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Wednesday, September 30, 2009

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.

Saturday, September 19, 2009

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.

Sunday, September 6, 2009

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.

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

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.