The Big Update

Ok, I know it's been a while, but I've been really busy. Let's start at the begining.

Prague:
It was really beautiful. I had a great time there and bought some great souvineers including a painting (direct from starving artist) for about $15. I met my good Indian friends there, Dev and Sandeep. I found out that Dev was moving from India back to the U.S. and Sandeep had just quit his job in Washington D.C. to move back to India. The two hadn't seen eachother in about three years and so this was the first time we'd all been together in quite a while. We probably won't be together like that again for a long time. But welcome back to the States Dev! Anyway, I saw all the sights and took tons of pictures and got something for my parents, my brother and Jason. And of course, a few things for myself. Two days after returning to germany from Prague, I was on my way to Oktoberfest.

Oktoberfest:
Wow. That's a lot of beer! But lets start with the van... Lukas (german) rented a van through his work for all of us. There were seven people all together. Mehek (british/dutch/pakistani/mongolian/a few other things), Me, Brendon, William, Dan, and Sara (all American). So there we are in the van for 7 hours (would have been 5 without traffic) with a bunch of cookies, chips and kleenex. We'd all recently had a cold, so going out in the cold to drink a bunch of beer was probably a bad idea. But seeing as I am a tourist, how could I go to germany for a year and have people ask me if I went to Oktoberfest and have to say no? What kind of tourist would I be then? A pretty crappy one. Anyway, on the first night we drank ourselves silly. I recall a particular scene of Dan laying on the table while the rest of us leaned over him to have our picture taken. We have no idea who the camera belonged to, as none of us seem to have the picture. The next day I bought a Dirndle. That is the traditional Bavarian dress you see at Oktoberfest. Everything Americans know about Germany is Oktoberfest. To sum it up, I have the dress, I have souvineers, and I drank 2 liters of beer.

Potsdam:
I got back from Oktoberfest at 1am and at 8am I left on a bus for Potsdam. It was a quick two day tour of Potsdam with a night free to visit Berlin. I saw some nice sights, but I was so tired I didn't appreciate it as much as I should have, so in a few weeks I'll be going back to Berlin with a Eurobiz trip.

School:
I spent some time just trying to recover from my adventures and from my cold (which was quite bad at that point). I was also trying to choose some classes. Last week, classes started and let's just say it's been a whirlwind. I have four classes in English (shakespeare's comodies, understanding america-counts as a history class, Chicago in poetry and prose, and american poetry from Puritans to revolution) then I have two german courses (spracwissenschaft, lituraturwissenschaft) a german journalism course, and my language course which runs four days a week. I think it's a bit much for me, but I'm going to drop the journalism class. It's a little too advanced with the language for me, and I don't already have approval for it. Besides, Ithink I'll have plenty of credits for the semester if I finish what I already have. In the meantime, I have to order some books from amazon because most bookstores here don't carry sinclaire's "The Jungle" which I have a quiz on in two weeks.

So now you know why I've been not posting to my blog. It's been a little busy around here for about a month. But I can finally settle into a routine and just have adventures on the weekends until december when I go home for Christmas.

And now, to break out my weapons and fight back the masses of literature/my impending doom.