Meine Familie!

I know almost every foreign exchange student says this, but I think I may have been the luckiest in terms of host families. They are absolutely great!

I'd been Facebooking and emailing them for the entire summer and had kinda gotten to know a lot of facts about them, but hadn't really gotten to know them; so I was still incredibly nervous on the Saturday they came to pick me up.

All the host families who came to Schloss Wittgenstein were in a seminar of sorts from 10:00 until 1:00, I think. And there wasn't any way for us to meet them, even though I was a mere 1000 yards away from the castle. Nerve-wracking is what that was.

With as much of the group as we had (as some had left by train rather early), we walked over to our last meal and ate it in the sun while a wedding party started getting under way. We passed the "parking lot" of the castle which was as full as it's ever been. We spent a few minutes looking at all of them, wondering which belonged to which family and who would be going in them. Side note: Almost all of them were black, I just thought it was kind of odd.

The time finally came, when the host families walked out into the courtyard, and naturally mine was the first out! I recognized them right away and went over to them and was greeted by warm hugs and smiles. Any worry that'd I'd had was pretty much gone by that point. 

There 3 hour drive home passed by so quickly, it didn't feel like a burden at all. Everything seemed so natural. I was totally excited. And we spent the entire ride speaking in German. In fact, I have never had a proper conversation in English the entire time that I have been here. Not that that is really a problem, just an observation.

Overall, I'm just really happy and content, or in German "zufrieden" with my host family and the decision to come to Germany. All the wonderful things that this year is going to be are slowly starting to come out in to the open; it's not quite so unknown any more!

A little dramatic, I know, but I didn't have any better pictures to put here.

Die letzten(isch) drei Wochen

I promise I haven't died. The last two weeks since I started writing this post have been incredibly busy and I'm adjusting to my life in Minden quite well, I'd say. I do intend on catching things up rather quickly, so expect some back to back posts, but don't get used to it.

Goodbye Schloss Wittgenstein

So I've actually been in Minden for about a week now. We're all left Schloss Wittgenstein and Language Camp at various times last Saturday. That last week was so packed, legit.

It was the week of pranks and craziness. Beds ended up outside, in hallways. Underwear was taped to ceilings; furniture rearranged. Toothpaste on the mirror, window, wherever. Chaos. Wonderful, amazing, chaos.

Between class and other scheduled activities, we prepared for our host families and for the talent show on Friday night (and Saturday morning). Our class put together a great German word to Cee Lo Green's "Forget You" and a Foto-Love-Story. Overall, the talent show was one of the best I have seen or participated in. For four+ hours people sang, danced, were crazy, sang more, told jokes, and acted out skits. When we finally finished at 1:45, I was exhausted, but I still didn't want it to end. The night was really magical and as we were walking back to the school, the universe had one more surprise in store: the Milky Way. I've always lived in densely light polluted Virginia and have never seen it; it was surreal.

For us as a group, it was the closest week we'd had yet. I knew that, as a gaggle of 50 people, we would really bond over the three weeks. But the last week, I was surprised by how close we actually became. We bonded over small things, like the walk to Bad Laasphe, and big things like learning to drink properly.

The coolest group of people I've yet known

But now we are dispersing across a country to live with families we've never met. We may not be at each others physical sides to assuage homesickness or loneliness; but I've made friendships that I'm sure will come in handy down the line. I can't wait to see what this year has in store for me and for every one of us. Good luck!

Moving forward on my adventure!

Marburg!

This weekend was a blast; we finally got out of Bad Laasphe! Don’t get me wrong it’s a lovely little town, but it is rather small and it is always great to see somewhere new and exciting. Plus we took the train, which is tons of fun.

In fact, here is the view from the train window

We didn’t take one of the high speed trains because they don’t go to Bad Laasphe and probably not to Marburg either. We were on what is known as a Regional Bahn, the slowest of the three train types. It stops at every “cow pasture” and small town, so it takes awhile. I’d say it wasn’t any better in terms of speed than a highway, but it is so much more environmentally sustainable and comfortable. I enjoy not having to worry about rear-ending the person in front of me and just staring out the window. 

So we get there; and Marburg is beautiful! The Altstadt (Old City) is just like a fairytale. [Fun fact, the Grimm Brothers even lived there for quite a while.] Even one of the German leaders we were with was remarking at “how cute” Marburg was because the streets were so narrow and the buildings were so traditional. The entire country really isn’t like this, but it does exist in a fair many places.

Here’s a cool building near what I think is the old Rathaus

Like any good German city or town, there is a castle on the nearest mountain or hill. And just like Schloss Wittgenstein in Bad Laasphe, it is quite the hill. The view was definitely worth the climb. (Sadly the pictures didn’t quite turn out, but it was so beautiful and I’ve got copies in my mind). 

A view I got later in the day

As a little side note: I really appreciate the freedom that this program affords us. I absolutely hate it when we go around as a group of 50 (or even a group larger than 5), it makes us stick out and we become a burden to walk around. Sneaking around the city in little groups (minimum of 3) is great, but I don’t think any organization in the US would allow us to do that without first signing 45 forms and checking in every X number of hours. Here they just got us to Marburg, told us the times when there will be trains to Bad Laasphe, and reminded us to stay in groups of at least 3. 

Anyhow, on our way down, we made our way into the Protestant Cathedral of Marburg (I never caught it’s name). It was a really neat building, very sparse inside. But the coolest thing was that there was going to be a wedding. You could tell all around. We actually had to walk through one of the bands to get up to the Schloss (there was a marked path). But the pews were adorned with flowers and ribbons and the organist was practicing before the ceremony and that was the most amazing thing. It was so pretty and surreal. We didn’t actually see the couple, but we saw the car. Other groups got different views, one even saw them exiting the church with great fanfare. It was simply neat all around. 

Then the shopping. A lot of us needed to buy some clothing items for a variety of reasons. A few people’s bags were searched and their clothing taken, so those needed to be replaced. Some figured that one pair of shoes would be enough. Nope. Others underestimated what Germans consider “summer” and desperately needed warmer clothing. I didn’t get anything because I was lucky and planned well when I packed, but it was neat to browse H&M in German.

After that we kept “shopping” by going in to all of the shops along the winding streets of the old city. There was a shop designated to wooden brush products. Things like the French-maid style feather dusters, brushes of all kinds, and baskets. Neat. We even saw some American exchange students who are going to be going to university in Saarbrücke. 

Imagine if Broad Street looked like this

It was so interesting and enjoyable that we were all in agreement to take the 6:30 (and last) train to Bad Laasphe. The one before it left at 4:30. Unfortunately for us, everything closes at around 4:30 or 5. But we made do.

We meandered back towards the train station and passed the Elisabeth Church (the Catholic Cathedral) and went in. It, like the Protestant one, was sparse on the inside. Mind you, these are 800 year old structures and they are beautiful in their own right, I was just surprised. 

Speaking of surprise. You walk into the Marburg Cathedral, up to about the altar and it looks normal and like any other church, then you turn around and look up. The organ is magnificent. It is shocking, really. Ultra modern it is literally soaring into the heavens and the stained glass window behind it also gives the impression. Since it was a church, I voted against taking a picture, but wow.

And through a crack in the wall on the other side of the street, we discovered at 13th century pilgrim graveyard. Just hiding behind a bunch of buildings.

Cathedral from the outside

There is so much history everywhere; it’s crazy. Virginia, probably more than any other US state, is blessed with history everywhere. Walk through Denver and you won’t find much historical. In my mind, Richmond and Williamsburg are chalk full of history. Nothing compared to Marburg or most of Germany. Everything has a story. Yes, Marburg Cathedral is 800 years old and the first Gothic church in Germany, but it also played a role in each of those 800 years. Paul von Hindenburg is buried there and there is a gorgeous modern organ. I was just struck by it.

To sum it up, the day was full of shopping, history, and döner.

die Schlossschule

Most of the time, I just blog about random experiences that happen that were fun or important or great; something. They've all been specific experiences with some general thrown in there. That's all well and good and I could have a blog chock full of them, because I have so many. However, I feel like getting the gist of my day to day life is important too. 

And, to be honest, I'm in school. Both literally and the other literal interpretation. The Schloss, while a historical castle, is now a boarding school (Gymnasium and Realschule) with classrooms and dorms in the actual Schloss and in the "Schulgebäude" (School Building).

We're not in the Schloss, though we do eat there and do other things from time to time, we sleep in the Schulgebäude and our classrooms are on the second floor. It's a pretty neat building and the windows are fascinating. I feel like I've probably written about them before. But anyhow, here is how the "typical" day is run.

8:00-ish is when Breakfast starts (8:30 announcements, so you need to be there)
9:00 - Classes start
10:30 - Break
10:45 - Class starts again
12:15 - Morning classes end
1:00 - Lunch
2:00 - This is where it gets complicated. On Tuesdays and Thursdays we have more class, but other days we just do activities and learn about German culture in other ways.
4:30 - Sometimes there is one at 4:30 too.
6:30 - Dinner and Announcements
7:30 - Activity #3! Usually, of course.
9:00 - Begin free time
10:00 - Internet off
11:00 - Lights out

Mind you this is a "typical" day at the Schlossschule. Sometimes the activities are only 45 minute sessions and sometimes they are 2 hours, it just depends. It's all pretty interesting though. Today one of them was about trash sorting and the like (actually rather confusing for an American, even one whose family has always recycled and sorted a few things).

This is the Schulegebäude

But anyhow, you must now be wondering exactly what I do in class exactly. Deutsch. I speak German all the time, but that is just my class. We've been sorted into 5 different groups based on skill. Two of them are for beginners with absolutely no experience whatsoever. I give them total props for being CBYX kids without knowing the language. Far braver than me. But of the remain 22 of us, we're split into three levels. Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced.

Since I've been learning German for four years and went to the Academy, I'm in the advanced class and we speak German. We use it a lot though, we're playing a Taboo/Cranium/Trivial Pursuit type game for a few days and we're tackling word order and verbs with prepositions. The latter two are the most fun, let me tell you.

But really, I love our teacher and it isn't bad at all. The time flies. We'll be in there and suddenly we are at the break in the middle. Takes me by surprise every time.

So that is my school day!

View from my classroom window

Einfach Tanz!

I know I have a lot to cover, I've already started to piece some other "themed" blog posts together so you can get an idea of what my day to day life is like here at Language Camp at Schloss Wittgenstein. But now is not that post, cool things keep happening to me!

I just keep on getting more and more extroverted every day. Never say no is definitely a mantra that I am beginning to live by. To be honest it started earlier this summer when I did crazy, out of character things like going on the giant swinging tower at King's Dominion (against my intense fear of falling). But many curses later, I came down with an exhilarated feeling. The same thing is happening here at the camp.

For example, one of the afternoon activities that we did last week was improv. I don't really act. Or didn't I should say. But I went with it anyway and had a great time. Almost everything was hilarious and it was so much fun to sit there and laugh along. When I finally decided to jump in, some jokes fell totally flat, but if you just smile and move on, you can be the funniest for just a moment. It happens. Whatever to the things that fall flat.

I danced at the Beerfest too. I don't really ever dance. And it was fun. Everyone was so happy, it was hard to stand in the background.

So what do you get when you merge my experiences with putting myself out there by dancing and the Arbeitsgemeinschaften? Capoiera.

Capoiera is a Brazilian fight sport/dance that one of the teachers here knows really well because she spent quite a bit of time in Brazil. We only practiced for half an hour, so I am awful, but it was a total great time.

I can't wait to learn more crazy new things; things I would never have done before. Like Capoiera or improv. I am so ready to take on this year.

Since I don't have any pictures, here is the "best video of capoiera ever!"

Das Bierfest

So, as promised I'm finishing the wonderful Friday that I had last week, with maybe a bit more from the rest of the weekend.

But after coming back from the game and dinner, we went down into town for the local Bierfest (of sorts).

Basically, one of the biggest companies in town is the local brewery, Bosch. And during the months of July and August, they throw parties in the main center of town, Wilhelmsplatz. There is a local band that plays and the ice cream store on the Wilhelmsplatz is open and a lot of people come out to here the band and drink beer.

So we all went down to the party to hang out and have a good time. The band was actually pretty good and they seemed to alternate between English/American rock songs and German rock songs. I didn't know some of the English ones but it seemed like a lot of people in the town knew all the words to every song, so I guess they were all pretty popular.

And now, the big elephant in the blog post. Alcohol. I'm 18, which means all forms of alcohol are technically legal for me here. The CBYX rules only allow beer and wine, for which the legal age is 16. Kind of irrelevant at this point because Bosch is a beer company with a bit of a monopoly. But just in case you were wondering.

Really not a huge fan of the way beer tastes. Handled myself well; a decent first time, I'd say.

Für einen Apfel und ein Ei

Friday and the whole weekend was quite exciting, I must say. Class on Friday was a bit boring and we took a test. It's no more fun in German than in English...

But Friday afternoon was a blast. We were playing a game based on a German idiomatic expression "für einen Apfel und ein Ei" (For an apple and an egg). The basic jist was that each group had an apple and an egg and went down in to town to try and trade them for bigger and better things and then come back to see what everyone else had gotten.

I was in a group of four, and the only one out of us who could speak any German, so we relied on me to do all the talking.

At first we were pretty successful. We traded an egg for a bag of corn chips, and the guy told us how to tell if an egg is raw or cooked. Just spin it and if it spins fast, then its cooked. So that was cool. We tried to go into town hall to see the mayor again, but there was a wedding so we figured the tourist info building next door would work just as well. Not so much... The woman kind of looked at us, and then went back into another room, came out with "Bad Laasphe Water" and traded it for the apple. I'm pretty sure the water was free, but whatever.

Soon we had some tic tacs and a set of eyeglass screwdrivers. Nothing much, and one store owner gave us a really cheap ornament for free. Somehow, though, we got behind some of the other groups and the shopkeepers were getting a bit grumpy. So we were like, where else can we go but this street? The hotel of course.

From up on our mountain, you can see this big building with "Hotel" spelled across the top that is at the foot of the neighboring mountain with Bad Laasphe in the middle. We just walked towards it, but got a bit turned around and we saw these two women talking. I go up to them and ask "How do you get to the Hotel?" The woman gave me this really weird look and asked me if I meant the one on the hill, and I was like "yeah, pretty much."

So we got the directions [there was a path literally ten feet behind the woman] and made our way up to it. After accidentally going into the Assisted Living Home next door, we realized which building it was. The one covered in weeds and broken things. The great hotel with nice staff was in fact filled with an empty pool and an overgrown Biergarten.

Want a beer?

That was loads of fun though. But we realized it wasn't the greatest part of town and headed back down to the old city. Back to our friend in the Russian store.

We waltzed into the Radio Museum in the town too, completely unaware that it was closed. The door was wide open! But the guy was super chill about it. He asked me what country I was from or what language I spoke, I said English, and he asked if I was from England. Apparently I'm not an obvious obvious American. Even though they were closed, he offered to show us around and we didn't have time, but he said he'd let us back in for half price whenever we wanted!

We saw this great bookstore, but no one was in it. Saw an awesome map book and stuff. Really really interesting. Too bad we didn't get to talk to the guy who ran it, he was really nice according to all the other groups.

Our more or less final stop was a free trade store. We go in and I explain our game, hoping maybe the woman has a pen or something. But she started to talk about the store and how it is free trade and all the profits, the 20 elderly women who run it don't make anything, go towards helping people across the world. She was so sweet and asked us about why we were here. She, like the other guy, asked if I was from England. Nope, America!

But she and her friend, who came over after a bit, just kept talking to us (me really) and it was so great. They tried out their English and the one newer woman said that every time her grandkids heard her speak English they told her to stop because it was so accented. It really wasn't awful, she just thought over each word a lot.

But anyhow, she started talking to us about our scholarship and what we thought of Bad Laasphe too. She went on for a while about the important art installation that is in town. It was put together by a Bavarian student and someone else and apparently people came all the way from New York (or would have to, the translation was iffy) to see it. She was super proud and we thought there was only one bit of it, but there was another piece in the river that she told us to go see. Naturally that was pretty much the next and last thing we did that afternoon.

Really really fun. Awesome way to build confidence and extroversion skills.

The Main Attraction

In the River

Much more happened that Friday, but this post is already waaay too long, so you'll have to wait until tomorrow.

Ich bin Einkaufen gegangen

...and a whole lot of other things too.

So I got to Germany about 5 days ago. The date is kind of vague because it was a 36 hour long "day" that crossed six time zones. Lufthansa really gets kudos for that flight. It went so smoothly and I had leg room (by a stroke of luck) and everything was great. The huge excitement high that I had at the time might also have had something to do with it. I had a bit of fun practicing my German on the stewardesses, because they are all bilingual with Lufthansa.

But we got here, I found my room with the roommates I chose in DC. They're pretty cool guys. The view from our window is the side of a mountain so it's really just a bunch of shale. The windows are honestly much cooler. It has this amazing contraption that makes them pull in a few inches from the top if you turn the handle up. If you turn the handle to the side, it opens out like a door all the way, and turning the handle down locks it. Seriously, I'm astounded and I want one at home.

View from my window

But I've been doing fine. We are doing a lot of activities all the time. I know that's super vague, but that's really what they are. I've gone running on the loop around the top of the mountain a couple of times. I'll need to take my camera along at some point, because the views are spectacular. We're in a really rural part of the country it would seem.

We took a placement test of sorts and I scored advanced. (Thanks German Academy and Frau G.!) That means my class is entirely auf Deutsch. I feel like I am getting better and stupider at the same time. These silly adjective endings really will be the death of me. But everyday I learn and remember new vocabulary and realized how much I have remembered from across the years.

There were a lot of amazing moments and I love the people here a lot. I am ever so grateful that I was given this opportunity and chose to take advantage of it. Sadly, I can't write about them all. I have to pick and chose.

On Wednesday we went down to the village (town, really) of Bad Laasphe, next to which the Schloss is. It was a blast! Our rooms didn't have any hand soap, so we had to buy that. I didn't bring any shampoo with me so that needed to be bought. In both places I actually spoke to real Germans in real German! Most of them were super duper nice and helpful. There was only one guy running a shoe shop who seemed to dislike our presence, but that could have been because there were 4 teenagers in his shop.

There was a Russian specialty store! Kalinka, it was called. I really didn't need it, but I had a craving for tarkhyn and I wanted to show the group I was with. It was pretty cheap and I got the chance to speak to the cashier in German and Russian. Pretty awesome experience right there! She seemed both surprised and impressed by the Russian (despite my horrendous accent). I'm not sure what she was thinking. I also noticed a Russian newspaper in the grocery store. Maybe worrying about

On our way back we got super cheap ice cream cones (like less than a dollar) and totally smashed the stereotype about Germans being cold and unfunny (which the Teamers here already did, but they're special). So I was ordering my ice cream and being all polite and timid about it. Basically I asked him "Am I allowed to have a cone of raspberry ice cream?" To which he replied: Nein. Then he got a giant grin and gave me the ice cream cone. Pretty jovial and sarcastic guy right there.

We went down to town again today in order to visit the Mayor (Bürgermeister) and the Town Hall (Rathaus). He and two interns gave us a nice overview of the town in both English and German. Just the basic facts and then we went out in front of the Rathaus to test out the health water of the town (At least, I'm 90% sure that's what was going on.) I even got a picture with the Mayor of Bad Laasphe!

Meeting the Mayor