It's been a strange week, strange in the sense that now that classes are done, I have a lot of free time, and I don't know what to do with it all. So far I've mostly been using it for sleeping in and hanging out with people in the StuSie complex- most of my evenings have been spent outside in the nice weather, be it out by the lake behind my apartment building, or making dinner with other students. We made a good dinner on wednesday at Lauren's apartment- Chicken with couscous and garlic bread. I've been hanging out with Lauren and Alex this week (mostly because a lot of student's left to travel with all this time off). Lauren's roommates have been welcoming too, in particular the two german ones. Its nice to practice so much german with them, I have to admit. They're both going to be teachers, so they don't mind helping us all with our skills. They speak outstanding english, too. They'll both make good english teachers someday, even if they don't fit the part of a "teacher" with their really long hair. Kind of cool in my opinion.

Tonight I'm writing this from my bed, sick. Kind of lame, I know. I felt it coming on yesterday, as I didn't sleep good and found myself waking up coughing a few times. Last night was even worse. I've been spending the majority of my day sleeping and trying to get better. So far it's worked okay, though I'm still really tired, and my cough hasn't really improved. I got an email from my mom saying that she wants to skype with me, so she can video chat. She picked a great weekend to check up on her son; I look pretty rugged. And this cold has brought me to a pretty big realization- there are no parents here to fuss over me, there is no girlfriend here to nag me and tell me to eat some soup. It's just me, taking care of myself. And while that might sound melodramatic or lonely, it's more of just a fact. Gotta learn to take care of yourself sometime; it's called growing up, I suppose.

Regardless, I'm doing okay. I've been doing a lot of stuff this week, besides cooking and enjoying the outdoors. I had my academic advising meeting on thursday, and I had to pick my schedule of classes. Classes start on the 18th- so I still have another week- but I'm nervous. I picked a lot of classes in the University, as opposed to the classes offered through the AYF program. I hope I can handle the load, but thats why scheduling is really flexible. The final drop date for classes is in December... and I have enough classes selected where I have too many credit hours, I'll have to drop some the first week. They just encourage you to go to classes the first week to make up your mind, because to be enrolled in many classes, you -have- to be there for the first day. So if you have any interest in a class at all, you have to attend the first day. They rarely allow you to jump in later, you're name simply isn't on the attendance list.

So outside of trying to figure out a foreign education system and staving off a cold, I'm doing just fine. The Michigan/Michigan State football game is this weekend, and it's kind of a bummer that I'll be missing it, since both teams are undefeated and ranked well. I'm not too worried, espn.com works just fine in Germany too. Lauren, another AYF student who lives in StuSie with me, goes to U of M, so we're having a lot of "discussions" about which team will come away Saturday with a win. I would love to see an MSU win tomorrow, even if I can't be in Michigan to enjoy the victory. It's still nice to see the Spartans do well. My goal for this week was to take lots of pictures of Freiburg and post them on this blog. Obviously, I've fallen behind. I still have yet to upload my Oktoberfest pictures to my blog. Yikes! Oh well, I have nothing to do tomorrow afternoon and on Sunday. The weather isn't going to be too bad, either.

"Humankind cannot stand very much reality."

-T.S. Eliot

Wow, I haven't updated my blog in almost a week!

It's been a busy week too. School wrapped up on thursday... but leading up to the exams was a long and busy week. I had so much material to cover, I was swimming in homework and study materials. So after many hours of studying, and some late nights, I took my exams. The first one went pretty well, the second one felt a little rougher. But thursday night was fun, regardless. We all got together, the so called StuSie "family" and celebrated the end of classes. We were over at Lauren's place, and some of her german roommates came and joined us. While we were there, one of her new roommates arrived. He was from Oregon, and seemed nice.

Friday was a really low-key day. We had orientation meetings in the morning, and then I spent the second half of the day cleaning my room up a little bit, and reading. It was a cold, rainy day. I went to bed really early, since I had to get up around 4 in the morning for the long train ride to München (better known as Munich to you folks) and Oktoberfest. We were going to do a day trip, which meant we wanted to get to Munich as soon as we could, since we heard Oktoberfest fills up quick. This was also the 200th anniversary of Oktoberfest... It was a big deal!

Needless to say, we got there safe and sound. I had a blast- the atmosphere was incredible. It was essentially a giant festival. Everyone seemed to get along- surprising since it was full of Europeans (and American's and Aussies) and alcohol, and on more than one occasion, I heard people break out in national songs. I thought this might stir up trouble, but on the contrary, it was pretty light-hearted fun. It was a great day.

The trip home was interesting- on our first train switch, the train we were supposed to be in was much too full to fit any body. There were some people (me and the girls I was with included) that had to wait for the next train. Well, Deutsche Bahn being the nice people that they were, gave us tickets to ride the ICE trains. We had originally bought a "Schönes Wochenende" ticket, which allows you to ride on the Regional Trains only, but for around 7€. The ICE train actually got us back to Freiburg much sooner than our original plans, so it worked out for the best. It was a great time, though I was exhausted by the time our train was getting back toward Freiburg. We had been up for almost 24 hours at that point.

Today I slept in, and lounged around. School is done, and I am planning on spending my time this week looking into classes, exploring Freiburg, and looking into making little travel arrangements to meet my old host family from last summer in Mayen, and my friend Manuel in Stuttgart.

So far, my time here has been great. I feel so extremely lucky to be doing what I'm doing. I have to thank my parents for making this possible, and MSU too, to an extent. This program is really well organized, and I get all the support I need from both MSU and from the AYF program. That being said, I still sometimes miss home. Though more and more, I'm starting to realize that if my next 10 months here are anything like my first one... I might not be ready to leave next August. This place is already starting to feel more and more like home. I can't say that there has been any great culture shock. In fact, I really enjoy the German culture, except perhaps their directness. If they don't like something, or they don't think you're doing something right, they'll tell you. It's a little abrasive at first, but once you realize that they mean well, and aren't trying to simply be rude, it's easier to adjust.

I'll continue this post more later, and with some pictures from Oktoberfest- but I'm rather tired for now. It's been a really eventful weekend- I definitely count Saturday as one of the best days of my life.

"In the end, it's not going to matter how many breaths you took, but how many moments took your breath away."

-Shing Xiong

Well, it looks to be officially autum here in Germany, now. Even though the sun is out, shining brilliantly today, its still rather cold. The entire weekend was a rather cold and rainy affair too, sunny only for a bit on Sunday. Despite the weather (or maybe because of the weather, I do like fall), I had a really good weekend. Friday night was fun- went over to Alex/Emily's apartment (two girls also in the AYF program) who live just down the way from me in the StuSie complex. They have a really nice appartment, and I got the chance to really meet some of their roommates. We had a "Sing-Star" party, a game that is played by singing songs into a microphone, and which ever team wins the most songs, wins. We played two rounds- my team lost (specatcularly) one round, and won the last round. It was a real good time. Then we played a german card game, kind of similar to an American game I learned many years back, known as "Scum" or "P and A." Strange names, but the german name for it was even weirder. I dunno who comes up with names for card games... but they should probably be fired. Saturday was a really low key day. It rained. A lot. So I stayed in and watched movies, and talked to Marilyn for a while. From the chaos of the week, it was a strange feeling having nothing to do. I felt kind of bad though, I missed my make up call from Emily/Alex, there were some people going to France that morning. I woke up just about the time the bus left. Kind of frustrating, but I got to catch up on some sleep, that I had sorely needed. And besides, who plans a trip on a saturday morning to have to get up at 8:30? Not when I've spent the entire week getting up early and doing homework... I wanted a break. And thats what I got. Sounds like France was a bit of a bust, in any case. At least it didn't rain for them. Yesterday was another low key day. I got a little bit of homework done, read some Harry Potter (shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody by now), and had a lovely Italian dinner with some of the girls from StuSie. It was a lovely little Italien place, we talked about making a sunday night dinner there a tradition. I would love that.

Alright, the day is moving on, and I still have a bit more homework to finish up before I start class in a couple hours, so I must say farewell. Glad to see Michigan State won their football game with ease (and without Dantonio) on Saturday. Big game coming up on Saturday! The program is dominated with Wisconsin students, so I think there is going to be some trash talking this week. I won't get a chance to watch the game, I'm planning on joining some people on a trip to the 200th Oktoberfest! Should be fun.


"For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move.
-Robert Louis Stevenson

Well, today is friday, thank goodness! I haven't updated my blog in a while, since this week has been busy. Well, busy is putting it nicely. Up to my neck in things to do is another way of putting it. We had a mandatory meeting this morning to talk about scheduling classes. There was a lot of important information, and I'm worried that I'll have trouble keeping it all straight, seeing as how we don't start actually start signing up for classes for about two weeks, leaving plenty of time for me to forget everything I just heard. But I suppose thats why I can always ask the people in charge here for help.

I was supposed to give my presentation yesterday- but my handout didn't send properly via e-mail, so I was one of two people elected to go today instead. I would have preferred to just have it done and out of the way, but this way it gave me a little more time to think about some things I wanted to change. Okay, in reality it just made me more nervous, but at least I got to see everyone else go ahead of me, so I can borrow some of their styles or whatever. There were some pretty good presentations- I suppose thats because I'm in a class with kids who have either lived a decent portion of their life in Germany, or have dedicated a lot of their life to learning German. Not that I'm out of place, just that when you're giving a presentation to a room of your peers, it's a little intimidating.

This presentation is on top of the two tests and paper that was due this week, plus all the regular homework. I'm certainly not bored when I get home from classes, I'll tell you what.

But time is quickly wrapping up for these courses, which is unbelievable, since that means that we're almost entering October. Next wednesday marks one month from being away from home. I don't mean to sound rude, but I haven't really missed home much. Too much going on to think about everyone else, really.

Not much new to add on my end- Discovered a restaurant with unbelievable spaghetti, and from 6-7:30 pm its only 1,80€. Oh, and I've been eating a decent amount of ice cream this week, since the weather was suddenly very pleasant. Of course, being the weekend, the weather decided Friday should mark the first cloudy day all week, and a sharp drop in the temperature. It was even sprinkling a little on my walk over to the AYF Center where I am now.

I went to a soccer game on wednesday- it was a very long day, but the soccer game was really a blast! I liked it more than I liked football back in America. The game was incredible, but Freiburg gave up a goal within the last few minutes. Unfortunate that Freiburg had to lose to their rivals, Schalke. The whole town was wearing red and black on wednesday (SC Freiburg's colors, naturally), and anyone wearing blue was obviously an enemy. The Schalke fans all dressed in blue were rather boisterous, even before the game. I was really hoping that Freiburg would quiet them, and they almost did! So many close chances. Regardless, still a great game.

Well, its time to finish up my Referat (presentation), and then fill out a quick worksheet. Then all I have to do is sit through four hours of classes, give a presentation, and I'm home free!

"I had to experience everything very preciesely... I am such a realist, you know, that I have to see everything with my own eyes."

-Otto Dix

(Appropriate, since I'm giving a presentation on him!)

Strange how whenever I ought to be doing something else, I tend to write a blog entry isn't it? Tomorrow we have a test in our language classes, and then we have a presentation to give on Wednesday. Wednesday is going to be a busy day, because after class a large group of us are going to the SC Freiburg soccer game. Thursday's going to be a long day predictably, since everyone's going to be tired and run down from the night before. Freiburg's soccer club has been doing great so far though- and we have tickets to their rivalry game. Exciting!

I need to start doing my research for my presentation. Maybe I'll take a break from writing my essay and looking up German verbs to start digging a little bit.

I am really glad to hear about the Michigan State game yesterday! It was quite a way to win a game. It's kind of weird to read on Facebook about how all my friends are at the game, and yet I can't even watch it on TV cause it came on around 2:30 a.m. Oh well, I was up late and caught the score of the first half on ESPN.com before going to bed. The thing about having classes at three every day, my sleep schedule is very strange. I do a lot of homework at night or in the morning, not really during the evening. Hopefully when the actual university starts up, things will make a little more sense.

One of these days, I'm going to dedicate a whole blog entry to just posting pictures of Freiburg, and giving my opinion on the whole region. For now though, I'm going to be a good student and starting tackling this mountain of homework and then start studying.

"The call of the year!"

-Brad Nessler, on Mark Dantonio's call to fake the field goal in overtime.