Frustrated

I was so excited that Keith let me use his Ethernet cable to get online last night! I got to talk to Brittanie, Jess and Erika for quite awhile. I went to bed kind of late so I was really tired this morning. When I looked out the window, it seemed like it would be a nice day, so I decided to straighten my hair. I used my new straighter and it worked pretty good for being cheap-o. Nothing compared to mine at home, but it did the job.

Today was our first day of full-on intensive grammar lessons. The class that I’m in has all of the people in our group whose German is amazing. They speak so well! I feel like their German is so much better than mine and it is a little frustrating. I have been exposed to a lot of German grammar before, but I’ve never learned it completely in German. It was so hard! I think it is difficult to grasp some of it when it’s explained in English, but in German it seems so much more complicated! Hopefully I will get used to these terms and it won’t be so hard. I’m glad that I’m in this class though because I really feel like I’m being challenged.

After our never-ending grammar classes, Katie, Heidi and I (of course) went to lunch. As we were trying to find a restaurant, it started to rain and none of us had umbrellas. So much for straightening my hair! We wanted to go to this place that has wraps and soups and such, but it was too crowded. One thing I don’t really like about the majority of the restaurants here is that you always seat yourself. So we walked around the whole restaurant looking for a table when there wasn’t one. It was a pain because it was really crowded. So we decided to go to this other restaurant and it was so slow! It took forever for the waitress to come and then for our drinks to come and then even longer for our food! It wouldn’t have mattered except that we only had an hour for lunch since our group was going to a museum. I had a small baguette sandwich with cucumbers, salami and cheese. It was really good and didn’t cost too much. While we were eating, it started to hail! I said something about the hail and Katie said that it wasn’t hail, but chunks of ice. From what I know, chunks of ice falling from the sky is hail! She said that since it wasn’t a thunderstorm it couldn’t be hail. Interesting.

The museum we went to was about the history of Heidelberg and its royalty. We were all bored out of our minds. Herr Doerr (the guy who showed us around Heidelberg and who then turned out to be an incredibly hard grammar teacher) gave us the tour again and it was all in German. I don’t think we’re going to be having any tours in English so I better get used to these! While it was interesting, it was such a long tour mainly full of him talking and us staring. I couldn’t wait to get out of there because I was so tired!

After we were done at the museum I went to buy an Ethernet cable. One of the other girls, Sarah, walked with me because she needed an adapter. I had bought one a few days ago with Katie so I knew exactly where to find them. It started pouring as we walked all the way to the end of the Hauptstrasse and so we ran some of the way and then had to stop in a store so we didn’t get drenched. When we got to the store, they were all sold out! We looked and looked and then asked a sales lady (in German!) and she said they were “ausverkauft” (sold out). What a bummer! I was happy that I could describe the one that I had found the other day, though!

It had stopped raining by the time we left the store so I decided to pick some things up for dinner at PennyMarkt. Two of the Katie’s, Heidi, Keith and I were going to try and have some sort of Mac and Cheese for dinner. Since it wasn’t raining when I went into PennyMarkt, I bought 6 huge bottles of water. When I left, it was definitely raining. It is kind of a long walk back to my apartment so I was not a happy camper once I got back home. Then people were coming over so I cleaned up a little bit. It just was really frustrating because I was tired and my brain hurt already. It just made it even worse that I was soaked.

Katie Wolfe, Heidi and I cooked the macaroni and the other Katie brought the cheese. It was just shredded cheese and it didn’t turn out too well. It was just noodles with Mozarella-like cheese. Not a lot of flavor at all. Since our light is broken in the main part of the apartment, we all sat around in the dark. I felt like I was really poor because we were all sitting around in a circle, eating our tasteless food in the dark. What a bummer for our first time cooking. I think it’s better when only one or two people cook instead of so many.

There was a welcome party for the international students at 9 that Heidi and Keith were going to so I thought I might as well go too so that I could meet some other people. Maressa from my program met us there. She is Brazilian, but lives in New Jersey. Her German is so good! I met a girl from Huntersville, NC (which is really close to Mooresville) at this welcome thing. Small world! I know all of the people she knows who go to Elon and she knows some of my friends at Chapel Hill (where she goes!) Pretty cool. We walked to this bar that they had rented out for everyone, but it was so loud and crowded. I HATED it! Everything was so awkward and it was hard to talk to people. So we decided to go to a little Café and talk for awhile. It was a complete change of pace. SO quiet! We talked for about two hours and then called it a night. There were some things that were bothering me so fortunately Brittanie was able to get on Skype with me. It just wasn’t a good day for me. My brain feels overloaded, I am tired, it rained and I just want things to fall into some kind of routine. Brittanie reminded me that I’ve only been here five days and that everything was still new. If tomorrow doesn’t rain, things will be even the tiniest bit better!