A really long update

So, I finally found some time to fill you guys in on what I’ve been up to! So I guess I left off from Salzburg. From Salzburg we went to Munich, which I enjoyed a whole lot more than Salzburg. I was used to being in much smaller cities and being in a large city was weird and I was starting to miss the quiet atmosphere that comes with smaller cities. But Munich was really enjoyable. We got there and took a bus tour around the city to get acquainted with it. They did the tour in both English and German so it was fun to listen to the German and see how much I understood when they repeated it in English. After the bus tour we went to have some sausage, because at that point we really hadn’t actually had any yet. But in the middle of our dinner it started pouring down rain, and then it started hailing on us! It was so weird! The next day, we went back to several of the sites we saw on the bus tour: to Nymphenburger Palace, the Olympic Park from the ’72 Olympics and the BMW museum. Munich is a really cool city, and absolutely beautiful, there were a lot more trees, parks and flowers than there were in Salzburg and it was just all around a nicer place to be.
After Munich, on our way to Rothenburg, we went to Dachau, the first concentration camp. I could have spent a much longer time there than we did. The museum was so interesting- it had a lot of information on the history, to personal stories, and there was a film about the camp also. It was really eerie being there, just knowing what had previously gone on in that place. It made me really uneasy most of the time I was there. Walking through the living quarters, the prison, and the crematorium, really just being there in general was difficult.
Rothenburg was really cool. It’s a medieval town, still “preserved” from the 1400’s. By preserved I mean, after WWII the parts that were destroyed were reconstructed to resemble what the town looked like 500 years before. It was a really beautiful city- we didn’t do much there, we took a tour with the night watchman, who was this funny guy who dressed up as the night watchman and took us on a tour of the city from “his eyes.” It was pretty funny, we walked around the city wall, had some delicious ice cream, really just enjoyed the scenery.
Then on Sunday night we came to Schwabish Hall- we tried to find the Goethe Institute and had dinner and pretty much just crashed. Monday was registration, so once we finally found the Institute, the parents left to head to Frankfurt so they could go to Stockholm for their cruise the next day and I had like 3 hours of German testing. I had an interview, a multiple choice grammar section and a writing section to figure out what class I should be in. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be, in fact it was a lot like what we did in class at school. Truett actually did some good teaching! Anyway, I am in the 6th of 11 levels.
I really like my class. It will definitely help to improve my grammar skills and really already has. It’s like everything I’ve ever learned how to do in German is finally being explained to me so that I can reproduce it for more than just the in class exercises, like with Truett. One of my friends who is in the Vienna program with me, and lives across the hall is in class with me. Our teacher is from Turkey so the other day we went and played backgammon for a while, that was pretty awesome.
My roommate is pretty cool, can you guys believe it- I finally have a good roommate! She is from the Ukraine. We get along really well and are learning a lot from each other. There are 6 of us on the floor, My roommate, Lilja and I, the boy from my program Anadin and his roommate Alex who is from Romania, Pelle who is from Sweden and an older woman named Svetlana who is from Russia. We all get along well and spend most of our time together. Anadin has been cooking a lot for us, so it’s been good to get some homecooked meals again.
My days have pretty much been about the same everyday, I get up at 6:30, that’s right before most of you go to sleep, I have breakfast at the institute, have class from 8:15-12:45- we have a break ever hour and a half- eat lunch at the institute, the usually take a nap because it’s too hot to do anything else, do my homework, make dinner and then after that we have done something different every night. One day I walked around the city exploring some, another day we went and played pool, another we had a small get together sponsored by the school, another day we went to play backgammon, and yesterday night there was a big dance party offered by the school.
I’ve really been enjoying myself here, it has been really cool to get to meet and learn about people from all over the world. It’s been interesting trying to acclimate to the German culture, from figuring out what is on a menu, to checking out at the grocery store, to water bottle returns for cash, there’s something new everyday that I learn about the culture that I had no idea about before. It’s really cool to get to experience something that in a lot of ways is completely different than what I am used to.
Phew, I’m sorry that is so long and that it has been so long since I have posted something.
I love it here : )

Miss you all,
Love
Ann