Passau!

Hello Everybody,

I’m going to try and keep a semi-regular blog this year, and hopefully post pictures on it as well.
For those of you that don’t know, I’m spending my junior year abroad at the University of Passau in Passua, Germany. I’ll be studying german, french, and international affairs while I’m here this year, and of course traveling around as much as possible.
Passau is a fairly small town in southern Germany. It’s about two hours away from Munich. The town that I lived in Austria when I was in high school is actually only about an hour away from Passau.

When I first arrived in Europe, I went and stayed with the Kaisers, my host family in Austria, for about a week. It was so nice to be able to get here and be with a family and feel at home. After that I came Passau and started getting settled in here. I live in a student apartment complex, which is actually really nice. I have my own room and bathroom and then I share a kitchen with three other students.

School actually hasn’t started here yet. Classes will start up next week. I’m still not quite sure what I’m taking because the way you register for classes here is quite different from in the U.S. However, I’ll probably end up taking four or five classes. I’m a little nervous about taking classes all in German, but I think it will work out fine. I’m also taking quite a few sport classes: beginning salsa dance, ultimate frisbee, soccer, and climbing.

I’ve been meeting so many new people, up until now mostly other exchange students since the german students only started arriving this week! It’s kind of like the beginning of college all over again except for a lot of people’s names are hard to pronounce. So far almost everyone has been so nice.
I haven’t been out on too many trips yet. Two weekends ago I went to the German/Austrian Alps. It was so beautiful there. We went hiking and visited two castles including Schloss Neuschwanstein which is the really famous castle that the Disney castle is supposed to be modeled after. Needless to say it was much more interesting and beautiful than the Disney castle. I’m planning to travel to Perugia, Italy at the end of this month to meet up with some friends for the weekend. I’m really excited about that, it should be a great trip.

I think that’s just about all the news for now. I always love to hear from people, news from friends, family, and home is always welcome, and I’m usually pretty good about responding. My email is efinger@ups.edu.

I hope everything is going well for all of you.
Love,
emily