Since I will be pretty busy these following days I will be doing a major update, as in a weekly recap on Sundays. So here we go:
We got here on Monday the 2nd we met our host families, they are awesome. My Oma gives me so much food, is one of the nicest people in the world! They live in a small neighborhood in Bremen, which is a town with viel Gemütlichkeit, which is a German word that is kind of a mix of hominess or comfort. This being said it is a gorgeous town with many attractions and many things to do and a population of over 500,000. So Monday we went home with our families had dinner and then went to sleep. Tuesday included our first day of classes that went extremely well with our teacher named Andre and the meeting of our new classmates. We had a equal balance of us 6 American students to 6 students from all over, Italy, France, and Spain. It was pretty interesting dynamic for a while but it has since then settled down and everyone has become used to each other. After classes we went on a School sponsored Kneipenbummel, which is a pub crawl. I just love the fact that drinking is not seen as this evil thing but something that should be fun and friendly but under control. On Wednesday we had classes again and then set about getting details cleared, up like bank accounts, cell phones, work visas and the like. Our day usually consist of two one and a half hour sessions in the morning and then a more cultural and historical lesson for another hour and a half. Pretty much a standard week with much friend making and beer drinking and then came the weekend. We went to Hamburg and toured the city seeing many of the famous sites, including the St Nikolai tower and the Rathaus. It was pretty cool and there was many things to see, unfortunately we had to catch and early train back, so only limited sightseeing was available. There really is too much to see, and I just need to remember to keep that in perspective. After that weekend this week has consisted of many things, from a international party on Monday and Becks Brewery tour, which is the local brewery here so everyone drinks becks or hakke becks the regional beer. The tour was great, much beer drinking again and a little insight into the liquid of the gods. After this we had a trip to Norderney this weekend which is a island to the north of Bremen on the north sea. It was a very nice day so much swimming and sunbathing was taken in. After this I had my first Germany disko club experience and I have to say I was not impressed, it was just the same american songs and the same meat market feeling. But still a lot of fun to witness at least once. One thing I will say is different is how long they stay going, the place got packed at about 2 am and was still going at 5am?! It was pretty nuts but no more for me. For tomorrow I will be looking forward to breakfast with my Oma, like every morning with orange juice, coffee, schinken, which is a German cured ham and nutella, which if you have never had it before you do not know what you are missing! I will then ride my bike to class, of which I bought my bike last weekend and it is super sweet having wheels here everything is so connected and bikes are given the right of way and paths everywhere! I love it and wish I had my bike here for some training rides, as my Oma's good cooking and the amazing Beer have definitely filled in a few flat spots, yikes I better watch out. Anyways this weekend is Amsterdam and the next weekend somewhere new and exciting! If you would like to see the photo's accompanying these events they are on my picasa web
album. Guten nacht to all of you who got through this horrible post, thank you for reading it and I promise I will not try and fit two weeks of amazingness into a couple paragraphs!
a delicious dinner of Dönner, which is kind of like gyros and of course the team brew for Werder, Becks 12
On Thursday we then had cultural training with Ute from InWent, our program coordinator in Germany. On Friday this was followed up with many hours of more culture training in recognizing the differences between the cultures and trying to be a good example of our culture, while trying to also appreciate the other person's culture as well. I also found out were I will be staying for at least the next three months if not ten and this is in Reutlingen, Baden-Württemberg. It seems like a beautiful town, filled with mountains and beauty, while only being 30 mins from Stuttgart! 
