Vacation

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

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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.



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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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