Hallo friends!
I’d like to share a quote that I found the other day that I have fallen in love with: “I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.”
I haven’t read or seen the book/movie this quote comes from (Anne of Green Gables apparently...but SOME of you already know that) but I have found it to be so true. We’re only 12 days into October here, but I am loving this month. Actually, I think I’m really just enjoying the fact that fall is lasting for more than a week or two! The weather is cooling down, but not plummeting as it tends to do in Alaska (I’m looking at you, Palmer). In the morning, the air is crisp and there are more and more puddles of leaves underneath the trees every day. I love it because it’s slooooow-fall isn’t here and gone! The colors are slowly changing, the leaves are falling, the wind is blowing and I am enjoying the gradual transition. Someone actually asked me today (Wednesday) if this is nice weather to me, and I replied so enthusiastically and joyously that I think I may have weirded them out a little bit.
Friend: “Is this nice weather to you?”
Brittni: “YEAH! *Gush gush gush gush about fall* I LOVE THIS SEASON!”
Friend: “Oooookay keep your pants on, it’s 8am.”
They didn’t actually say that but it’s probably accurate. And now my gushing continues to all of you. I’m definitely a summer person but I have always loved fall too.
A wonderful tree that is right outside our dorm. Green, Red, Yellow...fall colors.
The view from my window.
Walking to class...IT'S FALLLLLLLLLLLL
It has been a couple weeks since I last posted, but to give you a play-by-play of each day of every week would be really exhausting for all of us. I ended the last post at the beginning of my second week here, and as of today I’ve been in Germany for a month!
One kind of exciting thing I’ve done in the last two weeks is finally bake “American” cookies! This was quite the accomplishment. Finding the ingredients in the supermarket wasn’t easy, but I had just learned the verb “to bake” the day before so I found the right aisle after some searching. The ingredients weren’t really the same either- the brown sugar I bought was basically white granulated sugar that was brown…which wasn’t really what I wanted for chewy, soft cookies. I played with the recipe until I was convinced the cookies wouldn’t be dry, and they turned out pretty good! My friends here liked them anyways. Cookies and brownies are really “American” to them, so they were excited that I baked them. I’m guessing that my flatmates liked them too because they didn’t last long.
As I’ve said before, during the week, we have German class from 8:30-12 every day. My German is slowly but surely coming along, and our class is MUCH better than it was in the first week. Oxana has stopped rolling her eyes at us (although she hasn’t stopped batting her eyes at some of the boys in the class). I understand most of what I read and a lot of what is spoken to me (depending on the vocabulary used…I’m sure I would be right at home in an elementary school classroom) but when I speak, I have to put a lot of thought into my sentences and the sentence structure. But my vocabulary is building every day, and I think it really helps that I have no choice but to listen to German spoken around me all day long! When I think about it, we’ve really learned a lot in the last month. This week (the week of the 7th) is our last week, and I can’t believe it! Some people don’t really like our teacher, Oxana, but I think she’s kind of funny, and she isn’t a bad teacher. She’s always very interested in our lives, maybe too interested, but all in all I like her. Our teaching assistant Yu Fu, however, is another story. Every time she teaches, even for a short amount of time, I have to look around the class to make sure I’m not the only one who feels like I’ve somehow been slipped a crazy pill. Sometimes I really can’t tell if she’s speaking Chinese, German, or English! When she speaks German, it sounds like garble to me: monotonous chatter. She speaks German with a very Chinese accent, if you can imagine that. You should ask me to imitate her when I get back. She’s very accommodating and nice! But when she teaches a lesson and asks if we understand, we all kind of look at each other and then at her with really pained expressions and say “Wie bitte?” (literally “how, please?”, like “come again?”). Usually Oxana comes back and re-teaches the lesson, like on the day Yu Fu was teaching us to talk in the past tense (you can imagine how well that went). Our class on Wednesday was particularly hilarious. After having a small lesson from Yu Fu, Oxana was teaching us how to talk about what we want to do/be in the future. She asked Juan if he wants to get married. He said maybe, to which she replied, “Why not?” (this is all taking place in German by the way) and he said that he didn’t have a girlfriend, which he would need first to get married. She laughed and waved his answer away, saying “Oh, no worries for that. You should have no problem finding a girlfriend- du siehst so gut aus!” At that last part, I cracked up because I got it immediately. She’d said “you are so good-looking!”, and when he said “Wie bitte?”, she didn’t just brush it off or just tell him to forget it, she actually wrote it out on the chalkboard and explained “Oh, it means you are so HANDSOME, so GOOD-LOOKING, so BEAUTIFUL, etc…” and at that point, we were all laughing. This woman is about as subtle as a dump truck.
So anyways, I have really enjoyed my intensive German class- my teacher, my classmates, the coursework, everything-and it’s sad to think it’s the last week. During the semester we won’t have it every day, only one day a week (but for 4 hours) and we’ll have a different teacher. I did very well on my final exam, so I was really pleased with my progress. I also was assigned a Tandem partner for the semester, I’m very excited to meet her and start practicing with her! I've also been listening to worship music in German, and learning the songs (not that anyone but me will ever hear them, but it's good practice!).Felix has let me borrow the first Harry Potter book in German, I hope to try to make it through it, even though I know I'll need to look up most words. I might read it later, when I have a larger vocabulary, but I'm excited to start it! I also have met a girl that is studying abroad with ISEP in America next year, I’ll see what I can do to convince her that Juneau is the place to be.
Another important aspect of life here is, obviously, food. These last two weeks were the first weeks I’ve been able to eat in the Mensa, the student cafeteria. Before that, we had to eat in the Cafeteria (they’re different) because we didn’t have student ID cards. The Cafeteria has lots of different things to eat every day, it’s basically just like any cafeteria. They have hot stuff, cold stuff, salads, pastas, drinks, A FREAKING PASTRY BAR (sorry it excites me every time), so you can eat however you want. The food isn’t terribly priced, either, and it’s pretty good. In the Mensa, however, you choose a meal (yes, an entire MEAL) from one of 4 menus: a regular menu, a vegetarian menu, the saladbar, and a soup and it costs a grand total of 2.50 Euro (except the saladbar). A meal for 2.50 Euro! The food isn’t usually bad and different every day, and it’s so cheap that it’s more popular than the Cafeteria. The food is kind of “heavy” for me, so I’m finding that instead of eating a bigger meal in the evening, I’m eating that at lunch, so my eating is kind of backwards. That hasn’t stopped me from eating Nutella like it’s my job, though. When Oxana asked me one day what I’d eaten for breakfast and I said Nutella, she thought I was joking. I wasn’t. I seriously shouldn’t be allowed in the candy aisle or within 10 feet of a jar of Nutella. And I’m not even a “candy” person back home! But put a package of any kind of German gummy candy in front of me and it turns into a scene from Jurassic Park.
Empty Nutella jars...someone stop me.
Anyways, about things that are more exciting than class and food.
At the end of my second week, I found myself doing quite a bit of exploring!
On Friday after German class, the sun had finally come out and it was a warm, sunny fall day. My flatmate Kari and I spent the afternoon walking around Bielefeld-all around the city! It was really fun and I liked not being rushed by a tour guide. He had been in a different tour group during our city tour, so we had some different stories to tell. Plus, he actually knew quite a bit about the history of various buildings and Bielefeld so he was a great companion! He can read German pretty well, so he was able to translate the different educational plaques found on some buildings. We visited the church I hadn’t been to yet and walked through a couple of the city’s parks. Outside of one of the churches was this statue of Jesus being carried from the cross. It struck me because it depicts Jesus’ body well- his skin is raked and ragged, there are jagged gouge marks in his feet…it is a picture of pain. I was kind of captured by it, I stood there running my fingers over the carved holes in his feet, and I couldn’t even imagine what it would’ve been like to be there at the crucifixion. Then I was kind of bewildered, stuck by the realization this statue is something people can walk by without really noticing every day, just like the beautiful churches. I am always so overwhelmed when I think of Jesus’ trial and his pain, that when I see something like this statue it commands my attention. I wanted to turn to the casual passersby in confusion and say, “Did you even see this? Do you know this was done for you?!” It makes my heart a little heavy but at the same time, a little hopeful that I will get the chance to share.
It was while taking pictures of this statue that I realized that my camera actually didn’t have a memory card in it-so unfortunately I don’t have any pictures from my afternoon walk around Bielefeld. One thing I also liked visiting was the old part of the city. Little remains of the old part because it was bombed in WWII, but I still like to see the old next to the new. I think Bielefeld is a very green city-lots of trees and some parks. I’m going to romanticize fall again- seeing the changing leaves throughout the city was really beautiful in the later afternoon sun. I think Bielefeld is a good size too, at first I was a little intimidated but I have been able to recognize certain parts. Although I still had those moments while walking when Kari would ask, “Do you know where we are?” And I could confidently say I had no idea where we were or which country we were in. That night, some people went to the city center for some excitement, but some friends and I decided to stay home and watch Despicable Me 2 because we had a daytrip on Saturday morning.
This daytrip is my favorite thing we’ve done so far!! Our international office arranged a trip for us to go to Detmold, an adorable little town about an hour away from Bielefeld. Specifically, we went to a museum. You’re probably all thinking, “Wow, Brittni, you’re really excited about a museum, yawn, time to find some cat pictures” but this was a museum unlike any I’ve been to before! The museum collects HOUSES….entire farms!! They started more than 50 years ago, collecting these old German farmhouses from all over Germany. It’s an open-air museum of sorts, so you basically just walk around all over this square hectare of land checking out the farmhouses and old villages, it’s like time travelling! The way the museum is arranged is really cool too. The north part of the museum has the buildings from the north of Germany, and so on. They’re also arranged by date too. We had a guided tour in English, and the tour was so informative! Our tour guide didn’t really want us to stop and take pictures, since we would have time to explore on our own. She was very knowledgeable though, I loved the tour and all the history behind the buildings. She explained that unfortunately the majority of their buildings were rich farmhouses, of rich farmers, so we couldn’t get a real good idea of how poor people lived. This was for a couple reasons. Firstly, because poor people’s houses weren’t really made to last and weren’t built as well, and secondly because when the museum was being founded, nobody cared about the poor people and they mostly wanted to preserve the pretty, rich buildings. Our tour guide lead us through various houses and buildings that would have been found on a farm back then. Since none of us were studying architecture, she mostly focused on the social and cultural aspects of history. I LOVED it! Some complained that our tour was too long, but I was all over it. I wished I’d had a notebook! It’s taking some serious self-control to not launch into a nerdy re-telling of the entire tour, but I’ll keep it short and say I really loved learning about the family/farm life and duties from those times. I also thought that their superstitions were very interesting (there was a house dedicated to showing what happens when someone died). I was really fascinated by the museum and the history, and we saw only a SMALL part of it! I definitely want to go back, I’d even pay for another tour (maybe) so that I can pester them about every little detail…I’d be that kid. I guess my alternative would be to kidnap one of the tour guides and march them around the museum demanding answers from them. Like I said, it’s a very large museum, so I could definitely spend a day checking out the rest of houses. At the end of the tour, we ended up in a little village where we could see old houses. It was funny because the facades of the houses were really nice, but the sides and backs of the houses weren’t decorated at all-it was all about the outward appearance. Great value was placed on how you appeared to others, which I found interesting. After the tour was done, we checked out the old bakery where they were still making bread, but decided to eat currywurst instead. I felt so German, eating currywurst surrounded by the buildings of the old German village. I wanted to time travel back to the old days, marry a German farmer, wear a floor-length dress, keep a cute little garden, and bake bread. (I know, I know. Shut up Brittni. I won’t go all “Little House on the Prairie” on you).
Gatehouse to one of the German farms. I could tell you about the history behind it if you want!
At the museum
At the Museum
more of the museum
It was a very sunny, beautiful day. The museum was built on these lovely green farm fields complete with old windmills and tilled dirt. It was so green, with tinges of fall color starting to appear, and wide open fields…it was just a really beautiful place. I loved the landscape! I made the comment “Wow, this would be a beautiful place for a wedding” (seriously…it would be my dream wedding setting) but my wishful thinking was shot down with raucous disapproval from the [independent, don’t-need-no-husband, very European-thinking] girls I was with. I can dream though!
such a beautiful place!!
We were free to stay at the museum and in Detmold as long as we wanted, since the International Office staff left after the tour. We decided to explore Detmold. Surprisingly, it was already 3pm! But we started out as a giant group navigating to the city center. We found a really fun shop in which everything cost 1 Euro (like a dollar store). We kind of broke off in little groups after that though. I was in a group of all my Italian friends, Federico, and Kari. We lost Kari though, since he was charging through town like a conquering general and we were being rather slow. Our main goal was to find the castle that Kari had told us about. On our little exploration, I fell in love with the little town. It was really such a cute “litte” city! In the fading sunlight, it was beautiful. There was a lake and canals by the street and more joy-inducing old German buildings. I literally can’t wait to go back! I want to go back at Christmastime, when there are the German Christmas markets set up. We found the park with the little castle and fountain (apparently two people live in the castle?! I’m not sure if that’s true). It took us quite a while to find our way to the train station on foot, and we kind of walked around like lost ducklings until a nice lady pointed us in the right direction. It had been a long day of walking (in addition to my Bielefeld walking tour the day before) but I really didn’t mind because I wanted to see as much of the town as I could. It was an adorable little German town and I can’t wait to go back!
Exploring the city!
Beautiful Detmold.
The castle and park
My friends and I in Detmold!
After such a magical Saturday, I was ready for a Sunday of rest. However, Sunday evening found me in yet another new town! Since we are students at Bielefeld University, our ID serves as a ticket for free transport all over our region! Which means we can take trains in our region for free, which is awesome for exploring! So on Sunday evening, my flatmates Momoko, Kari, and I caught a random train to a city we’ve never been to! We went to Gütersloh, a town which is only about 10 minutes away by train. In Gütersloh, we walked to the city center, where there was some kind of event going on. It was some kind of special day because the shops were still open too, and usually on Sundays all the shops and supermarkets are closed. Music from a flute-like instrument drifted through the square and the smell of currywurst was in the air. There was a makeshift stage of sorts, and a voice spoke over a speaker system (not that I knew what was being said). We found the church, but there was a service of some sort going on. We wandered around, passed a little café/ice cream place and through an alley by the café found the old part of the town. The houses there were typically German (and cute)! I love that the family information is written above the doors on the old houses and buildings. We didn’t stay too long, just long enough to walk around a bit. It was a nice way to pass the evening.
Our Sunday evening adventure
the old part of town
Love it.
Momoko, Kari, and I!
The church, there was a service going on but it was pretty from the outside.
Monday (we’re up to the 30th by now!) was a really long day for me. Oxana had been urging our class (but really just Juan and Giuseppe) to come to the fitness class she goes to on Mondays. Laure, a fellow international student, and I decided to go just for fun. Our teacher was super excited that we were coming!! It was kind of cute. Before we went, however, I had to buy running shoes since I left my pair home after dealing them the death blow on Thunder Mountain this summer. I went with some of my Spanish friends to some kind of sports outlet store that was LITERALLY on the other side of town…we took a tram, switched trams, and then a bus, and then walked a short distance-I was mentally exhausted by the time I got to the fitness class. The class was really good and actually pretty challenging! It was like soccer conditioning with aerobics thrown in.…but the motivation is greater when your instructor is a super-fit, intimidating 60-year old German man! It was like soccer conditioning with aerobics thrown in. I will definitely need to keep attending this class if I maintain my current diet…especially after seeing my teacher killing it.
The next day was also pretty long and also involved traveling! This time we actually left Bielefeld, though. Some friends and I went to the nearby city of Dortmund to check out a store I had never heard of before. It was a store called Primark that I thought was a little like TJ MAXX but with not as many things, and maybe not as good quality. It was a long way to go for not so great shopping. It was still a fun trip, but after the group separated in the store I was completely lost. I was the first one who was done, so I waited for what seemed like hours. After finally meeting back up with one of the girls, my friend Tena, we waited again for the French girls. Our waiting was useless, however, because we got a text saying they’d already taken a train back to Bielefeld because they couldn’t find us!! It was pretty humorous. Tena and I stayed and looked around in Dortmund, just shopping and looking around. When we were done, we hurried to the train station (after a quick trip to subway) but JUST missed the train. The next train got us back to Bielefeld at around 10:30, and I was dead tired. The reason we had been so sad that we missed the train was that our friend was having a pajama party in her flat, and now we were two hours late. When we got to the pajama party, there was a mattress on the floor and Tena and I collapsed on the mattress imdediately! It was a really relaxing and fun way to end the night (pajama party-what a great idea!!) because it was very low-energy and we were all lying around in pajamas.
On Wednesday, our international office arranged a karaoke night for us in an Irish pub in the city. I didn’t sing of course, but it was still fun to watch others. Some of my friends are so talented! Felix had also come out for the day, although he didn’t sing either. Thursday was a German holiday so we didn’t have school, which was weird to have a random Thursday off but I won’t complain.
And Friday I was super German and went to Hannover to go to Hannover’s Oktoberfest!
My flatmates and I had been trying for almost a week to make plans to go to the most renown and famous Oktoberfest in Munich. It was really hard to plan though, when nobody knew who was coming or what they wanted to do. It was also VERY expensive, just to get to the Oktoberfest, and all the hostels are full so we would’ve been staying at a tent-camping place. Then, the beer in the beer tents at the Oktoberfest are really expensive and you have to wait to get into them. Needless to say, our planning for Munich definitely didn’t work out. When my fellow international students started planning for a different day trip to Cologne, I really wanted to participate, but again the planning was really bad and I wanted plans that wouldn’t fall through. I made my own plans to go to Hannover for the weekend and check out the Oktoberfest there with Felix. I also liked the idea of being with a real German. I really LOVE our group of exchange students, but when we go somewhere, be it a café, pub, a city…we kind of walk in like an invading army. I thought being with a German might be different than being with a massive group of foreigners.
Oktoberfest!
I think I made the right choice, although I WILL say that I didn’t have the typical crazy Oktoberfest experience (which is fine with me). We actually went to the Oktoberfest on Saturday evening. It was a warm, foggy evening that I thought was a perfect fall night. Surprisingly, it wasn’t full or busy at all! I had no idea what Oktoberfest is like, so to situate those who are like me, I’ll explain. The Oktoberfest was basically like the Alaska State fair, but smaller, and with a lot more beer. There were food booths everywhere, selling all kinds of sweet-smelling candies. There were these giant iced cookies that said things like “Ich liebe dich” on them (apparently they weren’t really cookies but made out of glazed nuts??) There were rides just like at the fair, but some of them were really elaborate or crazy! One ride looked just like Splash Mountain at Disneyland. Felix and I went on a ride that spun you around, while the carriage while whirling around the other carriages AND flipping you upside down! I was literally being thrown around in the ride, I don’t know if it was because I wasn’t locked in tight enough but I felt like a ragdoll and was definitely anticipating some whiplash. But I loved all the spinning and upside down turns, of course!! After that, we went on the much tamer Ferris wheel. I loved riding the Ferris wheel because it gave me a great aerial view of not only the Oktoberfest, but the city. I had the pumping music and crazy flashing, neon lights from the festival on my right and the old, pretty Rathaus and taller churches on my left. I love the feeling I get when I see the older buildings here next to the new, it’s history and the present all at once. After we did the rides, we went to one of the beer tents. Usually they’re very full but on that night it was just one other party of people and then Felix and I. We drank Hannover’s beer (many German cities have their own beers) and listened to the music the DJ was playing. In Munich, most everyone dresses up in the traditional German dress, but I didn’t see many people dressed up in Hannover (but we did see a group on the train). Sadly, nobody was dancing on the tables and singing German drinking songs, but it was still fun to see. After we finished our beers, we ate German sausage, of course! I had Schinkenwurst and felt very German. We walked around the Oktoberfest once more, ate some sugary treats, and left. I know it’s not the crazy Munich stereotypical Oktoberfest but I really had a great experience there.
The ride we went on!
The Ferris Wheel!
Oktoberfest
Cheers! :)
Cheers! :)
After the Oktoberfest, we went to a huge bar. A HUGE bar, it had a couple of club/disco rooms in it and everything. What I loved about the bar was the music they played! It was all German, and I think the best way you could describe it was that it really inspired a happy mood. Kind of like ABBA. According to Felix, it was "beer tent music". They were upbeat but also kind of silly, one was a song that had motions that go with it. It was a really fun song, it had motions that went with it and was saying:
“And I fly, fly, fly like an aviator
I'm so strong, strong, strong like a tiger
And so big, big, big like a giraffe
So tall, oh, oh, oh
And I jump, jump, jump again and again
And I swim, swim, swim over to you
And I take, take, take you by the hand,
'cause I like you
And I say
Today is such a beautiful day
La-la-la-la-la…”
You can probably imagine the motions that went with it. I liked the music and the atmosphere in the bar so much! The other parts of the bar, in the disco parts, played the usual hip hop music, but I thought the bar was much more fun.
Here is the song, so you can listen for yourself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-_xXfjB3AM
Before leaving Hannover on Sunday, I had dinner with Felix and his parents. It was traditional German food, so German that its name is from the old German that few people speak anymore ;) It was a sausage called Bregenwurst (brain sausage) but it isn’t made with brains anymore. I really liked it!
This last week of October 7th was, as I said, our last week before our semester starts. Monday was my flatmate Kari’s birthday, so we threw a mildly-surprised birthday party for him. It was really funny because we were doing the preparations and decorations while he was in his room. He kept asking if there was something going on that night, but we denied having plans several times. When people started coming to the door and telling him “Happy Birthday!”, I think he realized the party was coming to him!
Happy Birthday!
The rest of the week passed with the usual German classes and daily routine. All the classes had an exam, so many people spent their time studying. I did very well on my exam, only making some spelling and sentence structure mistakes, so I was pleased and relieved. On Friday, we had a very nice “International Welcome Dinner” in the university’s restaurant with free food and free beer, so of course we had a good time. The Rektor (the president of the university) welcomed us to the university in a German/English speech. I couldn’t believe I had already been here a month!! I sat surrounded by my new friends and was a little overwhelmed by it all. A month ago, all these faces were new. I didn’t know and couldn’t pronounce anyone’s names. And now, we play, study, and live together. We encourage each other while learning German together.
Friends.
Yesterday, the 12th, some of us went to nearby Münster to spend our Saturday there. This was another beautiful city that I loved! It had beautiful churches and an impressive cathedral. The shopping area was modern but also really pretty too, built into old structures and a huge church overlooking it. It was an overcast day that was kind of chilly, but that didn’t stop us from eating delicious ice cream. While looking at one of the churches, my friend asked if one day I would tell her “the Christian story”, she wanted to know “the whole story about Jesus”. Since there is literally nothing I would rather do more, I of course told her I would love to, and I really hope I get the chance to. It started to rain pretty hard during our trip, but we still made it to the castle! And afterwards we took refuge in a super hipster café. The old part was much prettier and bigger than Bielefeld’s, which is probably why I liked it so much. I loved that the city looked so old and comfortable. It’s another place I would love to see at Christmastime.
There was a really beautiful walking trail in Münster!
This what I mean by the shopping district being old and modern: modern shops in old buildings. Love it! the church is on the right.
lovely square next to the church
There was a captivating clock in the church that told the time, day, month, etc.
little cafe in a picturesque place with delicious ice cream!
The cathedral
There was a little path with trees and leaves...of course we threw them :)
We found the castle! And it's pouring rain! Jump!
Today is Sunday, and tomorrow our winter semester starts. This first month was exciting, fun, overwhelming and went by so fast! I’m excited , but also a little nervous. I haven’t had actual classes since May (or honestly, late April if we don’t count Finals Week) so I hope I can get back into the school groove. I’m really excited for my classes though! I’m taking American Gothic literature, Social and Cultural Studies: North America, a class on analyzing and interpreting texts from American literature (and its tutorium), American Modernism, Creative Writing, British literature, and continuing my German course. This schedule should be my final schedule but we’ll see at the end of this first wee. I’m especially looking forward to Social and Cultural Studies: North America because it sounds so interesting! This is the class description:
“This course will attempt to give you a broader understanding of how various Americans in the United States think about their nation and themselves and how they participate in shaping and passing on its culture(s). Of course, with over 300 million inhabitants representing all the races, religions and ethnicities on our planet, the existence of a common culture is a problematic and contested issue. Nevertheless, there are certain beliefs, values, ideas, and experiences that have played a central role in how Americans have interpreted their history and that continue to influence contemporary public discourse.
We will take as a starting point the challenges facing President Obama in his second term. We will evaluate the conclusions that can be drawn from the 2012 election and try to place these insights in the context of recurring themes and motifs in American culture. This will also lead us to examine the structure of government, the role of founding documents, and a range of historical and contemporary political issues, including gun control, immigration, and imbalances in wealth distribution. We will also explore questions of diversity in terms of attitudes towards race, immigration, religion, regional differences and cultural geography, as well as the cultural dimensions of education in schools and universities. We will be concerned with some of the things Americans have in common with each other, what divides them and whether and to what extent the United States can or should be regarded as an "exceptional" nation.”
I don’t know about you, but I was hooked! I don’t really follow much politics and such, but I’m excited to hear so many other views. This class isn’t really going towards my degree at UAS, but I think it’s such a unique opportunity. When else can I take a class that talks about America, but from a different vantage point, surrounded by opinions and people from all over the world?! The teacher is also from America, I believe. My favorite part about my schedule is that I don’t have any classes before 10am…which is truly beautiful.
I feel like it all gets “real” tomorrow…the “studying” in “studying abroad” is finally happening! It’s been a great month, but I’m looking forward to what is coming. Especially tonight, because our Hungarian friends are making Hungarian food for us!
I hope I’ve managed to catch you up without boring you!
P.S. I’ve achieved my goal of being able to take public transportation by myself! I don’t even get nervous! Of course, the flip side of this is now I have nothing holding me back from going shopping and buying too many clothes and too much Nutella…
P.S.S. Did I mention I'm loving the fall here?
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