Language camp and all that jazz

Hello all! I hope you are having a wonderful day. Here's a little update, obligatory first month post, some pictures of Germany, and overall a good feeling and reminder that YES! There is at least one language that I am fluent in (ahem... english). I have been in Deutschland for a whole month??? WHAT. Time has gone fast, and especially now that I am busy with regular school and making friends in my permanent setting, it's going even faster. Language camp was a gift from above, our teachers were so great and almost everything they taught I have found useful so far. Now for the recap!

For three weeks I lived outside of Hamburg, where I went to Deutsch school everyday. There were many good things to see and many wonderful experiences to have during Language camp/school whatever you want to call it (Thank you CBYX!). In addition, having two host families there made every day fun and interesting! I had two because of conflicting vacation times. Both were amazing to have as introductory families!! It showed me two different perspectives of the same area, and for this reason I think that having an exchange program with multiple host families (e.g. with the program or any foreign exchange student in a hosting situation where this happens) can be a great way to see the culture. That being said, I was very glad to settle into my room when I moved to Leipzig to my permanent family's house. In Hamburg I also loved having pets at my temp. families' houses. I spent a healthy amount of downtime practicing all of my basic German words with the company of my host family's labradors.

On the weekend, I got to take a boat tour of Hamburg's Harbor. It was super! This is one of the buildings on the waterfront. Known as the Elbe Philharmonic Hall, it's lookin pretty fine. It is one of the city's biggest and newest buildings at 360 ft. tall. People here have been waiting (and still are...) for it's opening since the project began in 2006. 

thank you deutsche-bahn 

Everyday after school, I got to chill with my host family. Since that meant traveling to and fro Hamburg, getting home involved three trains and took 1.5 hours everyday... when on the right trains... Fear not, good people, for all exchange students have marvelous power napping skills and the coolness of cucumbers in unexpected stressful situations! 

Navigating our first Döner shop during lunch at language camp.

The class took a day trip around the city of Hamburg, where we got to see the city hall, ride the ferry through the harbor, check out the happenin's on Hamburg's Reeperbahn street, gawk at 30,000 E Rolex watches in display cases near the Gucci store, and try Fischbrötchen.

Hamburg Rathaus (the city hall)

Outside of St. Michael's Cathedral 

 

just your average mannequin

Bretzel!

Fischbrötchen!

Raw meat for breakfast anyone? 

 So, there is a lot of great German food here. There is everything you've ever heard about (perhaps pretzels, bier, bratwurst, more bier, oven-fresh bread, schnitzel, pickles, heaping mounds of nutella, and anything else) but have you tried Quark? Or tried putting butter on every sandwich on the face of this earth? For breakfast, most German families seem to love their fresh bread with cold cuts/salami and swiss cheese (and butter), or jam (and butter) or nutella (perhaps even with butter). More to come on the topic of food at a later date, because it is so very much fun to talk about, but this blog post is getting longer than it should be and I have to wrap it up so I can work on my math homework!

Here's some more of the pictures from the evenings in Hamburg. Thank you for reading!