Peanut Butter Nutella Time!!!

Before I became an exchange student, I was always impressed with the other exchange student’s vocabulary. Don’t get me wrong, learning a second (or third, or fourth or fifth) language isn’t exactly a walk in the park, but now that I’m an exchange student and have been for 8+ months, I understand why my old exchange student friends knew random words and phrases like “cannibalism,” “facetious,” or “I made it by the skin of my teeth.” After living in Germany for eight months and especially after talking to friends (as compared to simply random people who just ask you the basic, “What’s your name? Where are you from?”), it’s hard to think of a word I don’t know, or at least a word that I couldn’t act out either with hand motions or with other words.

Sunday I went with my host parents to the Steinhunder Meer (a little lake)near Hannover and it made me think of a wannabe less touristy, smaller San Francisco simply because they had peers with people selling foods and lots and lots of sail boats! Back in California I was part of a sailing crew, so being at places with lots of sail boats that remind me of San Francisco make me more homesick than anything else (in that since I’m glad to live in the middle of Germany instead of say, Hamburg), but it was still great to eat an (odd tasting, but FRESH!) shrimp sandwich and to see the water again!

*English Class, talking to the teacher*

Leo: “Oh you bad boy. If you promise to learn tonight, I won’t tell your mommy!”

I figure an explanation is in order. This past week we have started doing improvisation in English, so to start out the session, my best friend Leo and our English teacher were in the circle and Herr Franke was pretending to be a little boy who had failed his Latin test where Leo was the dad. I don’t think he realized the sexual connotation behind what he said to our teacher, but he made me laugh to the point of crying, and the fact that it was my best friend who said it made it that much funnier to me. At the end of English on Monday, I had a pain in my gut from laughing to hard at all the different scenarios.

Wednesday I spent the morning touring a textile factory, which is A LOT more interesting than that sounds. A man in my Rotary club runs the factory, so I spent three hours with him, as well as three other people learning about how all the rugs and towels are made, and I even got an awesome rug at the end of the tour in my favorite color!  

Earlier this week, Leo and I made the most delicious nutella cinnamon rolls to ever exist on the planet. I somehow stumbled across a recipe for them, called and asked him to come help me, and ‘wala!’ Our cinnamon rolls were born! They were so delicious looking that I posted a picture on my Facebook, which then turned into a girl in my history class asking me to bake more and bring them in because they looked so delicious. Mmm nutella cinnamon rolls! And on the note of food, my host-mom randomly bought me a jar of peanut butter. Sadly we didn’t have any ‘peanut-butter-worthy-bread’ though, so I just ate it with a spoon. It was one of those, “I’ve waited 8.5 months, I don’t want to wait a second longer” moments. 

It probably has something to do with the fact that I grew up in the U.S. (ever notice how Americans are obsessed with the American flag… how there are so many rules regarding it and the intricate ‘stars and stripes’ as compared to solid lines?), but I love seeing the German flag flying. For one reason or another (and I’m sure there are a lot of different reasons), it’s simply not very common to see the German flag flying, so whenever I do I simply have to take a picture of it and sadly I don’t have nearly as many random pictures of German flags as I would like to.