We're coming to your town, we'll help you party it down, we're an American band.

So, among the several good things that are happening this week, I'm on Easter break until April 15th. I usually would have work today and tomorrow, but today is a field trip day, and tomorrow there's one of those things where a few classes are taking a bunch of tests and the rest of the kids have the day off. So my break officially started yesterday at 1:25, which isn't too bad.

Second, my mother is here to visit, and we've been walking around a lot and enjoying the good weather. On Thursday night, we're taking a night train to Zurich, where we'll stay until Tuesday and hopefully get to see some other bits of Switzerland as well. Then she's flying home, and I'm going to Istanbul (I only made these travel plans last week, so I'm still scrambling to read up on the city, check the weather, figure out what to bring, etc.). I'm coming back to Zurich on Easter Monday, then taking a few days to work my way back to Berlin by train.

I'm really excited, and will certainly have a lot to report when I get back. I'm starting off the trip with the usual what-on-earth-is-the-weather-doing cold, but hopefully I'll get over it soon. E-mail access over the next few weeks will probably be pretty sporadic, so I'll apologize in advance to all the people whose e-mails are sitting in my inbox - I promise to get back to you as soon as I can, hopefully with some interesting stories.