What a week!

Tomorrow will mark my first week in Germany. I feel like so much has happened in this week. Getting to Germany was fairly simple, getting to Bonn was not. The two hour bus ride took an extra hour due to traffic. Being late due to unpredictable circumstances happens more often than I like this week. I met my host family and they are wonderful. The mother is so caring, nice, and friendly. The daughter is younger than me but is very mature and we have very similar interests. They showed me the different ways to get to the HBF and I tried public transportation for my first time. I took the bus and a train to get to AIB the first day of class. I soon realized that a different bus was the easiest way to get around. Charlie, my host sister's dog, has kept me from getting homesick. He is a playful puppy that reminds me of my dog back home. He is always happy to see me and has taught me some German; we are working on his English. Later in the week I got to try my first German beer. It is really strange to me to be able to sit at a restaurant and order an alcoholic beverage. Kölsch beer is my favorite. I cannot pronounce it, but I somehow manage to order it. I learned very quickly that if you mispronounce a German word, the Germans do not understand it at all. It is almost easier to try to find the few English words a person knows than trying to correctly pronounce a German word. This does not help me learn a new language but very much helps me get around. I have liked my classes so far. The pace is very fast but manageable. I used to go to sleep listening to classical music up until I was about 10. I find this doesn't help my school work because I want to go to sleep whenever I listen to my homework assignments. I fell asleep listening to the assignments and had to re-listen to them in order to be prepared for class the next day. I went to the opera to support my host sister and found it kinda hard to stay awake during the parts where no singing occurred.I made my way through my first opera and would not mind if it counted as extra credit. For the first weekend in Germany, I went to Munich with some classmates. The journey to the hotel was long and costly, but the pizza there was amazing. We got to go to the Dachau concentration camp. It exceeded my expectations. I was amazed at all the number of people who had been to the camp: prisoners, visitors, and SS officers. The rest of the Munich trip was much more lighthearted. We went to the Deutshe museum. This museum is somewhere I could spend days in. There was so much information on the history and production of different technologies. I also got to try Bavarian beer. I wish I could have tried it in smaller portion sizes, but they only sold the beer in a liter. Munich is a beautiful city but is very large and expensive. The journey back to Bonn took more hours than we planned due to unforeseen circumstances. I am just glad that I made it back to my wonderful host family survived my first week in Germany!