Already in Heidelberg Posted on August 30th, 2010 by Anne Thielman

Hello. I finally got internet in my room tonight!! I was afraid it would never happen. I also feared my computer here would never be able to charge again but my (new!) friend Sarah loaned me an adapter that seems to be working. So anyways, I guess I could have been writing sooner but somehow just assumed the blog site was still not working. Silly me.

Actually now that I’m here, have the computer working, and the internet, I find myself quite tired. I didn’t think I was one to succumb to jet lag so easily but here I am, contemplating bedtime at 9:30pm. Normally I wouldn’t be caught dead being tired at 9:30pm and certainly not thinking about going to bed as a solution but my times seemed to be all switched around now. Going to bed before 10 (the first night was seriously at 8pm and I was never so excited to go to sleep!) and getting up at 9am on my own? Without an alarm clock? And today it was 6:30am and I couldn’t go back to sleep so I just took a long walk, of all things, before class started at 8:40. I hate to say it, but maybe Germany is making me a morning person. Please don’t judge me. I’m sure in a few days/weeks all will be back to normal.

I arrived bright and early Friday morning at the Frankfurt airport. There was another guy from my program, Tom, on the plane that I managed to meet for about 10 seconds before we boarded and at the airport we talked and waited for the rest of the people to show up. I was probably rather tired. I managed to sleep some on the plane but not really well and my headphones didn’t seem to work for the movies so I just gave up there but still ended up watching other people’s movies with no sound. In this way I kind of saw When In Rome twice. It looks alright. But honestly, never settle for no movies on a trans-Atlantic flight. I still hardcore regret not asking for help about it because I was intensely bored and when you can’t sleep and everyone else around you can watch awesome movies to pass the time…well, it just isn’t the greatest is all.

But anyways, made it to Frankfurt alright. Spent only about 5 hours there before we finally all loaded onto the bus to head to Heidelberg and get our first orientation packets. I wasn’t going to but I think I fell asleep on the way but I only know because I suddenly woke up in the middle of reading about safety or shopping in the handbook and my papers were falling to the floor and we were almost to Heidelberg all of a sudden.

I just realized I don’t know how long these blog things are supposed to be. Maybe I should just focus on the inter-cultural experiences I’ve had so far. Well, I met my suitemate, whose name may very well be Rojda. She speaks German much better than I do (she’s German). She is also very nice and the few times we’ve actually had pseudo-conversations she is very understanding and patient with me. Which is extremely helpful because most of the time I have no idea what I’m talking about. I don’t really see her much. We usually miss each other a lot during the day and evenings and spent most of our time in our individual rooms. I know she’s only staying til the end of the month though so I’ll try to make an effort to get to know her a bit better.

I hope this is enough for a first blog because I am calling it quits for the night. I don’t know if I need to go so far as to actually go to bed but perhaps heading slowly in that direction–maybe read some Harry Potter und die Kammer des Schreckens–couldn’t hurt. We shall see.