odds and ends

I'm so thankful that I'm back on a normal sleeping schedule hahaha. I've been fighting the urge to take naps everyday. Haven't taken one yet!

So classes started today and we've got a busy week ahead of us......we're going to visit the Buchenwald concentration camp on Friday and then.........Michelle, Hanna, and I are going to fly to Nice, France to spend time on the French Riviera!!!! I'm so excited :) :)

berlin!!!

Ok so I've been in Berlin this whole weekend. It was amazing :)

Did lots and lots of walking. Berlin is such an amazing city and is full of adventure and historical monuments. I had an amazing time. I got to see the Blue Man Group on Saturday night :) :) 

June 3, 2009. 

So the June 1 post was actually June 1-2....forgot about that time change!! I'm still trying to get used to it. It's crazy haha. 

Ok so yesterday was a really fun day. It was our first opportunity to really venture out and see Leipzig. 

So I work up around 5:30 am because there was light outside. So naturally I got up and proceeded to start my day. The Internet is starting to work better here so I was happy about that. I ended up going back to bed after being up for about 45 minutes. After eating breakfast, our group met downstairs around 10 am to start our day. We walked about a block to catch the tram which is kind of like Houston's Metrorail. We took it into the city. We saw a couple of cool buildings and toured the Leipzig History Museum. I got lots of cool pictures there! They have lots of paintings, sculptures, old books, etc. It was really neat to see all of this history. We also visited St. Nicholaus Church. It is really cool. Kind of reminded me of the Sound of Music church. For lunch, we went to the city center which is a mix between a mall and a train station. It is really cool! Most of the store names are in German but a few of them were in English....the Body Shop, Claire's, Levi's, H&M. And there was a McDonalds, Burger King, and a Pizza Hut. 

After lunch, we all kind of did our own thing. I went for a walk with a few people around the city. We went into St. Thomaskirche (or church). This is basically like Bach's church. I was excited of course about visiting here :)

For dinner, our group went to Leo's which is a restaurant and a bar. We meet up with this woman and 2 university students. They gave us menus in both English and German. The food was delicious by the way. Talking with the students, Felix and Mandy was a lot of fun. They had really interesting perspective on many topics that we talked about. They were really sweet and I really enjoyed eating and talking with them. 

We then went back to the city center and shopped around for a bit and then headed back for the night. 

I kind of left out some of the big details but I'm going to add them later. You'll see why :)

I'm trying my best to get pics uploaded so keep checking my photo website often.

finally in germany

June 1, 2009

I woke up at 5 am after going to bed at 2 am because I decided to pack the night before! Grand B, Grand T, and I left for Dallas shortly after 6 am. We stopped at McDonalds, a random rest stop, and then IHOP. I didn’t have any problems with my passport or luggage or anything like that. I got to pick a window seat, which was pretty nice! I had to wait 3 hours before boarding. When we all finally boarded….well let me just tell you about it. There were quite a few interesting characters among board…a bunch of seniors from Dallas going on their class trip, 2 babies that would not stop crying (one of the babies’ mothers tried to SHAKE their child….not good), an Indian man that got up out of his chair immediately after we took off and didn’t understand what it meant to go back to his seat, a couple playing tonsil hockey in the seats across the aisle from me and did *cough cough….other things….

The food was pretty good I guess. Most of the people in our group managed to squeeze in at least an hour or two of sleep. I watched videos most of the time. It was a looong flight and the flight crew was good about serving us drinks about once every hour. By the way, the bathrooms weren’t too bad...except the one that had a baby’s diaper stuffed down the toilet L

We arrived in Frankfurt around 9:15 am and had a 3 hour layover. We had to go through passport and regular security. The airport had several “Camel” zones where smokers would go into this confined area and smoked. The flight was delayed by like 30 minutes because of some electrical problem.

We finally arrived in Leipzig around 2:00 this afternoon. We had some really nice taxi drivers that helped us with our luggage. We arrived at our flats, got settled in, and showered. Then we all walked to the grocery store that was several blocks away. It was quite an interesting experience. You have to either use your own shopping bags or buy your own. As far as brand names are concerned, it’s pretty much all in Germany with the exception of candy, cokes, and Uncle Ben’s rice. It was a nice grocery store. After this, we walked back to our flat, had some really good pizza in Dr. Shewmaker’s apartment, and are going to bed around 8-9 pm. What a day……

hopefully i will post tomorrow