The DSH is DONE and Caitlyn is HERE!

Most of the students in my program met up at AJY at 8. We had to be at the testing place by 8:30, but the building is right across from AJY. We payed our 50 Euros and got all set up. They put us in groups alphabetically and I was in the same group as Heidi, Maressa and Alexander. We all sat on the same row for the test. The first part of the test was for reading comprehension and we had to answer a bunch of questions. The second part was just grammar. This test was crazy. We had about a ten minute break and then started into the next part which was a listening test. We had to listen to a guy read a really long article about the death of languages and then answer a bunch of really specific questions. The last part consisted of looking at a chart and then analyzing it according to the questions asked. I was definitely happy when it was over!!! I didn't have a bad attitude about it, but going in I knew it would be hard, so it wasn't a surprise when it was! I'm just not at the level in my German to where I can perform really well on a test like that. But I'm ok with that because that's what I'm here for, to get better at German and to learn a lot.

Caitlyn's train was supposed to arrive fifteen minutes after we finished the test. Heidi was really excited that she was coming and said that she felt like Caitlyn was already one of her friends! So she came to the train station with me. I was SO nervous that Caitlyn hadn't made it! I had told her EXACTLY where to sit and when I walked through the door, there she was!! Sitting on the bench, holding her big green bag tightly in her lap! I ran up and hugged her!! It was really exciting to see someone from home!! I think I told her about a million times how I happy I was that she was here! We walked back out to where the busses were and decided to risk it and not buy her a ticket. We made it to Bismarckplatz just fine and went to a restaurant for lunch. Heidi had some stuff she had to do, so she didn't join us. Caitlyn told me all about her travel adventures from the morning including how she accidentally fell asleep on the train! She said she woke up just as they were pulling out of Heidelberg! So she got off at the next stop, walked across the tracks and got on a train going back to Heidelberg! She is really lucky they didn't check tickets because she probably would have gotten a huge fine. Oh well, it all worked out! She actually arrived an hour early thanks to the help of someone at the airport who told her about busses and trains that were leaving earlier than hers!

We both ordered margarita pizzas and enjoyed talking. She was really tired so after I showed her a few things on the Haupstrasse we went back to my apartment and I let her nap for a few hours. I needed to shower and answer a few emails anyway, so it worked out perfectly. After we got ready, we took a little stroll around the town. She got to see the pretty view of the castle and the sun set! When we were walking back to the main part of the Haupstrasse we ran into Heidi and Maressa. They took a few pictures for us with the castle in the background! Caitlyn and I decided to eat at Hard Rock Cafe. She wanted to get a shirt, but the ones they had were really boring and not worth the money. We both ordered cheeseburgers that we thought cost 3.90. When it was time to pay the waitress told us that it was "Burger Tag" aka Burger Day and that all burgers were 4 Euros. We couldn't figure out why the price would be more expensive because of a "special." Who knows. We were going to meet up with a bunch of my friends who were celebrating the completion of the DSH, but ended up just going back to my apartment and hanging out. We had a Skype date with Brittanie and Jessica at 12 and we didn't want to miss it! It was so cool that the four of us got to talk! I think we talked to them until about 3:30 and then called it quits. We stayed up for about an hour more and then crashed. So happy to have my first visitor and even more happy that it was my Caitlyn!!!