The Last Three Months

First of all, I apologize for not updating for so long. Yes, I am still alive, and yes, I am still all in one piece. I have been very busy, but have had a wonderful time so far. After I posted the last blog before this one I became very busy. In my language and culture school the eleven of us formed a friendship of shared experiences. We understand each other well, because we are all adjusting to a new culture and language at the same time. We often hung out together after school, and often on the weekends, either as a whole group, or just a handful of people. Our host siblings often hung out with us as well. During the month my family took me to Breitach Klamm, and Neueschwanstein. I was in Munich twice sightseeing, both with my class, once organized by us, the other time organized by the teachers. This left little time for writing on my blog.  I knew I only had a short time with those people, and so spent as much time with them as I could.  All in all, the experience showed me that I can be independent, and that I can handle life in another culture, and enjoy it. The friendships I made will hopefully last for a very long time. After the course was over, I rode the train from Munich (where my host family took me to the train) to a town near where I now live, where two of my host cousins picked me up. I stayed with my host aunt and uncle for a week because my host family was still on vacation in Italy. The extended family also lives in about a 10 mile radius around, and in the town where I live.  All of the smaller towns around a central, and Belmond-sized town belong to the Belmond-sized town, which is where I now live.  In the week I spent with my host aunt and uncle I got to know my host extended family, all of my host cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandmas. I had lots of fun on the farm, ate ice cream at the local ice cream café in the town where I now live, went bowling (a rare thing here) ate McDonald's (better than in America, slightly healthier, and slightly smaller portions), and helped milk cows one evening, to sum it up in one sentence. I then got to meet the people I would be staying with until July. First impressions were very good.  They took me home, and showed me the house.  We then went to a fair that was also a market, and I met a few of the people who are now my classmates, as well as a good friend of my host dad.  I had about a week with my host family before school started.  I got to know my host family in that time, as well as meeting more of my classmates and getting to know some of the ones I met at the fair.  The first day of school was a good first day.  I met the rest of my classmates, who I will be spending the rest of the year with.  I was surprised that I understood most of what was being said, and what was happening.  I often didn’t understand all of the vocabulary, but could understand the gist of what was said.  The second day of school was really the beginning of learning, and I came home exhausted from having to concentrate the entire day, and trying to understand what we were learning, in another language.  During the last part of that week (school started on Wed.) and the next week I gradually understood more and more, and school became less exhausting.  In the second full week of school the tenth grade class went on a class trip/graduation trip sailing on the Ijselmeer lake in the Netherlands.  That was lots of fun.  I got to know my classmates better, and learned a little about sailing.  In Germany each class is split up into sections, and each section has its own classroom, and the teachers come to the class section. (except for the science teachers, and the teachers for the one subject that the students get to choose) Each section has a class teacher.  For the sailing trip each section had booked its own ship.  The three sections were all together in harbor each night, except for the first and last night of the five-day trip.  We sailed during the day, and were in a different harbor each night.  In the late afternoon and evenings we could go shopping in the nearby town, or stay on the ship and hang out.  Each person had to take a turn helping out with the cooking.  Overall it was a great trip.  When we got back, and went back to school the next Monday I was surprised at how much my German had improved.  It is no longer so difficult to understand what is being said.  I then had one full week of school, the next Monday off, and then I went on a trip for three days with the choir to a youth hotel in a castle.  We practiced on Thursday and Friday, had a party to celebrate our hard work on Friday evening, and then went home on Saturday.  We then had two weeks of school before the two-week long fall break started.  It is now the beginning of the second week of break, and so far I have relaxed, done some yard work with my host family, played card games, visited my extended family, had a concert with the band that I have become involved with, and taken pictures of the pretty fall colors so far in the break.  I have also gone to the swimming club with my older host sister, and have attended the local Lutheran church, and gone to some of their youth meetings.  I am also in the school choir, a choir affiliated with the school, and the school musical.  As you can see, I have a very full, but fun program when school is in session.  Overall I am having a great time here. 

            Some culture observations: The streets here are narrower, and the sidewalks are often almost as big, or as big as the streets, when the sidewalks on both sides of the street are set next to each other.  Buildings are built solidly and to last.  The people know how to get work done efficiently, but also when it’s time to take a break, and relax. I have also noticed that they take things at a more doable pace.  They don’t run from one event to the next, but are involved in less, which means they have time to be really involved in the activities they do choose.  It also means that they have time to sit and chat, and to drop in on family in the neighboring town, and the family has time for them.  Taking time to meet with friends on a regular basis is also important here.  Being driven to school is very unusual.  Walking and biking are the main forms of transportation.  There is a taxi service in my town.  Buses have routes through all of the little towns, and the trains run through all of the somewhat larger towns.

            Living in the German culture has gradually become normal, so that I don’t notice the differences between the two cultures much anymore, like I did when I first arrived.  Speaking German all the time has also become normal, and German is the language that I automatically speak, instead of English.  At first it was strange that everything around me was in German, but now it is normal.  I have adapted to living here in Germany, in my host family, and in this community. 

            So, that was the last few months squished into a couple of typed pages.  Hopefully I will have the next blog posted before February.  J I will try to post more regularly in the future. 

The First Few Days

It has been a busy, exciting 8 days.  I spent about two days in Washington, D.C. in an oreintation for Congress-Bundestag scholars.  We all arrived on Tuesday.  During the time we were in D.C. we had several seminars about what to expect in Germany, and how to deal with things like culture shock, and being in an unfamiliar school system.  On Wednesday we talked with our Congresspeople individually.  I was expecting to talk to a staff person, but Tom Latham, Jaymee, and I had about a ten minute chat.  He said that he was in support of sending young people on youth exchanges.  Jaymee and I then went to see her representative.  Unfortunately, he wasn't available, but one of the staff people took us on the train between the representative office buildings and the Capitol, that was fun.  We also saw the Newseum, (a news museum), and the German-American museum, and the Goethe Institute.  We left on Thursday.  Thursday/Friday was a really long day. 

I left the U.S. on Thursday, but because of the length of the flight and time zone changes it was Friday when we landed in Germany.  I flew from D.C. to Frankfurt, and then from Frankfurt to Munich.  I took train from Munich to Kaufering.  I arrived at the Kaufering train staition at about 2:00.  Kaufering is where my language/culture school is, Landsberg is where my host family and I live. 

I stayed awake until that night, to help me adjust more easily.  The evening I arrived my host family took me to Ruethenfest (rootenfest).  Ruethenfest is their town festival, but it compares more to a Reniassance festival in America than a town festival. It takes place every four years. The festival is celebrating the middle ages in Landsberg.  There are booths with all kinds of crafts and food, from iron working, and carving words into granite to bratwurst, and medivial-style pizza.  The crafts and food being sold are of good quality.  We wandered around the old-town of Landsberg, which is the main business, district, and where the festival was.  On Saturday I didn't wake up until almost noon.  We watched the Ruethenfest parade.  It was also unlike American parades in that there were no advertisements, and the people in the parade were mostly children and teenagers.   All of the floats were pulled by horses, and decorated with flowers, and often had very detailed and difficult designs. The parade began with the costumes, floats, marching bands, and other parts of the parade depicting the early middle ages, and as the parade progressed the parts of the parade progressed through the middle ages.  The parade went by once, and then came back from the other direction.  The parade was also on Sunday. 

On Sunday I went with my host family to the baptism of Marlen's (my host mom) niece. It was in an very old Catholic church with a decorated altar in the style of many of the old cathederals.  After the baptism the extended family that was at the baptism went to a place that catered the meal for us.  They were all very nice and inclusive toward me.  We all then wandered around the city.  Some of us wandered through a flea market, and others went to get ice cream.  We then all came back to the catering place for dessert.  Monday was my first day of language/culture school.  Sunday evening my host family watched the fireworks over the bridge on the Lech river. The fireworks concluded the Ruethenfest. 

Our next door neighbors also have an international exchange student that is in my school.  We walk to the train station in Landsberg where we meet four others from our school.  We then take the train to Kaufering, about a ten minute ride.  There we walk to the school where we meet the other five students that are in our language/culture school.  Our language/culture school is in a German school, we are just using one room of the school.  Out of the eleven of us in the school, eight of us met in D.C.  These same eight are from the midwest U.S., the other three are from the state of Georgia, Australia, and Indonesia.  In school we learn grammar, and about the German culture.  We have breaks, and we play games to help us learn grammar, and also to give our brains a break.  Our teachers are very open to using teaching methods that are interesting to us, and to altering their plans to reflect our prior knowledge, what we struggle with, and what we don't know at all.  The people in this school all get along really well, and are friends.

 Other than school I have gone for a bike ride around the town, playing basketball with Leonie and Leslie, two of my host sisters, and hanging out with my friends from the school.   Yesterday some friends from the school, Leonie, and I went wading in the Lech river.  I also went to Schulfest.  Schulfest is literally translated as school festival.  During the two days prior to the Schulfest the kids all do projects, and then display them at the Schulfest.  Schulfest is always at the end of the year.  At Schulfest we watched the high schoolers verse the teachers in soccer, ate a hot dog, and some potato salad, and watched the dance club danc.  We also watched two movies that the movie club created.

Some general culture observations: There very little litter at the Ruethenfest, even though there were thousands of people there over the course of the week that it went on.  I could probably count on one hand the pieces of litter I saw.  There are more smokers here than in America.  They sort all of their garbage, not just recycling.  It seems common to greet people, including friends with a handshake, not just when meeting someone for the first time, especially among middle-aged and older people.  Handshakes are also seemingly common in saying goodbye.  Sometimes payment is required to use a public restroom.  Trains, bikes, buses, and going on foot are the preferred modes of transportation.  The architecture is also very different.  Buildings are often made of cement, stone or brick, and are of original design, I haven't seen any housing developments where there are many houses that are exactly alike.  Germans work very hard to be environmentally friendly. 

All in all, I am having a good time here in Germany, I'm learning a lot from both the school, and from everyday life.  I like my host family, and the people in my language/culture school. 

Beginning

To start out this blog I'm going to give you all the story behind this year in Germany.  Some people may already know this, but I thought it would be a good way to begin. 
     In the fall of 2003 my dad went to Germany for two months to attend the Goethe institute and learn German.  I was in third grade, and of course I wanted to go, too. unfortunately airlines aren't particularly appreciative of small children riding in suitcasess... so I didn't go.  The next summer my family and I discovered Concordia Language Villages.  This is a group of about fifteen camps that each have a language and culture in which they immerse the campers, or villagers.  My family and I attended family cam there for three years.  The next year I attended the two-week long regular camp.  The following two years I attended the month-long high school credit program.  All of my experiences at Waldsee were very fun, but also were very formative for me as a person.  They helped widen my perspectives, and helped me learn to think with an international perspective.  During my sophomore year of high school my family and I  hosted an international exchange student.  She soon became a member of the family.  Hosting an international exchange student fueled my long-held dream to discover Germany for myself.  My goal in becoming an international exchange student myself is to experience Germany as it really is in day-to-day life, beyond the tourist sites.  I want to be a part of the German culture (as much as I am able, as an American) and be open to new experiences and perspectives that I would not neccesarily encounter if was not an international exchange student.