Wohnung gefunden!

Great news! I officially have a place to live in Freiburg. It's affordable and right in the middle of the city! I won't be far from the school and very close to the University and the Altstadt. The Gymnasium where I will be teaching is right next to a park where a lot of students live, grill and play sports; my apartment is a two-minute walk from the main train station. I couldn't have a better location! My roommate seems friendly. She's studying to be a dentist and loves sports--she's going to teach me how to ski! My room is furnished and quite big with a lot of sunlight. I'm looking forward to moving in and uploading some pictures!

I also found out that I can be a guest student at the University. Basically, that means I don't have to enroll or pay the 500 euro. They have a lot of awesome classes open for guest students. Ideally I would take a French class (I'll be about 20 minutes from France) and a class on education or immigration, but I think the French classes are pretty sought after.

Here is the school where I'll be teaching. They place a lot of emphasis on the arts and French--students actually learn English as their second foreign language. So I'll just be the lowly English teacher...

http://www.wentz.fr.schule-bw.de/

You can imagine my excitement when I saw that the film score concert included Titanic. I'm pretty pumped that I'm going to be at such a rockin' school.

Opa!

I chose the name "Wanderlust" for this blog because in German, Wanderlust translates loosely to "desire to wander/travel." My goal is to share stories of my time in Freiburg, Germany with the Fulbright program. I will be an English teaching assistant at a nearby Gymnasium, the German equivalent of a high school. I will also teach the Kinder all about American culture. I'm pumped--I also hope to do some volunteering and sign up at the University as a guest student. To be a guest student--just attending classes without the rights or responsibilities of an enrolled student--costs only 26 euros.

Apparently, Freiburg is closer to Italy than to Berlin. Maybe I'll even pick up some French!

Right now, I'm searching for an apartment that is cheap-ish; well-located, either near the school or the university; furnished; houses a couple of nice Germans; and finally, needs a tenant for the dates I will be there. Sound easy? It's not. I just had a Skype date with the first place that fits those categories. I think it went well...? The bedroom is large and has some great furniture, and the kitchen is just slightly larger than my Tazewell kitchen (wouldn't take much, would it?). The girl I spoke with was really nice, but it's her room

I'd be taking, so I wouldn't be living with her. The apartment is very centrally located--2 minutes from the train station and very close to the Uni and downtown Altstadt. I should find out on the 26th, she said. Even if it doesn't work out, there will be other apartments.

So although I won't be in Germany until September 2nd, there is still traveling to be done right here in the good ol' US of A! I will start with the Greek Festival in Richmond, which I crashed with three of my best friends--Alison, Paige and Katie. We call ourselves the Fearsome Foursome; rather, we were called the Fearsome Foursome and it sort of stuck in a

big way.

We haven't seen each other since the day after Graduation, so when Alison suggested meeting on Thursday for the GreekFest, I naturally jumped. Also because I love baclava. And spanakopita. And dolmades...basically all Greek food. I have to admit, I was skeptical that Katie would like Greek food--she's pretty picky--but we were all very proud of her!

Greek salad, dolmades, spanakopita and Greek green beans.

Me and Alison after our delicious meal. If you look closely, you can see a bit of my dolmades nestled next to my eye tooth. Snack for later.

Where can I get me a frock like that?

To our great surprise, Katie not only finished everything on her plate, but started to eat off of Paige's plate, too!

I wish I'd gotten a picture of the fortune teller and his wife who sold me and Paige some earrings. Not only were we asked our opinions on open relationships, but we had our palms read. Apparently, Paige will have few relationships (probably long-lasting, healthy relationships), while I will have many. Also, my dreams (not my ambitions, but my weird night dreams which involve car accidents, celebrities and tornadoes) tend to come true. Hmmm.

And so it begins.

In my room, there are bags still to be unpacked, but it is more or less becoming more of a refuge every day. Right now, the temperature is somewhere between pleasant and stifling. The AC is only effective when it is on high, although after 15 minutes, it feels like I'm living in an ice cream truck. Also, the knob is broken. Like many things in our house, I need to enlist outside help (in this case, a wrench) to turn it on. I even needed help adjusting the wrench, because it was so rusty. Welcome home!

I'm looking forward to reclaiming this room. It is such a strange time of life. I am now a college graduate who left home four years ago, each year packing all that I deemed to be necessary in boxes and arranging it differently every time. Having a space that reflects who i am has always been very important to me--the way that each space has morphed over time expresses (i think) a growth in maturity and creativity. Or perhaps just better feng shui? Maybe the only thing I've learned is to separate treasure and crap.

I will miss sharing my space with Alison. For four years, we had fun, late-night conversations about everything from guys to food to existential dilemmas, almost always ending in one of two questions: "So, are we really going to go to the gym tomorrow?" (Alison) or "what are you going to dream about tonight?" (me. I am still confident that you can plot out your dreams ahead of time, although the how is questionable). Sometimes talk didn't end with sleep--it often continued as entertaining mumblings, not always in English.

I miss Williamsburg already. I feel so much more at home at the Rec Center, for example, than I do at the Y. No matter what state I was in on Sunday morning, no one at the Rec seemed to notice or care. On my first day at the Y, there was hardly a person who I didn't recognize from school, work or some other context. I found myself feeling self-conscious the other day when I planned my transition from the elliptical to the weights, ultimately deciding against them when I noticed some guys from my high school hulking around them, comparing biceps. Also, Bodypump was cancelled here (tragedy!), so I'm feeling a little lost.

Mostly, I miss my friends. But I'm not too sad, because I know that Alison's birthday is just around the corner. Every time we reunite, it will be as if no time has passed at all.