- I passed all of my exams!!! (I am awesome.)
- Room cleaned, windows washed, garbage taken out. First suitcase closed. The second one probably never will be.
- The weirdest things got left in my fridge --> tonights special: spinach, an egg, a piece of cheese and two pickles.
- Last night (~last goodbye party).

- Time to go home.

- Aufsatz & Konversation (作文と会話) --> passed!!! (grade: 1,7 :-D )
- succesfully (finally) de-registered from the City of Bochum
- picked up the certificates for my German language courses
  ...Catch-22: I need someone to put the credit points for these courses also in the system. (WHY just WHY don´t they do it automatically when so many people need it.) The teachers told me to ask at the administration office. At the administration office they told me to ask the teachers. (One of them has already gone on vacation for three weeks.)

UPDATE: One of the teachers answered my e-mail: I need to contact Mrs XX who´s in charge of that. So I did. Guess what... She´s on vacation until August 10.

On the plus side, I am not afraid of sending e-mails in German anymore.

(9 days)

- last lunch with my campus group. goodbyes with the nicest and most caring campus guides Joana, who´s going to Japan next semester and Bettina, who´s going to Korea for a year.
- last tandem session with Sayo, my best Japanese friend.

- first two japanese exams done. results by Friday. (fingers crossed!)
--> last (and the most difficult) step: Japanische Übungen (文法演習 - JCčka) and Japanische Syntax (統語論) on Saturday, wish me luck.

I definitely cannot say that I understand everything we learned in this Syntax class (yet). And it is kind of a bummer that RUB is the only university which uses this textbook and approach by Rickmeyer. BUT it looks like one of the very few approaches which could actually be applicable to Japanese grammar and work and make sense (!!). And that is REALLY cool. Maybe it will become a big thing one day.

11 days.

- Awww yesss!! Feste und Feiern in Japan --> passed. (with an A!)
- Last school day in Germany. Ever.
- Remember when I wrote about my first day? How the caretaker went on holiday the week when all the students were coming to move in? Well, he´s done it again. We are supposed to set up a meeting with him about 10 days in advance so that he can inspect our rooms on the day we move out. But he´s on vacation since last week until next Wednesday - the middle of the week when everyone has to move out.
- The German language courses end this week as well as all the other regular ones. All the students (several hundreds) need to get a certificate which proves that they got the credit points. The person who is supposed to sign them all took vacation during the last week of the classes. --> every single student has to go the the secretariat next week to pick it up. (Plus the U-Bahn won´t work the whole next week so I don´t really know how I´ll get there.)
- Two weeks!

- Can I use a German-Czech dictionary during the exam?
- Haha, no.
- But it is a German-Czech dictionary. It has nothing to do with Japanese.
- No.

Thank you very much.

FOUR MONTHS.
- Last Sprachcafé, first goodbyes.
- "Feste und Feiern in Japan" exam over, results who knows when.
- Last kickbox training, I will miss that very much. I especially had a lot of fun with my fighting-partner Gönül. No one knows better than her how to motivate me to try harder.
- Planning a goodbye party so that we make sure that we have time to say goodbye to everyone.
- Next step: "Aufsatz & Konversation (作文と会話)" and "Textanalyse (読解)" - two exams in Japanese this Saturday.
- 15 days left, time to start to count down.

trying to organize my study schedule and decide what to study first

- update on vocabulary:
(I know that it´s probably not interesting. But writing it down helps me remember these very useful words better.)

- vorangehen = vést průvod
- Papierfächer = vějíř
- Ernte = úroda
- Ahnen = ancestors
- Rachegottheiten = gods of vengeance = bohové pomsty
- rein = pure
- unrein = impure
- Hausalter = domácí oltářík
- Wesenheiten = beings, entities
- Tauziehen = tug war = přetahování
- Votivtäfelchen = modlitební destičky (?)
- Fluch = curse
- Segen = blessing


- thank -whoever is responsible for it- for wikipedia

kemari - traditional japanese football https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkzJSosn6Os

- preparing for my Tuesday exam - Feste und Feiern in Japan
- my notes make perfect sense: "haramaki - traditional Kleidung, ale jinde jinak"
- new Vocabulary:

- Bestattungsfeierlichkeiten - funeral ceremonies
- Sonnenwende - solstice (slunovrat, I had to look that up in English too)
- Tagundnachtgleiche = equionx (rovnodennost) (sometimes I love German, it literally means day-and-night-the-same)
- Geisterwelt = spirit world
- Schrein = shrein = svatyně
- Tempel = temple = chrám (I never know what the difference is)
- Malvenblätter = hollyhocks (?) = listy proskurníku topolovky (?)
- Räucherwerk = incense = kadidlo

I have a little notebook where I write the words that I don´t understand during the day and then I look them up later. During the past months I repeatedly wrote down one word that I didn´t know and repeatedly kept crossing it out thinking I must have misheard.
- Verschleimung = mocouc congestion = zahlenění (I didn´t need this word.)
- Verschleifung = assimilation of voice = asimilace hlásek (I needed this one. Phonetics.)

- German phonetics --> passed!

- Official international goodbye dinner is over.
(- Best part of the evening: Alejandro and Daniel were voted the best Erasmus couple.)

(I managed to sell my German texbook, yay!)

- successfuly signed up for all the classes I need next semester!! (for those who don´t know how it works in Olomouc - this is a big deal.)
- now I need to decide whether to drop Spanish, Korean or sleeping.

- German language course --> passed! It was the very very easiest exam from all the ones that I will have here but it is still a nice feeling to have my first four (!) credit points.

Our university!

https://www.facebook.com/RuhrUniBochum/videos/866145106755401/?pnref=story

- first two (easiest) exams over, now let´s hope that successfuly
- next step: german phonetics on Friday!
- international goodbye party this Thursday. how crazy that we should start saying bye already.

- Preparing for the tomorrow´s American literature exam:

A man said to the universe:
“Sir, I exist!"
“However,” replied the universe,
“The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation.”


(STORM. Finally able to breath again!)

- Presentation in my Japanese conversation class is successfuly over, yay!
- First two exams on Monday, wish me luck.
- HOT.

ONE. MONTH. LEFT.

where did this come from?
what is this magic? o.O

Hamburg (28th June)

low budget & low sleep & high adventure trip nach Hamburg!

Departure: Saturday 23:25 Köln
Arrival: 5:30 Hamburg
--we watch the sunrise at the harbour

- walking around the empty city
- walking around the city waking up
- walking around the city slowly getting crowded with people
- walking walking walking for 15 hours (with short breaks for food)

- amazing weather (we are in awe the whole day. is this really Germany?)
- it only starts raining at around 9pm, so we find a place with coffee, wait for the bus and write postcards

the HafenCity is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen

6am: a tired but happy and excited selfie
(girls power with Anna and Monika)

how to start a day: 1) find a place where they have a coffee and bathroom, 2) sit ourside and enjoy beautiful Hamburg

sobluesoblue

I fell in love with the Hamburg canals and bridges.

it felt like the end of the world

if you are waiting for a sign this is it. who needs more?

our lunch place
seagulls
(do you think the fact people from Hamburg say "moin" instead of "guten morgen" has anything to do with the fact that the city is full of moin-moin seagulls?)

- sitting by the lake, watching supercute and fluffy ducklings
- discussing why the evolution decided to make the mistake and take away the arms from the birds.
(no.hands. how weird is that?)

sunshine-hippie graffiti all around the city. we counted at least 27 of these smiley faces.

Rathaus with an exposition of random photos of Prague inside (we didn´t figure out why or what it was for.  it didn´t even say the name "Prague" anywhere. but there was a picture of "železářství" in one of them so we are sure it was Prague.) 

you know, a six meter big stone / art ...in a church

<3

St. Michael´s church from the bottom.

...and from the top.

a windy picture from the top of Hamburg

Sunday 23:15 departure from Hamburg
Monday 6:00 arrival in Köln
8:00 arrival in Bochum
- run run to the dorms → shower -> 10:00 - 19:30 school →20-22:00 Sprachcafé

- megabus is a dream coming true for students who want to travel cheap
- I am really becoming an expert with what to pack for such trips. My scarf turns out to be be a perfect sleeping bag/blanket.

- I forgot to say how awesome the trip to Berlin was! It was very awesome.

- My English and German teachers went to Berlin just the weekend before I did. The next weekend they went to Prague. I can´t believe we missed each other just because of a few days.

- Exams are coming. Time when there´s no time to sleep is here.

- German officers are as annoying as the Czech ones. How dare I to ask them to do their job!

Berlin

- departure: Köln Thursday 23:35
- arrival: Berlin Friday 6:00
(I feel like a master of sleeping positions on the bus now.)
(Also, second one-euro trip worked very well. I just need to remember that megabus saves mony on the heating.)

- raining
- found the U-bahn and bought the tickets like a native Berliner!
- getting a life saving coffee and brushing the teeth in a Berliner cafe (and Tracy Chapman playing in the background)

- raining
- walking around the city for more than 12 hours
- raining
- everything is under construction. they even run out of yellow giraffes so they had to use red ones!

Gedächtniskirche - bombed during the war and left that way

French Dom

German Dom. (I read the story why they look the same but I am not sure how it went anymore.)

THEY ARE BUILDING A F***ING NEW PALACE IN THE MIDDLE OF BERLIN!

AND they have a sample wall.

Alexanderplatz and the famous clock.

My favorite building in Berlin - the Berliner Dom.

Museums. Beautiful museums everywhere.

my favorite building again.

More museums. 

the television tower

neue Synagog

Very interesting museum about the history of Berlin.

THE WALL.

Angela Merkel´s place. Seen from the Bundestag.

Bundestag.

Brandenburger Tor.

Ritter Sport chocolate (museum and shop).

Cycling around the city and drinking beer at the same time on this vehicle. Only in Germany.

My umbrella didn´t survive Berlin weather. (I guess no himym story for me.)

Bundestag with Daniel and Honza. (I totally did not forget to take the pepper spray from my backpack when going through the security control. not. at. all.)

- the sun in Berlin never goes down. and so the people never go to sleep.


(the Egyptians seem to have a elaborated network all around Germany. Or: how we met Amr´s friend in Berlin so that he could give us a bag from Egypt for Amr.)


(oh god this was a hard one, picking up just a few pictures for this post)