Mountains

The last time I you have seen some pictures from the sea. But the great thing about the area I'm living in is that there are also mountains close by! Twice I've been hiking in the Pyrenees already and I enjoyed it a lot!

This is the Canigou, about 9100 ft, that you can see from Perpignan. Some friends have already climbed it, but since you have to stay in a little cabin overnight and I didn't bring any eqipment for that I'm not sure I'll be able to do it.
I took the picture from our balcony. It was last week when there was some snow up there. Since the weather has improved again the snow has melted by now though.

During my first hike with my flatmate Jana we visited a 1000 years old abby, situated high up in the mountains. It was really pretty!

Another time we were hiking along the border of France and Spain. Even though it was really really windy and cold we had a great view and much fun!
Hiking towards the sea you could see the Mediterranean Sea of Spain on the right handside and the Mediterranean Sea of France on the left:

We had a great view on Perpignan and the surrounding towns as well.

Last weekend the summer returned to the South of France, fortunately. My friend Philine from Chemnitz came to see me and we had a great time togehter. I showed her the area, for example the beautiful village Collioure:

On Friday my mum is coming and I'm looking forward to spend a week together with her and show her my "new home".

My Life in France

I am already living here for 5 weeks now... time just flies by!!

I settled in really well. I like my room, and get on well with the two other girls who also live in the house and who I share kitchen and bathroom with: Leanne from England and Jana from the Czech Republic.

Especially with Jana, as well as with my Friend Luise from Chemnitz, I like to hang out, go to the beach or go on a tour.
We have had a really warm September, that was awesome! One week I went to the beach for 4 times, enjoying the sun and being lazy. And even last Sunday, in the beginning of October, we had a warm summer day at the sea! I love it! :-)

I am very glad I have a bike here because I love exploring the area around Perpignan by bike. There are also many busses which go to a lot of places for little money, but while on bike you can appreciate nature and the landscape even more.

I've had many visitors from Germany by now, that's great! :-) In my second week here, Sascha joined me for 5 days. We really had a nice time together, and made trips to neat places and all that.
The ladscape is really pretty in this area! It's a mix of mountains and the see, you have small villages, neat towns, vineyards, castles,... A great place to be! :-)

Last week my room mate from Chemnitz, Kristin, was here for 3 days. I showed her around town and we went on a 50k bike ride, that was fun!
Afterwards she went on to Besancon, a town in the east of France, were our other room mate, Philine, is studying this semester. And Philine will come to see me too, in the end of October.
And during the first week of November my mum will be here, I'm very much looking forward to it! I have so many plans on what to do... I guess one week won't be enough! ;-) Since she will be flying to Barcelona we will also spend 2 days there.

This all sounds very much like vacation, doesn't it? Well, that's not all of it. I am also going to school! University has started 3 weeks ago. I attend a variety of lectures, like history, geography, politics, French,... some of them are a little boring, but most are really interesting and I learn a lot! It's the same with the language: Some professors are really hard to understand, but with most it works quite well. Next week my French language class will start, I'm very much looking forward to it, because I want to improve my French skills! Understanding is ok by now, but speaking is difficult.

There are many foreign students at Perpignan University, I've already met many Germans (of course, they are everywhere! ;-)) and Czechs. This afternoon we're going to have a first meeting of all the foreigns, I'm looking forward to meeting them all! And on Saturday there'll be a city tour with them. We'll see how that'll be.
Since I am off on Fridays, and so is Jana, we want to go on a trip tomorrow. Maybe we'll catch a bus to the mountains, that would be really nice.

I'll try to keep you updated!

Cinderella's Castle (but for real)

This week I have my first visitors from Germany: On Monday Verena, a friend from Chemnitz, and her friend Anja arrived and they'll stay until tomorrow.
After walking around in Perpignan and enjoying the beach we went on my first day trip on Tuesday. We took the train to the town Carcassonne. There is a huge fortress, which isn't just a castle, but there's a real town inside the ramparts!

We spent the whole day there and had a wonderful time walking around and enjoying the medieval flair.
Besides being the biggest fortress I've ever seen it's also famous in/for movies: the last Robin Hood movie was partly shot there. And Walt Disney was inspired by the Carcarsonne fortress for his famous Cinderella castle. What I can say: It is very beautiful and worth to be visited, that's for sure! (Even though there were loads of tourists... and judging the languages people were speaking you could have been in Germany ;-))

Salut de Perpignan!

Last Thursday my semester abroad started.
I have a nice room to live in not far from downtown. The last days I have explored the town and the surroundings. I like it a lot – it's so Mediterranean! Luise, a friend of mine from Chemnitz, is doing her semester abroad here as well. School doesn't start until Sept 21, so we have much time until then to do fun things!
On Saturday I was on my own walking around town, sightseeing and so on. It is really pretty!

Yesterday we went to the beach, that was so cool! We went by bike which took us about an hour; by bus it's only half an hour though! It's amazing living so close to the Mediterranean Sea! :-) The weather's still really nice here.

This week I have some visitors from Germany. 2 friends arrived today and will stay till Thursday, and then Sascha will visit me for 5 days – I'm really looking forward to that!
Today I'm at university for the first time… checking it out and everything. There'll be a meeting for foreign students on Sept 18. I'm sure that'll be fun cause then we'll get to know more people!

Gosh, it's amazing how hard it is to write in English at the moment… in my head it's all French! Even though I have quite a tough time sometimes… French is much harder than English and when I went to the US 5 years ago my English was better than my French is now. But well, that'll work out. I can understand ok, but speaking is pretty hard since I'm missing a lot of vocabulary.

D'accord, c'est tous de moi pour ce moment.
Bisous de la France!

That's my house.

Getting ready for France

While I am enjoying the summer in Chemnitz right now, there's a lot of organizing going on - concerning my semester abroad in Perpignan, France.
Finally I have booked my flight. The adventure will start on September 3. School will start on the 7th, but only some classes, most of them will not start until the 21st. So I hope I'll have some time to get to know the area and enjoy the Mediterranean summer. Sascha will visit me also in the beginning of September! I'm looking forward to all that.

It's interesting how I'm not really nervous about going abroad... it's just SO different from the last time! I am excited, and I'm looking forward to it.

Hiking in the Alps

The semester is finally over, I'm on my summer break. Even though it won't be so much of a break because I have to write a few big papers.

But last weekend I was off from school and school work and everything! I went to the Alps.
I was with my parents and some other people from Plauen who like hiking. The plan was to have a hiking tour on Friday, then sleep in a cabin, hike again on Saturday, stay at another cabin Saturday night and have the last tour on Sunday.
But unfortunately it was all very different.

Early Friday morning we went to the Alps, it was still sunny then. Around noon we started our first tour, and it already started to rain - we didn't care that much though!
Even though you couldn't really see much...
... we had fun hiking!
I really liked the tour, sometimes we even had to do some climbing which was fun!
And we made it to the top of that mountain! But, again, we were surrounded by fog.
We made it savely back... and brought some mud with us ;-)
That's where we were:

That night we slept in a cabin, which wasn't even a real one, because it was not up in the mountains like they usually are but was in the valley. But still it was an experience sleeping in a room with 10 people :-)

While on Friday it was raining a little, sometimes there was fog but sometimes the weather was ok; it started raining Friday night at 8 and hadn't stopped a minute when we woke up Sat morning. Up in the mountains there was even snow!

We figured it would be too dangerous to hike up there and so unfortunately we had to give it all up :-( In the morning we went into a impressive gorge, but after that we went back home.
My friend Anne lives on our way home and we made a quick stop there, that was fun!

It does suck that we couldn't really hike that much! But we want to give it another try in late August, we'll see if it works out then!

New York City - Israel - NMUN - Distinguished Delegation

Much was going on during our 12 day stay in New York!

The reason why we (11 Students from Chemnitz University, including me) were there was NMUN, the National Model UN: 2500 College students from 29 countries simulation the United Nations for 5 days. Each delegation representing one country - not its own. Chemnitz' students representing Israel. - These are the facts.
And now about our experiences:

It was amazing, meeting all those people and then becoming diplomats. We had 4 days of hard work: In each committee delegates held speeches, discussed and tried so find solutions to current issues.
I was in the General Assembly Second Committee, Economics and Financial. Our task was to address Food Price Volatility. There were different working groups (mostly regional groups, like the EU, the African Union or the Arab countries) working on different draft resolutions. We had long days, with sessions fom 8:30 a.m. till 11 at night, it was a lot of work, but it was also fun - and we learned a lot! But it was also tough being an Israeli delegate: There are 2 countries in the world who do not belong to any regional "bloc" (or caucus bloc): the U.S. and Israel - which didn't make it easy. So it took a while to find a suitable group to work with. But in the end we worked on two draft resolutions.
On the 4th day we went into voting procedure, and passed 4 resolutions, only two drafts have been rejected. Both the drafts we had been working on have been passed! :-) While voting on the draft resolutions, it was interesting again to represent Israel. One example: there was one draft which actually was a good one, with a good content. But it was sponsored by all Arab countries, including Iran - being Israel, we could therefore not vote in favor of that draft, but obstained.

2 of our delegates had another great experience: The Security Council, which had also been simulated, discussed the Israel-Palestine-Question. And therefore they asked both parties to speak before the SC! We had been given 5 or 6 questions in advance, and then had to answer them. There was also a direct confrontation between our delegates and the delegates from the Palestinian Territories. That's were our delegates could show that they were really well prepared: my friend said that even though the Palestinian delegates were native speakers they could easily outtalk them! It was great that we had been given the opportunity to prove ourselves: To show that were really well prepared to be able to "stay in character" - the most important thing at the Model UN.

All the sessions which I have talked about took part in the Sheraton hotel we were staying at.
But we also got to go to the real UN!

On the first day of the conference the Opening Ceremony was held in the Great Hall at UN Headquarters, the General Assembly hall you know from the media! We were really honored to be there. And we even got to sit where the "real" Israeli delegates sit!

On the 5th day of the conference we went to the Headquarters again. In the morning there was another voting procedure. Resolutions passed by the GA Committees have to be passed again by the whole GA Planery, and that's what happened that morning. And it took place in one of the rooms where the real GA meets - this included using the electronic voting system - really exciting :-)

Afterwards we had some time in the building, to visit the book shop and have a look at the exhibitions.

In the afternoon we attended the Closing Ceremony, again held at the Great Hall. By now being seasoned diplomats, that wasn't such a great deal anymore ;-) No, just kidding, we really appreciated having the chance to be there again. But there wasn't the whole "gosh, look were we are, wow,..."-thing from the first day anymore.

The final part of the ceremony was the presentation of the Awards. About 20% of the 300 delegations have been awarded for their good work: Included is how active you are, how well prepared, if you achieved great things, and, if you stayed in character of the country you were representing. There are 3 award categories: Honorable Mention, Distinguished Delegation and Outstanding Delegation.

And we, Chemnitz University, representing Israel, received the Distinguished Delegation Award!
That was a great conclusion of the whole project. This means we did our job well! :-)


Apart from the Conference we did some other things in NYC, too! Before and after the conference we had time to do that.
One day we walked around Times Square (where our hotel was really close to) and Downtown. One day we went on top of the Rockefeller Center and had a great view! On a sunny day we enjoyed a few hours in Central Park. Another day we got a great walking tour trough the lower East Side and Brooklyn - it was awesome! And it wasn't just some regular tourist tour. Our Faculty Advisor knew the guide from last year, and he was really cool! He has lived in Manhattan all his life and knew some great spots to show us. We also took the Staten Island Ferry - which runs from Manhattan to Staten Island, and is free - which took us past Lady Liberty and, going back, offered a magnificent view of Manhattan's skyline.
At night we went to some great dinner places, and sometimes to a pub afterwards. Oh yes, and we did some shopping, of course.

All in all, we had a wonderful time in New York!

I was back home Easter Sunday in the afternoon - my brother's 18th birthday (the really big one in Germany). But everyone except Sascha and my Mum thought I'd come back the next day - so it was a big surprise when I suddenly showed up! :-) It was a nice birthday party. And on Monday Alex took me to Chemnitz - being allowed to drive now, and having his own car. Great! :-)