Shopping and blisters - May 23, 2013

So today I woke up late again, as usual. Professor Freeman was downstairs critiquing people's photos. I was nervous about that, since I've never taken a photography class and I honestly have no idea what I'm doing with a camera most of the time. I had a couple okay pictures, but I definitely need to get out and take more.

After breakfast a group of us decided to go to Alexanderplatz to go to this festival (which was possibly an African culture festival), but we all got separated at one point and Lauren and I were on our own. I was wearing new shoes which were giving me blisters so I went to dm and got some blister bandaids, but they are not the same as the ones back home. That is, they didn't work.

Lauren and I spent the day shopping around Alexanderplatz and then we decided to go to KaDeWe, Europe's largest department store. I could have spent hours there. The food selection alone was really cool. They even had an American section of drinks and candy. There was stuff from all over the world. We plan on going back for Emilie's birthday to get dessert because they looked phenomenal.

After KaDeWe we had to head back to the hotel to get ready for dinner. We ate at this Thai/Vietnamese place down the street from our hotel and I got chicken and fried rice with vegetables. It was so good. I plan on going back there at some point because it was cheap and I really liked it.

I got back to the hotel early to check my email because I was supposed to meet up with Severin and I had to figure out where the place was. Since I had time to myself I finally got to Skype with one of my friends, because it is really difficult to use the internet when everyone is here and sitting in your room having 4 conversations at once. So it was good to catch up with someone from home.

At 9 I was supposed to meet Severin at a restaurant with his friends so I figured it wouldn't take that long to get there and I could leave about 20 minutes before I was supposed to meet him and be on time. However, that was not the case. Once I figured out how to get there it took about 45 minutes to an hour to get there.

Lauren and I had a nice time having drinks with Severin, his girlfriend and his friends and it helped me get to know him a bit better.

I feel like I'm getting really good at navigating the city and the public transportation. I have my bearings now and one of my favorite things to do is explore on my own and find random places that nobody else from the trip has found. Well, that's all I have for today!