Nothing much - Days 11 and 12

Why can I never seem to keep up with my posts?  I'm almost a week behind!  Yesterday (Monday, April 12) was the two week mark, and this week is my last week of orientation.  Classes start next Monday, so after that I'll have a more regular schedule (and less free time) and maybe I'll be able to more regularly post something online, but for now I'll just keep playing catch-up and try to write about as much as I can tonight.  Last Thursday and Friday (April 8 and 9, Days 11 and 12) weren't actually all that exciting, so I don't have too much to say about those two days. 

On Thursday, I did some work in my room, cleaning up and stuff, as well as trying to figure out what classes I should take at LMU.  I still haven't quite figured it out, but I've found a couple of classes that I could take, including a class about the history of zoos, which sounds interesting, if a bit random.  The only scheduled orientation event that I had on Thursday was a tour of the Stabi (short for die Staatsbibliothek, which is the Bavarian state library).  The tour was really pretty interesting, and I wish I could have taken pictures, but it felt a little weird to take pictures in a library where other people were legitimately trying to work.  Maybe sometime during the semester I'll go back and discretely take some photos, but we'll see.  The history of the library is interesting too, though I don't promise that everything I remember is exactly correct...the tour guide talked in rapid-fire German, but I think I got most of what he said.  The library was founded by one of the Bavarian kings, who bought several private collections of books to create his own.  The stairs in the entryway were at one point reserved for the king himself, and the ceiling was beautifully ornate, but was unfortunately destroyed in WWII.  The building is still beautiful and huge, and they keep trying to add space because so many people use the library.  It's now the second largest library in Germany (the first being in Berlin) with millions of books (a dream come true!).  It receives or buys a copy of every book written in or about Bavaria, similar to the Library of Congress in D.C., and also maintains thousands of historical documents dating back to who-knows-when (I'm sure the tour-guide told us, but I don't remember...maybe I'll try to look it up online sometime).  Once we get our library cards, we can use the library for research or as a quiet place to study.  After our tour, I studied with a couple girls for our placement test that we had on Friday.  Of course, that studying mostly became chatting, but that's beside the point.

On Friday, most of the day was eaten up by our placement test, which determined what level German language class we will take at JYM and whether or not we're able to take classes at LMU.  I believe the test is based on the Goethe Institute's test for rating people's German abilities, and it was broken up into writing, grammar, listening comprehension, and reading comprehension sections.  Overall, it lasted from about 10:00 - 16:00, with breaks in between each section.  It was exhausting and harder than I expected, and I was shocked yesterday when I found out that I placed into the highest group among the JYM students, which I did not expect at all.  The good news it that I can take classes at LMU, but the bad news is that my language class at JYM is on Mondays, which means I won't have four day weekends every week...but I'm not taking classes on Fridays, so at least I'll have three days every weekend...I guess I shouldn't complain too much.  After the test on Friday, everyone was pretty much brain-dead.  I made plans with some friends for Saturday, spent a while just relaxing in my room, and then I went for about thirty minutes to a "Welcome to StuStadt" party, before finally crashing for the night.  My Saturday was much more interesting...my next post: my trip to Augsburg!