Oktoberfest

Tomorrow I'm going to Oktoberfest and I have nearly no idea what I'm about to get into.  Saturday morning, at a time I like to call bright and early, we are leaving for a 3 leg, 6 hour trip.  Upon arrival we will spend the rest of the day at the festival grounds until the tents close up around 11p.  Then we will stay up all night for our return train at 5:45a PDT+9, which also happens to be a 3 leg and 6 hour trip.  It's going to be a little crazy I expect and I will keep you posted....

Stuck in Wonder

Last night was a birthday party for a friend that I've made here.  She is from France and turned 21 yesterday.  I was under the impression that we were throwing her a surprise party.  Rachel and I helped our other friend from France to make her a cake from scratch (which I never saw again at the party which makes me think it didn't turn out).  I should also preface this little story by saying that the dormitories at JLU are spread out and each one leads somewhat to segregation in the student population.  Obviously my dorm has the coolest people in it and the others can just live with that.  See what I mean.  Anyway, surprise party, right?  No.  

Rachel and I show up to Jeff's dorm area and in the common area are already more people than I thought I knew and more and more people from the summer course kept coming through the door.  Turns out this wasn't a surprise anymore and that about 35, maybe more, out of 55 summer course students plus 4 of out mentors made the trek to come to our dorm building.  Not being very good with large groups of people, I promptly placed myself outside with Victor where we could have pleasany discourse and smoke a pipe.  Topics included The Doors, spirits, pipes, karaoke, Romanian drinking practices, beer and more.  

The real point of my story is the following.  While standing outside watching the people inside talking, I realized that I was in Germany listening to conversations around me in English.  Then I noticed that our mentors and some Russian students were talking in German, while the other Russian students were speaking Russian.  Looking in I saw the kids from Spain speaking Spanish or Catalonian.  I also knew we had several people here from Poland that were gathered together at that moment and I'm sure the birthday girl and the other girls from France happened to be speaking their native tongue at that moment.  It was just a very interesting revelation of what a diverse... I don't know... thing I'm doing.  There were more that 6 languages being spoken in an area no larger than 30 or 40 square meters.  It was cool and gave me pause for a moment.

Second Week Down

I've been in Germany now for 2 weeks.  I'm not sure if I've fully acclimated yet or not since I had my first "I want to go home" moments today.  I think I did pretty good by making it to 2 weeks.  Last time I mentioned I'd finally been to the Lahn river which goes through Gießen and I was getting ready to do laundry.  Well, I went with Rachel and together, with some knowledge from friends who had done laundry already, we managed to each get a load of laundry done and dried.  I don't think I'm going to look forward to laundry day ever.  I have to go to a different building in my complex, down a flight of stairs and into a scary room with only 6 machines.  My predication is that it will be absolute chaos in there when the buildings are actually full of students instead of a quarter full for the summer.  

It's been really hard to be motivated to do anything the past week.  The 9 week intensive course of German I took before coming here pretty much wiped me out.  The 5 days after the class and before I flew here went by in a blur of packing and making sure I had everything.  Then this international summer course started and at the end of the second week, it's just like it is the 11th week of the intensive course.  I need a vacation because I'm completely burned out.  That and a nearly complete lack of money means that I am getting some good reading time in since I can't afford to go out.  

We go to Heidelberg tomorrow and it is probably a 1.5 hour to 2 hour bus ride down.  I hear from multiple sources that it is the most beautiful place in Germany.  I guess we'll see and I will get pictures out hopefully on Sunday or Monday.  No other news I guess at the moment except I'm still working on getting a link set up to pictures so everyone can see.  Until later...

Welche Sprache sprichst du?

Okay, finally done with one whole week.  It's astonishing how long it feels it's been when it's only been 8 days or so.  So much has happened that it feels like a month has gone by already.  The summer course goes well.  Quickly, here is the way my week will go for the next 3 weeks.  Everyday there are language tutorials/classes for 1.5 hours followed by a half hour coffee break.  Then another 1.5 hours of tutorials followed by lunch.  On Monday and Wednesday lunch is 1 hour followed by 2 hours of instruction that focuses more on culture and what not (still in German though).  On Tuesday and Thursday lunch is 2 hours followed by 2 hours of a workshop.  I picked the Zeitung, or newspaper, and will be writing a short article on the history of Gießen.  On Fridays classes end at lunch.  Yay!

I've wandered much of Gießen now and must say it is a very interesting city.  The combination of rural and urban is extreme.  I live on the outskirts of town, give or take, and have two giant fields and a forest (nearly) to walk between on my way to a major street with a McDonalds, Burger King, gas station and 3 large stores plus many smaller stores.  There is a large river, the Lahn, flowing through the upper part of the city which I finally went and saw on Thursday I think, maybe it was Wednesday... I just don't know.  

Today I need to figure out where and how to do laundry since I used my last pair of socks on my Frankfurt excursion yesterday.  There, I had my first Starbucks since getting to this country and it was also the largest cup of coffee I'd seen yet.  Folks, just be prepared when you get here for nothing bigger than a tall when you order coffee.  I've been around this town and every place has the same kind of automatic (but freshly ground) coffee machines and the largest cup is a stinking coffee cup size.  I want something bigger!!  Anyhoo.  I'm still working on getting a Picassa thing going so non-Facebookers can see all the pics.  I'll figure it out soon enough.  In the meantime, go here and select the Gießen album or any album name from the places we'll go.  Hope the link works.  Let me know if it doesn't.  Until later....ciao!

Willkommen: Deutschland

Well, the big day finally came.  I am sitting in my apartment/dorm room in Gießen, Germany...finally.  After all the buildup and anticipation for coming here since winning a spot in this exchange program, I have made my way at least by plane and by train to this medium sized university city.  I AM TIRED.  15 or so hours of flying with 2 connections but no break (our planes landed, we ran, the next plane took off), made for a very rough travel day.  But, because we flew into and through the night, our arrival plus lack of sleep made us think that only a normal 9 or 10 hour day had gone by instead of the 17 or 18 hours from first take off to arrival in Gießen.  Thus, I slept just fine Thursday night and awoke refreshed Friday morning.  There is much that happened just on the way here but I merely include pictures that hopefully will reveal what has gone on.  But I'll come back to those. :)

So, first full day in Gießen! What happens?  To start, I haven't had the internet and have really been aching for it, which just goes to show how much I must be addicted.  Secondly, since this is a summer LANGUAGE course, we had to take a test first thing (before Coffee!!) to determine which level group we should be in.  They are trying to make sure that beginners aren't stuck with more advanced speakers of German and vice versa.  I won't find out my results ever but will be told what group I'm in on Monday.  It was interesting and just like the tests I recently was taking at UW, but there were words that I didn't understand.  Moving on and please forgive the length, I want to say a bit.

After the test, we had a Kaffeepause or Coffee break.  I met some new people there and would like to say a few words.  Victor, or as he is called at home Calin, is from Romania and does not know Germany very well, possibly at all.  He is here to learn.  His English is great and is an example of how messed up our country is when it comes to languages, but I digress.  Victor is a slow talker, not because he doesn't know how to say anything, but because he doesn't like to repeat himself.  Awesome.  Then I met two guys from Estonia (don't know where that is? look it up).  Pritt and Sander are interesting guys who also don't know German and have a thicker accent than Victor when they speak English.  On the train with Rachel, Jeff and I was a exchange student who will be here all year too named Yasmin.  She is from Turkey and has difficulty with German and English.  It has been interesting trying to talk with her.  Today, I tried to describe what 'humid' was.  It was difficult!  

After we were done with being introduced to the itinerary of the course, we were set loose for the day.  Rachel and I both didn't have internet in our rooms so we decided to head downtown and find an electronic store to get some CAT5 cabling and Victor, Pritt and Sander came along.  I will have to tell more about downtown on my subsequent blogs so be ready for them.  But I will tell you that outside the store we found our cabling in was a Biergarten.  Yes, I had a beer with Rachel, Pritt and Victor.  I had a dunkel or dark half-liter beer on my first full day in Germany.  It was right I think.  It was amazing sitting in an actual German beer garden drinking German beer and thinking, "Oh my gosh, I'm actually in Germany which is in Europe.  What am I doing!?"  So, pictures ensue since I don't want to talk too much.  Love you all out there and if you're one of the anonymous readers, I thank you.  

Pic1: Rae and I after 10 hours or so of flying.

Pic2: Jeff and I after 10 hours or so of flying. (Honestly, no clue what the Icelandic flight attendant was doing.)

Pic3: A view of the building I'm in (it's the middle one in the back).  I have a view to a wooded area.  It's nicer than the courtyard and the room is nice too.

Pic4: My first beer in Germany with new friends Pritt (left) and Victor (middle).

Rediscovery

With only 8 days until the great grand adventure, my panic attacks have begun to come more frequently and even while I sleep.  The intensive language class is ending this week and since it has slowed down considerably (i.e. all homework is now completed, 3 days ahead of schedule), I have discovered something amazing.  Well its actually a rediscovery.  

I like science.  I mean REALLY like science.

It's like a festering scab wound thing that you just have to itch and it makes it worse but it feels so good and you just have to itch it one more time because of some weird feeling it gives that makes it feel better than when it is festering, scabbing... i think you get the idea.  I just read the two latest issues of Discover and Astronomy magazine and I'm borrowing the May issue of Science (very fancy) from the Physics department.  And I'm reading almost every article.  Geography, Chemistry, Biology, Psychology, Physics, and yes Astronomy.  I can't get enough.  Just one quarter without taking any kind of science class and I find that I can barely contain myself.  I want to be doing two research projects and learning how to present my work with new computer programs.  I can't wait for these plane rides so I can just sit and read magazines.  If only I could get my hands on the Astrophysical Journal I'd be set.  Alas, that costs quite a bit.  

Anyway, this just makes me feel better about the choice I made in picking the Sciences. Even though it is really hard at times, I enjoy it and just need to find that special niche where everything clicks for me.  I know that I'm not going to be a super genius, but I still love reading up on everything.  Jack of all trades, master of some - that's what I'm aiming for.  Prost!

Holy Cow!

So there are only 16 more days that I'll be in this country and then I'm gone for more than 11 months. I feel like there is so much to do and Rachel has even more that she has to get done. We're scrambling trying to finish our intensive German class, I'm praying that I haven't forgotten some important paperwork, and we're both still trying to get our crap organized and/or stored. In fact, I must be back to my homework. Prost!