We made it to Germany!

Hello all. Sorry for the large gap between updates. We’ve successfully made it to Germany! We have been here since Saturday now, and are starting to get used to the city. A little bit about last week first. We had one week up at Calvin. We moved pretty fast from the get go, covering the first 4 and a half chapters in the week. Most chapters take about a week each normally, so that kind of shows you how fast we were moving! It meant a lot of homework, but I still was able to have fun with the guys on the cross country team in the evenings, which I really enjoyed. But Friday came, and the group boarded the plane for Germany. After a total of 14 hours of traveling, we finally arrived in Berlin.

Wasting time in the Amsterdam Airport

 We got in at around 7 in the evening here, and had little more time than to walk around for about an hour, eat a meal, and get to bed.

Now a little about where we’re staying. It’s called the St. Michaels Heim. It’s kind of a mix between a hotel and a youth hostel where there are private rooms, but there are also very large rooms that can sleep 7 or 8. There are currently 6 in our room. But we’re living very comfortably.

Our Home for the next couple of weeks

Ok back to the trip. On Sunday, we woke up and got ready for church. We caught the bus (I think I’m finally getting the hang of this whole public transportation system, minus learning the names of the streets) and went to the American Church in Berlin. It was pretty cool as there were people from all over the world there; South Korea, Egypt, Zimbabwe, just to name a few.  We then proceeded to tour the central part of Berlin and see all the touristy things. There should be some pictures below.

American Church in Berlin

Group photo in front of the Reichstag

We went car "shopping". This one might be a little

above my price range

The different colored bricks mark the site of the Berlin Wall

Sunday evening, I went on a run with another student and cross country teammate Landon Potts.  We just went out to kind of explore the town, and ended up finding the Olympic Stadium! I kind of wish I had brought my camera with me so we could get a picture, but it was just awesome to take my first run in a new country and wind up at an Olympic stadium.  It was a good end to the day.

Monday we woke up, ate a quick breakfast and went out to the bus stop to get on the M29 and take us to our class. The public transportation is really nice here. All of the students received a Monatskarte, which allows for us to get on any bus, tram, train or subway in Berlin for a month. The busses are very consistent and cover most of the town, especially the places we need to go. And after a couple of days, I can officially say that I believe I have got the hang of it.

Anyways, our weekdays pretty much follow the same routine: get up, go to engineering class from 9 to 11:30, go to lunch at the Mensa (a government subsidized cafeteria on the campus), come back for German class from 1 to 4, and then take the bus home to eat, run and do homework in whatever order works best for that night. We haven't got to do much extra stuff because we've been getting a ton of homework, but it’s starting to slow down a bit, so we'll hopefully be able to get out a little more.

Ok I think that’s about all I've got for now.  Sorry about the whole wall of text thing, but we've had a very eventful couple of weeks! Tomorrow is our first engineering test and then Friday, we're going to Sachsen-Hausen, a concentration camp. An update should hopefully come this week.

Tchüss!

Jonathan