Der erste Eintrag

Hi my family and friends :-)

I just made this blog, and I guess over here any website you go to that's internationally used comes up in German instead of English (which I didn't know, I thought that if it was a ".com" and not a ".de" it would always be in English) so I just made it following all-German directions. Go me! I guess everything else on the page other than my actual entries will be in German, but that's pretty cool I think.

I don't really know where to start for this entry. Laura and I got here Wednesday morning, ate some croissant sandwiches (the yummiest thing EVER) at a sidewalk cafe and then slept all day until orientation started at 6. Our hotel was so cute. The picture is of me and her (matching because we're queer) standing on our balcony yesterday morning. The hotel was just off Kufuerstendamm, which is a really upscale street full of designer shops and things, kind of like 5th Avenue in New York. Everyone here calls it Ku-damm. The street running behind us isn't Kudamm but Kudamm is running the other direction. Unfortunately I couldn't buy too many things from Gucci or Bulgari during our stay, it was pretty hard to walk by stores like that all the time!

There are only 11 kids in the program. Nine are from Duke, and there are two guys from Davidson in North Carolina and one from UC Berkeley. They're a pretty cool group of people I'd say. The first night our program director, Jochen, took us all out to dinner at this really cool place, and then the 11 of us went out and ordered our first legal drink together! Most people had beer, but it was an Italian restaurant so I got a glass of chianti. If it's not German beer I don't see the point! haha. Thursday night we went out for the first time. Two of the girls have lived here all summer and have their own apartment, and another guy (the one from Berkeley) lived here for a month last year so they new some cool places to go. We went to this "bar" that's on the fifth floor of a random building, you wouldn't even know it was up there. It's basically on the roof and there are couches everywhere and you look down over the city. So cool. But then after that we all had to get up and do a four hour bike tour of the city yesterday, which none of us were at all excited about but it turned out to be amazing. We went all over and saw all the important stuff and all the not-so-important but still awesome stuff :-) The parts that I thought were the coolest, besides the millions of amazing old buildings and new ones, were Checkpoint Charlie (the old checkpoint between Soviet East Berlin and the American sector of West Berlin from when the wall was up), the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, and an apartment complex where Hitler's headquarters used to be. When we saw that we were stopped on a sidewalk in the courtyard and the guide told us that directly below us is where Hitler's bunker was (and still is, sonar shows there are empty rooms still down there, but nobody has any interest in excavating because they really don't want it to be a tourist site).

And then last night we had our banquet and met our families! Only my host-mother came to dinner, but we all sat around and talked (in German, for the first time) and then she took me home to Dahlem, a wealthy area in the southwest part of the city. We live in an apartment, but the area is mostly single family houses which is very rare in cities here. The apartment is so cool. It's brand new--they've only lived here for three months--and everything is so modern. I have my own room with huge windows and blinds built in that you press a button to make them go up or down. They have a huge terrace, and really tall ceilings, and it basically looks like it's from the Style network even though it's not that big. I met Naomi, their daughter, late last night. She's 15 and very nice. It'll be nice to have her around I think.

Today I got to sleep in (it's about time!) and then I got up and walked around the area a little bit. It's right on the edge of a forest so it's very green, but even other parts of the city usually have a lot of trees too. My host mother is throwing a party tonight, and when I came back from walking I helped her make two desserts, one with plums (they're much more popular here) that is a traditional bavarian dish, and the other with apples. But people are starting to arive so I have to go for now, but I'm sure I'll write again pretty soon. Classes start on Monday, so I'll have less time, but the schedule doesn't seem too demanding. No classes on Fridays, none before 12 on Mondays or before 10 Tues-Thurs, and no more than two classes a day. Can't complain there!

Anyways, I love you guys! I miss you already!