City Tours, Bilingual Children and SIM Card Debacles.

Hallo! Heute ist ein gut Tag und das ist ein lang Schreiben.

Today is a day full of accomplishments. I commuted alone on the U-Bahn for the first time, acquired a SIM card for my phone (still trying to figure out how to work it), played with my host-brother (the three-year old), learned some Deutsch, and got oriented to the city a little more.

This morning started off slow. Got a good night's sleep (thanks, ZzzQuil) and woke up to delicious crepes with my host family. My host-mother is French and Italian, so das Essen ist sehr gut. Commuted to the study center on my own, with no problem, dealt with academic orientation, consumed an excellent Greek Mittagessen, Kofte im Brot. Then, my program went on a wonderful walking tour of Berlin, albeit extremely kalt. We saw: Potsdamerplatz, Topography of Terror, the Berlin Wall, Detlev-Rohwedder-Haus (former Luftwaffe headquarters, Soviet Administrators, now the German Finance Ministry), location of Hitler's Chancellery and Bunker, Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Reichstag, and the Brandenburger Tor. Our tour guide was engaging and a pro at cliff-hanger transitions to the next site.

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe sticks out in my mind, as it doesn't appear to be much a first glance, but once you wander around in it, you understand why it was designed in that format. I definitely plan on going back to a lot of these sites to absorb as much history as possible, when it is warmer of course. That is one of the major reasons why I am here.

Afterwards, we went to Alexanderplatz to acquire photos for our residency permits  and cell-phones (which both caused large amounts of fussing and complaints). SIM-card acquired, I headed home on my own. Successfully, I might add, ignoring the several turn-arounds I had to make in the U-Bahn station as I tried to figure out which entrance I had come from.

I arrived home around the same time as my host-mother, L. and my host-brother (three-year old), G. It was quite relaxing. I had a cup of jasmine tea (yum), and was working on papers, when G., who has been fairly wary and shy regarding me up until now, approached my room, and after I nodded and said "ja," came in with a box of alphabet letters. We spent the next hour, teaching each other German and English words.

Trying to describe my joy while doing this is impossible. This is what I had been hoping what would happen. He and I went through the alphabet, spelling our names and sounding out the letters. Then he crawled over to the map that I had been examining and started showing me die Autobahn, as he loves die Autos. We continued along that note, communicating about colors, our families, and homes, and other things. He corrected my terrible pronunciation as I tried to mimic the dictionary app that I was using. Only problem is that he speaks both German and French, so I'm still working out when he's using what. Later on, at Mittagessen, his mother helped me out with pronunciation and learning more basic words.

Currently, I'm trying to figure out the SIM-card debacle (fun tip: put it in the correct way), flipping through two German children's books, and figuring out the number of things I need to read and write. Tomorrow are more meetings, visits to the Berlin Wall Memorial (Bernauer Straße) and our welcome dinner, since as of today, all of the program participants have arrived!

We are twenty-four strong, with the majority of the people from the East Coast, a few from California, Texas and the Midwest. Surprisingly, I'm the only one representing Ohio, alas.

Additionally, I'm looking forward to exploring the neighborhood where I live more with my host-family. It looks to be an exciting blend of cultures and ages. It originally was primarily Turkish and Arabic in makeup but has expanded to include all ages and nationalities, due to it's lower rents. It seems to be a very diverse area. There will be more on that later.

I apologize for the length of the post, but it's been a busy day. Tschüss!

P.S. Check out the photos that should be on the sidebar to the right. There'll be more to come.