![](\"http:\/\/blogs.mlc-wels.edu\/study-abroad\/files\/2017\/01\/blog-1.jpg\")
Hello!<\/p>\nHello!<\/p>\n
My name is Collin Wenzel and I am a Junior at Martin Luther College. I am getting ready to leave for Berlin, Germany, where I will be studying for the Spring 2017 semester. While I am there, I will be posting occasional updates to this study abroad blog. If you would like to follow along and read about my experiences and see pictures, keep an eye out for blog updates! They will be every other week or so. For this initial post, let me tell you a little about what my semester will look like:<\/p>\n
My flight leaves this Saturday from Minneapolis, and from there I have two layovers\u00a0in Paris and Frankfurt before reaching Berlin late Sunday afternoon, 19 hours later!\u00a0Good thing I know how flying works. Just kidding, I don’t. This is my first ever flight. But how hard can it be?<\/p>\n
I will be studying at Berlin’s Freie<\/em> (Free) Universit\u00e4t.<\/em>\u00a0The name refers to how the university\u00a0was founded\u00a0in West Berlin during the Cold War, being positioned in\u00a0the free western world. The university enrolls about 34,000 students, which is\u00a0quite the contrast to what I am used to! The international program I am in\u00a0has about 150 other participants, many of whom are from the United States. I will be staying with a host family during my time in Berlin.<\/p>\n Program registration is next Tuesday the 31st, and the next 5 days after that are orientation days, concluding with a welcome reception. My classes start on Monday, February 6th. I will be taking 12 US credits: two German language courses, and two subject courses, which I was able to select during the application process. The names of the\u00a0courses I\u00a0chose are Modern German History in European Context, and Exploring Classical Music: Baroque to Contemporary. I am looking forward to leaning about German history and culture from this perspective! My classes are all taught in English. The German language classes are taught each morning Monday through Thursday. My history class is Monday afternoons, and my music history class is Thursday afternoons. These two are each 2 1\/2 hour sessions, but only once per week. One of the perks\u00a0about this international program is that there are no classes on Friday! This gives an extra day for relaxing or study or travel.<\/p>\n Halfway through the semester I have a normal spring break, during which I plan on traveling to either Greece or Rome. Fortunately,\u00a0flying within Europe is very\u00a0cheap! International round trip plane tickets can be as low as 50 Euros. In addition to spring break, included in the program is a 9-day guided trip towards the end of April. I had the option of going to either Cologne and Luxembourg, or to Frankfurt and Prague. I chose the latter. Other things included in this international program are a semester pass for public transportation and several passes to museums, concert halls, soccer games, and day field trips. One of these trips is a guided “Luther tour” of\u00a0Wittenberg during the first week of\u00a0May, right before exams start.<\/p>\n The great thing about studying abroad through Martin Luther College is that all of my credits will transfer back to my pre-seminary program at MLC, and I will graduate on time with my class.<\/p>\n That’s about all for now. I would greatly appreciate prayers for safe travels during the next 3 1\/2 months! While I am both excited and nervous, I have\u00a0the confidence that God is always by my side wherever I go, and that he will bless my experiences.<\/p>\n Keep an eye out for my first update from Berlin in the next couple of weeks! I promise my next posts will be more exciting.\u00a0Tsch\u00fcss<\/em>,<\/p>\n Collin<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hello! My name is Collin Wenzel and I am a Junior at Martin Luther College. I am getting ready to leave for Berlin, Germany, where I will be studying for the Spring 2017 semester. While I am there, I will be posting occasional updates to this study abroad blog. If you would like to follow […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7Lhdr-2x","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mlc-wels.edu\/study-abroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mlc-wels.edu\/study-abroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mlc-wels.edu\/study-abroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mlc-wels.edu\/study-abroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mlc-wels.edu\/study-abroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mlc-wels.edu\/study-abroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":165,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mlc-wels.edu\/study-abroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157\/revisions\/165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mlc-wels.edu\/study-abroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mlc-wels.edu\/study-abroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mlc-wels.edu\/study-abroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}