Brig's study abroad!

Brig left me for a month to go on study abroad to Germany (jerk.... just kidding). The study abroad was required for his major, and it worked out that he was able to do a month long series of courses at Philipps-Universität Marburg in Marburg, Germany. We had originally thought he would have to go away for a whole semester, so this was great news. But alas, even a month was very, very sad for me. I know, you can say it, I'm a big fat baby. I don't mind.

I'm even so lame that I made Brig take a picture with me the night before he left... just in case I never saw him again, or something I guess. Aren't we lovely? Glad I could have that face to remember.

I dropped Brig off at the airport early on the 24th of July. The most time we'd spent apart until then was a week. So yes, I was a blubbering fool.
The first couple of days were really hard because our communication was very minimal. Brig used his cell to call me when he got there, but because it is SOOOOO expensive, our conversation was very short. The first few days he had an orientation and toured the city. They didn't have the ability to even connect to the internet until Wednesday. Even when Brig did have internet access, it was only on campus. The problem with that was that it is an 8 hour time difference, so by the time he was out of class at 4pm, it was 8am here, which means I was at work most days. Brig's dorm was over a mile away from campus, and he didn't have internet there. We did the best we could though, and emailed a lot. I was able to talk to him on Monday and Thursday mornings via skype. Oh, blessed skype. Weekends were bad, because they had trips that they were required to go on as part of the program, so he couldn't even ever make it to campus to email me. I am making it sound so awful, and sometimes it was, but I actually did a lot better than I thought I would. I tried to keep myself busy (more on that later), and while it was definitely a long month, it went by faster than I expected it to.

So here are almost all the pictures that Brig took before I got there:

His room. It was actually a decent place, besides being so far away from everything. And he didn't have to have a room-mate or anything, which if you know him was a MAJOR plus.

Each room had a little wash area, but just like most dorms, the bathroom/showers were down the hall. I don't think I could handle that. But as you have no doubt gathered by now, I'm wimpy.

Brig got to take some interesting classes while he was there. He took German all month, Arabic for one week (potentially cool, but worthless due to the lack of time), a class on Iraq and the UN, and a class on Islam and Europe (He is a Political Science major, with an emphasis in International Studies, in case anyone didn't know that). Some of the classes were a week or two, some of them the whole time, and he had a few seminars as well as the weekend trips.
For the most part he had an ok time. Imagine being almost 29 in group full of 21 year olds. Might give you a slight clue to why it was just "ok." There was one guy who was 35 and another guy who was 50 though, so at least he wasn't the oldest ;) The 50 year old guy was from Palestine, and he was Brig's favorite. He did make friends with a few guys though, and was able to tolerate the annoying ones (which was definitely difficult, but he did it!). There were people in his group from Massachusetts, Israel, Sweden, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Palestine, Brazil, England, and a couple of other places, he can't remember. When we went to pick him up I got to meet a couple of the guys. They were very nice.


One weekend Brig's group went to Strasbourg, France. Here are some pictures of the concentration camp that was somewhere outside the city:

All those patches of dirt are where the buildings used to be that housed the prisoners. Such a sad, sad thing in such a beautiful place. Brig took pictures on the inside of one of the buildings that is still standing (where people were taken to be abused and killed). But I took most of the sad pictures out of here because well, they are too sad. It breaks my heart when I think that places like this really existed.

And that sums up ALL of the pictures that Brig took in his month in Germany (besides the really sad ones). Yes, no pictures from the city of Strasbourg, none from Frankfurt, none from Weimar, Eisenach, or any of the attractions that they stopped at going to or from these places. I sent Brig with the point and shoot and reminded him CONSTANTLY to take pictures. And the only day he remembered it was the sad day. To his credit, he did take it on one other trip, but then accidentally left it on the bus. Oh boy. We are completely different people. Good thing I love him so much. Also a good thing that I at least got to see Marburg when I went, and that I took MANY pictures.

I promise these are Brig's words not mine, but he was very glad when I finally got there. And I was happy to be there!

On August 17th, I got to fly out to Germany! But for that post you will have to wait a little bit longer ;)