Friday, June 11, 2010

My birthday

I've now been in Germany for a week already!

Class is going really well, but I'm getting a little homesick (Heimweh haben).  I was just thinking today how I'd like to go to the beach, but I can't here. I'm also starting to miss just hearing people talk in my mother language, it's still cool to overhear German when I walk by a group, but those homey touches are missing.  I was thinking last night how much I would have just liked a grilled cheese sandwich made with Kraft cheese.  Right now, I need to do a little bit of grocery shopping, but here are the kinds of things I've bought in Germany to eat back at my dorm (It's still fun to be able to buy everything in German!):
Vince sent me flowers yesterday, which were delivered in front of the whole class so everyone ended up seeing and then they all sung me Happy Birthday in German.  I gave everyone chocolate ladybugs (Marienkaefer) as a little birthday treat. (Marienkaefer are lucky in Germany).

 Here are the flowers from him.

Since it was my 21st, I went out with some friends for a little while last night, but it was pretty short and tame since we still had school this morning.  It was just nice to be able to celebrate with some people. I had been worried I wouldn't know anyone really well yet.

As far as I know, no big plans for the weekend yet.  It's probably not going to be one of my travel weekends.  I'm going with some of my classmates and roommate again tomorrow night to a Kneipe (bar) to watch one of the Fussball games for the World Cup.  There's been German flags on everyone's cars and the packaging to almost anything has something about the World Cup coming up.  Lots of products even have German temporary tattoos in the wrappers including cheese and juice.

The one other kinda interesting thing I've noticed is that lots of people walk with their dogs at pretty much any time of day.  In itself, that's not really that interesting, but in every case, the dog is never on a leash. It just walks next to the owner or behind them obediently.  None of them are running ahead or even paying attention to people they meet on the sidewalk.  In the US, I'm not sure, but I think we HAVE to have our dogs on a leash a lot of the time.  The other thing is I've yet to be in a carpeted room that had padding under the carpet.  Everything is like walking on concrete, even in the hotels I had been in.  Oh yes, and the cranberry juice (again, I haven't tried many brands, but I'm just guessing as a generalization) is not as sweet as it is in the States, but I'm getting used to it since I have it with breakfast everyday in the cafeteria.

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