Sternschanze and die Wohnungssuche

I met up with a couple other Fulbrighters last night who I met at orientation and headed out on the town a little bit. One of the big nightlife scenes here in Hamburg is the Sternschanze neighborhood. On the whole Hamburg is really clean and nice, but Sternschanze is definitely reminiscent of the stuff that I saw while I was in Berlin last summer, one of those blood and vomit on the sidewalk kinds of neighborhoods. (don't worry Mom, everything is perfectly safe there, I promise.) I'm personally kind of attracted to the grittiness, it adds that uniquely urban touch to the place that you don't get in small-town Ithaca or suburban Salt Lake City. It was a tame night, we had our share of Alster out of plastic bottles and turned in super early by European standards (I was back home by 1 AM, and that's when the party starts over here).

Currently I'm in the living room trying to find an apartment. In big German cities in particular it's hard to find a place, and all of us in Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Frankfurt, etc., are having a tough time. I spoke to one girl at orientation who said she had to send out 30 emails before she got a response, hopefully I'll have a little more luck than that. Gesche and family have said that I can stay with them for a little longer if nothing works out, but I'm hoping I'll be able to find something by the end of my three weeks here. Gonna be hard to leave this family though, they are so incredibly nice. We have breakfast and dinner together every day, I don't have to buy any groceries or anything, they let me have Jakob's old cell phone since he recently got a new one (just have to buy a SIM card and some minutes to use it), I lucked out incredibly by finding them.

And tomorrow I have my first official day at the school! I'm not going to be teaching, just introducing myself to a couple classes and observing some lessons, but I'm excited to start! I've got a pretty wide spread of classes that I'm going to be assistant teaching in--from 7'th grade all the way up to 10'th and 11'th--so it'll be a really varied experience, and I'll get to do a lot of different lessons with the classes, given their different ability levels.