My daily life

I have a little bit of time to kill so I figured I should give a little more detail about my weekday life rather than just my travels on the weekend. I am attending the University of Cologne through an international program called ZIB WiSo (don't ask me to tell you what they mean, I still have no idea!). Its a fairly independent program, which is good for me. They gave me one offer for housing, which I immediately took! I am renting a room from a girl named Svenja who is currently studying in Budapest, Hungary. I have five roommates, Scarlett, Carla, Daniel, Martin, and Natalia. All are native Germans except Natalia, who is from Bolivia and attends Uni Koln full time. It will be very good for my German to live with 5 fluent speakers.

My room is on the first floor of the building. I got very lucky because my neighbors upstairs aren't loud at all. I unfortunately am on the street level, so it gets somewhat warm at night due to lack of air condition and needing to keep my window closed for safety. On the subject of safety, Koln is a very safe city, at least compared to Minneapolis! I live in a very nice neighborhood; my building is surrounded by apartments and houses where elderly people and families live. I am so used to needing to walk home with a buddy or call someone to let them know I am coming home while I am in Minnesota, that it was kind of a shock when I first needed to walk home alone! I've gotten used to it though :) The Uni Koln is a fairly large university, with about 40,000 students. As far as the exchange students and I go, we all live pretty far from each other. This makes it a little more challenging for me, but I usually will ride my bike to the bus stop or train station so I can bike rather than walk home at night. I wish that all of the foreigners lived together, but we make do :) Transportation around Cologne is very reliable and pretty easy to get used to. I use it at least every other day and its very easy to get to the center of the city. I was very lucky about my whole living situation. My room came with a queen sized bed, desk, large dresser, a set of small drawers, and a tv. She has let me use all of her linens and most things lying around her room which has made it really nice for me (not having to buy as much, feeling more at home, having more luxuries) and nicer for her as well (not needing to move everything out). She also is letting me borrow her bike, which is great! I could make do without a bike, but having one makes life so easy. Well..maybe not that easy ;) Within my first week or so of riding my bike, I have managed to be yelled at in German by two old men (separate occasions) and be honked at by a car. Since my German is still pretty rough, I have no choice but to smile and say "Danke" and walk away! I live very close to an "Aldi" grocery store; I'm pretty sure I have been there about 5 times already! I do have a cell phone here but it costs me .15 Euro Cents to place a call or text so I don't use it much at all. The weather here is cloudy about 90% of the time. It hasn't been too rainy, but also not sunny either. I learned the hard way that Europeans dress very nice. When I came to the country, wearing sweatpants and white tennis shoes, I got some pretty awkward stares. I just bought a pair of cheap black Puma-like shoes so that I won't be stared at so often! I was fully under the impression that I could wear T-shirts and tennis shoes about 80% of the time like I do in the US. Now that I can't without broadcasting that I'm an American, all of my t-shirts are going to sit in my closet until I go home :)
My German course is getting better every day. It is taught in German and if we want to address the teacher it must be in German as well. I got very lucky because the girl I am renting from has a pocket-sized German-English dictionary that I use about once every 2 minutes in class! I don't think that I will learn nearly as much as I had hoped, but again, living with German people and forcing myself to think in German will help! All of my friends that I hang out with speak English as our main language, which has its positives (I can understand what is being said) and has its negatives (it won't help my German at all).
I've found a great bunch of people to hang out with. I have found a few travel buddies (mostly from the U of M) that want to see as much as I do, so I am hoping to be gone almost every weekend to see Europe! We have started a tradition in this small group. The group consists of on average, maybe 10-12 people. We came up with the idea to have a "food from your home country" night. Last night, two of the people from France made delicious crepes. There were two types; one filled with cheese, mushrooms, and ham, and the other filled with sugar and lemon juice. Last week, one of my friends from Belgium had us over and made a pasta dish. The sauce was marinara, but there was a lot of vegetables in it which made it absolutely outstanding! I'm hoping very much that this tradition keeps going! As I was sitting with everyone last night, I realized how many different nationalities were represented. I was in a room with at least one person from Finland, Belgium, Denmark, Portugal, Hungary, Ireland, France, and the US..how wonderful is that?! We always poke fun at each others country stereotypes; I often find myself making fun of America as well! I think that for the American night I am going to team up with the other girl from the U of M and make a large pot of chili. Its been very difficult to think of a nice American dish because so many are from different places (pasta from Italy, Burgers from Hambourg, Waffles from Belgium, etc.) I was very surprised when I came here about the amount of diversity within my program. I ignorantly assumed that there would be more Americans in our group of around 60. Within my program, there are only 4 including myself, and all from the U of M! Most of the students are from Asia (China, Japan) and from the European Union. However, in my language class, we are integrated with people from other programs so I have about 8 Americans in my class from Pennsylvania. This is all the time I have for now, I hope everything is well back home :)