I know that I really have not been writing on this blog often at all, and I'm sorry. Hopefully someday I will be able to begin blog entries without apologies.

Anyway, classes started last Monday (the 12th). I'm taking a German class from 9 to 12 Monday through Thursday, so that's a lot of German. But my teacher is really nice and I am learning a lot. Some Thursdays we have field trips, and today we went to the Berlin Zoo for class. It was really cold walking around, but we got to see elephants, lions, bears, monkeys, a hippopotamus, and the famous Knut (a polar bear born in the Berlin Zoo and really famous for being ridiculously cute. Unfortunately, he's grown up and is not as cute as the baby Knut was).

I am also taking a class called Contemporary Germany in European Perspective and one on the Architecture in Berlin. The one on Contemporary Germany in European Perspective is about how Germany deals with its past and how that shapes its politics and culture today. It focuses both on Germany and how it fits into Europe as a whole. I think it will be interesting and the professor (who is also the program director) is a really good lecturer. So far, we've had a brief overview of German history and a look at the political parties and happenings in the post World War II and Cold War eras in both West and East Germany.

In my architecture class, we will go through all of the time periods and styles of architecture in Berlin. We look at a lot of photos of buildings in class and my professor incorporates the history and other things that influenced the architecture of the time. Last class, we talked about a very influential architect in the 1800s named Karl Friedrich Schinkel.

In both of my classes, we are assigned projects that involve going to certain places in the city, so I am excited for these classes to help me see more of the city that I would on my own. And the information is definitely much more interesting because I am here and the places are familiar and close. It's pretty cool getting to learn about stuff in the place you are and being in the place where you get to learn about stuff!

Tomorrow I'm leaving to go to Leipzig and Dresden, two cities that are about 2 hours south of Berlin. I'll take lots of pictures and write all about it!

P.S. I've uploaded pictures onto facebook, so check them out if you'd like!