My Blisters have Stories

So the past few days have been insanely crazy. We had orientation, then some more orientation, went on a boat tour, a walking tour, and then went to the Night at the Museum. Today is our first and only day to relax since school starts tomorrow so I figured I'd update my blog while eating Nutella straight out of the jar for lunch.
We started Friday off with a tour of the Freie Universität (that's the school that my program is associated with) then took a long boat ride on the Spree River where we saw a lot of really cool buildings that I can't remember. It rained so that kind of sucked since my umbrella's broken but I'm a trooper so I managed. The boat tour ended somewhere deep in former East Berlin and from there we walked to the Soviet Memorial which was really cool to see since every aspect of the memorial has some significant meaning behind it.
On Saturday we took a walking tour of Berlin where we look stylish with our massive headsets. We learned a lot about Berlin. It was really cool to learn about its history while actually looking at the buildings and going to the places where it all took place.
After that tour a group of us went to the Night at the Museum. Where for 10 euros you can see 80+ museums all throughout Berlin from 6pm to 2am. The event started with a helicopter flying right outside the Berliner Dom dropping 100,000 poems from the sky. Everyone ran around trying to grab them from the sky. My friend Nicole got me my first one then I got 2 more and gave one to some old lady, then got hit in the head with another one. So I got 3! After that we boarded buses to go to the museums. We ended up only going to the Gay Museum and Checkpoint Charlie. Checkpoint Charlie was where the crossing point between East and West Germany was. After an eventful week I'm glad today I can relax and start freaking out for school starting tomorrow.

I'm standing over where the Berlin Wall used to be.

Inside the Sony Center

The Soviet Memorial ~ 1000 bodies in each of those grass squares

100,000 poems falling out of the sky

I got a poem!

Checkpoint Charlie

My tourist ways :)

Old News but ya

So I’m here in Berlin…finally! (This is one LONG entry because it has to make up for the fact that the hostel FAILED and didn’t have working internet, so it’s a bunch of days combined into one entry). Enjoy!

Overall I’d have to say it was a good trip. But there was definitely some bad mixed in with the good. The guy at the LAX Airport forgot to charge me for my second suitcase so I saved $68 there. I got stuck sitting next to 2 small children who kept screaming “chocolate” as they pretended to eat chocolate. They didn’t even take a nap on the 12 hour flight to London!! The 20 min of sleep I actually did get on the flight was right when they served breakfast so of course I was hungry when I woke up and they didn’t have any more breakfast left ☹. On a better note I was totally passed out on the flight to Berlin. Even though it was less than 3 hours I completely KNOCKED OUT before the plane left the ground. And when I did wake up like more than half way through it the guy sitting next to me had grabbed an extra sandwich from the stewardess for me! That made me happy!
So once I landed I got into a taxi and headed over to the hostel. Since the hostel was already closed I was supposed to call the manager who’s supposed to put the key to my room in a safe and I’m supposed to call him to get the code to my safe. Well I didn’t have a phone but some other man was waiting and he said that he had called the manager cause the battery of the safe was out. Oh how convenient. Thank god that guy was there. He was pretty tight. He was from Holland and for the last few weeks he’s been riding his bicycle from Holland all the way to Berlin. That’s pretty insane. Out of the four different groups of people waiting to check-in I was definitely the youngest, and by youngest I mean the only one who still has all their hair left.
But I’m not gonna complain because I paid for a twin room and the guy gave me a room with 5 BEDS and its all the way at the top so the only stuff that’s on my floor is my room, the bathroom, and shower. It’s like a whole section of the house to myself. It doesn’t look like there’s anyone else near me.
Last thing I’m going to say. I think the hostel guy thinks I’m a terrorist or something. When I asked to use the internet he made me sign an agreement saying I cant download anything (this part is understandable). But then he kept emphasizing (like 6 times) that I cannot contact Obama bin Laden or do anything that associates with him. ARE YOU SERIOUS? I’m one single girl and I’m Armenian, geeeeeeez. I was like umm…all I need to do is email my mom so she knows I got here safe, and then the buttface said it again!


So its my second full day in Berlin and today a few of us that are already in Berlin went sightseeing. We took the U-Bahn all the way to downtown Berlin and walked for hours and I mean hours looking at anything and everything. It was ridiculously hot and humid even when it was overcast but that’s okay because it made for perfect picture weather. We saw the Brandenburg Gate, the Bundesrat, the Reichstag, the Holocaust Memorial. We also walked through Alexanderplatz and along the Spree River. And of course after 2 wrong U-Bahns and one right S-Bahn we finally got to the Berlin Wall! Its pretty cool because the former East side of the wall is all white since there used to be guards who guarded it and wouldn’t let people get near it and then there’s the West side that’s all spray painted and awesome since the people were free and allowed to approach the wall. The only place in all of Berlin where it is legal to do graffiti is on the Berlin Wall. So me and my peeps are gonna go back with spray cans and spray paint our names onto the wall. Excuse me, but how freaking COOL is that? Pretty darn cool. Oh and another interesting fact that I learned from a friend (aka my German translating savior, who without her I would be a lost foreigner in a land of beer) is that you can tell whether you’re in the former East or West is by the little people in the streetlights, there different little green and red people and that’s how you can tell. ☺
Tomorrow most all of the group will be arriving in Berlin so it’ll be cool to see everyone meet each other.

T-4 Days

Still haven't packed yet (go figure) BUT I did find a suitcase so I'm not freaking out about that anymore. Sadly, I don't think my bags are going to be filled to their fullest seeing that I'm trying to be practical with my packing.... I guess that's a good thing?
I did however think about some of the things that I really want to do over the next 4 months, that is unless I die of hypothermia, which (thanks to my socal wardrobe) is a likely possibility.

Here it is:

- eat a black forest cake while IN the Black Forest
- hike in the Bavarian Alps--I figured, I've gone white river rafting down the Swiss Alps, now its time for the Bavarian ones :)
- travel travel travel travel travel anywhere and EVERYWHERE- preferably more of Eastern Europe this time
- become as fluent as I can in German (which might be tough seeing that I speak NO German)
- start liking sausages (I might just have to force myself to do this, I remember not really liking German food the last time I was there but that was 3 years ago so......)
- try all different kinds of beer
- go to an opera concert
- go to a soccer game
- go to as many museums/historical landmarks/parks/shows/concerts/etc as I can
- learn to live/eat/drink like a German
- make the absolute most out of my time abroad
- touch what's left of the Berlin Wall
- go to Oktoberfest
- dip my toes in the Baltic Sea and the North Sea (this may just be the reason I die of hypothermia) 
- take a ride on the Rhine River
- that's all I could think of now...

11 days until take-off!

This is my first blog....EVER. So not only should you guys feel honored to be a part of this pivotal point in my life (the posting of my first blog) but also feel free to ooooooo and awe at me in my absence.

Okay so as my title says, I have 11 days until I leave and I have done NOTHING. When I say nothing I mean I don't even have a suitcase. I did, however, buy a cute pair of boots but that's about it. Procrastination you say? Well I like to think of it as a challenge.

I'll try to keep this as updated as possible mostly so you don't forget about me but also because I want my family and friends to know what's going on without having to tell you kiddos individually.

bis später!