I know I still have to post pictures of our short two day Christmas trip to Prague, but I haven't gotten around to editing them yet so you'll have to wait just a bit longer! Sorry! What I have for you today are mainly phone shots documenting pieces of our move to Mainz. We arrived here at the Institute for European Studies on Monday afternoon after a 5 hour car drive. Packing up in Munich was pretty easy, but due to procrastination it took us over two weeks to get it all done! It was bittersweet leaving the place we called home for the past 6 months, but there was a hint of excitement to explore and call another city home. The drive was pretty uneventful and thankfully hardly any traffic. One of the students here let us in and showed us our room on the 5th floor. It's larger than we expected and has plenty of space for all our things! We've been using the communal kitchen and bathroom/showers for the past two days and it isn't as bad I was prepared for it to be. That being said, there are quite a few people still away on vacation, so I'll have to provide an update next week with a full floor!

We came here to Mainz expecting it to be like Basel in that it is a small town, but although small, Mainz, is very busy! We are in the heart of the city with tons of shops right around the corner. While Basel definitely has an arm and a leg up on Mainz in the charm factor, I'm sure we'll find the small little corners of the city that will make it special in its own way. :)

We spent New Years Eve with a couple people we just met playing a dice game I had never heard of before and being introduced to all sorts of German proverbs and having fun sharing funny German and English sayings. Around 11:30pm we all trekked over to the bridge over the Rhein river where everyone had gathered to watch the fireworks. At midnight everyone cheered and all the fireworks went off! It was quite the new experience and sounded like a war zone! We had a great time and were glad to have a fun thing to do especially after just arriving in a new place.

The following are pictures taken with my phone (I haven't had an opportunity yet to get the camera out) of some of the experiences. :)