Ich heise Ali!

Happy Monday everybody! German started today, and that was fun and intimidating all at the same time. I had forgotten how unnerving it is to begin a new language. It is hard to make mistakes if front of people and really hard to wrap your tongue around a new pronunciation system! But the prof is great and I am sure it will be loads of fun. In other news, after spending over an hour of my ridiculously long 2 and a half hour lunch break (whatever happened to the twenty minute sandwich scrabble in between bells?) backtracking my way through the shops of Bruges, searching for that elusive and ever important student card. Alas, my efforts were to no avail. I finally broke down and paid 15 euros for a new one. It was rather funny actually, because the woman in the front office was trying to convince me to wait three or four days to get a new one because she said it would be a shame to pay 15 euros and then find the card later. I proceeded to inform her that it would be far more uncomfortable to go three to four days without regular meals (and not to mention expensive if I ate out!) than it would be to just buy a new card and forget the whole thing ever happened. She found my argument rather amusing, but made me a new card all the same. So that ordeal is over.

Things are looking up on the social front as well (not that they were actually ever looking down :) But I have actually begun to hang out with a solid group of people and someone even loaned me a film we had talked about over drinks on Saturday night! I also have an invitation to someone's house in Venice for the Christmas holidays in case my family plans fall through. So life, while lonely at times (starting over is really, really, really hard) is full of new and caring people who could possibly become true friends.

On that sappy note (which should hopefully offer those of you going abroad a little encouragement) I will start on my reading. A bientot, bonne nuit, ciao!