While i still have plenty to write about from Christmas and New Years, i thought that i would fill you in on what i've been doing more recently. I decided in December that i did not want to continue in the school after winter break, which meant that i had a two and a half week period between the end of winter break and a seminar in Berlin. I decided that i wanted to spend this time doing a mini-praktikum at the Don Bosco Club in Köln-Mülheim. This is an interesting borough of Köln. In the last sixty years it was a booming industrial center with many factory positions. To fulfill these positions, many guest workers (Italians, Greeks, and Turks) were brought in. However, these factories were closed in more recent times (last twenty years?). This left a large, un-educated population living in very close quarters (there is an old army barracks that was converted into housing after the second World War. fifty thousand people lived in these barracks, which is probably on a piece of property the size of two football fields). This inevitably created a cycle of poverty to which drugs and violence are natural. What i do is volunteer in a youth center, a safe haven if you will, for the kids to have a chance to be kids. Essentially, i play games all day. it is extremely fun. We play monopoly, risk, pool, kicker, soccer, ping pong, connect four, and much, much more. Even though the kids try to BS me all the time on rules, i still show them who's boss. Actually, they'll walk all over you if you let them. It's not all fun and games, but the majority of it is.