first museum day

trying to find the Bode Museum...

 
this second day using the trains was a breeze, we're practically professionals now.  today was the first real day of school. after taking the tests the day before they placed us in classes according to how we did on the tests. joslin and our friend katie thought that they were going to be in the came class but unfortunately they were in the same level but different class! there are 2 classes per level apparently. i really like my teacher, joslin likes hers too.

my favorite part of this whole going to school part is that there are students from ALL over the world in our classes. we've met students from these countries: vietnam, america, algeria, isreal, turkey, australia, greece, ireland, norway, italy, japan, china, hungary, france, india, libia, mmm and i'm probably forgetting some. it's incredible! never before have i had a conversation with someone from algeria, but nbd the student from there hung out with us the other day when we explored the city. it's so great to be able to talk to them about the differences between our countries, and the similarities. definitely a fantastic experience. it's also great because in some cases the students don't speak english so when we have a question, german is our common language so we have to speak what little german we know to communicate :). ahh so fun.

the german classes are great, we have class from 8:30-1:00 every day with 2 breaks. usually a break at 10:00 for a half hour then a 15 minute break later on. you would think that after studying german for almost 5 hours we would get super tired of it but surprisingly we haven't. well i mean, we HAVE only completed the first week, so ask me how i feel about it near the end of the 8 week program. but for now, the classes are good. probably because they are so interactive and small classes, i have about 12 students in mine and that's about normal.

for part of the study abroad program we all get a free museum pass, which is a nice bonus. (hah at first we were like WOW that's nice of them to give us the free museum pass! and then we remembered we payed a few thousand dollars for this trip, so i suppose we probably paid for it :) ) tuesday after class we decided to go to our first museum in berlin.

we decided to go to the bode museum, BUT not before joslin and i tried our first döner. seriously my favorite food i've tried so far. first, it looks nasty. they shave off some meat from this big, out in the open, chunk of meat that is over a warmer to cook it. i've asked my friends and no one knows what kind of meat it is...it's a turkish dish, they put some of this meat in the sandwhich along with some garlic spread, spicy sauce, then cucumbers, cabbage, and lettuce. i guess they aren't allowed to have these in the U.S. because the meat is out in the open like that, understandable, it looks pretty gross. but it tastes deliciouss.

naturally, we took a photo.

delicious. i want one right now.
(i had another one 2 days later, don't even worry about it.)

after the döner...on to the museum!

bode museum.

i loved this sculpture. it was of the virgin mary, the note next to the piece of art told how it showed her pain and torment after christ was crucified. she even has glass tears. it was so beautiful!

also. i could not beLEIVE how many religious scultpures/paintings/pieces of art there were at this museum. like, half of the things we saw. probably. maybe? anyways...alot.

 just liked this one...these little guys were so small! like the little skeletons were teeny. minitature.

good work artist. amazing how they make these things.

  

don't even worry some of these coins were from before christ's time.

the oldest one that we saw was i THINK 14  BC.

incredible?

cute.

katie's outfit? 

and the skirt that she MADE?

this guy's hair was great.

nick does really good poses.

another cool religious sculpture.

this one was of the two men who were crucified next to christ.

it refers to the story in the bible where one of them accepted christ as the savior and was more at peace and the other never did and was tormented. the one on the left was the one who accepted him and is looking up to the savior and the one on the right is disturbed and never accepted him as christ. i guess the third statue was lost and never recovered, it was, of course, of the savior being crucified.

also, these ones were pretty teeny which was kind of adorable. like a foot tall. love the bite sized ones.

no big deal we hung out in this museum.

this is just a taste of what is looked like. 

turns out i love museums!

i just get so sleepy when we are in them for like hours.

whew.

don't mean to end this post so abruptly, but we got home and then the night ended with the famous electricity story. 

so. not much else to say here :)