A Great Autumn Break

Autumn is here!  It's been cold here for a while actually, and there were many times when I talked to people back in the U.S. and heard that they were wearing shorts or tank tops while I was absolutely freezing, but I think at this point we're all suffering equally.  Anyway, back to the positives of fall, I had a two week vacation at the end of October which was extremely nice but also very busy!  I visited Flensburg as well as the Netherlands and had a great time.

I left school a day early to travel to Flensburg and visit my first host family.  My permanent host family was in Turkey for their holidays, which I think is a popular spot for Germans to visit after Spain, and I was very happy to go to Schleswig-Holstein again and visit everyone!  Traveling with the train took a while but I was very happy to see Susanna and Lina waiting for me at the station.  The first weekend I was there, Lina and I had a Mädelsabend, which means "girls night."  We ate junk food and watched a few movies, one of them being Türkisch für Anfänger, which seems to be our tradition.

When the week started Lina had to go back to school after her break (in Germany different states have their breaks at different times to avoid congestion on the highway, or Autobahn).  I went to school with Lina for two days and the rest of the week I spent with Susanna which was also fun.  During the week I also met up with one of my friends from my orientation and language course that I had in August.  One of my friends, Angalee, is American and she's living in Flensburg the whole year.  She saw me walking in the city and she practically mobbed me.  We had a very loud encounter and I'm sure some people were thinking "Oh, those Americans" but it was fun!  My other friend, Sophie, is German and was one of the organizers of our course and she also did an exchange in France.  The three of us did some eating, catching up and walking through the city.

Sophie, Angalee and I had a lot of fun hanging out

My last weekend in Flensburg, Lina and I decided to go to a disco in Husum which ended up being lots of fun!  The two of us went with one of Lina's friends from school and her boyfriend.  When we got there the music was horrible.  It sounded like Schlager music which, from my understanding is just old-fashioned German music which reached its peak in popularity in the sixties, so you can imagine.  The music did end up being really good later on and we had a great time!  We also ran into someone we knew and we all went into the photo booth.  After the disco we slept over at Lina's friend's house.  The night before I left we went to a singing mass at the church where Susanna is part of the choir.  I really liked that we got to sing along, even though I didn't understand it all.

Susanna and the choir

After a great time with my first family, I came back to my first host family in North Rhine-Westphalia for the night and then I was off to the Netherlands the next morning to visit my family.  Unfortunately I was visiting during a week where my cousins had exams, but I did get to spend some quality time with my uncle and my aunt, which was nice!  It was especially fun to have "girls' time" with my aunt because normally she's surrounded by boys.  We had a workshop in Delft and learned how to make our own necklaces and they both turned out really pretty!

During the trip I was also on the hunt for a good winter coat because, as I mentioned, it's cold.  Luckily, my uncle knew all the right places to look and I ended up buying a nice one from a Dutch department store called de Bijenkorf.  The last night that I was there we did something special for dinner.  We had lots of food to choose from and we cooked our own meals individually on a little grill.  I thought that it was a lot of fun and something unique!

Getting ready for dinner

My two weeks went by fast, besides all of the time I spent using the Deutsche Bahn.  I had a fantastic time during my break and I was so glad to be in such good company.

Vikings and Cowboys

This is so overdue, I'm sorry for being gone for a while!  I still wanted to make a post about the end of my time in Flensburg and the fun things that I did.  I had an amazing start to my exchange year in Flensburg and I am so lucky to have had the wonderful host family that I had.  They taught me so much about German history and culture and really made me feel like a part of their family while I was with them!  Among all of the great experiences, some of my highlights were learning how to make German Kartoffelsalat with my host mom Susanna, playing soccer in the garden with my host dad Andreas and the dog Lotta, hearing stories from Insa's year in America and doing a spa night with Lina.  I want to say thanks again to Susanna, Andreas, Insa and Lina for everything!

A picture with my host family! (minus Insa because she was back at college)

My sweet host sisters Lina and Insa

I also really enjoyed my Orientation and Language Course in Flensburg with nine other Americans and one Indonesian exchange student.  This was very comforting because we were all in the same boat and we had a lot of fun together.  Coincidentally, one of my friends from Champaign-Urbana, Sylvia, was in my same group so that was really cool!  Our teachers were also really funny and encouraging.  I feel like I got a lot of advice about living in Germany and my German really improved as well.  We did lots of activities in class like a scavenger hunt in the city and we went on a little field trip to a city called Schleswig to see a Viking museum.

Us at the hip, new bowling alley 

Enjoying the countryside on our Viking excursion

Sylvia and me

One of the weekends that we were there Sylvia's host family had this awesome Western party and invited me, my host sister and another one of the American exchange students to come.  The party was on their farm and it was huge!  There were so many people dressed up like cowboys, Native Americans and even cacti.  There was really good music, cool decorations and of course lots of beer.  Really, there was a lot.  For our exchange student going away party, we organized a potluck on Soliüde beach with all of our host families. We performed our little going away song called "Tschüssi" to the tune of Mumford and Sons' song "Little Lion Man" and although it was pretty hard to understand I think they really liked it.  We had a fun time and it was nice to start off together before having to really survive in Germany.

I stayed a few more days with my first host family before moving on to my year-long host family.  In these extra days my host mom, host sister and I went by train to Hamburg.  Hamburg is the second largest city in Germany and although we were only there for the day, I found it really beautiful, especially because there's water all around it.  The Rathaus, or city hall, was so cool, as was the shopping center called the Europa Passage.  Overall, I had an amazing time with my host family and I had the perfect start to this year with them!  I can't wait to going back to Flensburg and see them later this month during my break.

Orientation and Language Course kids

Across the Border and Back

For my first three weeks here I am living with a wonderful host family in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein.  I am living with a host father, a host mother, two host sisters and a cute golden retriever named Lotta.  The city I am living in, Flensburg, is the northernmost town in Germany.  I am so glad to be in this beautiful harbor town less than a thirty-minute drive from Denmark.  The first weekend I was here my host family took me to across the border to Sondeborg, Denmark which was so cool!  I can officially check Denmark off my list of countries to visit.  We went to Annie's Kiosk, which is a small yellow shack known for its Danish hot dogs.  I had one with mustard and pickles, and I've noticed that for some reason the mustard here is generally much better than in America!  I'm not quite sure what it is about it.  One of the nice things about Flensburg is all of the water that surrounds it.  The harbor downtown is full of boats and my host family and I have enjoyed spending time there.  We've also gone to the town of Glücksburg a couple of times as well.  Last weekend there was a cool trade fair called "LebensArt" followed by the annual concert by a German band covering Simon and Garfunkel.

The Flensburg harbor

I'm having a great time here in Flensburg with my host family and my German is slowly but surely improving.  I'm feeling comfortable with my routine here.  During the week I go to my orientation and language course from 8:00 a.m. until 3:30 p.m.  I feel like I am learning a lot thanks to all of the activities and the worksheets upon worksheets.  One of the cool things about the northern part of Germany is a sweet word moin.  When I first heard this word I thought it was just Morgen said really, really fast.  It basically just means hello and I'm sure I have been saying it way too much.  Moin moin!

The cute little shack with delicious Danish hot dogs

Hallo Deutschland!

It's hard for me to even believe that I am here in Germany now!  Since the time that I started filling out the Congress-Bundestag application in the winter, leaving my home in the United States for a year to live abroad seemed like such an abstract concept.  It was just something I thought I would do in the future, and as a teenager, or at any age, really, the future is a difficult thing to grasp.  When I found out that I had received the Congress-Bundestag scholarship to go to Germany I was thrilled because since I had heard about the idea of doing a foreign exchange as a gap year I was sure that it would be a good experience for me.  Especially being a year younger than most of my classmates, I thought it would be a fantastic way to mature for a year before going to college.

One of the things I have noticed while explaining my plan for this year to people, especially people who are unfamiliar with gap years, is that they think of it as a "year off."  I'm sure this is not meant to be offensive, but for me, it makes me think of going on vacation for a year.  Yes, I am delaying my normal schooling in the United States by one year, but I did not come to Germany just to hang out.  I am just starting my year here, but in my mind I think that it will be one of the most challenging things that I will ever do.  Coming to a new country by myself and functioning at school all in German are just two of the many things that are scary about this year for me.  Nevertheless, I am so happy to have the support of so many people this year!  It is nice to know that the college I will be going to, Amherst College, believes in this program and thinks that it will help me do better when I get there.  It has also been encouraging to hear all of the nice stories from others who have also done foreign exchanges.  I know it will be hard but I think it will all be worth it.  Maybe by the end of the year I will even be able to express my feelings all in German too!  Vielleicht