Fall is Here!

I woke up today to find leaves falling off of the trees outside my window- it finally feels like fall! I'm not sure if I'm happy about it or not... being here in the fall makes me miss everything about fall at home- the hot caramel apple cider's from Starbucks, sugar donuts and cider from Yates, college football (but I managed to watch the MSU/UM game online!!!!), Albion & Rochester hoemcoming, and Halloween. But I suppose that having nothing to do for a weekend would give me lots of time to think about that kind of stuff- lesson learned: plan something for every weekend!!!

Not that I didn't have about a million pounds of homework to do. I FINALLY had my first week of classes! So far so good, but I have lots of homework to do. IES wasn't kidding when they said that German University is more self directed... I have about 75 pages of reading to do- all in German! I finally decided on all of my classes: German (4 credits), Media, Politics, and Society (3 credits), Intercultural Competencies and Communications (3 credits), German Politics (3 credits), and German Films (3 credits) = 16 credits! Not bad for two months- our syllabuses are silly looking. We have a month of class, midterms, another month of class, then finals. Putting it into perspective like that really showed me that I don't have much time left here- even though I've already been here about a month and a half.

I got my fifth and last roommate last week when I got home from Berlin. His name is Antonio and he is from Spain and VERY excited to be here. Someone told me (who knows the Spanish culture) that he is typical Spanish- very friendly, almost overbearingly, and tries to get us to do things with him all the time like eat, drink, go out together, etc etc. But he is very nice and LOVES to clean, so I don't hate that! But his german is almost impossible to understand, so I have to talk to him in English.

Overall a good week and I'm looking forward to the next- and praying that I don't get the same amount of homework!
P.S. Happy Birthday Dad!! (and Aunt Sue (today) and Mutti (last Friday))