Since the last time I posted, I haven’t really done much exciting traveling. I know, disappointing, but it’s only been a week or so.. But this gives me a chance to post about life in general in Reutlingen, what my average day-to-day activities are. As average as life gets here, anyway. Which isn’t that average. I mean, it’s Germany. And our professors always move classes around, so no two weeks have the same schedule. Makes things interesting.

So I guess I’ll talk about classes first. We have classes just with the other Valpo students and mostly with Valpo professors, which for this semester means there are five of us with one professor in a classroom. For all of our classes. Very different than at Valpo. We have five different classes: German language, German literature, Luther and Bach (all taught by Valpo professors), Art/Art History/Architecture (taught by a professor from another town close by), and International Economics, which also focuses on the region Reutlingen’s in and Germany and is taught by the man in charge of the international program at Reutlingen. So those five diverse classes make up our weeks, and all of them are actually pretty interesting. The only downside to these classes is that it’s just the five Valpo students in them, instead of many other programs which integrate the students into the university or at least into an international program with hundreds of other students.

Looking down from a hill onto part of Reutlingen

Instead of using classes to meet other students, we meet them most often in our dorm. These are different than dorms at Valpo. Here most rooms are singles, although I am one of the very few in a double room. Each floor in my dorm (so like 20 people) shares two toilets and two showers, one for guys and one for girls, and a kitchen/lounge area. This kitchen is where you actually meet the most people; since the cafeteria is only open for lunch, there’s always people in there cooking and watching tv or just sitting around talking. Cooking, by the way, is an adventure. Since, you know, everything’s in German. And since my German isn’t good enough to be able to read ingredients and stuff, I just make it up as I go. Problem is, I probably won’t be able to bring my newfound skills and recipes, if you call them that, to the U.S. because I won’t actually know what the ingredients are.. I just know what the bottles or packages look like! And they probably wouldn’t taste as good anyway, because Germans put much less preservatives and other junk in their food.

The best part of Reutlingen, though, is the nature, and I’ve been taking full advantage of that. There’s plenty of hills around to hike, a big outdoors sport complex with tons of fields to throw a frisbee or play some soccer on, and while out running I’ve found a big expanse of woods with trails and an absolutely beautiful nature park. And of course it’s even better now that fall is in full swing and the ground is covered with yellows, lime greens, and oranges.

One of the paths on campus yesterday

So that’s pretty much my life on a general day. And even though it does sound amazing (it is, let’s be serious), I really miss everyone back home. My best friend who’s in Athens studying abroad this semester, my boyfriend, my family, my frisbee team, and all of my other friends.. The whole experience has been a series of ups and downs, and I’ve broken down a few times because of the downs. It really is hard to be away from everyone you care about for months, and I’m only halfway through. At the same time, though, I’m already halfway through, and I feel like I’ve just started. And by the time I have everything figured out, it’ll be December and time to go home. So for these next couple of months, I’m concentrating on having the time of my life and learning more than I think possible and gaining a global perspective on things and becoming the person I want to be. And I’d say I have a pretty good start 🙂