in my life.  I went to the restaurant and had some hot kartoffel (potato) soup.  As I eat, the storm cleared, and I hike down the mountain in the warmth of the sun.
My third week was interesting indeed.  We received a new group of employees who we had to help move in (part of my job).  One was an ex-Marine sniper who set a record as the fastest person to get sent home, which is sad.  He was very polite when he arrived, but proceeded to celebrate arriving in Germany the usual way (drinking!) but took it to an extreme.  Intoxicated he proceeded to go around the Abrams bursting into people's rooms and calling them names before going out on the town with the rest of us and doing more of the same.  I was the only person who stuck with him the whole night (I finally got him home at 3am and fed him and put him to bed) because everyone else couldn't stand his presence (I found him mild enjoyable, actually).  I pitied him because it was clear to me that he was very shell-shocked from the things he had seen/done in the military (his roommate said he had nightmares all night both nights he was here).  He was very sorry and embarrassed the next day and apologized to many people but they sent him home by Wednesday due to so complaints about him.  Many of the stories I heard about what he had done while here were false and terribly overblown to his roommate and me, who had been with him the whole time so we knew they were false.  This taught me unfortunately just how dangerous and gossipy this little community of American we have is!  On Thursday we put on the annual Employee Appreciation Party which meant a lot of extra work and time for my department while everyone else partied, but it was good because I got to impress my bosses.
Also on that Thursday found out that due to some medical issues of a co-worker, my schedule was changing and I was going to have a four day weekend.  So I went to the travel agent, looked at some all-inclusive resort deals and decided to go to Hurghada, Egypt from Saturday to Monday to swim.  I liked Egypt very much.  Two days was much too short, especially with how much travel it took to go each way (about 12 hrs between all the trains, securities, planes, and buses).  The plane ride there was interesting because we had all the 30 Miss Germany contestants on the plane with a film crew and in the middle of the flight over the Mediterranean they had a mini-pageant where we all voted for our favorite (the girl I voted for won).  Sunday, I was able to snorkel in the reefs all day long for practically no cost.  I absolutely adore the Red Sea!  Some of the most beautiful fish ever - I will definitely go back if the opportunity arises.  My resort was like a giant open-aired Arabian palace and the Egyptians were really friendly.  They all thought I was Dutch til I told them I was American, which shocked them because they say they just usually get Europeans – I may have been the only American for a hundred miles (what a mindtrip)!
This past week and a half have been hectic because I have been taking over new responsibilities to cover for my co-worker with the medical issue and I changed rooms I was living in.  The room I had been put in originally had a balcony and an amazing view but was pretty full of my from roommates stuff so I basically I was just squeezed into a corner.  I was able to move into a room with a guy who finished and left on Friday so that I was able to clean the room and let a buddy move in with me.  I like it better because it is next door to the kitchen and closer to the bathrooms and showers so I don't have to go so far.  I finally feel like I have a place that is actually mine here.
Otherwise, I think I have had a good first month.  I miss all my loved ones back in the U.S. but am slowly making friends and picking up the German language.  I love Garmisch and how cheap it is to travel from here.  I am walking everywhere (I haven't got a bike yet) and am feeling stronger and healthier – maybe I will get to hike Mt Kilimanjaro this year!

I evidently need to start blogging more often again because I left out a ton and this is still a stupid long post!

I am officially a super-hero now!  Today I crashed my motorcycle at 60 mph as I was going down I-45 and walked away from it.  As if that wasn't enough, the motorcycle was also stolen from the scene of the crash!  What happened was this… I was in the left lane so as to be in lighter traffic and decided I would rather be going slower than 75 mph so I made my way over to the right hand lane.  But once I was there I realized that I couldn't see past the large truck in front of me despite being a good five car-lengths back.  So I decided I should move to the middle lane and looked behind me to make sure the lane was clear for my change.  When I looked up the truck in front of me had slammed on its brakes and I was speeding toward it.  So I slammed on my brakes, which are not integrated b.t.w.  My front wheel wobbled but I managed to hold it straight till suddenly I was flying through the air.   I face-planted into the asphalt and my face-shield on helmet shattered into pieces and scrapped the ground as my body slid to a stop.  As this happened I thought, "Gee, dying didn't hurt as bad as I had thought it would!" because I thought I had just died.  So I stood up and looked at myself and realized I was alive.  I turned around to see traffic stopped and my bike lying on the highway so I ran back to it and dragged it off the road, surprised that except for mirrors and lights it looked fairly undamaged.  I took off my helmet ("Always wear a helmet!") and was amazed at how unmarked it looked.  The guy who had been driving behind me stopped and convinced me to let him drive me to the hospital, where he dropped me off.  The look I got from the other people waiting in the E.R. as I walked in, my left side covered in blood was priceless.  After waiting an hour, a doctor squeezed the areas that were bleeding/swollen (knee, arm, shin, wrists), told me probably nothing was broken if they didn't hurt when he squeezed, and suggested I get some x-rays.  I said no thanks and since Craig, the best buddy in the history of the world, was there to give me a ride home, we left, chatted with Kevin (also an awesome buddy) in the parking lot, and went to Chick-Fil-A (I smell a commercial).  On the way home we went to pick up my pick from the side of the road, but it was gone.  I thought maybe it had been towed but when I called there was no record of anyone getting it.  So I guess it was stolen!  Oh well, now I don't have to try to sale it or give it away before I move to Germany.  Craig took care of me for most of the day but I bet I'm gonna be sore as hell on my flight to Colorado in the morning!  But hey, that's Texas Tough!