My Family is Here!!! Part 1: University

Because pictures are more fun anyway, I'll share mostly with them :)

Here's an in-flight picture of my little brother on one of the many ziplines we visited :) (Hooray for German playgrounds!)

The first week of my family's visit we went to the university while F was in class. I didn't consider myself quite the qualified tour guide, but I showed them some things, we looked at some cool wind statues and then walked around one of the ponds. On our way we fished an orange crowbar (or prybar?) out of the stream (and made a carrying handle for it out of some wire we found...um, yeah :P ),

napped in a field,

took pictures (of ourselves, 

of each other,

(doesn't she look cute in my hat?)

and of daisies (called Gänseblümchen or 'little goose flowers'--and I love the pink on the undersides of some of the petals!),

and invented a version of catch using sticks and a little yellow cap my mom had found. Hooray for creativity!

Then we went to the Botanical Garden and I rejoiced in seeing that funny curly-branched tree, whose branches provide such joy to German hanging decorations (see post on the Germanness of Germans). They'll hang just about anything decorative from a stick, but their favorite type of stick is this one, from the Corkscrew Hazel. This picture hardly does it justice...ah well.

Here's a Google Image search on their decorations--to use a German expression--"herrlich!" (~"lovely/incredible")