A "real" week in Wuppertal.

As I have told many of you, classes were to start this week. So far, I have had a placement test for my German course, annnnd that's it. We were told that the course would begin on Monday. I have gotten some other things figured out though. I went to speak to people in the Music department this last week. I have gotten things straightened out there. I am now ready to take trumpet and piano lessons. I guess it is a requirement here that one has not one, but two musical talents. The most popular combination is piano as a major and voice as a minor. They, in fact, have no trumpet students at the moment. The actual program, as I understand it, is only music pedagogy.

I have my first piano lesson tomorrow, and I have no idea what I will be doing. I have no piano books with me, and I don't play piano very well. All of the other piano students are more than able to play a four part hymn (arguably the most difficult part of Bethel's piano proficiency and one of maybe two remaining pieces on my journey to the Class Piano wall of fame). I tried to make it clear to the music faculty that I was a beginner, but we will see on Monday if it's clear to the piano professor. I also have been in contact with the director of the orchestra here. The first meeting of the orchestra is on Monday, and I will find out more then. I am excited to be able to play music with people again. That is a big part of my everyday experience at home, that hasn't yet been present here. For trumpet lessons, I have received an e-mail from the man who teaches trumpet here at Uni-Wuppertal. It was kind of ambiguous. Essentially he introduced himself, and gave me some contact information. I am not sure if I need to take the initiative to schedule a lesson with him, or if he does that, or if the university does that. I e-mailed him back saying I was interested in taking lessons with him, and asked him what I needed to do. It has been a few days already, but I haven't heard back.

This week has been a week of welcome. At Bethel, this would mean there would be "fun" all-American events every night, like an ice cream social, or a movie night. Here at Wuppertal, that means that there will be huge parties every night, sometimes on the very university campus (maybe in the on campus bar). I have met some really friendly people here. Mostly through international student events. There is a international students team that helps with on campus living, and there is one that is more general call team that helps with the exchange students. There are some truly welcoming people there. For some reason they have been very complimentary of my German. Everybody seems to be surprised that I have only been studying German for 4 years. So, good work Merle (my German professor).

Tomorrow we find out how we did on the placement exam. There are 6 levels of German A1 (complete beginner), A2, B1, B2, C1, C2 (mastery). I was placed in the B1 group at the German Language School in Berlin. The German courses here (for the exchange students) only go through B2, so hopefully I will be in B2 here. If I were to count the words that I have spoken in German before coming to Wuppertal, and compared that number with the number of German words I have spoken since being here in Wuppertal, I am sure that the second number would be at least 3 times larger. The German language is beginning to gel in my mind. I feel less and less like I am thinking in English, and translating into German. I still have a long way to go, but the progress I can see in myself is encouraging.

So since I didn't have any photos last week I will try to put up extra this week.

A trip to Dusseldorf.

Sunset on the Rhine.

Out my window.

--Austin