okk, well i am gonna try to keep on updating. Since i didn't introduce myself before i should probably do that now. I am caitlin Ryan from Greenport new york. On exchange in Neuruppin as i sed, but i practically live in Berlin. Of course i love playing sports, just my thing, and sometimes people tell me i am smart, but they just don't know me. haha. Anyway, today I went with my brother and a man that my host dad works with to Hamburg. It's a city thats aboutt 2 hours from Neuruppin. Like my brother said, it's exactly what you expect a true German city to look like, from the buildings to the streets, just everything. It was pretty crazy to see a city other then Berlin for once. We started with having a really hard time finding the parking garage, and when we finally found it, we spent even more time figuring out how to get out. As soon as we walked out from it, we were at this big shopping center where we picked up our nice little tourist pamphlets as well as a coffee(it was still early) before heading out into Hamburg itself. It was so freakin cold! If there was ever a time to inspire me to buy a really warm jacket it was today. So we started off a little clueless, with absolutely no plans and then just made our way down to the harbor. From there we took a 2 hour boat tour around, which wasn't hard to do since Hamburg has like the second biggest port in Europe or something. It was pretty cool and of course i took a ton of pictures. After we stepped back out into the freezing cold, the man we were with told us about this huge building that has a bunch of exhibitions and what not in it so we went there. The first one we went into was like miniature models of different cities around the world. They had everything from Hamburg(or course) to Vegas and Florida. Sadly, they didn't do New York. It was really amazing though. I decided that i would never ever have the patience to make any such thing with that much detail. From the people to the mountains and the houses, it was so realistic. My favorite part was definitely Nederlands. One part even had a lake with a boat driving around. Pretty cool I must say. After we just went and got some food in the mall and made our way to another part of the city to walk around before we left, it was pretty late afterall. We ended up somewhere really close to the red light district that strangely enough had a ton of souvenir shops(don't ask me). All in all I thought it was pretty cool to head to a little bit more western part of Germany and just see the differences. Of course it wasn't as amazing as Berlin, but it was still really nice because it was a lot smaller city. Having my brother visiting was just a really good excuse to go places, especially on school days haha. Sadly enough, he has to leave Friday and then things will go back to normal, which i don't quite mind either. OK well I don't know what else to write so i am gonna sleep! And i will try to upload pictures!