Anyway, I thought I’d better do an update before Eurotour! We’re meeting on Friday (March 16th) in Hannover, and then Saturday morning we leave for Belgium. 3 weeks, 6 countries, and 14 cities with 45 other exchange students- I can’t wait! Here’s our route:
I’ll be flying home on July 28th, which is later than most exchangers-some people leave in the beginning of June- but it’s still not the last, which I’m actually glad about – I don’t want to be the only one left after everyone else has gone home. The other exchange students in my district aren’t just my friends, they’re my family here, and it’s hard to imagine next year when we’ll be scattered all over the world and unable to see each other at any time.
By the time I leave I’ll have been in Germany 10 days short of a full year, and I can’t believe that my departure is only in a little over 4 months. It’s hard to explain: I haven’t been in Germany very long, but in such a short time it’s become my second home. It feels like I’ve been here forever but only just got here at the same time.
To sum up the past 2 ½ months: I switched host families on January 4th. I was nervous about it, since I loved my first family, and I’d lived there for 5 months and didn’t know how things would change. That might have been silly, since they were Ana’s first host family, and she absolutely loved them, which I do now as well. I don’t have any siblings here, my host parents have 1 daughter currently on exchange in Australia, but they are so sweet, and I’d just like to stay here for the rest of the year.
All of the oldies are now gone, they left in mid January, and our newbies are here! It seems so long ago but it was really only 2 months. Cata, one of the newbies from Argentina, lives in Helmstedt. The other newbies I don’t know very well, because I’ve only gotten to meet them once or not at all, since they all live further away. There are 8 altogether.
At the end of January I started up with German classes again. Ana and I go to the Volkshochschule twice a week, and in May we’re going to take a government assessment test. Since we had a lot of free time, and didn’t want to be blimps by the time we got home, Cata, Ana, Karla and I joined a gym at the beginning of February.
Our last Rotex weekend was February 17th-19th, and it was in Hundisburg, which is in Sachsen-Anhalt (I live in Niedersachsen) but since I live right on the border, and Hundisburg is on the western side of the state, it only took us 30 minutes to get there. We stayed in the Hundisburg castle, which was beautiful. Normally we sleep in sport halls, this time we had actual rooms and beds. On Saturday we went to Hötensleben and Marienborn, memorials for the division of East and West Germany. Both are only a 10-15 minute drive from where I live, so I’d actually been there just 2 weeks before with my host parents, but it was still really interesting to see and hear more of the history. It’s so weird to think that that was only a little more than 20 years ago.
That Sunday we went to Karnival in Braunschweig, the 4th largest carnival in Germany. Karnival in Germany is a mix of a Mardi Gras style party with Halloween costumes. We didn’t dress up, but we watched people and the parade. It was really nice until it started pouring rain and then snowing. We’d been having such nice weather, then that day was just horrible. It’s really nice out now, around 8 degrees, which is much nicer than the straight -15 degrees that we had for 3 weeks straight in January and February. That was freezing. Of course I got sick that weekend, and my cold still hasn’t gone away. I’ve had it for almost a month.
The last few weeks I’ve been to two ice hockey games with my host parents, which were a lot of fun and a first for me. We went to watch the EHC Wolfsburg “Grizzly Adams”, the first league professional team in my area. They’re 4th in the league and are going to the playoffs sometime soon.
Last Friday I went to the opera with my host parents in Braunschweig. We saw “The Barber of Seville”, and it was my very first opera. I can’t say that I enjoyed it all that much. It isn’t the music that annoys me, I actually kind of like opera music- which probably makes me weird for my age. The story was just so incredibly boring, uncreative, and plain ridiculous.
After the Opera I went to Sarah’s house for her birthday weekend. One thing I learned recently is that Germans consider it really bad luck to celebrate your birthday before the actual day. You can celebrate the night before and party into your birthday at midnight, but you can’t wish anyone happy birthday before midnight, or that’s bad luck too. But since we’re not German, and her birthday was on a Sunday, we decided to celebrate beforehand anyway.
I’ve started tutoring my German teacher’s kids in English once a week, which is interesting. It’s something I’ve never done before, so the first time I was a bit clueless, but the time went really fast and it wasn’t at all difficult.
Tomorrow I’m going to Leipzig for a book conference, and I’ve heard that it’s one of the largest ones in Europe. Helmstedt Rotary Club is taking us.
I’m gonna go, tschüss till after the Eurotour!
