1 week and counting

The first week has passed so quickly. gosh. and i'm going to start my german intensive course today. yay. making new friends is really quite fun, thought that it'll be so arghh, but its turning out great. made friends with quite a few people on my floor here. Australian, Korean, Austrian, Polish, Bulgarian (land of Victor Krum, haha, honestly that's the absolute first thing i thought of when she said she came from Bulgaria), Chilean (is that how u spell it, as in from Chile), Canadian, etc. Cool eh? haa, and their jaws almost always drop when they learn that i'm doing Maschinenbau, Mechanical Engineering. Really, you would think that girls like don't ever ever ever do engineering. like never ever. and the quizzical, but why?!?-look. Heck, how would i know. its kinda common in singapore and i never had to answer why i'm in engineering in a 'it's a man's job kind of way'. although i'm used to why in a 'as opposed to choosing something else like arts, etc kind of way' gah. whatever.

anyway, been to more touristy spots after the first 3 days doing all the irritating admin stuff. Went to 2 museums so far. Jewish Museum and Museum at Checkpoint Charlie. Walked about and explored Potsdamer Platz, Zoo area, Kurfurstendamm, Gendarmenmarkt, Tiergarten and of course the uni-area. i really have no idea how i'm gonna do more sightseeing as my classes for the next 4 weeks, aka intensive, are all in the afternoons 2-6pm everyday. oh well, i'll deal with that later.

oohh. good thing is that i found singaporeans. so exciting. thing is, ms goh (ex-ballet teacher) works in the singapore embassy here and we went for lunch with various embassy people and another student 2 days ago. had dim sum. it was sublime, i tell u. not that it was crystal jade or anything close (though the price is) but it's chinese food. die, i cant live without chinese food. so anyway, met the embassy people and some engineers (haha, singaporeans in berlin are either diplomats, engineers or engineering students, i think). mostly youngish, so it was pretty fun. since the place is like pretty dead and quiet on a sunday, we went to catch a movie. english movie. english hollywood movie. Walk the Line - which was really good by the way. for that 2 hours or so, i was almost back in singapore. its just so nice to have something so familiar after 6 days of floundering about in this strange land. then we went for a german meal. the guys, well, they were all guys anyway, ordered meaty stuff which didn't really interest me. pork knuckles. eww, i thought actually. and i had some cheese-y dumpling pasta thing, which was quite good. and beer of course. after that dinner, i hardly ate anything yesterday (monday). so my sunday was all good. learnt that they met up every few weeks so at least i'll have that to look forward to.

ok, i know, to come on exchange is to meet other people from other parts of the world, blah blah blah. but there's this thing about hanging out with singaporeans that is priceless. have been trying to speak english without the lahs and lehs and mehs and mahs. gosh, its so hard. i speak singlish all the time in singapore. but the other students here say that i'm quite understandable (thank goodness) and with minimal strange sounds. good.

ate at the mensa (=school canteen) yesterday and the food is ghastly. the grossest i tell u. but i really have to eat there on a regular basis because i just absolutely refuse to cook meat. and we dont have a freezer. so my meat intake will come from the mensa. for now.

have been hanging out with this girl from Australia and its really good. so we'll walk about together and visit stuff, complain about the cold and the tiredness of walking, the laychay-ness of cooking, the gross-nest of German food, laugh in delight at the snow and its quite awesome. learnt that she does ballet too! and she brought her ballet stuff too! so we'll join the uni ballet classes together when term starts in april. yayness.

gah, am really looking forward to learning german and being able to converse like a real human. haah, right now i'm a total fool. it all becomes linguistic speghetti in my head when someone speaks german to me. i speak it in a weird staccato, i think. gosh, they all must think that i'm really weird. hahah.

anyway, now that i'm mostly settled, its time to plan for the ostenferien. as in easter break. praha, paris or pisa?