Where does the time go?

I've already broken a promise to myself. It's been more than a week since my last post. It's exactly one week since I arrived in Kiel, and I've only had in-room internet access since Thursday night... but excuses aside, things have been going really fast here. Maybe I should do a day-by-day summary to catch up.

• Last Sunday, Aug. 14: I and nine other Fulbright students going to Kiel loaded onto a charter bus and drove 8.5 hours from Frankfurt to beautiful Schleswig-Holstein. Hah, funny.... I just now made the connection that this is where the black-and-white cows come from. Anyway, it rained all day. We made it to the first dorm and I found out that I and two other students had been randomly chosen to live in a different dorm away from the rest of the group. (I momentarily considered the likelihood that the others had volunteered me while I was in the bathroom, but happily that turned out not to be the case.) So. I got to haul my giant heavy suitcases up three flights of stairs to get to the suite, and then up a spiral staircase to my upstairs room inside.

• Monday, Aug. 15: Official orientation. The one perk so far about my dorm is that it's a three minute walk from class. Lots of information is thrown at us, then, after a break, lots more. There are forms to fill out so that we can participate successfully in world-famous German bureacracy. Oh, and interesting breakfast meats. We get a tour of part of the University, lunch at the Mensa, and then a walking tour of the city. (Everybody rode the full circut on the Paternoster at the Rathaus... Disney land should look into getting one of those things.) By the time we got to the official welcome dinner, I was ready to conk out from walking everywhere... and then we missed our bus to get back to the dorm... luckily a member of the program staff had pity on us and we didn't have to walk all the way back!

• Tuesday, Aug. 16: We got to take a placement test in the morning, and then it was back downtown to register at the Rathaus and get our visas. Several of us also got cell phones and bank accounts, so this was a day of major accomplishments. We decided to try and do group dinners, which so far has been awesome. So much good vegetarian food... pesto pizza, vegetable and mushroom stir-fry, broiled fresh pepper with carrots, mozarella and tomato salads... I'm drooling just thinking about it!

• Wednesday, Aug. 17: Free day! We planned an afternoon beach trip, to check out the water at Strande up by the top of the Fjord, on the Baltic Sea. I decided to go back downtown in the morning and put money in my bank account. I managed to get lost and wander all over the city in my beach shoes. Mission accomplished, but at the expense of my feet (oozing heel blisters) and my bus map (dropped on the street somewhere). I checked the class bulletin board: I'm in Mittelstufe I, the intermediate class (the highest class offered here.) The beach was cold (maybe 70 degrees), but the water was colder.

• Thursday, Aug. 18: First day of classes. A little overwhelming, but survivable. I have 4.5 hours of class every weekday except wednesday, when I have a free period in the morning and only 3 hours in class. My courses include Grammatik/Textarbeit (grammar/text work), Leseverstehen (reading comprehension), Wortschatz/Idiomatik (vocabulary/idioms), Schriftliche Übungen (writing exercises), Hörverstehen/Sprachlabor (listening comprehension/speaking) and Konversation/Landeskunde (conversation/regional studies). There are three 1.5 hour class periods per day, with breaks in between. Yikes, that's alot of German! Oh, and I got my internet working on Thursday. Yay.

• Friday, Aug. 19: Second day of classes. A bunch of us went out after dinner, which was fun. We went to a club at around midnight, and I was falling asleep in my chair by one. Yahoo.

• Saturday, Aug. 20: Field trip! We went sailing from Schilksee (up by the beach). Well, more like bobbing along... the weather was really calm, so we were a bit impeded by the lack of wind. Also, I finally remembered to take some pictures:

Walking back up to the dorm after breakfast at a nearby cafe, we saw a beautiful bush with purple flowers and lots of butterflies.

Later that day on the boat, the wind was a bit low for fast sailing, but we enjoyed bobbing along on the Ostsee, as did a few other boats.

My apartment-mate Meghan (l) and another grantee Leslie (r) enjoy the breeze, or lack thereof.

Hallo von der Ostsee!

Our captain and Meghan

Amanda looking happy (as always)

The first mate (and of course, I don't remember names...)

Apparently, a famous ship that has been around the world many times, which the captain told us about. I'm going to have to start carrying a notebook to write down the details, or all my stories are going to be really boring and vague.

Did I mention that the other dorm is also right on the water? Life isn't fair...

The water in the Baltic is very black, and full of really cool jellyfish. Supposedly they don't sting, but something got me very lightly when I went swimming, so I'm not so sure.

Another jelly... I'm going to try and take a movie of one swimming and post it as a .gif, if possible. The above with a little more contrast, thanks to photoshop.

Our crew packing it up for the night.

• Which brings us to today, Sunday, Aug. 21: I went to Mass auf Deutsch for the second time in my life (the first, of course, was in Austria last year.) It's funny, because I know the structure well enough to know exactly what is happening and when... but my grasp of the language is still weak enough that I'm not a hundred percent sure all the time. I recognized the readings (the gospel where Jesus establishes Peter as the rock on which the church is to be built, for example) but none of the music. I have to leave the house an hour early to catch the bus, and then I get to wait around outside St. Heinrich's for half an hour until it starts, but I'm looking forward to making a habit of it. Afterwards I went downtown to buy another weekly bus pass, forgot where we bought them last time, mildly panicked, bought a sandwich, ate it, remembered where to go, got it done and went home. The sandwich? Delicious. Being self-sufficient? Even better.

Hopefully I'll also get into the habit of posting more often so my messages won't be so monstrously long!