It looks like a synchronized swimming bike

Hey gang, so it's been a little while, and I am sorry for that. Not too much has happened this week outside of the mundane school-starting shenanigans, so that's what you get to hear about. Get stoked. 

To start, Tübingen has been beautiful. Literally 65-70ºF and sunny every day with the exception of Tuesday afternoon. I am in love with this weather. However, it is not at all conducive for productivity. The Sommersemester is going to be hard. 

Anyways, I have no classes on Mondays, and therefore, my school year didn't officially start until Tuesday. However, Monday was filled with sign-ups. As it was last semesters, while some classes you sign up for way before the semester, and some have sign-up days on the first day of the semester. The two big ones for me being art classes and ADaF (German as a foreign language). So in the morning, I headed to the Neue Aula to sign up for art classes, met up with Caroline, got falafel with her and her friend Dan, went home, and then went back into town to sign up for ADaF courses. I got everything I wanted–thanks to Ute who got us all really good sign-up times. Later that day, it was the first day of Unterwegs Zumba, and afterwards, I went with Lisa, Hannah, Erin, Emily, and Drew to Saints and Scholars for burgers. (Super productive after working out, I know.) 

Then Tuesday, I had my first class: International Political Economy in English. Which was good and pretty interesting. Despite not needing it for credits or anything, I think I am going to stick with it. The rest of Tuesday was pretty uneventful. I went to the gym, ate dinner, you know, normal stuff. 

Wednesday was super-everything-at-once day. I had my two seminars (das Politische System der EU and Der Agent des Zeitgeists. James Bond-Filme als historische Quelle–so a political science seminar about the political system of the EU and James Bond movies as history, respectively). I also had to sign up for Tufts fall semester classes at 3, and the university wifi was down. The Tufts kids and I had intentions of getting together in the library to sign up for classes together, but that quickly came to having Camp Class Sign-Up in Elizabeth's room. 

I had to leave before my 3PM sign-up time because of my poli sci seminar at 2, which I proceeded to make a bit of a fool of myself looking for the room. This building is a large one with a north entrance and a south entrance, and whatever architect decided that the building should be separated down the middle with no possible way to go from one way to the other should be severely scolded, because that is incredibly unpraktisch and unlogisch. Now before I go any further, I should say that I was incredibly nervous for this class. It's a seminar, so that means I have to speak intelligently in German about complicated political topics. Furthermore, I thought the entire class would be comprised of Germans, and so that would be super intimidating. However, after arriving, I was put at ease. I got there to 4 people sitting in the room, one guy and three girls. After some silence, one of the girls asked my name, and I told her and then said I was from the States. She told me her name and that her and her friends were from Russia. And then the last girl chimed saying she was from Poland. The guy responded with "ich bin ganz normal; aus Deutschland." So I was put very much as ease that I wasn't the only one who didn't speak German as their native language. Also the professor didn't end up showing up. (He was sick as it turns out.) So I was able to sign up for Tufts classes completely on time. 

Afterwards, Marlena, Elizabeth, Caroline, and I had victory falafel in the Alte Botanische Garten, where we hung out until Elizabeth and my James Bond class at 6. We got there early, because the professor had told us that there would be quite a crowd, and ended up being some of the first five people there. Harvey rolled in 10 minutes later, and together, we made an Austauschstudenten corner. The professor came in, kicked out everyone that wasn't let in or an international student, and then started the class. And god, is it going to be cool. I can barely contain my excitement. After class ended, I went to Elizabeth's for gin and tonic with her housemates, and then went home after the eventful day.


Thursday was much less eventful. After a slow start, I went to the library to do some of my reading. Hannah met me there at 4, and we went to Edeka to get meat for the Unterwegs first Donnerstagabend of the semester/barbecue. As usual, Donnerstagabend was awesome with tasty food, awesome music, and fun people. Afterwards, Hannah and I met up with Lisa, Lasse, Mike, Claire and her friend and went to a bar for a while, and that was that. 

Friday was the much-anticipated Tufts grill-party. :) That night, we went over to Marlena's house to chow down on food and play some music. She made burgers, baked beans, and potato salad, Yasmine brought guac, and I brought Nana's broccoli salad. It was all super tasty, and we left for the Semesteranfangsparty quite full. Anyways, just like last semester, the first Friday of the semester is the Kuckuck Semesteranfangsparty. However, unlike last semester it wasn't actually at Kuckuck (a location with a lot of bus traffic). This year it was at the Mensa Morgenstelle (on a hill with next to no buses). The party was quite cool and fun, but we hiked both up and down the hill, which wasn't great and left us getting home and close to 4:30AM. 

Then the next morning, I woke up at 8AM for the bike flea market. (Woooooooo!) After meeting up with the Tufts students, we went to the wrong location and Yasmine and I only actually managed to make it to the actual location because some nice guy had made the same mistake and offered to take us over in his car. By the time we got there, there were already quite a crowd, but there were still quite a few bikes left. And that was how I met Rocky. Rocky is my beautiful mountain bike, and he is awesome. Yasmine bought an equally wonderful 80s looking bike, that, if it were a person, would have been a cheerleader and synchronized swimmer in the 80s. It's named Bunny, and her and Rocky are dating, in a Grease-type scenario. We rode the bikes back into town, got locks, and then went back home for some down-time before heading to Metzingen with Julius, Marlena, and Caroline to go outlet shopping. However, the outlet-shopping was sad, expensive, and didn't include sundresses. So I am not going to talk about it any further. Once we got back, we had a nice Italian dinner, and then I went home, chilled, and went to bed. 

Then there was today, Caroline and I went to the only English movie theater in the area and saw Captain America. And oh my God, IR nerd freak out, it was beautiful. Watch it! However, the only theater in the area is Vaihingen, so the 2 hour long movie turned into a roughly 5 hour excursion. But I am still content with my Sunday. After I got back, I went with Hannah to a biergarten, and that's been about my Sunday. 

So that's my week. All of my classes are starting this week, so things will ramp up a bit. And then it's Easter, so hooray for everything closing! But hopefully that means chilling and hiking. So that'll be good. Anyways, bis später, gang!