Here in Germany!

So finally I have a place with a constant and free internet connection, so I'm starting up my blog! I've been here in Germany for about a week now, and so far it's been slow but good. My trip started out interestingly as my program director, Tamsin, sent me an e-mail telling me where the hostel was that I had a reservation for which somehow took 4 days to get to me, meaning that when I was leaving for Germany, I had no clue where I was supposed to be staying once I got there. Thankfully, my parents lined me up with a hotel for the first night and then I figured I could find a place after that first night. So my first night in Germany was rather simple, collapsing on my bed from jet lag and then trying to get further along in my "German for Dummies" book.
I then found a hostel 5 minutes from downtown, right in the middle of the red light district of Frankfurt, full of shops and ladies standing on the street corners (as well as full of families with their kids), and checked in there for the next night. As this is the only hostel I could find using all English sites, I shouldn't have been surprised that most of the people at this place were Americans. So it was pretty fun, met a couple cool people, had kebobs with Annabel from Washington State and then ran into a brother and sister from North Dakota. The sister, Sarah, went to the U of M and actually recognized me from coming into The Tea Garden where she worked. Imagine that! So we had a good time, found some other people from California and a guy from Finland, Anti, and went out for a some beers. We also tried out Frankfurt's specialty, apfelwien (apple wine), which was, well, pretty bland.
The next day I had finally gotten the e-mail from Tamsin and then checked into the place she had set up for me at the Haus der Jugend. Once I checked into this place and had another hostel to compare it to, I realized that the Stay and Learn hostel from before was actually just about as sketchy as the area where it was located. But this new place was nice! Basically like a nice hotel room (since Tamsin got me a single), and, best of all, 3 all you can eat meals a day! That was definitely really nice. The worst part was that since none of the English hostel search sites found this place, there weren't really any Americans but instead just a whole bunch of high school age tours groups constantly playing soccer in the halls. I started to wish that I hadn't given up soccer when I was, hmmm, about 13, but then I figured that it was a little too late for wishing and instead started doing things I would always think about doing "if I just had some free time." So I did quite a bit of reading, my German book and then a translated German book (Thus Spoke Zarathustra), did some running, and some drawing, and whatever else I felt like doing. Oh yeah, and I also had started doing some language courses which have been fun, but I think it's going to be awhile before I can speak any decent German with anyone. So far I'm working on signs. I've gotten pretty good at the simple ones, like V. M. von Steuben Strasse. That means V. M. of Steuben Street. Pretty good, huh?
But things are looking up, I'm meeting up with the other interns here in Frankfurt tomorrow, having coffee with my language instructor, and will hopefully meet a couple more people at my new place in the Catholic dorms in north-west Frankfurt. Then I start up work on Monday ANNDD now I have internet so I can search around for the other places I want to go to while I'm here in Germany :)
So, congrats to all, or maybe the one, that actually made it to the end of this post, and I will be inserting some pictures from my wonderful Tour von Deutschland as soon as I find a USB chord for my camera which I forgot back in the States (doh!).

Tschüss!