German Experience

(Sadly I don’t really trust myself to go much further than that with my German here..  I know that I can actually do fairly well, but my writing is still similar to that of a 10-year-old, so I think I’m going to wait a little  bit longer). So, as I’m quite sure that all of you know, I haven’t exactly been very active here for a while. I’ve kind of failed in that respect. Unfortunately (or fortunately) it is actually my lack of other major failures that has kept me from writing. It’s simply become too normal for me here. Anyway, two months of material should allow me to fashion some kind of entry (I don’t know when I’ll get pictures up. Due to technical difficulties, both the blog software and Photobucket don’t work at the moment). So, I guess first thing, I would like to talk a little about the schools here (or at the very least, my school, while I don’t really know much more than that).

One of the coolest things, I must say, is that you aren’t required to stay in the school the whole day, every day, from 8 to 3. The way that they make your schedule (is actually very complicated, and it would be much easier to do it like we do, but okay) leaves you some days with school until 4, and some day’s until 12. What’s even better however, is that if you have a free period, or a teacher isn’t there (and hasn’t given out any specific instructions or homework) you’re pretty much free to do what you want, as long as you come back for your next class. You could go out to lunch, go shopping, go home, or buy a puppy*, they don’t really care.

And now, the grading system. I don’t really understand the reasoning behind it, but I think that it’s interesting. I’ve heard before that German schools are much much harder than ours (that is still possible, I still only know my school), however I’m not really sure if that’ entirely true. First, they don’t give out nearly as much homework. Maybe we get 2-3 assignments per week (sometimes less, sometimes more), and when you do have homework, it is not very often that they’ll collect it. Generally, the teachers will simply say that you need to learn this. As far as tests goo, I would say that they are harder. This is because there aren’t usually many questions of the fill-in-the-blank or multiple choice type, where you have a chance through luck to receive credit, even if you don’t really know the answer. But, on the flip side, the grading system is easier. For instance, a 50%, while not a good grade, is still passing (roughly equivalent to our D). That is very good for me (however, now that our exams are over, I don’t know how much that will help me. We’ll have to see on that).

And now that daunting task of sorting through everything that’s happened since my last update. One of the most interesting, different, and slightly gruesome things that I’ve ever been a part of, I encountered here (I have to consider how much detail I want to go into, at the risk of frightening or disgusting some of my readers). I helped kill Ms. Piggy. Okay, that’s really inaccurate, as I didn’t actually do much to help, I pretty much just stood there and watched. In spite of that, it was pretty crazy. I have never seen an animal slaughtered before, so it was a little bit of a shock (however I did ask to go with them. I figured that I should try to experience everything I could). Actually, as I right this, I think I’m going to leave it at that (unless someone later wants me to go into the gruesome detail), and just say that it wasn’t as bad as I thought it might be, however there was still massive amounts of blood, and that pork looks a lot prettier after that process than before.

So, I guess I’ll jump right into the Christmas season. First of all, Lebküchen is delicious (it’s a little bit like gingerbread, but often with chocolate). Second, they do things a little bit differently here. Advent is a fairly big deal (I would say that most people who aren’t Catholic at home won’t even know what Advent is). For the 1^st Advent families often get together, drink coffee (which is also normal here, simply getting together for ‘coffee’, which often means just getting together before dinner but after lunch, although coffee and cake and cookies and whatnot usually play a role). Second, they have things here called Advent calenders, something that I didn’t know about except for my German class last year (Props Herr B.). This is a calender for the 1^st of December until the 24^th. Everyday, you get the calender, and for that day you open up a little ‘door’ in the calender, and there’s a little piece of chocolate for you! From what I’ve gathered, even people with no religious orientation do this, most likely out of tradition, however I must say that it’s also a good excuse to simply eat chocolate everyday (and I have absolutely no problem at all with that).  They also have HUGE Christmas Markets with a bunch of vendors, all selling alot of food, presents, toys and all sorts of things (and alot of Glühwein.  I don’t know if y’all have heard of it, but it’s hot redwine, often with a shot of rum or amaretto).  We went to one of the many in Berlin, but they’re all over the country, both big and small ones.

Christmas (or Christmas as most of the Americans know it, with presents and family and food) is actually the 24^th of December here. Another thing, is that they do the Christmas trees here the Catholic way (or the way my old religion teacher said that you were supposed to do it). That means they don’t put the trees up and decorate them until ideally the 24^th, although many people do it the 22^nd or 23^rd, simply because it can be fairly hectic here ‘Holy Evening’. I would say that it was probably a little busier for us than most people (since a lot of the family lives fairly close together). The way that the tradition goes here is that the family gets together on the 24^th, eat a simpler meal, have coffee and then open presents. But, as my host-dad is telling me as we speak, at this point most people do it how they like (so similar to us), but the main point is that presents and Christmas trees are a day before us. I’ll go ahead however and give a basic idea of the normal Christmas (Christmas here is really separated into three days, 1^st 2^nd and 3^rd Days of Christmas, basically) food. It’s almost like our thanks giving. Normally there is a goose or a duck, cooked like a turkey, Rosenkohl (I have no idea what this is in English, but it looks like a really reeeally small head of cabbage, less than an inch in diameter), Rotkohl, which, while embarrassing for me, I have actually developed a taste for, and Kartoffelklöse, roughly translated to ‘potato balls’. I don’t know what they are exactly, but I would say they are kind of like boiled potato-bread dough. I maintain that one of the things that Germans can do really good is food (except for things like liverwurst. I have no idea what they were thinking then).

So, on an off-topic point, there’s another sport that they have year that I’ve never heard of at home. It’s called ‘Kegeln’ I don’t know what the translation is, or if there even is one. However, it’s very similar to bowling. The difference is that the ball is a little smaller, and has no holes, there are only nine pins, and the line is only about 2 feet wide. Like most sports that I’ve played, I managed to fail miserably, coming in last, with the ten year old with us even beating me lol. Anyway, I thought that was cool.

The 26^th of December, we went to a really cool show in Berlin. It was hosted in a seriously big ice-hockey stadium (I think it’s called O2world). The name of the show was Afrika!Afrika! I know that it’s a traveling show, but I don’t know if it reaches to us in the U.S, but if you get a chance to see it, I recommend it.

As far as New Years is concerned, I wouldn’t say that it’s that much different than at home, with the exception of the fact that fireworks are a really big deal. From what I understand, you are allowed to legally use fireworks for a 3 day period or so leading up to and including New Years Day. On another interesting note, it is actually illegal here to simply buy fireworks and use them whenever, but you are allowed to simply fill out a permit, stating when you want to use them, and for what, with the police, and then you can go ahead as planned.

We also took a short trip up to that Baltic sea, and visited some cool museums, although I think we came to the agreement that the older one was overall cooler, but the ‘aquarium’ if you can call it that, in the new museum was amazing. I don’t know how big the largest one was, but I do know that the display window was over 12 inches thick. Despite it being incredibly cold, the Baltic sea is seriously beautiful. The water was clear and wasn’t full of trash and seaweed like a lot of beaches, but they did say that while you can go swimming there in the summer, it will still be fairly chilly.

We also took a trip to Bremen to visit some friends last weekend, and I have to say that it is an incredibly cool city. It has a lot of the modern things that bigger cities do (skyscrapers, fastfood, all of that), but they’ve still kept an incredible amount of the older buildings giving it a very old-time vibe. Hopefully I can get the photos working and that I can upload them (I think I’ve acquired about 200 total, I’ll need to thin that out a little). Anyway, I wanted to let everyone know that I am indeed alive and well. Once again, I’m sorry for the lack of funny anecdotes, but that’s harder to do when nothing particularly embarrassing happens, or when I wait 2 months to post a new entry /blushingsmiley.

*I do not recommend or encourage the purchase of any small furry animal during your free period, no matter how cute it may be.

Hello again my ladies and gentlemen. I’m afraid that I have failed rather miserably the last few weeks as far as updating this goes. Between all the things we’ve been doing, school, and just wanting some me time, there hasn’t been much room for me to make my usual witty and pithy writings and tales. However, the second downside to this failing is that I have no idea where to start or what to tell, so please, allow me some space for a little incoherence.

As always, I guess I will begin by saying where I am in my journey. I’ve been here now a little over eight weeks (the current date is the 9^th of November, however, due to some circumstances that I will certainly explain soon enough, I don’t know when I’ll actually get a chance to post this). First off, to alleviate any possible fears from people that I’ve forgotten to call or message (sorry.), I am alright and everything is going well. My last post was before the holiday, and I do indeed have much to tell, so I do suggest that you first get something to drink if you intend to read this all in one go.

So, let us for a moment skip the conventional practice of using chronological order, and I will tell you about the latest development in my now-post-16-year old life. I’ve got some new living arrangements while Martha and Frank are in Papa New Guniea on vacation. I’m living with some friends and colleagues of Martha. They have 3 sons, one 10, one 18, and one 23 (that could be wrong, but it’s somewhere around there). The two oldest aren’t always here though, so that leaves it a little emptier. They are all good people, but they are lacking wireless LAN, leaving me unable to upload this from home. One the brightside, I’m leaving close to Martha’s work, and I can use their WLAN when I feel like walking a few hundred meters. Now that that has been told, I can move on.

Considering my astounding inability to not remember when things have occurred, I’ll pick a slightly arbitrary point; sometime in the break (which, by the way, is two weeks. It gets the Brandon Stamp of Approval). I went to a German disco. Now, as lame as that sounds, believe me that it is far from it. A disco is basically what we would call a club in America (you know, that thing that all of my under-21 friends have never been to ). The following morning was also very cool (despite the long night). We got up and went to ‘Tropical Island’ with a bunch of the extended family. Tropical Island is basically a giant waterpark, except indoors, and at a temperature far more comfortable that the 40 or so degrees it was outside.

Then, sometime later that week some friends of Martha and Frank came from Luxemborg, and we all went to a theatre in Berlin. However, not any theatre, but Friedrichstaat Palace. I found that incredibly amazing, and it also once again reminded me that my hostfamily is awesome. Martha and Frank both love theatre, providing me with opportunities to also attend. Which brings us to the following point. For my birthday present, we went out to Berlin to a dinner theatre type event, presented by a very good chef. However it wasn’t theatre in the sense of a plot and storyline, but more acrobatics and various shows.

But, it does indeed go further. Since the show in Berlin wasn’t actually on my birthday, we went to Berlin the day of my birthday, and visited a very good friend of Martha. We went on a short tour of Berlin that day, and then returned to our ‘hotel’. Which brings us the the first interesting story that I get to tell.

Let me begin by saying that the room Martha and Frank had was in order. I was not so fortunate however. First, they gave us a key ring. Okay, some places still use standard keys, no problem. However the keyring had 3 separate keys. There were 4 separate locks that I had to navigate work through to reach the final destination of my room. Do the math, and take into account that I’m not bright enough to remember which keys I’ve already successfully used, and you can find that it took me over 10 minutes just to get into my room. But it gets better and better. I had a refridgerater in my room. A fridge that wasn’t plugged in. Or cleaned out. I took a quick peak, to find something, I don’t really know what, I was a little scared of it, was living inside. Not just living, but that kind of green/purple/black-almost-moving- sort of living. I was unaware such a fungus existed, and many parts of me wish that I was still ignorant. And now we move on to the GDR style décor that adorned the room. Plain walls, strangely patterned carpet, along with those old 60’s style tiles in the bathroom. But we cannot forget the small, not-automatic water heater that lived there. Now, since we were going back out after our first visit, I didn’t bother to mess with anything and see what all was there, which brings us, once again, to the next issue.

The next morning, I awoke to the sound of people coming down the steps that went down my thinly insulated room. Frank, who had already left for work, called me and told me that Martha wasn’t answering her phone, and that I should try to call and wake her up. I tried, only to hear a robotic voice coming over my phone:

“Hello. You have run out of minutes on you phone. Please purchase a new card.”

Well damn. So, I get out of my room, and walk across the hall to see if I could get to Martha’s door with one off my keys (there are two separate doors to get into your room; a main one that leads to the corridor housing the rooms) That didn’t work. So I went back in my room. 5 minutes later, Frank called again. He told me to go outside, and told me which window was hers. So, I did that, knocked on the window, only to find that Martha was already awake sigh. So, I go back to my room, ready to take a shower, brush my teeth, all of the normal morning rituals. I go to the toilet, and then, I try to flush. Nothing. I try the shower. No water. The sink? You guessed it. Not a drop. I checked the water heater, making sure that I had set it. Yep, everything was in order. So, I go back outside, knock on the window, talk to Martha, collect all my things, and then go and shower in her room. And so, only then were we ready to leave.

Now ignoring that, the rest of the day was really cool. I went out with Martha’s friend and her daughter, and we took a tour of Berlin (and bought my some shoes and another dress shirt). At this point, I’ve been to Berlin so many times that I think I know it better than the village I live in.

As you can probably tell, it was a fairly eventful break. Unfortunately, the nice time was over. Before, I’ve only had to go to school from 9:30 till the end of the day. Now, I have to actually go to school like a normal person, from 7:30. The bus leaves at 6:50. Fun, yea?

As far as school is concerned, it is going a little better. I have yet to nail down the language, but it’s to the point where I can usually follow at the very least what’s going on, if not the actual points. My grades are much better than I would of thought (mostly because the majority of the teachers are cool and understanding of the fact that I have no idea what I’m doing), with, of course, the exception of sport and computer science.

So, for now, I’m going to wrap this up. Sorry that it is not as carefully planned out as usual, but I really wanted to get something posted to let everyone know at least a little bit of what’s going on here. To everyone I usually talk to, the next few weeks will be a little more sparse than usual, since I won’t have free access to the interwebz.

So, farewell for now.

Oh, and GObama!

And so, we once again move on with what I would like to call “The Attempt and Subsequent Failure of Brandon Trying Not to Look Stupid.” That’s not to say that there was one sole event where my stupidity was overwhelming (there have been many, such as missing classes because we had them at a different time or place and I didn’t know what the teacher had said), merely the general feeling of, “Oh. I missed that completely.” So is life.

It’s hard to believe that I’ve been here a month already. It feels like I’ve been here forever in some ways (I’ve been going to school for almost 4 weeks now, and have figured out where everything is, I’ve figured out the general routine in the house), but it also feels like this month has gone by REALLY fast. Now if I could only get the language nailed down. As far as speaking goes, it continues improving. I’ve learned alot of vocab and gotten more into the habit of speaking. I still mess up alot when I come across a word I don’t know, and especially when it comes to genders, but it is infinitely better, and hopefully it will continue to improve.

Now, however, I would like to go ahead and thank Herr und Frau Wernicke, who have done the work in setting up this blog, and, as some of you may have noticed, the new German translation! So, should I attract readers that are fluent in the German language, fear not! You now also have access to the potentially humorous plights, failures, and occasional successes of the ‘Lockenkopf’ (Curly-head, and that might be misspelled. It’ll make more sense later) American in your land.

Now, back to the spinning of the tale to be told. I do believe that I left off with my slight sport-disconnect (don’t get your hopes up either, that still hasn’t changed), as well as my promise to entertain you with my experience at a concert of epic proportions. But, as chronology dictates, you’ll have to wait for that :).

Later that week, I got the chance to participate in an interview with one of Rathenow’s newspapers. As I’m sure you can imagine, along with that came the chance to make a fool of myself. However at least that is usually entertaining. Like with many interviews, the best parts were left out when it came to print, leaving me looking bland, and after the translation from English to German, a little stupid. I don’t really blame the journalist, since she did speak English, but she missed some of the context that my statements were in. Essentially the newspaper wrote that I called Germans unpunctual and not really that organized (Oh shi**). I haven’t yet encountered any bricks through windows or Molotov cocktails yet, but it’s only been 3 days since the article ran. I’ll let you know. I was also referred to as “curly-head american”. Ouch. Still, I got my picture in the paper, and how can THAT ever go wrong?

We then went bowling the next day, and that was fun (and of course, requiring some modicum of coordination, providing some amusement for everyone else as well). Just a quick side note so that you know what I’ve been up to.

And so, Berlin. And 500,000+ people. And speakers with more watts than there were people. And 3.50€ beer. And 500,000+ people drinking 3.50€ beer. I have to say, it was pretty entertaining.

But first, an interesting note. We ate at McDonald’s after we got off the train. This was the first time I had eaten it in about a month and a half. What was stranger though, is that German McDonalds tastes EXACTLY the same as American ones. That’s a little scary to me. It wasn’t bad, but I think I’m going to wait another couple weeks for the next one.

What’s best though, is that we (me and the 4 other classmates that went together) were in the first two rows. As in, less than 4 meters from the stage. As anyone familiar with concerts knows, there are only a few things more awesome than feeling your entire body shake from the massive speakers directly in front of you. Now we come to one of those stupid moments. We had been there, standing room only, for about 5 hours. My legs hurt, and I was incredibly thirsty. I told my friend this, and he said, “We’re leaving in 2 hours, and don’t think you can get back through.” I looked at the crowd and thought, “Well, I’m skinny, I’ll manage.” Please bring forth the obnoxiously loud “WRONG!” buzzer. After muscling my way through about 300 people to walk 30 meters to the counter, I was beginning to doubt myself. But, I got out right?

And so, after enjoying one of the most delicious Coca-Colas ever, I began my trek back. I managed to get about 5-10 meters behind my friends, when I encountered an obstacle. “Entschuldigung, darf ich?” I said, motioning to move through. She smiled widely, “Nie,” I smiled back, figuring that she was messing with me.

“Bitte?”

“Nie,”

“Meine Freunde sind da, bitte sehr?”

“Nie,”

“Oh. Okay then.”

So that kind of sucked. Thankfully though, it wasn’t like you couldn’t see anything from where I was.

We had already seen most of the better shows, and I got to sit down, so it could’ve been worst. When we were back in the trainstation, we had about another half-hour to kill, so what did we do? Ate at McDonalds. Again, lol. It was slightly more interesting this time. As we were eating, a kid at a table next to ours said, “Hey, let’s eat over there,, there’s a big f***ing flatscreen TV there.”

We all started laughing, because while the kids with me didn’t understand all of what he said, they most certainly know English swear words. Well, it turns out that they were Americans as well. Unfortunately, after talking to them for a little bit, they were your stereotypical asshole teenage Americans. So, I’m sorry to any Germans who had the distinct pleasure to meet them, we’re not all like that.

The following day (Saturday) was fairly interesting. There was a small fest (less than 100 people) in Grosswudicke, where there was music, chainsaw sculptures (I don’t really understand that one), bratwurst, kuchen, and of course, beer. Despite it being fairly small, it was still nice, and i got to meet some people who also live in our village.

Then, there was shroom hunting. Okay, if we’re going to be accurate, the real name is Pilze Suchen (You have to admit though, shroom hunting sounds better). Now, since I have been here, I’ve known that Pilze Suchen is fairly common in Germany. It was still strange however, since in American the only people I’ve ever heard of doing this are stoners and serious nature people. However, it is a large tradition in Germany. And so, specific stupid moment number two. Since we don’t really do this, I only know about 2 or 3 types of mushrooms. Frank tried to explain to me how you could tell the difference between poison mushrooms and edible ones, but I couldn’t understand him. So, trotsdam (in spite of it) we began our search.

“Da?”

“Gift (poison) Pilze.”

“Da?”

“Gift Pilze.”

“Da?”

“Gift Pilze.”

I think I did this for about 10 times, him continuing to try to explain it to me, but I still didn’t get it. Finally, he just said that I should wait until he found an edible one that he could show me. The second he did, I understood exactly what he was trying to tell me. So, I now know one type of wild mushroom you can eat (I’m still not going to trust myself on that however).

In the end though, he said we were too late in the season, and we walked away without a single edible shroom (the ones we had found had been first discovered small critter. Damn.)

And now the moment some of you may have been waiting for. I tried rotkohl. Again. Martha made it for dinner one night (”just try a bite, I’ve got peas here too if you don’t like it.” -I love you.). There it was again, the steaming pile of purple (this time, without the thick gooey sauce, so that made it look better). And I have to say, it wasn’t that bad. It’s not going up there with the things I look forward to eating, but I’ll put it with liver (I can eat it no problem, it’s just not to my taste). Unfortunately, that was a fairly anti-climactic ending to my previous traumatizing story (don’t go thinking that just because I can eat Martha’s rotkohl that I was exaggerating before. That was still horrible.)

We also mowed the lawn today. Contrary to some of my hopes, grass does indeed grow here. Also contrary to some of my hopes, mowing a lawn in Germany is not any more fun than it is in America. However, Frank has a tractor, so it could be worse.

So, I believe that we are now coming to a close. To those who would possibly care: Since I don’t understand a thing in my computer science class (it is completely German speaking, and as such, currently over my head), after I’ve finished copying the few notes we get, I’ve been trying to learn some HTML (fake computer language, I know, but it’s the only thing I know how to do with an offline IE and notepad), so at least I’m learning something in that class now. The teacher doesn’t speak any English, so he just ignores me most of the class anyway, so until I can figure out what he’s saying, it works out.

I’m sure that I’ve forgotten something, but what can you do? I’ll talk to y’all later, bis dann!

Well, it’s been a little over a week since my last post bearing actual content (only pictures don’t count). So, to begin, I will try to pick off where I left the last post. . .

That Friday was Stadtfest in Rathenow, probably one of the largest city-wide festivals that happens here. One of the girls from my school who also lives in Grosswudicker called and invited me to go out with her and some of the other kids from here to the festival. It was pretty awesome, and we didn’t get back until almost 3 (we had to take a taxi, the buses here normally only run between here and Rathenow until 6, but it was still only 12 for Stadtfest). And don’t worry, my host parents were fine with it.

At 5 Saturday morning, Frank and Martha left for the airport for their cruise, and I went to live for that week with Thorsten and Verena, some very close friends of the Wendt’s who I had met at the party.

Later that day, I had the interesting experience of actually going to a German football game. Now, since I never really followed sports, I don’t know how most Americans actually perceive football and its fans. While there are of course people who don’t care about football here, quite a few do indeed. And I will go ahead and say it, they are INSANE.

Thorsten and I got on the train and went to Berlin. The game was at Olympic stadium, the famous place of the Olympics during WW2. Over 40,000 people showed up to watch football and drink beer, and Thorsten still informed me that it was fairly empty (apparently they hadn’t played so well the previous weekend). I only got a few pictures, but they’re in the Trips&Sight-seeing folder.

So, my experience the following Monday gives me a perfect opportunity to talk a little about German food first, if you’ll indulge.

The first thing that I will say, is that it is good that I find potatoes magically delicious. I would venture to say that somewhere between 100%-100% of dinners (when we aren’t snacking, zB making sandwiches for ourselves) include some form of potatoes, with a slightly less impressive number of 70% of hot lunches (although often it is only a rolls with meat and cheese perhaps with a piece of fruit). Now, on the rare occasion when we have no potatoes, it is bread. From this point alone, I think that it is quite simple to see how I could fit in here quite well, at least as far as cuisine goes.

So moving on from that, I would like to say that everything I have had here has been good (or for liverwurst, edible), with only one exception, which I will go into detail later. Everything here is fresh. The meat that we get for sandwiches from the butcher? From Grosswudicker cows. There is a far wider selection of things that you can buy that were made locally, or at the very least in Germany. While there aren’t many spices included in their meals, it is far from bland. Tomatos, sauce, or gravy

(usually made from that meat that you’re eating) are always included, and goes well with the bread/potatoes and vegetables included. Also, as I said before, the portions are larger. I have already gained somewhere between ,5-1,0 kilo. Unfortunately, it seems like that is just one of the things that comes with the experience.

So, with that out of the way, I now have the pleasure of entertaining you with my story of the school lunch I had that Monday. Now, normally the school lunches are at the very least passable, if not fairly good (although they still don’t compare with family-prepared food). But this brings us the exception: Rotkohl. Now, if you don’t know, that is red cabbage. Red cabbage, in a salad, or otherwise tastefully prepared, is good. This was not normal red cabbage however. This was indeed purple cabbage. Now while anyone who has ever worked with red cabbage will be saying, “Of course it’s purple!” let me continue. Take a moment, and picture sour kraut. It might not be for you, but it is shredded, bleached cabbage, usually in vinegar or another preserving brine. But now, take that image, and picture it purple. Now I’m not talking about slightly purple like fresh red cabbage is. Purple. Try to think flourescent-lavender-Grape Soda-Barney purple. Darken it a little, and let your imagination go wild. You have now perhaps achieved the required shade of purple. However, now cover it in sauce, with a consistency that is indescribable, somewhere between water and gravy. The taste was also indescribably, a kind of malty-sour with a hint of sweetness and a little bit of normal cabbage. Hopefully with that, you can now understand my distaste and slight fear of this different food (on another note, I would be willing to try it freshly prepared, giving it the benefit of the doubt considering that it was school food, but you will have to wait a little while for that).

Now that that business is passed, let me offer the slightly random note that rasberries are in season here. A little different, but still delicious.

So, a slightly different subject for the rest of this post. Now, while it is school, I would not normally consider it so. That is because it is ‘Sport’ class (P.E.). Now, anyone who has been through any American PE class recently knows that it is a complete joke. Bring gym clothes, show up, and at least pretend to try, and it is easy enough to achieve an A. By comparison, let me lead off saying that I am currently failing PE. Not only do they expect you to actually be fit to achieve your marks, you have to do things that I had never even HEARD of in the typical American P.E. class (although my mother has informed me that she had to do these things as well). So, the list:

Kugel-Stossen: The art of lobbing a freaking six kilo iron ball as far as you can, similar to the American shot putting. When a kid I knew was trying to explain it to me here, I could understand the words, but found it so absurd that I assumed there was something I was missing in the sentence. Apparently not. My best by some act of god was 6 meters, a passable number, however it got progressively worse, before ending at an even 4 meters.

Speer-wurfen: As one can sort of tell from the name, this is taking a 2 meter fiberglass and steel javelin and throwing it, hoping that it sticks in the ground. I achieved a record of 11,5 meters, perhaps the most epic fail ever witnessed in sport class here. I take a bow, and move on.

Weid-Sprung: Not as strange as the others. This is simply running about 10-20 meters and then seeing how far you can jump into a pit of sand. Still, my best is the score of 3,80 meters.

From some of the numbers I have shown you, it is quite obvious that I’m not doing so well. What is infinitely worse however, is that these numbers are so extremely bad, that they are roughly equivalent to not showing up in class. I’ll have to work on that.

So for now, that it all. Despite my rotkohl and sport experience, it really has been amazing here, and I really have had fun. On the 3rd of Oktober, a Feuertag ( a holiday for the joining of East and West) I’m going to Berlin by train to see one of the largest concerts this year by the Brandenburg Tur. I will try to get some pictures and let you all now how it went :).

[lang_en]Just a quick sample of pics of Grosswudicker, Rathenow, and the House.

[lang_en]

[/lang_en][lang_de]

[/lang_de]

Hello from Germany! I haven’t been able to get internet until today, but hopefully now I will be able to update this blog with some regularity.

- Hopefully I will be able to write this blog in both German and English (currently, my German is very broken however. I can usually string together sentences well enough to convey a point, but that does not mean that I said it correctly )

First, let me say that it is a LONG flight here, and that I am currently 5-6 hours ahead of EST (depending on daylight savings and all that), and there was NO sleeping.

My flight was on Friday, and I arrived around 8.00 local time in Frankfurt. From there, there was 5 hours of waiting, and approximately 4 hours of train riding and changing, followed by a 45 minute drive, before I finally got to my new home.

My host family is very nice. My host mother and father know about as much English as I know German, so it can be a little tricky speaking to each other. We live in a very European-looking house in the small village of Grosswudicker (that should be u-umlaut, but I don’t know how to do that on this laptop). Most of the extended family lives here, or in the nearby town of Rathenow (which is also fairly small), where I am going to school.

My first real day here (Saturday night didn’t really count, since I could barely eat my food without dozing off), my host family threw me a welcome party. Their extended family (totaling around 10-15 people in all) came, and we had a cookout. It was very fun, and everyone was very nice, despite my inability to sound even semi-intelligent (on a side note, I have seen that when it comes to beer drinking, Germans are badass. They don’t take sips, but gulps. Also, how one opens a beer bottle with either a lighter or another beer bottle is apparently common knowledge.

German portions are also very large (for me at least). Both my host father and uncle laughed at me for the ’small’ amount of food I ate (one helping of everything).

On Monday, I started school (although I only went for a little while Monday, and I go to my last 5 periods only for a few weeks, until my German is at a passable level). It is definitely interesting, however I don’t really understand what is going on in most of my classes (although I understand some of my Math and French classes, and all of the English class I have been going to). I won’t lie, I’m not really expecting to do so well this first quarter, heh. I guess that is part of the learning process, however.

Tonnes more has happened, and I have noticed ALOT of little stuff that you would simply have to be here to appreciate (things like how water can taste flat, you put your fork and knife down a certain way when you’re done eating, etc), that is really fairly boring from someone else’s perspective.

For now, that is all. I am doing well, and hopefully I can continue to udate this blog perhaps every week or two, depending on how everything goes. Gute Nacht!