It's Only Day 4...

     Boy, the first few days in a foreign country were...different. I was completely exhausted on day one, I don't even think I remember much of what happened. I met some awesome people on the trip that I really click with and that has made this journey a lot easier already. My host family served us pizza turtles, which it was funny listening to the host daughter describe it. She said they usually call it pizza snakes because it starts as one long roll, but then you roll it up and cut it into chunks and then it becomes a pizza turtle. All I did after dinner was go to sleep on the first night. I slept great until the sun came up at 5:30 am which was very new to me. Luckily I was able to fall back asleep before awaking at 8:00 am to meet the group at the Bonn train station.

     The train station is only a 5 minute walk from my host house which is really awesome and lucky cause it is centrally located and only a 15 minute walk to the new AIB where our classes are. We had the welcome meeting which I'll be honest was super boring because we had already heard the information a thousand times but I understand it was very important information that needed to be repeated. We then departed on our Bonn orientation tour with one of the AIB student workers. He let us stop at the plaza by the city hall which had tons of food trucks that we got to stop and eat at. I tried the pasta truck and it was absolutely delicious. I didn't think that Italian food in Germany would be so good. For dessert, I tried gelato for the first time and let me tell you, that was life changing. I really love ice cream back home, but gelato was 100% better than the ice cream back in America. It was so creamy and smooth and just had a great flavor. The flavors I got were cookies and walnuts. I now want gelato almost everyday it was that good but my wallet can't handle that. We continued with the tour and encountered a very scary situation. There was a legit street fight that went down that included a man running and flying jump kicking another guy in the chest. The guy that got kicked whipped out pepper spray and chased the one who kicked him and started moving the fight towards us. We ran and another guy pulled his belt off and started smacking the guy with the pepper spray. It was wild but we were safe and continued about our way. The rest of the tour was dull by comparison but was really helpful and informative. We ate chicken patties and homemade French fries for dinner and then I went to bed right after dinner again.

     Day 3 rolled around and once again I was woken up by the early rising sun. We had our first German lesson which was super fun and exciting to start to learn how to greet people in German. For lunch, I went basic American and got chicken nuggets and French fries which was a great decision and was delicious. Then a few girls and I got smoothies and enjoyed the beautiful weather.

We met everyone back at AIB and took the tram to the Haus de Geschichte or the House of History. Dr. Wasser was our tour guide and we got to learn about the history of Germany from post-war 1945 until now. We saw everything from tanks to cars to robots to rubble from the Berlin Wall to space craft and so much more. It definitely was an information overload but was so interesting and enjoyable. A bunch of us went out for a drink after, and I got to try my first German beer.... and I did not like it. I am not a huge beer person but I had to give it a shot. Can't wait for more journeys and experiences.