First of all, my apologies for the fact that my first post out of Germany was such an angry one. It happens to the best of us.

So I got to our beloved Pearson International, to find that I was on standby. I said goodbye to my dad hurridly, and rushed off to find that all was well, and there was a seat waiting for me.
I sat down on the plane, thinking that I was very worried about speaking German, unsure of my abilities. I was glad to know there were eleven more hours to go until I would need to try it out when.... ''Sprechen Sie deutsch?'' I looked over at the man sitting next to me. ''Ein bisschen,'' I answered.
It turned out that he was an Austrian, and was returning home after three months in Canada. He was a truck driver, and had come to look for a job here. When I asked him if there were any truck driving jobs in Austria, he said yes, but that ever since Austria joined the EU, they no longer payed enough. He had hoped to be able to earn more in Canada, but his lack of English skills had held him back.
I mention this because, as much as I like the idea of a united Europe, the actual EU is full of problems for the average person. The laws don't take into account the needs of people on a local scale, and the Euro has made keeping up with the cost of living very difficult.

Upon reaching Berlin, I struggled with my massive bags through the public transit system. It seemed huge and unwieldly then, but I'm already becoming very fond of it. It's open very late (I'm not exactly sure how late. It may never close at all), and covers the whole city. There's nowhere the BVG can't take you.

I got to the school, and was taken to my room. I will have to photograph this thing for you, it's amazing! It's bright and modern and cool, and I can't believe this is the cheaper option! I unpacked, struggled to stay awake, had dinner, and was just about to fall alseep when my roommate showed up.

She's a Swiss girl, with an American father, the result being the she speaks English perfectly. She's quite good at German too, but she's worried it won't be enough, in case she goes to a German-spreaking university in the fall.

The next morning, Monday, we had a placement test, and I got put into an intermediate level. We had class, and nothing much interesting happened until that night, when there was a sort of party in the restraunt. It was a social for all the new students to get to know one another. I mostly talked to a Berkly doctoral candidate, who's writing a book on boredom as the key to Nirvana. To be fair, he did most of the talking. I just asked poignant questions once in a while.

And today, I finally got myself into the downtown! I took lots of pics, which you can see on Facebook. The computer room is gonna close soon, so I need to finish up, but there's lots more to come from me.

Argh! I dropped my camera, and now, rather than being able to take over 100 pictures, it can only take about 20, and that wouldn't be so bad if I could upload them, but the computers here have virtually no RAM and trying to upload anything makes the whole machine so slow that there's a 15 second delay between when a type something and when it appears on the screen, and I tired impoting my pics to the computer, but that only made it worse and now I don't know how to delete them, and the keyboards here have the y and z reversed for no reason, and I want to go home.