Welcome to my blog! I figured I'd take this semester to jump on the study-abroad blog bandwagon, and I hope that I'll be fairly consistent with updates. For those of you who don't know, I'll be studying in Münster, Germany for the next four months to fulfill the language immersion requirement of my German minor, get some research experience for my history major, and hopefully be able to see a lot of Germany! (I guess seeing some cathedrals, eating schnitzel, and mastering the European train system won't be too bad, either...)
Tonight's my last night at Luther before heading home for a few days to finish getting ready (read: start packing!) to go to Münster next Thursday. Where is Münster, you might ask? Münster is in very northwest Germany, about three to four hours east of Amsterdam by train. It's a city about equal in size to Madison, Wisconsin, and I'll be living with a host family while I'm there. Academics-wise, I'll be taking four classes: two German langage classes, an ethics class about the Jews in Germany, and my history seminar class about the Black Death in the fourteenth century. I'll be taking the classes with seven other students from Luther, and our classes will be taught by either our Luther faculty advisors, or graduate students from the local university, from what I understand.
I'm ridiculously excited to go--I was talking to a friend the other day who had studied in Africa, and we were commenting on how we have traveled places for short periods of time (me: Europe, her: Africa), but we'd spent much of our time since then figuring out how to get back to those places! However, I realize that I'll be leaving behind many people and places that I'm probably going to miss very much in the coming months, so in true David Letterman style, I thought I'd leave you with my very own top-ten list of things I will miss about the United States.
10. readily-available peanut butter
9. Koren hall at Luther College
8. t-shirts with writing on them
7. cheeseburgers
6. People magazine
5. Wednesday night Eucharist
4. free diet coke refills
3. free public restrooms
2. my dog and cats
1. friends and family :)
