Deutschland!!

Wednesday, September 30

I'm here!! Safe and sound. And with a tired mom and tired baby, but, you know. I do what I can. We got in around 11 something your time, and promptly set out for some food -only to discover that it was about a 3 mile walk to the outskirts of the center of town (which is basically the only place to eat that's not a biergarten), so that was a long delirious walk. But I got food out of it, so it's all good now.

The flight itself was very nice. We had some issues going through the airport, like having to go through security yet again and discovering 25 minutes before take-off that we were at the wrong gate, but we made it through. The long flight, especially, was as nice as a 7 hour flight with a 3-year-old can be. They served tea, twice. I love tea! And both the dinner and breakfast were more than edible. (SAS is the airline... unofficial promotional ad!) I also got to watch Star Trek, the new one that I'm completely obsessed with, yet again, but this time I watched it IN GERMAN! It was really interesting, and I'm pretty sure I only knew what was going on because I had already seen the movie so many times. However, I liked it. The only downside was that some of the jokes lost a bit of their humor once translated. For example the quote "Are you out of your Vulcan mind?!" doesn't work in German.

Thursday, October 1

I think I've walked over fifteen miles in the 30 hours I've been in Trier. No lie. This morning Alydia and I set out to find her Kindergarten. 1 hour, 1 mountain, 4 wrong turns, and 10 people who had no idea where the Kindergarten was later, we were there. It was absolute torture. And I'm not even kidding about that mountain part, or the part about no one knowing where it was. People less than 100 feet away had no idea it existed. Isn't that odd? And then we got in and the woman didn't understand who I was or who Alydia was, and told me she wasn't allowed to come. And at that point I started crying. Yes, crying. And she took me into her office, where we finally communicated what I was doing here. I stayed with Alydia for about an hour, and then walked back down the damn mountain (I had just missed the bus, and the next one wouldn't come for 20 minutes) to get my stuff and ride this time back up the mountain to sign up for classes. Fortunately, that was easy, and I found my apartment with little trouble. However, I must mention that it's on the 4th floor, which is six flights of stairs up...or maybe seven. I forget. It's a lot. They have flights for each half floor.

After that I picked up Alydia and took her back to the hotel. Alydia absolutely loved school! She didn't want to leave when I picked her up. We got back to the hotel and my mom and I each took a bag in hand and dragged them to the bus stop, rode the bus to the University and then rolled the bags to the apartment and up the stairs. Then I went back for another one. Fortunately, when I got back a nice guy who was also moving in picked up my suitcase (without asking -I would have declined) and took it upstairs for me, and then ran right back down. It's a good thing he did, though... I think I would have passed out. Did I mention it was 4pm and I hadn't eaten lunch yet?

So then I went and found a grocery store while my mom unpacked and got peanut butter, crackers, milk, and apple juice that wasn't fizzy.

And then I had to go to a dinner, which was fun, but I feel like 60% of the people speak better German than me. But it's ok. I know I was having a bad day. I forgot the word for "bad".

But the food was good, and I met lots of interesting people. Two girls from Japan, a girl from Cyprus, a guy from France, a girl from Estonia, and a girl from Finland. And that was just at my table... an entire restaurant was filled with international students. It was pretty cool.

Friday, October 2

Today was another long day. I had to be in class at nine to take a test that would decide which language group I would be in. We were given til 10:30, but I got done at 10:00, so I rode back down the mountain to help my mom finish checking out of the hotel and moving the last of the bags before 11, when I had to be back in class. At 11 we got a tour of the school. It's really quite nice and very pretty. All the buildings are blue on the top stories, but the main three buildings have different colors on the first floor so that you can easily tell which one you're in. Most of my classes will be in building B, I think, which is yellow.

And, of course, we saw the Mensa which is wonderfully inexpensive. I didn't get to eat there yesterday, though, because instead I grabbed my mom and Alydia and went grocery shopping. Alydia took the day off from school to play and recover from jetlag. Then it was back to class to get some information about the apartments, and more specifically about the internet. We're allowed only 2GB up- and download each month. However, there's an internet service you can get downtown that's a flat rate 15 Euros per month that I believe has no up-/download limitations. A solid idea, if you ask me. I'm going to see if they're open on Sunday. Normally, I think Sundays are pretty sleepy days, but tomorrow is Tag der Deutschen Einheit (the day of German unity), which is a national holiday, so everything's closed. But then tomorrow is an official "Shopping Sunday", of which there are many throughout the year, but the point is that I'll hopefully be able to get good internet to upload pictures and I'll also hopefully be able to get a shower curtain.

I haven't said anything about my apartment! So, briefly: There's the most inexplicably tiny kitchen I've ever seen. I have a stove top with two eyes (I'm assuming that's the spelling. I know that's the word) and underneath those is a half fridge. I also have a sink that has what I'm assuming is a hot water heater above it, but it doesn't work. Something to report. The kitchen is the first thing inside the door, and next to it is the bathroom. It's very basic and very small. The only real complaint I have is the lack of a shower curtain. We really are going to have to get that fixed ASAP. Then there's my room, complete with shelves, a closet, a single bed, a tiny side table, and a huge desk. Twice as big as any other dorm desk I've seen. From there there's a door to Alydia's room, which is furnished similarly. We've pulled her desk away from the wall to use as a dinner table, and she uses her little table for all her projects and crafts.

Today was much easier for me, speaking-wise. I was able to carry on decent, albeit short, conversations with both tutors and fellow students. The only person I have trouble understanding is the guy from France, who has an incredibly thick French accent, and as we all know -Devon doesn't speak French. By the end of the day, though, I had gotten used to his accent and we talked about music -he likes rap- and drinking ages and a bunch of other stuff.

The default language when someone doesn't know a word in German is, fortunately and unfortunately, English. That means that I can ask questions, but it also means that every once in a while people fall to asking questions in English. For the most part, though, people are good at keeping to German. Hopefully that'll only get better.

That's it for me, though. I'll try to keep you guys posted.