4th of July Fun

Happy 4th of July, everyone! Technically, it's already July 5th in Berlin, but whatever. 

I found a picture from last week that I forgot to post...but I was inspired by a fellow HIA Fellow from her awesome food blog, and I took the following picture. I like the style. Oh, the chicken tasted good too. :)

This morning, I picked up a new cell phone for 10€. It's a piece of crap, but I'm only here for another few weeks, so no big deal. If I ever move back to Berlin, I'm signing up for a month-by-month contract with O2.

I headed over to Brandon's, since he was going to cut my hair (last time in Berlin actually...sad). I also picked up some chicken, and we marinated them with some fresh herbs from Brandon's balcony garden.

After they were done, we had a feast. Greek salad, sausages, and chicken. Amazing. Of course, we washed it down with some beer. Haven't had a Stara Bohemia in over two weeks. I missed it. Haha.

Don't that look goooood? :P

Fresh herbs look a bit different from the ones I have at home (store-bought shaker bottle things).

In the afternoon, after lunch, a haircut, and a shower, I headed out toward the Freie Universität to pick up a group of students from the University of Kentucky, who are in Berlin for a month as part of a special Fulbright program. It was really fun meeting them, and I helped guide them to Tempelhof, where Brandon was setting up our July 4th grill party and softball game.

I hadn't played since my last practice with Brandon's softball team back in March, so it'd been a while. But it was so nice to get back on the field—without a knee brace either. I started out playing at shortstop and promptly booted my first ground ball. Yikes. I settled down after that, but I still didn't nab the runners on the two or three slow rollers hit toward me. Bummer.

I think the students had a great time though. Many of us had very little experience, so it was entertaining to say the least. Plus with our music blasting and everyone enjoying themselves, we braved the rain with no problems.

We chose random teams, but it was fun playing together.

Even posing between pitches. Haha.

Catcher's no easy position to play, so mad props. :)

I had a pretty decent day at the plate...much better than usual. Although in this particular at bat (second one, I think), I forgot to put on my other glove. The one on my left is always on, because I wear it under my baseball glove when I play defense too.

I started out 3-3 (3 singles) and ended up with 2 runs scored, I think 1 run batted in, and a walk.

My first at-bat was a clean single lined into left center that rolled past the center fielder, so I ran all the way around and scored. Technically, I would've scored it a single and a run-scoring error on the center fielder. No inside-the-park home run. :P

I also lined into a double play and struck out in my last at bat. That was the at bat that stayed on my mind after the game though, because the bases were loaded with two outs and I'd worked a full count. The pitch I struck out on was a low and inside pitch that sunk into the dirt. I was mad at myself.

But we had lots of fun, and I don't even know who won the game or what the final score was.

It was really great to have some real softball players around too. Martin crushed every pitch he got.

It was also fun to see everyone gather outside the dugout and watch people bat, while shouting encouragement. Ah, sports. :)

Pitching's not easy either, so all of our pitchers did a great job.

Everyone was hungry though, so once the grill heated up, we threw tons of sausages on.

Our grillmeisters did an amazing job. Björn and Brandon really prepped a ton of stuff. I know Stefan helped out too. Simply stupendous.

Looks good, eh?

Yummy...

Björn, der Grillmeister.

Everyone had lots of food and enjoyed great company on this 235th birthday for the United States.

We also had cold beer, so it was perfect.

Then we broke out the sparklers and just had fun.

Happy 4th of July from Germans and Americans alike!

Martin even got creative with his sparkler, and it was pretty awesome.

After three sausages, a veggie kebab, and a scoop of potato salad, I was full, for sure.

A number of the students headed back soon after, but a few stayed and hung out with us.

My camera was one of the few taking pictures, so I tried taking pictures of the students so they'd have pictures from tonight. Clearly, one of them didn't want to be in this one. Probably since the previous picture I'd gotten of her was her face frozen in a non-flattering moment. Haha.

Overall, July 4th in Berlin turned out to be a rainy but fun affair. It reminded me of the last July 4th I spent in Berlin (2008), when it poured buckets of rain. That was the day the U.S. Embassy opened at Pariser Platz, so there were fireworks downtown then. But I heard they no longer do that. Makes sense. :P

In a few hours, I'm meeting with my professor to go over my final Fulbright report, so I'm about to hit the sack. But let me leave you with this song that just debuted today. It's by a friend from UW, who has been sharing his God-given talent around Seattle for some time now. It's called Stars in My Eyes.

Happy July 4th from Berlin!

Till next time,

Sam