General Update

Before I go into all the trips I haven't written about, I wanted to get a general thoughts and feelings update type of deal down on paper (figuratively). The posts show up newest first so this might not be in order anyways, but here you go :)

First for all of you Californians complaining about how cold it is there, you shut your mouths! hahaha. Someone on Facebook a few days ago posted a screen shot of the iPhone weather that said it was 39 degrees, and I almost felt bad for them UNTIL I saw that it was 9 IN THE AM. Not sorry, the high at 2 pm was still 57! Yes I went back and found the post to check, I also switched my phone to Fahrenheit so I can accurately tell you how cold it has been here. This week has been 45 degrees during the day (7 Celsius for my non-American friends) and yesterday I used the phrase "it's been warmer this week." I can actually walk around without zipping up my jacket! Last week it was 30 degrees. APPARENTLY in January and February it's know to be 0 degrees Fahrenheit on a regular basis, so that should be a fun time.

I'm actually really enjoying the cold right now, besides the fact that leaving my room is a full five minute ordeal. You can't just "run out of the house", you have to put on a million layers first. I LITERALLY factored in extra dressing time when setting my alarm clock for morning class on Tuesday. It's serious. Anyways, once I get all the extra layers on it's really great. I wear my high-er top TOMS with the fabric (almost spelled that with a k, thanks German) inside every day without my feet getting all hot and sweaty and gross. Sorry SLO, but you fail in that respect. Also in the whole "white Christmas" thing, although I guess it doesn't really snow on Christmas here, but it has snowed a few times so far and when it does it makes the Christmas markets all cute and magical.

Now sort of switching to school but still on the cold weather topic, I'm convinced that they have 15 minutes between each class because of the whole dressing-undressing ordeal, haha. It's like shedding every time you go into class, and each of the classrooms have a row of coat hangars next to the door, which about two people per room use. Everyone else just piles all their crap on their chair. Most restaurants have coat racks too, lined up on the wall and sometimes on the pillars next to tables, AND the long-distance trains have hooks next to the windows. Everyone dies of heat in the subway cuz there's always a billion people, and the heating in class is hit or miss. Either the professor likes it warm and it's stuffy, or they like fresh air and have flung all the windows open, making it freezing cold. German windows also have this nifty movement where you can crack them open a bit at the top, which makes the temperature of the room deceiving. You think it's fine until you're suddenly freezing again half-way through class.

So to speak about actual class, I have three engineering courses and three general studies courses, which make a whopping 14 hours of class a week. It's been a little like being on a 3 month vacation, since there are no homework assignments or projects or midterms or anything. We did have our first lab for my controls class on Monday, but when we got there the lab tech said that it wasn't mandatory and that we didn't have to stay. What. We did anyways, and I got to use electrical equipment that wasn't from the stone age! There were different colored lines on the display and everything, such a novelty.

There are lots of little things that are different about German classrooms (at least at my university, can't say anything about the others). First, the chalkboards are actually green, thank the Lord, not that awful orange-brown color that you can't see squat on. The chalkboards fold open, instead of those slidy ones they always show in movies about Ivy League schools or whatever, AND they move up and down, which I'm guessing is an ergonomic measure for the professors, since it really doesn't help out slow writers like yours-truly. Whenever they get to the bottom of the board and move it down to write up at the top again I have to stand up to see the notes.

They are also big fans of colored chalk/pens. Each classroom has a box with white, red, blue, yellow, and green chalk all neatly organized, and most students I've seen have a set of colored pens. Also, instead of the projector screens that you pull down and then roll back up when you're done, they have a solid square board that swings out to the angle you need. Certain professors are better at aligning it to the projector than others, haha. One of my professors is also really fond of using the pointer stick thing and the first time he used it it made such a solid scratching noise it kind of startled me, just one of those things that you're not used to. The students also do this thing where they knock on the desks at the end of lecture, it's just a respectful gesture to the teacher I think, like clapping. We've started to do it in classes where there's only international students, but it just doesn't sound the same with only 6 people, haha which is in two of my classes.

That's all my brain can remember at the moment, I'm sure other things will come up as I write about the various trips.

Oh! There is one thing. It may be because of the whole immersion thing, but I think the stereotype that German is an ugly language is silly. I find it to be rather pretty, call me crazy. It's grammar could be a little simpler, but it definitely doesn't sound as harsh as everyone seems to think/how it's portrayed in movies. At least for the Munich dialect, no guarantees about anywhere else!