Getting home/the end of the trip

Well, it is the end of the trip and I am now home. I have been to Amsterdam for about 5 days before returning home. I didn't do any drugs or anything. I think have so much to say but it isn't coming out as fluid as it could. I met quite a few people on the entire trip. I really enjoyed the people that went on the trip from RWC though. There were nine other students that went along on the German trip and five of those eight went on the Amsterdam trip afterwards. It was great knowing them through these 28 days, from beginning to the end. I got to know the personalities of the eight people a little bit as we were on the trip and they got to know me. I had fun on the trip because of the things that we did, such as going on the excursions and the events, although the group didn't always get out there but they enjoyed themselves. There was so much that we did, but just saying German Sommerkurs, I don't know what to think. It seems at a briefs notice, that we didn't do that much. It seemed liked we did a lot at that time or had something that we had to do every day whether it was some kind of activity that we could do, or to go get food, or do blogs and talk to your family through the internet. There seemed to be a lot to do when we had to do it, but at times, I think that we could have done more, but then it would probably have been too chaotic and hectic. It was a very fun trip but I am excited to get home.

Eisenach and Wartburg

So I need to write a little bit more about Eisenach and Wartburg. I don´t have anything to say about Eisenach. But I think I can say more about WArtburg. Although I wasn´t extemely interested in was a very nice castle that sat high on top of a mountain that you could see a lot of the city which was nice. The castle was pretty big and awesome. We got to see a few rooms and get a guided tour which I didn´t understand much of. I was kind of zoned out most of the time. They had some pretty cool utensils with figurines sculpted on the ends. I kind of walked through the castle pretty quickly. But the interior of teh castle is beautiful. It has nice mosaic walls and ceilings in particular rooms. They reconstructed some parts of the castle and they did look a little bit newer.

Eisenach

We wen't to Eisenach and Wartberg today. we basically had two hours to tour Eisenach on our own. We didn't see to many sights but it was nice to walk around for that period of time. E then went to Wartberg which is where martin Luther his while he was excommunicated, and where he translated the bible into German. I don't really have to much to say about either place. I think that is all I have to say. Good bye. See you later.

Ilmenau

One thing that I should have known that of course I did not and would not have thought about it was to write about Ilmenau. Ilmenau is the city in which we are located at the Technische Universität. Ilmenau, I noticed is located in the German state of Thüringen, which I think is in central Germany. I think Ilmenau is awesome though. If you looked at the one or two pictures of the city that I took, almost all of the houses have red tiled roofs. that is kind of cool. A lot of the house are also plastered which is kind of awesome. The Technische Universität takes up a lot of room. It probably takes up probably about 1/2 to 3/4ths of the space that the University of Cincinnati takes if not more. Allthough this campus is spread out on a more hilly setting which is nice to go to class in the morning because it is about a fifteen minute walk down hill, but the walk back to the dorm is more fun because it is all up hill although we usually go directly to the Mensa which is the cafetaria and they have nice size portions this fill me up, then every once in a while, definately n the last week, I have been finshing up other peoples food- So I usually have a good size portion. There are also a lot of hills. I think I briefly taked about going up that mountain. I don´t remember how to spell it, or even say it but it starts with a K. It is about an 800 m mountain that has Goethes way. Goethes is a famous German poet which I don´t know too much about. On top of this mountain is a memorial tower I think. I don´t know if it is a memorial tower or if it is from this tower that he wrote one of his most famous poems. I think the tower is in the general spot that he wrote his poem. But we got to see his house on the way up to this tower. That is one of the longest walks that I have been on. The journey was approximately 8 hours long and we probably walked for about 5-6:30 hours of it, although that includes the walk down which was less than an hour. We also were told that how group got lost on the way to lunch- Debbie, Mark and I were the only 3 out of the 10 in our group that attempted the hike. It was a nice hike though. Debbie got some very nice pictures. Ilmenau also has a lot of green space which is nice. I also posted a couple pictures of a fish farm which has 3 different ponds. I posted those pictures on my first slide show. I have also noticed that a few of the restaurants are spread out. Our group has also noticed that people in Ilimenau drive crazy. It is kind of funny but scary at the same time. I think that is all I have to say right now. I will see you later.

Erfurt

Ok, so this is one of two post that I forgot or didn´t realize that I had to do. We took a train to Erfurt which is about half an hour to an hour away. I kind of forget what it was like but I will try to remember what it was like. The train station was kind of big and touristy but it was nice. There were a few parts near the train station that were under construction but you must build and reconstruct in order to improve. So, we did take a tour but I don´t remember much of it. Erfurt was a big city, a bigger city than I expected. There were a few words that I think I better understood during this tour, so that was awesome. I saw some SparKasse which is a savings bank. What else? Oh yeah. I think that Erfurt is the place that has this two large churches that rest right next to each other on the top of this hill with a whole lot of steps that go up to them. One of the churches was aesome. It was beautiful. I however, forgot my camera that day, so I got no pictures of the churches.

Winding down

So it is Tuesday, August the 19th and I will talk in the present tense because I think this is one of my more on time blogs that I have written so far. So it is Tuesday and it is kind of a busy and stressful week. I had a problem on Sunday which we are working out but I am not stressing out over it. It will all work out. We have a lot to do this week. I have to do my wash today, so that will be fun. I am going to use my room as my drying because they have 4 working washers and they did have one working dryer into last week. So they don't have any working dryers as far I know so we have to work around that. We are working on this thing that we have to present to the rest of the people in the Sommerkurs program on Friday. We talked about it in class today and I thought I knew what we were doing, but somebody told me something a slightly more different than what I knew, so I am kind of confused. I thought that we were going to do a skit where one of our group members was going to play his guitar everybody was going to talk about what they thought about Sommerkurs in their own language. But we are going to write down what we think about Sommerkurs and a person in our group, group numebr 3, is going to say what we think about Sommerkurs in our language, not their own. So, for example, I think that Sommerkurs was awesome and that I liked meeting all of the new people, a person from Russia in our group would say that for our skit on Friday. Okay, I think that is all I have to say right now. See you later.

Berlin

So I briefly told you taht I went to Berlin on Friday, August 15th and Saturday, August the 17th. We stayed at a youth hostile in Berlin on Friday night. That was fun. We had nice rooms but they were small. I was okay with that. It was funny though because the bathroom was pretty small, definately teh entrance. The bathroom sink is directly across from the bathroom door. If I assumed correctly when I was there brushing my teeth in the bathroom, if you try to bend ove rand spit into the sink with the door closed, your butt will be brushing your butt pretty firmly against the door. I roomed with a person who spoke no english so I had to speak to him in German and he spoke to me in German. It was kind of funny on Saturday morining when he woke me up and told me in German that the breakfast was downstairs and that it tasted good. I got a majority of my souevenairs from Berlin. That is all. See you later.

Reflection of the Second Week

So I kind of forgot what we did during the second week but one of the two Amanda's helped to get my brain started. We went to this hilarious and fun puppet theater where this guy dressed up and had fun with puppets and performed the fary tale where the daughter supposedly spins straw into gole. He was just so funny. I couldn't understand much of what he was saying because almost all of it was in German except a few parts, maybe a short sentence or two that were in spanish. We also went out to this one restaraunt where we briefly saw the mayor of Ilmenau. On Wendesday, we had Bergfest. On Thursday we went to Erfurt where we had a tour guide or two to break us into groups and take us around Erfurt which was a nice experience. One of the streets that has shops on it, is actually a bridge and you don't even realize it. On Friday, we had our classes in the morning and then for anyone that was going on the two day excursion to Berlin that started on Friday left at 1. So I had to make sure that I ate and got some forgotten stuff by 1 which was only about an hour and 10 minutes because our classes go from 8:45 to 12:00 with a fifteen minutes break from 10:15-10:30. Although we were let out fifteen minutes early on Friday. We got to the youth hositle that we were staying in on the two day Berlin trip at I think around 7 p.m or 8 p.m.. Berlin was fun but that will be in a different post. On Sunday, August the 17th, we climbed KickelHahn which took just about all day. We left the meeting point at about 11:00 a.m. and Mark and I went directly from that to got out to eat which was about 7 p.m. We did stop to rest and eat. Actually there were couple of times where we stopped and rested besides that time. The second week was fun though. See you later.

Bergfest

So we had this event called BergFest last Wednesday, August the 13th. Berg in Germanz means mountain so when we saz BergFest we mean at the top of the mountain and you have made it halfwaz and you still have a half still to go. The event was a party that represented the midway of the 3 week course which we call "Sommerkurs" or Summer Course. The party included 5 events that you had to do in zour group. Your group consisted of a total of four people including yourself. There had to be at least one person in your group that was not from your country which made it fun because if zou have two people who spoke english and two who didn't, communication gets kind of tough. My group consisted of four people, two of which who did not speak English and one of those had a little trouble speaking German, which is about my level. It was fun though. I was kind of excited about Bergfest if I remember correctly. I forgot to say the events that you did in your group was part of a competition and competition consisted of those five different events. The five events included all four walking on skies; four of the group doing an egg on the spoon on a slight incline; a four legged race directly against another group; an event where you would try to knock as many cans in a can pyramid down; and an event where you had two people of your group stand on one crate and use another crate to move 5 steps.

Reflection of first week

I am late with writing this blog, but this is going to reflect how I think my first week went. I think that my first week was okay but I don´t know. I am in a class with Amanda Fene and Jason. the first couple of days were kind of stressful for a feww people. I was able to listen better German by the end of the first week. I think that is an improvement, from when I started this trip, so I think tht is a good think

So, we need to write a blog about our travels within Germany. So on the Weekend of August th 9th and 10th we went to Weimar/ Buchenwald. the bus ride there was not very interesting after about 10 or 15 minutes. I took some pictures of the people with in a group. I couldn´tkae a picture of one of the people because she didn´t want her picture taken. I think we started up and there the 1st wecond or third bee on the bus and Amanda Hovart was sitting next to me next to the window and since she was afraid of the bee she tried to back away from it and she pushed me of my seat. We took a nice tour of Weimar and I took a few pictures. At Buchenwald, it was at times, pretty freaky and breathe taking. It is was sometimes just so fraky how some of that is set up like in one of the rooms there was some silouhettes I was the most freaked out because. The fact that the silhouettes represented people that existed at that time. That room is the room that i feel like impacted me the most. I didn´t get any good pictures but I got quite a few pictures. I am excited because, although it was too buchenwald, I did ask a girl if she would take the tour with me so that was good and worked well. That is all for right now and I might post more when I am more awak. Ofcourse also if have the will to do it , I will

Getting Started

Well, I am doing getting started on the same morning that I wrote the Journey. The first day of classes or figuring out whre we went was a little longer than I would have liked but I think I can stand that. That night, I found out that I was in group three which is not too bad. There are six groups that I am sure of. I am kind of confused about how many groups there are because there were more than six sheets posted for the groups. The highest group is group six and of course the lowest group that I know of is group one. I am in a class with two people from school; Christin and Jason. They are two very nice people. I like them in my class. I am not allowed to work on stuff in group´s with them. The professor didn´t want the American´s to be in the same group together. Nothing much has surprised me. The classes are all in German which makes it more fun to learn and I donät remember learning any new words. Okay, I think I am finished.

1st blog

Well I am supposed to talk about how the journey from Cincinnati zu Ilmenau was. I think the journey was long an boring. Right now on Thursday morning at 6 minutes, I don´t remember much of the trip though. I mean I remember that we watched 21 and the second movie of Narnia. I do have a roommate and his name his Max Moore. I currently dont have a picture of him´. I felt pretty gugt most of Saturday in fact probably all of Saturday. I had soem of my Monster enrgy drink while we were waitning for the train and I took some pictures of the train, some signs and a picture of the group. I think I wen to sleep early, maybe or was that Sunday. I either went to bed early on Saturday or Sunday and woke up at about midnight or 1:00 or 2:00 aand went back to bed around 2:00. I got a good amount of bed. Our room is very small. It is probably as big as our kitchen at my house, maybe a little bit wider, but it is comfortable enough to sleep in. Although we have two people in our room, we don´t sleep in our bedroom too much.
Okay I think that is all I have for right now.

Hey Everyone. I think that this will be an excellent trip with the crowd that we have going.