ee-bee-ass part i

It’s 2.58pm here in Hattenheim, Germany, and yes - I am finally starting to blog. To those who are new to the blog, welcome! Entertain yourself while you can for it won’t be long before you realize that:

1) I am not a very consistent blogger (read: im lazy)
2) There’s really nothing very exciting about my life. Which reminds me: I came across this picture on postsecret a while back.

How apt.

Anyways! This is officially my 1st blog entry of 2008! How exciting! I always thought I should begin my year with a list of resolutions or something along those lines. But I guess being the unconventional blogger (yes. I am afraid this means the same thing as lazy) that I am, that wont be the case. Arh wells.

Okaes! So! To the main point of this entry – my EXCHANGE! it’s been a week since I left Singapore (which reminds me that I haven’t called home since last Thurs. hmm) it’s been a busy busy week, although I have the slackest timetable (read: everyone else is having corp finance class now, whilst i am here, blogging away!) the classes here are really strange. Like for one of the marketing courses I am taking, there is only 1 class to attend. And I get like 3 ECTS for that. Hurhurhur. I am so not complaining. So far I have only been to 2 german classes here. So yea. The school is really small too, so I guess everything here is really very different from spore (:

donnerstag. (thurs)
qatar air sucks. Its been such a long time since I experienced motion sickness on airplane (think: indo trip in pri one when I puked the entire choc donut in the middle of jakarta aiport). the flight was experiencing so much turbulence that i wondered if:

1) sky was made of clouds, hence the pilot couldn’t see well
2) rush hour 3 was so bad i was shuddering excessively
3) there was even is a pilot

so yea. I puked like twice. One on each flight. But if there was any consolation, I am really getting better at this. The 1st time I managed to reach for a bag in time (nevermind the bag had holes. Ewww. I know) the 2nd time I was able to make it to the loo (even had a conversation with stewardess on how I am not allowed to use the business class toilet which was 5 rows away from my seat. Had to walk all the way to the back for the correct one). But yes. I puked into the sink. Talk about social responsibility.

We arrived quite promptly at frankfurt flughafen international airport and after some confusion and lost-in-translations, we managed to locate the driver.

Flat 5, Rheinstr. 14, 65347 Hattenheim, Germany

Flat was alright I guess. We stayed on the 3rd floor, so it was crazy having to lug the 21.5kg backpack all the way up. Met our roommate – mathilde, from paris and she’s really nice! Yays! We have officially arrived!!!!

Night was spent cleaning up the very dirty room. Found a mothballs-filled drawer with ritter sport wrapper. great.

view from my window!

freitag.
one day tour to frankfurt with the other exchange students. anne frank museum was my 1st encounter with this country so deeply rooted with war and history.

(1,2) view of frankfurt (3) "the working man" (4) my almost-was-university (5) smu exchange students! (6) frankfurt messe (ala spore expo) (7) paulplatz (8) maggi shop!!! (9) discussion after anne frank musuem tour

day ended with drinks at a tower-looking pub along hauptwache.

L-R: mathilde, me, hong, caroline, yinghao, huifen

samstag.

wiesbaden is probably the next closest thing we can get to civilization besides frankfurt. It was nice walking down the streets, just looking around. Just as we were contemplating whether to cook or eat out, we receive news that caroline’s roommates have arrived!

(1,2) fresh veggies at wiesbaden street market (3) caroline with her french-german dictionary (4,5,6) attempt at artistic pics of random buildings (7) smelly cheese! (8) girls! (9) at the Heidenmauer ("Heathen Wall") - the last remnants of the Roman fortifications of Aquae Mattiacorum.

sonntag.
went for my 1st jog in germany with huifen. headed to school in the afternoon to use the internet after being “deprived” of it for 3 days (singaporeans! guilty as charged!) flat was supposed to be equipped with wireless. but so was hot water and good heating. bahhh. oh. we rented a bike each too. coz burg campus is around 30mins away on foot, so we thought we could save some time + effort by paying 10 euros a month. Yes. I know what you are thinking. I will try not to - get knocked down by a car / run over a dog / crash into a wall / fall into the vineyards.

montag.
german class in the morning! Just as we thought we were late for class (germans are famous for being punctual) turns out the office told us the wrong reporting time. 4 hours of “how-are-yous” and “my-name-is-xinyu” in german is taxing but we survived alright. settled some admin stuff back in schloss and we hit the supermarket* in the evening. 2 guys and 2 girls shopping meant a filled-trolley with grocery ranging from mushroom sauce to table cloth to baileys. Bill total: 71.99 euros. ntuc has never seem so appealing.

*supermarket in hattenheim (or germany, in general) is a place where:
- shopping bags have to be purchased. Price range from 25 cents to 1 euro, depending on material.
- glass/plastic bottles can be recycled for money! It has since become our fav. activity (read: obsession) here – to collect bottles
- a place where we hang out, when we don’t have anything better to do.

Pushed trolley back all the way from rewe coz the guys explained that it is more economical to spend 50 cents on a trolley den on shopping bags.

Vik arrived that night, safe and sound!