Coming to you from Germany!

Well, here I am, in Germany! Today is Monday, and I arrived here on this previous Saturday, the ninth of July. It has been an interesting, and almost frustrating few days....

My flight from home to Chicago was pretty good. A lot shorter than I was expecting. You spend the first twenty minutes rising up to the correct height in the air, (which is only 29,000 feet high) then you spend five minutes up there, and twenty minutes coming back to the ground in Chicago... all in all, almost a pointless flight :) but sort of nice too, having just a short flight.

my flight from Chicago to Frankfurt went well, I suppose you could say. I was originally supposed to sit in the second to last row of the airplane, but my seat got moved to the very first row behind First Class, which was nice. Except that I got stuck next to a rather creepy old man, who spent the entire flight flirting w/the flight attendents, and drinking 6 cans of beer. I suppose 6 cans in 9 hours isn't a horrid thing, but since he was already creepy, it just made it worse. But I shouldn't be so harsh, afterall, when he talked to me he was nice, and seemed gentlemanly enough. Sometimes, however, people just give you a creepy feeling, and he was that sort of person. I tried sleeping on the flight, for about half of the time I was on it, but failed miserabley. After arriving, I only got an hour of sleep on saturday, until late saturday night.... which means that in a 30 hour time period, i only got 1 hour of sleep... great, huh?

anyways, I arrived, and my boyfriend picked me up. It's always such a great feeling to see him again. everything is instantly like we've been always been together in person from the time we see eachother on... and we're both just happy to finally be together again and to know that neither of us has to go to a different country in a few weeks time.

Saturday night we went to a concert of the band he is in (he does the sound board), Sunday I went to work with him and we met some of his coworkers, and today I met another friend of his. It's been a lot of fun, and I'm really happy to be here. Europe is so much different than the states, in a really good way... the architecture, food, culture, and not to mention language are all just so different, it can be frustrating and refreshing all at the same time.

the hardest part about being here is the language. My german skills are okay... if you give me something to read in german, and a dictionary i can understand it (even w/out the dictionary I can at least make sense of most of it, and understand portions well) if a person talks slowly, and clearly, i can understand them too... however, most people here talk very fast, and to a foreigner it sounds as if they are slurring their words together. this makes it more difficult to understand people. Its not so bad actually, i am getting used to it, and doing my best to understand people, however, it gets a tad boring to be in a group of people and not be able to understand what they are saying really, and therefore not being able to participate much in the conversation.... but, i am not the least bit worried, because i know that this will improve with time, and I did come here to LEARN the language, so, I definitely have plenty to do :)

but this has gotten rather long, so i will end for now. have a great week everyone!