Jetlag und Andere Dinge

So it's about 7:15AM right now and I can't seem to fall back sleep. Today is my first day of class (need to be somewhere at 9:30AM) and I guess I won't be getting a full night's sleep. It probably has something to do with going to bed at 4AM on Sunday, getting up at noon, and then taking another nap from 4PM to 7PM.

So I reread my last post just to see exactly how much I've said about what's actually gone down, and I guess I got an unfortunately gave a rather bleak view of my first day and homestay. It was a nervous time, indeed, but I guess I'll take this away time to mention some of the good parts of my stay so far!

To state unequivocally, my host family has been incredibly generous, welcoming, and very helpful. My host mom continues to be very kind, as are my host-brothers. It turns out that the older of the host brothers, Max, turns out to be only 4 months younger than I am. He's incredibly kind, mature, and has a big heart. Yesterday, I hung out with my host-brother during the day and my Stanford friends at night. While hanging out with my host brother, I found out that the father of the family passed away about three years ago, and since then, they've remodeled the house and all of that. I've also been learning a lot of German culture from him regarding schools, politics, tensions between Germans and the Turkish minority, etc. Overall it's been great.

I'm eager for the school quarter to start so I can continue to meet more Stanford students, figure out what sport classes (if any) I want to take at the nearby Freie Universität, and decide on my courseload (whether or not to take 13 or 18 units). But I'll probably have more to say about that later.

Bis bald (literally "until soon" or "see you soon," but only figuratively of course),
Charlton