Als ich zwanzig Jahre alt war, bin ich nach kassel gegangen.

I hope you all enjoyed my first blog post.
It's still a little strange for me. I'm not too sure what I should write without giving away too much.
Just describing what I did doesn't quite see to suffice either. Aber...

Today was my first day of school at the Universität Kassel. Our classes are in a church on campus in the little bible study rooms. Our Kurs beginnt um 8h30 bis 12h00 but we have a break von 10h00 bis 10h20. Und dann we have lunch in der Mensa (cafeteria). It was so great to see so many German university students in der Mensa. We take a tray, and we take the food that we want in a huge circle (half of the building) and it's very cheap. The food comes up to be around only 1 or 2 Euros! It was weird to pay for a meal with coins.
Anyways, I ate fish and a potato salad. I was decently satisfied. It felt so strange walking around on campus today though. I truly felt like a Canadian exchange student in Germany. Having my schoolbag on me, walking around asking die Studenten, "Guten Tag. Wo ist die Mensa?" because we couldn't find the Mensa in the beginning. An interesting thing happened today though. While we were eating lunch, I was just looking and observing the people around me while the others were talking. At the far end of the table, there was a group of four male students and I definitely thought that they were studying medicine or physics. Something along the graduate level. I know that sounds strange but they simply "look it". So after I put my tray away, I asked them, "Hallo. Was studieren Sie?" One of them gave me a puzzled look. For a minute, I thought, I must have said it wrong but I knew that I didn't. It turned out that they didn't speak german. They were polish, that only speak english here. Of all people in Germany, the first acquaintences that I made at the university were with polish students. Anyway, they told me that they study law. I acknowledged that and was about to leave but one of them told me to wait. My friends and I exchanged confused looks but waited for him. He brought his coat and bag and continued to talk to us. It turned out that he LOVES Kanada. According to my friend, his lips were actually trembling when he was telling us that he even loves the smell of Kanada. It was quite strange. He told us that he hoped to see us again very soon in der Mensa. I don't know why but i thought that that was an interesting encounter. I hope to have more of those but with more German students. On Wednesday, we are going to be assigned Tandem Treffen (exchange partners) with some of the University of Kassel students. I am super excited for that.

Afterwards, my friends and I went to the mall to buy a few things and had a beer.

That's another thing. Beer is extremely cheap here. It's weird to have a few coins in my pocket that turns out to be more than enough to have a few drinks in eine Kneipe (bar) or Biergarten. Germans also really enjoy mixing lemonade or soft drinks with their beer. i.e. Sprite. At the moment, I am enjoying Radler which is beer and lemonade. It's delicious but I can see myself getting bored of it and wanting to try other things. I still have a lot of time.

At the moment, my host brother, Tamil and my host mother are eating dinner (I already ate with my hostmother) and watching TV. Tamil is seventeen years old and super nice. Like EXTREMELY nice. So is my hostmother, Martina. For dinner, I had bread, cheese and some ham. In Germany, lunch is the main dish. Dinner is usually simple and a cold dish like bread and cheese. I really like it. Sometimes I will have a meal with a beer but today I was too tired so I decided to just drink water with my dinner.

Tami came to pick me up from the Bahnhof (train station) last Thursday when I arrived in Kassel. He came with me downtown to help me buy ein Handy (cellphone). I have my first German cellphone! I'm so happy and excited about it, especially when I called my friend Anna who is in Munich right now. She went to Concordia last year and was so kind enough to offer me a place to stay for a few weeks. I'm a little stressed because I changed my plane ticket to go back to Toronto a few weeks earlier. So now I have less time in Germany but for some reason, I'm more stressed about what I should do. I cannot stay with Anna for that long and most of the students are going back to Kanada a few days or a week after CSSG ends. Hopefully I won't be homeless on the streets of Munich or some other city in Germany...

Aber I still have lots of time to figure this out. It just requires planning. I know that I will take a day to just plan my trip after CSSG. (Actually, I have already made plans for the rest of June. It is mostly July that needs to be taken care of)

Tomorrow, all of the students from CSSG and our families are going to a restaurant to meet each other at 17h30 zum Rammelsberg. I'm really excited for that too. We are a good group. Especially the people that I hang out with. I really like the first roomates I had in the first city we stayed in (Melsungen) and the guys that also hang out with us. We get along very well, and I am very happy to have met somebody who is also from Mcgill. It's nice to be with someone from home, even though we have never met until last Thursday in the airport.

I think that I should most definitely write blogs more often so that I don't write essays like this. So much is happening in the next few weeks i.e. Berlin, a soccer game this weekend, etc.

I hope everybody back home are doing well. I am very happy to be here right now even though I miss my family and friend back home. But I'm doing well. I feel calm. I'm doing a lot of things, and meetings lots of people, but at the same time, I'm resting. I'm really enjoying myself.

will keep you posted.

aus Deutschland,

erin.