readjusting to German life...and Marburgs hills

Location: dorm room, Studentendorf (student dorms), Marburg, Germany, Europe

Listening to: birds chirping in the forest hills and cars trying to drive up the steep Panoramestraße less than 30 meters away, accompanied by the occasional voice speaking an unknown language.

I finally have internet access in my room, which means that I can start regular blog entries again. A lot has happened in the last few days, I'm not sure I'll ever be able to even describe the events of the last week. Instead of listing everything in this blog entry, I will try to break the blog into various parts such as first day in Marburg, language course, living with multiple cultures, walking in Marburg, my shrinking pant size, meeting other Fulbrights, running late in precise germany, saying goodbye to family, and any other titles I may think of.

I won't waste precious cyberspace describing my rather uneventful trip overseas other than to say that I sat next to a German who like Harley Davidson motorcycles. We talked a bit but I actually tried to sleep for most of the trip. I will also add that United airline food is nowhere near as good as the food on any other European airline.

I arrive in Marburg around 13:00 (1pm in the US) after boarding the correct train to the Frankfurt Main station, then to Marburg (I told you my trip was rather uneventful). I spent most of the train ride trying to remember how to call the US from Germany so I could notify my parents of my arrival (I eventually figured it out), then trying to remember how to call German handys (mobile phones) from my German mobile number.

Just a note for people not familiar with my phone habits. When traveling in Europe, I use my US phone, but I switch out sim cards so when I visit Germany I have a German phone number, which means that Germans can call me for rather cheap. When I am in the US, I switch back to my US number. I also have a UK sim card. Sim cards in Europe are rather cheap, so its easy to buy a different card for each country. All my European cards are also prepaid, so I just buy more minutes when I need them.

Anyways, I arrived in Marburg in early afternoon, where my host drove me to my new home for the next 6 weeks in Losomonov Haus in Studentendorf. The dorm room is identical to the one I had last year in Carl-Ludwig Haus, except that this room has an internet connection. :-) The room is quite small, only 9 feet by 9 feet for the bedroom part and 9 feet by 3 feet for the sink/closet part. I'll try to take some pictures to post later. After dropping my stuff in my room, showering, taking a quick nap (15 minutes), I caught the bus to the Chemistry building to meet with Prof. Frenking and the research group. I stayed for about 1hour, long enough to find my desk and reintroduce myself to the group. I then rushed back to my dorm to drop off my laptop and buy some groceries before the stores closed downtown.

Afterwards, I met with a Frenking labmate who is preparing to move to the US. He offered to make me dinner while I borrowed his internet connection. :-) We spent the next 4 hours discussing US and southern culture (he is preparing a move to Houston). I also tried to teach him some Southern terms (y'all, dahling, etc) before he gave me a ride back around 22:00. Instead of falling back asleep, I was wired for the night so I watched two of the 48 movies that I brought from the US. I finally crashed around 4am, only to wake up 5 hours later at 9am.

I'm going to stop this entry now as I realized that instead of discussing my journey in Europe, I'm just listing all my activities. I believe that my mind is a little too overwhelmed with new sights, smells, tastes, and experiences so I'm going to take a break, then try to explain a bit more about my time in Germany.