2 month and life caught up to me

Yeah, that's right I totally can't believe it myself, today I am already here for 2 month, doesn't it sound sooo crazy and very long??? but it kind of isn't. And life really got me now. Two weeks ago the new semester started and since then so many things have been happening.

                                                    (Britta & Carmen alias Amanda)

I have 5 different courses now and they are all in spanish. After monday isn't really my day I decided not to take any classes that day, means I am starting out every tuesday around noon with Organizational Behaviour, which is really a great class, the only thing is this Professor is really, really talking fast, so I usually don't understand much in class, but I am getting better, another little disturbing thing or lets just say I am not used to it anymore, we have to read for this class every week 2 chapters in the book and also have cases and articles to work through and then at least once a week is a test to it, the bad thing is even if you read it, but you didn't really get what its about, you have no chance... but I decided I will manage somehow :D like always. Then later on tuesdays I have my chilean culture class, that's kind of learning spanish over topics like history, economics, politics and so on... we will see how it goes, we just had it once till now and it was nice, but the teacher also seemed a bit strange.  That's my whole tuesday at 8 in the evening I am finished. After the big workload all over I decided it's better to have good breaks, so wednesday is my study day, where I review everything for my thursday classes and read a lot... we will see how this great idea works out. Thursday then is my longest day I packed it kind of. In the morning, that means 9.45 I start with Psycology, which I think is a great class, the professor is really nice and it'S fun being there, also if I only understand like have of that what is said, soon it will be more so. After a short lunch break, where I go home to eat, so nice walk 5 houses up the street or the hill of street and you are home and get lunch :D, I have Orga Behaviour again, at least there are other exchange students in there too. First time we had to search for our thursday room it is not so easy, because the entrance for it is actually not in the building, it is outside, on the backside of the building, a bit hidden, but that's what you need to know first. But anyways found it and at least still kind of on time, here somehow is the rule, 5 minutes late and you can't join anymore and every class they check names if everybody is there, you miss a few classes, you fail. So after this one I was actually going to take Negotiation and Conflict Management, but after sitting in one time, it was just too boring, after I heard a lot of the stuff tought already in other courses, so I wanted to switch, but it was really not easy to find anything suitable, which didn't fall on other classes, because most things are at the same time as spanish, which I totally need or they don't work out with my friday class. So I just took the easiest decision and kind of one and only option anyways and switched into Stefans Modern Political Theories class, which is long not one of the easiest, but pretty interesting. At the moment we are discussing Skinner. Half of the time it's kind of class discussion, which is hard to follow, but we will also catch up on that one. Thursday evening I can tell you, you are just happy to be done and can'T wait for friday to come and be over as well. Fridays then I chose to take development economics, which is really interesting so far and also good to understand, the professor always has ppts and lots of examples and so on which make my life easier :D This class is afternoon filling and then it's suddenly or more finally weekend. 

                                                            (great new friends)

Actually I guess everybody should go out by that time, but I didn't feel like it today. I kind of, no idea how, caught a cold yesterday. All in all that fits to my not too good week so. I mean it should have been good after not having lectures before thursday because tuesday and wednesday afternoon were of f because of first semester activities. The story is like this so. Monday was still ok just a lot of reading, tuesday started out fine as well, but then it started. In the afternoon was this first semester event , where I didn't go to so. It was somewhere out of the city, with a big field, a pool and apparently a stage, but no idea, Stefan went and said it was nice. The next day so we heard that some student got hurt at the pool and was in the hospital, what you hear, he is paralized and will be disabled, that was really shocking to hear, the next morning the had a big thing at the university build up, kind of like church for an hour outside in front of the buildings. Back to tuesday night so, in the evening was also a party for the first semesters in a club in our neighbor city.  We went to eat some Pizza first with the Australiens, we were so stuffed afterwards, so we just stayed at there place for another hour and then went to the club. When we arrived after a little bus ride, we still had to walk for a bit and it was so wierd, we just walked by some buildings and the one had the door open and of course the guys wanted to go in, I am sooo happy they didn't, cause when we were right at the doorstep and adjusted our eyes to the dark, we saw it's not really going in anymore, it's only going down down down, so it was like and old building only the outside walls left and nothing then darkness inside. I finally got everybody to go to the club, but they said they wanna go back later on, I was so happy that they forgor about it, after it really looked very dangerous. When we arrived at the club it was nice, but it was interesting, I mean everywhere here everybody needs to show there ID to come in, but there they also searched you and you purse. It was really great, it looked like an old fabric building which was turned into a club with different areas. We started out going on the roof, from there you had a great view and just a few minutes later the dance instructor came, up there was the Salsa area, which was fun. The guys went right away and tried and I took pictures, later on when the others came we were really trying so :D with more or less success. Later on we went downstairs and tried out all the other areas. Around 4 or 4.30 the club closed and everybody had to go home, that's when the next step of life over here started. In front of the club were a lot of busses to bring everybody home, so we just went to them and climbed in and I was already inside but still on the steps and somebody got my purse... It was so wierd and fast, I didn't even see anybody. I had my purse in my hand and under my arm, but whoever it took, cut it, ripped really hard and was gone. But not to worry too much after I had heard that Valpo was dangerous I didn't take much, I had my keys in my pockets and in my purse was only a copy of my passport, some snacks and so on and about 400 peso, what is around 50 cents. So I am sad about my lost purse, but happy that nothing important is gone, but now I kind of say, I totally arrived in South America. The next day then I heard, I was not the only victim, two friends got their jackets stolen, in one was all the money, cell phone and key, so not so nice, but still nothing what couldn't be replaced. 

                                                           (first tries in Salsa)

The story of the week doesn't end with this so, we kind of got a bill for the studyfees, I mean we don't directly have it yet, but you could say it's  like in the mail, so we know we probably will have to pay next week, which will totally throw my bank account out of balance after I still didn't hear anything from germany... Life goes on so, better days will come.Yesterday night we went to another friends place, to a little housewarming, which was really nice and afterwards we had late night food at Mc Donalds and crazy Thomas spent us a Taxi ride home. Gracias ;)So that's about it from me for today. Later on Isi will come and visit, which will finally bring some noise back to the house and I have to read a lot and a lot over this weekend, about 300 or 400 pages, don't even know how to do this yet, hopefully at least my spanish will improve with this and I also have to find an internship, still don't really know what I should do, any ideas?

I hope you all are doing great, will talk to you soon, have a great weekend, I miss you all                      

another weekend, another post

Hola my friends,

today I am writing you again. I have to say so, I am kind of tired after we came home late or better early in the morning and then just a few hours afterwards those construction guys started working on the roof or something, but at least it's saturday.

Maybe you wanna know something more about life over here. The first thing you should know, when you go to the grocery stores and you already have bag in your hands you need to go to the guy at the entrance and he puts a tape strip over it, that shows that you are not intending to steal anything. Then when you are once in, it's pretty easy to find the right things you are looking for. You can find a lot of european and US-products everybody knows, the only wierd thing is, you can find like a lot of things sold in bags, for example you don't buy Mayo and yam in a glass or bottle, even ketchup is sold in bags. If you want to buy bread, doesn't matter where it's sold by weight, so you pick first what you want put it in a bag and go and wait in line to put it on the scale :D If you wanna buy meat at the butcher you need, like almost everywhere over here, pull a number first and wait you turn, I guess it's a good thing after everybody tries to cut in line over here whereever he can. At the register then you usually have to wait for a whole while too...

Maybe more now to the last week, like most of you might already know on Monday we had Orientation Day, that meant we actually had the information that we have spanish class first at 9 and then an meeting at 12 where we were supposed to get all the important information. But then we came at 9 and couldn't find any class so we went to the international office, where we already met other people with the same problem and then we all went to the language office where we were told that classes will start on tuesday, but that was okay after by then it was already 20 to 10 and our informationmeeting was moved up to 10, the only thing then was at least half of the internationals wasn't there for it after everybody who didn't take spanish didn't know. The introduction was good so, we got our new university email, our RUT we need to have for the inranet and our moodle login, yeah right, they are also using moodle over here, just called different, bu the same program. Then the AKI from here greeted us and we got a campus tour, which ended in a nice room with couple couches and food, we all sat down and the professors came to introduces themselves. It was nice two of them directly came to talk to me, they spoke german so :D Then we had time to get to know everybody from the internationals, which was great, I would guess we are about 50 or 60, not sure so. Everybody is really nice. It didn't help my spanish so, after the english speaking group was formed in a sec, Carmen was there again and we met all the crazy Aussies and figured out that we live pretty close to each other, the best thing ever after most students live on the other end of the city. On tuesday then spanish started, which went pretty okay as long as nobody asked me a question. Later on that day we checked out where the guys live and spend a fantastic evening. The rest of the week pretty much just went on with classes and tons of homework. Yesterday then we had Carrete Benvenida, the welcome party for us internationals. So the guys wanted to play poker before, so Britta and me decided to visit Carmen first, the only problem we didn't exactly know where she lives :D So we just took the bus to the Mall and started asking around for the right building, the problem with this was, there are 4 buildings belonging together and we didn't know into which on we have to go, so we just went in one and asked the guy at the desk, yeah, they have a guy at a desk in the building to announce visitors, he checked but didn't find her name ( later on we found out, she hadn't signed in yet, after she just moved in a week ago) so anyways I said okay then lets just go to the Mall a bit and later on we will surley just meet somebody on the street we know and who knows :D And totally when we left the Mall about an hour later, the guys were standing right in front of us at the light :P we were lucky they were an hour late for poker. We went with them to the game place after it was in the samebuilding and just a minute after sitting down, Thomas, Britta, Pierre and me decided it's actually more fun to just show up at Carmens door then calling first ( he knew her apartment number) The only difficult thing was figuring out the elevators some go only to the high floors where we were at at that moment some go up to the lower once and some hidden once go there where we  wanted to go to, but after some tries and meeting new people, by knocking on wrong doors we finally found it and decided to just hang out at her balcony for a bit. It really has an amazing view. It got a bit later and then more people showed up and then the game was over and even more people showed up, so about 3 hours late we decided to move over to the next building to the actual party. The Party was great, meeting lots of fun new people. When we decided to go home, we were surprised that a bus was still going in hour direction, I mean it was about 3 in the morning ( 10 hours after I left the house), some people just come in and bring there on party cds and going by bus from the one to the next city :D I was then in bed by 4 and like I said at the before had to wake up sooo early, but doesn't matter anymore, I am tired but 10 more minutes and we are gone again over to the Aussies, there roommate is cooking for us tonight :D

So talk to you all soon, have a great sunday and I will post pictures tomorrow or some time 

Hi everybody,

this time it took me a bit longer to write something again, but I just felt a bit lazy the last days and had to deal with a lot other stuff first.

So what's new? First of all we got to meet two really nice girls which will study with us, Carmen alias Amanda and Maria :) Then we spend a lot of time at the beach, the mall, the city, went to a couple of Bars and finally found German Beer :D The one Bar at the City has Paulaner. In between I got to talk with a lot of you guys, I just love to hear all the news from all over the world. By the way, hi Mazen, I didn't forget and said hello from you ;)

Last weekend was like you all know Stefans Birthday, I made him a card, which I loaded up to his facebook, but for all of you who didn't see it, I will put it in here as well :D  After he was taking congrats all morning, he didn't see that our hostmom and me prepared "Käsespätzle" for him for lunch, I hope he liked them, after it was my first time making spätzle, the family also blew up ballons and as dessert he got a big cake with a lot of cream and everybody was singing. Then I thought what else would he like... and after we didn't have enough food already Claudia and me decided to bake triple fudge brownies, yam. So I just hope he enjoyed the day. In the evening then was Oscar night and we even got to watch about the first 15 minutes together, then Stefan was talking again :) After a while I couldn't stand the spanish talking over the normal oscar speaker voices anymore, so I found myself a livestream showing online, I am just happy that we have kind of fast internet. It was so fun watching and commenting everything with Florian, who was watching in Germany. If you read this, I am sure in maybe ten or twenty years from now, we will be there ;)

Yesterday then was on one side a good on the other a bad day. So good things first, at lunch the family said they think that they can already see an improvment in my spanish that really made me happy and I am going to continue working on it :) Then in the afternoon I found out that I still have problems with my paper work from home, most of you know what I mean, I can just say 8 month and I am still waiting... But luckily I have the greatest friends in the world thanks so much Börni, Lila and Jannis and also Ugur for always being so nice and making my days all better.

Now to come to an end I have a question, because I had a little discussion today and I would like to know what you think about it. Somehow the topic colonies came up and that Spain and Portugal did great and now many many people speak spanish and portugese, but anyways I said yeah one reason could be that they are directly at the Ocean and then I was told that Germany is directly at the Ocean, too, but for me the Baltic Sea is no Ocean it is just a Sea with a connection to the Ocean. I will put  a questionnaire to this on the side ;)

Talk to you all really soon, Miss you guys

A big Hallo from far far Away :D

The weekend is over and I thought it is about time for a new post :)

Like I told you guys we wanted to go to Santiago on friday, we went already on thursday then, plans change quickly over here. For the trip we had to get up early, what is early? In Chile 7 am is early ;) In the car we were told that we go an a bit longer way, so we can see some of the area. And it was really beautiful we drove up the hills and down the mountains through the countryside. On some spots you had totally amazing views. On the way we also got a little inside on the history of Chile. Then we arrived at the house where Yolandas mom and sister live. The first impression was great you drive through the gate and just see a house and a lot of gras all around and in the background you can see the mountains. We got out of the car and were friendly welcomed by everybody and then a few people started running, we weren't fast enough closing the gate and one of the horse was gone, but happily only for 5 minutes. Yeah that was the next thing there were 2 horses just walking through the garden :D  Now everybody changed in their bathing suits and relaxed in the sun next or in the pool. Then suddenly 3 other cars arrived with more people and cooking could start. That's anothere nice thing, I have never seen anybody having a kitchen in the garden... It was really like this, you have a little pavillion thingy open to everyside, just a roof and on the one side is a big freezer, kind of like in the grocery store just not as big as there and some shelves and a big stove. Then right behind it outside under a tree was a sink to wash dishes and get water. It was a totally relaxing day, spend most time laying in the sun, in the afternoon we got the german newspaper from chile to read and the man of the house came home, who has lived a few years in Germany and knew german and english, so finally somebody we could talk to ;) Then his son in law came as well, he is french and knows some german as well, yeah :) It got late and we started to pack up and drive home, this time we took the way directly through the city and I have to say also I haven't seen much of Santiago yet, I already love it. I totally have to go again pretty soon.

Friday was a more quiet day I went to the City for a while, but it was sooo hot. At the moment they also have a ton of events down at the beach and some famous people show up from time to time, so the blog streets and you have people everywhere, but it's nice to watch, it's so funny how some screaming girlies jump up and down on the outside of a fence to get a look to a star, I didn't even know who the person was... Next week the Festival the Vina will start so and everybody is preparing for it, then the real famous people come, I think this year Sting will be here and Carlos Santana and I forgot who else, I'll tell you later.

Then all over the weekend I did a lot of stuff with the family and I took a walk with Stefan out to the Mall which is nice, I did a lot of window shopping. In Zara you can even find sometimes still the Euro Price tags. Yesterday we went to the fair for a few minutes and ate Churros while Isi went on a karussel.  I also got to talk to Giulia and Clara, which was soo nice, finally seeing them again. In the evening then we had game night again and Stefan got a new minus record of all times from everybody, which came pretty sudden after he played good in the first round. I was middle like always not very good but also not that bad.

This morning then we went to a little spot with a great view over the City and I was just there for a minute and a car pulls up and people getting out, in that moment I already knew I am not alone, Germans are here :P and it was like it the came closer and were talking german. I wouldn't have said anything but after Yolanda heard they are from Germany she told them I was too... They were nice people from Nothern Germany and here to visit.

That's about it from me again, at the moment I am waiting for lunch to be ready and afterwards I guess we will go find a copy shop to finally get everything we still need for the studentsvisa, which we will hopefully have soon so we can do all the other office running and also get a cell phone.

So hasta luego and keep me posted about what's going on in the rest of the world!

Follow Up - Semester End :)

And because it was so nice, here is another one, soon to be continued on Stefans blog ;)

Some changes in plans, looks like we don't travel this week, but there is a reason ;) We probably go to Santiago over the weekend :D

Just a little thing to remember good old times :)

Welcome from the great country of Chile,

another week has gone by. All in all I sadly have to admit nothing very interesting happened. Most of the time I was busy working on the finance case studies, which I finally finished. Thank you Anni and also Jurriaan for printing ;) Then there was the beach time with relaxing and a couple of times walking around the city. And of course not to forget all the great chats with you guys, being at Annis Birthday cake eating event was really almost like being back in DEG and all the interesting, sometimes wierd, but really great and fun talks with?, yeah, you, Ugur, who gave me Motivation to go on working :D , you already saved my day again today with your great guest book entry ;)   (--> I already told him I will write something ;) )

So now to what's new. Stefan and me finally came up with a place we both want to travel to, the only bad thing is we tried to book it, but, wierd system here, you can't book the bus online, if you don't have a tax number... Anyhow, doesn't matter we will go tomorrow into the city and try our luck with booking it directly, I can just hope that the people will understand what we want from them :D Oh, yeah you might want to know where we actually want to go to now ;) It's a city called Pucón in the lake area of Chile, which is about 900km from Vina and will take us 12 1/2 hours in a night bus. I will search a picture and put it in here ;)

Then last night we had a game night with the family here, primarly to learn more spanish and spend some time with them. It was fun, we drank a lot of peach wine and played a game which seemed at the beginning a bit like romée, but it wasn't and I forgot the name, something what sounded close to karaoke, but it was fun.

Okay I will go on with studying spanish now, after I have to improve fast, so I will be ready to talk, when Sergio calls to practise :D

Miss you all