Busy like a bee!

Time is flying by here!  I haven't had much time for updating this, so I'm sorry about that!  Knowing my memory, I may leave out a few things, but I'll do my best to remember everything since the last blog update!


This last week we had a couple of group trips through DiD.  We have to participate in 14 programs with DiD.  It's required, but I don't think I'll have a problem with getting that done!  It's been 3 weeks and I'm sure I'm close to that requirement.


On Tuesday, we went to KaDeWe.  It's short for Kaufhaus des Westens (Department store of the west).  It has things from around the world.  A couple of people in our UNL group were missing some American items that we haven't had any luck in finding here in Germany.  For example, Melinda loves her Dr. Pepper, but can't find it anywhere.  Who has it? KaDeWe!  I was able to find my white chocolate covered Oreos as well! =)  People stocked up on their soda and other goodies from home.  It's a huge store.  We had to go to the 6th floor for the "grocery" items.  They even sell Duffy beer from the Simpsons!  It's ridiculous what is sold there!  After shopping around there for about 45 minutes, Anja, our tour guide, took us to a church. 


It was the Kaiser Wilhelm Gedächtniskirche (the Wilhelm Kaiser Memorial church).  
It had been bombed badly during the bombing raid of 1943.  The remains of the 
church are surrounded by walls made of a concrete honeycomb containing 21,292 stained glass inlays.  It's incredible to see!  We then were set loose by Anja to either continue walking around the famous shopping street Kurfürstendamm or head home.  I needed to get a pair of tights to go with my skirt for a concert our group would be attending on Sunday.  Emily and I headed to H&M and then walked home from where we were.  Kurfürstendamm is the street directly behind the street I live on.  It was only about a 30 minute walk home from there.  


Wednesday was a normal day of school.  It was a very long day, but normal.  Thursday was another group trip with DiD.  We went to the Berliner Unterwelten.  The Berliner Unterwelten (Berlin Underground) consists of the bunkers that were created underneath the city for protection.  Pictures weren't allowed, so I was only able to take a few from the inside before our tour began.  It was very interesting, to say the least.  The bunkers were ABC protected.  This meant they were protected from Atomic weapons, Biological weapons, and Chemical weapons.  The structure of the bunkers were very interesting.  The walls go in a zig-zag pattern.  Why?  It was believed that if the city was bombed, the impact of the bomb would spread out over this pattern and decrease it's feeling of impact.  It wouldn't feel as strong as if the walls were built in a normal straight line pattern.  There is a network underground.  We were in the Wedding section.  This was the part of town named Wedding.  There isn't lighting everywhere.  Some of  the rooms have it.  Everywhere else, there is glow paint to light the walls and help guide you along  the way.  We saw the only kitchen that was there, the infirmary, the generator room, and another room where the emergency air supply was.  That room had a tiny square cut out of the wall about 6 feet up from the ground with blocks blocking off the door.  The door behind the blocks is air sealed so that no chemicals can get into the room.  The blocks also help keep any radiation out if the room needed to be used.  The tour took us to one of the U-Bahn stations that was used as well.  Thousands of beds would have lined the station platforms.  We went into a room where the door is pressurized and the room had a microphone, but no window or camera.  This way, the guard of the door could let in the allowed number of people into the bunkers and then shut off the microphone and close the door.  He wouldn't have to hear the people screaming, crying, and begging for their lives.  Our guide told us, "Back then, you had to do your job.  You'd let it the allowed number and then shut the microphone off and close your eyes and ignore what was going to happen next as soon as you push that button."  When the bunkers were redone, they made sure that only curtains were used for bathrooms and not doors.  Pipes that could only hold some much weight were used as well.  There were no knives or anything else sharp in the bunkers.  Why?  Suicide.  All of these things were done to prevent the number of suicides that were committed.  The pipes would break right away if someone tried to hang themselves and curtains replaced doors so people couldn't lock themselves in and commit suicide.  The tour was a great experience even though it did have its sad moments and information.


On Friday night, our UNL group went to a puppet show.  It was definitely... interesting.  It was a parody of Orpheus and the Underworld.  This show was certainly not appropriate for children!  Even though it was entirely in German, most of us understood what was going on due to the actions of the puppets.  It was pretty amusing.  Once again, we weren't allowed to take pictures of anything and I would only butcher the story and the description of the puppets if I tried!


Yesterday, Saturday, was another group trip with DiD.  We went to Wittenberg, also known as Lutherstadt.  It is the city where Martin Luther lived, worked, and preached.  We saw his house where he worked on his theses and other writings.  It was really interesting to see that.  We were in Martin Luther's house seeing the robe he wore, the books he wrote, the people he fought against in the Reformation, and other important artifacts.  I got to see the first cup that was created and used for communion when the Reformation happened and communion started being taken in both forms, the wine and the bread.  I saw the very first Bible that was written by Martin Luther in high German.  That was a really huge deal back  then for it to be brought into the German speaking world.  I saw the first catechism and other documents that played huge rolls.  I saw on Ablass! It was a document sold to people telling  them it would save them and put them in Heaven if they bought it.  It was the selling of indulgences.  


We took the tour of the house, which is a museum now, and then walked to the church where Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses.  The door is now a replica of the one he posted his theses against.  Our group also walked to the church where he preached.  That church was the very first to convert in the entire world because of the Reformation.  The pulpit inside is known as the "reformation pulpit".  I was able to take pictures in there!  I saw Martin Luther's grave inside the church.  He was buried inside the church where he posted his 95 Theses instead of the church where he preached. 


It was so cool seeing history like that.  I absolutely loved it!  It's one of the reasons I love Germany.  There is history everywhere you go.  I go by buildings that were built right after the reunification of Berlin!  I see places that still exist after the war and the wall.  It's so different compared to living in the United States.  I'm constantly learning about something here!  There's never a dull moment.


Today our group is seeing an opera in a palace or castle.  We have to dress up for it.  It'll be another great experience!  I have my test on Wednesday to move onto the next level at school.  It's a huge test and will take place over two days.  Hopefully I can do well enough to pass onto the next level!  We'll see how much my studying pays off!

Learn from history's mistakes

I knew it wasn't going to be an easy day.  I knew that the minute I signed my name on the list to visit Oranienburg.  I tried to mentally prepare myself for what I would be seeing, but it wasn't possible.  It isn't possible to prepare yourself to see where thousands were tortured and killed.


Everyone met at McDonald's in the Friedrichstrasse Bahnhof to begin our journey. Everyone knew it wasn't going to be a happy day.  We were somewhat prepared, but how were we supposed to be prepared to see such a horrible place?  Everyone was talking about what their previous night was like and what was new with them. We were all in a pretty good mood.  We waited for everyone to arrive before purchasing our train tickets.  Afterwards, we all went to the platform to wait for the subway to arrive.  The subway would take us from the upbeat station at Friedrichstrasse to a dark and depressing place.  Our train ride was 45 minutes or so.  Everyone was talking with one another. I decided to read my book, Verblendung, and enjoy the long ride.  


After the 45 minute ride, we had arrived at our destination, Oranienburg.  There were 24 of us in the group.  We took up a good chunk of the sidewalk as we walked.  Lsya started giving us a brief history of Oranienburg (in German).  She told us "Sachsenhausen exists today because they want people to visit.  They want everyone to see what happened and learn from it.  It is something that should never, never again be repeated."  The group got really quiet for a minute.  Lsya said we had a bit of a walk ahead of us.  We started and talked with one another.  I don't think anyone was ready to see what we were going to see.  After a long walk, we saw the sign for Sachsenhausen.  Everyone stopped to look at it.  


We continued our way into the first building where we would pay for our headsets.  Everyone had to wait because they had to know how many needed an English headset, a Spanish one, a French one, and any other language that was spoken within our group.  We all got our headsets and walked out the doors.  Everyone huddled together to find out what time we had to meet back.  We had 3 1/2 hours or so to walk around and see what we could see.  Lsya recommended that we go to the cinema there and watch the film.  After that, everyone split off and made their way down the long road along the side of the camp.


There was a section along the wall with pictures and testimonies from people who were in the camp.  There were sad pictures, but there were some happy ones.  You could see the pure joy on the faces of the people in the pictures when the US troops came in and helped free the prisoners.


Kelleen, Emily, and I stayed together.  We walked around and headed towards the first building we saw.  It was a museum.  Inside was the uniform of a Nazi soldier along with propaganda that they used.  Horrible.  Glass display cases lined the walls.  They were filled with letters from prisoners, personal items, postcards, and pictures.  It wasn't easy looking at the items, but they were definitely interesting.  It was interesting to read what they wrote to people outside the walls of the camp and to see pictures of people.  Some people had remarkable stories, because they were fortunate enough to survive.  The others who weren't so fortunate pulled at my heart.  We finished walking around the museum and made our way to the memorial site.  We walked past numerous memorials for those who died.  This memorial site and the museum sit outside the gate into the camp.  We walked through the gate which had "ARBEIT MACHT FREI" on it and stopped.  The camp is huge.  It's in the shape of a triangle, but a massive triangle.  I started to walk along the wall the surrounds the camp.  It has multiple sections of barbed wire along it.  There was a sign with a skull painted on it and other reading "Neutral Zone".  The three of us made our way over to a building we saw nearby.  We entered and were welcomed by a room of computers.  You could sit down and learn about the different things that went on in the camp.  I decided to read about criminal medicine and the research that was done.  I read about how the homosexuals had to wear a pink triangle so that everyone knew they were homosexual.  I then read about how they were forced or tricked to sign a consent form to be castrated.  They thought that if the homosexuals were castrated, then this would eliminate their urge and attraction to other men.  They did other experiments of this sort with other groups of people.  The SS would make these people go days without food and make them only work unless they decided to sign the consent form.  The experiments that went on were absolutely ridiculous, horrible, and pointless.  They proved no real scientific evidence for anything!


We walked through the rest of the long building and down the stairs.  We saw multiple rooms.  I can't remember exactly which ones, but I know we saw a washroom, kitchen, and a dissecting room in that building.  I think we may have also seen where bodies were kept before they were dissected.


We walked over to the building beside it.  It was similar to the other building with the rooms. I saw the masks that were made of the gypsies by the researchers.  These were the exact masks from then.  There were so many and all of them were of gypsies.  There was the first mask that was made and then the 2nd which was then painted.  Most of them had the name of person underneath it, but some were unidentified.  There were kits of different colored hair, skin, and eyes.  These were used to determine the eye, hair, and skin color of a person who the researchers were studying.  They would make notes of which color each was and try to find a underlying pattern for each group of people.  Once again, their research was pointless and they didn't come up with any real data. 


This building had a room with three screens in it.  I tapped the "English" button on the wall and stood back.  Each TV lit up simultaneously.  "From the view of the SS" on one screen, "From the view of the prisoners" on another, and finally "From the view of a visitor" on the third screen.  Kelleen and Emily walked in and sat down in a chair.  I continued standing for a minute and then sat down.  It was incredible how different the views were.  I'd look at the prisoner view screen and see them scrubbing the floors, putting bricks up, digging, starving, and completely exhausted.  Then I'd look at the SS screen and see them standing around smiling and laughing, thinking that they are part of something great.  They showed a picture of one of the guards handing a prisoner a cigarette, making you think things weren't bad at Sachsenhausen.  They were all lies.  Looking at the prisoner screen again, I'd see people digging graves for other prisoners.  Interviews came on with people who survived and told about what happened.  One man told the story of how people from around the world, mostly journalists, would visit the camp.  The guards would warn them a day or two in advance of the important visit.  This meant that the camp had to be spotless with every bed made and everyone looking they're "finest".  If a bed wasn't properly made, the guard would take away food privileges for a week or so.  One prisoner gave another his food in exchange for making his bed for him.  There were some people who made the beds perfectly, but they still weren't perfect of the guards.  It was unbelievable to see all of that.


We weren't able to see all of the camp, because we didn't have a lot of time there.  It was definitely an educational experience that I will never forget.


After the depressing part of the day, we walked to cafe and got some lunch before heading to Schloss Oranienburg.  I got a bratwurst with potatoes.  It was alright... not delicious.


We walked to the palace, which was huge!  We went inside and paid 2 euros each since we had such a large group.  I paid another 3 euros to be able to take pictures of things.  The palace was alright, it wasn't anything super fancy until we went to the basement.  There were rooms of giant beer steins! I'm talking like... 2-3 feet tall ones made from pure silver.

Pergamon Museum

Sorry this is a couple days late!  Time goes by pretty fast over here!


On Tuesday, a trip to the Pergamon Museum was organized by school.  We met at the school with Lsya, who was our group leader for the day.  Things then got a little disorganized and confusing.  She gave us the option of just paying for the day or buying a year pass for the museums on museum island.  There were at least 20 people in the group and everyone except for 5 of us wanted a year pass. The rest of us didn't want to get one and only wanted to pay for the day, so we had to wait.  We gave Lsya our money for her to buy our tickets and waited for the others to rejoin our group.  When most of the group came back from buying their year pass, we went inside the entrance of the museum.  We took our things over to a little coat check in area.  We were given a little "ticket" back and then walked over to get our tour guide headset.  Everyone kind of split up into their own little groups after that.  We did take a few group pictures on the steps of the temple, but that was probably the only time our group was entirely together for the rest of the museum trip!


The Pergamon Museum is incredible.  That's really the only way I can describe it.  It is a huge museum!  The Pergamon has original-sized, reconstructed monumental buildings such as the Pergamon Altar and the Market Gate of Miletus, all consisting of parts transported from Turkey.  The Pergamon is divided into the antiquity collection, the Middle East museum, and the museum of Islamic art.  I strongly recommend going!


We pretty much stayed until the museum closed.  I took a ton of pictures, but unfortunately, they are all on my camera, so I can't upload them!  I can steal pictures from other people though that went!  We were the only people left inside the museum, so we kind of hurried to get our things.  Our group then got stuck inside the museum.  Lsya wouldn't listen to me when I told her that a specific door was open and all the others were closed.  She continued to walk around the bottom level of the museum trying to figure out how we would get out.  I then decided to just walk over to the door I had been trying to tell her about and opened it.  Other people in the group saw and followed.  We would have been out of the museum 10 minutes earlier than we were if she had listened to what I had been telling her!


Last night for dinner we had Hackenbraten and Gemuese!  It was delicious.  It was merely meatloaf and vegetables, but amazingly good.  My hmom doesn't follow recipes.  She sort of just throws things together and creates new things on her own.  It's great!  She did it last night with putting different things in the meatloaf and was asking me how many eggs I usually put in when I make it.  I told her that I've never put a cooked egg in the middle of the meatloaf and had never heard of that.  She said her Canadian friend does it and says it's the popular way of making meatloaf.  It must be popular in Canada, because I've never heard of such a thing!


Tonight we had spaghetti!  It was so much food!  We had salad before and then the spaghetti.  I didn't finish my dinner, so sorry if there's bad weather tomorrow guys!  I'll take the blame since I didn't finish my dinner.  My hmom also created her own concoction for dessert!  It was a mixture of coconut creme and bananas!  I really liked it!  With all that being said and what I've said previously about my hmom's cooking, I'm definitely eating well here!


I'm completely stuffed and my throat is a bit sore, so I think it's time to relax and then head to bed a little early tonight!  Have a wonderful day everyone!

Beware the Ides of March

  Today wasn't that special.  Well, I take that back.  Today was entertaining.  Last night, we were supposed to get the 2nd student to live with us from the French part of SWitzerland.  She was supposed to arrive at the apartment around 10PM.  I hung out in my room ready for bed, because it was getting late and I wasn't going to stay up very late just to say hello.  10:00 came and went and it was soon 10:45PM.  The doorbell rang.  I was falling in and out of sleep since about 9:45, so I didn't really know what was going on.
  A few minutes later, my host mom came back inside speaking French with the girl.  I figured things were fine and so i went to bed.  I woke up this morning and got ready like usual.  My host mom told us breakfast was ready and so I said "ok! Ich komme!" and walked to the kitchen.  My host mom looked at me and said, "We have the wrong girl!  They sent us the wrong girl!"  Apparently the flight was late and the car was packed of girls that needed to be taken to their host families.  This girl, Virginia, claimed to be the girl who was supposed to live with us.  My host mom made a couple of calls after breakfast and she and Virginia left before 8AM this morning to try and sort things out.  I didn't worry about things at school.  I figured either the right girl would be there when I got home, or the wrong girl would live with us instead.
  Kelleen came home with me today because we had planned to see a movie in the afternoon.  Mondays are called "Blue Mondays" because it's the cheapest day to see a movie.  My host mom had left her keys in the door, so I couldn't unlock it.  I buzzed and she let me in.  Kelleen introduced herself and I told her we were thinking about seeing a movie.  We had a schedule of movies and the theaters on the kitchen table, so kelleen and I looked at it.  i asked if the right girl was here, but my host mom looked at me like I was crazy.  I repeated my question and she said, "no, but we are going to make the switch at 6PM tonight."
  We had just gotten home in time for "cake time".  My host mom made tea for both Kelleen and I and gave us some kind of baked good with chocolate in the middle.  Delicious.  We looked at the schedule of movies and decided we'd see "The Ides of March" at 6PM.  We hung out in my room until it was time to leave.  The movie theater we were planning to go to is only just down the street.  it's 5 minutes away or so.  I'll have to add a picture of it, so that you can see the street where I live and such.  Just as we were about to get ready to leave, the doorbell rang again.  It was Virginia and another girl, the right girl!  I have no idea how to spell her name.  It's something like "Nuamee".  I'll have to find out how to spell it!  My host mom introduced us and I continued to put my shoes on.
  We were getting ready to leave when my host mom asked where we were going.  I told her we were going to see a movie and then I'd be home.  She asked what I was going to do for dinner and I told her I would be home only a little later.  She said ok and that I could eat when I got home.  She told me that "Verdammnis" would be on TV tonight at 10:15 and so I had to be home in order for that!  "Verdammnis" is "The Girl Who Played With Fire".  I told her I would definitely be home in time for that!  We left and headed to the theater.  We got there and it was a really small movie theater!  IT's really cute though.  We bought our tickets and were surprised.  Normally, you have an assigned seat in the movie theater, but not in this one.  I liked not having to seat in a specific seat.  We had to wait a few minutes until someone told us the theater was open.  We walked in and found our seats.  It is a very old looking theater with a stage and curtains that cover the screen.  They drew back when the previews started and then closed again before the movie started.
    I won't give away anything about the movie, so no worries!  It was a really good movie.  George Clooney directed it and wrote the screenplay.  The movie was all in German which made it a little difficult to follow.  The voices didn't seem right for Ryan Gosling and George Clooney.  I think they could've picked better voice-overs.  They also spoke incredibly fast and so I had to focus on the words and also the scene to make sense of it all.  It was a good experience and I liked the movie, even though I couldn't understand every single word.
  I walked the short distance home.  My host mom was surprised I was home so early and asked if I had eaten.  I told her I hadn't and she told me to come to the kitchen right away and eat!  I told her ok and followed her.  She had left food on the stove for me to eat.  Noodles!  Yummm.  I'll add a picture of my dinner as well. It was incredibly delicious.  Pretty much everything my host mom, Birgit, makes is delicious!  I've told her what I don't like, so she knows what to avoid cooking.
  Anyways, I'm home now and just about to head to bed.  I don't think I'll be staying up to watch "Verdammnis" with my host mom, unfortunately.  I'm am way too tired for that.  Tomorrow I'm going with a group from school to the Pergamonmuseum right after school.  I'm going to need my energy if that trip is supposed to be 3 hours long.  I'll leave home around 8AM and not return until 6:30Pm or so.  I need my sleep!

Schlaft Gut!

Leipzig!

  Today (Saturday) a group of us from school went to Leipzig.  The trip was organized by school, so we all had to meet at McDonalds in the Hauptbahnhof.  It's a huge station with multiple levels and can be really confusing.  It was a giant group of us that were going.  We had to be there by 9:30AM and a lot of people were really tired from going out last night.  I got plenty of sleep, so I was just fine!  A girl named Anja was our group leader and took our money from everyone to pay for our train tickets.  We then ventured to the platform to wait for our train.  Everyone was sort of in their own cluster.  We would speak German, but also other languages that we know.  You can hear German, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, and a lot of other languages when we're all together.  


  The train ride to Leipzig was a couple of hours or so.  I sat next to Olivia, another girl from our group and helped her with her homework.  She's younger and has only taken the level 210 back home. She has a harder time with German, so she would ask me questions and how to say things.  My host mom, Birgit, gave me 3 books the other day.  They're the books in the "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" series.  Here, the titles are only one word!  It makes things so much easier when talking about them.  I brought the first book, Verblendung, with me on the train to read.  It's definitely not as easy as ready a children's book, but it's really good practice!  


  We had to switch trains, which wasn't too bad.  The ticket control person came through and people started to worry.  He didn't ask any of us for our ticket, only the people that were sitting near us, who weren't with our group, for theirs.  At first the people in the same train car as me started to panic, because we didn't have a ticket to show him!  One girl told him that Anja had our tickets.  He said he already had talked to her and that we were all fine. We continued the ride to Leipzig.


  We arrived a little after 1:15PM.  Anja told us we were free to roam around and only had to meet at the McDonalds there by 4:30PM.  Kelleen, Emily, Olivia, and I roamed around together.  We had no idea what there was to see.  All we knew was that Bach had been there and there was a very important church to see because of him.  We roamed around for a while and saw a couple of cool things.


  We saw a children's playground with a small tower and climbed that.  We ventured different ways for a while.  We then thought we had to be back at 3:30 instead of 4:30, so we headed back so Olivia could get some lunch.  We started walking down a pathway and found out we couldn't go any further that way.  I saw the fence was open and decided we could just go through that to go to the street instead of walking all the way around again.  As we went through, I realized something wasn't right.  The area we had just climbed into had ping pong tables outside, benches, basketball hoops, and bike racks.  We walked over to the gates to get out...they were locked.  We thought about jumping the fence.  Emily and Olivia both said they wouldn't be able to, so we walked back to the gap in the fence, climbed through again, and walked all the way around.  It was after we walked around that we realized we had just climbed into a school's outdoor area.  Well, I guess I can cross trespassing off my list of things to do! Looking at my watch I realized we didn't have much time left.  We started walking back in search of a place to eat.  We didn't find anything and ended up walking back to the train station.  We all ended up getting some food at the train station.


  After realizing we didn't need to be back until 4:30, we went searching for the important church.  Kelleen and Emily were pretty much running because we didn't have a lot of time left.  Olivia and I took our time.  We had time to find the church and head back by 4:30.   


  We found the church,but the signs were very misleading at first.  Random sidenote -Olivia and I paid the 50 cents to use the bathroom, which were really nice ones! I definitely try to wait until I get home so it's free.  St. Thomas Church is amazing.  It is the home of the St. Thomas Boys Choir and also the final resting place of Johann Sebastian Bach!  It's absolutely amazing inside.  Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures.  We got there during a mass I believe and begged our way inside to observe.  We got to listen and watch for 5 minutes or so before we left.  Interesting facts about St. Thomas: The St. Thomas Church dates back to the 12th Century. It was here in 1409 that the University of Leipzig was founded. From 1492 to 1496, the church had the form of a late Gothic hall church. It was also here in 1539 that Martin Luther preached the implementation of the Reformation.


We rushed back to the Bahnhof and met with the rest of our group.  Anja had us all group up to take a photo of everyone.  Afterwords, we went to the train and got on.  There was a giant "BMW Werk Leipzig" sign in the station, so I made sure that I took a picture of it for Michael.


  I got home, had some dinner that my host mom left on the table for me, and crawled in bed.  Today was such a long day, I look forward to sleeping in tomorrow.  Tomorrow night we get a girl from the French part of Switzerland to live with us.  She won't arrive until 10PM or sometime late in the evening.  At least that's what my host mom said.  We'll have to see!  


I'm off to bed!  Have a splendid rest of your afternoon or evening!  Tomorrow comes with another blog!


Tschuess!

merp. back in school!

Back in school and I'm totally feeling like a high schooler again.  On Monday we had our placement test and interview.  We were all tired and jet lagged, so I'm sure none of us did as well as we would have hoped, unless you're Kelleen!  Haha just kidding!  This blog may seem really boring.  It's pretty much me explaining my day and how things work.


After that we took a tour of Berlin around where school is.  There's a doener restaurant down the street!  Delicious.  There are also a bunch of little cafes and bakeries nearby school.  Lunch is not provided by my host mom, so I have to get lunch on my own every day.  It's not bad and I can usually find something pretty cheap!  


I'm in class from 9am every morning to a different time in the afternoon every day.  I have class from 9:00-10:30AM and then a 15 minute break and then 10:45AM-12:15PM every day.  It's called Standard-Kurs (Standard Course).  On Tuesdays I have Standard-Kurs and then Intensiv-Kurs (intensive course) from 1-2:30PM.  After that, I'm done for the day!  On Mondays and Wednesdays I have an additional class with Prof. Hayden-Roy, who came with us from UNL.  The class with her is at different times on Monday and Wednesday.  On Wednesdays, I have to attend Selbstlernzentrum.  It's like a study hall where I can get extra help and work on my homework.  Most people only go right before our tests.  For us who came from UNL, it's mandatory for the first couple of weeks and strongly recommended to continue going.  It's another reason why I feel like I'm in high school again.


Everyone that goes to Deutsch in Deutschland Institute (DiD), comes from all over the world.  There are 6 of us Americans, who are all from our UNL group, in my class.  I also have guys from Australia, Mallorca (Spain), Mexico, and Saudi Arabia.  The other girls in my class are from Switzerland, Russia, and Brazil.  They can speak English, but they don't seem to know a lot.  It's interesting to hear them speak German because of their accents.  It makes it difficult for most of them to say certain words or make certain sounds.  For us Americans, it may seem difficult to others, but not as difficult as it is for the other people in my class!


I am only in this class for 2 or 3 weeks and then we'll take a test.  If I pass the test, I'll move up to the next level.  If I fail the test, I have to retake that entire course again.  My course is in it's 5th week.  This is where we started unlike the others.  The other people in my class have been in Berlin for 4 months or so.  Students are constantly coming and going depending on the program they are here with.  


I don't really get homework.  If I do, it's a worksheet that doesn't take long.  We work on things in class most of the time.  Things might change as things progress, but we'll see!  


Bis spaeter! 
Later! 

Ich bin in Deutschland angekommen!

Hallo!  Wie geht's?  I've arrived in Germany!  First off, let me explain the title of the blog.  "Ich bin ein Berliner!" is a famous quote by John F. Kennedy when he 
visited Berlin.  A Berliner is a donut, so he literally said "I am a donut!" when he gave his speech.  It's a joke and fits perfectly since I am in Berlin!  


The plane rides weren't great, but they also weren't horrible.  We had some drama on our flight from Chicago to London!  I sat next to a guy named Timothy in our group.  I had finally fallen asleep on the plane when he woke me up.  I looked over to my left and saw a flight attendant standing next to me and Timothy asking if I could get up so he could get out.  I let him out and sat back down.  He was gone for a while.  After some time, a flight attendant came over the speakers and asked if there was a doctor on board.  What was going on?!  I got worried and asked Emily, another girl from our group who was sitting in front of me, if she knew what was going on.  She said she didn't.  A little bit later, a different flight attendant came up to me and asked if I could hand her Timothy's backpack.  I gave it to her and she walked off to the back of the plane.  He was still gone for quite some time.  A different lady came up to me and asked for his kindle.  I got it out of the seat pocket and handed it to her.  She said that Timothy wasn't feeling well and that he was going to stay at the back of the plane for a while.  He was fine and I shouldn't worry.  I tried falling back to sleep a few different times after that.  After a couple of hours or so, he came back with a flight attendant.  I asked him what was going on and he told me.  The flight attendant wanted some information from him.  We told her we were traveling in a group and that our teacher was actually meeting us in London once we arrived.  "Oh fantastic!" Timothy then got to move to the very front of the plane to First Class for the rest of the flight.  The doctors who helped him also moved to the front so they could be nearby if he needed anything.  Once we landed in London, our group got together and I had to update people on what had happened.  Timothy got checked out by paramedics as soon as we got off the plane.  We continued to our next gate while he stayed behind to get the ok from the paramedics to carry on.  What a great flight, right?  It certainly was interesting!


I arrived Sunday early afternoon in Berlin and was picked up by my host mom, Frau Graw (Mrs. Graw).  At first I thought she had forgotten to pick me up, but then we found each other.  She is really nice and also speaks English!  We speak Germish around the apartment, but will soon become only German. 


The weather is cold and it rains sometimes, not a lot, but it will rain.  I mean cold by it being in the 30s here.  I'm hoping it will warm up soon!  I packed all layering clothes so I stay warm!


We live in a typical German apartment only 5 minutes from the subway.  I live close to another student from the UNL group who is here, Emily, which is really nice.  We meet and go to school together every day.  We live on the 4th floor, but here in Germany, the 1st floor isn't the 1st floor.  So really, I live on the 5th floor!  It's definitely a work out every day!  We live in Charlottenburg, Berlin.  It's literally China town here.  No joke.  There are so many Chinese restaurants around us! 


The first night for dinner I had a goulash with veal!  I had never had veal before, but it was good!  I met the neighbor across the hall.  She's from Austria!  She's really nice, everyone has been so far.  I've been warned about violence and what to do in case something happens.  


More to come later!