I thought it was time for a new template once again

und dann hab ich mir gedacht, dass ich doch mal wieder was auf Deutsch schreiben sollte. Da hab ich so gut mit angefangen und dann gar nichts mehr. Na ja, aber ich bin es ja auch gar nicht wirklich gewohnt so viel Deutsch zu sprechen. Obwohl jetzt mit den ganzen Deutschen bei uns an der Uni da hab ich schon ein bisschen mehr Übung, und dann will ja Dimitrios auch immer dass ich ihm Deutsch beibringe. Bis jetzt hat es ja nicht so gut geklappt, aber immer mal ein bisschen und irgendwann geht es schon. Aber mal sehen.

Oh ja, meine Sonnenblumen machen auch ganz guten Fortschritt!


und so weit gucken sie schon über den Rand vom Blumentopf.

North Devon has beautiful beaches!

yes it does! I had been telling Neil that i would like to go to a proper beach, meaning a beach without pebbles and with miles of sand. So since Neil had Saturday off work and the weather was supposed to be nice enough we decided to drive up to north Devon for the day yesterday. We went to Woolacombe and had a lovely day. Here are some photos of the day:


this is just an overview of the beach with the town in the background. I couldn't believe the length of the beach... It was so nice to be able to walk barefoot in the sand and stick my feet in the water.

here another view of the beach to the other side, it went on for miles... We enjoyed a very nice walk into this direction, not really taking notice of the very strong wind and how much it would blow in our faces on the way back.
As usual at any beach we have been to so far, Neil had to built something. Here is his sand castle. As I was taking photos of it a man in a surfing outfit came by and asked why I was taking photos of the sand castle - he must have thought it wasn't very good. I thought he was being quite rude... Very unusual of an English person to just come up to someone else and tell them what they are doing is silly. Usually English people would just talk about this behind your back... or maybe I am misunderstanding the English there... anyway, we didn't really care about what he said and took a few more photos of the sand castle.



After all the fun of building the sand castle we walked up into the town to find some food. At first we were going to have something to eat at one of the vans parked on the beach selling food, but decided they were too pricey so town it was. We ate some fish and chips, which are always being served in the same box saying something like "the great British take away" on the top. After that we went and played a round of Krazy Golf, yes spelled like that! Neil beat me but that was clear from the start... it was still fun though.


After crazy golf we went back to the beach and went for a walk watching the many surfers trying their luck at finding the perfect waves. It was amazing though the amount of spray being produced by the wind.




And a seagull struggling against the wind


here is Neil about to stick his feet in the water...

and then getting wetter than he wanted

And here a very windswept Neil:


We also saw this guy whizzing past with a kite. it looked really cool, but who knows how difficult it might be...



I really had a good time at the beach... and I think so did Neil...
I love walking barefoot in the sand!


In the evening we went to see some friends to watch Eurovision which this year was a big disappointment. I still can't believe that the German entry was so bad. The No Angels are usually quite good, their performance was really not up to their normal standards. There were only a few very strange entries. I would have voted for Bosnia & Herzegovina, but in the end didn't really feel inspired enough to vote for anyone. Hope next year Eurovision will be back on proper form, otherwise I might not want to watch it again... if even Terry Wogan doesn't quite know if he wants to be involved again something is seriously wrong!

more sunflowers and things

my sunflowers are making more progress



and here another one



also this week Neil was reading a clever magazine



which reminds me we still have to come up with our version of the future. The New Scientist is having a competition which ends soon. Any thoughts? You can win a year's worth of dry cleaning vouchers and other bizarre things like that. I want to win the Sony Vaio Laptop or the cool mobile - yes I know I still am a self-proclaimed geek!

in other excitement, we had a bomb attack in Exeter yesterday, well we still aren't quite sure whether it really was a bomb or not. But anyway some guy walked into a restaurant then there was some explosion of some kind and then the whole city centre area was closed for the rest of the day. Very strange to have this happen in Exeter though...

now I have just come home from a lovely dinner at Strada with some uni friends. One of them has just come back from Australia, so it was nice to get together. Plus the food there is just so good!

trying to grow sunflowers

last weekend we went to the otter and butterfly sanctuary not too far from where we are and I bought a little pouch to plant sunflowers in. It is really cool so see them start growing so quickly. The pouch said they will germinate in about 2-3 weeks, but I'd only just planted them and now they are already this far!