Emily (Germany) European Travels and The Beginning of School

If you want to read about my travels to Berlin and Tallinn (Estonia, FYI), please visit my other blog at deutschlandemily.blogspot.com. There are pictures :)

Monday was an incredibly difficult day. We were traveling back from Tallinn after everyone had stayed up until six am watching the Superbowl. I of course spent the entire day thinking about Jordan and missing her more than I had since her birthday in November. It was especially difficult because I've only mentioned her in passing (ie when asked why I'm vegan) to a select number of people here. I'm still not close enough to talk to anyone about her on a deeper level. I suppose it'll be awkward to talk to anyone about her if they didn't know her at all. But a bunch of my sisters called that night, so it was really great to hear from them and work things out a bit.

On Tuesday, we finally started our weekly classes. Before that, we were in an intensive phase of two hours a day of our mandatory European Union seminar and German classes. Today I had my exam over all of the intensive EU stuff that we'd learned... which is a TON for someone who less than a month ago knew nothing more about the EU than that it exists. It went pretty well, though, and tonight there will definitely be some celebratory dancing and drinking. Yay for no Friday classes!

The other classes I'm taking are:

* IR 370: EU-US Relations: A Multi-Dimensional Partnership
* IR 425: Culture and Politics: The Quest for Civilizational Identities in the Post-National World
* PO 332: The European Union and the Muslim World

I'm really excited for the EU-US relations course. The professor seems amazing. He accompanied my group on our trip to Berlin and Tallinn and he's at the very least a really nice and intelligent guy.
I'm kind of concerned about the other two. The Culture and Politics class seems like it's going to be very academic, theoretical, detailed and convoluted. It'll be fine, so long as those words don't translate to boring. The professor is probably the most stereotypically academic I've ever seen. His hair is styled like he belongs in the middle ages, but everything else about him (most notably his manner of speaking...) says he's a total intellectual. If only his accent wasn't so thick.
My Muslim World professor seems like he'll want everyone to say exactly what he wants to hear. We went around the class yesterday and spoke about our background on the subject and he basically shot everyone down. Scary. I said what he wanted to hear, though, which was basically "I know nothing teach me everything you know, all mighty one." According to someone who had him last semester (he's doing the IES Freiburg German program), he's the worst professor at IES. Lame. The readings and subject matter seem way too good to pass up, though, so I'm sticking through it...

So now I finally have an entire three days to myself. I haven't had more than a day without structure since I got here. My plans: Party tonight, sleep until I wake up tomorrow (which with my total sun blocking blinds should mean until noon, at least), write my reflection paper on our trip, do all my readings for my classes for the first two days of the week, go to the hot springs in a city really close to Freiburg or else hike in the Black Forest (just to celebrate the fifty degree wonderfulness that is Freiburg in February!) and possibly go to Basel for the first night of Fastnacht on Sunday. Hopefully most of that actually gets done...