**Disclaimer** it's 1 in the morning here and I'm exhausted. I WILL make grammatical errors and spelling errors and I don't care.

Yesterday I went to the Sky market to pick up some supplies and my dinner. I walked through the store and I didn't find anything that was easy enough to make that I really wanted so I decided to go over to the deli section and try my luck there. The sign was all written in a rather short hand german. For example it would say something like "Roast beef sandwhich" and then have "with a roll and cheese" but since I didn't understand what the "roast beef" part meant, I wasn't entirely sure I wasn't just going to purchase cheese and a roll. There was a lady at the counter so I asked her if she spoke English. She shook her head. I said out loud "oh brother, this isn't going to work very well" she shrugged and said something in German to which I looked at the sign and shrugged. She pointed to a really delightful looking sandwich and then at me and said "yes, good" so I nodded, she brought out the sandwich and put it in the oven. When she was heating it up she asked me "Kansas?" I said yes because that's where we're technically from on this trip. She ran over to the counter and started thumbing through a pile of newspaper which she then showed me after rapidly flicking through 3 of them. It was a picture of my group that was taken at the fourth of July celebration in the town square. She gestured for me to take the paper and upon a closer inspection, I found that most of it was dedicated to us and there was actually a picture of just me in it as well. I thanked her as she handed me my sandwich saying in German "hot, hot" then walked outside. She came to the window and gave me the thumbs up, I returned it. I think I made a friend and I'm in a German newspaper. Pretty successful day I'd say.


Tonight we had our first concert. We performed various works ranging from Copland to Gershwin to Von Suppe. It was in the "barn" at Hasselburg which is a castle in Eutin. The concert was the opening concert to kick off the Eutiner Festspiele and we played to a sold-out crowd of 900 people! The program was fun to play, especially with all the American music, and looking out over the crowd told me that I wasn't the only one enjoying myself. We also played "the evening prayer" from Hansel und Gretel, one of the opera's we're doing this summer, as sort of a "teaser" for the audience. It is an incredible piece and one that is well known to German audiences. By the time we played the final chord, there was hardly a dry eye in both the audience and on stage. We got several standing ovations and each one of us received a rose and countless compliments on our energy and performance.