Monday, May 17

first day of class. woke up at 5am. didn't know there was internet in my room, so i basically just sat there for an hour. finally got myself ready and headed off to my bus stop. carol and i met up at the hauptbahnhof at 8:30 and found the bus to the university buuuuuuuuut that literally took an hour. so we were half an hour late for our first class. luckily, cothran was feeling kind that day so we did not have to memorize a poem for being late. we got our books, went over the syllabus and schedules, and talked about german government or something. after class ended at 12:30, we met our tutors and went to get lunch and cell phones. acquisition of the cell phones was quite an ordeal. i could not for the life of me figure out how to get internet on my blackberry with a german simcard. turns out it is nearly impossible. but then we had a couple hours to kill before our welcome dinner, so a group of us decided to go get some one euro beers and sit on the rhein and drink. i mean after all, we are in germany. but of course since i don't like beer, i got a redbull and a flask of vodka. so we sat on the steps of the rhein for a little bit, but then it started raining so we went under the schlossturm and drank on those steps. after about an hour and a half, cothran comes walking up to us and is apparently mad at us for drinking in public because it "gives a bad impression". whatever. so she walked away and let us finish our beers (luckily i had hidden my vodka) and then showed us some boring stuff in the square where we had been happily sitting. dinner was good, i ordered wienerschnitzel and spargel mit hollandaise. not a huge fan of the spargel, but i had to try it since it is a dusseldorf specialty. and of course i had wine. after dinner, we all went home because it was rainy and we were very tired.

Sunday, May 16

we arrived at the airport and walked around for a bit, not really knowing where to go. but then we found where we were supposed to be and got our taxi ticket, bus pass, schedule, and map. and then dr. cothran came (finally) and kind of gave us directions on what to do but then basically she was like ok now take a tax to the house you're staying in... so that was kinda scary. but the group made plans to meet up at 12:30 for lunch and to just walk around/explore the city. so i was in a new country, new city, no idea where i'm going. but i arrived at my house, which was in a very quaint little neighborhood, and met the lady i would be staying with for the next 2 weeks. my bedroom was very similar to the broom closet harry potter used to live in, and i had to share a small bathroom with 4 other people, but hey, what can ya do? so then i basically sat in my room for the next 2 hours and cried. which was not very fun at all, really. but after cleaning myself up a bit, i ventured out into the land of downtown dusseldorf. got lost on my way there, but eventually found the main train station and all the people i was meeting up with. we got lunch at the hauptbahnhof and walked around with our little sandwiches. we went into the altstadt and walked around some more, but since it was sunday, pretty much everything was closed. since there wasnt really anything to do, we all just went our separate ways back home. i got back into my room, took a nap, woke up, took 2 ambiens, apparently talked to kelsey bouton, sean, and my mom (before seeing people that werent there, of course) and then went to bed for real. not a very exciting day.

Saturday, May 15

it took me 8000 years to pack and i still had wayyy too much stuff..go figure. the plane ride was no fun at all because i hate planes and it took forever. plus the man sitting next to me was persian and mid-way through the flight his persian friend came over to have a chat IN THEIR NATIVE LANGUAGE. i was convinced that i was a goner. but then a priest walked by so i could breathe again because i knew that the plane was indeed not going to go down after all. and he took out his blackberry and everyone knows that terrorists do not have blackberries. BUT THEN this strange man sitting next to me began to sing. and not like a song or something normal, no no. he was singing some kind of persian chant. after about five minutes of this nonsense i started thinking that maybe he was muslim and therefore he was doing his little 7-times-per-day prayer thing. but then he took out his blackberry again so obviously not. this went on for approximately half an hour and sometimes he was so loud that everyone around us was staring, probably thinking (like i had earlier) that we were all doomed. mind you i first heard his chants above my ipod and i do not exactly listen to my music very softly so this is really saying something. but then luckily (or so i thought) he fell asleep. but it didnt take long for him to scootch on over into my already-too-small seat and lay his head approximately 1 millimeter from my shoulder. and we all know how much i loooooooove being close to people... ugh. after the first movie i was watching for the screen that tells you what you're flying over/how far you've gone/etc and i was expecting us to be like over greenland or near the north pole or something...nope. flying over boston. awesome. the movies were not very good so i listened to about 5 chapters of a harry potter. which ended up being fantastic. they came around with dinner but i literally took one whiff of it and said no thank you. the cookie was alright though. after that everyone went to sleep, but of course i could not sleep because i am an insomniac. so i listened to more hp and read my book and my magazine and went to talk to carol. and then i finally settled down. and finally got to sleep. and literally maybe 20 minutes later they turned all the lights on and started NOISILY serving "breakfast" which also looked disgusting. and then we landed, whoop whoop.