On Sunday the 10th, I moved into my dorm room from the language school (the language school which goes by the name... F+U. No, seriously. I don’t know how they thought that was a good idea). Not a bad room, although the lighting was a little iffy. The cool thing is that Manu’s father let me borrow a bike of his, so I can bike to and from school, which is about 20 minutes or so. It makes me totally feel like a resident, which is really nice.

My room. Nothing special, but pretty roomy. Tiny little bed, though. For the first week there were 2 boys living ext to me, maybe 14 years old. And... Let’s just say that I fantasized about killing them. Ok, maybe not, but they made an incredible amount of noise. Seriously, it was impressive. They moved out after a week, though, so that was good.

Death by German grammar. UGH. I copied out all 200-something irregular vrebs in present, präteritum and perfekt, which took roughly forever.

Anyways, classes were alright. The first few days were hard. I had trouble understanding the professor (turns out, she’s Hungarian, and had an accent that threw me off at first), and was definitely behind the rest of the class. It was weird, though, because the grammar was nothing new, I mostly just had trouble following the directions. After the first few days, though, we split into two groups, and that was a lot better. It was only 9 of us, and we went a little slower. By the second week, I had a good grasp of it all, which was nice. Not the best classes I’ve ever taken, but if nothing else, it was really good to have German spoken at me for 3 hours every day.
Also, it was really cool who was in the class—an American, 2 Turkish, 1 Spanish, 1 Chinese, 1 Italian, 1 Ukranian, 1 Czech, 1 French. It was just so neat to be in a tiny little classroom with 9 countries represented (plus the Prof), with all of us trying to learn a language, and all working together. I guess that shouldn’t be so cool after MHC, but I think it was just so much more obvious here.

The view from my window, Viktoriastraße. It was about 6 minutes by 6 from Manuel’s mom’s house which was great, and I went over there quite a bit.

We decided to cook a German dinner one night (ironically, I did most of the cooking)—Saurkraut, Kartoffeln, Wurst (it was beef, promise!), and of course Bier. It’s Radler, though, which is half beer and half limonade... Which is like Sprite, I think? Anyways, it’s yummy, and sweet enough that even I can drink it.

My lovely bike which is about a century old :)

One of the great things about Heidelberg (and probably most German cities) is that they have bike lanes throughout the city. What’s not so awesome is that some of the streets have cobblestones which make for seriously awkward bike riding. I think it must really suck to drive a car in the city, though—Not only are there bikes everywhere and astronomical gas prices, but the trams (you can see the tracks in the photo) run right in the street, so cars have to stop all the time. Oof. Glad I have a bike!

Also, random fun fact—the name Heidelberg comes from “Heidelbeeren” which means blueberries. Apparently they used to grow on the hillside.