My first week here was characterized by chaos internally and externally, processing everything that has been going on has honestly been so hard. It started out with connecting with the group at the airport which was a challenge. My dad booked the wrong hotel in Frankfurt which meant I had to take a taxi late at night on Sunday the 27th to get to the right hotel. The morning the group was meeting at the airport, I decided to wake up early and try to figure out the train situation in Frankfurt to connect with the group at the airport and avoid spending another 60 euros on a taxi. I trekked two miles through downtown Frankfurt with a large (50lb.) suitcase, another smaller carry on, and a very full backpack in tow. At this point I was telling myself I was an idiot for packing so much and could probably have been fine in a total of two outfits for the trip. After 30 minutes of trying to find the station, I decided to ask for help and wandered into a near by hotel in which the front desk person spoke very little English, but nevertheless drew a diagram that helped me to find the station. When I got there I "easily" bought a ticket and dragged my suitcases up three flights of stairs (with the help of a kind German stranger). I got onto the platform and sat down waiting for my train, relieved that I found it, but when I confirmed for peace of mind with a man sitting next to me that I had bought the right ticket for the airport he said "nein" and then proceeded to tell me how to buy the right ticket. At this point I gave up, walked back to the same hotel I asked for directions in, and asked for them to call me a cab. She looked confused and said the trains were easy and she would explain again, and I said that was very kind, however I was really ready to get to the airport.
After connecting with the group I felt so much relief, but also defeated that during my very first day I felt so overwhelmed. Upon arriving in Bonn, our host mom Carmen picked us up and she seemed very nice and showed us around the house and our little village of Oberdollendorf that we would be staying in for the next six weeks. She gave us so many helpful tips and showed us how to use the trains, once again exclaiming how easy they were to use but I remained skeptical after my experience in Frankfurt. The first day of classes came and Rachel and I easily navigated our way there only to get lost in the underground maze of Bonn Hauptbanhof for at least thirty minutes, but we finally found the group at the information desk and that was a small victory of the morning.
After a day or two Bonn started to become familiar and easy to navigate, on our afternoon off from class we even decided to explore a castle of Drakensberg, which was a hike but so worth the views that overlooked the Rhine and Bonn. Everything is so green here and I am still not over it. 
In this short week here I have learned so much. It is very cool learning not only in the traditional classroom setting, but then also learning while taking tours of museums and simply through conversations on excursions. I loved the excursion to Bingen, while it was beautiful, it was so interesting to learn about Hildegard and where medicine in that time period started and to relate some of the remedies in that time to what we use now. I have also learned that while lots of people do speak German, many do not or don't speak it well enough for them to want to, so it's important to try to learn their language while I am here. Other little things that I have learned is that getting lost often leads to the best little adventures and only helps you to understand what you're capable of, a scoop of gelato is good for the soul, it never hurts to ask for help, and a smile is universal but it kinda weirds the Germans out if you smile at them and you don't know them.
Over the weekend a group of us decided to explore Belgium. First we traveled by train to Brussels, and we sat at the Cologne train station for a little over an hour waiting for our delayed train, making sure that it didn't effect any of our other connections. We made it to Brussels late Friday night and checked into our hostel, and then spent Saturday trekking all over the city seeing everything we could see and eating one too many waffles.
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| Brussels, Belgium |
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| Burges, Belgium |
Sunday we went to Bruges, which was the most quaint town, and in the morning relatively quiet and it felt like we had the entire city to ourselves which was a dream. In the afternoon it got relatively crowded and tourists came from all over to see it. That night we caught our train back to Bonn, and everything was going smoothly until our third connection. Since the train was running behind schedule, some of our group thought this was the location of our connection since it was the time that we were scheduled to arrive even though the platform name was different. So we quickly got off of the train, but two people from our group didn't make it. We frantically ran back and forth trying to get a door open, but the train pulled away and we were standing on the platform and they were riding to the next destination (which was the station which we had our connection). It was stressful and funny all at the same time and in the end we figured it out and made it on time to the station we needed to be at to reconnect with our group. Three times getting in one week has taught me that in the end it will work out and probably be a really cool experience.
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