Late-Spät

05.12.09 (because in Germany, we write our dates with the month second, which is rather logical actually)



So, I haven’t really updated in like a long time times two. But I have a slightly good excuse! I took the SAT Test, and so I didn’t feel like writing my blog... but, lots of things have happened since I last updated! For example, I am now pregnant. (Not really, but I wonder how my mom reacted to reading that)

Anyways, my host father and I went to the East Side Gallery to look at the paintings. It’s essentially a really long piece of the original Berlin Wall, but with paintings on it. Beautiful, inspirational paintings.





Then, last weekend, my host family and I went to Nürnberg for a weekend and stayed with my host father’s cousin. His cousin and her husband were both really nice, and they showed us a lot of places in the city. The Weihnachtsmarkt (Christmas Market) was really cool, and I even translated for some Americans that were trying to buy something ^^. I also bought a bunch of books on Napoleon Bonapart, because they were all together 6 Euros :D. I also bought some presents for my host family, since you know... it’s like Christmas or something soon ^^. Speaking of which, my host family strung up a bunch of gifts on the staircase as our advents calenday... so far I got a little thingy of lotion ^^. Also, the SAT Test was a lot easier than I expected it to be. I hope I get a good score on it, and I think I will. I totally have just about nothing to say about the last few weeks.

Well, my community representative gave me this book called „Der Vorleser“. I’m really surprised by how easily I can understand it, especially because I expected it to be harder, since my CR said it would be. I was reading it on the train to and from Nürnberg, since it was like five hours both freaking ways. For English class I’m supposed to present about how intercultural communication affects one’s concept of a country... my CR told my host family I’ve learned German rather quickly, and that I must have a gift for languages (THIS MADE ME SO HAPPY!!!!). She also said that I should probablly do something with languages as a job. And to be honest, I had been thinking about that for a while. But anyways...

I ALMOST FORGOT! So, in Nürnberg Hitler built a collesuem to be used during the thousand years of peace or whatever that he planned to bring about. I went there, and it was really farmilliar looking. But here is where Hitler once stood to deliver speeches.



There were no seats in the collesuem. According to I forget who, Hitler believed that the German people should be strong; too strong to require sitting while enjoying a game.

I also went shopping with the Swiss exchange student. I had a hard time finding shoes, because ya know.... my feet are like their own planets :D. But, I finally found some nice ones with my wonderful, amazing host mom ^^. She was so excited, she even dreamed of shoe shopping the entire night before we finally went shopping (she didn’t actually enjoy the dream :D). I got these 60 or so Euro shoes for only 20 Euros, if I remember right...

08.12.09
The world hates me. Every subatomic particle in this world decided to join the „I hate Caitlin“ club. (Insert more hyperboles here). Anyways! I had to buy a new cell phone, because my American one decided it wanted to pretend that my highly expensive America SIM card, and my not so expensive German one, doesn’t work. Yay. At least a very nice German person decided to go to the store with the American. And he will probablly read this. And he will know who he is (hello German :D). My Mathe PK teacher wasn’t there Monday, so I decided to hang out in an English PK course. It was absolutely thrilling! Well, not really. It was actually the complete opposite. But, a lot of people had been asking me why I didn’t take an English PK course, so at least now I can say I tried it and didn’t like it...

The second part of the world against me happened today. Please note that I decided to be retarded and leave my American credit card in my wallet while I went to school. For no reason. Just to have it, apparently. Then I left it on the bus. Because I am so smart. Seriously though, a part of me is happy this happened, because now that I know what it’s like to lose a wallet, I’ll try SO much harder to make sure it never happens again. But, the person who found my wallet was really nice, and didn’t steal anything. She didn’t even accept a „gift present thing“ as a sign of appreciation. But, I think I met her before. When I had my funny hat... maybe not, but she was as nice and young as the other lady, and they both had a boy and a girl of the same ages with them... but, I am in a sort of badish mood right now, because I’m really tired. And I’m really tired because I decided to walk all the way from Heerstraße/Wilhelmstraße to Flatow Allee. I really don’t know how far that is, but it’s 12 minutes by bus, in Berlin, where there’s traffic and the maximum speed on that stretch of road is like 50km/h (30 or so miles per hour).

12.12.09
I just have one more Klausur (German word for the type of test I am taking) left, and then it’s Christmas vacation ^^. Last night I went with a friend to the Christmas carnival/fair/market thing. Basically it’s a bunch of shops that only show up around Christmas time. In Nürnberg there weren’t any rides, but at the one in Spandau there was. My friend made me go on the ferris wheel. I am scared to death of heights. I was freaking out at first. Then it wasn’t so bad.



Ya. I think I look retarded. But then we went onto THIS.



It was really fun. It basically tried to make you go around so fast you couldn’t breathe. Then we watched very pretty fireworks. After that we basically just walked around. We went through a park, and then we walked along a stinky river to go look at a thing (I think it’s called a water ladder?). Then, I went home. Originally we were going to go go-karting, but the track was totally booked until 10 o’clock, which was my curfew. Anyways. The other day, I was up really early when it was still dark, and I saw something in my host mom’s shoe. I thought it was a tree branch. I ignored this. Later, I went down with my host family to eat breakfast. There was a tree branch in all of our shoes o.O It turns out that instead of having stockings as part of our gift assembly at Christmas, in Germany they stick stuff in your shoes on „Nikolaus“ Day. Mainly candy. And pieces of pine trees :D. My school also had an event for the day, where the students could send each other „Nikolauskarten“, which were basically cards saying „merry Christmas“, with a huge candy Santa. I got one card, but two candy Santas ^^. Today I cut off my candy Santa’s head, and stuck it into some muffins I made with my host sister.

I forgot to mention earlier that I had gone to my hostsister’s Christmas concert at her school. It was really good, actually. I had really liked it ^^.

My tests are... well... a little bad. The SAT Test was ok, and I will know my scores on December 22nd, but my German tests are like. No. Awful. I think. My exchange program sent me and my school papers for my teacher, and they will grade me based on wether or not I take part in class, wether or not I made advances in speaking German, and wether or not I sort of get what’s going on. I already got an A in English class. Who would’ve guessed? I mean, it’s not like I speak English or something... right? o.O

One last thing. My mommy sent me Christmas presents for me and my host family :D.

hai

Germany was not always one, united nation. During the Cold War, the Russian controlled side of Germany and the French, America, and British controlled sides were EXTREMELY different. So different, in fact, that people would risk their lives trying to get into the Western controlled sector of Berlin, which was in the Russian controlled section, but split between all of the four powers. Monday was the 20th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall. There was a celebration at Brandenburg Tor, and it was really nice. There was fireworks, and even Hillary Clinton. I went to the celebrations, putting me within about a mile radius of the presidents of Russia, France, and Germany, the Prime Minister (I think) of Britain, Bill Clinton, and Hillary Clinton. Beat that. Seriously though, I was SO excited. I wanted to go into the section where all of those people were, but my host dad wouldn’t let me, and neither would the police, since it was already overcrowded. So, instead I had to stand by a French news station that set up a tent to report from. Ironically, it was the same news agency as the one my French teacher in America had brought in news for us from. I tried to tell that to one of the reporters, but they thought I wanted to say that on the news... xD I tried to explain myself again, and I don’t know if he understood, but he was friendly, and that’s all that matters =]. I also met a group of Americans, some English speakers on the bus, a French guy, two people from Australia, a girl from Canada, and a girl that was born in Boston, but is now living in London. Or England. I think it was London. My father ended up asking my community representative if it’s normal for Americans to talk to everyone.

But, back to the celebrations. There was also these huge dominoes set up that were from all around the world, and were pushed over to reenact the falling of the Berliner Mauer, which is fancy German talk for the Berlin Wall. And Brandenburg Tor is also fancy German talk for the Brandenburg Gate... but anyways, there was also a rather pathetic display of fireworks. Then a voice came onto the loudspeaker and assured us it was just a warm-up, and that the real fireworks were ready :D. Yay. It was prettyfulls.


°°°°°°°

(Here comes the normal update.)

I haven’t updated my blog in almost two weeks I think. Well, Thursday after my last post, I went ice-skating with a friend. He was a REALLY good ice skater, and I sort of just sucked, so... yeah. Ironically, right before we got to the ice skating rink, he said that in Brazil the people that said they could ice skate, could really only just skate a bit, fall down, then get back up again. He didn’t consider that real ice-skating. I was just thinking, „thanks man, that’s exactly what you’re about to see me doing“. Anyways, I fell. I got bruises. To this day, I can still see a little bit of their color. But, it’s not as bad as what he did. He decided to be a total wonder-skater man, and landed on his... I don’t know. I just saw him on the ground and he said he saw stars o.O. Our time at the ice rink ended when I fell on my head. It really hurt.

Then on Friday it was Ladies Night at this store called Karstadt... in German I would say „bei Karstadt“, and I noticed that I am starting to forget which English preposition I should use when I would use the word „bei“ in German. I also start wanting to put commas around EVERY clause. Anyways, at Ladies Night I met Mr. Beautiful and Mitch. Mr. Beautiful was a model who was getting painted in the middle of the store.

Mitch is an American that was stationed here during the war, and never went back to America. I met him while spinning this wheel to win free stuff. I won a pastry. He gave me his card so that when I go to redeem the pastry, I can ask for him too. I will, because he was really nice. And not in a creepy way. Just in a really outgoing person way :D.

Halloween. I dressed up and looked for candy. I also thanked people for donating to the United States of America, and said that we appreciated their support. I swear, some people gave us more candy just because I was talking to them in English. I even sang, „trick or treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat! If you don’t, I don’t care, I’ll pull down your underwear!“ I found it kind of funny, because usually older siblings complain about having to take along younger siblings, but this time my host sister had to take her German-retarded older host sister along with her :D. But, I had a nice time with her and her friend. I went as the Joker, sort of. The Joker’s makeup was made more to make him look cool, while mine more or less... accentuated my cheek fat.

Anyways! Then, Monday, I tried to go to school... then after about just five minutes I left. Why? Because I started to feel like I had to puke. What did I do as soon as I got home after riding my bike through a whole freaking park, in the rain, and falling in the mud? I puked! Then I laid on a heating pad all day, and felt a lot better. So, I decided to return my huge hoard of audio books to the library. Then what did I do? I got off at the wrong stop, and I think I was even in the wrong city...

I was in a bad mood by the time I got back home.

Tuesday, something mind-blowingly amazing happened. Speaking of that, does anyone actually know when we use the hyphen to join words together in English? Because I sure don’t. Anyways, I saw someone. On the bus. It was my geography teacher. So what? So, I saw a TEACHER on the BUS! That doesn’t happen in America! I mean, sure, I use public transportation to get to school in Germany, but still... and I also took pictures of the school cafeteria. The school doesn’t actually serve meals, it’s really just a small room, compared to an American cafeteria, and serves mainly snacks; such as a huge pastry, which is called in English a „pig ear“, that’s bigger than your head. Other than the food serving counter, there’s just like six or so tables...

Wednesday. This day, last week, probably meant nothing to you. But to me, IT FREAKING SNOWED!!!! And you know how when a vehicle is really dirty, the meanie heads will write, „ please wash me“ on the windows? You Arizona people have to write that in grime, but I got to write it in SNOW!!!

Thursday. I stayed home. I was sick. And I concocted a plan. I would get my entire host family sick. And I am trying to think of a really cool sounding result from getting my host family sick, but I really can’t :’(. Besides, I didn’t really mean for them to all catch my cold, but now everyone but my host sister is sick... but, she’s getting a headache too now, so maybe it’s just a matter of waiting.

Anyways, on Saturday I met up with two friends from language camp, and we had a really good time. We went to Checkpoint Charlie, Brandenburg Tor (we also visited the U.S. Embassy there, where we met a VERY cute member of the German police, who said that we couldn’t go into the embassy, because it wasn’t public, and that the building for lost Americans was on the other side of town, because of course I wanted to know where all of the poor lost Americans were supposed to go), the Berliner Turm, the Alexa (big-butt shopping mall), the Reichstag, and the place where Chancellor Merkel works. At Checkpoint Charlie was the last Kremlin Flag in all of... Berlin? Germany? I don’t know. The sign wasn’t too specific. Anyways, it’s all ragged and torn, but it looks really cool. Definitely old.

I also saw some funny postcards, and one said, „ Mei Englisch-Tietscher ist a werry stupitt Idioth!“ If your pronounce it like it’s German, then it sounds exactly like the English would, except for the „ist“ part.

On the way back, I went with the same retarded bus as before, and I ended up a little bit before the same retarded place, and so after walking around Berlin all day, I ended up walking around three kilometers to get back home. And of course, part of that distance is from walking in the wrong direction. And I had a problem with having no bathroom. Let’s just say that nature is now women’s’ toilet too.

The next day, Sunday, we went out to eat breakfast at the lakeside with my host mother’s parents. It was my host grandma’s birthday celebration, since she spent in actual birthday in Prague. But, I met a very adorable poodle that day, and I got to see the almost creepy-misty looking Berlin lake. Well, only one of the lakes. My host family also had a little get together one of these days, I forget when, and we basically just said what we liked and didn’t like about each other’s actions. It wasn’t a pick-apart-the-exchange-student day, it was just for ALL of the family members. I liked it. Then, this last Monday... I had my first big test. On monsoons. I wanted to write about cows REALLY badly, because I had no idea about monsoons, but instead I wrote about the monsoons in America, and the little village near India that has the highest amount of rainfall per year. (I swear, in the context I was writing this, it was all on topic. Even writing about cows would have been on topic. The only question not requiring a scientific knowledge of monsoons asked why the Indian people both love and fear the monsoons.)

Tuesday! It was a day. A really annoying one, really. So, my day at school was really long because I had chess club after, and was teaching the little kids, because no one my age is in the chess club apparently, English while we waited for the teacher. Then, when the 8th period was almost over, we went into the library to get our chess on. And yes, I beat the little kid at chess. Barely. I barely beat the little 11-year old at chess. He even thought I was in 8th grade because he said I looked small :’(. It’s really pathetic, but I was so happy I beat the little kid in chess!

On Wednesday, one of the boys in my class had a heart to heart with me in English class. I told him I’ve never kissed a boy. He told me that because of how I look, I will never get married, have kids, get a boyfriend, or even kiss a boy. He said I need new clothes, a new haircut, and need to go to the gym. And that I need to stop acting to manly, because a guy is never going to care about my personality enough to get past my looks. Quite a gentleman, isn’t he?

Once a week, there’s this really awesome day. Today is that day, commonly called „Thursday“ among the English people. Or „Donnerstag“ amongst the Germans... but when you’re French you call it „jeudi“. Anyways, the point is that today another extremely polite German gentleman told me an even nicer thing than the other one. This one was listening to me talking, which I didn’t like because he always makes fun of my German, so I asked him why. He said he wasn’t listening, and that he only speaks High German (there’s many regional dialects of German, but there’s only one accepted form of German for school and writings, and it’s High German), so he can’t understand what I’m saying because I don’t speak High German. Then he was making fun of my last name because it sounds like a first name... I find it rather pathetic. I almost hope he has to be immersed in another language himself, not out of my own sense of revenge, but just so he can realize what it’s like...

Other than that, I had a very nice biology test. I won’t be surprised if I get a bad grade on it, but I understood SO much more than I did on the geography test... and I finally met a German that likes Slipknot ^^. I went to the Spanish club today, and it was interesting... I have no idea if they were pronouncing everything correctly, but it was NOTHING like what I think the Spanish club at Buckeye is like... we actually were learning and practicing Spanish. When it was over, I walked with the Swiss exchange student to Kaiser’s, bought the two cheapest candy bars I could find, and ate them with her. Tomorrow I am going to meet with my community representative... and in case you’re wondering about how my German is coming along, I heard through some very reliable sources that the Swiss exchange student was jealous of my German, because I can speak it as well as she can, and she has been studying it for five years. That’s the best compliment I EVER got, in my opinion ^^.

Other than that, the only last thing I have to say, is that I had observed a French tour group while in Erfurt, much like I will observe Knut when I finally meet him. If you don’t know who Knut is, remember that Google is your friend. And that he’s a polar bear. Seriously though, I just found it really cool. I also like it that I can understand the Frenchies. I don’t know if I had mentioned this previously, but I also met this German guy who looked like a British guy, and sounded like an American, but was a German o.O IT WAS SO COOL! He was sort of strange though. Everyone in the area I was in had an accent, so I couldn’t understand them that well, and he saw me trying to talk to someone, and tried to make fun of my German as a joke. He totally was NOT being mean, he just found an offensive joke to make xD. But, he was really interested in English, and I appreciated that.

I almost forgot, the terrible, evil boys in my class teach me extremely perverted things in German, then tell me they mean something totally different, and then try to get me to say them. For example, „ich möchte ein Fesserspielchen spielen“. According to my German classmate, I would be saying, „I want to play a certain type of board game“. According to reality, I would be saying, „I want to have sex involving being attached to the bed with handcuffs“.

°°°°°°

I wrote that on Thursday. I didn’t update my blog because of technical difficulties. I had written this blog with some pictures in it, then my computer decided it wanted to listen to me when I was being stupid, and deleted Microsoft Paint. Now I can’t resize the pictures for my blog. I was hoping to be able to post this with pictures, but I waited two weeks already, I don’t want to wait any longer...

Friday I got a test back in PK Biology. I got a +4. In case that doesn’t make sense, I got an 18 out of 32. I can just imagine Antonio reading this and having his world turned upside down. Or the George who moved to the East Coast reading this and thinking I’m lazy. But, hey. I didn’t speak any German three months ago. What do you expect? That’s one thing I really like about being over here, I’ve gotten used to accepting the work I do, as long as I know I’m trying. No one can really set a standard for me, I have to make it myself. I also am learning more about my own values now, and my own personality perks. I had an epiphany today, Sunday... I realized, I thought my culture shock was over, but it’s really not. I also just realized this paragraph is suffering from unconnected ness. But, today I had a talk with my host mom, and I realized this whole time I’ve been sub-consciously clinging to my American life and values. And I need to let go.

That would be a wonderful sentence to end my blog on, but I’m not finished talking yet. I really like my community representative. I had a nice talk with her on Friday, borrowed a bunch of magazines, and she bought me ‚Der Vorleser’, a book, while we were waiting for my bus to bring me home. Saturday, I was trying to finish my mom’s knitted present so I could send the box, but it didn’t go so well. I’m sending it Monday instead. Mailing stuff is SO expensive here... everything is so expensive here... the rest of the day was spent running around with Tara from language camp. And running around is serious. As soon as I got home, I fell asleep on the floor. Right after I showed my host family the funny hat I bought at a second hand shop, right before seeing ‚2012’, the movie, with Tara. The hat has a flap on it, that opens up like one of those brush things on a knight’s helmet. But, it’s the German flag :D. It was only €4.95 or so, but it is going to make me lose all of my friends! For instance, I was wearing it on the bus when three kids from my school walked in... they said they didn’t know me, and ignored me as I tried to talk to them on the bus. But then I talked to this really nice German lady and her two children. THEY liked my hat. Other than that, I just went to Media Markt with Tara, and met Russians. I was walking out of a shop that sold Pokemon things and such (according to Tara it smelled like black market), when the Russians asked me where the „S + U Bahnhof Spandau Rathaus“ was. The foreigners asked the foreigners where something was, and oh did we know where it was.

Today I watched my host father and his team running in a race for Seimens. The track was in the Berlin-Tempelhof airport, which hasn’t been used as an actual airport for some years... it was a really cool building though, and it had been used by the Allied Powers back in the Berlin Airlift. I even got to see a plane there. I was looking around for a way to get into the actual airport itself, but everything was not only blocked up, but creepy too. I seriously would NOT have been surprised to see someone with an ax or something there; I was sort of expecting it... the buildings were extremely huge though. The business offices had ravens carved into them. My host father said it was really special that we got to go into the airport, because it’s usually never open. There were a few stands that people could by sports related things at, including some cheap shirts. The cheapest was for €2. Being entirely brilliant, I noticed one shirt had a sticker on it saying €1. My host mom and I both wanted to buy two shirts, so I took them with me to the register, asked how much they were, and got the €2 reply, then I showed them the one that said €1, and got four shirts for €4. Beat that. The workers were actually annoyed at each other for making that mistake with the sticker machine xD.

I totally and accidentally fell out of my chair in French class.

Vacation

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

°°°°

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.



°°°°
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.