New beginnings / old friends

One thing I've always liked about coming back to Germany is the fact that I'm always in a situation where it's easy to meet new friends...but at the same time, there are always many old friends that I can visit. This week was a Mischung of new and old, present and past.

Let's begin with the new: die OE-Woche, or orientation week, started on October 5th. Marburg has a special week organized just for international students. We arrived, paid the 35 Euro to take part, and were promptly split into groups. I was in Gruppe 3, which was made up of a fun bunch of girls and one guy. We represented Greece, Romania, Ukraine, Spain, France, Krygystan, Canada (duh) and our two Tutorinnen (mentors) were of course from Germany. Mostly everyone spoke German the whole time, which is always awesome. The first few days were mostly spent getting the formalities and paperwork out of the way, and also just getting to know one another (and people in other groups). The first night the ENTIRE international student population that arrived that week went for drinks at a local bar, which was lots of fun. The next evening was a welcome evening at the student residences. They have a bar there called SchwarzWeiß Café and it's pretty much exactly like the Thekenraum in Ulmenweg, the bar in the student residences where I lived in Mannheim. In any case, we all hung out that night too.

Wednesday, we finished all the paperwork, and did an organized city scavenger hunt of sorts. It was hilarious. We split our group up to tackle questions around the city - and apparently that worked well, because we won by 40 points! Woot.

By the end of Wednesday we were all exchanging numbers, so we can hang out after the orientation week as well. Thursday was the best though, with an International Food night planned. We picked our meals and all went shopping together (paid for by the orientation week)...on deck for our group was a baked fish meal from Krygystan, Quiche Lorraine from France and a chocolate cake from Greece. After shopping, we went up to the student residences, took over the kitchen in Haus 1, 4. Stock and cooked (and drank) for 3 hours! It was a lot of fun, and when we finally got everything to the SchwarzWeiß Café it was insane - so much food from all 10 groups...the most delicious stuff I have probably ever had! The party was awesome after too, lots of dancing and fun times. Late night for sure.

So goes the "new" portion of this blog. Now for the "old"!

Friday evening, I took the IC from Marburg down to Frankfurt...my friend Anke was having a birthday party! I know Anke because she was an exchange student at Penn State in our department in my first year there. She found out I was coming to Marburg, and invited me to stay at her place and go out with her friends. I got to Frankfurt and she had made us all dinner and of course there was birthday cake...mmm. And Bailey's too :P

We went out later all together, and danced for hours! The girls were all into dancing to salsa and other latin music...I on the other hand, am not so talented in that area...ha! However, I danced a bit and actually improved my Bachata moves slightly... :)

The next morning, after a good old-fashioned German breakfast, I made me way down to Baden-Württemberg (YAY) to one of my former stomping grounds...MANNHEIM! I stayed with my old roommate Berni for the night, he has a big apartment. We went into town for some dinner (at Zentrale!) and my friend Anna also came along! She was an exchange student during my Masters at Waterloo...haven't seen her in awhile, so it was nice. Also, I ate Curry-Wurst and Kirschweizen for the first time in a long time...life is tough, you know.

And today, I met up with Kyle and Danielle!! Also friends from Waterloo...Kyle is doing an exchange semester in Mannheim himself, and Danielle (his fiance) just happens to be visiting. Anna and Berni came along too, and we all had some coffee (well, Danielle and I had heiße Schokolade) and cake (German cheesecake to be exact...)

Tomorrow is Uni. I have one seminar, so we'll see how that goes. I am hoping to join the orchestra here, so I'm going to go to their first rehearsal to see if I can borrow/rent a violin for the year and join. Who knows! Teaching starts next week, but I have to get a syllabus written this week. I'm meeting with another teacher (exchange student like me) to see if we can't come up with something half decent ;)

Overall, this week gave me a glimpse of the fun times to come here in Marburg. For me it was kinda cool to see some familiar faces and places as well. At some point, I'll make it down to Karlsruhe again too :)

Bis bald!