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.