March 19,20,21 MTW

 Sooooo,
I GOT MY RESIDENCY PERMIT TODAY!!! FINALLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
AAANNND I GOT TO RIDE IN AN ELECTRIC SMART CAR!!!!!!!!!!

one right after the other too!!! So it was very "gluecklich" this morning, I'd say.
(glueckich--> like "gloop" but with a k, + "leek" = happy/lucky)

This is my Australian friend Jenny's German welcoming buddy. He went with both of us to the foreigner's office today. Afterwards he and I were both headed back to campus, while Jenny needed to go to the phone store. He said he much prefers driving to taking the trains and asked if I wanted to drive back with him. Car sharing is majorly popular and awesome in Stuttgart. Basically people who live here sign up online with the car sharing program, and then whenever they need to take a car somewhere, they just swipe their card which unlocks the doors, and they can drive it wherever they need to go. Then the car records the mileage an stuff on their cards, and they pay per minute or mileage of use. Stuttgart is one of the few cities that uses a lot of electric cars. It was sooo neat!!!

 

This is the first time I've gotten to see how to drive from downtown to the vaihingen campus. I honestly had no idea what the roads or terrain looked like because the S-bahn is all underground.

It turns out that "downtown" is literally down town. As in, to get back to the campus, we have to drive up a little mountain (driving through tunnels to go upward seems counter intuitive, but I guess it works ok)

 

 

Charging the car when we got back to campus! (Apparently everytime a car sharing user gets to charge a car- only when the battery is lower than 40%- they get 15 minutes free driving, so basically our trip back to campus was free :)  )

 

Anyway,
here are some pictures to sum up the last few days here. :

 

A guglhupf cake!!! Apparenlty they are very common around here!

A year or so ago, Leanne found one of our Grandma Marilyn's recipe for something called a Guglhupf, which we thought sounded ridiculous, and I never got around to making. Therefore I was so excited to find this at the Kaufland grocery store!

 

This is one of 4 garden plots that I saw at the mall! Each was something like 4'x 8' and super duper pretty!!! I don't know why they are there, but I was impressed, and they are quite charming

 

This is a very tasty salad I made for dinner that resulted from a complete cooking disaster, which went as follows:

American tries to cook like an America, which means deep fried pickles.

Impatient, and puts beer battered pickle slices into pot before the oil is hot enough.

Everything turns into a soppy mess. Solution is to add frozen creamed spinach chunks and try to make savory funnel cakes with remaining batter.

Batter globs together terribly into weird fried doughball chunks.

 

In the meantime, I was enjoying fresh mozzarella cheese! And strawberries! And balsamic something or other dressing! With cucumbers!

And so, I simply broke up the fired beer batter spinach dough chunks and used them as croutons!

And TA DA! delicious salad.

I'm going to stick to cold foods from now on.

 

 
 

My first EXCITING mail!!! Aka, not from the Insurance company or the bank!!!

Yesterday I got this little package containing wonderful card from my beloved FRF and Tyler, which they all made for me while I was flying here. It was incredibly sweet and frfy and I love it.

Today's Lunch. A chocolate filled croissant- which I didn't realize was chocolate filled when I bought it. Also I accidentally burned parts of the chocolate when I tried to warm it up in the microwave. >.<

Plus, kiwi slices!!! Can't go wrong with fruit!

 

 
 Today I walked part of the way to class with a few classmates (it takes about the same amt of time as the bus ride, I found out). It was a very simple walk, and along the way, I noticed that this tunnel, which I usually find boring from inside the bus, is really really cool looking!!!
 

Stairs going down to the street. We walk about a block down, take a right, walk another block and then we are at the German course building. This is on the west side of Stuttgart. It's ok, nothing spectacular, but the view is really cool and there are a lot of old looking buildings.

 

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnd Once again, I failed at cooking hot food.

All I had to do was heat a pre-breaded fish fillet in the skillet, and STILL it turned out badly.

Even with oil coating the skillet, the breading stuck to the bottom and completely fell off. then when I took the fish out of the skillet, it started falling apart. >.<

Oh well, at least my salad was once again delicious! mozz chees, strawberries, cucumber and balsamic something or other dressing.

Om nom nom nom