First week of classes!!!

Though I realize it has been a while since I posted, maybe a week or two, I cannot remember, I have a good reason.  My charging cord for my computer and cell phone both broke, and because of that, when I had time to post this weekend, I had no energy on any of these devices.  But that has been taken care of.

Talk about that extremely frightening, overwhelming first day of school feeling.  I am not talking about coming back for your senior year of high school; I am talking about full-fledged HOLY COW College is scary, or even first day of middle school type stuff.  Except that needs to be multiplied by German^2 (That is "German*German," the speed at which the German in my lectures was spoken is provided in the multiplication of German by German.)  My first lecture of the week was the most difficult thing I think I have yet to have experienced.  90 minutes of Linear Algebra is hard in English, but multiply that by the German^2, which I explained earlier, and it becomes anybody's worst nightmare.  I suppose I should probably just explain my whole week shortly.

Monday:
10:00-11:45 Linear Algebra.  I frantically took notes to keep up with what the professor was writing on the smart board.  It was not until later in the day, that I found out that all of her written notes from lecture, a voice recording of each lecture, and her past lecture sheets were all online!!!  That makes learning the material that much easier; PLUS! one of the recommended literatures is written in English!

11:46-12:23 I was on the bus from Campus Bockenheim to go to Campus Westend for my Mikroökonomie 2 course.  Yes, unfortunately I have to switch campuses one to three times a day... But it is a good thing I have a bicycle, so the commute is only about 8 minutes, as opposed to waiting for the bus, then being crammed into it like a sardine for 10 minutes.  After I arrived at Campus Westend, found my room, sat down, and waited until the travel period between courses (about 30 minutes) was over, someone in the room announced that our course would not be held until the following week.  Woo!  No class on the first day.  I then went to grab a bite to eat at the student cafeteria in Campus Westend.

12:30-16:00 After lunch, I walked back toward Campus Bockenheim, which only took about 20 minutes, so that I could relax and figure out my schedule for the coming semester before I had a German writing course (which I have since then decided is not what I thought it would be, and I dropped it.)  Then I sat through that course, and afterwords went back home, ate dinner, and copied some of my Lin. Algebra notes into a cleaner notebook.  I used the online resources to have many an epiphany about some of the things in lecture, which made no sense due to the language barrier.

Tuesday:
I woke up not so early, but I was able to get to meet up with friends and go to my first lecture/course, which was supposed to be a German course for which I had already registered.  Upon arriving at the lecture and talking with the professor, I was informed that there was no room, though I had been assured of the opposite, and was told to come again on Thursday.  So I had then time to exercise, which is always great!

I then had no lectures until 14:00, which was Marketing 1.  The professor spoke very articulately and at a good pace, so I had not any problems understanding what he was explaining.  After that course ended at 15:45, I had to rush from Campus Westend, where I was, to Campus Bockenheim on my bike.

Back in Bockenheim, I was to attend the Übung (practice/tutoring/exercise) session for my Linear Algebra course.  This session lasted until 18:00, after which I went home, ate, studied, and went to bed.

Wednesday was fantastic this week, for I had NO lectures!!!  But I bought some warmer bed sheets, trained at the gym, ate, and studied a lot of Linear Algebra!

Thursday was the fun day.  I had lecture from 8:00-16:30 in the following order:
Management (which will eventually be taught in English, but on the first day was all in German)
Linear Algebra (once again, ridiculously difficult to understand)
Another German writing course (which turned out to be again not what I was expecting the course to be, plus there were too many people in the small lecture room.)
AkadeMi (which was the course I attended Tuesday, but was told to come back on Thursday, which I did, and I was allowed to take part in the course.)

FRIDAY!  I had off!!  I went to the Ausländerbehörde in order to turn in my paper work to get my residence permit, which will be coming shortly.  In the meantime, I have to carry around a form saying that I have received my permit, it is just in processing at the moment.  After that, which took two and a half hours, though I had an appointment, I was able to train, study, eat a good few meals, spend time with friends, and then turn in not too late, for I had a new adventure the next day!! Which I will write about in the next post.