Massive Post I

I am officially a fail at doing more than three things at once. For why I'll never be an adult, please visit http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/06/this-is-why-ill-never-be-adult.html

Since I cannot keep up multiple things at once, this massive post of the last two and a half weeks will be broken into two pieces: Meissen and my classes here, and the Berlin excursion. Perhaps there will be another post before I leave for the weekend about my excitement for Prag? (Let's not raise our expectations too high).

So apparently, I can call phones in the US from my email address for FREE. This is why I love Google! I hope to be calling everyone at least once from Germany, just for the novelty of it all.

Last week heralded the start of real classes, which has been exciting. We have cell biology very sporadically, so it has been a ridiculously easy week so far. I met my new German teacher, and he seems very kind. He was telling us about a better, cheaper grocery store that is within biking distance (speaking of, I now have pictures of my one true love-my bike- on my photobucket. I've been getting into the rhythm of going to class and trying to make three balanced meals a day for myself. It's hard to not eat just sausage and bread here, both of which are delicious.

Thursdays are a tough day, I have four classes. I have organic lecture and discussion, which are alright. Our first professor (Dr. Reuner) is very kind, but we were learning functional groups and his accent does not help me keep them clear. When I come home, you can hear my nearing-perfection German accent. After organic we have a quick lunch and go to German class, which is alright. Again, I wish I knew more than the present, but at least I have learned some prepositions and some more vocabulary. Then we have our culture class, which is 98% bullshit. I love it. It's like high school English class all over again. I can barely pay attention and still contribute the most to class discussion, and I learned we only have to write one 10 page paper. We also get to do cool cultural excursions around Dresden, one of which I will write about after Meissen.

This weekend we went to Meissen for our cultural excursion. About forty five minutes away on the train, it's a very quaint little town (describes 90% of Germany I've seen thus far) that houses the first manufacturing plant of European porcelain. We didn't have to wake up ridiculously early, and took a nice stroll through a museum about the porcelain manufacturing process, especially the artisan-ship that goes into each piece. It was all very beautiful in the gift shop (I made sure to keep my hands in my pockets), but ridiculously expensive. We ate at a delicious little restaurant. I had potatoes and veggies au gratin, something I would never had the patience to make myself, and it was 80% cheese. It was so good, but I couldn't finish all of it. Then we went to another museum, but larger and inside a castle. It was so neat, and I took a lot of pictures. I liked the thrones and all the decorations on the walls. I've discovered that I really enjoy slowly strolling through a museum on my own, reading all the little placards and looking closely at the paintings and such. The return from Meissen and the rest of the weekend was pretty uneventful, standard Hausaufgaben (literally "housework") procrastinating/doing and room cleaning.

Monday started our second week of classes, which was interesting. We had cell biology for the first time, which is on Dresden's medical university campus, forty five minutes away. We also have biology at 11:00 Monday and 7:30's on Tuesday/Wednesday. Needless to say, I brought a full thermos of coffee on Tuesday. Our professor is hilariously German (he wears neck scarves and his name is Peter Dieter!), and also very kind. His English is superb, he says his wife is American. He is also on my good list because he let us finish all our slides for the week on Tuesday so we didn't even have class on Wednesday! Hurrah for nice professors.

The rest of the week's classes were pretty standard. We did have a cultural excursion for our German class, though! It was to a Kindergarten! TINY GERMAN CHILDREN. We went at about two in the afternoon. German Kindergarten is not just the first year, its more of a daycare for children from 1-6 years old. They were all very well behaved, and I made a tiny German Freunde named Tom because I pushed him on the tire swing. It was pretty funny because I speak basically no German, but gestures saved the day again. I really liked visiting, it was such fun to play with the kids on their really awesome playground. I noticed that they don't really have a lot of adults with the kids, just a few per about twenty kids. It looked like fun though. All the kids have cubbies with their name and pictures and it made me think about my school days when I had my cubby! The rest of the week flew by, between our excursion on Wednesday and my four-class Thursday. Friday we were off to Berlin. I think I'll stop here and share the link to my Meissen pictures below:

http://s192.photobucket.com/albums/z254/rusher116/Studying%20Abroad/Meissen/