I'm in Germany!

Hello everyone! I have officially been in Germany for a little over 2 weeks and I love it here so much! I have been at Language Camp at Schloss Wittgenstein in Bad Laasphe for the 2 weeks I have been here and I still have one more week here before I go to my host family. Because I am constantly surrounded by other Americans and speak English all the time (except in German class) it still hasn't really hit me that I'm actually in Germany. It's kind of like I'm in a little American bubble. It especially hasn't hit me that I'm going to be here for another 10 months.

So a lot has happened since I last blogged. Our plane ride took about 8 hours. We left D.C at 5:20 pm on August 10th and arrived in Frankfurt at 7:20 am on August 11th. Then we drove about 2 hours to language camp in Bad Laasphe. We were all super exhausted and by that point had been awake for about 24+ hours. When we got to language camp we got all our stuff moved up into our rooms and then we had a brunch and then walked down into town. The rest of that day we just slept and did some simple welcome orientation things. The next day we were all still super tired but we took the language exam and were placed in our German classes based on our knowledge of German. Since I have never taken German before I decided to op-out of the exam and be placed in the lowest level class. I'm really glad I am in this class because my teacher, Tim, started from the very beginning and it has been really helpful, especially in terms of pronunciation and basic grammar. There are 7 other people in my class and they are all really nice and we have a lot of fun together. Language camp is pretty routine for the most part so instead of going through what we have been doing day by day I'll just give you a basic overview of our daily weekday schedule.

Monday, Wednesday & Friday

7:30- Wake up and get ready
8:15-8:45- breakfast
9-12- German class
12:30-1- lunch
afternoon- either we go to the Planum (room in the school) for culture seminars or we have free time, it is usually a mix of both
6:30-7- dinner
night- either free time or small group lessons, sometimes a mix of both
10:15- room check

Tuesday & Thursday
The same as Monday, Wednesday and Friday except we have afternoon class from 2-3:30 instead of Planum or free time. Except on these days afternoon class is usually watching a German movie.

On weekends, our schedules and activities vary. Also, our curfew is 12 instead of 10:15. Last Friday night, the 16th, we all went to the Beer Fest in Bad Laasphe. It was really fun and I had my first ever beer. The next day, Saturday, we went to Marburg for the day. It was my first time every taking a train and it was a really cool experience. Marburg was amazing. It is such a beautiful city and it has so much history. We had the day to do whatever we wanted so I explored the city with some of my friends. We walked all over and found a bunch of cool little shops. Then we went to a cafe for drinks and it was so cute. It was right on a river and we sat in the little garden behind it. However, as we left, we noticed there were Neo-Nazi and anti-socialist posters on the wall of the cafe. So we accidentally had drinks in a Neo-Nazi cafe... awkward. After that we walked up to the Marburg Schloss (castle). It was so beautiful and it was on a hill that overlooked the entire city. I have never experienced anything like it and it was absolutely breathtaking. After that, we walked back into the city and had dinner. Then we took the train back to Bad Laasphe. When we were back in Bad Laasphe my friends Katy, Ashley, Arron, and I went to a bar called Roots and had Apfelwein (apple wine) and talked and just had a blast. On Sunday, we got to sleep in and we had a brunch at the Schloss. In Germany, all of the shops are closed on Sundays so it is a very relaxed day. So instead of going into town we had some culture activities in the Planum.

This weekend, there was a festival in Bad Laasphe called the Altsadt Festival. It started on Friday, so Friday night we walked down into town and went and had dinner. I went to a restaurant with my friends Katy, Ashley, and Emily and we had schnitzel and pizza. Then we went to the festival and walked around and looked at all of the different stands and had some beers. There was one tent where there was a band called the The Henhouse Ramblers and they were having a "Hillbilly Hoedown". They had confederate flags and the Texas and Kentucky flags everywhere and they were wearing western shirts and cowboy hats and boots and playing American country music. It was absolutely hilarious. Yesterday, we got to sleep in and then we had some group activities in the morning. That afternoon we had free time and then around 7 we went back into town for the second day of the festival. Of course, the second we left to start walking down it started raining so we ran up to our rooms to grab our raincoats and umbrellas and went into tow anyway. It rained lightly all night but it was still so much fun! Today, we slept in late and had a late brunch. After brunch, we had a culture/information
session in the Planum about host families. After that we had free time for a few hours and I skyped with my family and my grandparents. Right now I am about to head to dinner and then tonight we have small groups.

Our internet here is really bad here but I hope to be able to post again before I leave for my host family on Saturday. I know this post has been a very basic overview of everything, and I am sorry for that, but we have done too much to post in detail about everything! I am having such an amazing time and I love the other 48 CBYXers so much! (The fact that there is now 48 others instead of 49 others is a whole other story in itself that I may or may not post about but long story short someone got sent home already.) I love Germany!

Tschüss,
Dani♡