So, brushing over the last 2 months really quick so I can get to the most recent things and (hopefully) not fall behind again!
So, I am actually not taking all that many classes while I am here. I have 2 Spanish classes, a German class, and choir. That would be a reasonably normal amount except that they all meet only once per week, so all my classes fall on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and take up a grand total of 5 hours and 15 minutes per week! This makes for a fantastic travel schedule, but also for supreme procrastination, as I can quite easily fall into the deceptive mindset that I am not in school! I was originally taking a Spanish history course, but it turned out to be way too hard, and the professor recommended I take a Spanish comp course, so now I'm taking that instead. The other Spanish class is a phonetics class (we attempt to learn how to pronounce Spanish properly), and the German is an English-German translation course, designed mainly to broaden vocab and increase our understanding of German, using the translation as a tool. Pretty neat.
So, with all this time on my hands, what have I been up to?
Well, honestly, I have watched a lot of movies, but I have also done a bit of traveling, and have more in stock for the next month (like, a lot more)
A week or two after classes started I went on a trip to Ulm and Blaubeuren with the local student group, StudIT. Yes, you are remembering correctly, and I have already been there. HOWEVER, I didn't buy postcards. Also, the famous "Blautopf" in Blaubeuren was not looking its best when I was there before (in fact, it was looking pretty bad from snowmelt), so this time I got to see it in all its glory. But interesting story with this trip (a 2-day, 1-night trip). So, we got to Ulm, did our touristy thing, went back to the hostel for dinner, and then they went to take us on a hike. Never mind that there was rain in the forecast. So anyway, we hike what I would estimate to be several miles out into the countryside by Ulm, up to the top of a hill (mini-mountain) where there was a really nice view of the city. Great. Except that there was also a really nice view of this nasty-looking storm cloud:
This was also accompanied by lightning, and was coming in our direction. The leaders decide we should go back a different way (we apparently took "the long way" out). So this is what we do: as darkness is falling and the wind is picking up, we light torches (yes, torches, old-fashioned torches) and walk into the woods. As we go along the path with pretty much only torchlight, the wind picks up even more, and the torches burn wrong and have to be dropped and put out one by one. So, to clarify, it is dark, very windy, getting cold, we are in the woods, and we have one torch left at the front of our group of 20. Then it begins to rain, and within about 30 seconds it is pouring in sheets. I had an umbrella, but everything from the waist down and on my left (I was sharing) was soaked. As in like I had jumped into a pool. Everyone else was in the same condition. Eventually we get out of the woods and find ourselves in what looks to be suburbia. Now, if you thought we knew where we were going this whole time (so did I) you would be wrong. In addition, our leaders are nowhere to be found. Eventually they came back, but still didn't know where go, so we ended up asking random passing cars how to get to the hostel. Yeah. We eventually made it, like half an hour later.
Since this was a 2-day trip, I thought one pair of jeans would be plenty. So this is the story of how I ended up walking around in my pajamas the next day, like so:
I did get my postcards. And the Blautopf was amazing:
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