Late-Spät

05.12.09 (because in Germany, we write our dates with the month second, which is rather logical actually)



So, I haven’t really updated in like a long time times two. But I have a slightly good excuse! I took the SAT Test, and so I didn’t feel like writing my blog... but, lots of things have happened since I last updated! For example, I am now pregnant. (Not really, but I wonder how my mom reacted to reading that)

Anyways, my host father and I went to the East Side Gallery to look at the paintings. It’s essentially a really long piece of the original Berlin Wall, but with paintings on it. Beautiful, inspirational paintings.





Then, last weekend, my host family and I went to Nürnberg for a weekend and stayed with my host father’s cousin. His cousin and her husband were both really nice, and they showed us a lot of places in the city. The Weihnachtsmarkt (Christmas Market) was really cool, and I even translated for some Americans that were trying to buy something ^^. I also bought a bunch of books on Napoleon Bonapart, because they were all together 6 Euros :D. I also bought some presents for my host family, since you know... it’s like Christmas or something soon ^^. Speaking of which, my host family strung up a bunch of gifts on the staircase as our advents calenday... so far I got a little thingy of lotion ^^. Also, the SAT Test was a lot easier than I expected it to be. I hope I get a good score on it, and I think I will. I totally have just about nothing to say about the last few weeks.

Well, my community representative gave me this book called „Der Vorleser“. I’m really surprised by how easily I can understand it, especially because I expected it to be harder, since my CR said it would be. I was reading it on the train to and from Nürnberg, since it was like five hours both freaking ways. For English class I’m supposed to present about how intercultural communication affects one’s concept of a country... my CR told my host family I’ve learned German rather quickly, and that I must have a gift for languages (THIS MADE ME SO HAPPY!!!!). She also said that I should probablly do something with languages as a job. And to be honest, I had been thinking about that for a while. But anyways...

I ALMOST FORGOT! So, in Nürnberg Hitler built a collesuem to be used during the thousand years of peace or whatever that he planned to bring about. I went there, and it was really farmilliar looking. But here is where Hitler once stood to deliver speeches.



There were no seats in the collesuem. According to I forget who, Hitler believed that the German people should be strong; too strong to require sitting while enjoying a game.

I also went shopping with the Swiss exchange student. I had a hard time finding shoes, because ya know.... my feet are like their own planets :D. But, I finally found some nice ones with my wonderful, amazing host mom ^^. She was so excited, she even dreamed of shoe shopping the entire night before we finally went shopping (she didn’t actually enjoy the dream :D). I got these 60 or so Euro shoes for only 20 Euros, if I remember right...

08.12.09
The world hates me. Every subatomic particle in this world decided to join the „I hate Caitlin“ club. (Insert more hyperboles here). Anyways! I had to buy a new cell phone, because my American one decided it wanted to pretend that my highly expensive America SIM card, and my not so expensive German one, doesn’t work. Yay. At least a very nice German person decided to go to the store with the American. And he will probablly read this. And he will know who he is (hello German :D). My Mathe PK teacher wasn’t there Monday, so I decided to hang out in an English PK course. It was absolutely thrilling! Well, not really. It was actually the complete opposite. But, a lot of people had been asking me why I didn’t take an English PK course, so at least now I can say I tried it and didn’t like it...

The second part of the world against me happened today. Please note that I decided to be retarded and leave my American credit card in my wallet while I went to school. For no reason. Just to have it, apparently. Then I left it on the bus. Because I am so smart. Seriously though, a part of me is happy this happened, because now that I know what it’s like to lose a wallet, I’ll try SO much harder to make sure it never happens again. But, the person who found my wallet was really nice, and didn’t steal anything. She didn’t even accept a „gift present thing“ as a sign of appreciation. But, I think I met her before. When I had my funny hat... maybe not, but she was as nice and young as the other lady, and they both had a boy and a girl of the same ages with them... but, I am in a sort of badish mood right now, because I’m really tired. And I’m really tired because I decided to walk all the way from Heerstraße/Wilhelmstraße to Flatow Allee. I really don’t know how far that is, but it’s 12 minutes by bus, in Berlin, where there’s traffic and the maximum speed on that stretch of road is like 50km/h (30 or so miles per hour).

12.12.09
I just have one more Klausur (German word for the type of test I am taking) left, and then it’s Christmas vacation ^^. Last night I went with a friend to the Christmas carnival/fair/market thing. Basically it’s a bunch of shops that only show up around Christmas time. In Nürnberg there weren’t any rides, but at the one in Spandau there was. My friend made me go on the ferris wheel. I am scared to death of heights. I was freaking out at first. Then it wasn’t so bad.



Ya. I think I look retarded. But then we went onto THIS.



It was really fun. It basically tried to make you go around so fast you couldn’t breathe. Then we watched very pretty fireworks. After that we basically just walked around. We went through a park, and then we walked along a stinky river to go look at a thing (I think it’s called a water ladder?). Then, I went home. Originally we were going to go go-karting, but the track was totally booked until 10 o’clock, which was my curfew. Anyways. The other day, I was up really early when it was still dark, and I saw something in my host mom’s shoe. I thought it was a tree branch. I ignored this. Later, I went down with my host family to eat breakfast. There was a tree branch in all of our shoes o.O It turns out that instead of having stockings as part of our gift assembly at Christmas, in Germany they stick stuff in your shoes on „Nikolaus“ Day. Mainly candy. And pieces of pine trees :D. My school also had an event for the day, where the students could send each other „Nikolauskarten“, which were basically cards saying „merry Christmas“, with a huge candy Santa. I got one card, but two candy Santas ^^. Today I cut off my candy Santa’s head, and stuck it into some muffins I made with my host sister.

I forgot to mention earlier that I had gone to my hostsister’s Christmas concert at her school. It was really good, actually. I had really liked it ^^.

My tests are... well... a little bad. The SAT Test was ok, and I will know my scores on December 22nd, but my German tests are like. No. Awful. I think. My exchange program sent me and my school papers for my teacher, and they will grade me based on wether or not I take part in class, wether or not I made advances in speaking German, and wether or not I sort of get what’s going on. I already got an A in English class. Who would’ve guessed? I mean, it’s not like I speak English or something... right? o.O

One last thing. My mommy sent me Christmas presents for me and my host family :D.

hai

Germany was not always one, united nation. During the Cold War, the Russian controlled side of Germany and the French, America, and British controlled sides were EXTREMELY different. So different, in fact, that people would risk their lives trying to get into the Western controlled sector of Berlin, which was in the Russian controlled section, but split between all of the four powers. Monday was the 20th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall. There was a celebration at Brandenburg Tor, and it was really nice. There was fireworks, and even Hillary Clinton. I went to the celebrations, putting me within about a mile radius of the presidents of Russia, France, and Germany, the Prime Minister (I think) of Britain, Bill Clinton, and Hillary Clinton. Beat that. Seriously though, I was SO excited. I wanted to go into the section where all of those people were, but my host dad wouldn’t let me, and neither would the police, since it was already overcrowded. So, instead I had to stand by a French news station that set up a tent to report from. Ironically, it was the same news agency as the one my French teacher in America had brought in news for us from. I tried to tell that to one of the reporters, but they thought I wanted to say that on the news... xD I tried to explain myself again, and I don’t know if he understood, but he was friendly, and that’s all that matters =]. I also met a group of Americans, some English speakers on the bus, a French guy, two people from Australia, a girl from Canada, and a girl that was born in Boston, but is now living in London. Or England. I think it was London. My father ended up asking my community representative if it’s normal for Americans to talk to everyone.

But, back to the celebrations. There was also these huge dominoes set up that were from all around the world, and were pushed over to reenact the falling of the Berliner Mauer, which is fancy German talk for the Berlin Wall. And Brandenburg Tor is also fancy German talk for the Brandenburg Gate... but anyways, there was also a rather pathetic display of fireworks. Then a voice came onto the loudspeaker and assured us it was just a warm-up, and that the real fireworks were ready :D. Yay. It was prettyfulls.


°°°°°°°

(Here comes the normal update.)

I haven’t updated my blog in almost two weeks I think. Well, Thursday after my last post, I went ice-skating with a friend. He was a REALLY good ice skater, and I sort of just sucked, so... yeah. Ironically, right before we got to the ice skating rink, he said that in Brazil the people that said they could ice skate, could really only just skate a bit, fall down, then get back up again. He didn’t consider that real ice-skating. I was just thinking, „thanks man, that’s exactly what you’re about to see me doing“. Anyways, I fell. I got bruises. To this day, I can still see a little bit of their color. But, it’s not as bad as what he did. He decided to be a total wonder-skater man, and landed on his... I don’t know. I just saw him on the ground and he said he saw stars o.O. Our time at the ice rink ended when I fell on my head. It really hurt.

Then on Friday it was Ladies Night at this store called Karstadt... in German I would say „bei Karstadt“, and I noticed that I am starting to forget which English preposition I should use when I would use the word „bei“ in German. I also start wanting to put commas around EVERY clause. Anyways, at Ladies Night I met Mr. Beautiful and Mitch. Mr. Beautiful was a model who was getting painted in the middle of the store.

Mitch is an American that was stationed here during the war, and never went back to America. I met him while spinning this wheel to win free stuff. I won a pastry. He gave me his card so that when I go to redeem the pastry, I can ask for him too. I will, because he was really nice. And not in a creepy way. Just in a really outgoing person way :D.

Halloween. I dressed up and looked for candy. I also thanked people for donating to the United States of America, and said that we appreciated their support. I swear, some people gave us more candy just because I was talking to them in English. I even sang, „trick or treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat! If you don’t, I don’t care, I’ll pull down your underwear!“ I found it kind of funny, because usually older siblings complain about having to take along younger siblings, but this time my host sister had to take her German-retarded older host sister along with her :D. But, I had a nice time with her and her friend. I went as the Joker, sort of. The Joker’s makeup was made more to make him look cool, while mine more or less... accentuated my cheek fat.

Anyways! Then, Monday, I tried to go to school... then after about just five minutes I left. Why? Because I started to feel like I had to puke. What did I do as soon as I got home after riding my bike through a whole freaking park, in the rain, and falling in the mud? I puked! Then I laid on a heating pad all day, and felt a lot better. So, I decided to return my huge hoard of audio books to the library. Then what did I do? I got off at the wrong stop, and I think I was even in the wrong city...

I was in a bad mood by the time I got back home.

Tuesday, something mind-blowingly amazing happened. Speaking of that, does anyone actually know when we use the hyphen to join words together in English? Because I sure don’t. Anyways, I saw someone. On the bus. It was my geography teacher. So what? So, I saw a TEACHER on the BUS! That doesn’t happen in America! I mean, sure, I use public transportation to get to school in Germany, but still... and I also took pictures of the school cafeteria. The school doesn’t actually serve meals, it’s really just a small room, compared to an American cafeteria, and serves mainly snacks; such as a huge pastry, which is called in English a „pig ear“, that’s bigger than your head. Other than the food serving counter, there’s just like six or so tables...

Wednesday. This day, last week, probably meant nothing to you. But to me, IT FREAKING SNOWED!!!! And you know how when a vehicle is really dirty, the meanie heads will write, „ please wash me“ on the windows? You Arizona people have to write that in grime, but I got to write it in SNOW!!!

Thursday. I stayed home. I was sick. And I concocted a plan. I would get my entire host family sick. And I am trying to think of a really cool sounding result from getting my host family sick, but I really can’t :’(. Besides, I didn’t really mean for them to all catch my cold, but now everyone but my host sister is sick... but, she’s getting a headache too now, so maybe it’s just a matter of waiting.

Anyways, on Saturday I met up with two friends from language camp, and we had a really good time. We went to Checkpoint Charlie, Brandenburg Tor (we also visited the U.S. Embassy there, where we met a VERY cute member of the German police, who said that we couldn’t go into the embassy, because it wasn’t public, and that the building for lost Americans was on the other side of town, because of course I wanted to know where all of the poor lost Americans were supposed to go), the Berliner Turm, the Alexa (big-butt shopping mall), the Reichstag, and the place where Chancellor Merkel works. At Checkpoint Charlie was the last Kremlin Flag in all of... Berlin? Germany? I don’t know. The sign wasn’t too specific. Anyways, it’s all ragged and torn, but it looks really cool. Definitely old.

I also saw some funny postcards, and one said, „ Mei Englisch-Tietscher ist a werry stupitt Idioth!“ If your pronounce it like it’s German, then it sounds exactly like the English would, except for the „ist“ part.

On the way back, I went with the same retarded bus as before, and I ended up a little bit before the same retarded place, and so after walking around Berlin all day, I ended up walking around three kilometers to get back home. And of course, part of that distance is from walking in the wrong direction. And I had a problem with having no bathroom. Let’s just say that nature is now women’s’ toilet too.

The next day, Sunday, we went out to eat breakfast at the lakeside with my host mother’s parents. It was my host grandma’s birthday celebration, since she spent in actual birthday in Prague. But, I met a very adorable poodle that day, and I got to see the almost creepy-misty looking Berlin lake. Well, only one of the lakes. My host family also had a little get together one of these days, I forget when, and we basically just said what we liked and didn’t like about each other’s actions. It wasn’t a pick-apart-the-exchange-student day, it was just for ALL of the family members. I liked it. Then, this last Monday... I had my first big test. On monsoons. I wanted to write about cows REALLY badly, because I had no idea about monsoons, but instead I wrote about the monsoons in America, and the little village near India that has the highest amount of rainfall per year. (I swear, in the context I was writing this, it was all on topic. Even writing about cows would have been on topic. The only question not requiring a scientific knowledge of monsoons asked why the Indian people both love and fear the monsoons.)

Tuesday! It was a day. A really annoying one, really. So, my day at school was really long because I had chess club after, and was teaching the little kids, because no one my age is in the chess club apparently, English while we waited for the teacher. Then, when the 8th period was almost over, we went into the library to get our chess on. And yes, I beat the little kid at chess. Barely. I barely beat the little 11-year old at chess. He even thought I was in 8th grade because he said I looked small :’(. It’s really pathetic, but I was so happy I beat the little kid in chess!

On Wednesday, one of the boys in my class had a heart to heart with me in English class. I told him I’ve never kissed a boy. He told me that because of how I look, I will never get married, have kids, get a boyfriend, or even kiss a boy. He said I need new clothes, a new haircut, and need to go to the gym. And that I need to stop acting to manly, because a guy is never going to care about my personality enough to get past my looks. Quite a gentleman, isn’t he?

Once a week, there’s this really awesome day. Today is that day, commonly called „Thursday“ among the English people. Or „Donnerstag“ amongst the Germans... but when you’re French you call it „jeudi“. Anyways, the point is that today another extremely polite German gentleman told me an even nicer thing than the other one. This one was listening to me talking, which I didn’t like because he always makes fun of my German, so I asked him why. He said he wasn’t listening, and that he only speaks High German (there’s many regional dialects of German, but there’s only one accepted form of German for school and writings, and it’s High German), so he can’t understand what I’m saying because I don’t speak High German. Then he was making fun of my last name because it sounds like a first name... I find it rather pathetic. I almost hope he has to be immersed in another language himself, not out of my own sense of revenge, but just so he can realize what it’s like...

Other than that, I had a very nice biology test. I won’t be surprised if I get a bad grade on it, but I understood SO much more than I did on the geography test... and I finally met a German that likes Slipknot ^^. I went to the Spanish club today, and it was interesting... I have no idea if they were pronouncing everything correctly, but it was NOTHING like what I think the Spanish club at Buckeye is like... we actually were learning and practicing Spanish. When it was over, I walked with the Swiss exchange student to Kaiser’s, bought the two cheapest candy bars I could find, and ate them with her. Tomorrow I am going to meet with my community representative... and in case you’re wondering about how my German is coming along, I heard through some very reliable sources that the Swiss exchange student was jealous of my German, because I can speak it as well as she can, and she has been studying it for five years. That’s the best compliment I EVER got, in my opinion ^^.

Other than that, the only last thing I have to say, is that I had observed a French tour group while in Erfurt, much like I will observe Knut when I finally meet him. If you don’t know who Knut is, remember that Google is your friend. And that he’s a polar bear. Seriously though, I just found it really cool. I also like it that I can understand the Frenchies. I don’t know if I had mentioned this previously, but I also met this German guy who looked like a British guy, and sounded like an American, but was a German o.O IT WAS SO COOL! He was sort of strange though. Everyone in the area I was in had an accent, so I couldn’t understand them that well, and he saw me trying to talk to someone, and tried to make fun of my German as a joke. He totally was NOT being mean, he just found an offensive joke to make xD. But, he was really interested in English, and I appreciated that.

I almost forgot, the terrible, evil boys in my class teach me extremely perverted things in German, then tell me they mean something totally different, and then try to get me to say them. For example, „ich möchte ein Fesserspielchen spielen“. According to my German classmate, I would be saying, „I want to play a certain type of board game“. According to reality, I would be saying, „I want to have sex involving being attached to the bed with handcuffs“.

°°°°°°

I wrote that on Thursday. I didn’t update my blog because of technical difficulties. I had written this blog with some pictures in it, then my computer decided it wanted to listen to me when I was being stupid, and deleted Microsoft Paint. Now I can’t resize the pictures for my blog. I was hoping to be able to post this with pictures, but I waited two weeks already, I don’t want to wait any longer...

Friday I got a test back in PK Biology. I got a +4. In case that doesn’t make sense, I got an 18 out of 32. I can just imagine Antonio reading this and having his world turned upside down. Or the George who moved to the East Coast reading this and thinking I’m lazy. But, hey. I didn’t speak any German three months ago. What do you expect? That’s one thing I really like about being over here, I’ve gotten used to accepting the work I do, as long as I know I’m trying. No one can really set a standard for me, I have to make it myself. I also am learning more about my own values now, and my own personality perks. I had an epiphany today, Sunday... I realized, I thought my culture shock was over, but it’s really not. I also just realized this paragraph is suffering from unconnected ness. But, today I had a talk with my host mom, and I realized this whole time I’ve been sub-consciously clinging to my American life and values. And I need to let go.

That would be a wonderful sentence to end my blog on, but I’m not finished talking yet. I really like my community representative. I had a nice talk with her on Friday, borrowed a bunch of magazines, and she bought me ‚Der Vorleser’, a book, while we were waiting for my bus to bring me home. Saturday, I was trying to finish my mom’s knitted present so I could send the box, but it didn’t go so well. I’m sending it Monday instead. Mailing stuff is SO expensive here... everything is so expensive here... the rest of the day was spent running around with Tara from language camp. And running around is serious. As soon as I got home, I fell asleep on the floor. Right after I showed my host family the funny hat I bought at a second hand shop, right before seeing ‚2012’, the movie, with Tara. The hat has a flap on it, that opens up like one of those brush things on a knight’s helmet. But, it’s the German flag :D. It was only €4.95 or so, but it is going to make me lose all of my friends! For instance, I was wearing it on the bus when three kids from my school walked in... they said they didn’t know me, and ignored me as I tried to talk to them on the bus. But then I talked to this really nice German lady and her two children. THEY liked my hat. Other than that, I just went to Media Markt with Tara, and met Russians. I was walking out of a shop that sold Pokemon things and such (according to Tara it smelled like black market), when the Russians asked me where the „S + U Bahnhof Spandau Rathaus“ was. The foreigners asked the foreigners where something was, and oh did we know where it was.

Today I watched my host father and his team running in a race for Seimens. The track was in the Berlin-Tempelhof airport, which hasn’t been used as an actual airport for some years... it was a really cool building though, and it had been used by the Allied Powers back in the Berlin Airlift. I even got to see a plane there. I was looking around for a way to get into the actual airport itself, but everything was not only blocked up, but creepy too. I seriously would NOT have been surprised to see someone with an ax or something there; I was sort of expecting it... the buildings were extremely huge though. The business offices had ravens carved into them. My host father said it was really special that we got to go into the airport, because it’s usually never open. There were a few stands that people could by sports related things at, including some cheap shirts. The cheapest was for €2. Being entirely brilliant, I noticed one shirt had a sticker on it saying €1. My host mom and I both wanted to buy two shirts, so I took them with me to the register, asked how much they were, and got the €2 reply, then I showed them the one that said €1, and got four shirts for €4. Beat that. The workers were actually annoyed at each other for making that mistake with the sticker machine xD.

I totally and accidentally fell out of my chair in French class.

Vacation

The following is a recap of my vacation with my host family.

°°°°

17.Okt.2009

Today we started our drive to some hotel in Thüringen (did I spell that right?). If you don’t know what that is, then just imagine German as having states just like America, and you’re in New York and want to go to Kentucky. On the way, we stopped at this huge building that hosted something you’re all familiar with. One hint, it’s a really big store. And it’s blue. If you thought Walmart, then you don’t know that Walmart already failed when it tried reaching out to the German market. It was an Ikea! That store is actually from Sweden. Here’s a picture of the mini „Swedish Shop“ inside of the Ikea.



After a long day of driving, and of me forgetting to bring my bathing suit, we ended up on the top of a hill. A very big hill. You could see for miles. Here’s a picture.



The museum itself wasn’t much. The only exibit they had was one huge picture. The guy talked for I don’t know HOW long about it. I don’t know how long because I fell asleep. He wasn’t boring, I was just tired. The picture was definitely worth it though; no matter how well you thought you knew the picture, upon closer inspection you missed something. The artist basically stuck a bunch of different scenes together to create his painting. It had the Tower of Babel, the end of the world, just about everything. Even a lady with four heads, a priest getting harrassed by demons, a really weird globe thing with a hole in it... it’s probally a more imaginitive painting than the most imaginitive thing someone could experience from doing drugs. Which just says drugs don’t really help being imaginitive that much. Unless the artist was doing drugs... speaking of which.



I saw that in a shop window in Erfurt and took a picture. In fact, if you look really closely at the bottom, you can see the reflection of me with my camera.

After the museum, it was just a short drive to the hotel. After we put all of our stuff into the room, we walked around for hours looking for a place to eat dinner. Why did we do that? I have no idea. There were many places open and serving food... my host family just didn’t GO there. Finally, we ate at one of the first places we went by... ( ok, it might not have been hours, but my boot was hurting my ankle :`( ) As I was walking by a very dark entrance into a very dark building, just as the soon to be very dark night was getting very dark, I saw something that wasn’t so dark... it was yellowish, in fact. What was it? If you guessed the Rolling Stones and the Statue of Liberty, you were right. If you didn’t, shame on you!



A last note for this day... if you’re confused about your gender, you’re not the only one.



18.Okt.2009

Most of today was spent just looking at the town we were in, Mühlhausen. It was realy cool, because there was a wall around the town from the Middle Ages. Here’s a picture taken from the wall.



The church in the picture is where the Church hanged a man and his closest follower. The man was a reformationist, and that was his hang out until the Catholic Church got to him...

We also went to a museum about the Farm Wars, but I didn’t really like it... they were really violent too.

After we left Mühlhausen, we went to this place up in some trees and just hung out there. Since walking around in trees is perfectly normal, right?





The second picture is of this rope, quiet literally just rope, bridge that people could walk across. When I was on it, my host sister starting shaking it, and I started yelling at her. She’s such a pleasant person. She even started calling me Caitless. In case you don’t know, I’m afraid of heights. There was also a really high tower that you could go up in, and then you could see for miles. The sight wasn’t nearly as good as the one in Schwarzwald, though (stay tuned for pictures of that one!). But, you know how when water gets cold enough, it like... freezes or something? And then, in some places this like... snow thing happens? It did that in Germany.



19.Okt.2009

My host family and I are staying with my host father’s parents in Löchgau for a few days. I have my own room, unlike the hotel where there were four beds in one room, but the rest of my host family has to sleep together. We didn’t really do anything today, other than getting ice cream and walking around the town. We rode to the town on bikes, and most of the way is down a hill. And not just any hill. This hill was COVERED in grape vines. In fact, just about every hill in that place seemed covered by vineyards. It looked to me like winemaking was just about the only industry that that little town had...



There was also a charming little British-style pay phone. Its phone smelled like pee pee.



20.Okt.2009



Guess where I am today? Stuttgart. We came by train, and the first thing we did was go up this tower that had the Daimler logo rotating around on the top. We could see the whole city...



We walked along the shopping street, and then we went into this marketplace... I had NEVER seen so many dismembered animal legs before in my LIFE. I took a bunch of pictures to show to my vegetarian friends :D. There was a memorial going on for a school shooting that day as well. The whole thing was obviously private, with police officers standing outside the really fancy building the guests were going into, but then I asked a guy what it was and he wouldn’t tell me... he even shut the doors to the building. But then I asked someone else, and they were nice and told me what it was ^^. After all of that, we met with my host father’s sister and visited her for a while before heading back home.

21.Okt.2009

I slept the whole day. (not really)

We ate lunch with my father’s parents at a little restaurant. Or café. What’s the difference, anyways? I had cow cheeks. My plan was to order anything weird or cow, and so I got cow cheeks. They had a really funny texture. Really fatty, and... well, just chew on your cheek a little, then imagine eating that. Then eating six. They were good, but I don’t think I’ll ever order them again... and it was my host father’s birthday. After eating out, my host sister ditched my host family and I, so we climbed to the top of one of the vineyard hills without her. Again, we could see for miles. But, guess that’s sort of what you expect from being high up...



I just realized how obvious it is that when you’re higher up, you can see farther, so it’s rather redundant to always feel the need to say, “I can see for miles!”. Unless you can see France from where you are. Which I did. in Schwarzwald. Ha.

22.Okt.2009

Today, I saw France from Germany in Schwarzwald. I have a really nice picture, but I’m not going to shame it by making it small enough to fit here.
Please follow the link to see it.





Aren’t the donkeys and deer so cute? The deer were in this HUGE fenced in area with each other, and the donkeys were in a smaller area, down the hill a bit more, with some sheep. On the hill opposite the deer was a place for that one snow sport that starts with a b and involves sledding or such... I don’t think it’s bobsledding, but it might be... Anyways, a little later we came across this sign. Please note that in German ‘Kinder’ means children.



When I first saw it, I thought it was warning parents about a child napper or something. But no, it was just about a little ‘adventure’ thing that someone had set up for the kids. You had to hike this path while looking for words. One word was hidden in a tree, another in the mouth of a carved rock, another in the mouth of some weird... thing, another you had to stick your head into the mouth of carved wood to see, and finally the last one was made of rocks and scattered in a small area. The phrase was extremely nonsense. It was something about onion freedom for trolls... or something.

23.Okt.2009

We left my host father’s parents house today to go stay with his brother. There was a flea market for the church and youth groups going on, so we went there to help out. Because I helped out, I got like five free books xD. I met another American there. He had been living in Berlin for three years and was engaged to this German girl. He met her nine years ago when she was an exchange student to where he lived, and then he went on two exchanges in college to Germany just to be with her. He had been studying German for five years too... I think that is the CUTEST and SWEETEST story ever xD.

24.Okt.2009

We went to the flea market again, and I got more books, and a metal rose and cow. Then we left my host father’s brother’s house to go to Erfurt to stay with my host father’s cousin. His cousin and her roommate took us on a tour of the area around their apartment, and it was really nice.



25.Okt.2009



We walked all over Erfurt today, and I took tons of pictures. I really liked the two churches in the previous picture. I find one of their doorknockers very interesting. Can you see the person being eaten?



There’s also a large fortress in Erfurt, and we walked along it. There was a weird art gathering by it, with lots of animal pieces. One lady was roasting a WHOLE pig, and another stall had fish pieces just hanging out everywhere. Including this other thing... and I’m pretty sure that was intestines.

26.Okt.2009

We walked around Erfurt some more, then we drove home. Doggie.



°°°°
My fingers are mad at me for making them write that much. I don’t blame them though. I would be mad too if someone worked me so hard, then cut part of me off. Oh, did I mention that I cut pretty deep into the tip of my thumb while cutting bread? Now the tip is more like... a flap. I didn’t know so much blood could come out of a finger though; while my host mom was getting band-aids, I looked to see that my hand was COVERED in blood. I seriously thought, “ oh shit, you can’t bleed to death from cutting your finger, right?”. But, it stopped bleeding, and so now I am just awkwardly typing with a bandage on my left thumb. I went to the library yesterday with my host mom after picking up a box my mom sent me at customs. I checked out six movies and 16 audio books. The audio books are going onto my iPod ^^. In the box, my mom sent me the calculator god (TI-84), and CANDY. CANDY CANDY CANDY!!!!!!!!! right? Another thing was a pair of pink boxers signed by Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

Oh yeah, I also found this Yu-Gi-Oh magazine in a store here. I couldn’t believe they had it! So, of course, I bought it ^^. Also, my host mom is teaching me how to knit. I’m going to knit my mom something for Christmas, but don’t tell her that.




And that, my friends, concludes my posts for a week. I am happy. Just the writing alone, without the pictures, is six pages in Microsoft Word. It’s going to be a page-eating monster when it’s posted with the pictures :D. It’s a Godzilla post.

YAR!

So, I saw Lucas, another one of the CBYX kids on Saturday while heading towards the Spandau Rathaus. I was REALLY REALLY REALLY happy to see him ^^. The night before, I went to a ‚modern music concert’ with my host father... it was definitely strange. And not the best. A fourth of the audience went home during the intermission. The last piece was good because it had a video, but the other pieces were rather... ... ... not so great. Sunday I cooked meat for my host family, and THEY LIKED IT!!! It was really just meat with weird German ‚barbecue sauce’ on it, but I liked it as well.

I got a 4 on a thing in sport class, which is like a D in America. To be honest though, I don’t care. It actually felt good getting a low grade. In America I always got good grades so I always felt more competitive, but now it seems to matter less and less to me as every day goes by. Not that school is going bad for me, of course. I had a French test today, and I think I did really well on it. I also answered some questions in my PK Biology class, and they were right, so that’s good... I feel like I’m getting less and less things to say here. I believe it’s because this place is starting to feel more and more like home. In fact, I was sitting in class today, thinking about why I felt so regular, and I realized it’s because I felt at home.

There’s this one boy at my school who is extremely rude to me. This is going to sound awful, but I wonder why he has friends... He has yelled at me about four times so far, and he makes fun of me and my German while I’m standing right there. But, there’s another boy who’s really nice to me. In fact, he offered to teach me how to ice skate. Everyone’s nice to me actually, except for that one kid.

I talked to my community representative yesterday in German. I was SO happy when she told me that I was DEFINITALY progressing above the average rate, and I would know less than half of what I know know if I had been progressing at that rate. That made me feel so much better about my German. I really like my community representative, she’s a nice lady.

I’m going on vacation tommorow to some area around... some area... around... Stuttgart? And I have a book called Antigone that I need to read over my autumn vacation, my last day of school for two weeks is Monday, for German class. As for the weather, it already hailed/rained, it’s been so cold for awhile that I could see my breath in the air, and it has already snowed, I believe, in Southern Germany. Take that, Arizona. I will be posting some pictures whenever I get around to it. I live next to this really pretty park, and I ride through it twice a day on my bicycle to and from school. There’s a really steep incline in part of it, and I go down it every morning to get to school... I’m always afraid of going down it because the whole thing is gravel. One time a person was walking in the middle of the road under the incline, and I almost ran them over...

Yesterday, I went to an art exhibit with my class, and I really liked it. It was all surrealistic style art and I have never seen anything like it before. After that, I went meet my community representative, but spent about two hours with this kid from my class while travelling back to the area we live in. I really like spending time with the kids from school ^^. Don’t tell my host mom, but tuesday I found a bag of western-style barbecue chips in Kaiser’s, and I ate all of them. They tasted funny. Maybe it wasn’t just a coincidence that my stomach hurt the next day...

RAMMSTEIN!!!!!!! They have some new material out, and tommorow I am going to buy it from the store, and have it, and love it, and have it, and love it, and adore it ^^.

About the cold, it feels like claws are digging into your skin. Speaking of skin, I had burned my fingers while cooking rice, and then the skin got all wrinkly and nasty, but now it’s starting to peel off.

I've gained 3.3 pounds here. My lower leg muscles are bigger now ^^ (I think it's from all of the walking, bike riding, and sports I do here), and I had a terrible case of killer pimples all over my face for 2 weeks, but they finally deserted me last week-ish.

Does anyone have any questions about anything in Germany?

So, for Wandertag my class took a group dancing lesson, and the teacher was SO cute that I wouldn’t be surprised if some people took classes taught by him, just to watch him jump around. Because that’s what we did. Jumpstyle dancing is a traditional sort of dancing from the Netherlands, according to some kids in my class, where the whole time, you’re really just jumping all over the place. We all totally sucked at the dance though. We mainly focused on salsa dancing during the lesson, and then we had to dance with someone. So... I had my first dance with a boy o.O He thought I didn’t know the dance moves though, only because I was really uncomfortable, and I didn´t want to be there, so I wasn’t trying... he thought it was because I didn’t understand German, so he had the teacher teach me in English. The teacher taught me by dancing with me. So, I also got to dance with a really hot guy xD.

On the way to Wandertag, I met some people on the bus. They were 4 university exchange students, two from Spain and two from Italy, who were talking to each other in English, since it’s the only language they could use to communicate with each other. None of them really knew any German, but they all seemed really nice, and all :D. One was surpised that I was so young and in a forgein country, she said when she was 15 she wanted to be around her mom. I feel better now though, for going into a country where I don’t know the language, since they are basically doing the same thing, but at an even higher and harder level. On the way back, I met a Britsh lady that teaches at an institute here in Berlin, and her German student. I also met a guy from England, and then on the bus I talked to these two guys that were totally decked out in American apparel, but were Germans... I really like Berlin’s public transportation.

I forgot to mention in my last post that I’ve been riding my bike about half way to school, then taking the bus the rest of the way. It cuts off 20 minutes each way. The little neighbor girl also woke me up by knocking on my bedroom door while holding a bowl of peanuts :D. She was SOOO cute (about 5 years old too), and she apparently had been asking and asking when the African was finally going to come xD (she thinks I’m from Africa).

I also had gone to see these huge puppet things with my host family. One was a girl who was 13 meter high or so, and was riding around in basically a boat pulled by a truck, and the other was her uncle. We stood around for a while, waiting for the uncle to move, but he didn't... I bought a shirt that says Berlin all over it, and I also saw these other really cool shirts with things like "74 million Germans cannot speak Bavarian".

Today I was talking to a girl from the French speaking part of Switzerland. She’s also an exchange student at the German highschool I’m going to ^^. I was invited to someone’s birthday party as well :D, but I’m not able to go because my host family and I are going on vacation... I checked out a bunch of books from the library. Some are novels, but one is a book on art, and another is about chemistry. I want to also read my textbooks so that I can understand better what’s going on, and to learn of course... I’m learning how to form the imperfect tense in German ^^. That’s like my favorite tense :D. I got my first grade today, it was on a drawing of my eye and another eye for art class... I got a 2- on it, which is like a B- in America. I was happy though, because in this art class your drawing has to be PERFECT to get a 1, an A in America. Art class here is really hard, because the things we spent a week drawing in America, we spend a hour drawing here... I just hope I’ll do well on my tests... my exchange program asks the school that I get graded on my learning of the German language, not so much on the teachers’ lessons, but I still want to know what hard, cold, I-don’t-care-if-you’re-foreign grade I would get. I also kind of have to maintain good enough grades to NOT get sent back to America xD (don’t get your hopes up, mom). By the way, I also have my first English essay due on Wednesday. I wonder how many, if any, mistakes my teacher will find? We were told that we would get our first essays back with a ton of corrections, but we were also told that we would not understand a foreign language class (like French or Spanish) here, so we shouldn’t take one, but I totally get my French class, so perhaps the only fault my teacher would find will be huge, gigantor, run-on setences with tons of commas, much like the one I’m writing right now, but I really don’t want to end it now, since I want to get my point across; although, perhaps I should have used semicolons? (98 word sentence, lol?)

Last, but not least, I have a thing (lol?). It’s three letters long, and rhymes with car. I have a car :D. My mom bought me a car for my birthday/Christmas/I’m-so-not-ever-going-to-get-another-present-again. It’s a blue Honda Civic Lx, with no stickshift, a huge trunk, and wonderful gas mileage. The gas mileage is so good that my mom has decided to drive it to work every day until I get back -_-’. That alone will save her $150 a month.

As for CBYX news, we were told that we should both shower and change our underwear more often. Apparently, some people were not showing and not changing their underwear... in language camp, they had told us a story about a kid who had hid his/her (oh yeah, you can’t use the word „their“ to stand for a singular noun, according to my SAT-preparation book. My quotation marks will look funny, due to the fact that I am using a German keyboard, and Germans write their marks like that) underwear under his/her bed, then his/her host mom found it. Ew, anyone? In language camp, we had also gone into the boys’ bathroom to get internet access, since we got like 4 bars of wi-fi reception on the window sill in there xD.

I went to a hockey club last Wednesday, and one of the guys from there told me later that I really really sucked -_-’. He had actually been an exchange student to America, and I met another kid who went to America too :D. I sort of sounded like I would shut up, then I just kept talking throughout this whole blog. I guess I will stop now.
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Hi.

Unicycles

So, my host dad was trying to teach me how to ride a unicycle. My host sister would hold one end of like a fire-poker thing, my host dad the other, and then I would attempt to use the stick to help me balance myself. I ended up leaning forward once with too much weight, my host sister let go, and I got hit in the lip. It started to swell up, and was bleeding, but it´s all okay now. I had another lesson, but I kept falling over. I got REALLY dirty and yucky.

School is really nice. I corrected a German, in German, in Germany, and I felt really good ^^. I wasn´t just rudely correcting him, mind you, he did a math problem wrong and the teacher asked for someone to correct him. My French teacher thinks I don´t know French. But, I will show him! He told me not to do this one thing in class, because it would be too hard... I really appreciate my French classes in America now. But, there´s a lot of verbs in my French class that I´ve read so many times before, but never bothered to look up, so I wish I had looked them up... now, grammar will matter more too... on Monday I went to a badmitton club and met a boy who is fluent in American English, and whose mother is from America. Yesterday I met a German who had gone to America for an exchange year, and then today I met another one while playing in a field hockey club (technically it was before, we talked while waiting for it to start). I also heard that the field hockey coach gives better grades to the students in field hockey club, and he happens to be my biology teacher!

My receiver for my wireless keyboard broke. Now I can´t use that keyboard. So now I am using a German one :D. And I can do this; öäüß. Beat that.

I went to see part of the Berlin Wall with my host family, and it´s ALL covered in paint. It´s actually totally accepted to just walk up to it and paint graffiti on it. You can literally just take a chunk of the paint off, since there´s so many layers. My host father said that ever 2 days or so, the graffiti on the wall will be totally new. I also went to the library with my host parents, and we went into some clothing stores... I was walking around for most of the day, and my legs were so tired, that I sat down on a computer. Someone left their computer monitor out on the street corner.

Tommorow is Wandertag, where I will go dancing with my whole school. I have no school tommorow, I just HAVE to attend a school dance from 11:00-14:00. Nothing else. They also don't have substitute teacher in Germany. When a teacher isn't there, you just don't go to that class. I also only have a maximum of three different classes a day, but I have like... 10 or so different subjects all together.

Did I mention that here the really big packages of toilet paper have handles? I want handles on MY toilet paper! When I speak English on a bus or something, everyone stares at me. I actually had someone ask me 'are you Caitlin?', because they knew that I was 'the' exchange student. I´m also playing this really fun game with one of my classmates. He invented this game where he ignores me, and I ignore him, and whoever stops ignoring the other first, loses. Apparently he's just strange like that to everyone.

About the whole learning German thing, I am able to thing in German, although my grammar is awful, but I am learning grammar. It's really hard, because there's three different genders and then a plural. So we only have one article, 'the', but German has der, das, and die, but that's only in the nominative case. Because German also has four cases. And I forgot to mention that adjective endings change not only according to the gender and number of the noun they modify, but also the case it's in. There's also about 6 different ways to place verbs in a sentence, but only one is right. Some verbs have a seperable prefix that detaches and then goes to the end of the clause. Note; clause, not setence. There IS a difference. The normal case that the object a verb has usually takes the accusative case, but some verbs' objects take the dative. Prepositions also have a pre-determined case of the noun they're talking about, but there's a trillion of them, and some can take more than just one, depending on wether or not movement is being expressed. Go here if you want to know what I'm talking about; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_grammar. My first day in Berlin, I thought my host mom said we were going to eat the neighbor's cat... for all of the difficulties of the German language, I really like it. And I am starting to correctly form the adjectives for the nominative and accusative cases, and to use some prepositions correctly :D.

I am starting to wonder how I will have changed when I come back to America.

Really Late Post.

On Saturday I went with Tara and Lucas to the Berlin-Spandau train station. There, we met our host families and went off with them. No more language camp! I was sad about leaving, since I was just starting to get REALLY comfortable there, and even the people that had really annoyed me at first seemed to not bother me anymore. I gave my teacher, Evelin, flowers, chocolate, and a card, and she was so happy to get them :D. I also painted a thank you card for the kitchen ladies, and painted an envelope in the colors of the German flag and sent it to America for my cousin’s birthday... I don’t think she got it yet. My mom sent me a package with the MOST motherly things ever; hand lotion, heating pads, cough drops, Airborne (basically vitamins), heating pads for muscle pain, and beef jerky. Evelin cried when all of the kids had loaded onto the bus to go to the train station in Magdeburg and were starting to pull away... she was a really sweet lady.

I’ve had my first days in actual real German culture now. The train ride to Berlin wasn’t the best, I was so tired by the end of it because I had to move my big heavy suitcases all over the place, and down two flights of stairs. On the train, it kind of hit me that I’m really just a little kid. I almost got out at the wrong stop, since there was a train stop that said something like Rathenow-Berlin-Spandau. Of course, it was wrong. Finally, at the right stop I was looking at the crowd for my host family, and I saw them, and some German guy helped me with my suitcases, and then my host parents helped me with my suitcases, and then we were in the car. I also tried Froop. I will probably never try it again. They use so much less sugar in their foods here, and I miss SUGAR!!!! But, then my host parents drove me to our house, and I put my suitcases away, had something to eat, then we walked around in Schöneburg. Berlin has SOOOO many trees, it’s so beautiful! My school is also by a forest, so it has even more trees. Actually, my house is by a forest as well :D. It’s also cold here. Anyways, Sunday we went to church, and I almost fell asleep about 5 times, then we went to Kaffeepause with the other church people because it was raining. Oh yeah, it rains here, not like in Arizona. Then, we rode our bikes back to the house (my host family likes to ride bikes, on Saturday my host dad is going on a bicycling tour, and he even rides his bike in to work). Monday my host mom brought me to the Hans-Carrossa-Gymnasium. I met a girl from my class there, and she showed me the school. She is basically like my babysitter at school right now xD. But, she is really nice. Everyone in my class seems to be nice so far. My first day at school I wasn’t too scared by the fact that I didn’t know much German, because I could still follow what was going on. The second day also went well, and the today I answered a question in math class, and also asked the teacher for help twice, and she told me that she’s happy I’m so good at math :D. She seemed REALLY happy that I was at least trying. I think I am starting to make friends with the kids in my class. They’re all nice to me, but I don’t want to get overexcited or such, because according to just about everyone German friendships take longer to establish. But, one girl asked me to ride home on the bus with her, and these three guys all seemed happy to talk to me, so I think I will make friends. I talked a lot about America in my English class, and the kids seemed really interested in it. The teacher wanted me to bring in pictures of America. Also, apparently I am the youngest person in my Klasse.

My host family is really nice. My host dad designs custom-made engines for Siemens. He’s really funny and has an accent. Someone had even asked me if I had a hard time understanding him, since they know he has an accent. My host mom is really really REALLY nice, and really organized. One of the first things she did was to give me printouts of every bus I will take, the schedule for every day until Winter Break, and also the number to every single phone the family owns. She reminds me in some ways of my own mom. Then, my host sister. She just seems like an adorable little kid, and she really likes to read.

Anddddd, that’s all; other than the fact that I’m really not having too many problems with the language. I think it’s really cool that I’ve had conversations with my host mom where she’s speaking to me only in German, and I’m speaking to her in English :D. I am speaking German every day, admittedly not 100% with everyone, but for someone who has had only 4 weeks of real German courses, I think I’m doing really good. I’m able to have a conversation in German.

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So, I wrote all of that stuff two days ago, and just didn’t get around to posting it until today, and I realized I forgot to mention some stuff. After a week, I’ve realized that German culture really IS different. Something that we don’t think of as important in America could be really important here... and vice-versa. Also, my host sister just gave me a huge pile of books to read to improve my German, I’ve gotten a German SIM Card for my phone, someone invited me over their house, I bought 75 Euro leather boots for only 20 Euros :D, and I bought this really pretty jacket and scarf. I think my French class will be easy, because I already know about 90% of the vocabulary in the test my teacher’s given us (and I was really scared because German school was supposed to be so advanced o.O), I understood my BK (PK classes are like AP courses in America, but BK are just regular level. At my school, you can only pick 2 PK courses) math class since I already learned logarithms, and in my PK biology class we’re going over basic level osmosis (which I already learned). And the math teacher that told me I was so good at math...? Turns out she’s also the principal. My community representative was also told by her that she’s really pleased with me. My CR visited yesterday, and it went well. She seems like a really nice lady, and she spoke REALLY good English.

On the bus ride out of Hedersleben, the bus drive gave Anne a box from Johny, this Hedersleben kid. A ring was in the box. It had John engraved on the inside. Anyways, this kid had a huge crush on Anne, he had even waited outside the monastery in the rain once to talk to her, because she accidentally told him that she was in love with him in German. Apparently, saying “ich liebe dich” (I love you), is only reserved for your lover, and she said that to Johny... ever since then, he has liked her. A lot. A lot a lot. So now, she is going to write him a letter saying that she doesn’t feel the same way, and asking if he wants his ring back.

My first day in P.E. class, we had the Cooper Test. That’s where you run around a track for 12 minutes straight, and then the teacher actually grades you on distance. Art class also goes like that, where if you just suck at it, you still get a bad grade.

The first day I used the Berlin bus system, I got lost. My host mom thought that there would be a chess club after school, so she told me to get on this bus an hour and a half after school ended. It turns out that chess club is only on Wednesdays, and it hasn’t even started yet, so I just went to the bus stop. And sat there. I didn’t realize that the many buses going by me for over an hour could have brought me to the same place as the one my host mom told me to use >:(. Then, when the bus finally comes, it’s late and then it breaks down, every has to get off, and we get onto another bus. When I finally got to the place I was supposed to get off at, it was past the time that the second bus I was supposed to take was supposed to have been there. But, by then I sort of noticed that every bus that had gone by me had the same destination thing written in their digital screens, so I just went to the wrong bus stop and waited there for 20 minutes. I was starting to get worried, and I was trying to call my host parents (none of them had their cell phones on :’(), when I asked this German lady about the bus. She told me it would come in 5 minutes. A bus came in 2 minutes, and before she got on it she did some pointing, and I heard “anderen Bus” (other bus), so I thought she meant a bus would come to that station in 3 minutes, and it was the one I should take... but nooooooo. She meant I was on the wrong side of the road :’(. A bus did come though, and I asked the bus driver if it went to my destination, and then he told me that I was on the wrong side of the road... then I went to the bus station on the right side of the road, and I got home. Then I was happy. I know enough German to not get too lost, hooray.

Hi

So, first off in my poor chronological memory is the trip to Halberstadt. We took the train there, and went on a tour of a meat plant for the Halberstadter sausage company; this particular building had been around since before the division of Germany, which was a big deal since Eastern businesses had a hard time surviving the reunification. There was so much meat. It smelled sort of off, and I saw a fly in one of the rooms, but it wasn’t really disgusting. Some people were talking about swearing off meat for a year, but there really wasn’t anything that bad with the place. It made me want to join 4-H again and enter a carcass judging competition. But, because of 4-H I probably have a better appreciation of the eating-living-things-thing, which might be why I wasn’t as disgusted. It was kind of funny though, that the vegetarians here had to see it too. At the end, they offered us freshly prepared sausages and I ate one. It tasted pretty much like an old sausage. I also bought some school supplies in Halberstadt, and then we went to this really pretty cathedral. It had a bunch of textiles, the second largest collection in the world I believe. During World War II, people had taken the relics in the cathedral to save them from bombing. One piece found its way all the way over to a New York museum before being returned.

Then comes the fire station visit of last night. It started off with us taking a ride out to this creek thing running y a field, and the firefighters put a hose into the creek and pumped it through these fire hoses so we could use them. Basically, they had a natural fire hydrant. I tried holding two, and ironically the only hose that was tough to hold was a small one. After I was done holding the small one, I was just standing around by the back of the fire truck, minding my own business, when the hose popped off the truck, essentially spraying me with enough water for four fire hoses. My reflexes suck so I was sort of just standing there for a second thinking ‘wait, what?’. I was so wet my shoe felt like there was a puddle in it. Afterwards, we drove to some other town’s fire station, then to a second town’s fire station. In the second town’s station, they had naked pictures. First, it was a calendar with a woman proudly displaying her body parts, then it was like 20 girls all covering each other’s body parts, but nevertheless naked, and on the wall of the workout room. On the way back to Hedersleben, a car managed to get in between the two fire trucks, so the one I was in turned on its sirens. The car pulled in front of the first truck and started speeding up to just get out of the way, so my truck decides to chase it. We kept chasing it until the car really stepped on the gas and got out of there. Other than that, nothing really happened in the truck itself, other than me falling into a CBYX guy’s lap (liek tat momy?). When we got back to Hedersleben, it started to rain, and a firefighter gave me his jacket. Then they invited us for some refreshments. We ate sausage and drank soda and some weird apple thing. One fire fighter tried to give Lyell a beer, and another was talking to me and was saying, “are you hungry? Are you thirsty? Do you want this?” and then he tried to give me a shot of whatever that was. Then he didn’t want his sausage, so he put it on my little sausage holder. Then I forced someone else to take it who was Muslim and didn’t eat pork. So, we kept passing the sausage around until one of the language teachers ate it.

I like the food here, it’s just too much. There’s SO much meat here! I miss my vegetables! I will be getting off a train at the Berlin-Spandau station at 13:05 Germany time on Saturday the 12th. Then, I will finally see my host family. I am really looking forward to that. Nida already got to meet her host family, since they live in Hedersleben. She was one of the last people to be placed. I met her sister, and we were able to understand each other. I introduced myself as Steven as a joke and Nida told her host sister I was just crazy :’(. But, I think she liked me, since I saw her at the church bazaar today, and she smiled at me. I miss milk. And Rammstein.

Lastly, my shower is broken. There was this whole thing set up so that you could adust the height of the nozzle, since it was basically like one of those fancy kitchen sink faucets where it's like a small hose, and it was already loose when I got there. But, the top washer or whatever apparently just got a little too loose and fell. Then I tried to pick it up and more stuff started to fall apart. It's not morbidly broken or anything, it just needs to be put back together. Correctly.

Ich finde dich!

Today, we did some community service in the town of Hedersleben. First I helped paint a fence, then I painted a wall in a playground. Our orders for the wall was to pick one of the pictures already painted there, then to build on it. I picked a picture that was a red hexagon inside of a rectangular yellow background. First I tried to add orange streaks, then that got boring, so I decided to flick red paint at it and to add handprints everywhere. Now it looks like someone was murdered there, and their blood got all over the wall xD. The guy who was working at the playground looked at me, told me to look for the nearest shower, and to stop painting. He also kept cursing and saying ‘shit’ in German. I personally happened to find my picture pretty :’(... but then again, I had two streaks of red and orange paint on the bottom of one pant leg, droplets of red paint on my shoes, two hands covered in red paint, and red paint all over the area under my elbow. My mom is about to freak out from hearing this, so I am going to mention that the paint was like little kid paint, and it was coming out of my clothes just from rubbing them xD.

I got 18 or so bug bites all over my body. The language teachers made me stay in bed this one evening with a wet bandage wrapped around my foot because there were two swollen bug bites on the heel of my foot. The night I got them, I woke up at midnight itching myself, and would find more and more bites after each day. They’re almost healed now with almost no irritation and reddening. I keep getting self conscious about my comma use, since that was my biggest problem with writing in English class... I keep imagining Ms. Balicki reading my blog and shaking her head at all of my mistakes. I puked two mornings ago, and have had a killer stomachache since then... but I am resting a lot and starting to feel better.

I called my host family twice now, and they’ve sent me two packages. Both packages had chocolate :D. But, they seem really nice, and as language camp is getting closer to ending, I’m looking forward more and more to meeting them. The only qualm I have is the fact that I wouldn’t want to speak English to them, and it’s kind of hard to learn another language in a month... but, if babies can learn a language without even being able to ask questions, or to translate things, then I should be able to learn a language too. At least I can understand most of what my teacher is saying to me... the only thing is that I don’t really understand the idioms they’re using, or what they’re referring to. For example, I understood exactly what my teacher said this one time, I just didn’t know what she was referring to, so I was like ‘what?’.

I’m having a great time here, and I feel like I know what a boarding school is like now. Some people are annoying, but then again, I can’t expect to be perfectly compatible with every single person here, since there’s 45. McKenna, Tara, and Nida are all really cool people, and I go to town and hang out with them just about every day. There’s some other friends I have here too, but I don’t spend as much time with them as I do with those three.

Have I mentioned there’s practically no rules here, other than to not do things detrimental to yourself? I’m going to go to this town, I think it’s called Halberstadt, tomorrow; a few days ago I went to Quedlinburg, and it was sooooo pretty. There were anarchy signs all over, which was kind of weird, but some vandal made up for it when they drew a picture of a man throwing the Nazi emblem into the trash with a note saying “Nazis are on the out!”. The town had been a shrine to the Nazi regime during the Nazi regime, so that could explain the vandalism... the group I was in was comprised of all beginners (the name of our German class level), and I was speaking for them to German citizens a little bit, and the people understood me, and I understood them, so I was really happy and confident ^^. I just realized that I feel more confident about my German abilities when I’m in a city. An interesting thing about the teachers here, is that so far whenever they ask someone a question, they don’t ask someone else if the person doesn’t respond.

I really really like it here, but I feel like I complained more than I complimented in this blog, so I would like to mention that my stomach is killlliiinnnng me, so I’m not in the greatest of moods, but I really do love it here. I already don’t want to go back.

I want to meet my host familllyyyyyy. My host sister is 12, so I keep having this picture in my head of an adorable little kid, even though I have a picture of her and she’s really tall. She doesn’t look like a little kid either. I think my lack of siblings has screwed up what I expect people to look like at certain ages... I just realized I don’t know how to pronounce either of my host parent’s names :D. My host mother called me by the German pronunciation of my name on the phone, so that sort of reminded me I didn’t know how to pronounce their names in German.

Rawr! (Let Me Sleep)

So, I totally said that I would update every week, and I am almost into my first week, and I haven’t made a real post. The first two days outside of Arizona were mainly spent traveling on a plane. I have no roommate here, and I <3 my room. At first, I was uncomfortable in it, but now I am not. As I’m writing this, I’m watching Asterix, a French cartoon. It’s supposed to be about Asterix fighting off the Roman Empire, from what I remember of my French class, but there’s Indians (the Native American kind) in this episode... no clue why.

Anyways, I have three hours of German classes in the morning, three in the evening, and three meals a day, 30-minutes of German news and announcements a day, and Kaffeezeit (coffee time). Kaffeezeit involves CANDY and coffee. It’s like the British teatime, just in Germany and replaced with coffee. I think I’m doing pretty food with my German, since I’m able to get the basic jist of what people are saying to me, as well as being able to spell a word based on its sound, but I still feel so crippled with German. Do not pity me, the reason for this is because I am totally immersed in a foreign language that I have never really studied before :D. After all, think of all the different words you use while talking to someone... then imagine not knowing any of them.

Anyways, I’m making friends here. There’s a large variety of people here, and even the people sitting in my room right now are rather different. I yell to the Germans out of my window, and have hung out with them a little in front of the monastery. They don’t really know English, so there’s a huge language barrier, but it’s mainly just kids from both language hanging together, but only talking to speakers of their language. It’s interesting. One of them climbed a tree and shook it, sending pears flying everywhere. Last night they ran into the monastery, and got kicked out by the kitchen staff and language teachers.

My speaking lisp is sort of coming out, but in a different way. The past two days it’s only happened two days, but I will forget how to make a sound, and a sound really close to it will come out instead. At least I’m pronouncing everything correctly :D. I am happy that I can also tell when my classmates are incorrectly pronounce something, and can tell if someone is a native speaker by their accent. So, I can tell I am learning, I just can’t really quantify it yet.

Germans are secure in their sexuality, end of story. They were selling birth protection in the REALLY small drugstore, and magazines with COMPLETELY naked women on the cover in the supermarket. Hedersleben is really small though, even smaller than Buckeye. This town is covered with trees, and is rather cold in the mornings. Every person and thing here is friendly, even the bugs. I was trying to get a HUGE gangster bug out of my room, but it was just chilling on my wall instead. The flies here could eat the flies in Arizona, and the cats enjoy being literally picked up and carried around the town. Tomorrow is Sunday, and I will be going to the protestant church right next to the monastery.

In Liepzig, I bought a book under the “first reading book” section. I felt a bit pathetic, buying a little kid boo for myself xD. Then, my friend Nida was looking for incense. There was a really rude waiter who had just ripped the menu out of my hand (and another waiter that stared at me while flies danced on the pizza he was selling), and he told us to look for this one store for incense. The only warning he gave us was that it sold weird things. What could those weird things be? Why, bongs of course! The store sold bongs, hookahs, weird books, and some strange stuff that looked like pesticides. The only other ting they seemed to sell was incense. I wondered who could possibly use so many bongs, since there was easily over 100 in all different styles. To make the situation funnier, it was called the Chill Shop, and had a marijuana leaf on the store sign. Just remember, we ONLY bought the incense.

I love it here.

Ghosts

This was my first morning in Hedersleben. I decided to go to breakfast, and as soon as I was outside of the room, I put my key in the door to lock it, and I heard the furniture inside of it moving, and my toilet flushing. I was freaked out. I don't think it was the room next to mine, because when I went back to check it later, the room next to mine flushed their toilet, and it definitely sounded different. I asked one of the language teachers about ghosts, and he said there was a ghost in the cellar, but it was just a story and he wasn't sure if it was true.

Hai, Eat Me Pl0x?

After millions of years of evolution, we get the chicken. Specifically my roosters, who are right now crowing, while the hungry coyote that wants to eat them is howling less than a quater of a mile away. Nature, thank you for the brilliance of the chicken. We can only hope to be as smart them one day, so that while the hungry robots are within earshot, we have the cunning brilliance to scream, "Hai, eat me pl0x?".

Speaking of humans, I saw this in a public bathroom today.

What's THAT for? Are the employees going to flood the bathroom with it and enjoy a nice, improvised, hot tub?

Dishwasher Friendly! / CBYX Conference 3

Watch the video.



The point of this, is that we just took our broken dishwasher out, and put in a new one... and I decided to crawl into the old one. It was a very tight fit. I had a hard time getting out, but when I did, the dishwasher fell on me!

But, I would like to give a shout out to Cody Smith... thanks for stabbing me! (We were sword fighting with play fight swords, and he accidently stabbed me in the arm. It wasn't that bad, and it was a while ago, so it's almost healed by now.)

I also had my third CBYX conference recently. There were other alumni on the call, and one said he was totally not paying attention in language camp, then he decided to work hard, and within about two weeks, or a month, he was just like any other student... and was getting higher grades than some Germans by a month. That made me feel a lot better, because the other alumni had said it took him practically nine months to feel comfortable talking to people. But, the conference was mainly about safety and school. One of the things they mentioned, was that school spirit is virtually non-existant... another one of the alimni said that he lost 80 pounds in his first four months! But, it was also said that girls are likely to gain weight overseas, while boys lose it. What I really liked was when they said that drinking in Germany was more of a social lifestyle, and it wasn't abused. Germans don't drink to get drunk, they drink in a bar while talking to their friends.

The safety part was what you'd expect. Always meet up in a public place, unless you trust the person. Friendship are taken very seriously over there, and it takes more than being mere classmates to be considered a friend. So, you can't trust someone 100%, just because they're a classmate. The German students will be flocking over you, because you're a student from America, and your first impression will be everything. It was also said to be careful when going out at night with friends, because of pickpocketers, to make sure your wallet is on you at all times, and to not bring your passport around.

I have already packed for Germany, and I'm excited.

Owl Baby and Exams

So, you might be asking yourself, what is an 'owl baby'? My owl baby is a demented looking creature that my cat tried to kill. This is a picture of my owl baby.

Quite the looker, isn't he? I put him on my lap after my mom saved him from the cats, and he was starting to fall asleep as I stroked his head and his back. He sort of flopped around, instead of flying, and so he most likely injured his wing. He wouldn't eat either, so my mom called an animal shelter, and they came to pick him up. Here is a less creepy looking picture of my owl baby.



I had him for less than 24 hours :'(. But, there will be other owls like him at the animal shelter.


As for exams, today was my last day of college courses at Estrella Mountain Community College. It was interesting, because I realized this college has no "+"s or "-"s on their letter grades, just the letter (for example, B instead of B- or B+). In math I was supposed to have a final exam today, but there was a different surprise... only about four people actually had to take the test. The reason for this is that if the other students took the exam, it wouldn't really effect their grades. I had planned on hanging around and taking the final, but my teacher said he wouldn't grade it, so I just left. These are my final grades for the class (HWK means homework average), and my overall grade was 98.



As for the career and personal development class, my grade is an A. I have no idea what my number grade was in the class, but I got the highest possible letter grade, so yay. They gave us t-shirts, ice cream, and pizza in our last CPD meeting :D.

My reflections on my first college classes are simple... they were very easy.

As a last note, toads sound like chickens when you hold them in your hands with gloves on. The toad that was hanging out with the kittens in my garage (until I picked him up and put him by our citrus trees) also decided to secrete poison (or pee, my mom says he peed) from his glands as soon as I picked him up (if it was pee, then he hadn't used the bathroom in a few days).

My Host Family

My host family rides unicycles. That is so cool! I was told on June 25th who my host family was (so yes, I am being very lazy about updating this), but they seem so cool! My host sister Julia is my age, but she will be on an exchange year in Ireland while I am in Germany. The other host sister, Alina, plays the violin, and is 12 years old. My host mother is Viola, and she is a stay at home wife who takes care of their garden, and also reads to kids once a week. She's also trying to get me to write more often in German, so that I learn the language faster. My host father Joachim was on a bike tour thing this weekend. My host family seems really into riding bikes. After reading about them on the host family profile, and also from the mails they've sent me, I'm really looking forward to spending my year in Germany with them.

They live just outside of Berlin, the capital of Germany, and I will be going to the Heinz-Berggruen-Gymnasium. My German friend David looked at the gymnasium's website, and said it was really good... I will also be able to continue studying French at that gymnasium, so I am happy. I don't know wether I will be going into the 10th or 11th grade there, though, since the school wants me in the 10th grade (because I don't speak German), but it says on my secondary application that my American school suggests I go into the 11th grade.

I'm very happy my host family doesn't smoke, because I have so many not-so-fond memories of the smell of smoke :\. I feel like I'm not writing enough about them... maybe I would have written more if I hadn't been walking around for hours in the murderous sun. When I sat down at this computer I could FEEL all of the sweat on my back :'(.

Fast-Food Bathrooms? Think Again!

I went to an unnamed fast-food restaurant today, only to see something disturbing. A woman was cleaning her granddaughter's butt/dress/legs/the floor of the oozy goo that the little girl left all over the place... it was chunky (and it came from her butt, if you didn't pick that up). I was thinking 'ok, it's just a little kid they do this'. After the lady got the kid out of the bathroom stall (she was cleaning the kid half in and half out of the stall), I used it, and all was good, until I looked down while washing my hands and saw chunky bits floating around... and realized the girl's goo was on the handle to the sink. Thank you Walmart, for selling me that hand sanitizer.

College Courses: Almost Over!

First of all, let me say thank you for following my blog and leaving me comments. It makes me feel special, and like I'm not just talking to myself! xD

I have just 4 more math classes, and 2 more career and personal development classes, then I am done with collge courses for the summer! I want to spend more time at the food bank during the next month of summer, I am starting to miss people, and want something to do...

As for my German exchange, I didn't write anything about the conference call that I had on June 12, 2009 yet. It wasn't very informative, and most of it was going over a list of clothing items we need to bring, which had already been sent to us in an e-mail. Having a Visa card was suggested for use instead of money, that way we don't need to be carrying around as much money. We were told to bring a German thesaurus, English - German dictionary, backpack, 2 weeks of toiletries, and presents for our host family. We were also told that we need to adjust to our host families, not have them adjust to us.

Culture shock was also touched on. Symptoms are stereotyping the host country, homesickness, boredom, and excessive sleeping/eating. The solutions were to overcome this by interacting with your host community, exercising, reflecting on why you wanted to be an exchange student, and thinking positive instead of negative. The stages were described as follows,
1 Honeymoon - everything great and interesting
2 Focusing on differences
3 Comfortable in new environment
4 Able to function in a new culture
5 Re-entry shock - coming back to America, where everything that was once so comfortable is suddenly so strange

One of the alumni was on the conference call, and said that he was able to function in October, but not able to carry on a conversation until May. He wanted to be away from school because he felt like it was alienating him, and he felt like he couldn't have friends because he couldn't communicate. Being patient was strongly suggested for almost every problem that you have as an exchange student.

I've ammassed enough toothbrushes for my whole exchange year (thanks mom), enough toothpaste for a really long time, more deodorant than I've used in my entire lifetime, a really nice new backpack, an even nicer pair of gloves, and a rainproof jacket thing, as well as a new, and bigger, suitcase. I can't even remember the other things I have, but they're all invading a section of my room, where all of it is stacked on itself. I also have had some trash in that area for about a week now (I couldn't find my camera charger and started cleaning my room), but my mom still hasn't really noticed, even though I went as far as putting a sticky note labeled 'trash' in front of one pile... I should probally clean that up before she reads this blog. Other than that, my mom also bought presents for my host family. She got Arizona themed socks, two weird pens, and an Arizona shirt. She also got me a cross necklace, which I want to bring with me to wear in Germany. I'm going to be scared to death in a foreign country, and I want a reminder I'm not alone...

I cannot wait until school starts again! I want to take every single piece of work I get back from my college math class, and show it to Mr. Henrion. I got 101% on my last test in that college class, but I got a B in both semesters of Mr. Henrion's lower level class...

The Math Instinct: Why You're a Mathematical Genius (Along with Lobsters, Birds, Cats, and Dogs)

This book got rather boring about half way through, as the author Kevin Devlin switched from animal mathematics to human mathematics, but the first half was certainly a good read. He starts off with an experiment which showed that humans at 4 months of age have a sort of number sense that allows them to do addition and subtraction on groups of objects less than 4 objects in size. Other experiments also showed that the same procedures can be done by babies who are just a few days old. If you don't believe me when I say that babies have the number sense to know that 1+1=2, read the book. My mother doesn't believe me either.

The most interesting chapters were chapters 1 through 7. Chapter one houses the pages on babies doing math, while chapter 2 starts off with a dog named Elvis that can do calculus. The owner of Elvis was a math proffesor, and noticed that when he threw the ball on an angle into a lake, Elvis would run along the beach for a while (dogs travel faster on land than in water), then jump in at some point to swim to the ball. After a day of many measurements, Elvis's owner realized that Elvis was jumping into the lake at the exact point that he should if he wanted to take the quickest route to the ball. But, the owner had to use calculus to calculate that point.

Devlin then goes on to show how the birds travel using the position of the stars, sun, and even Earth's magnetic field. People also used to travel like this, but they needed to use trigonometry to do so. The point that is made is that birds and people can perform the same function, but birds naturally are able to calculate the direction they should travel in, while humans need to perform complex mathematical calculations to know where to go. That is the point of the entire first half of the book, and I suggest reading the first half. It's quite interesting how bats, ants, and lobsters also navigate.

My criticisms on this book is that Devlin will repeat himself over and over and over to make a point, and it is quite annoying. Other than that, the last half of the book might be interesting to some people if they're into human mathematics, the links between abstract math and the brain, and why school taught mathematics are what keeps some people from learning how to succeed in math. There's also a half interesting section on the human visual system.

All together, it's a good book and definitely worth the read.

Update 6/8/09

I got my TB tests and some painful shots (my arms were sore for a couple days after), and now there is nothing left to finish on my secondary application for going to Germany. I am excited! I also met another girl who was accepted into the program, and will be flying to Washington D.C. with her, where I will meet up with the other CBYX kids to fly to Germany.

I started the ACE program (sponsored by Maricopa Community Colleges, where, starting the summer before their junior year, students will take college courses all throughout the rest of their school year. They will be making an exception for me, since I will be unable to attend an American school during my year in Germany) last Monday, where I am taking college math and career and personal development courses, and got a 95% on my first math exam. It was really easy and all review, but it's quite boring since I stay there for about 11 hours a day, due to issues with driving back and forth. I'm starting highschool courses with Prima Vera online highschool to pass the time, and I will be starting June 15th on Spanish 1A and Psychology A. I'm also helping Mrs. Kurfman write her textbook for her AIMs Math class.

The ACE program is only Monday through Thursday, so on Fridays I am volunteering at the All Faith's Food Bank. I have to ride my bike into Buckeye to get there, but they have water and such for their volunteers, so it's all good.

I got an e-mail suggesting that I get my host family gifts, and it also said that flowers would be a good idea since German women love to recieve them. I thought that giving flowers that you can buy would be less special than making flowers that never die, so I am going to draw the following picture for my host mother.

(If you want to see the full picture, since some of it was cut off, you can do so here.)

My next conference/orientation will be on Friday, so I will most likely be posting information over the weekend about that.

Mr. Henrion suggested that I read a book called The Math Instinct: Why You're a Mathematical Genius (Along with Lobsters, Birds, Cats, and Dogs), and I finally found it, albeit by accident, at the Estrella Mountain Community College Library. It's extremely fascinating, and I will be posting a summary of it later. It finally made me understand this quote by Albert Einstein, "If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it." To explain this quote more, Einstein was agnostic but believed in Spinoza's God, which to my understanding is an impersonal interconnectedness between all things, and is observable through science. That quote really made me think when I first saw it, since he is describing an amazement at nature... I didn't realize how strange and sophisticated it could possibly be until I starting reading that book Mr. Henrion told me to look at... speaking of teachers, I saw Mr. Eads at EMCC (Estrella Mountain Community College) today. Apparently he teaches math there over the summer.

(By the way, I'm not implying I am agnostic by understanding Einstein's quote. In fact, I find that the sophistication of nature enforces the idea that this world couldn't possibly have happened by chance.)

My First Phone Orientation

My phone orientation on Friday outlined language camp in Germany (since they have to teach me German, of course :P) and the basics of the CBYX program.

My first month in Germany will be at language camp in Hedersleben. If you look this town up on google and wikipedia, you wont really find anything, and the coordinator said that it was a small town; therefore I imagine it to sort of be like Buckeye, but in Germany. One big difference is that Buckeye doesn't have a 13th century monastery like the one I will be staying in at Hedersleben :D. Its rooms are renovated and such to be like upperclass hotel rooms, but there's only 2 phones in the building. It's suggested to contact home no more than twice a month, but I should be able to use the Internet at least once a week, which I will do to update my beautiful wonderfull blog. My daily schedule will be really intense, though, with it being summed up as wake up, breakfast, German classes, lunch, core classes, Dinner, and then free time. During my free time, I would be expected to study for my classes, and I would have to watch the German news with all of the other kids. I'm really excited for this, because I LOVE to learn, and I have been curious as to wether or not I could spend too much time learning.

There are five points that the CBYX program is built around, family, friends, language, government, and school. I am required to make a life long relationship with my host family, and can even be put on probation if I don't. I'm also required to make friends, and can but put on probation there if I don't (I'm not worried though, I just thought that was cool). We're expected to speak as little English as possible to fully immerse ourselves in the language, and we're expected to be in contact with our local Bundestag (the German parliament) representative. As for school, we are expected to be a full time student and skipping classes is not allowed. I would be required to keep my grades above a 4 (the German version of a C with a 1 being an A+), but I might be able to keep up with learning French along with the core classes of history, English, German, math, science, and PE that I would be taking. I would be placed by age though, so that would be interesting since I have always been the youngest since I skipped a grade...

I should have a blog post soon about who my future host family will be. I am SO excited :D.

I will have to fly to Washington D.C. to meet up with the other CBYX kids at the Dorris International Airport, and then we will all fly together to Frankfurt, then to Hannover, and then we will go by bus to Hedersleben. I couldn't find much on Hedersleben, but here is a picture of a cute little church in it. It has living plants, not dead ones :D.



Hedersleben is in Eastern Germany, and I am excited to be there since Eastern Germany was a communist controlled area of Germany up until October 3, 1990. I doubt it will be too different from West Germany, but it would still be interesting to see any differences at all. Here's a small map of where Hedersleben is.

I've been feeling rather melancholy now, thinking of the fact that when I go to Germany I will come back to see that all of my friends who are currently seniors will be gone, as well as my friends that're juniors... so, for any of my friends that actually LOOK at my blog, like I asked them to, they can find me on Facebook, MySpace, and e-mail me at caitlincerra@hotmail.com.

I should be leaving for Germany on August 16th, and coming back June 18th. I'll probably go to BUHS for the first few days of the school year before I leave.

Also, for any of you that want to learn another language online, a service is offered through the Buckeye Public Library. Go here; http://buckeye.mcldaz.org/ and click on the link to the left that says, "Tell Me More Online Language Learning". Then you just enter your library card number, and then create an account, and you will have free access to the software, with no download needed. German, French, Italian, Dutch, English, and Spanish (both Spain Spanish and Latin American Spanish) are offered.

I got beautiful wonderfull AIMs scores back.

I am happy with these scores, ansd congratulations to Antonio for his scores, as well as everyone else.