Arrival in Bonn

oy, i'm really slow at this whole blogging thing! partially because it takes so long to upload photos since the internet is rather slow here. so, there won't be any pictures in this post, but hopefully those will come tonight or tomorrow.

I wanted to write real quick about my first week here at the Goethe-Institute. It's located in Bad Godesberg, which is a suburb of Bonn, which (fun fact alert!) was the capital of Germany and the seat of the government from 1949 until 1990, when the capital of reunified Germany was moved to Berlin. I think the Bonn natives are still pissed about that, because Bonn lost a lot of businesses, consulates, inhabitants, etc. Anyways, Bad Godesberg is fairly small and rather quiet, but it only takes 5 minutes with the train or 20 with the subway to get to Bonn city center. Bonn is a BEAUTIFUL city, with lots of Baroque architecture (pictures to come, I promise!) So basically, I've really enjoyed my surroundings so far.

I arrived at the Goethe-Institute on Monday afternoon (I took the train from Essen with Pascal). And thank goodness he came with me, because there is no way I could have maneuvered all my luggage on the train (you need lots of stuff for 6 months, ok?) Anyways, when I arrived at the Institute I checked in and then immediately had to take a placement test, which was oh so delightful. There was some grammar multiple choice, a short essay, and a spoken interview. It actually wasn't so bad, and from my experiences in class the first week, I think I'm in the right level. I also love my teacher; he's incredibly sarcastic and hilarious.

My daily routine here goes something like this: get up around 7:45 or 8 to go to breakfast (since it's only served from 7:30-8:30), shower (always a good thing to include in the daily schedule), do the homework I didn't do the night before, hang out in my room, go to the grocery store if necessary, eat lunch in the Kantine (a cafeteria in an office building a couple blocks away; it's really cheap), and then go to class. I have class from 1:30-6pm with 2 breaks in there, so it's really not as long as it sounds. After class I typically make dinner and then hang out with the other people in the dorm. So, pretty low-key, and definitely a huge change from the hectic pace of Wash U.

The dorm I live in is connected to the building where I have classes, which is very convenient (certainly beats walking ten minutes to class in the sleet like at WashU). There's about 20 people living in the dorm, and about 12 living in another dorm that belongs to the Institute. Most are people in their early to mid-20s, but there are a couple older ones (30s or 40s). The people here are absolutely crazy and hilarious; there's people from all over: Saudi arabia, Turkey, Argentinia, Brazil, Hungary, Korea, Italy, Mexico, Australia, etc. etc. There are actually very few Americans and the largest group of people are probably the ones from various Arabic countries. So basically we're all a bunch of foreigners trying to communicate in German with each other because that's our lingua franca; as you can imagine, this sometimes has very interesting results. I'm actually learning some Turkish and Arabic as well, which is fun and also very amusing, because it usually ends up with my friend Ahmad yelling at me for pronouncing everything wrong (including his name). Also living at the Institute are 3 Zivis, short for Zivildienstleistender. In Germany, once a guy is 18 he gets called up by the Bundeswehr (army) for a year of service (it doesn't always happen right when he turns 18). If he doesn't want to go to the army he has to do a year of civil service instead, which is usually working in a nursing home, hospital, etc. So our Zivis get to work at the Goethe-Institute and speak german really slowly to foreigners! They're 19, 21, and 22, and all are really nice and basically just chill with us all the time.

Ok, I'm gonna go eat lunch now, but I'm really going to try to post some pictures tonight. Tschuess!