Making up for lost time…

Everything is still going well, except that I’m realizing how bad I am at consistently posting on this blog.

So, here’s a short recap to make up for the absence:

• Last week’s German classes went well, but I thought they were a little bit too easy for me. So this week, I switched up a level, and I’m now enjoying the classes a lot more. Classes run from 9 AM to 1:30 PM (including 45 minutes of break time), so it’s a long day for just one subject. But, the classes are also really rewarding because you can learn a word for a vocab quiz and then use it the next day in conversation.
  
• Last weekend I visited Basel, Switzerland. It was a great city to walk around and enjoy. It’s feel was similar to Zurich, but it wasn’t quite as beautiful, neat, or clean. I do hear that Basel is a more fun city to live in, though.
  
  The best part of the Basel trip: I went to the Kunstmuseum Basel (Basel Art Museum) to see an incredible Van Gogh special exhibit - “Zwischen Erde und Himmel: Die Landschaften” (“Between Earth and Heaven: The Landscapes”). It featured more than 70 landscapes from every stage of Van Gogh’s life. I never realized how tragic Van Gogh’s life was, nor how much his paintings changed as his life progressed. So – an overall great experience.
  
  The worst part of the Basel trip: Basel was just as irritatingly expensive as Zurich and Lucerne. Just to give you an idea of how expensive Switzerland is… a Starbucks grande latte costs about $3.75-4 in the US. In Freiburg, it costs about 3.75 or 4 Euros (about $5.60). But in Switzerland, the latte costs 7.40 Swiss Francs – about $6.85. So bas
  
• Through the International Club of the University of Freiburg, I was able to find a “tandem partner.” The idea is that you meet someone that can help you with a language you want to learn, and in exchange you help them with a language they want to learn. So in my case, I help my partner with English and get help with German – we speak about half in German and half in English when we meet. It’s been great to meet a student native to Germany.
  
  On Thursday, we checked out the International Club’s Turkish culture festival. I met a bunch of other German students and got to speak lots of German, so I had a great time. (By the way, there’s a huge Turkish influence in Germany, since Turkish immigrants are by far the largest immigrant group in the country. People here are obsessed with Turkish food; there are Turkish restaurants and kebob places everywhere you look.)

Tomorrow, I’m going to make a trip to Strasbourg, France. More on that trip later, along with much more about life here in Freiburg!