First Week in Europe!!

My first week in Germany was an amazing one.  I didn’t really know what to expect or have much time to prepare mentally so it was interesting to just get on the plane and go.  After flying from Houston to Frankfurt, I was exhausted and jet lagged, so it was nice that we had a day to get our bearings before starting the program.

            My host family is so great. My host mom is a life coach and does a lot of interesting things with her clients and it is always fun to hear about her different adventures.  She has amazing English because she has been housing foreign exchange students for thirteen years.  Right now there are five, including Mikaela and I, a Nicaraguan, a Saudi Arabian, and a Spanish girl.  She is 16 and I have been able to talk to her for a bit.  I feel so guilty though because I can only communicate in English and everyone in the house knows about three languages.  I wish American schools placed a greater emphasis on learning more.

From the beginning, I have adored Bonn.  I think it is a beautiful German city and I love the people and the fact that it doesn’t overwhelm me.  We are so lucky to be able to work with the AIB.  The German classes we had the first week have been extremely beneficial to me and I know they will continue to be so.  At first, I felt uncomfortable because I knew I was butchering the language and I was embarrassed that my seven year old host family “sister” was better at speaking it than I was.  I was also jealous that she could speak it so quickly.  I don’t know how that is possible.  There are so many pronunciations.  However, as I learn more and more I am able to communicate more with her and teach her new words and learn some from her.  I enjoy it.

My highlight of the week was visiting Cologne.  The moment I walked out of the hauptbanhof and saw the gigantic cathedral I fell in love.  The zoo and elephant tour was very interesting as was the trip to the Sports University.  The view from the roof of the Cologne Cathedral left me speechless.  The Rhein and Cologne is breathtaking.  My favorite thing was visiting the EL-DE haus.  The EL-DE haus was very sad but gave a cool personalized history of Nazi Germany.  The basement was the prison and on the walls were so many engravings and notes from the prisoners.  It is difficult to look at something as horrible as the Holocaust and really understand what something like that did to people, but by seeing those notes I was able to see WWII for what it was, and that hurt.