Let the classes begin!

Guten Morgen everyone!  I trust you had a lovely evening back on the western hemisphere.  Here, it's 9-ish and my first class starts in an hour.  The university here in Gießen employs two primary types of physics classes-theoretical and experimental.  Both are lecture classes but I assume just a different take on the physics.  I signed up for the 3rd semester experimental physics class, which focuses on atomic, nuclear and particle physics.  I've taken some of this before, but I didn't think I would do to well in the 5th semester EP class which was titled core and particle physics (but a different word for particle, go figure).  I am also going to take the electromagnetism course this semester with plans to take the quantum mechanics class next semester.  I haven't actually gotten into the EM class but that kind of thing happens all the time at UW too.  In the meantime, if our calculations are correct, we will be needing a third class and I am hesitantly thinking of trying for a masters level nuclear astrophysics course, which covers the beginnings of the universe through the formation and death of stars.  Relativity, thermodynamics, and quantum mechanics are key players.  I'm scared but it's the only astronomy related class.  So in the meantime, I'm going to read a quantum mechanics textbook I brought along.  I'll learn it myself dangit!

Additionally, I sure hope to find the motivation to learn a programming language on my own this semester.  What I really need is a project (like homework) to focus on, otherwise I'm just learning the language and never using it in practice.  When I took a computer science class, they had us doing projects every week and gradually increasing our abilities.  So, it sounds like I need another text book with homework problems in the back. ;)  I'll just keep you posted I guess.  

I have to admit, I'm nervous about taking classes in German.  Yesterday we went to the department's meet-and-greet which turned out to be more like "let's go over the schedules and what's coming up just so you all know."  Naturally it was in German and I understood less than none.  This is probably going to be very bad.  I can only hope the homeworks are straightforward and not word problems.