Foreigners Foreigners everywhere and not a German to meet

March 6th
4:47 PM FDH D10

Let me fill you in on the last few days.

We took the placement test, which was basically a writing assignment about the pros and cons of International student exchange programs. It was pretty simple to understand, unless you misunderstood the word for 'student exchange program' as 'student uprising' as Conor did... Needless to say, between Conor's misreading and my horrible German, all the TCNJ students were placed in the euphemistically named "Group A" (the lower of the 2). Since then, we've had two classes with two different instructors that alternate. Both of them are really nice and great so far.

The subject material is dry but useful, but the best part by far is the group of people we've met so far--Matt from the UK, Ola, Ula, Piotr, & Justyna from Poland, Montse & Nuria from Spain (Catalunia), Irene, Manuela & Stefania from Italy, Margit from Norway, Katariina from Finland, Monika from Lithuania, James from Canada, Kostas from Greece, Manuel from Argentina, Adriano from Brazil and others!

Most of the time out of class we speak in English (not because of us so don't think that!). It's just that most of the kids speak better English than German and prefer it that way, but some don't speak any English. A lot of the time it's a mish-mosh: Milana speaks in Russian to the Poles, I speak in Spanish (sometimes) to the Spaniards, and we all switch between German and English. Bottom line- I end the day with a headache most of the time. We've all started hanging out a lot and formed the basis for some pretty cool friendships.

We also matriculated (one of the many processes the TCNJ equivalent of which is done online) and paid our semester fees. We planned on registering with the Buergeramt (police station) and getting residency permits today, but moderate socialism intervened. There was a public transport strike, so we had to walk to class and the Buergeramt was closed. Now we'll have to get up early and do it tomorrow.. Oh well.