At long last, internet access from my computer! It's oh-so-exciting! I have only been without internet for a week, but it feels like forever. Things that I missed while not online: there is a new president in France, Tony Blair is leaving, and someone had the brilliant idea to do a study on the "5 second rule." It's great to have news again.

Germany is great! We arrived at 6:00 am on Saturday morning and were not allowed to sleep at all until that evening, in an attempt to lessen the effect of jet-lag. It was a good idea, but it meant that we were awake for over 30 hours before going to bed. Our German friends prodded us along through the day by taking us on a tour of the city and the campus, which is one and the same. They are quite fond of saying, "The city is the campus!"

Ok, some pictures. We were greeted by the sunrise at the Frankfurt airport.

We had a long ride from Frankfurt to Jena, during which we passed fields of gold flowers and dark German forests. I had forgotten about the fabled German forests (and the Black Forest, in particular), and I'm looking forward to doing some hiking and checking them out.

Here is a picture of Andrea and Mary in our new office at the Center for Applied Developmental Psychology (or CADS, as they call it). An interesting tidbit: the German word for developmental psychology is (drum roll please) Entwicklungspsychologie. They love their long words!

And a few shots of the town (more to come in later posts). Here is a shot of part of downtown, the Stadtzentrum (city center).

And the market place - they are setting up for a spring festival!

I took this picture because I couldn't help myself. What says, "I'm German" more than wearing blue suspenders and wielding a giant mallet?

To come in the next post: German inventions that they should have in America, and American inventions that they should have in Germany (Charmin could make a fortune over here!)