T-Day 0-1.5 (Traveling)
I felt like a nerd/ engineer because I was looking at the wings while
we were taking off as they moved and adjusted and all I could think about was how fascinating
it was that it could withstand all the forces from the air and lift being
applied to it. Chicago looked so small and less intimidating than when you’re in
it. It made me think of the little model in the
museum and then of Sim City. I didn't get a picture because I didn't want to be yelled at by the flight attendants. I was somewhat close to the engine so the sound was rather
pleasant. I love looking through the Sky Mall magazine because it’s always amusing in one way or another. That's when I found something called a “Skel-E-Gnome” – skeleton versions of a male, female and dog gnomes. I was very amused. The food they fed us was surprising good, dinner was salad, chicken with BBQ, green beans, sweet potatoes (really sweet and weird but tasty) a wheat roll, crackers, cheese, and a brownie. I ate the first three things and was full and saved the rest for breakfast.
I ate the brownie and tried to sleep, made me feel sick. Then when morning came around I broke the roll and ate it with cheese, only to find out they were serving a egg croissant, banana, and oj. Also quite tasty.
Overall, the whole flight was quite nice aside from the occasional
bump from turbulence and from not being able to get comfortable enough to sleep
for long.
We arrived in Paris early which made the whole thing feel a
long longer because it was an extra 30 minutes in their airport. It was there that French is pretty hard to understand, but! I knew how the currency worked at least. :) Yay Euros! Pre-made food at CDG was kind of expensive, I had a baguette
with chicken and veggies (unfortunately with mayo too) the bread was absolutely
delicious and it tasted fresher than expected.
Our flight from CDG -> BRE was delayed by 15 minutes and
we ended up getting to BRE about 30 minutes late because it took a while to
board everyone into such a small plane. During the flight, at about 17:00 it was really hard for me
to stay awake my head would drop forward while I was trying to read my /FREE!/
IHT paper read. They served us some french pretzels on board, I got pesto flavored
ones, they were absolutely delicious. The nutrition is weird because they label most
things by “100g” even if it’s more or less than that, I was startled such a
small bag of pretzels was 478 kcal or something like that, but then realized the bag was only 20g. They also
measure everything my grams, no milligrams like us that was weird
Here's a few pictures from my flight:
Sorry it's upside-down
When we arrived at BRE everything was a breeze, our luggage
was there, the Taxi driver took us to where we needed to go and it only
cost 17,35 euros, less than our host
expected.
We arrived and Frau Thanner seemed very kind, she showed us
our area which, is quite nice if I don’t say so myself. We have a smallish
room, but basically our own floor of the house, a room, bathroom, living room and a quaint
little kitchen. Frau Thanner also told us that she had made tomato soup from
scratch and said it wasn't from a can or anything, I thought that was weird.
She also told us she bought us bread and jam for the following morning so we
would have something to eat since she knew we hadn't shopped.
Dinner was quite nice. The german bread was delicious, the
soup was absolutely phenomenal. We chatted with frau thanner some and for some
reason they’re under the impression that we only eat food from cans and white
bread. I told her I love fresh food and her soup was delicious. She told us
more about Bremen, places to see and shop at. She’s a very kind woman. Turns
out she’s a doctor. Her hudsband, who we met briefly, was very nice. She made
us some chai tea, also very good, and we looked at maps. She had us try it with
milk, I wasn’t a fan.
Later I went to sleep, it was /freezing/ in our room so we
had lots of blankets, I eventually fell asleep and slept very well for a while.
Day 2! – Insitut
Rachel and I woke up, caught the bus and arrived on time. The
bus was nothing special aside from hardly anyone paying and that they had a
change machine if you paid extra (which is awesome). The coins are hard to get used to, especially when I had American coins mixed it. It cost
2,35 for one way, that seemed very expensive in my opinion. Oh well.
We took our tests, I’m in B 1.1, Rachel’s in A2.2. Too bad,
but we can see each other during cultural things and breaks. The little
cafeteria in the building seemed okay-ly priced. Funny that a vending machine
20 feet away was ,20 more. After classes we went on a campus tour and found the
Mensa, where the Universitaet Bremen students eat. It was huge and had a pretty
decent variety of food. A whole meal, small soup, small salad, tchztiki, turkey
sausage, and rice (very filling) was only 2,20!!! Students are so lucky here.
The nice thing about the Goethe Institut is many different
people can come together and still learn because everything is taught in German
and explained in German. I’m the only one from America in my class. And the
keyboards are wieeerd. qwertz
Still haven’t figured out the internet in the house, oh
well. We had homework to do anyhow.
We went shopping at a nice mall not too far away and it only
cost 12,65 at Aldi for quite a bit of food, cereal, bierwurst, milk (they don’t
have skim just 1,5%), ground beef, tomatoes, romance lettuce, bananas, cheese,
eggs, mix for making tortillas and maybe one other thing. It was amazing! Also, they had huge leeks!
Day 3 - .8.2.2012
Today was day 2 of classes. It was a pretty good day, we
arrived late because we thought we weren’t going to make the 7.41 bus. Turns out the
buses run about 10 minutes later than the scheduled time. So, we could have and
there was also a bunch of kids on a field trip on the bus so it seemed to slow
things down even further.
I’ve decided I feel slightly out of place because I am
quieter than most other people, but I am okay because I understand things
fairly well. The day finished, we went to the Hauptbahnhof to get Bus/Bahn
passes for the rest of the month, turns out we need pictures. We investigated
getting Handys and found some good things. Then we went to the university and
got a picture for Rachel then went back and got our passes. We were a little
giddy because they are so cool looking! Afterwards we went to a place that had
some amazing deals only to realize that we needed visas to get them, which
neither school requires so we couldn’t get that, but rather we got different
cards and I get a cheap phone. Again, exciting. Then we wandered around a
shopping area looking for a Deutsche Bank and for a bathroom, finally we found
one in a bookstore and you had to pay ,50 to get in.
Trams are cool!
Afterwards we met up with a group of people for Begruessenabend (Greetings Evening) where a lot of the Goethe Institut students get together, eat and chat. A
lot of my class was there but I felt a little weird because I think many of
them have been in classes together prior to this one so they already kind of
know eachother, or… they’re just very friendly people. Either way, I’m shy and
they were all siting together drinking bier (Beck’s, which is brewed in Bremen! And is DISGUSTING, I literally had a full body shiver after tasting it). Maybe I
missed out being awkward with Rachel at our table with some people we had never
met before who were in higher levels of German. (We didn’t eat until ~20.00, I
really don’t like that… it’s far too late for me)
We grabbed a tram back, missed our stop, but made it home
just after 22:00, also much too late for me.
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