Events of the Past Month

I know that I haven't written a blog in a while and I was reminded today when my friend Mitch and Liz were talking about their blogs. I noticed that the last time I wrote a blog was in April and I do have a good excuse for not writing more often: Classes finally started. As crazy as that sounds, classes just began on April 20th and I have successfully managed to find the few classes offered at the Uni that involve homework and lots of reading. It seems to me that everyone else I know never has homework to do and just has to worry when they have to do one presentation. Sadly I cannot join them in this feeling because I have a constant load of homework and reading to do. This is a picture of the reader I had to buy for my EU course. It was huge!!

Since our classes only meet once a week for an hour and a half, a great deal of work is independent. Seeing as though I am in Europe for a semester, I have no desire to do homework whatsoever. I want to have fun and enjoy my time here to its fullest. Unfortunately this work ethic has created more problems for me because I am always behind. I am always trying to do my reading, make sure I am caught up with my classes, and it never seems to fail that I never can manage to do this. This coming Tuesday I have to give a fifteen minute presentation in my German history class that involves a two page hand out. My teacher wanted us to send him a copy of it the Friday before and I was only able to send him an idea of what I was going to do because I wasn't able/didn't have the motivation at 12am on Saturday morning to keep going and finish it. Luckily he said it looked good and I can actually get rid of one of the topics I was going to talk about.

Overall my classes are interesting, but they are difficult. I am doing my best to understand and follow along with everything my professors are saying, but it's hard to do all that AND take notes. As I sit in class I will look at my notebook and realize I have barely written anything down. This makes me nervous because at home I always take tons of notes. I also have to make sure I am paying full attention in class. If I space off or begin to think about other things, which is a very common thing, I realize that I don't really know what the teacher just said and from that point on I have trouble staying with the teacher. Things are really difficult here and I definitely think I am going to be better at certain aspects of German after this semester.

Besides classes I have been taking a number of day trips. My friend Jon doesn't have to take classes while he's here and because no one wants to spend their time in Germany in their room, he makes sure to use his time wisely. He usually has suggestions for day trips we can take for "free" with our semester tickets. The first day trip involved myself, Jon, and Todd. We went to Neuenburg am Rhein and then walked into Chalampe, France. It was on a Sunday and we packed a lunch and the guys brought wine and champagne. Neuenburg wasn't too bad, but not exactly super exciting. We walked into Chalampe and honestly we have never seen a town so dead. I think the whole time we were there we saw about 5 people. Granted, I know that things are closed on Sunday and people relax, but not one person was outside! When we walked past someone's house we heard them closing their blinds right when we were passing. We spent our time in Chalampe at a park that was deserted and we had lunch. It was nice and relaxing and then we took a lot of jumping pictures. After lunch we walked around and then walked back to the Rhein. Jon always taps his foot in water and that was his plan for the Rhein. As Todd and I were doing something else, we hear a splash and look and Jon had fallen into the river. He fell twice because he slipped trying to get out the first time and Todd and I just took pictures and laughed hysterically. Jon had extremely wet shoes, socks, and pants. Todd mentioned there was a sign saying not to do what Jon did and we made sure to see it when we were leaving. It was a perfect illustration of what Jon did and it even had warning signs in three different languages, all of which Jon knew! That kind of just added salt to the wound, but it was still a great day!

The weekend after that we did even more. On Friday we (Jon, Liz, Joo Young, and I) went to Titisee and we rented a paddle boat and spent an hour on the lake. It was really nice and a gorgeous day. When we were about ready to go back home after walking around it just started to pour down rain. It was thundering and even started to hail as we were waiting for the train. It was so intense!

On Saturday we (Jon, Liz, Mitch, and I) met up with Jon's tandem partner (someone you speak German and English with) and we went hiking. When I say hiking I mean serious, hard core hiking. We walked for about an hour and a half up a very steep hill, which was really narrow and it was hot and humid and exhausting. I have never done such intense hiking before, but the view at the top was amazing. We were able to look out over Freiburg and just relax. Going back down was worse because it was pretty slippery and we had to go down a steep decline the whole time. Jon was nice enough to tape me at one point to catch in case I ever fell down. Luckily I made it out alive and was extremely hot and sweaty (not a good thing).

On Sunday we went to Schluchsee, which was about an hour away. It was bigger than Titisee and so pretty. We rented an electric boat because it was the only option that would fit five people. The lake was spectacular and it was so relaxing. I just sat back and let Mitch drive. It was a great way to spend a Sunday. Jon decided to try to tap his foot into the lake over the side of the boat and he managed to get his foot into the water again. His shoe got wet, but luckily it wasn't as bad as one week prior. We had another really good laugh at that. What made it worse was that the boat wasn't moving that fast at all because it had two speeds: slow and slower. It was still fun though.

Just today we went to Strasbourg, France. We went cheap and took the regional train ticket to the border and then walked into France. It was quite the long walk, but that was the theme of the day. We didn't really have a set plan for Strasbourg and I just wanted to see the European Parliament (I know I'm a nerd). Well we just walked around all day and eventually found the center of town. It was a really nice place and I liked it a lot. We had issues at first finding a place to eat and the place we did find to eat only had one thing to eat: hot ham and cheese sandwiches, French style. It wasn't the greatest or worst thing I had ever had, but definitely was not worth the money. Of course after lunch we found where all the real cafes and restaurants were. Oh well!

My last big block of traveling is coming up this Thursday. I am going to be traveling to Munich for the weekend with my group of friends then meeting my best friend Katlyn, who will be staying with me for two weeks. Then that next Friday Katlyn and I are going to Brussels for the night and will return on Saturday evening. On Sunday, all of us are going to Salzburg, Austria for the Sound of Music tour and I'm pumped! We are going to sing and dance all over Salzburg. It's going to be great. Then on the 11th we are all going to Berlin and I can't wait! I love Berlin and I hope to meet up with a number of people so that should be lots of fun. Once we finish all that the most that will be going on are day trips. I will have to get down to business and work on my remaining presentations and the number of papers I will have to write. Not looking forward to that!