home is where the heart is?

my home away from home. we moved in with angie and denise because there is no where else to go and i don't really want to go back to the homeless shelter. if i didn't tell you..our first night we arrived in schwabisch gmund there were no hotels, no hostels, no nothing! so our taxi driver was really nice and said our last option was the homeless shelter. we were all like....ummmm...ok. it was really cold and we didn't want to stay up all night at the train station so we did it. it wasn't all that bad. we had our own room and everything. though i slept with my clothes with my knife in my pocket. i didn't really think anything would happen but it made me feel better. so anyway we moved in here. tony and i sleep in the living room on mattresses. the girls have the bedroom. the apartment is really sweet and big. the toilet is seperate from the shower so that is nice in the mornings. we have a full kitchen and dining room. we even have cable. and we hook up our phone and internet this week sometime. our landlord is awesome. she took me and tony hiking to her cabin in the mountains. gmund is in the valley surrounded by mountains 360 degrees. so it's quite beautiful here. once i got used to it. i hated it when i first got here cause i think i was used to all the big cities we'd been traveling through all month. but now i've slowed down and opened my eyes. it's quite different here. no one speaks english because they don't have to. in the larger cities in europe most people did because of tourists. but i don't think anyone would pass through here. there is a really pretty cathedral here in the center of town. i think it's from the 17 or 1800's. we have to go to the market almost everyday because we have to carry everything home. luckly it's only about a 15 minuite walk. we have to cash in all of our glass and plastic bottles. they are very environmently friendly here. we have to seperate all of our garbage into 4 different bags. it's a pain but once you get used to it it's not bad. and it's a good thing. the people at school have accepted us well. i've only had one drawing class so far. it went well. though it was 6 hours long! i'm taking 2 drawing classes, a corporate identity class and a class where i'll be designing an instruction manual and icons to communicate things non-verbally. so that will be a challenge. i'm looking foward to it cause i'm pretty bored here. there was a party for the new students last night. here they rent out clubs and throw parties. how cool is that! the dj sucked but it wasn't all that bad. that's about it for now. i'm just sitting in our amazingly huge studio. my desk is as big as a dining room table for 4. this school is hooked up! they have everything. they told us today we can rent movie cameras to make films.