I'm still here! Really!

I don’t even know how to describe what my life is like right now. I couldn’t bring myself to blog about it because it felt so normal... as in, why would I want to blog about my normal life? It’s just awkward. Anyways, I have a lot of things coming up, going on, and that have happened. I just wanted to write about them and how I feel about them right now.

Firstly, what has happened in my life outside of Germany? I got into American University, and also turned 18! I am very nervous and excited at the same time for the American activities that I am still doing, hopefully soon picking dorms and classes and so on. Intended major of political science and intended minor of German! It should be a great time, but I am also nervous still about how it will all work out with me being here.
Being 18 scares me. I am officially no longer a child, but I must say, if there is one thing I have learned from being here, it’s that I can never, ever know everything. In that way I will always be a child, making mistakes and having a lot to learn. So thats always good because I hate the idea of being a content adult. Also, being eighteen means that I am now in the selective service system, which I don’t really like. On the other hand, I can now vote! So exciting, I know.

What’s happening in Germany right now? A lot actually! This week I have my Halbzeit camp in Bad Honnef bei Köln. That means I am about halfway through with my time in Germany. I honestly couldn’t say where the time has gone. But I have noticed that it is always going faster. The month of February FLEW by. Its so odd that now I have a routine just like at home. I know how everything should work, and what my days will be like. I go to school, play soccer, relax on the weekends, have friends here, and an essentially normal life. It’s weird how fast it goes by. I remember last year the seniors always talked about how fast senior year goes by, and I couldn’t believe them. Honestly said, now I know what they meant even though I’m in a different place. I think it may have something to do with how I’m no longer under stress to get into college, and am also having an excellent time here.

I don’t know if this interests anyone, but I wanted to write about how my classes here are. I currently take: Math, English, Deutsch, History, Sport, Chemistry, Physics, Geography, Religion, Computers, and Music. My favorites are math, physik, history, and sport. I think I like math a lot because it is where I am learning the most. It’s basically calculus 1 and a half, but they don’t use graphing calculators. There are about 13 kids in the class, but only about 4 get it. For the german teachers thats not a problem, they just keep teaching! Lucky I was able to figure it out quickly enough, and now I have already taken two tests and gotten hundreds, better than in the US! But as I said, thats my favorite class. Physik is just cool, the teacher is really intense and has the 100 page formula book memorized. It’s cool to watch him do ridiculous math on the board. The other day we did a gravity problem about gyrosynchronis satellites that took about 2 hours in class. History is just cool because I love the German prospective of things. It’s very no nonsense, but a lot of times they miss subtleties of certain events. I think its a cultural thing. Sport is funny. I have a teacher from the “old school.” Also, gym class in Germany is wayy better than in the US. There are real tests of fitness to get grades. Sometimes, to get a one-hundred you would have to be at the level of a competitive athlete in whatever the sport is. One time, we had to do 50 push ups in 70 seconds to get a 100. Very intense. So thats a small look inside of my favorite classes, I hope it didn’t bore you?

I have a new favorite card game here. It’s called SKAT and it is extremely complicated. Three people play, and its always two against one. Its a trick taking game, and the two are decided depending on how the betting goes, who has what for Jacks, and what for cards the players have. It’s fun to play with Oliver and Marcel. I think I will try to teach my dad when I get home!

I decided to start up this blog (really!) again, so if you have questions....ask!

Change!

So I am now doing a video blog! its up on facebook, here's the link!
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10150148310506110

Schloss Wendgräben, snow, dreaming in german?

I know its been a while! Sorry! College things and I've been so busy with school. I applied to American, am still really nervous, and a little bitter that I will not hear until Dec 31st, I hope earlier so that I dont have to spend app money on other schools. And so that I can sleep comfortably again. Anyways, rant complete.

For the past few weeks from monday to friday I have really just been going to school, coming back home at around 4, eating and sleeping. Last weekend was Oliver's 17th birthday on Saturday. We had two parties, one on Friday night and one on Saturday. It was a lot of fun, and we gave him his gifts on midnight friday night, which I'm told always happens. Speaking of gifts, apparently we open presents for Christmas on the 24th? One day earlier, I'm not complaining!

Since Monday of this week, I have been at Schloss Wendgräben, about a half hour away. It was a really nice castle, old outside but a new made hotel inside. I went with my history class to learn about the old DDR, the Deutsch Demikratische Republik, and the history and mentality of the citizens. Most of the people that I interact with daily are either former DDR citizens or have parents from the DDR, so it was very interesting to hear what east germany was like. The three day conference was quite enlightening.

Last night we had the first snow of the year, and it was really pretty! Everyone was really happy but then immediately decided it was time to open all of the windows? Sometimes I really wonder...

At any rate, last night I dreamed in German! Yay!

Berlin!

So! Two more weeks of school down, and I have seen a lot more of Germany! Last weekend I went to Heide Park, which is a lot like German Six Flags. It was really good! Lots of rollercoasters and rides that we don't have in America. I think maybe the Safety Regulations are different? I don't know but it was great!

I went to Berlin for the first time yesterday, it was a small culture shock within a culture shock. It is not like any other part of Germany that I have seen. It was overwhelmingly international, half the people speaking German, the other half speaking another language, English, French, Italian, Turkisch... the list goes on! I visited two museums, one to remember all of the jewish people killed in the Holocaust, the other a history of WWII in the old Gestapo Headquarters. It was really interesting to hear from the German Prospective. It's not all that different from the American prospective, but there is a little less emphasis on villainizing (sp?) the Nazi's, all of the young people here already know that. There is more emphasis here on standing up for what you believe in, and questioning what you are told.

Oh! There are Starbucks in Berlin, and I enjoyed my first Coffee from there in 2 months. It was delicious.

My German is at the point where I understand almost all that is said to me, but cannot always respond immediately because I don't have the correct verb to do so. Almost more frustrating than when I didn't understand anything at all. In the end I can usually make myself understood. Like on Friday when I had to explain Sarah Palin to my history teacher. That was fun. Now all I have to worry about this week is applying to college. Please accept me American University!

College Apps sint sooo (mit drei o) viel spaß im Deutschland.

I know that I haven't updated in more than a week! Sorry. But I have been busy, working on my college apps and exploring a new part of Germany!

I have been to Magdeburg three times this week, its only about 25 minutes away and is a pretty big city, about a half million people. All of the Architecture is extremely old, and inherently very interesting for me. When we went to the Dome, the city monument and largest building in Magdeburg, my host father and I explored for almost two hours. There are some very cool pictures up on Facebook, go look!

Also, I went to visit my host mom's old school yesterday and that was cool. Her old school happens to be the oldest and largest castle in the area. It was a castle for 850 years and was only a school during the time of the DDR for the last 60 years. That was also very cool because half of the Castle was updated and the other half was left in its original form. I saw the pros and cons of both. I prefer the older parts because of the history, but I can see why people needed to make it new. I took pictures there too!

As for the bads parts of this week, College Apps. I am more worried about them because of the impact that they have on my life, not so much with how difficult they are to fill out. I have completed the American App, and it didn't take very long except for my essay. Writing was not easy because I keep forgetting specific words in English. Without speaking good English in over a month my vocabulary is shot. However, I did buy and english book this week for vocab inspiration. Ken Follett's new one, Fall Of Giants.

This week was vacation from school, but I think that it came at a good time so that I could focus on writing my essay and it gave my German time to REALLY improve. I am happy to say that I only asked what four words from english to german were today, and ended up looking up 3 of them anyways. I think that it has helped that my family speaks almost no english except when singing along to the radio. Also, most of the adults don't speak english (maybe because im in former east germany? I dont know why?) but I always am forced to speak german. That is a huge difference from in Celle, where I could frequently speak english because everyone else could and did. It's helped me in the end!

My New Family and School!

The past week has been so crazy! I am so tired, I haven't had any time to rest. It has finally just started to settle down. So I will write about what I have done.

Last Friday I went left my old guest house with the Göhrings. It was sad, but I was very happy to finally be with my permanent family. It was a good month and a good start to my year. And now I can finally settle in and make friends! I am very excited.

I then went to the late orientation camp run by AFS. It was very cool. I expected it to be like DC, mostly rules and regulations. It wasn't. It was more about what you should be careful doing, and how it was best to spend your time in Germany. More importantly, I met people from all around the world. From Shanghai to Italy to columbia. Everyone was very cool, and everyone had to speak either german because we all had different native languages. Although, many of them could speak english, especially the ones from Europe or China.

On Sunday, I officially moved in with my new family, the Klitches. They are a very nice, very crazy, and very loud family. It's a lot of fun but was very tiring at first. I have my own room which is good, but the internet is not wireless, which is not good.

Yesterday was my first day of school, and it might have been the most exhausting day of my life. I was already overtired from my weekend, and spent the entire day speaking with german teachers who had better things to do than listen to an austauschüler speak bad german. But they all turned out to be nice, or at least understanding.

My favorite class is Math, and my second favorite is Englisch. Both make perfekt sense to me! English is funny. Picture a frenchman sitting in on a french class at GHS. Sehr lustig!

Here's to hoping that everything continues to go smoothly!

Autostadt!

So! The past few days have been very eventful. On Saturday I went to the AFS farewell party, as I will be leaving Celle on Friday morning. Das ist sehr schlimm, Ich weiß. I have had a great time here, my family has been great, and I have done so many interesting things! From the first day, I have always had something to do after school, and that made a huge impact on the way that I am viewing my the rest of my year. I know that some other exchange students have not gotten the bright start that I have.

Yesterday I visited the city of Wolfsburg. If you didn't know, Wolfsburg is the car capitol of Europe, where Volkswagons Headquarters are. There is a really cool auto museum, and a pavillion for each of the companies that volkswagon owns. My favorites were Audi and Ferrari. In the Audi Pavilion I was able to go inside of all of their current cars, including a 2011 r8 Spyder. The car starts at around 200,000 euros. I was amazed.

In other news, I am very excited to go to my next host family because I will be starting at School there! Monday is my first day. Wish me luck!