Hello everyone! This past week has been quite busy for me! My grammar class has been getting intense as we prepare for the DHS placement exam...which is in about 1 week! It's quite nerve-wracking considering our ability to take classes at the university hinges on passing this exam!!! Assuming I pass the exam, I would like to take a German history class, a class on Luther's catechism, as well as Spanish, Chinese, and Swedish classes, which all require additional placement tests! the extremely frustrating thing about the German university system is how disorganized it is! School begins in about 3 week and there is still no official course book, so I can't even plan a schedule. Also, every course here has it's own rules about when and where to sign up, if you even need to sign up, so everything is just confusing!!! And the advising staff here is not as helpful as we would all like...they seem to expect us to just figure it out on our own! So hopefully that all works out!
As a part of the curriculum for our preparatory course, we have to break into small groups to go on intercultural field trips once a week, from which we must create a presentation for the rest of the group. This week I went to Mannheim to visit Rhein-Neckar Fernsehen (RNF) which is the regional television network. We met with the assistant manager and got a tour of the studio. Then we sat in on a live broadcast of "RNF Life," a local news program, and we appeared on TV! So that was cool!
On Thursday, my class went on a field trip to FRANCE! We took a coach bus to Struthof, a concentration camp in the mountains that was used for French resistance fighters against the Nazis. It was interesting to see, but slightly disturbing. Then we drove to Odilienberg, a monastery in the mountains of Alsace. Afterwards, we headed to Strasbourg, which is the capital of the Alsace region of France. It was beautiful! We visited the incredible Notre Dame Cathedral and climbed to the top! It was so exhausting, but the view was great! Then we had about an hour to explore the city on our own...which was totally not enough time!!!
Yesterday, my friends and I visited the town of Bad Duerkheim in Germany's Rheinland-Pfalz region...also known as wine country! This town hosts the world's largest wine festival, so we had to check it out! It turned out to be more like a creepy children's carnival with very little wine and made us wonder how it got it's title! Nevertheless, we had a great time. The town was very beautiful and the festival was still fun!
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| Driving through France! |
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| Odilienberg Monastery |
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| Strasbourg Cathedral! |
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| View from the cathedral |
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| Inside the cathedral! |
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| Strasbourg on the Ill River |
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| View of Rheinland-Pfalz from the ferris wheel |
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| Bad Duerkheim Wine Festival |
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| Bad Duerkheim Castle Church |
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