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).