Food Babies and Free Beer!

Turkey! Just as good as the ones in the states :)

Last Friday a good portion of the AYF students gathered to celebrate Thanksgiving together. We had a huge room in the basement of one of the dorm buildings and (almost) everyone signed up to bring some kind of delicious food item to the dinner. We gathered at 6 pm and socialized for a bit to allow the accidental latecomers and the people who are always "fashionably late" to arrive, although there were more than a few grumbles from people's mouths and stomachs alike. Once everything was in order, we had quite an impressive spread which I would say could have rivaled any Thanksgiving dinner back in the states! There were mashed potatoes, fresh grilled vegetables (carrots, zucchini, etc.), scalloped potatoes, macaroni and cheese, cranberry sauce, green beans, green bean casserole, garlic bread and rolls, and of course Turkey! The dessert table was overflowing as well - there was homemade apple pie, pumpkin pie, and more pie that tasted like sweet potato pie but the baker swears that it was pumpkin. It was delicious either way! We also had a fresh sliced fruit and dip spread and freshly baked cookies.

Aside from the delicious food, the company was great as well! The majority of us present were AYF affiliated, but some brought their friends and/or roommates. A special Russian guitar quartet was also invited and they performed a few songs for us because they are friends of the AYF program Resident Director. All in all it was a wonderful time and many laughs were had! All of us left with "food babies" since we ate so much it felt like we had an extra few pounds in our bellies!

Beer provided by the sponsoring company

That same night there also happened to be a dorm party in my building, so after the dinner I headed back to my place, birthed my food baby (let my dinner settle), cleaned up a bit, and waited with my housemates for the "guests" to arrive. I put guests in quotation marks because of the more than 100 people in attendance, I only knew a handful of them, but it wasn't bad. I met lots of people that night, listened to good music, stopped a guy from stealing eggs out of our fridge, and finally made it to bed at half past 3. One of the guys who lives on the floor below me got the company that he works for to sponsor the party. Apparently if he had enough people in attendance and advertised their products during the event, they were willing to pay for the costs of the party. So we had a packed dorm, free beer, wine, and red bull, and blasting music - all in all it made for a pretty fun Friday night! Although I lost a good chunk of my day on Saturday cleaning up with my housemates :(

Celebrating with my fellow Americans really tempered my holiday homesickness - I'm already looking forward to Christmas!

"Bond"-ing with Germans, Saucy Popcorn, Thanksgiving!

On Thursday I was invited to eat dinner with my tandem partner Christine and her roommates Lena and Sarah (and another girl whose name I can't remember!) at their apartment. It was a wonderful time and I got lots of practice speaking and listening to German, reading German recipes, and watching Germany's version of "The Voice" on television. For dinner we cooked Kartoffelbrei (mashed potatoes), Rotkraut (red cabbage), and Frikadelle (fricadelle), a very German meal. We had a mixture of sparkling water and apple juice to drink, then we lounged on the couch and ate gummy bears for dessert while watching the Germans sing their hearts out.

"Skyfall" movie poster

My tandem partner Christine, Sarah and I went to the movies together Saturday evening to see Skyfall, the new Bond movie! The movie was stunningly excellent, it definitely lived up to the hype, and I think I may have loved it even more because I saw it in German and I understood almost all of the dialogue! That's a milestone for me. :) German movie theaters, like almost everything here, are very logical. The tickets cost different amounts depending on where you sit in the theater, so the lower level seats are less expensive than the higher seats. Also, every ticket has a seating assignment on it, so they really maximize the space and make it less chaotic. For popular movies like "Skyfall", people reserve seats in advance, but if they don't pick up their tickets earlier than half an hour before the show starts, they can be sold to others. It's definitely an interesting system. And of course, since it was my first German movie experience, I wanted to go all out! I decided to get some popcorn and a drink from the concession stand. I was feeling mighty grown-up 'cuz I had my money ready and I already knew what I was going to say in my head. It went quite smoothly until- "Salze oder süße?" The guy was asking if I wanted salty or sweet popcorn, but in my mind "salze" sounded like "soße" which means sauce in English, and I surely did not want any soggy, saucy popcorn! So I asked for süße and munched happily throughout the film, but I learned my lesson and next time I'll go for the regular salty popcorn!

Thanksgiving is this Thursday and AYF is having a group Thanksgiving dinner and I wasn't sure what to bring, but since I've never cooked heavy duty dishes like Mac and Cheese (not out of a box) or stuffing, I decided to play it safe and bake my cheddar/garlic butter biscuits. I finally found extra sharp cheddar cheese here in Germany so I think I'm all set for Thursday!

Later this week I'll do another post about the Thanksgiving gathering, hopefully with pictures!

Bis dann!

Overview of my Winter Semester Classes

I am currently in my third week of University classes here in Freiburg and I seem to have fallen back into the rhythm of the whole school thing pretty easily, considering the fact that I actually went 6 months without having a full semester of classes since U of M let out so early for the summer and Germany's classes didn't start until the end of October. I must admit it's kind of strange not having any technical classes. No math, no science, just literature, grammar, and history. It's different but still enjoyable.

My classes:

The USA in WWI: A University history course about the role of the United States in the first World War. We read texts about the war in English and German and discuss them as a class. We also choose topics to give an oral presentation about each week. This is probably my most challenging class because it's full of native German speakers and the conversations can get a bit deep and beyond my knowledge of German vocabulary. Also, the professor speaks a mile a minute, but I get the gist of things.

Contrastive Linguistics: This is one of my favorite classes. It is an introductory English seminar about linguistics and comparing and contrasting the English and German languages. The professor is this cool, funny old guy from Berlin who speaks a ton of languages (or a least a few words from a ton of languages) and is a fan of class participation. It's basically a large group discussion comparing the languages which is quite helpful for me because knowing linguistically how German and English differ from one another will help me grasp the German language better.

German Grammar and Composition: This is a good class, not because it's particularly interesting but because I know it's extremely helpful. It's basically a continuation of the intensive language course I had during my first month here in Freiburg.

German History from Unification to Reunification: This has been interesting so far, it's just rather difficult since the text we read is long and in fairly complicated German and I spend half of my time looking up words, but on the bright side my vocabulary is expanding! It's not terrible though since all of the students in the class are part of my study abroad program, so we all suffer together and the instructor takes what we say into account. Also, we're taking a class trip to Berlin in January, so that's something to look forward to! :)

German Literature: This is probably my least favorite class, but I've never really been one to enjoy being assigned a book, having to read it and discuss it, and then being told that I'm "thinking the wrong things" or "not getting the meaning the author intended." How do YOU know?! This was written in the 1800s, I doubt you know what he meant either... But aside from that the class is nice. It's a comfortable atmosphere so we feel fine with speaking up and making a fool of ourselves in broken German. Some of the things we've read (poems and short essays) haven't been too bad, but I don't quite know what to think about this section on German Romanticism...

Well, those are my classes for the first semester! And I truly can't complain because this is the first semester that I've never had a Friday class! Three day weekends are wonderful things...

Until next time!