Day 2 and a bit of Day 3

Day two in Germany; Day two sneaking time off of Starbucks' Internet!  Although, if I come back tomorrow, I get a half priced drink!

On my second day in Germany, fear not I will not be posting every day, but much more is happening in these first couple of days, I had many a thing to do during the day.  The first, after sleeping only seven hours yet feeling fantastisch, was to go to an appointment at Commerzbank to open a bank account with them.  My newly befriended Polish friend and I went together to the Commerzbank right off of one of the Straßenbahn Warten (tram stops).  When we arrived, and I spoke with the teller asking about my appointment, he informed me that I was at the wrong bank, for I had made an appointment with the Filiale (headquarters of the bank, so to speak), and we had to walk down the street about five blocks to find the correct address, after we had walked two blocks in the wrong direction!  Alles klar!  We arrived finally, later than we should have, but we had not known in which directions the bus routes went, though the bus would have taken us directly in front of the building in 1/3 the time.  The woman at the bank was very friendly, helpful, and understanding to my situation, but I was able to conduct the entire bank account opening progress in the most German I had used in months!  There were only a few times when I had to ask her to either say it another way, in German, or try to explain in English.  By the end of the appointment, I had a bank account, had put money into it, transferred money to the proper accounts for my Immatrikulation (enrollment fees), as well as transfer money for my Polish friend, Aga, who would not be able to open her account for a week or so, and I also acted as a quasi-interpreter between the woman at the bank and Aga, in order to get some of the basic paperwork done for her account.
This second event, with the interpreting, took place after Aga and I had gone to the Bürgeramt (municipal building) to register our places of residence with the police/city/state/country?  I am not quite sure, but it is an important document which international residents are required to get.  That was about a fifteen minute appointment.  So that was good!

After all of this, she and I returned to our residences, and then I had plans with which to follow up, to meet with Andrew Pechmann at the Hauptbahnhof (main train station).  He and I managed to find a delicious restaurant, serving some sort of delicious curry-pork-rice-vegetable mixture!  That and the few beers we had (my first beers of being in Germany), brought us back to the Hauptbahnhof, where he left and I went back to my residence around 8:30pm, to fall asleep promptly afterward, for I was still quite exhausted from a bit of jet-lag and my first day of being awake 30+ hours and walking everywhere.

Now onto the third day, a bit shorter, I ate breakfast and met with Aga, for we had to find our testing room before 10am.  It is quite close to our residence, and after asking directions of two separate people, we found the way to the room, whilst bringing along another small group of international students.  The test was quite different from what I expected.  We had thirty minutes maximum to write answers to four questions, in German obviously: Why we chose to study in Germany; why we chose the Goethe-Uni; what our reasons were; and what sorts of expectations we had about Frankfurt, the Uni, und so weiter (et cetera).  After finishing the test, I called the International Office to try to figure out when we could get our Immatrikulation (one of the LAST, and right now most difficult, documents we need to acquire) from said office, and it seems that Monday we should be able to go right after our language course to get these papers.  After this, she and I met up with my wonderful friend and guide to Frankfurt, Svenja (!!!), to help us find many a necessity in our dorm/apartment-style residences.  I was able to get some inexpensive silverware, dishes, cooking utensils, a pot and a pan, and, FINALLY, a pair of sandals to wear around in the shower.  CAUTION: Those studying abroad, if you will be living in a dorm with a common toilet room/shower room, bring your own sandals; we went to five stores to find mine today, and there were in a fitness store and much more expensive than they needed to be for a cheap pair of sandals, meaning, if you can bring $1 sandals from home, do it!

Positives so far: the language is becoming easier, now that I have more sleep, and I have had to use it to do some very adult things, i.e. open a bank account, make phone calls to register classes, ask for directions, und so weiter; I am excited for my language course to begin; I am becoming ever more familiar with this city, in its enormity, and its transit system; I vow to learn how to cook, for buying food at street vendors and restaurants would be expensive (so if you have any simple recipes for noodles or chicken or something with vegetables or a mixture of things, PLEASE!! let me know via Facebook or a comment here)!  There is a lot of room for exciting things to take place!!!!

Negatives: for I have not been exposed to many students my age, I have not had a chance to practice German in my free time, and I have not met many people, but this will change through the language program I hope!; down time is difficult to enjoy, for I have no Internet access and familiarizing myself with the city does become very tiring after a long day; it is relatively expensive to start off a new life in another country, having to buy a lot of things right away, things which one would not normally think about because we are used to having them so close at hand when living at home; not having student dining services fifty feet from my room (Drumlin Dining Hall, for those who know UW-Whitewater) forces one to have to cook for oneself or spend time and money looking for a place to eat in the city (which is hard to do efficiently without Internet access); limited Internet access, also a bummer.

Alles wird besser!! (Everything will become better!!)
Thank you for reading, and we will see how the weekend goes!