Initiation Fallacy

INTRODUCTION
Hello, welcome to another temporary blog of Eric Lancon's doing; initialized for the Berlin Study abroad program offered here at my university: Louisiana Tech. We are asked to begin documenting and or elaborating on our experiences for this "Berlin trip." what you'll most likely find here are my elementary observations and reactions to a world I'm far from used to, the thing which I think makes world travelers a different breed of human, the thing that makes you wiser beyond your years almost instantly; I'm talking about culture shock.

How I've longed for a chance to experience such a feeling, where no one around you for miles, erhm.... kilometers is familiar with the everyday happenings of a culture you're accustomed with. There's no one there to relate with you. Now granted technically, I'd expect plenty of tourists and other English-speaking natives to relate on some fundamental levels but regardless, culture shock abound!

As we all know, making a trip abroad takes some serious planning. At least, I'd expect a responsible individual who plans to stay for a limited amount of time, to make some preparations of sorts to "flow' right into the country seamlessly. Make their trip more pleasant, and allowing them to focus on more important matters than, "where's my camera?" As such, I've been making most of my financial preparations with the mom & pops long before, and stock-piling my ammo dump of entertainment for the journey; we're talking books, music, videos, and even games, (yes, video games). Nevertheless, certain expectations await me once I unite with the larger group of students. We've already been paired with our roommates for the apartments waiting for us, and I'm quite thankful for our accommodations too. "The Caldwell," (that's Mr. Caldwell, one of our trip professors) has already assigned us with our roommates, and I'm quite pleased it would seem, he's done his homework on our personality types. I look forward to rooming with some fellow passive aggressive introverted dudes. This makes for one less thing I have to worry about. ...Onward to packing!


PACKING
So begins the tribal inductance to what will soon be one of the most memorable ventures in my life. -I hope. Alas, as I stated before, plenty of preparations must be made, and here are the ones I've made:
Behold! My Berlin survivor pack:

German survival pack

Things I think I'll be needing for the road. And if it's any indication from the cover of the top book, I should be well accommodated for most everywhere in Deutschland! Regardless of the fact as I understand most Germans already speak English, I really don't want to come off as the ignorant American. I at least want to make an effort otherwise, I would have gotten some kind of German language learning software ages ago. The plug adapter is needed for the laptop, camera and phone charger, and the current exchange rate right now is €1,00=$1.22. I'll be bringing ~€600 in cash. Also, I learned that banks will not cash euro coins, nor can you order them, so before returning I'll be sure to cash as many of my coins to paper, considering the lowest euro bill is a €5, I'll need to get rid of those €1 & €2 coins first.

Now, on top of this, I'll be bringing more money in traveler's cheques; it would seem they're a safer way to carry money around but not a lot of people use them, so I'm hoping they'll be familiar with those over there! Since we're staying for a whole month, I've readied up an external HDD to save all the pictures I'll be taking. My camera (a Canon Power Shot SD1200 IS) has an 8Gb SD card I should be able to hold enough at a time for a day's journey out. I already had the camera and external HDD, but I did purchase an awesome metal case to hold my laptop in as a carry-on. I actually look forward to the airport security having to look through it; It'll make me feel all important.

Well, I suppose I could go on, but seeing how this is the first post, I'll leave it at this. I have other internet duties to facilitate now.

Thanks for reading!