It's been a crazy past few days...

As my first post in Germany, there is so much that I could go on and on about, but I'll save some of it for later. We left Houston for Paris last Friday, hopped on a plane for Germany and landed in Duesseldorf that afternoon. We met our respective host families and went home for our first (somewhat awkward) meal. The next morning, a few other people studying abroad and I got on a train for Amsterdam. I guess its kind of interesting to note that on our first full day in Europe, we were headed for Amsterdam, God's Blind Spot. The city is very nice, with decent attractions such as the Rijksmuseum, the van Gogh museum and the Anne Frank house, but the Red Light District is another story in itself....one that I won't go into...

Now that we've been in Germany for a few days, I've been able to form a few first impressions... While the Germans get kind of a bad rap for being rude, most of the people younger than 50 are usually friendly, willing to help, and speak a decent amount of English. Even the 13 year old son of our host mother speaks better English than I do Spanish. The public transportation is a little hard to figure out, but after getting lost and getting to the first day of class an hour and a half late, I think I've mostly got it down.

Today we went on a day trip to Bonn and went to the House of History, which had German History from 1945 until today. It was an interesting experience that did a good job of explaining how the Allies, and the Soviet Union for that matter, rebuilt and influenced the recovery of post-war Germany. That may sound somewhat unexciting, but that was what I was able to take from the museum. What I did find unusual was there was an exhibit about the first man on the moon. It seems to me that the Americans gave the Germans a little rock from the moon and the felt obliged to put it into a museum... i have no other explanation...