Winter is Coming

The last few days here in Köln have been a little chilly. The winter coats, scarves and hats have become an everyday outfit. Chris claims to have seen some snow falling from the sky, though my only experience with it so far has been at the university, where some snowboarding club brought in a pile of snow for a demonstration of their skills and it has yet to fully melt. Two conclusions can be drawn from this: 1) it is cold here, 2) German universities, like American universities, have some crazy events going on at them, though at least at German universities, the funny events are accompanied with a stand selling kölsch and sausage as "snow treats." However, the snowboarding exhibition was accompanied by Green Day music from 1994, which caused a very unpleasant afternoon having When I Come Around stuck in my head. (Don't worry, no link to that song here.... though if I was clever enough to record myself singing it, that might be worthy of a link.) It looks though like it might start to get a little warmer here in the next few days. Thus I'll have to wait for another chance to freeze my ipod (something I did last winter in Seattle accidentally, when I learned that taking an ipod on a run in December can be detrimental to the ipod, and if that happens I probably should not have been out running anyways, but I digress).

Like in the US you know winter is coming by the number of Christmas goods in the stores. We've seen a plethora of advent calendars and decorations in the grocery stores, and the Weihnachtmarkts (Christmas Markets) start in the next few weeks. We've put up some wintery decorations (an early Christmas gift from my parents), though I'm sure I'll convince myself that they can stay up year round. Below is the art project I conducted on our wall. It was a "Kelly only" project, which meant that there was very little measuring and absolutely no levels involved, and I think it came out just grand.