Wer wagt, gewinnt.

Monday was a busy day! I had to wake up entirely too early to catch my train at 7:36am into Erlangen. My German class started at 8:30am and my train arrived in Erlangen at 8:13am. I was a bit disappointed by the people in my class, from a potential-friend standpoint. There were only three other women (one was from England, one from Turkey, and one from Belarus), they were all older, and two were married. So that's a bust. However, I think it'll be good to take the class because it'll only help strengthen my German. Reviewing grammar rules while applying them in my every day life should help me improve at an even faster rate. The teacher is a 60-something year old German woman. When she saw my name on the roster, she asked me about it and where it's from. She said it was a very different name and had never heard of it before. "Farrah" has some Persian/Arabic roots, and she asked if anyone from my family came from there. I then launched into the complicated explanation of my unique name and my teacher looked at me blankly. After class I spent some time walking around in Erlangen, specifically in the Schlossgarten (castle gardens). When I got back to Nürnberg I went shopping for some warmer clothes. I made it home around 2pm. I spent the rest of the day hanging around the house and spending time with my host family. At dinner time, HM asked me if I would be interested in going to the kids school a couple times a month to read English books aloud. It's a bilingual school and they are always looking for native speakers/exceptionally fluent speakers for the kids to listen to. I said I'd be more than happy to do so. She said she'd talk to the director of the school and let me know.

Tuesday I got up and went into town to buy some warm socks. Yep, you read that correctly. I needed to buy some warmer socks. There was nothing out of the ordinary about my working hours, just the garden variety meltdowns and playtime activities.

Wednesday I went for a run. While on my run I ran into (no pun intended) M and L, who were working in the garden. The invited me to come over for lunch later, which I did do. We all cooked together and it was simply delicious. I think I'll have to make the same thing for my host family soon. HM dropped One off with me later and immediately left for swim class with Two. One and I waited for HM and Two to get home so we could all eat dinner together. HD had left that morning for a work trip to England. The evening was otherwise uneventful.

Thursday I went to the Dokumentationszentrum Reichsparteitagsgelände (or Documentation Center Nazi Party Rally Grounds). I spent about two hours walking around and listening to all of the information. It was mostly concentrated around Hitler's political party, the NSDAP (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei) rising to power leading up to WW2. There was also a lot of information about the grounds themselves, as they were originally 11 square kilometers of rally grounds, most of which were never completed. The few areas that had been completed were destroyed/built over after the war, repurposed for other city functions, or were turned into the museum areas. I already knew a good amount of the information. I did enjoy being in a place where so much history had happened, even if it isn't the pleasant kind of history. I'm also really enjoying exploring Nürnberg. I'm not sure where I'll visit next week. After everyone got home, HM left shortly after to go to run some errands, leaving the kids with me for awhile. There were a few meltdowns, but nothing I couldn't handle.

Today I got up and went for a run and then did some chores around the house. M picked me up and the two of us went to pick up One from school so that I could take him to soccer. I have to get him by 2pm, which is entirely too early for HP to leave work (and hey, that's what I'm here for). I worked until 6pm. Now I'm waiting to go out and meet up with some friends. More on that later!