Willkommen in Deutschland

Servus Leute! I have arrived in Germany and I couldn’t be more excited. After a seemingly very fast flight over the Atlantic, the 75 of us arrived in Frankfurt with mostly everything intact save a few luggage wheels. From there we shipped off to Budenheim, where we stayed in Schloss Waldthausen. For those of you who don’t know German, Schloss means castle. So yes, we stayed in a freaking castle. Pics to prove it.

After some much needed R&R…actually wait. The Germans kept us active and moving all day playing sports and walking. I developed extremely terrible hackeysack skills and recalled how horrible I am at kickball. All in all though, it was a pretty good way to fight off the jetlag and adjust to the German time zone.

Then came Thursday — reckoning day. Or it was more like The Rapture, as the groups heading off to Radolfzell and Saarbrücken boarded their buses and disappeared out of our lives — mostly all of them until the midyear seminar in January. But there was no time for tears, about 40 of us rode in style in a double-decker bus toward Köln.

We arrived at our language center, where we will be studying for the next two months, and then were picked up my our host families. My hosts are an older German woman and her son Sami, who’s around my age. An easy name to remember considering it’s just one more letter than my actual sister’s. They’ve been extremely kind to me and feed me so much food for breakfast I need to find a fitness studio quick. Can’t let all that bread and Kölsch get to me so soon.

Tomorrow kicks off our first day of language school and I’m thrilled to be able to dive back into German. I’m pretty rusty right now considering the last two years I’ve spoken only on certain occasions. I’ve got to get my Wortschatz loaded up again to be able to communicate all these great American perspectives I’m supposed to share as a citizen ambassador. Ich werde es noch schaffen!