Category Archives: Germany Thus Far

Germany Thus Far: Two Months In

Has it been two months already? According to the calendar it has; therefore, it’s time for a status update on life thus far in Germany.

Travel

This month has been a pretty relaxed one in terms of travel. I’ve been hanging around Konstanz for the most part. Apart from that, I spent one day hiking in the Alps. A real hike in the Alps, to follow up on last month’s hike at the edge of the Alps.

Lake at the Top

Studies

My studies have been dominating my time. I have such an incredible amount of reading to do. Most days I feel like I’m drowning in academic journal articles and microeconomic proofs.

Very soon I have to hand in another paper and take my first midterm exams. Should be quite the experience!

German

Oh, the German… Deutsch is not an easy language to learn. Word order is throwing me for a loop in every assignment. I also have the problem that I’m always freezing up whenever I try to speak coherent sentences with native speakers.

Don’t get me wrong, though. There has been progress! I have completed several writing assignments for my German class, and they make sense! There are still word order problems, but I am retaining some vocabulary and verb conjugation rules.

Well, that’s all for this month’s update. Thanks for checking in with me.

Cheers!

Germany Thus Far

Before I dig into the substance of this post, I need to give a shout out to my incredibly determined Aunt Kara. Kara decided to go back to school and recently passed her TEAS Test. Now she has been admitted into a nursing school program that she’s been working towards for a little over a year now. Congratulations!

Now, I’ll celebrate a little bit more because today is the one month mark of my time in Germany! I’ve survived! To note the milestones and adventures I have living here, I’ve decided to write one post every month summing up what it is that I’ve been doing.

Travel

I arrived at the Munich airport before doing a bit of travel around southern Germany. I’ve climbed the tallest church in the world at Ulm. I’ve been exploring all over the city of Konstanz, my new home. I’ve also traveled to Kempten, and south from there towards the Austrian border.

For the most part, I’ve been staying put as I’m adjusting to my new life here in Germany. As the Christmas Market season kicks off, you can bet I’ll be heading back to Ulm for the biggest Christmas Market in the south, as well as visiting others around the south of Germany, and perhaps even beyond Germany.

Ulmer Münster

Studies

I completed orientation this month and started my Master’s degree in Political Economy at Konstanz Universität. I’m taking four classes for my program, and two German classes. I’ve also, as of this morning, conquered my first presentation and paper for a graduate course.

German

Alongside my uni studies, I’m learning German. The status update on my language skills is that they are still basically nonexistent. I’m working at learning German bit by bit every day. I am happy to report that after running into a lot of doors, I’ve finally learned that drücken means “push,” and ziehen means “pull.” I’m counting this as progress. I suppose it is also progress that I successfully asked the pharmacist to get me some cold medicine last week, and I also have ordered at a bakery all by myself twice now!

Bonus

On top of all these things I’ve done and accomplished this month, I was able to attend the graduation of some of my friends this past Friday. So, congratulations to my German friends for graduating from Hochschule Kempten (Kempten University of Applied Sciences). It’s strange to think that a year ago we were all studying in Northern Ireland together.

Cheers!