The First Few Days

The last couple of days have been very exciting, and I have seen so many incredible things. My confidence in my German has improved immensely over the last few days, which has been a rather large barrier in improving my language skills. The city is absolutely amazing, the integration of the old and new architecture is so fascinating. The first day was not all that exciting, but we spent some time with Berton, our host family's son, and interacting with him was fun. It was a bit nerve-racking at first to communicate in only German, but I quickly adjusted and now I am much more comfortable with it. After Berton left, we went to bed around 5, as our host family was not yet home and we were exhausted from the day's travels.

Yesterday, we met Kudret and Hasan for the first time, and they are amazing people. They speak only German with us, so our language skills are improving with each conversation. After we left to meet up with the group for the day, we explored the area surrounding Französischestraße. Sights included the Fassbender und Rausch, Checkpoint Charlie, and Potsdamerplatz. Once we left the group for the day, Ryan, Sam and I ended up wandering the streets for approximately four hours, just exploring and seeing what we might stumble upon. We eventually found the Siegelsäule and the Brandonburg Tor, as well as the Berliner Dom and Alexanderplatz. By the time we made it back to the home of the host family, we were exhausted from all of the activities of the day.

Today was quite a busy day as well, we spent the morning learning about the history behind the Wall, and then went on to visit the Reichstag. The tour was both interesting and a bit boring (in my opinion). The tour guide presented the material in such a way as it felt dry to me, yet the material was mostly interesting and parts of the building we visited were quite interesting. Other than that, we didn't really do a whole lot afterwards. We decided to head back to have dinner with the family and work on some homework, and are now discussing what-ifs in history.