Saturday 12.05

Today we had a day trip to Tübingen. We met at the PH to take a coach bus. I thought I was gonna be one of the first ones there because I was early, but I ended up being one of the last! Silly punctual Germans :) Anderson and I just kind of figured were wrong to think that Angela wasn't with us and started worrying that she wouldn't make it but in the end she was already on the bus! I ended up sitting next to Anderson the drive there. I was sitting there reflecting the past week. And at that moment, I was happy to be here, overjoyed actually but I couldn't imagine being away from my kiddos and friends for this long. (I miss my family too but I spent an entire semester away from them so these 8 weeks are nothing!) So it kind of put me in a funk for the bus ride.
We got to Tübingen and went to the university for a tour in german! Well there was a german option and an english option, but all of us chose the german. The other international students went for the english one along with most of the host families that went with us.
Tübingen is a gorgeous town. It is an old town. Many of the buildings were built in the 1400s! Crazy... Our country hadn't even been founded by then.

After our university tour we were let to do what we want until it was time to get back on the bus and head to the monastery. A group of us stuck together and found some delicious typical Schwäbisch food. My oh my was it delicious. We all tried each other's food because you have to experience everything! That's probably why we are alllllllll getting sick...

Then it was off to the monastery! There most of us took the English tour. We wanted to make sure we could understand the tour and learn as much as possible about the monastery. Thank goodness we took the tour we did. The native germans could barely understand the german tour guide...
The monastery was beautiful. The life these monks lived was very interesting. Like they didn't have any heat because they believed that was too much of a luxury and would take them away from God. They went to mass like 8 times a day. I could never imagine doing what they did.

Lovely hand painted walls

Very simple bedrooms. The comforter looks so comfy until you remember there was no heat....

Weird things painted on the ceiling

I walked back to the bus with one of the German students Sabrina who I had befriended on the first day. She is an international-buddy. She makes sure the internationals know where they are going and is kind of in charge of them their first week.
Anyways. We walked back to the bus together, and made it thanks to her wonderful navigation abilities. We may or may not have taken a couple wrong turns and got lost once but we figured it out!
We ended up talking the whole ride home from Tübingen.
When we got back to PH we had decided we wanted to go and get ice cream! So Angela, Becky, Sabrina and I went to get ice cream in Marktplatz and what place other than our wonderful M7! We didn't originally plan on going to M7 but it was the only place we noticed was open. We got Eisschokolade. DELICIOUS! I didn't get a picture of it though. I was already cold and then ate ice cream and got even colder. Sabrina and I shared a blanket. By the end of the night, we were really good friends. How it happened I honestly don't know. But I couldn't be happier! :)
And to think, I went from feeling home sick in the morning, to being super happy and excited for the next 7 weeks! :)
Angela came home with me that night to spend the night. We wanted to make sure we were both up in time to catch the train to München the next day.