First week: USA

Hello everyone,

I want to write a kind of "online diary" where people can read about where I am currently and how I'm finding my stay in the respective country 😊. But please don't panic if I don't write for a while. I am definitely not lost, I just haven't found the time to reach out.

Last Saturday at 1:30 pm, my flight from Frankfurt to Iceland departed. The transfer was no problem at all, and my seat neighbors were always very nice. On the flight from Iceland to Seattle, I sat next to two typical older American women who knitted for 8 hours and were very interested in me 😊. In Seattle, I got my visa (Esta) for the USA, which was also very funny. I talked to the customs officer (?) for about 20 minutes, and I'm sure he asked more questions than necessary because he was very interested and kept laughing at the fact that I was going to Peru without speaking Spanish after my trip to the USA 😂.

After that, I continued my journey to San Francisco, hungry because I didn't get any food on my 20-hour budget flight 😍.

When I finally arrived at the hotel at 1 am, all I wanted to do was sleep and brush my teeth 😂.

The next day, I was really excited to meet my host family. However, the first impression was terrible because I was just dumped in a room in the basement and no one spoke to me. To make matters worse, the room and the kitchen were incredibly dirty and messy.

By now, I like living with my host family because it turned out that nobody knew I was arriving on Sunday and the family is really nice! It's still dirty, especially the bathroom and the fridge, which is located in the basement so we can prepare our breakfast (the fridge upstairs for lunch/dinner is clean), so in the mornings, I usually only eat a banana. But at least it's a bit tidier now, so I have gotten used to it.

I have to travel one hour to school every day because the host family lives in Daly City. But it's not a big deal because I met a Japanese person and a Chilean person who usually travel to school with me in the morning. However, I have to stay in San Francisco all day because it's not worth going to Daly City for lunch or a nap in terms of time.

The classes are incredibly fun because we play Taboo in English, for example, or we just talk and learn a lot about the individual people from different countries 😊.

At lunchtime, I usually spend my time with 2 Dutch people, who I also went to LA with this weekend 😊. We get along really well! Occasionally, someone from Sweden, Switzerland, or Brazil is with us.

I try to see a bit of San Francisco every week, so I can't do everything in one week.

Last week, I had a wonderful view of San Francisco from Twin Peaks and participated in public yoga with about 200 to 300 people in a church. It was hard for me to take the situation seriously because there was a prayer beforehand and everything was very esoteric 😂. But the last 10 minutes, when we lay on our backs and stared at the 20-meter-high church ceiling, were incredible. I realized that this is definitely something I will never do again, especially not in San Francisco 😊.

My school is right by the fisherman's wharf, so I have a direct view of the sea 😊.

After being in Los Angeles this weekend, I am incredibly happy that I chose San Francisco as my location for 5 weeks, because San Francisco has so much charm.

Greetings from San Francisco 👋🏻