I can't believe I've almost been in Germany for an entire month! I know I promised cultural observations in my last Blog, but I've taken a few trips since then that I really want to talk about! A week after we got to Quedlinburg, a bunch of us took our first little trip on our own (woo, venturing out!) to the neighboring city of Halberstadt to shop to H&M for the afternoon. We bought our train tickets, navigated the train system, and figured out our way around city. We even made it back in one piece! After our successful day trip we got a little braver, and two weekends ago six of us went to Hannover for the weekend. It's about three-ish hours away from Quedlinburg by train, and we stayed for two nights in a Hostel. We felt so proud of ourselves for getting to and around a strange city all on our own steam! Our Hostel was absolutely adorable, and we were able use the city's subway/train/bus system without teacher help! Last weekend it got even better- I went to go visit Antonia, a German girl that we hosted for an exchange program 9 years ago, in Luebeck...all by myself! My train left on Thursday afternoon, and I got to the train station, successfully switched trains three times, and met Antonia at the Luebeck train station! Travel tends to make me nervous, so I was really happy to accomplish the whole trip (in a foreign country, in a foreign language) all on my own! While I was visiting Antonia we saw the sights of Luebeck, and we spent the entire day on Saturday doing sightseeing stuff in Hamburg, which was so gorgeous! We went on one of those double decker bus tours of the city, and went to the Hamburg Dungeon, which was this really cool theatrical presentation of the creepier aspects of Hamburg's past. I took zillions of pictures! On Sunday we went to the Baltic Sea, which was really cool! The beach/sea were beautiful, and the town around the coast was ridiculously cute. I learned some new words that are unique to Northern Germany; 'Jo', for yes (instead of 'ja'), and, for some reason that I don't understand 'moin moin' as a greeting. I was sad to leave Antonia, but I was looking forward to successfully navigating my second trip on my own. Buuuuuut apparently, some trains split in half, and go to two different destinations. On the very last leg of my trip back to Quedlinburg, I apparently  sat on the wrong half of the train, because I ended up in a town half an hour west of where I was supposed to be....I ended up taking the train back to my last connecting city, and then taking a completely different train to Quedlinburg. I got there eventually though! So yeah, despite small hiccups along the way, my first trip by train in Germany by myself was a success! This weekend my program is taking us to Prague, and I'm so excited!!! Everyone says that it's one of the most beautiful cities in Europe. I'm also really excited to go to the Czech Republic, because part of my family heritage is there. I taking a million pictures and bringing back lots of souvenirs! I have to go work on German homework for now, so I'll write more later!