Tag 5

The pics from my last blog weren't quite in order but oh well... I'm technologically challenged! I wrote this a couple days ago. Because I don't have internet access 24/7, I've just been writing on my computer and then copying it into my blog; therefore some entries will be from a few days before... Did I mention this before?

Deutschland Tag 5, Montag 17 Oktober
Now we are in Kaiserslautern, the town where Urs studies. We got here last night and tomorrow I will go to Landau because I have some kind of orientation in the morning. Last night when we drove here, we picked up Urs’ friends Frank and Simon. We had four people and all of our stuff in that little car (minus most of mine which we had dropped off at my room earlier). It was cozy :-) His friends are pretty cool except that I didn’t really understand anything that they said. Later that night with Simon’s girlfriend we all hung out in Frank and Simon’s room and watched a movie. I cheated a little then and spoke in English to them. Not so good but I had just spent two hours or so listening to them speak German and not understanding anything. It was nice to say something so they didn’t think I was mute! No, I did speak to them in German but only a very little. It’s kind of frustrating. Urs speaks to me pretty slowly and when I don’t understand, he explains it again in German. When I don’t understand other people, they just explain in English. At least people don’t seem to mind explaining things to me.

Ugh, I just went out for a walk and got lost. Urs has some sort of karate tonight so I have a few hours to myself. I decided after he left to go shopping for a bit and then walk around. Shopping was nice. I didn’t get too lost and I found a hardcover book of children’s stories in German for 10 Euro. It was the walking around part that got me. None of the streets here run parallel! I thought I would walk a while down one street and then go a street down and come back. The street actually went on a slight angle. I tried to walk to the first street that I was on but I didn’t remember its name. I got to a round about and picked a direction... and ended up somewhere. The wind was getting pretty icy and since it was almost seven at night the sun was mostly down. I finally found some buildings that I remembered passing before but I didn’t remember which way to go back from there. A few more loops around and about twenty minutes later I finally found Urs’ apartment. Phew! It actually wasn’t too bad until it started getting really cold. I passed so many Reisebüros (or maybe just the same one several times), which might have been very useful had they been open but oh well. Now I have some time to write this and read my book before Urs gets back. Bye for now!