christi himmelfahrt

Uni Hauptgebäude

Pronounced 'christi himmel fart' is a Christian holiday celebrating the ascension of Jesus into heaven. It exists in the US, but is celebrated here as a national holiday, meaning that there are no shops open, nothing is happening, etc. as described in my last blog posts. So, I am forced to think about all the things that I should be doing today for school und so weiter, but I probably will just remain unproductive and go walk along the Rhein.

Needless to say, I successfully checked myself out of the hospital last week with few problems. They gave me some antibiotics (which I have now completed) and some sketchy pain medicine that my dad the pharmacist recommended that I not take as it is toxic to humans. So that was full on interesting. Unfortunately, my experiences with the German healthcare system have not yet fully come to a close. Because I was accepted into Nursing School for next fall, I have to have all these crazy blood tests and TB tests done, which are getting to be a little pricy. It's not covered by the "Kasse" (which is like the socialist pool of money that pays for healthcare here) because I'm not actually sick. But I'm pretty sure these things are still cheaper here when compared to the US without health insurance.

Köln Zoo

This week has been good though, otherwise. I had an eventful outing to the Köln Zoo, which was ENORMOUS. It had so many really great exhibits and an aquarium. I love aquariums. :) It's been cold here so I guess that was the one downside of the day...and everyday really. I think it must be barely getting out of the 60's these days.

Post Zoo Chinese Food

I went to all my two days of classes (okay, well, one was cancelled, so I only had 2 classes period) and they've been alright. They were pretty understanding about my absences as I was in the hospital. I am having a really, really hard time caring about my Landeskunde class (Geography) because the teacher (Douzentin) is biased, boring, and verbose. Not a great combination, especially for 3 hours right after lunch. I fell asleep twice in that time period and have no regrets because honestly the time was better spent snoozing. We were "focusing" on the German educational system, which really just meant her tangents and repeated stories all kind of had something to do with education. I think the educational system here is more overtly elitist than ours at home, but that's just my opinion I guess. They split up kids when they're like 10 according to their scholastic aptitude. It's a little young in my American opinion to be deciding whether or not to go to college. In the US, sure, we have elitist school systems (think AP classes, remedial reading, etc) but here it's just so much more pronounced. You can tell which kids go to Gymnasium (the kids who will eventually have the chance to go to a University) and the Realschule or Hauptschule. They are having huge problems with immigration now as well, because apparently all the kids who can't speak German get sent to the Hauptschule and it becomes somewhat of a ghetto environment. I'm not really sure where I stand on it, to be honest, because the school system stems from a extremely long tradition/historical value and it has its advantages. It just seems so pretentious...

Biergarten on the Rhein

If you want more information about it or a better explanation than I could ever give, here's a link.

Anyway, I really enjoy my other class. It's just straight up vocabulary, which is immensely helpful. At the end of every day here, I try to name all the vocabulary words that I've accumulated throughout the day. These days it's been mostly Umgangsprache that I've been learning from my friends, which is like slang, which is the most helpful (lets be honest) in everyday conversation. For instance, instead of saying "Mädchen" like we learned in school, here people call girls "Mädels." Never would've guessed. Yesterday I learned "schüchtern" (shy), "an/abtörnen" (to turn someone on/off) and "mist" (crap!). I definitely learned more but those are the three that will probably be added to my workable vocabulary for the day. (yes, this is how my mind works now...sort through words, decide which to stow away, use them).
I've been hanging out with Germans more recently, which I'm totally loving. I still hang out with my Amis but I ate lunch with all Germans two days in a row, grabbed a beer with Janina and some other friends on the Rhein, and last night I went to Köln with Marco and some of his friends. It's nice because I can practice German and they can practice English and I gain a whole new perspective on things much of the time. Last night I had a really interesting conversation about how people from Berlin are really snotty (think: German equivalent of Paris) which I never really heard about. Makes enough sense, I guess, when you think about it. I'm also really excited because Marc asked me to help rep the US at the equivalent of their Study Abroad Fair next week, so I've been assembling some pretty awesome pictures of Madison for that.

Beer on the Rhein

Well, that's about it for my tales from Germany this week. As usual, hope all's well back home!