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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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.