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.