Now it really feels like summer!!!

This is what I have been anticipating all semester--weather hot enough to warrant days at the Stadtparksee.  Indra and I went back there again this afternoon.

Actually, in the morning I went to open hours in the printmaking shop at school because I have more work to finish up.  I spent about two hours making a portfolio folder (in German they call it a mappe) for my Magic Flute series to go in.  Alas, the print on the cover didn't come out as perfect as I would have liked, but I had to live with it because I didn't have any more pieces of card paper and it had taken me so long to measure and cut.

Indra looked super cool wearing my sunglasses

At noon I cleaned up my mess in the shop and zoomed home.  I was supposed to meet Indra at the pool at 2, and I needed time to get changed and make our milk rice for dinner.  Marni and I accidentally bought milk rice instead of regular rice the other night when we were shopping for our curry-chicken ingredients, so I ended up with a whole unused package of it.  Indra said she knew how to make it, so she told me we could prepare some for our dinner tonight.  She told me how to do it, because it has to be prepared a while in advance.  You boil milk, add the rice, let it boil again, and then take it off the stove and wrap it in towels and blankets to keep it hot for a couple of hours while the rice soaks up the milk.  The plan was to make the rice and let it sit wrapped up while we were at the pool.  So I came home from school and prepared the rice before changing into my swim clothes.  I was successful, although I made a bit of a mess because the milk boiled over and I had to clean the stove off afterwards.  Once I had the rice boiling, I took it off the burner, wrapped it in a towel, and then put it in my room and covered it up with my bed comforter like Indra said to do.  Then I got my swim stuff and went to the Stadtpark!

The Stadtpark Naturbad (natural pool)

Lots of people enjoying the sunshine and the water today!

Indra and I had another really nice afternoon.  We swam, sat in the sun for a bit, then swam again and then laid out to dry off before going home.  We both brought our goggles and it was so fun to dive under the water and skim our hands through the plants on the bottom or look for fish.  The Naturbad is really cool because it is like a lake and a pool at the same time.  I wished we had an underwater camera (not that the water is crystal clear or anything, but it still would have been fun to take underwater pictures).  It was hotter today than yesterday and it was also Friday, so the whole place was crowded.  Tomorrow if we go swimming again, we'll go to the big part of the lake where all the boats are, and where you don't have to pay.  The water is way more murky on that side, but it will be much less crowded there.

When we got home it was only 5:15 or so, but the milk rice was ready and we were really hungry, so we ate it right then, with cinnamon sugar sprinkled on top.  I had never tried milk rice until today and I liked it a lot.  After that we went to Indra's room and spent the next couple of hours making a recording.  We still haven't managed to find a good spot to record our church songs, but a whilke back I found another song called "Kilkelly" that I shared with Indra, and we decided it would be fun to record that one too.  So we made our vocal recordings and a guitar recording tonight.  Indra has Cubase, which allows you to select all kinds of different instruments on an electric piano, so she will add some other instruments like violin or flute later.  It's an Irish folk song and it should sound really pretty when it's done.

Before bed we watched The Iron Giant, which is an animated film by Brad Bird (the guy who directed Ratatouille and The Incredibles).  Indra and Marni had told me it was a good movie, and after seeing it I definitely agreed.  I really, really liked it!  It was cute, touching, and also super funny.

Last night before we went to bed, Indra showed me a movie called Drei Haselnüße für Aschenbrödel, which was a Czech-German collaborative adaptation of Cinderella.  It was from the 1970s and was definitely different from the American filmmaking style, but it was a beautiful movie with super nice scenery and really good character interpretations (the prince was especially well done because he actually had a personality, rather than just sort of being there like in the Disney version).  This version was set in winter, and there were a lot of pretty scenes in snowy woods.  In the story, Aschenbrödel (Cinderella) gets three hazelnuts from the stepmother's carriage driver, which turn out to be magic hazelnuts that can grant wishes.  I really enjoyed that movie too.  I would recommend both it and The Iron Giant.

Oh, and also . . . Indra and I have decided that, even though it will leave us 60 euros poorer, we are going to try and get tickets for Der König der Löwen (The Lion King) next week.  We've been listening to the soundtrack nonstop and wanting to see it so badly that we finally decided to just do it.  We can't wait!  It should be a really fun activity for our last week together!