Sad to report

My laptop charger has broken, so new photos will not be put up until I get this fixed...so when I get back to the home land.

What is this culture you speak of?

Saturday and Sunday I spent a good 12 hours collectively walking around 8 different museums and seeing tons of artwork.

I saw the Ishtar Gate, the bust of Nefertiti, Andy Wharhol's "Marylin", work by Rembrandt, Hans Holbein, Dürer, and so many other works of art. I saw prehistoric artwork to the renaissance and beyond. I also took 900+ photographs so bear with me while I sort through them all.

Also walking for 6 hours a day makes you sleep really well.

A day full of art

A fellow Alaskan and I went on an adventure to what is known as Kunsthaus or Tacheles this Thursday after our classes. We also went to what is known as The East Side gallery. The East Side gallery is a part of the Berlin Wall that is still standing and has been painted by many different artists representing over 20 countries from around the world. Needless to say it was quite lovely!

Don't worry I'm still alive.

Today concluded my second week of classes here in Berlin. So far it's going well, but my midterm is next Friday so we'll find out how well I'm actually doing.

Last Friday I went to an outdoor orchestra concert with my good friend Sophie who is from Berlin. The music was awesome and they followed the concert with an amazing firework display.

Wednesday I had the unfortunate luck to catch a 24hr stomach virus, but I'm all better now!

Today we went on an adventure

The program that I'm here with is called FUBiS which I think stands for Freie Universität Berlin International Study. Through this program they offer a variety of excursions for us to go on, some are free and are in Berlin. Others are a little costly and are weekend trips to other cities and towns in Germany.

On Wednesday we had the opportunity to take a boat tour through downtown Berlin on the Spree river.

I got a little lost trying to find our meetup point for the tour
so I took pictures of random buildings

And then the tour started...

This is beer with Fanta, it was surprisingly good.
Beer with coke or sprite is also very popular here.

This is the Berlin dome.

This is the Bode Museum.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engles

These are the Ampelman, the crosswalk guys of East Berlin. West Berlin and the rest of Germany have a different Ampelman. They also have museums and stores dedicated to the Ampelman.

I like drawing

I especially like drawing here, because everything is new to me or mostly new. So I've been drawing and watercoloring a lot lately and filling up my sketchbook, so I might need to get a second one if I fill this one up before the end of my trip, which I see happening.

Here are some of sketches from the last few days.

for this one the only thing I was actually referencing was the hat

A Day of Fun

Waking up this morning I was sent to buy some rolls from one of the bakeries for breakfast. Upon my return Inge and Ludwig (my host parents) had some bad news, an animal had killed all but one of their chickens in the night. So Carl (their son) and I got to clean up the bodies of the unfortunate chickens. But after that the day was much better.

One of Ludwig's colleges was hosting a fun day for all of their clients. The fun day was essentially a mini version of Amazing Race all around Berlin. There were 12 teams, each team had about 12 people on them and we had clues to get to places, and questions to answer where the answers lead us to different places where we either were timed to complete a task or had to race other teams. It was a very fun time!

The kid in the center is Carl, my host brother/chicken clean up buddy

Ludwig ( my host dad)

Claudius (one of my host brothers)

Boat race! I'm in the boat on the left

Needless to say, we pwned

Wild boar! (in a fenced wooded area...)

Curry-wurst!!! Soo good!

Fun day game- dress like a mammal and go through an obstacle course

Apparently 4-wheelers are also in Germany. This was part of the
fun day games. Our team won, and we actually got medals made with metal!

There are so many Different flowers here!  It's amazing,
there are some I've never even seen in pictures before.