rainy weekend trips.

this weekend i went to the cologne zoo. what the pictures don't show is that it was 43 degrees and raining off and on. but we were determined to see animals.

ROCK FISH!!!!!!!!!! it really seems like i was in the tank doesn't it? but i wasn't. sheree and katie wouldn't let me. party poopers....

these are a bunch of carp. there's a bigger aquarium in the near by town of königswinter so i will go there later to satisfy my "needing to see fish" thing.

this is a jellyfish. i thought it was a kind of starfish at first but i was wrong. i need to build up my german sea life vocabulary i guess.

PENGUINS!!!!! this is one of the reasons i went to the zoo. i have to go back with jürgen, my sprachtandem partner, because he really wants to see penguins. i think i can handle seeing them again....

these are baboons. i don't even want to talk about what the baboons were doing that we couldn't stop watching them for fifteen minutes. baboons are CREEPY!

do you see the baby otters?!?!?! they are so cute! they were making these really, really, really, really, terribly cute noises. like "too cute they need to be outlawed" kind of noises.

MEERKATS! or, as they're known in german: "erdmännchen." that basically means "little earth men." also terribly cute.

LLAMAS! actually, i think they're alpacas. but same general family. maybe.

well, i have way more zoo pictures than anyone wants to see. i took over 100 pictures. i also went to königswinter on monday because we didn't have school but it was also cold and rainy and my pictures aren't very pretty. so you don't get to see those until i can go back in nicer weather. but it's really impressive. basically you can travel up into the siebengebirge (seven mountains) and see for quite a ways. we could see the deutsche welle tower in bonn from there. even in the fog. anyway, that's it for this time. sorry for all the animal pictures.