Wilkommen in Freiburg im Breisgau

All’s been well since I moved to Freiburg on Wednesday. My host mother has hosted many students before, and even has two others in the house besides me right now – so she knows the drill well. I love the city and the people here – and of course I’ll write more about them later.

In the meantime, I’ll share two of the hardest parts about settling in here:

The first thing is the overwhelming importance of “Ordnung” (order) here. I read about how important order, procedure, and cleanliness is to Germans in my Germany culture guide, but I didn't realize how right they were until I moved into my host family's house. Everything here is very  neat and clean, and there is a structure to every procedure in the house. Being on time and planning ahead is very important. You all probably know that this is a big change for me – but of course maybe a good learning experience too!

The other thing is… the language. That shouldn’t have come as a surprise, but it still did. Language immersion in a language program is really hard, because even if you could get by with English, everyone insists you use German all the time anyways. The first day, I felt like my brain was in overdrive all day—processing all the German being thrown at me, and then trying to plan out my next response. I sturggled a lot yesterday – but already today, I am getting much, much better. After an hour long German exam, I successfully made some friends, shopped for a cell phone (“ein Handy”), and researched currency exchange rates at banks – all in German. Real German classes start tomorrow, and that of course should really help.

Writing all this in English is very relaxing and brainless. But, it’s also a little disorienting – it’s the first substantive English I’ve used all day, and now I have to shift gears again to German for school tomorrow. First day of real classes! I feel like I’m in elementary school because I’m actually excited about that.