Day 1 (or is it Day 0?)

After enough students had arrived at IES, some of the student assistants took us out to Alexanderplatz (the central square of the center of the city - where the TV Tower is, etc) to get photos taken for our residency permits and visas, and to buy Handys (das Handy is a cell phone in German.  It's named that because they thought they were using the American term for it, according to my German professor :))  The purchasing of the Handys went well and, because of a sale, all 30-something of us have the exact same phone (that won't be confusing at all, right?)

We took our first S-Bahn and U-Bahn (the metro system) rides.  It's really interesting riding the trains here, because you aren't ticketed to get in.  Picture a station in New York or DC, just without any machines to swipe in.  They have Polezei officers on the Bahns to randomly control (check and make sure you have a ticket), and if you don't, you get charged €60.  The whole train system is wonderful and so clean, unlike many others I've used these past few years. (Additionally, each metro stop - instead of smelling like grime, smells like amazing freshly baked pastries and bread - mmmm).

We went back to IES for a while to meet some new students who'd arrived, and chatted until our host parents came.  Ursuline is the name of my host mom - she is a wonderful and well-traveled lady with a gorgeous apartment in the Mitte (city center).  It's so homey here and my bedroom is wonderful and large.  There is also another IES student living in the apartment.  Apparently our bedrooms have a view of Angela Merkel's office! But as it gets dark at 4pm and it's now almost 4am, I've yet to see the view in daylight.

I know it's quite uncharacteristic - and I'm pressuring myself because of the Blocker project - but I haven't taken any photos yet, so I've inserted a couple google images to make this post more exciting.  I've frankly just been too tired to take any yet.  For those of you who don't know, the Blocker project is the large photo project I will be working on over the next 5 months.  I will be creating a series of photo essays based on different aspects of German/Berlin culture, reflections on points in history, or different themes in society.  This is for the Blocker Fellowship, through which a handful of us were blessed with the opportunity of receiving through a generous HWS alumni to allow us to study in Germany!  I presume there will be many references to the project to come, as it will make up a great deal of my experiences here, so there is a little background on that.  One of the photo essays will also be a daily photo journal - or a 365 (366 this year), which I have already started and will be on my flickr soon.

I'm off to try to sleep for a couple more hours.  Thanks for reading! I'll try to be more interesting in my posts, I promise!