Sacramento, Part Two

The first night of the orientation, I was ass tired. Like by 8:30, I had puffy eyes and no voice. Thanks, kids! But then I went downstairs into the TV room, posted the previous Sacramento post and talked with Jeff from Philly. We talked about music, Dane Cook, Temple University (which his friend goes to E... not that you'd know him since it's a large school and he's not a grad student), accidents, and injuries. It was a good time. Since Jeff kept me awake, I went back upstairs and took some pics.
Here is Gunnar, Frederic, Florian, and Karen talking about accents. The boys are all from Germany and Karen went to Switzerland on exchange. Both countries speak German, but they speak it differently. I took this pic, joined the conversation and it somehow slipped into how Bostonians and Minnesotans speak. They were all hypnotized by my ability to "speak like the movie Fargo".






Lorenzo and Dominic are playing chess. Smart kiddies! Lorenzo has a crush on me. He's from Italy and he's like every other Italian guy - charming, good-looking and very confident. But Lorenzo's also very sweet and funny. He kept coming up behind me and putting his chin on my shoulder. It was cute.







Here's Lorenzo again on the left, good pic. Karen looks so cute, right? And there's Dominic and Janis. Janis is from Latvia and Dom's from Switzerland. Janis bought what he called his gangsta jacket. It was Phat Farm or something like that, very puffy. But it actually looked good on him.







I did not go ice skating. And apparently, that was a good thing. The ice sucked I hear and the shoes were really tight and painful. So, I'm glad I missed that. But they make it look fun. Nobody but Eleanor fell on their butt. They were all pros. Eleanor is Shawna's daughter. She went ice skating for the first time and it was absolutely adorable. I wish I had pics.






Here's the kids looking happy on their painful skates. Laura is from Spain, Kwadwo is from Ghana, Katherine and Nora are from Germany and Halina is from Poland. Kwadwo was brave enough to try skating. He'd never been, so everyone was helping him out. He's a total sweetheart and wants to come back and study in the US. He's a pretty smart kid too, so his host mom is already starting a fund for him.

That morning, we played human knot. Kwadwo was the only guy in my group and our last knot we did, every girl had to go underneath his arms as we untied ourselves. He just stood there and smiled everytime. Sneaky guy, but he's too sweet and kind to really have thought it up beforehand.

That was the weekend. I was totally exhausted and out of energy by the time I got home yesterday. I was grateful not to have work today. But tomorrow it's back to the grind.