Endless waiting.

Once our fantastic cab driver dropped us off, we were at the FU-BEST program office (that’s the name of my program, by the way). We once again had to lug our luggage down stairs, but fortunately there were some of the teaching assistants around who helped us to put our bags in the basement – I didn’t even have to carry anything :) Then we went inside this house – it’s really the only way to describe the building – and stood around awkwardly, not sure of what to do. Finally, someone told us to give our passports to someone, then to wait for the next meeting to start. The meeting was super brief. We received a few really important cards – printer card, meal card, U-Bahn/S-Bahn ticket, and most importantly a card to get into about 30 museums for free!! I thought we had to buy this card ourselves, so I was beyond excited when they provided it for us!  

After the meeting, we were told to go upstairs and get our picture taken, then pick up our passports, and then bring the printed picture to the director’s assistant, who would let us know if we had sent them too much or too little money (I was really hoping that I’d paid too much, but alas, I’d paid the right amount). So, we waited around for about half an hour, gave the photographer 5 Euros for the picture, and then continued to wait around. Eventually, I got my passport back, and was informed that since I’m a member of the EU, I didn’t need to get my picture taken (apparently the pictures were for visas) but that they couldn’t refund me the money because of some weird reasoning. I was not amused. I was all done at that point, and could go to my apartment if I so desired, but I decided to wait for Mo to get all her stuff done. While I was waiting, I met Tall and Curly (this is how Mo has been referring to them for the last few days because she can’t remember names). They’re pretty awesome, and rode with us to the apartments. While we were waiting around in the office/outside waiting for a taxi, we met a whole bunch of people. So far everyone seems really awesome. Everyone’s pretty laid back, and really excited to be here, which is delightful :)

 The side of the FU-BEST house