Two weekends, two trips. And more.

So, it has been a while since I have written.
Two weekends ago Shaun and I went skiing in Austria. It was a trip planned by a group called AEGEE, which is a European organization that helps exchange students do things on campus and on the weekends. They do a lot of different things, like parties and trips. It is pretty cool. Anyway, the place we went to in Austria is called Warth Schroecken. It was a pretty cool mountain. There were quite a few blue (easy) paths for me to take down, which was good because it had been a long time since I had skied. We spent about 6 hours skiing, and most of that was actually going down the hill, unlike in Michigan where one spends more time riding up to the top than going down. There were a few times we went down in ungroomed areas, which was a lot of fun. Unfortunately it was quite warm, so the snow was heavy, and slow. (More about the weather in a second.) There were also a few really steep parts in which we both fell, hard. Shaun did a spectacular face plant into the snow, but he had the camera so I couldn't take a picture. I also fell, though it is more like tumbling than anything, as the pictures (coming shortly) show.
So, the weather. It was really sunny. Sunny enough that if you didn't wear sun screen, your face burned. Shaun and I considered such things briefly and because neither of us thought we would get 'snow burn', we didn't take any, even though it was offered to us. By the end of the day, we were very toasted, Shaun more so than I. We spent the next week walking around with red and peeling faces, and because of our sun glasses, everybody knew what had happened. It was a bad choice.
Our trip over Easter weekend is to Saes Fae Switzerland for more skiing. Don't worry, we have already bought the sun screen.
Last weekend we took a trip to Karlsruhe, a city northwest of Stuttgart. It was a trip put on by the International Zentrum (IZ). It was an interesting trip. The first place we went to was Zentrum fuer Kunst und Medien technologie (Center for Art and Media). It was definitely an art museum, because most of the stuff that was artistic, I didn't understand. This art wasn't painting and sculpture art. Instead it was art that utilizes technology to make statements and stuff like that. I found a few things to be cool, but I am not much of an art person. After that we went to the cities botanical garden and saw some cool things there, and the baroque castle built by the founder of the city. Castles are cool. Unfortunately it is now a museum, so it is not cool on the inside, but the outside is impressive.After that we went to a brew house an took a tour of their beer making process. This is kinda misleading because it only took about 2 minutes to see everything. All in all it was a good trip though. A good way to spend a rainy Saturday.
The only eventful thing that has happened during the week is that we had a test. It was three hours long, and we had to wait for everybody to finish before we moved on to the next parts, so I did a lot of waiting. We got the test back today, and I did surprisingly well. In German, all nouns have genders, either masculine, feminine or neutral. I know it is the same in many languages, but in German there is almost no pattern or reason for the gender. This means that you just have to memorize the gender of, I don't know, several THOUSAND, words. For one, that is ridiculous, and two, I hate memorizing. The reason I mention all of this is because I thought I was going to do pretty poorly on the grammar part of the test because I didn't know the gender of about half the words. It turned out okay though.

The Next Two Weeks

A lot has happened since the last time I wrote on this.
The first week was pretty relaxed. They didn't have much planned for us. We had a placment test Wednesday, which took about 30 minutes. On Thursday we had our first class, but that was only for and hour, and then we took a short tour of the city. Friday we had a short time to speak with the teacher of the class, in German, so that they could decide if we were in the correct class. The rest of the time was pretty free. There was a welcoming party after that, with some pretty good food. The rest of the weekend, Shaun and I watched NCIS (auf Deutsch (meaning ''in German'')) and movies from America. Pretty lame way to spend the weekend, but neither of us felt like going out.
On Monday of last week the real class started. Shaun and I are in the same class, which is good. The class goes from 8 until 1:15, with 45 minutes of break in there. The class is good. I have covered all of the material so far that we have talked about, and I think all of the material we will talk about. If I had studied for the two months I was at home, I probably could have been in a more challenging class. Oh well. The classes have lots of different countries represented. There are 4 form America, 3 from Australia, 2 from Panama, Poland, Spain, and one from Iceland, Canada, Mexico, Turkey and probably some others I forgot.
I think I should explain now why I haven't been online for anything very much. The problem starts with the fact that the power here is 220 V, instead of 120. Also, there plugs are just two circular prongs. (Pictures will be coming once I can use my computer.) I knew that I needed to convert the power, and thus had a power converter. However, this converter has a maximum output of 50 Watts. Well, when I plugged in my computer, which takes 90 Watts, I blew a fuse. I found another fuse to replace it, but I can't plug in my computer because it will detroy the converter again. In order to solve this problem, I am going to plug my computer directly into the wall, which is ok because the plug for my computer can handle 240 V. However, the plugs don't match up so I ordered an adaptor off Amazon. There were two problems with this. One, it takes a really long time to get here. I orderd it a week and a half ago, and it still isn't suppose to arrive until Thursday. The other problem is that the shipping is rediculous. I paid less than 3 dollars for the adaptor, and the shipping, which i neglected to look at before I paid for it, was almot 39 dollars. Oops.
Moral of the story, hopefully I will be on Facebook and Skype more in a week.
Future plans: skiing in Austria on Saturday, and next Saturday going to Karlsruhe.

First Post from Germany

Well, I have made it to Germany. The trip here was eventful. For starters, I missed the flight I was scheduled for out of London to Stuttgart. This was the result of many things, such as leaving late, no tail wind, poor weather in Enlgand, and lines to get through security. I have concluded that this could only happen as a result of God testing me to be less confident in the way things are. This trip is going to be like that, I get the feeling. When you can understand the signs, and speech, and papers people give you, things are much easier. Too bad things aren't like that now.
To get to the youth hostel that I spent the night in, I walked down (down, as in down hill) a street about a mile , only to find that the hostel wasn't there. I then had to walk back up the hill, again a mile, to the spot I started and find the correct road. The directions I had said follow the sign to the hostel, after waking down the hill. I didn't know what the signs looked like, so that is what caused me problems. Apparently the signs for a hostel are a house with a tree next to it, with no writing at all. My bad for not knowing that.
Now I am at the Universität, with a room. That is really all I need, for now.
Another interesting thing to note, is that German keyboards are slightly different than American ones. For one, the 'z' and 'y' key are switched. It is kinda a pain. Also, there are keys with umlauts, the two dots over letters, that makes it much easier to type in German. Other differences aren't quite as big.
Shaun is here now, so I don't feel like such a pathetic person because I have someone to talk to.
Pictures of stuff will be coming, once I get settled with everything.