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.