Rawr! (Let Me Sleep)

So, I totally said that I would update every week, and I am almost into my first week, and I haven’t made a real post. The first two days outside of Arizona were mainly spent traveling on a plane. I have no roommate here, and I <3 my room. At first, I was uncomfortable in it, but now I am not. As I’m writing this, I’m watching Asterix, a French cartoon. It’s supposed to be about Asterix fighting off the Roman Empire, from what I remember of my French class, but there’s Indians (the Native American kind) in this episode... no clue why.

Anyways, I have three hours of German classes in the morning, three in the evening, and three meals a day, 30-minutes of German news and announcements a day, and Kaffeezeit (coffee time). Kaffeezeit involves CANDY and coffee. It’s like the British teatime, just in Germany and replaced with coffee. I think I’m doing pretty food with my German, since I’m able to get the basic jist of what people are saying to me, as well as being able to spell a word based on its sound, but I still feel so crippled with German. Do not pity me, the reason for this is because I am totally immersed in a foreign language that I have never really studied before :D. After all, think of all the different words you use while talking to someone... then imagine not knowing any of them.

Anyways, I’m making friends here. There’s a large variety of people here, and even the people sitting in my room right now are rather different. I yell to the Germans out of my window, and have hung out with them a little in front of the monastery. They don’t really know English, so there’s a huge language barrier, but it’s mainly just kids from both language hanging together, but only talking to speakers of their language. It’s interesting. One of them climbed a tree and shook it, sending pears flying everywhere. Last night they ran into the monastery, and got kicked out by the kitchen staff and language teachers.

My speaking lisp is sort of coming out, but in a different way. The past two days it’s only happened two days, but I will forget how to make a sound, and a sound really close to it will come out instead. At least I’m pronouncing everything correctly :D. I am happy that I can also tell when my classmates are incorrectly pronounce something, and can tell if someone is a native speaker by their accent. So, I can tell I am learning, I just can’t really quantify it yet.

Germans are secure in their sexuality, end of story. They were selling birth protection in the REALLY small drugstore, and magazines with COMPLETELY naked women on the cover in the supermarket. Hedersleben is really small though, even smaller than Buckeye. This town is covered with trees, and is rather cold in the mornings. Every person and thing here is friendly, even the bugs. I was trying to get a HUGE gangster bug out of my room, but it was just chilling on my wall instead. The flies here could eat the flies in Arizona, and the cats enjoy being literally picked up and carried around the town. Tomorrow is Sunday, and I will be going to the protestant church right next to the monastery.

In Liepzig, I bought a book under the “first reading book” section. I felt a bit pathetic, buying a little kid boo for myself xD. Then, my friend Nida was looking for incense. There was a really rude waiter who had just ripped the menu out of my hand (and another waiter that stared at me while flies danced on the pizza he was selling), and he told us to look for this one store for incense. The only warning he gave us was that it sold weird things. What could those weird things be? Why, bongs of course! The store sold bongs, hookahs, weird books, and some strange stuff that looked like pesticides. The only other ting they seemed to sell was incense. I wondered who could possibly use so many bongs, since there was easily over 100 in all different styles. To make the situation funnier, it was called the Chill Shop, and had a marijuana leaf on the store sign. Just remember, we ONLY bought the incense.

I love it here.

Ghosts

This was my first morning in Hedersleben. I decided to go to breakfast, and as soon as I was outside of the room, I put my key in the door to lock it, and I heard the furniture inside of it moving, and my toilet flushing. I was freaked out. I don't think it was the room next to mine, because when I went back to check it later, the room next to mine flushed their toilet, and it definitely sounded different. I asked one of the language teachers about ghosts, and he said there was a ghost in the cellar, but it was just a story and he wasn't sure if it was true.

Hai, Eat Me Pl0x?

After millions of years of evolution, we get the chicken. Specifically my roosters, who are right now crowing, while the hungry coyote that wants to eat them is howling less than a quater of a mile away. Nature, thank you for the brilliance of the chicken. We can only hope to be as smart them one day, so that while the hungry robots are within earshot, we have the cunning brilliance to scream, "Hai, eat me pl0x?".

Speaking of humans, I saw this in a public bathroom today.

What's THAT for? Are the employees going to flood the bathroom with it and enjoy a nice, improvised, hot tub?

Dishwasher Friendly! / CBYX Conference 3

Watch the video.



The point of this, is that we just took our broken dishwasher out, and put in a new one... and I decided to crawl into the old one. It was a very tight fit. I had a hard time getting out, but when I did, the dishwasher fell on me!

But, I would like to give a shout out to Cody Smith... thanks for stabbing me! (We were sword fighting with play fight swords, and he accidently stabbed me in the arm. It wasn't that bad, and it was a while ago, so it's almost healed by now.)

I also had my third CBYX conference recently. There were other alumni on the call, and one said he was totally not paying attention in language camp, then he decided to work hard, and within about two weeks, or a month, he was just like any other student... and was getting higher grades than some Germans by a month. That made me feel a lot better, because the other alumni had said it took him practically nine months to feel comfortable talking to people. But, the conference was mainly about safety and school. One of the things they mentioned, was that school spirit is virtually non-existant... another one of the alimni said that he lost 80 pounds in his first four months! But, it was also said that girls are likely to gain weight overseas, while boys lose it. What I really liked was when they said that drinking in Germany was more of a social lifestyle, and it wasn't abused. Germans don't drink to get drunk, they drink in a bar while talking to their friends.

The safety part was what you'd expect. Always meet up in a public place, unless you trust the person. Friendship are taken very seriously over there, and it takes more than being mere classmates to be considered a friend. So, you can't trust someone 100%, just because they're a classmate. The German students will be flocking over you, because you're a student from America, and your first impression will be everything. It was also said to be careful when going out at night with friends, because of pickpocketers, to make sure your wallet is on you at all times, and to not bring your passport around.

I have already packed for Germany, and I'm excited.

Owl Baby and Exams

So, you might be asking yourself, what is an 'owl baby'? My owl baby is a demented looking creature that my cat tried to kill. This is a picture of my owl baby.

Quite the looker, isn't he? I put him on my lap after my mom saved him from the cats, and he was starting to fall asleep as I stroked his head and his back. He sort of flopped around, instead of flying, and so he most likely injured his wing. He wouldn't eat either, so my mom called an animal shelter, and they came to pick him up. Here is a less creepy looking picture of my owl baby.



I had him for less than 24 hours :'(. But, there will be other owls like him at the animal shelter.


As for exams, today was my last day of college courses at Estrella Mountain Community College. It was interesting, because I realized this college has no "+"s or "-"s on their letter grades, just the letter (for example, B instead of B- or B+). In math I was supposed to have a final exam today, but there was a different surprise... only about four people actually had to take the test. The reason for this is that if the other students took the exam, it wouldn't really effect their grades. I had planned on hanging around and taking the final, but my teacher said he wouldn't grade it, so I just left. These are my final grades for the class (HWK means homework average), and my overall grade was 98.



As for the career and personal development class, my grade is an A. I have no idea what my number grade was in the class, but I got the highest possible letter grade, so yay. They gave us t-shirts, ice cream, and pizza in our last CPD meeting :D.

My reflections on my first college classes are simple... they were very easy.

As a last note, toads sound like chickens when you hold them in your hands with gloves on. The toad that was hanging out with the kittens in my garage (until I picked him up and put him by our citrus trees) also decided to secrete poison (or pee, my mom says he peed) from his glands as soon as I picked him up (if it was pee, then he hadn't used the bathroom in a few days).

My Host Family

My host family rides unicycles. That is so cool! I was told on June 25th who my host family was (so yes, I am being very lazy about updating this), but they seem so cool! My host sister Julia is my age, but she will be on an exchange year in Ireland while I am in Germany. The other host sister, Alina, plays the violin, and is 12 years old. My host mother is Viola, and she is a stay at home wife who takes care of their garden, and also reads to kids once a week. She's also trying to get me to write more often in German, so that I learn the language faster. My host father Joachim was on a bike tour thing this weekend. My host family seems really into riding bikes. After reading about them on the host family profile, and also from the mails they've sent me, I'm really looking forward to spending my year in Germany with them.

They live just outside of Berlin, the capital of Germany, and I will be going to the Heinz-Berggruen-Gymnasium. My German friend David looked at the gymnasium's website, and said it was really good... I will also be able to continue studying French at that gymnasium, so I am happy. I don't know wether I will be going into the 10th or 11th grade there, though, since the school wants me in the 10th grade (because I don't speak German), but it says on my secondary application that my American school suggests I go into the 11th grade.

I'm very happy my host family doesn't smoke, because I have so many not-so-fond memories of the smell of smoke :\. I feel like I'm not writing enough about them... maybe I would have written more if I hadn't been walking around for hours in the murderous sun. When I sat down at this computer I could FEEL all of the sweat on my back :'(.

Fast-Food Bathrooms? Think Again!

I went to an unnamed fast-food restaurant today, only to see something disturbing. A woman was cleaning her granddaughter's butt/dress/legs/the floor of the oozy goo that the little girl left all over the place... it was chunky (and it came from her butt, if you didn't pick that up). I was thinking 'ok, it's just a little kid they do this'. After the lady got the kid out of the bathroom stall (she was cleaning the kid half in and half out of the stall), I used it, and all was good, until I looked down while washing my hands and saw chunky bits floating around... and realized the girl's goo was on the handle to the sink. Thank you Walmart, for selling me that hand sanitizer.