A Quarter of a Year

January 19-20th: A potluck celebration...

 and a hike up a mountain of ice.

It took over two hours to reach a peak one usually makes in thirty minutes, but the satisfaction was all the better. The view, unfortunately, all the worse.

February: My first exam as a master student here in Freiburg, truly challenging. A good amount of studying, a little bit of luck, and a good note to show for it. Success!

March: Vacation! Marina and I spend a week in Paris with her family. This is where we live, at the foot of the Pantheon:

Chillin' in the Jardin du Luxembourg, just around the corner from where we are staying.

 Seine by day,

Seine (and Notre Dame) by night.

A train ride, sitting next to a little boy with over-sized glasses that lent him powers to draw extraordinary houses and wizards, brought us down to Perpignan, where we spent the following week riding bikes to places such as...

 ...this lake, which was under attack by finger-freezing, bike-hating-or-loving winds.

Little lunch!

End of April: Another visit to Perpignan. Here we have carrot pie, carrot soup, carrot smoothie, and carrot cake. If you had a carrot allergy at this dinner, you were out of luck.

 Marina and Amanda, visiting en route a grand tour of Europe, on a waterfall hike.

Cascade.

First of May (back in Freiburg): A holiday in Germany on which many people go hiking. We trekked the Dreisam upstream and settled for a fire and lunch on this woody shore.

Andy, Eden, Elisa, und Marina. And "stick bread:" dough on stick, stick in fire. Bread. (delicious.)

May 9th, also a holiday. Also a hike day, for me anyway.

 Ihringen, Kaiserstuhl. Black Forest, Northwest of Freiburg.

A rogue field of Bärlauch (wild garlic)!

Until next time, many thoughts of blossoming Spring.

:)