Finally!

Even though we didn’t have to meet until 1:30 today, Katie, Heidi and I decided to meet around 10 for breakfast. I had a fabulous night’s sleep and didn’t wake up once. I’m guessing that Friday nights are really popular for partying and such here because last night I don’t even remember hearing a sound! Another reason I probably heard so much on Friday night was because it was one of the first nights and I was a little nervous being in my apartment alone. That’s the only reason I can think of because I remember being much more tired that night than last night! Despite the fact that I slept well, I still had a hard time waking up and actually getting out of bed. I needed to shower so that’s what really got me up. Katie met me outside my gate (I was running late so she came in while I finished getting ready!) and then we went o pick up Heidi. We thought we might have brunch, but we were so hungry, we decided to settle for whatever we found first! We found a quite place on the Hauptstrasse that had bagels, so we ate there. The bagels already had cream cheese on them and they were wrapped up. The name of this item was “straight bagel.” I think I would have called a bagel without cream cheese a “straight bagel,” but that’s just me. We all ordered our bagels toasted and I got a iced chai latte (my fave). Since they already have cream cheese on them, the bagel is toasted on a griddle-like thing. It was so yummy. The word yummy is “lecker” in German or you can also say “Es schmeckt gut” to say that it tastes good. Maybe you can learn some German from my blog, too! It would only be appropriate! The place we ate at was called Star Coffee (such an un-German, but American name unfortunately) and there was an American man with his three children eating there also. I tried to figure out what they were doing there. When I say that it is because the man was on his computer the whole time (on Blackboard at that!) and his children were playing on their bikes in front of the café. Then later the man’s wife showed up and he told her that they had also eaten breakfast at home. I couldn’t tell if they lived here or what! This is pretty much useless and unimportant information, so we’ll move on.

We had plenty of time before Orientation so we went to the Geldautomat (ATM) for Katie and then to AJY. In case I haven’t mentioned this, AJY stands for American Junior Year, which is the name of my program and the AJY center is our study center. I might refore to it as that as well. Another thing that I just love is that we have our own key to the study center. I will take a picture, but the door to the center is on the Haputstrasse and is mixed in with restaurants and other offices. We get to walk right up and open the door with our key. I feel so official! We were also given a little red piece of plastic that we just flash in front of an automatic reader and it lets us into AJY which is on the second floor. The staircase in our building is really cool and old. I think it’s very German. We thought we might watch some German TV once we got there, but instead we just talked and played around on the Internet. Katie and I both have some German music on our computers so we listed to that while we checked email and such. Actually, I only have some, she has a ton. And she is obsessed. It’s pretty funny because she knows EVERY word. Heidi’s computer broke before she came to Germany so she just hung out with us in the TV room where we used the wireless connection after she finished with her emails in the computer room. Katie’s wireless connection didn’t really work so after awhile it was just Heidi and I.

This next part is pretty sad. If you don’t want to read it, I understand. But I feel like it is really important for me to remember and a milestone in my friendship with Heidi.

So Heidi came to Germany on August 2nd to stay with her friend Johanna for a month before coming to Heidelberg. Johanna was Heidi’s roommate at her college (Heidelberg College in Ohio) and she was an international student. Now they are best friends and have a really cool little story. Anyway, Heidi and I were just sitting there talking randomly in German and got on the topic of how she was at Johanna’s earlier last month. Then she told me that her mom had been diagnosed with breast cancer a year ago and they had told her that she had no more than a year to live. This hit me really hard because I wasn’t expecting to hear (or understand) anything like this in German. She then said that her mom spent all of June and the first week of July in the hospital and that she was really sick. Right before Heidi left for Germany (she is here for a year, by the way) she told her mom that she would stay and not go to Germany in an instant, but her mom said that it would make her the happiest if she went to Germany to get her education and to fulfill her dream. So obviously Heidi came to Germany to stay with Johanna and a few days later her brother-in-law called to tell her that the doctor’s said everything was fine with her mom and that the cancer had disappeared. I can’t even imagine the relief. Except the next day around 1 AM Germany time her brother-in-law called again to tell her that her mom had passed away. Of course she was hysterical and was in shock. They tried to get her to come to, but she didn’t have a pulse. When they finally let Heidi’s dad in to say goodbye, he held her hand and told her how much he loved her and then she started to move a little and her pulse came back. She couldn’t respond, but they were able to keep her alive until the rest of Heidi’s family could come and say their goodbyes and that Heidi could call and also say goodbye. They had to unplug the cord after that because there was nothing else they could do to make her better. Johanna’s family bought Heidi a plane ticket home and she stayed for a week with her family. I truly couldn’t believe what I was hearing when she told me this. After awhile, when it started getting really complicated, Heidi started speaking English and then I knew I was hearing and understanding her correctly. I just don’t even know what I would do if I were in this situation. Of course I couldn’t help but cry and I felt so bad because she was so strong and didn’t shed a tear. She told me that one of her friends went to Spain for the semester and just in the past few days told her that she couldn’t believe she wouldn’t see her mom for a whole semester and all Heidi could think was how when she left for Germany, she had no clue that she would never see her mom again. I have no words for the heartache I feel for Heidi and her family. Though it is unbelievably sad, I am happy that she was able to tell me this, especially on only our third day here. To me, this speaks volumes on the friendship we have already developed.

I’m sorry that last bit was so sad, wipe your tears, say a prayer for Heidi and be thankful for the health of your loved ones.

More people came into the center so we stopped talking about Heidi’s mom and moved to the computer room. After that heartwrenching conversation, it was a little hard for me to focus on writing on my blog and answering emails. But I had to think of other things because if I dwelled on it anymore, I knew I would start crying again. So after some time on the computer, everyone else arrived and we started our second orientation session with Frau Heckmann. She is a German lady and is so nice. I really really like her. Yesterday Dr. Tracy talked about everything in English to make sure we understood, but today Frau Heckmann spoke only in German! I was so impressed because I understood nearly everything! You can only imagine how excited I was about this! We did speak in English about health insurance, but that is because it is slightly complicated. I really wish that the US had the same healthcare system as Germany. It is just so sweet. Along with the insurance we bought as students, AJY also has insurance for us that is pretty incredible. We can go to any doctor for free and get prescriptions filled for a minimal co-pay. The prescription has to be written by a German Doctor but after that, it’s no big deal. I thought that the Dentistry system was also neat because you have to pay 10 Euros to the Dentist the first time you go, but every time after that is free. I encourage you to find out more about their healthcare system because it is very neat. Germany actually provides some for of healthcare for all of its citizens free of charge. I’m very impressed.

Frau Heckmann also told us that if we need light bulbs, toilet paper, cleaning supplies, laundry detergent, basically anything, we can get it for free from AJY. I didn’t know this and of course we were all excited. She even gave me a lamp because there wasn’t one for my desk in my room. This program just continues to impress me.

I also learned that Germans are very private people and that they always shut their doors, especially if you share an apartment with them. Apartment in German is “Wohngemeinschaft” aka WG. I wanted to tell you that in case I refer to my apartment/apartments in general as WGs. And we as Americans tend to be more polite and are afraid to even knock on the doors of a German roommate so we simply wait for them to come to us. But they usually will let you make the first move so it is a tricky situation. We learned that as Americans we need to be more aggressive with the Germans in order for them to open up to us, so I shall keep this in mind!

During orientation I also came to the conclusion that it is impossible for me to daydream or do anything else while in class here because my full attention has to be on the speaker. I also realized that instead of translating the German into English as I hear it, I am actually hearing it in German and can understand it instantly. To me, this is absolutely amazing. I don’t think I wrote this, but the other morning I woke up and about an hour later realized that I had dreamt in German. I had always heard about people doing that and have wanted it to happen since I started taking German, but to no avail. But finally, I am making some serious progression!

There is still a lot more in the day, so take a break (if you haven’t already) and prepare yourself for the next segment!!!

After orientation finished, we headed out for our castle tour! I was looking forward to this, but wasn’t too excited because I had already done a castle tour when I came with Mooresville in 2004. We decided to walk to the castle instead of taking a bus. Let me tell you, flip-flops and steep cobblestone roads are not the best combination. With my track record, all I could picture was me wiping out and then rolling down the hill. Did I mention I was also wearing a jean skirt? No? Well yes, this added to the difficulty! Really, it wasn’t that bad at all, just poor planning on my part when I got ready in the morning. I’d say it only took about 20 minutes or so. I actually really enjoyed this walk because we got to see views of the castle and other parts of Heidelberg I had never seen before. This city is just so picturesque that it is hard for me to believe that it is real. April from Scrap Shack gave me the coolest little travel notebook where (per her request/demand) I can write down things about pictures I take so that later when I look back I will remember what I have taken pictures of. The notebook also has little pockets throughout where I can put tickets and other memorabilia. I brought this along to test it out and soon realized that our tour from Dr. Tracy would not be in English. Silly me, it was of course in German. All of it. Except for a few words here and there that weren’t part of our vocabulary (like artillery for instance). But I love the notes that I took because now that I look at them, there is both English and German. I can also tell where I stopped writing in the middle of the sentence because where I started in English, I often finished in German and vice versa. Oh and April, a few people (and Dr. Tracy) asked me why I was writing things down and I explained the concept of the notebook and they thought it was a fabulous idea. I think I scored some points (in German) with Dr. Tracy, too. So THANKS!

I was completely wrong about already visiting the castle and seeing everything. I thought our tour was extensive last time, but this time we walked through the beautiful gardens and saw views of Heidelberg I had never seen. I’m not expert or connoisseur of Heidelberg in the least, but I thought I had seen all of the views from the castle during our tour last time I was here, but today topped all of that. It was all just breathtakingly gorgeous. This city…wow.

On our tour I learned a lot of new things like Heidelberg is a wine city and not a beer city and that you don’t have to pay to visit the castle gardens, only the courtyard and inside of the castle. Dr. Tracy recommended that we go there to study and told us the best places to go (away from the crowds). Despite the hike, studying in the castle gardens sounds like a pretty good idea! We were also informed that if we go to any cultural event (inside the castle included) we just need to take our ticket to AJY and they will reimburse us completely. This also applies to the theater, movies at a movie theater, basically anything in the likes of a cultural event! How sweet is that!? The pictures I took show so much of the castle's beauty that my words cannot compare!






















Despite my complaints about the German keyboard earlier, I have become pretty adjusted to it and now prefer it over an American-style keyboard, especially when writing in German! The umlauts (o,a,u with two dots above them) are on the keyboard and I don’t have to find them in symbols or figure out their number on the keypad. It just works better overall! I have been writing my blog posts in my room at night and have been finding that I am trying to type as if I’m using a German keyboard! When I write a ‘y’ I accidentally push the ‘z’ key because that is where it’s at on the German keyboard! The reason they have them switched is because the letter ‘y’ is rarely used in German and ‘z’ is more prevalent. Lots of other things are different, but it is kind of hard to explain unless you see it! Maybe I’ll take a picture and you can understand it more!

After our tour we walked back into town and right to the restaurant we were eating at for dinner. We had already chosen what we wanted to eat on the first night we were here so we didn’t have to wait too long for our food to come! A lot of the students ordered beer or wine, but I stuck with coke (except they call it cola). Even if I did drink, I think I’d be too thirsty to drink anything other than cola or water! I sat next to Jenny, the assistant of the program. She was an AJY student also but then moved to Heidelberg to complete her masters after she graduated from college. She is from California but lived in Portland for quite awhile. She was telling me where she had gone to school and one of them was Teralinda (for you Oregonians). I told her that I went to Oak Hills for elementary school and she was excited because she knew exactly where that was! What a small world! Before dinner, they served us all a vegetable soup which was of course delicious. For dinner I had the chicken and it came with a salad and pommes frites (french fries). The fries were not greasy, but were nice and crispy. Perfection in the name of a french fry!!! We had eis (ice cream) for desert. It was actually the first eis I’ve had since I’ve been here. There are little eis shops all over the Hauptstrasse, but I just haven’t bought any! The day will soon come, I’m sure! Oh and did I mention that this meal was free. Bravo again, AJY!

I feel kind of bad for Frau Heckmann because one of the girls in the program is a really picky eater. She told the directors that she was a vegetarian, but then when we had pizza on the first night, she didn’t eat and said that she doesn’t like pizza. So Frau Heckmann asked her what else she doesn’t like and she said pasta. So when we went to this restaurant tonight, they ordered the vegetarian option for her, but she didn’t eat it because she didn’t like the vegetables and cheese that were in it. So she doesn’t like cheese either. We did find out that she likes almonds, salads, and broccoli. Oh and protein shakes and protein bars. Thank the Lord that I am not so picky because she has made it incredibly difficult on herself. I hope she can find some things she likes to eat here because Frau Heckmann told her that energy shakes are rare here (she had never even heard of them!) and that Germans like real food, not food made from powder! Of course this entire conversation was in German and was very amusing to those of us who were sitting at the same end of the table.

We have a test on Monday morning that will place us in different groups for the intensive language training that lasts all of September. To review, Katie, Heidi and I decided we’d go to Katie’s WG later at night. Katie and I both wanted to go to the computer lab to use Skype. I was going to try and call my parents, but the timing was off and they had gone to a movie. Hopefully I can talk to them on Monday or Tuesday. Instead, I had an incredibly nice surprise with instant messages from both Erika and Jessica. They suggested I get on Skype and so after a few minutes, we were talking! I could hear them LOUD and clear (so could Heidi who was sitting next to me!) It was just so exciting to actually be able to hear their voices! Skype is amazing. Amazing. And I recommend it for everyone. It lets you talk over the Internet for free. All you need are headphones and a microphone and you are good to go! So we talked for over an hour and just had the best time talking like we always do. There will definitely be more of this in the future!

So after we left the study center, we stopped by my room to drop off my light and some stuff in my backpack. There was a light on in my WG and we all got really excited. When we walked in I saw someone (a guy) sitting at his desk with the door partially open. He came out and said hello and we found out that he is an American studying business at Heidelberg. He is from Connecticut and is with an exchange with Baden-Wuertemberg (the state Heidelberg is in). Oh and his name is Keith. Yes, mom. One of my roommates is a guy. It really isn’t a big deal! I think he is my age. He had been in Freiburg for the past month and moved in today. I was just so relieved to see that I finally have a roommate! He was so nice and offered to let me use the Internet connection he was using. We are going to buy an Ethernet cable tomorrow and try to get it all set up. He didn’t know anything about our other roommates either, so at least I’m not alone in wondering what is going on!

After talking with Keith for a little while, we went to Katie’s apartment and reviewed our German grammar. I needed a little refresher and it was nice to do it with my two new friends. I really love hanging out with them and know that my German will improve by leaps and bounds just by being with them. They have some of the same goals as I do and want to speak German as much as possible. Of course we speak English too, but German the most. I can’t tell you how nice it is to have someone who understands what I’m saying when I speak German. Finally my hard work is being put to use! Something I have enjoyed observing is how we will be speaking English one minute and then the next sentence explodes in full-on German. It’s pretty neat, if I say so myself!

We walked Heidi home and then Katie and I split up at an equal distance between our apartments. We are still trying to figure out a way for us to get home that works out safety-wise. Tonight was better, but not ideal! Maybe now that I know Keith it will be a little less scary because I can let someone know when I’m headed home. We’ll see how it all works out. Believe it or not, it’s only the third day! I feel like I’ve been here much, much longer!

After I walked in, I said hi to Keith and then started putting my things away so that I could go to bed in a little while. As I was doing this, I heard a door open and then a girl came to my door! She was speaking German to me so I continued to respond and answer her questions in German. I told her that I was unsure about who else lived here and what we were supposed to do. She said she also moved in today, so I have NO CLUE who I heard this past weekend. Maybe I was imagining it or was hearing it from other apartments, but I really doubt it. We don’t connect to any other apartments because we are on the end, so who knows! This girl (I can’t remember her name at the moment) then asked me where in Germany I am from. I told her that I am from America and she was shocked. She said that my German was so good that she thought I was a German! Way too cool! We also talked in English about the confusion we had with the apartment. She suggested that we go to the landlord to get a better understanding of things. School doesn’t officially start until October, so it is understandable that our other German roommate isn’t here at the moment. Maybe she will come back now that the weekend is over. I hope so! Anyway, my roommate goes to school in Italy, but is from Romania. How neat is that!? I’m guessing that she speaks at least four languages considering where she’s from, where she goes to school and then the languages I heard her speak! I’m really beginning to like my whole living situation!

I know I must seem to just think everything is so great here, but I really do think so. I guess I’m still in the “Honeymoon” phase, but this is just how I feel about pretty much everything right now!

Alright, I think I’ve bored you enough! So off to bed I go!