Wednesday, October 26, 2005

To France!

Monday October 24, 2005


I am beginning to feel a little more at home here. There is not carpeting in the wonheim so it echoes everywhere. I also didn’t have very much stuff to fill up my rather large room so it felt a little lonely here. I bought a little rug and some honey hand soap (for dry hands!), along with a few towel which all made my room much cozier. I also bought enough food to cook a few things here. This is a pic of the first hot meal I made (the peanut butter on the bread looks a little strange because I needed to use a flash). I’m starting to get to know the other exchange students better as well. Tonight I had Kathy, Kaija, and Joanna (from Poland) over to watch a movie. It was really fun and Joanna is so friendly. After the movie I went to her room and we talked for about two hours, just about classes and foreign languages and such. I wish she were staying for the whole year but alas, she will just be here for a semester, as will all the other exchange students except us Americans and Hanane from France.

I feel like I’m picking up some German. It is getting a little bit easier to speak and Joanna told me she thinks my German is better today than it was even on Friday. I hope that is true! I don’t feel like I am getting better very quickly but then again, I have only been here for a week and a half. The obstacle to learning German here though, is that I am constantly surrounded by English. All the German students that I have met (and will meet) speak very good English. The radios are always playing songs in English and even the other exchange students have taken English as their second language. I think for most of them German is a third or fourth language. It is nice to have the other exchange students here though, because we almost always speak German together. Even though they don’t know every word in German, they are still very good (much better than me!) and they don’t use as difficult words as the natives. I can speak to them fairly easily in German and I usually understand a good deal of what they say. They are also very patient when I take a while to remember a word or figure out how to construct a sentence.

Tomorrow Kathy, Kaija, the Polish, and the Greek girls, and I are going to venture to Wissembourg, one of the only two French cities that are covered by our semester train pass. I’m so excited! I haven’t ever been to France before. I don’t think anyone knows what there is to do there but I’m sure we can look at the Banhof in Wissembourg and find some brochures for things too see. Plus it is another chance to know the other exchange students better.

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