First Impressions

Well, I have been here in Düsseldorf for three days now and I am loving it!! Arriving at the airport was interesting because there were not many people in it...it was pretty creepy. Then getting a taxi that five girls could ride in was another adventure, and the scariest part was his driving. (I guess that is one thing that is the same in any country with taxis.) Once we arrived at the AIB we met all the wonderful people who work there. I ate some breakfast there even though I wasn't really hungry. (this blog is taking me longer to write than usual becuase the keyboard is somewhat different.) Anyways, that morning I also met my host parents, Gerd and Christa Erps, who are the nicest, sweetest couple you will ever meet!!! They are so funny and they seem to care about Katie and I so much.

The next day Christa showed us around their town of Benrath. I loved the village shopping area and the huge Catholic church that was there. That afternoon we went to the AIB and Dr. Wasser gave us a three hour tour...not in a boat...but around Düsseldorf. He held up the EU flag to give us something to follow and wore this straw hat to protect his head from the sun. It was really really HOT, though and it was hard to pay attention to the tour, but it was fun meeting two police officers who gave us gummy bears. That night it was really sweet of the AIB staff because they threw us a 4th of July party which was a lot of fun.

On Wednesday Christa taught her first German class to us and it went really well. We also had Dr. Wasser's class and Mariam's culture class. That afternoon we had a scavenger hunt around Düsseldorf. My team went out with good intentions of doing well on the hunt, but not even halfway into it, it started pouring so we went into the mall, shopped and ate some ice cream. When we left the mall we kinda forgot about the hunt and walked around and back to the AIB. We are very sure we lost, but we had fun anyways!! Okay I think I wrote enough, I need to learn how to be breif...sorry.