Home… Sweet Home?

Californized… Germanized… I don’t know what I am anymore. Probably a mixture of both I would guess. But I really need to say, being back… is strange. I should be a ‘good exchange student’ and say it’s different, because nothing is better or worse, it’s all just different. But I don’t know if I can bring myself to saying that. I feel like I traveled back in time after learning valuable life lessons and how to take care of myself.

My three extremely long flights weren’t too bad, and I even made a new friend along the way (typical Angie, right?)… though I did manage to leave my blazer on the second flight… normally I wouldn’t really care, but this blazer has pins, tickets and other memories of trinkets from hundreds of exchange students and memories. It’s disappointing how the only thing I left/lost/forgot is probably the most valuable.

German has magically integrated itself in my English (as have German customs into my actions)… which would be fine if 1) people here actually spoke German or 2) it actually made sense… but sadly neither of the two conditions fit my current situation. I often going around saying “no thing” instead of “no problem” as well as “think you?” instead of sarcastically saying “you think?”. Not to mention several other… inappropriate things that tend to slip out of my mouth.

Angie: Mom, can we please hurry if we stop at home so it doesn’t dauer?

Mom: …Sure

Angie: …Is dauer a word in English?

Mom: Not to my current knowledge.

Conversations like this happen quite often as well, seriously “dauern” should just be made an English word though, it’s so much faster than saying “to take a long time.” There’s also the frequent occurrence when I say, “achso!” or “stimmt” mixed in with English. “Genau” comes up quite a lot as well, simply commonly used German words. “Stimmt” almost got me in trouble with one of my more conservative friends though, he thought that was my way of not swearing and simply saying a bunch of consonants together, when really I was simply agreeing with him in German.

I have also brought a lot of the things I learned in Germany back to California with me, whether I meant to or not. For example, I have not used a dryer since coming back and rather made my dad set up a clothes line and have been hang-drying and ironing my clothes, just like in German. I find it silly how Germany has very little sun in comparison to California yet it’s rare to own a dryer in Germany, whereas in California it’s rare to hang dry our clothes.

People keep asking me if I’m happy to be back, and yeah it’s nice to gain some pigment in my skin and see my old friends and family again, but I guess I’ll always be a German-girl at heart.

Hah, talk about the fastest year of my life.

EUROPATOUR!

(I apologize in advance when this post is abnormally long, but to be fair, I do have to make up for all the lost writing due to the strike. )

So where to begin? Well, with nothing other than the beginning of course! After miraculously getting to the train station before the train left at 5:20 a.m., I realized the ONLY thing I forget to bring was nothing other than my camera memory card; but no worries, I somehow had the luck of meeting a girl the very morning the tour began (THANKS KENZIE!) who brought an extra 8GB card along with her which she let me use for the trip. Now, how I’m going to choose 10-15 photos out of the 1000+ that I took is a little beyond me…

I had the pleasure of not only making a new best Canadian friend for life, but a new best Canadian friend who speaks French. She defiantly made France a lot easier to get through, and with the Spanish that I speak, the only country we really had no clue what was going on in, was the Czech Republic.

So some highlights of the trip include watching the gay French performers do awesome flips and then make out in Strassenburg, France, meeting a really cool guy from Libya in Switzerland… not to mention feeling like I was in a postcard the entire time I was in Switzerland and exploring the third biggest caves in the world (also in Switzerland), getting stared at/talked too/checked out by/followed by almost every Italian man who saw Anne and I(-quick story, two guys were eating dinner and even ran outside to continue watching us walk down the street!-), regaining my tan/blonde hair in a matter of two short weeks (my German friends even told me I look a lot tanner and that my hair looks lighter xD), walking to McDonald's numerous times for milkshakes with only slippers, riding in a gondola in Venice, seeing the Schönburn Schloß in Vienna and only being able to think of my amazing 9th and 10th grade history teacher the entire tour –yes Mr. Emery, I clearly mean you!-, and last but probably my favorite memory of all, going to the club in Prague.

Anne: “I’ll have 2 strawberry milkshakes please.”

McDonald’s Employee: “Oh are you on a diet?”

Anne, being the kindhearted Canadian she is, agreed to get my milkshake while I went to the bathroom… the employee there however didn’t seem to see her act of kindness.

Being the strange person I am, I took a picture of every meal on the trip (mainly because it felt like something my mom would do actually) so I’m sure at some point there will be a ‘Special Post’ dedicated to just the food, but until then, there was one special salad that my newfound best Finnish friend Akseli decided not to finish in Italy where it’s considered rude to not finish your meals because it’s seen as insult to the chef’s cooking. Akseli put the salad bowl in the middle of the table, and not only did the waiters refuse to take it away, but they continued to all give him death stares at every meal for the rest of stay in this particular hotel. The funniest part of the story is it was Anne’s salad to begin with that she gave to Akseli.

Touring Europe with a group of people I met the day the tour began was a little strange, but I wouldn’t have it any other way… I have so many memories and new friends I’ll never forget, and through the whole tour, despite how much fun it was, I couldn’t help but feel more and more thankful that I’m having my exchange year in Germany. Germans may be cold at first and have to knock you onto your feet before they say “Excuse Me,” but that doesn’t change how much I love Germany and how thankful I am to be living in it.

Getting back into the swing of things, especially enough to be motivated to write a blog post(and especially ESPECIALLY after having a five day weekend on top of a two week Europe tour) was a bit harder than I expected,  but words cannot describe how happy I was to be back in Hameln at the end of the tour. I remember sitting on the final train to Hameln, almost squirming with joy that I would soon be back in my little, beloved town seeing my family and friends again. If I was like that after only two weeks, I can only imagine what a year or two away will be like.

P.S. Look what the post did to my Cheese-It’s!?!?

And now, a few of my favorite photos:

And a special congratulations to all of California’s Seniors who are graduating tonight! Sorry I can’t be there with you, guys!

3 Months Today!

I don’t know what it is, but for some reason, I randomly hiccup… just once… all the time. My first host mom would always say “Someone is thinking about you” (as the German expression goes), and seeing as my second my mom is now French, she says the French expression, “An older man wants to kiss you.”

Last week I was blessed with nice, warm 50 degree Fahrenheit weather, but this week it has been in the low 30’s and winter jackets are coming out. I feel like I’m going to die. My feet are ALWAYS cold (to be fair, they were always cold in nice, warm California too, but here it’s 1000 times worse).

Last Thursday I only had two lessons (one class) because my other one’s had been canceled (German school: when a teacher is sick or busy, class is just canceled and you’re free to do what you want) so I went to Ith (pronounced like “eat”) to go climbing with my Rotary councelor again. It was really pretty…. that being said, we didn’t climb for very long because our fingers were to cold to move.

Now, the weekend. It was an interesting weekend. Friday evening I went to a Guy Fawkes Day celebration with my school friend Leo, my host-brother, Julien, and my Rotary Youth Exchange Officer’s family. It was really cool, they had good food and the fireworks were really pretty! Though, it was quite weird, everything was in English because it was a British holiday/event, and it was like mini-culture shock to hear all the English. Leo and Julien thought it was really weird that everyone was speaking English, and after they asked me what it felt like to be able to understand everything going on again. It was honestly really, really weird. Afterwards, Julien and I stayed up late watching movies. The Saturday, three exchange student friends (Jordan, One, and Ryan)from the Gifhorn/Wolfsburg area came and visited me for the day and I showed them Hameln and we had a blast doing seemingly absolutely nothing. Though I do seem to remember us taking an abnormally long time to decide what type of cheese we wanted to buy for our lunch sandwiches, and we met a very interesting homeless man and had a nice chat with him about recycling in German for what felt like forever. Then, in the evening my school friends invited me out, but Julien and had plans to go to the movie theater because I have never been, but when we got there we weren’t allowed to see the movie because Julien and I are both 17 and the movie ended after 12 and Germany has curfew laws for the youth. So we went and got popcorn (which mind you, is VERY difficult to find here) and stayed up late watching movies again. Finally, Sunday, my host mom left for Barcelona for the week for an “intensive Spanish course” so I went with my host dad to drive her to the airport, and after we went sight-seeing as well as too the ‘Schillat-Höhle’ which is essentially a nifty underground tunnel. I think I might have permanently blinded the tour guide with the flash on my camera, but she was still nice to me nonetheless.

The other day, a boy in my English class came up to me and said, “Hey Angie, I have a joke for native English speakers…what do you call a deer with no eyes? … No eye-dear!!” I don’t know why, but it was the funniest thing at the time, I miss world plays that I actually understand. That being said, my German is getting better daily and people (for some crazy reason) seem to be impressed with how much German I speak/understand.

Ohh! And today is “Martinsinggentag” so little kids keep coming up to the door singing songs about a man who gave a dying man his jacket to get candy. It’s kind of like a strange take on Halloween.

For anyone who has read/been reading my blog for awhile, you know I had issues with German plumbing because it’s the opposite of American plumbing. Well guess what. Three months in, and I’m STILL turning the faucet the wrong direction when I want to brush me teeth. Some habits are clearly impossible to break.

Finally, I have a haircut tomorrow… it’s well needed, but I’m scared. I have had more bad haircuts than imaginable.

Morgen...

Tomorrow, tomorrow, I'll fly out, tomorrow, it's only a day away ♥

So the strangest thing happened today. My mom and I went down to the lobby of the hotel we are staying in to ask for some extra pillows, and low and behold the guy in front of us in line was speaking German. The line was fairly long so we got to talking to him and found out not only is he fluent in German, but he was a Rotary Youth Exchange student to Germany 10 years ago to Bremen (a town 200 km from where I live).

Today was my last day in America, and as I sit in the hotel room 10 minutes from SFO, a mere 7 hours from when I need to be at the airport, I have no idea what emotion I am feeling. (Before you ask)I'm more excited than imaginable, but quite curious as to how this will turn out. This morning I went to breakfest with my best friend and boyfriend one last time, and this evening my family and I went and had sushi with my family. It was nice to spend one final evening.

But tomorrow. Tomorrow will truly be the day.

I never thought the day would ever come, the day I leave behind everything I have ever come to know, but whatdyaknow. That day is tomorrow

Yay for Flughäfen!

"Where are you going to school now?"
"Schiller Gymnasium."
"Is that an athletic school...?"

I talked to my second host-Dad the other day who so kindly pointed out to me that I am flying into Bremen instead of Hanover, which would not be a problem except for the fact that Bremen is 200 kilometers away from Hamlin, while Hanover is only 70 kilometers. He assured me that I would get picked up no matter how far away it was, but we was confused nonetheless (keep in mind this entire conversation took place in German. I don't speak German. That was fun. :p ) Nonetheless after a lot of chaos and time deadlines, we switched my flight so now I will be flying to Hanover from Frankfurt, which I am extremely grateful for because the less traveling I have do, the better. I'm already looking at at least 22 hours plus a 9 hour time change. Talk about the journey of a lifetime.