A large update...

so, basically a lot has happened. i've started university classes, they're kinda hard, but not ridiculously so. i have no class on mondays, 2 on tuesday, 1 wednesday, 1 thursday, 1 friday. i'm taking pretty much all literature classes...in german. kinda crazy.

the partying here is also crazy, people love it. a lot. my crazy spending has slowed down as i've gotten all of the initial investments out of the way, and have found the cheap grocery stores. i went to one today called "Aldi Süd" which was basically full of old people who have nothing better to do than drive out in the middle of nowhere to go to a cheap grocery store. they had all sorts of weird knock off brands, especially when it came to liquor and cigarettes. they all looked like the packaging of the real brand, but with like a different name. so like jim beam was some other dude's name, but the front of the bottle looked like a jim beam bottle. it was ridiculously cheap though...tempting. though honestly how good (or bad?) can a 5 dollar bottle of whiskey be. it would probably still get you drunk though... they had some disgusting looking rum and whiskey too for like 4 euro. oh man.

i bought a 1 liter bottle of glühwein for 89 cents. glühwein is what they drink here at christmas time, it's like a spiced wine with brandy.


also, i went to paris.
mac invited me to come, and it was really truly amazing. i was there the 27th through the 29th, not very long, but enough to scurry around the city like craaazy. i did the big sights, and actually felt like i got to know the city kinda in the time i was there. it's a very exciting and ridiculously expensive place. the view from the top of the sacre cœur was amazzzzzing. we literally walked around from noon until 9.30 at night on saturday.

i love it here, i'm having the time of my life. i miss certain things from home, especially all of you (and real halloween...), but i'm happy and learning alot about myself. it was weird to live alone at first, but i think it has made me okay with just hanging out by myself. i can go out and see things by myself - i don't need to wait for other people to take me, which i think is a really good thing to realize.

i am also making friends. it's nice.

University party

last night there was a ridiculous huge party in the main building of my university. i couldn't even believe my eyes. imagine the biggest lecture hall on campus with a huge open indoor entryway, packed like a house party with people dancing and drinking. it was awesome. i went with some people from my orientation course - 3 english girls and tuula, a finnish girl. it was really a great time, other than the bit of a hangover the next morning. i definitely didn't make it to orientation class until after our break.

Nuremberg

So instead of waiting and writing really long posts, i figure i should just start updating with little ones.

i went to nuremberg last weekend for my scholarship conference. dana parfait was there, randomly, as she is another scholarship member. it was really quite crazy to just randomly run into her on the street in nuremberg...outside the place we were meeting. the city is quite beautiful, and i managed to get sick in the youth hostel with a fever and terrible cough/sore throat. unfortunately i didn't take any pictures at all...but yeah. the other americans in the program were all very nice, and i met martina, a german living here in munich going to LMU.

Oktoberfest is almost over...

okay so i've been here for 13 days. it seems like longer actually. already i've gotten kinda used to certain things, which is totally good. it's monday, october 2nd. i started my orientierungskurs today, basically i could have put off all the stuff i've been running around doing for the past couple weeks until today, because they set up all the stuff for me and kinda held my hand through it if i needed it.

they had somebody there to take down health insurance stuff, which i had done previously on my own. they had somebody there to take money for the student fee thing, which i had wandered around previously and found on my own. they even set me up with my own specific time to register - 8:15 on wednesday morning, so i didn't have to go there in the first place to register on that friday morning the first week i got there, but i'm glad i did, because i met Chris, a fullbright scholar here from boston college.

i also randomly met a ton of americans on the way down to meet dietmar for a program sponsored drinking session at oktoberfest. it was grand fun...and they turned out to be meeting him too. totally weird. becky and i, an american girl, have since become friends because of this randomness.

ivan had two frenchies here with him over this weekend, anna and amance. amance was a really hilarious guy, anna was a beautiful french girl. (regrettably she spoke very little german/english, and my french isn't so good.) amance just came back from spending a year in america at ivan's university in arizona so his english was just about perfect. becky and her friend theresa and i went to oktoberfest with them on friday night, but it was pretty much packed, so we went to the augustiner biergarten, an outdoor place to just chill. becky, theresa and i ended up heading home after that, because we were all tired.

on saturday, i had the most epic day i think i have ever had. i went with ivan, anna, and amance to the english garden around 1pm and we sat down at the 'chinesischer turm' biergarten at about 1:30. ivan's swedish friend from his language program showed up with like 5 of his friends who were visiting for the week, who, after a maß or two, became my new best friends. we drank and ate there in the beautiful garden until about 6, at which time we came back to the studentenstadt to do a little more drinking and get some dinner. holy crap swedes can drink, by the way. they easily drank 4 liters at the beergarden, one guy drank 5, and they were still standing and wanting to drink more. we got back to the stusta, ate some dinner, talked some politics, i told the swedish guys they could sleep on my floor (which never ended up happening...just trying to be nice but they wandered off before the end of the night). at about 8 i met Nikki, Nico, and Anna. Nikki has a masters in german, and is teaching english in germany. anna also studied german literature, and she's also teaching english here. nico is an exchange student from america/mexico who speaks spanish with no accent, english with a tiny accent, italian with a tiny accent, and german with a tiny accent. i'm jealous. we left the swedes in the restaurant to eat, and headed up to the bar on the 21st floor of my building. we left the studentenstadt towards marienplatz at about 10 to augustiner bierhalle. it was the last night for a student in ivan's program, so it was his going away party at this beer hall. we drank there until they closed, then headed to the club Nacht Galerie. we left there at 5am, and i got home at about 6am. an incredibly epic day.