One week in the books

The first week abroad has been nothing short of incredible.  The amount of new things that I've seen and done these past few days is almost overwhelming considering what I knew sitting on the plane over.  The anxiety from being in a new place has gone down exponentially as I now feel like I can confidently get anywhere in the city by train or bus.  My host parents Carmen and Wolfram have been great with getting us acquainted to the new atmosphere.  Although they've been great it's been tough acclimating to the whole no AC anywhere thing.  I love the culture and I've learned so much about how the Germans live already I can't imagine what I'll know by the end.  One thing I've learned not to do is smile at people in passing. Its not like College Station and for some reason they'll look back at you as if you have some type of mental illness.  Once the first school week was over I took a weekend trip to Amsterdam with a big group from our program.  During which we came across our first, may I say optimistically "learning experience", when we missed our first train from Cologne to Amsterdam.  It literally drove away right in front of our eyes while we stood there thinking all was good.  Looking back I'm glad it happened because it made for an awesome bonding experience and a nice short trip in Cologne with friends until we finally made the later train.  Once we got to Amsterdam it was beautiful, weather and all.  Also it was a very refreshing to find most people spoke English along with Dutch so communicating was much easier all weekend long.  On Saturday we went to visit the "Heineken experience" which was quite literally an experience and not just your everyday tour.  At one point we literally got "brewed" like a Heineken beer does and got to witness the full process in how the dutch beer is made.  The train ride home went more smoothly than the way there and we're officially back for our second week of class.  It's been amazing how well everyone hit it off during this first week.  It already seems like we've known each other for much longer than a week so I'm that much for excited for the weeks to come.