Holy cow!

I can't believe it, but I'm officially more than half-way done with my time here!  It's ridiculous how fast the time's flown by, and how much I've already done...and when I think about how much I still want to do, I can barely believe that either!

I meant to post this list earlier, but in the spirit of reflecting on the first half of the semester and looking forward to the next half, here's a list of all my travels so far, and of where I still want to go:

Places I've been in Bayern:

• Munich (duh...in case you missed it, I live there...)
• Garmisch-Partenkirchen, where I spent the day hiking with some friends
• Augsburg - a day trip
• Regensburg - another day trip
• Tegernsee, where I went hiking with the full JYM Sommersemester group
• Bamberg, my favorite city ever...I haven't posted about that yet, but I loved being able to go there again and visit our old stomping grounds
• Nuremburg...another one I haven't posted about yet
• Neuschwanstein (Cinderella's castle) and Linderhof (a castle build by the same king of Bayern as Neuschwanstein), and along the way, the towns of Fuessen and Oberammergau, but this was all on a bus tour, so we didn't get to see too much of the towns themselves.  Again, the post for this one is coming eventually...

Places I've been outside Bayern:

• Bilbao, Spain for a weekend to visit my roommate Emily
• Salzburg, Austria...I went with my friend Kathryn from JYM and my friend Meredith (from home, not from the JYM program) had a lovely (though cloudy) weekend, with plenty of Mozart and Sound of Music activities
• Prague, Czech Republic, where I went with Meredith...I thought it was a beautiful city, but definitely full of tourists

 Places I still want to go:

• Berlin - never been there before!
• Koeln (also known as Cologne, to those English speakers of the world...)
• Wien (also known as Vienna, Austria)
• Maybe somewhere in France, since I have a Eurorail pass that covers France
• I'd love to go to Denmark and Norway, and was hoping to do this when my parents and sister come visit me, but I'm not sure we'll be able to because of the cost and the stupid volcanic ash cloud...boo volcano!
• At one point, I was thinking of going to Cairo, Egypt with some friends, but then one of my friends asked their friends who are studying in Egypt what kinds of safety measures they've had to take, and the answer was that their study abroad program hired a personal bodyguard while they're there...needless to say, that trip's not really going to happen...but it would have been cool
• Just about anywhere else where others are going!  I've heard lots of people talking about various trips, so we'll see what happens!

Crazy, right?  Clearly, I'm going to need to sleep for about three weeks straight once I get back to Virginia, since on top of all of this I've been hanging out with friends, doing homework, going to classes, and all sorts of other stuff.  But clearly, sleep is overrated and when else am I going to get a chance to travel like this?  So hopefully the second half of my semester will be just as fantastic as the first half and I'll be able to do all sorts of traveling on the weekends I have left.

Well, as overrated as sleep really is, I think I'm going to catch a bit while I can and go to bed, since it's now after 2am...goodnight for now!