Last Days in Germany

It's time to wrap up my time in Germany already! It flew by and I can't believe it's over. I've learned so much but in so many ways I feel like I'm just starting to really get a feel for things (language, culture, etc). Auf jeden Fall (in any case), I've come a long way from where I was on Day 1 and that's all that matters.

Things I will NOT Miss About Bayreuth:

1) Rain all day long every day.
2) Spending my evenings in my room with instant pasta and my computer. (Nothin' like Grey's Anatomy or Cinderella auf Deutsch to entertain me in the evenings. I am REALLY looking forward to having a kitchen again!)
3) Mensa food! (Salad: lettuce, cucumbers and carrots. Every day for lunch. For seven weeks.)
4) Not being able to go to church.

Things I WILL Miss About Bayreuth:

1) Being able to get delicious ice cream on every street corner (Cinnamon is the best flavor ever!)
2) The European "Cafe culture" - where all you do on weekends is rotate from one cafe to the next.
3) Going to the movies and having it feel like you are being productive and educational (since it's in German!).
4) Visiting a new city/country every weekend. (Ellen and I joked that we're going to have to take trips on the weekends in Evanston too.. to cool places. Like Milwaukee.)
5) Sprachkurs every morning where you discuss current events and just about everything else under the sun with your classmates. (Fact: I just capitalized "Sun" and had to fix it. Because it's a noun. I have maybe spoken a good bit of German recently. :))
6) Saying "Genau!"(exactly!), "Echt?"(really?), "Nei!" (Nah or No way) und "Stimmt" (Yep! or That's exactly it!). German expressions are just so much better than English ones!
7) Being able to flash my student ID card and taking the bus anywhere I want for free.
8) Learning SO MUCH even though it feels like you aren't learning anything because you don't have to do very much homework.

Overall, my time in Germany has been amazing and I would do it again in a heartbeat. I'm so glad I came, so glad that I spent these seven weeks in Bayreuth instead of anywhere else. My German skills have really exploded while I've been here and I can now say that the immersion experience is definitely worth it (and it works amazingly quickly!). In the course of seven weeks, my comprehension skills have gone WAY up (I can understand basically anything now, except for really technical German) and I am completely comfortable speaking German all day, every day. I will definitely miss speaking German all the time, but at the same time, I'm ready to get back to Northwestern and start my junior year.

Hooray for learning! Hooray for Bayreuth! Hooray for German! :-)