Rain, rain, go away

It pooooured today right as we were leaving a lecture we received at Leipzig University. NOT fun. For lots of reasons that we shall get to...But first a quick recap of the last few days:

We've been having class daily since my last entry and that has been good. Dr. Beck is awesome and we're learning lots of good stuff from him. Mostly after class we have all just been hanging out playing cards in the flats and taking short trips down town for just a cup of coffee or something like that. We like to get out and see the city but we also like to not spend a lot of money!

Day before yesterday we went to the Stasi Museum in Leipzig. The Stasi were the secret police during the time that East and West Germany were split after WWII. East Germany was under control of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the Stasi helped the communists to censor people, interrogate people that were political opposition, they recruited informants (people to spy for them--this could be your boyfriend or girlfriend, spouse, best friend, etc)...It was a dark time for sure and there is tons to say and tell but the museum was really interesting. Our tour guide was very knowledgable and answered all our questions. After that we went on a psychology tour of Leipzig. I won't lie, it was the least favorite tour of everyone that we have done so far. But that's okay.

Yesterday instead of class we went to Wittenburg. Wittenburg is important because this is the town Martin Luther was from, and he is the one who began the Reformation. I will assume everyone is vaguely familiar with Luther and his 95 Theses. If not, I am more than happy to elaborate on who he was and what he did, but I am on a bit of a time crunch so I can't right now. Basically, Wittenburg is about the size of down town Leipzig. You can walk the perimeter of town in like 15 or 20 minutes haha. I know this because we accidentally took a very roundabout way to a park and figured out afterwards we had walked all the way around town. It is officially my favorite thing we have done in Germany! It was just the cutest little town and all the history it holds was of course very interesting to me and I took TONS of photos. Family, get ready for endless talk about that when I get back. ;-)

Sights we saw in Wittenburg: Luther's house, Castle Church (where he nailed the 95 Theses to the door of the church and basically started the Reformation), we climbed the bell tower of the Castle Church (WORK OUT), saw another guy's house who I don't know how to spell or pronounce his name so we'll just call him Mr. M (Mr. M housed Luther while he was kind of in hiding), we hung out at a pretty park and then we took the train back to Leipzig.

We took the wrong train to Leipzig. Basically you go to the Hauptbonhoff (trainstation) or Halle. Halle is actually just north of Leipzig and has a small airport. We went to Halle. It's like 15 minutes by train to Leipzig from there, so it was really just a minor incident. It was an adventure and really wasn't stressful or anything, just kind of funny.

Today we went to the Leipzig zoo and saw the primate exhibit. It is the 2nd largest in the world and they do experiments here (they are behavioral experiments, and cause no harm to the animals in any way) and they are very much related to psychology so it was really interesting. They house all four types of primates in their exhibit and this is the only one in the world (I think) that has all four in the same place. After the primate thing we went to the University of Leipzig for a lecture from one of the psychology prof's there. We learned a lot about how the field of psychology emerged from Leipzig to become what it is today. It really did all begin right here, so that was a cool lecture. The professor also told us about his personal experiences in the German Democratic Republic (when the Soviet Union controlled East Germany) and that was really moving. He was definitely a strong man who stood up during a time when it was dangerous to do so.

Right now...I have to go pack! I'm off to Paris tomorrow morning. Our train leaves around 8 or 9 am (Amy has our tickets so she knows the exact time) and we get there around 6 in the evening. Our hotel is going to be P-I-M-P (that just means really fabulous for anyone who is not familiar with this terminology ;-) )....Amy and I will have four days to discover all the famous sites and to find some cool places of our own there. I'm really excited! I'm off to go do laundry and pack so I will hopefully blog later from Paris! I may not have the internet there, so maybe I'll just do one when I get back. We'll see...Okay...tata!