A small update...finally!!!

Alright, so I've been in Deutschland for a little more than 3 weeks now and I went (until today of course) that entire 3 weeks without internet in my room and let me tell you, that was a very frustrating time. My only contact with people back home is through E-mail, Facebook, etc. and while my friends here let me use their internet just about whenever I needed to, it sucked not having my own internet connection. But anyway, enough about that, I'm over it now.

So, these past three weeks have been filled with lots of different types of activities. The first couple of days were filled with lots of information and I felt a little overwhelmed at first because my German isn't great and it was difficult understanding everything that was said. So we arrived in D-land at 7 something in the morning on Wednesday, September 16th and we were met by the Resident Director and the Academic Coordinator of the JYM program, Hans-Peter Söder and Sommer Sherrit. We then loaded all of our stuff into a nice bus and headed to the Studentenstadt which is our home for the next year. We then had a few hours to ourselves to sort of unpack, nap, etc. and then we had to meet at the JYM building at around 12:30 in the afternoon for food and information about the next day. After that we could do whatever we wanted and I ended up just going around some parts of the city with one of the girls from the program, Kate. So we went by the Alte Pinakothek, the Neue Pinakothek, some of the university buildings, and other random places. We went by Karstadt which is a popular department store here so that I could buy a towel and an alarm clock since I didn't have my packages that I bought yet. Then we walked through the Englischer Garten and then I honestly can't remember what I did after that because so much has happened that it's all blended together unfortunately.

So the next day we had to meet at JYM again at around 9:30 in the morning for a nice breakfast made up of lots of good breakfast foods like bread, cheese, meat, yogurt, coffee, juice, water, milk, granola bars, etc. Then after the breakfast came an immense amount of important information and paperwork that we had to fill out, including the forms for our residency permits and other important bureaucratic things. After all that came lunch at the Löwenbräukeller, which was really good. I don't remember the name of what I got but I did take a picture haha! Then after that came a tour of the surrounding area which was given by the awesome Hans-Peter Söder. After that we had free time until the packages that people purchased, including me, came. The guy who delivered them came about 30-40 minutes late and by the time he got there it was raining pretty steadily so we had to unload all the packages in the rain. By everyone helped each other and while I was really soaked, it went by quicker because we all helped each other out.

The next day we had a light breakfast at JYM and then we had to complete a placement exam to determine our level of language competency. This test was very hard for me, especially the hearing comprehension part. The reading and writing wasn't all bad and I did end up doing better in the reading and writing sections than I did in the other parts. So I'm in the B1 level. From that test they split us up into two separate groups and for the first two Moduls (I'll explain that later) we took the Moduls separately. Anyway, that day (Friday, September 18th) we ate lunch in the Mensa, which is a student cafeteria-type thing which has decent and cheap food so it was good. Then later in the evening we had a tour of StuSta which was helpful in orientating ourselves with our new home.

I'm sorry if this post was boring and a little repetitive (especially with all of the "and then..." statements). I'm trying to catch myself up so I will write more tomorrow (hopefully) but it's 12:15 in the morning and I'm tired and I have orientation stuff at 9:30 in the morning so bis später my friends!! Oh and I'll try and post pictures too. :D