The Road To Germany

Deutchland - Part 4

Sat, 8 Dec 2007 22:53:26 -0600

whats up guys
happy chanukkah

I know I haven't written in a while but i havent felt like doing it.
I have since found out that german is a hard language and I am very bad at learning languages, so I am behind all the other exchange kids that came at the same time i did, but i am able to say some select sentances and phrases that I need to. A couple weeks ago, i had my second AFS camp in Tönning, which is on the north sea. I had a good time becsue there are some cool people in my region, even if the meetings are super boring. I met a couple kids that i hadnt before because they came at a different time so they had theyre end of stay camp and that was fun.
The next week, i went to the Hamburg Dom, which is a festivel with rides and candies and stuff, with Manu, from malaysia, and Lisa, from mass., i didnt buy anything because it was way too expensive and ive been spending too much recently. we also saw a couple kids from afs that we didnt know would be there. and we didnt see the poeple that we thought would be there. Boom had to move to Bremen because they couldnt find a new home in hamburg for him to move to, so they sent him away.

School is allright, it keeps going on like normal, but i have this system now. I go to all the classes that i can do like math and english and french, and a couple other. But the ones i cant do i go down to the hauptschule (the lowest level of school) and i learn german with a teacher that just teaches german to people that dont know it too well. At my school there is also exchange kids from mexico, australia, and connecticut. On mondays after school i also take an extra german class through my school with jsut me and the girl from conn.

Weatherwise, its getting colder, but not really cold, the average is around 6 degrees Centigrade and there has only been about 2 hours with visisble snow fall so far this year. However, it rains alot. yesterday, it rained all day while iw as at school and in any given week it wil probably rain 2 or 3 times.
Also yesterday, i went to temple for the third time this year, second time at this particular temple. My host moms friends are jewish and the invited me to go with them for the first time last month, where i met the rabbi, who is british and i met some of the very small congregation. at that service there were 10-15 people and i was called up to the bima to the the torah prayers because there arent too many people to do it. They have services witht he rabbi once a month because they cant do it every week due to the fact that there are so few people, and the rabbi is also the rabbi at several other temples around hamburg. But last night he wasnt there, so the cantor led the services, and there were more poeple around 20-30 because some of the kids did a little play thing. The services are held in gemran, with some russian lines here and there, and the prayers, which are somewhat the same tune, but some i dont know at all.
Since its christmas time , the family has been gearing up with some german christmas rituals that ive never heard of before. For instance, they have a calander called an adventskalander, and what it is, is that it has a little pouch for every day of december up intill the 25th and the parents but candy in it and every day you take the candy out. Also they had nikolas day the other day and there was htis huge array of candys outside my door when i woke up. It was cool. One thing i learned is that they give presents on the night of the 24th, after the christmas dinner.

thats all for now, i posted newer pictures here, and here, if you didnt see them yet.

Hamburg - Part 3

Tue, 9 Oct 2007 23:01:27 -0500

Since the last note, i have started school and atteneded for 2 weeks. On the first day, i was supposed to have phyiscs first, but the teacher wanst there, so there was no class. i was invited by some people that had been introduced to me as in my class to go out with them and drive around for a bit. when we got back i was invited to a game night at someones house where we played pool and n64. Intorducing myself to the teachers was the hardest part, because they knew class would be that much harder with a non-german speaking person. The second day i had double english and that made me happy becasue the english level taught in the calss is low for me and at least i knew i could pass one calss this year. We are reading "A Painted House" by John Grisham, its not a very good book. My first imperssion of the class is that it was made up of gernerally nice people, who, especially the girls, were extremely nice to me. the second day, i had an off hour, and then the teacher was gone again so these two girls asked if i wanted to walk into town with them.
All this time, i was starting to have arguments with Gudrun. She didnt like my hygenics, like about how often my laundry was in the room (i was not allowed to do my own) or whether i peed standing up or sitting down, i was not allowed to stand up and pee, but i did it anyway because that's just weird. But mostly she was angry with the fact that i didnt speak german well enough. she would tell ne to go study my vocabs all the time, and even though i knew them, iw ould tell her that and she said than why dont you speak german?
The first weekend i was invited to an oktoberfest party at he local disco. it was very fuinny with lots of sterotypical german music playing and weißbeir. it was also one of my friends birthdays, so i gave her a pink hoody that said minnesota statefair on it. I think she liked it.
the rest of the week was uneventful until tuesday when Gudrun came into my room one day and said i dont think we are getting along too well, i called frau flugge (the regional director) and said that i want you to move out of this house. So i went with her to a coffee shop and met my counsilor, Hendrik, and we talked aboot what gudrun said. After that, we went back to the house where we met up with mona (the family director for the region) and went into the house and talked about it. A lot was said, most of it in german, but the end question was mona to gudrun, do you see this working out, and gudrun said no.

the next day, after another argument with gudrun she said that a girl in my class, Romina, said that her family might be interested in taking me. This was great becasue if she couldnt, then i would probably have to switch schools. So i went and spent the afternoon with them, talked about it, and they agreed to host me, but in order to do that they would have to apply and that would take a couple days, so mona and brigit decided that it would be best if i would move out of house dorbrandt as soon as possible. So i went home and packed my things in about 15 minutes, and mona took me to stay at her hosue. they were a very nice family, and monas husband spent a year with afs in a little town in northern minnesota so we had some stuff to talk about. We went canoeing in the rivers and canals in hmaburg, which was fun.
On Saturday, i was given the goahead to move into the new family. That day also happened to be Romina's Birthday, so i went out, got her a present and went to their house. That afternoon for lunch, the invited some of their family for cakes and coffee. That night, we went to a bar with some of my school friends, and her older sister venessa and her boyfriend tobi. At the frist bar i drank a heineken, then my friends found out that they were carding for the hard liquor so we switched bars. at the 2nd bar i had a second heineken an dthen a long island iced tea. When i came home, the parents offered me another drink, which tobi made and was extremely strong. One might say i was tipsy.
Next week is the first holiday, which i think is the harvest. There are 2 weeks off of school. For the first week i have to stay home with Romina and Venessa, but the 2nd week and can go and meet up with the parents and Fiona, the youger sister in a cottage in northern denmark. But ihavent decided if want to go or not. Also next week, i just found out, my friend from sw, ricarda, who was a student at my school is coming to hamburg fro the break so we might meet up.

Here’s some recent photos of good times!

--TOBY

In-Country Orientation

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 08:10:57 -0500

i finished my german courses on thursday and i had an afs orientation camp for the northern 4 afs regions. It took place is Pönitz, which is right on the baltic sea at a youth hostel there.
I went by train on friday to the place, i also had mcdonalds at the hauptbahnhof in Hamburg which is the first fast food i’ve had since i arrived, the 5 euros were totally worth it. when we got there i met everyone else from other afs-regions around mine. there were 3 chinese people, 1 thai person, 3 chileans 1 venuzualean 2 brazilians, 1 hondurasian, 1 costa rican, 1 italian, 3 russians, 1 dane, i czeck, and myeslf. they were all really nice. The second day, we went to the beach after a couple of meetings and hung out there, played volleyball and swam in the water. then we did a program where they paired us off and they ave us an apple and an egg. they put us all in separate parts of the town and told us to go up to strangers and try and trade the apple for something better and to fry the egg. my team got a lemon, a feather that i found on the ground, and a wine bottle i pulled out of the trash can. That night we had a talent show where i sang O Canada! and talked about how i was the only north american in these four regions. other people also did anthems or national dances or similar things. All the AFS volunteers went up and sang the German anthem, and for some of them it was the first of second time singing it ever and the only did the 3rd verse.
After that, the gave everyone beers and we had social time for the rest of the night. I had a Krombacher and a Hosltein.
then i came home and wrote this.

other things that also happened, i learned how to sort of ride a bike. they just gave me a bike and on wednesday and said here your have to learn by monday so you can go to school and so i just did it after a day or so. However i’m still not very good at all and i will take the bus to school for the next couple days.
I picked out my classes. I will be taking, English, German, French, History, Geography, Philosophy, Chemistry, Physics, Economics/Politics, Music, Gym, and a class that teaches you how to learn.

thats all for now...(more photos on my Facebook!)

Deutschland

Sat, 15 Sep 2007 15:09:40 -0500

hi everyone!

it is now 17:32 (or 5:32 PM) on friday i got here almost exactly one week ago. I left minneapolis on thursday and went to jfk airport, where we had an orientation before we left of all the 50 american germany kids that were not on scholarship. we stayed at a double-tree hotel just outside of the airport. the food there was terrible but other than that, the orientation in itself was fine!

We left to go to the airport from the hotel at about one in the afternoon on friday to sit in the airport for 4 and a half hours. i bought an 8 dollar pizza from a little shop in the terminal, listened to my ipod, conversed with the other afs kids and played a gam of the fast and the furious arcade racing. the plane took off at around 7 o'clock.

The plane ride although was not good for me, although there was very little turbulence and any problems with the plane, i could not sleep at all. I spent all 7 hours either watching the plane-t.v, watching sin city and office space on my ipod, and playing cards with other afs kids sitting near me. the in-plane movies were night at the museum and mr. beans vacation.

we arrived at 6 in the morning and were met by an afs-germany voluenteer at the gate. she brought us to baggage claim , passport control, and then to the train terminal where we got to dump our bags, meet other kids from other kids that are also in germany through afs and wait for our trains. Each person had to wait till a different time depending on where they were staying to leave. I had to wait until four in the afternoon to leave. So i went out and called my parents, took 100 euros out of an atm, and bought a venti iced mocha from a starbucks. At the terminal, i met some kids from new zealand, australia, china, brazil, and other as well as the other 50 kids that got a full scholarship through the bundstang-congress program, which is payed for by the us government.
I was very tired from not sleeping on the plane, so i decideed to nap with the luggage of the 100 or so kids that were there at the time, this is what i spent most of my time doing.

When we left on the train at 4, i found myself in a train compartment with 2 other americans, and 2 italians who were very nice. we talked some of the time, slept most of the time, and for about the last hour played hangman with the italians. it was a 5 hour train ride. On the train i met eva wolfe, who is making a documentary of the usa-germany exchanges, and i’m going to be one of the people in it. she gave me a clip-on mic to wear for when i met my family. I nearly walked off with it by mistake.

When i first walked off the train i was sort of lost. Although i had seen a picture of my host-parents in an email, they were no where to be found. After about a minute, eva called my name and pointed, then i saw them and my host-brother kester. They seemed very nice upon first glance, and it immediately became obvious that the parents did not know english too well as they were translating through kester. The first thing we did was go to a restaurant, even though it was 10 at night, i had not eaten since the plane ride and i was very hungry. My host-parents decided we would go to a steak house. so we were driving there, and i’m enjoying the scenery of downtown hamburg and i suddenly notice that were in the middle of the red-light district, it was very strange.

The steak was good, and i had a salad with american dressing, which is what they call ranch. then we made the 40 minute trek to ammersbek and i was shown my room and almost immediately went to sleep.

On sunday we went apple picking with theír neighbours, who know a lot better english, but still had problems understanding me because i speak american english as opposed to british english as is taught here. apparently american is a lot faster and less separated as the british counterpart.

On monday we went and applied for my visa at the rathaus and i went to an afs meeting of our region, which is hambug-nord-ost. On tuesday i had my first day of german lessons in rahlsted, and my host mother drove me to volksdorf and i met up with another afser from chile also taking the same class. since then, i have just been going to german classes, except that instead of getting driven to volksdorf, i must take the 376 bus from rehagen to hösbuttel and the u1 north train fron hösbuttel to volksdorf. Last night i went to temple for rosh hashanah services. we’d called the nearby temple and found that they weren’t having services so my host-mother found another temple that was and told me how to get there. once i got there, and got through security tougher than an airports, did i realise that it was an orthodox temple, but still i sat through it.

i must go eat... more later

The Garage Sale Soars!

Sat, 26 May 2007 14:24:05 -0500

Prep for this scared the hell out of Ian (their was stuff EVERYWHERE!). Friends and neighbors were amazing with their donations to our effort, and we put up a monster stop on our annual neighborhood garage sale. In the end, we pulled in around $525...yes! We’re donating the remaining items to some local charities, and still trying to sell some of the larger items on the local craigslist. You can also check out the items here, on my For Sale page.