You Go Nate!

I'VE RECENTLY BEEN EATING MORE CASHEWS
and other tantalizing topical tidbits...

Between my occasional excursions I do have a life here in Munich. I've been lucky to have some fun students recently in my English teaching work. A few weeks ago I had a pair of business professionals for a week-long intensive course. One was from Greece and the other from Kazahkstan, but both longtime residents of Germany. We got along really well and had a lot of good laughs in the classroom. They even treated me to lunch a couple of times. Weeks like that fly by and make my job a lot more fun.

At the language institute where I work, whenever it's someone's birthday we usually have a small get-together for lunch with people bringing potluck. The best, however, are always the cakes, usually made by our trainer supervisor. Oh man... they're good.


Friday night is usually the Young Men's activity. We almost always play a little fußball (soccer), but we also do other stuff like cook tacos! (I even found a little Tienda Mexicana near where I live and was able to procure real Mexican tortillas) It's a fun group:





The Young Single Adults of Munich do stuff often. Including this BBQ on the back lawn of the church...







Spontaneous evenings are fun. One Sunday evening, a few of us got together at Katherine's house to cook dinner.



We were all Americans, except for Adam in the back who is from England but lives in Zürich and was here visiting. Hector and Adelaide are a newly married (and graduated from BYU) couple who moved to Munich a few months ago for work. Next to Adam is Katherine who was born and raised in Germany and whose apartment we are at. Next to her is Angela who is a mezzo-soprano from Arizona who sings with the Bavarian Staatsoper here in Munich. Adam was the head chef and Hector and I helped while the girls did nothing but eat. :-)



Since Angela is a part of the Munich Opera, I just had to beg some comp tickets off her. She finally got me in to see a production of Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier. (This was especially cool because Strauss was a Münchner and often involved with the Munich Opera scene.)

So I went to the opera house...



...and had fourth row seats...



Of course, part of the fun was to enjoy the lavish interior of the opera house...








It was an excellent production. The sets were incredible, the orchestra outstanding, and the performances superb. It was four hours with two intermissions, sung in German with German supertitles, but I still enjoyed it immensely.

Here I am enjoying...





One day the University of Utah Singers were in Munich as part of their tour through Europe. The director, Dr. Allred is a friend of mine and I met him with a different choir accidentally in Munich last year. This time he gave me their itinerary so I could know when they would be in Munich. They spent most of the day in a recording session at a church. I had to work that day as well, so after work I went over to the church and met up with them. It was fun to see a lot of old friends from college and some of them were surprised to see me, not knowing that I lived here.

A large group of them wanted to go to the Hofbräuhaus for dinner so they looked to me to guide them to the U-bahn and to the world's most famous pub...




The Hofbräuhaus (from February).... I had walked through it but never eaten there...




We went to one of the upper rooms where there was a huge hall packed with people at benches. A Bavarian band was playing with all the performers in folk costumes...




We sat down and ordered our food from an overworked beer-maid (I had to recommend the best Bavarian specialties to the people sitting around me.)

Here's Dr. Allred with a maß of beer he accidentally received in the chaos of the evening. (To the left of his elbow is Ed Reichel, the Deseret News music critic)...





It was really noisy, and matters weren't helped when this guy came out and started whipping...




Here are some old University friends: Katie, Joseph, and Bronson. It was a bit of a collision of worlds seeing these guys on the U-bahn and similar settings that are part of my every-day life here in Munich.



PROST!




Also in the University Singers is Michael Newton (on the left), the cousin of my brother-in-law Matt. That was funny...




Here I am dancing...




Afterwords, it was pouring rain but a few of the Singers wanted a short tour around the inner city. So I took them around to a few sites and led them back to the U-bahn...



So that was fun. The next few days they were in a small town south of Munich for an international choir competition where they won first place.


Last Sunday the Young Single Adults from the Munich and Salzburg stakes combined for a Singles Ward in the town of Rosenheim between Munich and Salzburg. It was fun and afterwords a few of us Münchners walked through the city. There wasn't much to see but it was still fun...





Oh yeah... I also cut myself not long ago. No, I'm not emo... I was washing a kitchen knife when it slipped and cut a pretty decent gash in my left hand. It was bleeding fairly badly so I thought I had better go to the clinic and have it looked at. I cut myself around 5pm and was walking out of the clinic around 6:30pm with three blue stitches. It was my first experience with the doctors here in Germany and I was pleased with how fast I was in and out (it was a Sunday and I did have to pay a weekend fee), and how nice everyone was. Not bad.



The stitches are gone now and the wound is healing nicely. I think I'll have a cool scar too!


So there you go... a bit of my recent social life and injuries.





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