German class begins, Hilarity does not ensue

Bayreuth Tuesday Jan 11, 2011

We had to wake up at 6:30 and it was still pitch black. Having to wake up that early is never going to be easy. We ate breakfast, prepared for us by the ever gracious Olga. We had to hurry up to catch our 7:30 bus, Olga came with us to make sure we knew where we were going. We arrived at the Central bus stop at around 8am and took a bus from there to the Uni. That’s right same routine every day, I may never get used to this. We arrived at the Uni at 8:10 and had to wait until our 8:30 class. We have class with Brian, Leanne, Simon, and Ling Yao. All of us find our class room ready to learn more German. The class is long as hell, the teacher is awesome, and the material is boring. This does not make for a very good course to be taking. We will have to deal with this class for only 15 class periods; I think we can handle it. We got a ton of homework and it didn’t get any easier after our quick break and then more German. I thought maybe my brain would just stop functioning with so many harsh German words invading my quite little English thoughts. It was starting to feel so much like my least favorite year in high school, 10^th grade, up before the sun to catch a bus, boring and long classes, tons of homework or rather busy work, and no way to change it all. After saying all of this, I know I am in Germany and there is only a little bit of actual work. I couldn’t ask for more than to be living in Germany for a month no matter what I am doing.

After our killer class we had the tour of the city and of course I forgot my camera. The city is nice and our tour guide Torsten made it interesting, but it was really cold and a little long. We ended the tour asking Torsten where a good café was and he took us to Café Rossi, a nice little place on the main square. We had this amazing coffee with Amaretto and other alcohols. We chilled for a while and then we returned to the house for dinner. Everything was great, and I couldn’t help but feeling this was the way life was supposed to be “German”. We decided to give our gifts to parents and they were happy. My gift was a bottle of Maple syrup from my Uncle Tim’s sugar shack. It was little funny because right before giving the presents to our parents another border came we talked for a while, but it was all good. At that point it was late and we needed sleep.