zwischendurch

Believe it or not, I am actually living on weedays in between these trips :)
Class is pretty cool. We are always in this same little room with the same little group of people. Each class meets only once a week (except language skills, twice) which I'm not sure is so great with language courses. I forget a lot of the grammar that we learn, and grammar is so incredibly important.

Actually, I take that back. Class isn't too cool. I was swimming around in my head thinking of which class is my favorite, but none of them are that fantastic. Either I think the teacher is particularly good with an bland subject or the material interests me but the teacher is dull. In any case, I am getting to learn about fairytales, architecture, and the language. And more than anything right now, I want to be able to speak German. It's growing inside of me and I think I may have found something new to learn with passion. Understanding people and likewise being able to express yourself, even simple thoughts, is so unbelievably satisfying.

I forgot to mention that I was really sick in between the Milan and Edinburgh trips. I spent a couple days in bed feeling absolutely horrid and and some points, I felt really helpless. It's strange being alone with no one to take care of you. I mean, literally, I ran out of food and no one would run to the grocery store for me. Maybe I am responsible for myself? Maybe. At one point my fever got really bad and I called my program manager, knowing she had driven other, less sick people to the doctor, seeing as our health insurance cards were still en route. I was really annoyed when she brushed me off and emailed me the name of a doctor, suggesting that I take the bus for 20 minutes to the city center and walk to the doctors office from there. I instead opted to sleep the entire day and ward of my flu on my own. Later, I found out that my program manager was also at home, terribly sick. Yet again, I am reminded not to make assumptions.

One good thing was that I had a lot of time to sit on the computer and Skype chat with my german neighbor. It was really fun; we'd switch between languages and I had plenty of time to look up words on internet translators. Once he realized that I was bored cooped up, he brought me chicken soup and a bunch of german DVDs. It was really nice. He said we could absolutely hang out and speak German as soon as I was better, but since then, I've asked him to hang out numerous times... and... nothing. This whole making-German-friends thing is really wearing me out.

One Sunday afternoon, we went to a modern/jazz dance competition in Berlin. A girl from Berlin who works in our study abroad office used to be on one of the teams. I think it was a big deal because dance teams competed from various states all over northern Germany. They did some crazy stuff. We were impressed. On some weekday afternoons, we go on culture excursions relating to our elective classes in the Potsdam/Berlin area. I missed out on two excursions while I was sick, which I didn't realize was such a loss until I went with the group to Sanscouci Palace.

I was considering not going, as I have already done an audio tour of the palace with Cat. Little did I know that our guide for the excursions not only sets up private access to the sites, but also orates well. It was such a different tour than before, and I will definitely be attending all the others from here on out.