Winter Blues

FREEZING.  That is what I am right now.  Europe is going through this cold wave - over 120 people have died in the cold.  One thing that I hate is cold.  It's pretty hard to imagine that winter gets on my nerves then, right?  No I didn't think so haha.

What's hard about winter is that it is the season of waiting.  Everything is in hibernation, waiting for spring.  Soccer had been reduced to once a week indoor practice, there are no more hikes in the woods, no outdoor breaks during school, etc.  I get restless. 

Fortunately, I have a busy weekend to get me on my feet, even if it is in the cold.  Tomorrow night I am going to my first ever live hockey game :)  I am really excited because not only does this sport sound awesome, but I also get to big out on German "junk food" like bratwurst and currywurst.  I am going to this game with my host father and a woman named Manja.  Manja is my BFF in the house, and she is the "maid" so to speak.  She cleans everything, cooks everything, does all the shopping, etc.  She even semi-raised Lynn and Gesa, my host sisters.  She's practically part of the family though.  Her favorite thing is Ice Hockey, and I am so glad that I finally get to experience it with her.  I also am traveling to a nearby town called Göttingen on Saturday with my friend named Anna.  We're just going to window shop and get something yummy to eat.  Then, when I get back, I am going to my good friend Vivien's 18th birthday party.  18 is a big deal in Germany, because then you become an adult.  I don't mean you "become and adult but not really," like in the USA, it's legit here.  You can drink, smoke, enlist in the army, sign your own forms at school, everything. Parents respect it too.  You can do whatever you want when you are 18 ;). Wait, how old am I?  Haha, just kidding Mom and Dad........

Anyway, hopefully people still read this since I am a horrible blogger, and more to come soon!

The kind of embarrassing moment every exchange student hopes they don't have, but they inevitably do....

 On the upside, my embarrassing moment took place during a time which I was completely alone. On the downside, that was the reason why the moment became even took place. These past couple of weeks are what are called “Vorabis” Vorabis are like midterms, only on steroids. They are all six hours long... yep... six hours of writing and scrambling your brain looking for that one answer. Sounds pretty horrible to me, and that's why, holding the lucky position of “already graduated” exchange student, I opted out. Haha. Anyway, that means that once or twice a week I have no school. Last Friday this was the case. It also happened to be a day where the housemaid Manja began her vacation. That meant that I got to spend until lunchtime alone in the house. Honestly, as an exchange student, true alone time tends to be nonexistent. I believe that most of cherish these short hours alone where we can truly unwind and relax. I like it because I can do things that I do in my own home, like going barefoot and staying in my Pj's until noon. Unfortunately at eleven, as I was sitting upstairs putting the final touches on my college applications, the doorbell rang. Now, most houses in Germany have a speaker system and a buzzing system built into the house so that you don't have to run to the door, and my house especially. My house is HUGE. The bottom floor is a two-car garage, the washroom, the storage room, a doctor's practice, and my host father's dentist practice. Yes, really. We live on the second, third, and fourth floors. The entrance, however is on the first floor. You then walk up a flight of stairs, through a door, across an open corridor, through another door, into the mudroom, and then through the front door. Complicated, I know. It's even more complicated when you don;t know how to buzz someone in, and in your comfy short-shorts Pj's. So I scramble and pull on a pair of pants and run. I run downstairs and then through all of those doors. By the time I get there, no one is there. “Okay,” I think, “Cool. Just saved myself some major embarrassment. No one will see me like this afte rall.” I then walk up the stairs and look. Every single door shut behind me. I have no phone. No key. I am quasi in my Pj's and I am barefoot. This is getting good, isn't it? As I sit on the steps, I think over my options. I could wait for someone to get home around two. I could walk through the first floor corridor and into the practice and ask for a key. Yep.... That's pretty embarrassing. But there was no way I waiting for someone to get home. So I go down to the corridor and as I'm walking through I peek in the washroom and see a pair of sandals,; I throw those on to preserve a bit of dignity, and then I go to the door to the practice. I stood outside of that door for about ten minutes, putting off the inevitable embarrassment. That;s when another option hit me: Ring on the other resident's doorbell! We also rent a small apartment to an old woman on the second floor. I rang her doorbell, and she answered. The problem was that she had never met me. I explained, and I think my accent mixed with my desperation and the state I was in convinced her that I probably was living in the house. So she let me in, and no one but her would have know if I had remembered to bring the shoes back down to the washroom... shoot... haha.

Long Time No See....

So it's quite obvious that I am not very good at maintaining a blog... I am very sorry about this, and I will try to do better for all those of you that check hopefully everyday.  One of the problems is that, while I am very busy and experiencing all sorts of things to include in this blog, I am getting settled as well.  So now something that would make a great blog seems more like the norm to me, and I don't recognize it for its blogging worth.  Again, I will try to do better.  Here is my life since November 1st.

On November 12th I switched my host family.  I now live in town, rather than on the top of a mountain.  I have two host sisters: Lynn (19-20) and Gesa (17).  Both of them are very, very nice and very, very fun to hang out with.  My host parents, Astrid and Charles, are also awesome.  Charles is actually from England... yes, England.  It's actually quite helpful to have someone who went through the same process of learning German though.  My German has improved tenfold since I moved in.  

Thanksgiving was a depressing and fun time at the same time.  Depressing because I only saw digitalized versions of the delicious food and wonderful family, and fun because I saw digitalized versions of the delicious food and wonderful family.  Jealousy to all you people who actually saw your families in the flesh and got to EAT THAT FOOD.  My mind was quickly drawn away from Thanksgiving because the next day I drove to a Rotary weekend in Wenigrode.  Wenigrode is a small town about forty-five minutes from my town, and it was definitely me favorite weekend yet because all my Rotary friends that live in and around Hannover (that = all of them) got to see what the country looks like, and quasi where I live.  They thought it was so beautiful and quaint.  Don't get me wrong, it is both these things, but they forget that I am also cut off from all the things they get to experience.  Each place has its advantages and disadvantages.

Christmas is a huge deal in Germany.  Not the buy blow-up/light up snowmen for the yard crazy, but city-wide Christmas market crazy.  They have a book full of foods solely for the Christmas season.  It will make me fat, this book.  Advent is also an important part of the way they celebrate Christmas, meaning that the Advent Calendars are out of this world.  Advent Calendars are actually large cloth things that people buy here. Some are in the shapes of Christmas trees, with little pockets, some are a string with 24 stockings on it, etc.  Then what they do is that they buy 24 things to put inside each year.  Not just candy, other things too.  Then there is the evening of December 5th/ the morning of December 6th, which is the time you put your biggest shoe out for Saint Nicholas to fill with candy and presents.  basically, I have a mini Christmas morning out.  My host mother told this funny story about how when she was a kid, she would put her shoe out the first night, get presents; put it out the next night, get presents; put it out the next night, get presents; and put it out the next night, and get coal.  Haha.  I decided that I have enough candy and sweets, no need to test that theory out.

Hope you all had wonderful Thanksgivings and wonderful Christmas preparations, please enjoy it all a little bit extra for those exchange students that don't get to do so.  Until next time, which will hopefully be soon!

Cruising :)

Ok so I'm not gonna lie:  I have always been one of those people who make fun of cruises.  I think about how cliché they are, and how it's like taking a vacation with 2,000 people you don't know and having every minute planned with them... I don't know I've never seen the appeal.  I was quite wrong.  Cruises are awesome!!  There is always something planned for you to do, if you want, like volleyball on the deck, the food is free and there's plenty of it, and when you go to explore a city you have a guide that knows where they're going.  It was actually a lot of fun.  Here was my itinerary:

DAY 1 : PALMA DE MALLORCA, SPAIN

This day was mostly a loading day, getting settled, meeting the crew, and exploring a little bit of the Spanish island Palma de Mallorca.  I loved it.  It was very interesting because most of the store owners spoke German even though it's a Spanish-speaking region because the number of German tourists is so high.  That night was a late night celebration for taking off, and we also stayed up until midnight to celebrate my eighteenth birthday (picture below).

 DAY 2: SEA DAY

My birthday was the one and only sea day, a day where we made no stops.  We lounged on the deck, I read books, listened to music, swam.  It was nice to really relax for the first time in two months on my birthday.  

DAY 3: CORSICA, FRANCE

We stopped on the island of Corsica on the third day.  Our activities for the day were visiting a turtle park and going to the beach.  Yes, I said a turtle park.  Initially, I was quite interested in the turtle park because a) I had never been to one, b) I have friends that LOVE turtles, and c) turtles are cool.  When we got there and started looking around, we couldn't see any turtles... It was too cold out and they were all in there little incubated areas.  But then we kept walking and found the turtles that were willing to brave the cold and come be fed by us.  These turtles were humungous! I have videos and pics for people who want to see.  It had warmed up by the time we went to the beach, and for those of you that know I'm beach crazy, you can imagine how excited I was to get to swim in the ocean.  Well, the water was so cold that at first I didn't notice how different it was from any ocean I had swum in before.  The water was crystal clear.  I could see my entire body as if I weren't in water, and I could see everything else too.  I was surrounded by fish.  It was awesome.

DAY 4: ROME, ITALY

In Rome I did a panoramic tour of the entire city, which was really interesting since I got to see everything in a nut shell.  Then we had free time and my host family and I went exploring.  The street we took, however, was the most exciting part of Rome for me :)  It was, of course, the shopping street.  Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Valentino, Gucci, Tiffany's, Mui Mui, Missoni, etc. Right there!  I didn't get to go into any though :/

DAY 5: PISA, ITALY

In Pisa we did the obvious:  We visited the Leaning Tower of Pisa.  I found the stone that the tower was made of to be very beautiful since it was so white and gleaming.  We also almost missed our bus back here and had to run to catch it.... yeah that was an interesting site let me tell you.

DAY 6: NICE, MONACO, MONTE CARLO

This was probably my favorite day because we saw so much and heard about so much interesting history, not to mention we were in a very rich area where the taxis were BMWs and such.  In Monte Carlo the normal streets that cars drive on had diamonds mixed into them so that the streets glinted in the sun.  Beautiful, and horribly expensive.  Monte Carlo is also home to the casino where the first of the modern James Bond movies was shot.  So cool to actually be in the place where those scenes were shot.  

DAY 7: BARCELONA, SPAIN

In Barcelona my host parents split from the host kids and me.  The host kids and I went on a bike tour for the entire day through Barcelona. If I had known that Barcelona is quite hilly, I think I would have rethought my choice to do the bike tour.  All in all though, I bet the bike tour was the best way to see an awesome city from head to toe, and my legs didn't hurt... that much... afterwards :)

Sorry For Taking So Long...

Hi everyone!

I know  haven't written a blog post in weeks, and I'm sorry, but I was vacationing for two weeks and letting college applications suck the life out of me for the others.  As for my vacationing, let me sum it up for you :)

LONDON

Ok, so my overall view of London, Oxford, and England in general was that it's freaking awesome!!  I am in love with London and Oxford.  I could totally see myself living there one day.  It's all so saturated with history; I love it!

MONDAY:  We arrived on Monday morning at 10:30 in the morning.  No, we didn't come by plane, we came by bus, and the promised 12-hour bus ride actually ended up being more like 16.  Trust me, those four hours do make a difference in one's ability to walk.  Once we put all our luggage in the lobby of our very creepy and cheap hotel (the rooms weren't ready yet), we moved on to doing the Queens Walk, which is from Tower Hill to the London Eye.  2.5 hours later and still walking, I asked myself why we were doing all the walking on the day where we didn't sleep at all?  I'm still waiting for the answer myself.  It was quite beautiful though. Once we arrived at the London Eye, which I believe is the biggest "ferris wheel" in the world, we actually got to ride it, which was pretty awesome.  After that we had free time.  Yes, in Germany when you go on class trips you don't have to stay with your chaperones all the time and you have a pretty late curfew :D

TUESDAY:  Tuesday we had a Panorama Tour of London.  It was here that I truly fell in love, since I saw everything and heard about all sorts of history and traditions.  After that, and this will interest all Harry Potter fans, I visited Platform 9 3/4 at King's Cross.  Yes, it does exist, but they've moved it outside the station now.  I even have a picture :P  I then visited a very cool art museum that I currently can't remember the name of, but I bought lots of things there for people because art museum gift shops are the coolest stores ever.  

WEDNESDAY:  Oxford Day!!!  This day was sooooooooooooooooooooooo cool :)  Oxford University has a fascinating history and a fascinating structure.  There are actually 38 independent colleges that make up Oxford University, and when a student applies, they have to choose which college they want to be a part of.  If not, a computer chooses for them.  The colleges are very different, so I wouldn't recommend the computer strategy.  I also saw many places that scenes, once again, for Harry Potter were filmed.  I was in Hogwarts hospital wing, where Harry regrew his bones, and I was in the courtyard where "Professor Moody" turned Malfoy into a ferret.  Haha.  Sorry, Harry Potter moment there.  

THURSDAY:  On Thursday we visited Shakespeare's Globe Theater, the rendition, of course, and that was one of the coolest things we did on the trip.  Partially because the tour was in English, partially because I love Shakespeare, and partially because I had an amazing English teacher named Mrs. Knudson that drilled all sorts of history and facts about him into my brain, so I knew way more than anyone else.  After that tour, I went to Oxford STREET in London.  Anyone who knows Oxford St. and me would know that that is a very dangerous situation.  Oxford St. is the shopping street, and yes, I shopped. :)

On Friday I flew out early from the trip because of the cruise my family got me.  England or Cruise?  To be completely honest, at that moment, England won hands down.  Ok I'm gonna save this and write another with the rest before my internet dies and I lose all this.  I'm back everyone :)

A Little Bit of This and a Little Bit of That

Ok so this is going to be a somewhat random entry that basically sums up what is going on in my life and what i've been wanting to write here but haven't had the time to do so.

Tonight I'm getting on a bus with my class for 12 hours (yes, 12 hours) and we are driving to London for the week.  That's a German high school's idea of a class trip.  Awesome, I know.  But 12 hours? All night long?  We'll be stepping off the bus in London at 8 am and beginning our tours.... yeah I hope we can stay awake during the tours too.  I'm so excited!!!

I then fly home on Friday a day earlier than my class rides back on the bus (1 hour plane ride, 12 hour bus ride... haha in your faces) because I have to repack and fly´to Spain to go on the week long cruise that my host family gave me for my 18th birthday.  Yep, my host family is awesome. 


Anyway, that's all that I have time to update you guys on, but I miss you all.  Tschüss!

Was passiert in München, bleibt in München....

A group of people were wearing homemade t-shirts that said this at Oktoberfest in München.  Yeah, I got to go to that. :) It's only one of the biggest drinking parties in the world, where women are wear really cute dresses and men wear... um... interesting short/pant thingys called Lederhosen. All things said, Oktoberfest is like one, huge, city-wide fair.  There are cool rides, disgustingly delicious foods, things to buy, etc, only German style.  Here's an example.  They had funhouses where you had to go through a series of obstacles in order to make it through, and the first five or six things they had in the open so people walking by could stop and watch.  Now, the first couple things were fun and interesting, like having to run through a part that will randomly squirt water at you, or walking a cross a floor that randomly switched planes, but they were also easy enough for people to figure out.  This was a trick, my friends.  For once they made it through these obstacles, they came to some stairs (a warning already).  Now, this "obstacle" was purely for crowd pleasure and aimed toward women.  For the moment that you stepped on those steps, an air gun was aimed perfectly to send any women's classic german dress sky high.  It was also strong enough that there was no way to 1) hold your skirt down 2) pull your skirt back down.  We saw everything.  It was hilarious.  My favorite ones were where the girl didn't know about it and thought it was sweet that the boys said, "after you, ladies first."  Those ones were hilarious.  Just a bit of German fun.  As for everything else that happened, well, was passiert in München, bleibt in München... ;)