Deutschland!!!

     !Finally in Germany!

It’s hard to believe that summer had flown by so quickly and it’s actually July 26, the day I leave for Germany. It’s so crazy that the week before I was still in Louisville, but now I’m actually boarding the plane to Frankfurt, Germany. I arrived at the airport with the rest of the group at around one o’clock in the afternoon even though our plane doesn’t board till 4:30p.m., checking in and going through security took a while, but we still had 2 hours to explore the airport once we found our gate. I was assigned seat 25B, which sucked a little cause it’s the middle seat, which means that every time I have to pee the person on the outside had to get up and unfortunately the person that end up getting the aisle seat wasn’t someone I actually know, so I was kinda awkward to get up so I just tried to not drink that much liquid.

My flight left at 5:15 p.m. and it’s a 7½ hour plane-ride, so we arrived at Frankfurt at 7 in the morning since German is 6 hours ahead of us. I was planning to watch movies the whole eight hours, but for some reason I felt really sleepy before the plane even took off, so I actually slept five/six hours on the plane, which really helped with the jet lag. The bus ride from Frankfurt to Bad Laasphe was not very interesting, there were a lot of trees and it actually kinda felt like I was still in Louisville. The villages we saw on the way quickly changed that impression (all the towns/villages are super cute!)

After we finally arrived at Bad Laasphe, we settled into our rooms, and had brunch. It was an interesting meal, I’ve probably not had any of the food before, they all tasted pretty decent, but I especially like the potatoes they served (did I mention that I got to eat at the castle?). Then we were allowed a power-nap from 12-3p.m. (most people showered then napped so it was really more like a 2 hour nap). Then we got to explore the town, our leaders took us down to the local village (we weren’t able to shop because most shops were closed on Sundays, which was a really cool difference from the U.S.) the only thing was that I wasn’t expecting the hill to be that treacherous, so I wore flip-flops and had no water with me, by the time we got back to the school, I was ready to collapse. I felt a lot better once I had water, and a ton better once I had dinner, but both my feet got blisters on them, and it really hurts to walk.

Schloss Wittgenstein (Castle I'm staying at)

A little Garden in Town

Far View of Town

We’ve been told that classes go from 9-12:15 every weekday and curfew is 10 on school nights and midnight on weekends. And tomorrow(Monday/first day) we have breakfast at 8:30 and evaluations at 9 a.m. (I’m going to be in the beginner, beginner class because I don’t know any German… I’m really looking forward to camp, and will probably only post once a week or once every two weeks from now since internet’s not very reliable and I’m really trying to learn German so typing long posts in English is a little counterproductive. I also don’t want to spoil anything for the people that might want to apply to this program next year (language camp is really fun and the classes are very useful and definitely not boring and that’s basically all you have to know)