Uni starts tomorrow. It's been a busy month: I've packed up everything, moved to Kiel, got enrolled at the university, had my international orientation, met the other students in my degree, completed all my government stuff, and have just generally gotten myself settled. I begin my classes tomorrow with a class on the finite element method and my German class. I'm barely ready. I only just bought a notebook and some pens. The other people studying climate physics all seem super intelligent and have gone on awesome research expeditions or research trips abroad, and so I'm convinced that I'll have a lot of catching up to do over the next two years. They are really nice and friendly, so I think I will have a good time. It will just be very difficult, and I will realize very soon just how little I know about oceanography!
On the language side of things, my German is getting a bit better. My vocab is getting better from reading German signs everywhere, and I'm working on being more courageous in my speaking. Kiel is not an area where everyone can speak English. The college students all can, and so we usually speak English, but there are a lot of areas where that isn't a given. And, of course, those are the areas where the problems always occur ;) I speak in German when I am out and about, but as I rarely have conversations with complete strangers, the conversational practice still comes as a surprise. But it's getting there. I don't know how much the classes will help, but I am hoping that having 5 hours of pure German a week will help my brain transition from mentally translating everything to just understanding it.
As for an update of my culture-shock status:
- Kiel is rainy. A day is a good day if there is no rain. A day isn't a bad day until the rain is torrential. And drizzle is not rain- it's a part of life.
- Getting used to the rain is actually not that difficult. The most difficult aspect of it is having to ride my bike in it. I have a rain jacket which works great, but my pants always become two-toned.
- Puffy jackets are a thing here, and old 80s dance tunes and Phil Collins get played on the radio a lot. I am not sure which decade Schleswig-Holstein thinks we're in. I feel like I'm in the poorly remade German sequel to Hot Tub Time Machine.
- Sweet potatoes here are EXPENSIVE. So is peanut butter. And Tabasco.
- Speaking of Tabasco, anything "spicy" seems to have sugar as the second ingredient. Salsa? Water, then sugar, then tomatoes. The hot sauce I found here? Water, then HFCS. Truly terrible. It's almost as if Germans don't like spicy food.
- Kielers have either not seen cowboy boots before, or they have only seen them in the movies. I only make this assumption because whenever I wear them out (why wouldn't I? They're pretty much waterproof), I get lots of stares.
- Doctor office etiquette here is...very polite. You must tell everyone hello when you walk into the waiting room, and then goodbye when you leave it. However, you must never ever speak to any of the other people waiting during the rest of the time you're there.
- The computers are all running Windows Server 2003 and can't read a USB-stick. Am I actually studying at a university?
