Universität Tübingen

Today was my first day of my Masters of Laws degree at the Universität Tübingen, located about 45 minutes south of Esslingen.

It has been a rather long road getting to this point of being accepted into this program and passing the German language test requisite for university studies here. I couldn't have done it all without God and the help and support of my awesome husband. I also have to thank two awesome German teachers, Ulla and Sonja, who really helped me learn German quickly in order to pass the entrance test to get into the university.

I brought my camera along as I caught the 45 minute train from Esslingen down to Tübingen. Call me crazy, but I was actually really nervous about my first day of school!

 I had performance anxiety, which I prayed about on the train and thankfully by the time I reached the university, I was feeling calmer. I was afraid that my German would be so terrible that people would stare at me and wonder how the heck I got accepted into the program. (Luckily for me, no one stared).

I have written about the beautiful college town of Tübingen in previous posts on this blog. Tübingen was the first "trip" we made when we first moved to Germany, back in August, 2008! I can hardly believe that I am now a college student here.

I like that this is a historic town with a true student vibe. I even like the juxtaposition between the graffiti and protest flags with the middle aged buildings. 

The law school is beautiful and historic. The University itself has 22,000 students and a school for almost every speciality, it seems. Law school, medical school with teaching hospitals and even a theology school (Protestant and Catholic). The current Pope, Joseph Ratzinger was once a professor at Tübingen.

The Masters of Laws (LLM) post-graduate program is made up of only international lawyers. There are a total of 13 of us in this year's course. Five lawyers are from China; 3 from Greece; 1 from Mexico; 1 from Slovakia; 1 from Morocco; 1 from Brazil; and 1 from Australia. Guess who the Australian is. 

I really like my fellow students. They are all so down to earth, friendly and warm. This is going to be a good year. We are all specializing in a different area. My chosen speciality is criminal law.

I had a bit of a headache when I came home tonight, because of the abundance of information and instructions in German that we received. I am bracing myself for German legal textbooks. We will be studying alongside regular German students. I am scared, there I said it. But I trust that everything will work out ok. Zev reassures me of that too. He's good like that. 

Well, I am sure you are probably thinking on the back of your mind that Fifi is one of the biggest geeks you know. If so, that's ok, because I feel really at home reading a book or hanging out in a library. But seriously, I would love to become a college professor and teach law someday.
Today is a happy day. Even better than any experience I had today however, was the good news about the Chilean miners being rescued as I type this post out. Isn't that an awesome praise! Amen! I heard on a CNN video that one of the miners said this as he was pulled out from the mine shaft: "There weren't 33 of us down there but 34. God never left us."

I made sure to take the picture above of Jasmine and I, for our German teachers. Jasmine and I started "B1" German at "IFA" last October. One year later we are in the same LLM Programm!

Hugs and smiles across the miles ;-)