A trip to the Zoo

Since we've got the DSH on Monday (the equivalent of the English TOEFL), we decided not to go on a trip anywhere since we all want/need to study. But, we did go to the zoo for a couple hours! Located in Neuenheimer Feld, and a two minute bike ride from my room, is the Heidelberg Zoo. It's fairly small, but had a good number of animals to see. I'm not big on zoos and can't even remember the last time I went to one before today, but it was a pretty fun time. We were all kind of sad to see the animals though, because they all just look so sad :( I think out of everywhere we've gone though, I could understand the conversations of people around me here best, since I know animal vocabulary, and everyone there was families with small children, so they weren't talking in a complicated fashion. Here are some pics!





Now I'm writing this blog post to procrastinate studying...so what else happened this week? On Thursday afternoon, Katherine, Monika, and I had our meeting at the DAI (German-American Institute) where we will be interning this semester. Our "boss" is very nice, and encouraged us to travel on the weekends which was great to hear since we were a bit worried he'd be wanting us to work on weekends. We'll be interning in the library==the only public English library in the city-- doing all sorts of different projects and tasks, and we also must help out with one evening event per week. It's a very bilingual institute so it'll be interesting to be switching in and out of the two languages.

All of this past week was BEAUTIFUL weather. Spring has really started here in Heidelberg, and although it's gorgeous and warm, I'm also dying. My allergies were mild all week until yesterday, which was probably a top ten worst allergy day of my life. I probably sneezed 200 times, I went through an entire roll of toilet paper blowing my nose (I currently look like Rudolph) and my eyes looked like I was doped up on way too many drugs. I don't believe in allergy medicine because nothing has ever worked for me back home for my entire life, but desperate times meant that I would give German meds a shot. I went to the Apotheke and bought a small dose of allergy tablets and we'll see if they work. Yesterday afternoon, a group of people went out to play boccie ball and drink some G&Ts, but I had to stay in my room all afternoon with a washcloth on my face. I'm much better today (though it's grey skies and a 20 degree lower temp) but hopefully I'll be able to avoid days like yesterday.

Yesterday was also the last day of our intensive German class! Four weeks, four hours a day at the crack of dawn (Okay, 8:45am is not the crack of dawn, but after having class at noon every day last semester, it was pretty early) just sitting in class drilling German grammar is finally over! The class got a lot better after we got halfway through, but we are all just relieved that it's over. As I said, we've got the DSH Monday, and then we don't start classes for the semester until April 11--two weeks of nothing but traveling!

So I should get back to studying...something I seem to have forgotten how to do (LOL)