Apr
1
Erfurt so Far
April 1, 2009 | by Thomas Flannery | |
So my apologies for not making a post sooner but this past week had been extremely busy for me. There is a lot to tell you all about since my last post!
So now I am pretty well settled into Erfurt. My dorm here is very nice, similar to the dorm rooms in San Jacinto but with a full kitchen and 2 bathrooms. I have two roommates here, a guy from Berlin named Hannes and a girl from a town east of here named Julia. They are both very nice and I think that living with them will help to improve my German.
So last Monday the orientation course for the new international students began. There are 19 of us here so far, 7 Americans, 1 Englander, 3 Italians, 1 Latvian, 2 Turks, 2 Koreans, and 3 Russians. Of the Americans 2 of us are from UT, 1 comes from a small school in Wisconsin and the other 4 come a small school in Pennsylvania. All of the other international students are very nice and we all get along very well together. Almost every evening most of us get together and do something. Also every international Student is paired with a German student who serves as his/her tutor. My tutors name is Josie and she is also extremely sweet. It is really cool last year she was a Tutor for another student from UT and she was also an exchange student at UT!!! Its cool to talk to her about Austin. I should also say that all of the German students I have met here have been really friendly. There are also a lot of other European Students here studying on ERASMUS exchanged so I have had the opportunity to meet students from places like Spain and Kazakhstan and everywhere in between.
Well that is all for now it is getting late here in Germany 11:30. I will write more tomorrow about the city of Erfurt and what all I have seen so far. I am having trouble uploading pictures to my blog but I will try to figure something out soon.
Till next time,
Tom
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Tom, It sounds like all of the learning opportunities you are coming across there are wonderful. Glad you like your roommates and tutor, that is essential. Its kind of nice that you both have Austin in common to get to know each other and practice your German with. Have you gotten to drink some German Beer? What is the food like? How is the workload? What are classes like… are they all in German? Do you understand enough to get by? Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this blog. It is fun to see what you are up to!
Hey Melissa!!!
Yes I have definitely tried German beer!! It is soo good, much better than the beer we have at home! Whats really crazy is that at most restaurants a .5L class of Coke will cost about €3.50 and you can usually buy .5L of beer for about €2.30!!! And then in the supermarket you can buy .5L bottles for €0.79 and surprisingly it is quite good, even the cheap stuff. And the food here is AMAZING!!! Back home I never liked saurerkraut but over here I is delisous! Anther dish that I really like is called “Apfelrotkole” which is similar to saurkraut but is made with red cabbage and apples and is slightly sweet! And then of course the “wurst” sausages are also really good! About the classes I dont really know yet, they dont start until this Tuesday. For the past three weeks I have been in a orientation class. The classes that I have singed up for though will all be taught in German. But so far I have been able to understand about 90% of what people say and if I don’t understand I just ask them to repeat it again slower. A lot of the people here, especially people who are older than 30, don’t speak very much English because we are in the former East Germany so they all learned Russian instead which is good for me because it forces me to use German rather than falling back on English. And then I also get the impression that everyone is very impressed that as a Foreigner I am making an effort to speak German and everyone is super willing to help to help you speak better!