Alright guys, last post before I head homeI have to admit, I am writing this a tad bit early (Exactly a week before) but heyBetter early than never.  In case no one else caught it, this blog name, and the previous 2 or 3 make a funny little messageyea, nerdy, I know, but hey, it helps me get through the days.

Long story short, the last few weeks have been pretty hecticIt seems no one wants to do anything with an exchange student until they find out he/she will be gone in a few days, so I had about 5 different people invite me to a party the Saturday before I left.  Ill see who the lucky winner is

Friday before I go, the 16^th, is my going away party, shared with all the other american exchange students.  It should be fun (hopefully), and I can hardly wait.

The plan for me leaving as far as I know goes like this.

Tuesday 20th

Drive to Koblenz to my grandparents and stay the night

Wednesday 21st

Wake up early (630-ish) and drive to Frankfurt Airport, and wait for my plane to leave at 11 (stupid rule of us having to be there 3 hours early)

I should land about 2:30 or so in the afternoon our time.  Although, it could be washington time, then it would be like 1:30 our timenot quite sure, but still, sometime around there.

The rest of Wednesday and Thursday I have this dumb seminar with our congress that should be boring, and with jet lag I will almost certainly fall asleep.

Friday 23rd

Not sure exactly when my plane leaves from Washington, but I land in Austin at 920 or something like that.  Before anyone asks, no, you may not meet me at the airportno offense to you guys, but I would really like it to just be family that evening (you laugh, but Ive already had 3 people ask to come).

Saturday 24th

Partay!  Starts at 7 in the evening, those of you who should know where it is, probably already do, if not, just ask another one of our friends.  I know that the majority of people in band that I hung out with know.  Ask one of em'.

So, thats thatTo bring back an age old tradition, Id figure I would tell you all a few lessons I have learned over the course of an exchange year.  Note, these are not all of them, nor are they in any specific order.

Lesson 1 Almost every America loves cheddar cheese.  Almoest every German has never heard of it.

Lesson 2 Having a little sister for a while is quite fun.  Having one for 10 months can be quite annoying.  (It has its fun moments though, I have to say)

Lesson 3 DVDs are almost ALWAYS better in the language they were originally filmed in.  In Disney movies, however, every song is also translated.  This proves to be often funny andhonestlypretty pathetic.

Lesson 4 There are some things about home you just never miss.  Mrs. Jan is NOT one of them.

Lesson 5 Always trust your gut instinct.  I never shoulda eaten those asparagus

Lesson 6 TV is just as loaded with crap in Germany as in America.  However, like in America, there are those golden moments when they show Baywatch reruns.

Lesson 7 Summer in Germany is beautiful.  However, it lasts barely � of the year, and all the other seasons are rainy, cold, and rainy.  Oh, and cold.  And maybe sometimes snowy.

Lesson 8 There are some things about home you will always miss.  My bed is one of them.

Lesson 9 Biking is actually a fun and easy way to get around, but only as long as your destination is less than 5 miles away.  Unless youre a beast like me, then make it 10 miles.

Lesson 10 Most Germans are better drivers than anyone I have seen in America.  Imagine parralel parking in a space 2 feet longer than you car.  Thats just about a normal parking place in Germany.

Lesson 11 Video games are just as fun, if not perhaps more funner, to play in a different language.  That is, unless there is a word puzzle.  Then they suck.

Lesson 12 Even if they do speak another language, High School students are still just High School students, mood swings, raging hormones, immature comments and all.

Lesson 13 Regardless of what language it is in, Philosophy will always be confusing.

Lesson 14 Good public transportation, though at times more than a little annoying, can be useful for late night rompings in the city.

Lesson 15 It IS INDEED difficult to woo a woman in a different language.

Lesson 16 Planning which college one will attend, and what to major (a.k.a. ones future in general) is hard enough.  Doing it more than 1000 miles away just maks it harder.

Lesson 17 No matter where you go in Germany, you will always find a french fry stand.

Lesson 18 Contrary to popular belief, the region in Germany that drinks the most beer is not Bavaria, but Saxon.  There was a famous party in Saxon history that lasted 3 weeks, and on the last night alone over 6,000 liters of beer were drankdrunkenwhatever.

Okay, thats it for nowIll leave you with the hope that I write again to tell everyone how reverse culture shock as affected me, and a pretty impressive number (Or at least I thought it was).

When I arrive home on June 25^th, 2006, I will have been living in Germany without my friends and family for a total of 313 days.  10 Months and 9 days worth of life changing experiences.

Hopefully Ill see you guys all soon.

Until then,

Okay, so perhaps I didn't post quite exactly every 2 weeks like I said, but hey, I did post, and thats always good.

Okay, and since its now been four weeks, my memory is even worse, and the chances of me remembering things that far back are close to null.

The first week of school was pretty much boring and unexciting, two words that mean the same thing, but both used to exemplify the meaning.  Long story short, school was lame.  After I got over the fact that everything was in german, school is still just school, and boring and mostly useless.  However, I managed to struggle my way through the various prediciments and hardships, and continued on my somewhat less than merry way.

Second week of school, that being from 16-19, was better and worse in some ways, but still overall not that very exciting.  Go figure, eh?  In sport (P.E.) we're doing this circle training thing for time scores, and it was quite strenous and laborful, but much better than the acrobatic stuff we were doing before.  Also, its getting to be very cold around this time.  Not cold enough to snow enough to play with, just a thin sheet of snow to make everything slippery and dangerous.  Pretty fun at times, but usually just annoying.

That weekend (januar 20-22) also happened to be the birthday of my sister (Leah, for those of you who don't know) and one of my roomates in language camp.  I tried calling Leah like, 10 times, but no one was ever home, so I never got to wish her a happy birthday...but I visited Jared (my old roomate) on saturday evening, and we had a night out on the town for his 18th birthday, pretty fun stuff. 

The next week of school only lasted till thursday, and was still not very incredibly exciting, but my slight cold that I had been having for the past week or two got a little worse on wednesday, so I think I stayed home from school, due to headache and sore throat.  I think.

On thursday, januar 26 I went to cologne for a week long (okay, 5 days long) seminar with my program.  The schedule (that I can remember) was a-something like-a this.

Thursday - Arrive in cologne for a briefing over the next few days and our plans of who and what we're doing.

Friday - Visit Bonn, and take a tour through the "Haus des Geschichte" (house of history), then have a few hours to tour Bonn on our own.  Later that evening we would have another seminar over something or another (the seminar conversation topics, as you can tell, were very important).

Saturday - Visit Cologne for free time-tours.  This is basically them letting us loose, telling us where some museums and such are, and enjoying a quiet afternoon to themselves.  Them being our teachers for the weekend.  Once again, after we returned, we had a couple seminar meetings over this and that.  Just to let yall know, it was stuff like "what would you add to the handbook this year, that wasn't in there when you read it", and "Tell us about your day in KÃ?ï??ln, and how you enjoyed it", und so weiter.  Like I said, totally interesting, right?  Not.

Sunday - Morning off in case we wanted to check out what church was like in the Koelner Dom (the biggest church I have ever been in in my life), and more seminars in the afternoon.  Thankfully, these were more fun.  Stuff like "what do you want our t-shirt to look like for your group", and answering those survey questions that go at the end of the yearbook.  Oh, and just so you know, I won best hair.  Seriously.  Yea, I know, its pretty sweet...I do what I can.

Sunday - Head back home, getting back here about 11 or so, and sleeping a bit.  A fun weekend, if I do say so myself.

Since then, I have just had some more school and so on...if you must know, in german we're reading a book called "Der Physiker", in math we're doing tangents (a really complicated version therefrom, I am actually lost totally in the lessons.  Probably doesn't help that I don't pay attention...), Englisch I got a new teacher, because my other one moved to africa to be with her daughter and newly born granddaughter, philosophy we are talking about definitions of people and things, and the difference between what something is called, and what it is, art we are doing...something, not quite exactly sure...describing and noting the meaning behind pictures, or something like that, music we are playing keyboards a bit, talking about time signatures and how they effect the musics tonality, chemistry don't even ask my, I am more lost there than I am with math, but thats because they teach it so strangely. 

Other than that, nothing really new...my schedule got switched up a bit, not the classes, but just the times, which I thought was strange...but now I got sport only every tuesday, and every other wednesday, so I got my weekends back...some other minor changes, but...nothing I can really thing of.  Ummm...anything else to talk about...nothing I can really think of, I am sure I forgot something, but...oh well, I'll just fix it up later if thats the case.  I hope everyone is having a great time back home, and I will be back in less than 5 months now.  Almost 4 even.  I can hardly wait. I am actually almost counting the days.  Well, okay, its not that bad, but I am missing home a bunch.  Talk to you all somewhat soon, I got a faster internet now, so I am online more!  Hopefully I can catch ya sometime on aim or ICQ.

-Dane

Alright, so, it’s been a while again, so this might be a little vague, but I will update all the things I find personally interesting or important.

The last weeks of German school before christmas break –

Okay, whats important to know here, is that the break doesn’t start till the 23rd or 24th, so theres a lot of school (it feels like, at least).  In case you were wondering, there are no end finals like in america, where every class has a big test.  Every class does have a big test, but there are never more than 2 or 3 tests in the whole week, so they are spread over the months of december and january.  Which I found very nice and relaxing, because I remember cramming for the semester finals in america.  Oh, and you know how classes have parties in america, and people bring chips, soda, cookies, and stuff like that?  Mostly sweet or junk food, to say the least?  When a german class has a party, they all bring rolls and sandwhich meat, and cheese and butter, and have a “Brötchenzeit”.  I thought that was...weird.

On the last day of school (the 22nd, I beleive) the first 2 periods were optionary, as more than half the school went to church  (I sang with the choir there), and then from the 4-6 periods was a kind of christmas concert with little acts from each of the grades and stuff like that.  Pretty cool, overall boring, but hey, better than class!

Dezember 24th – This is the big party day for germans, and we had a fondue christmas dinner with my grandparents on my hostmom’s side.  We opened our presents one at a time, over a period of like, 2 or 3 hours, which I found...not as fun as a mass of flying wrapping paper and shouts of enjoyment (christmas should be hectic, I think), but still cool.  I’ll tell ya all the gifts I got that I remember.

From America

-         Pair of jeans and a hawain shirt

-         Garth Brook CD set

-         2 hats, one thats warm, and one for juggling

-         3 or 4 books that I have already read and enjoyed

-         A big stuffed monkey thats really comfortable and yes, cute.

-         A belt (I’m skinnier now!  Haha, take that all you people that gain weight from comming to europe for the exchange!)

-         Money

-         A goodie box from my cousins with all sorts of candy, fun shoelaces, fun-yuns, a shirt, and some other goodies.

-         Most likely something else that I can’t remember.  If so, my mom will most likely tell me on a reply to this post.

From Germany friends and family

-         Cool boxers (skulls with roses in their teeth.  Playa, eh?)

-         A book of childrens poems. (I can understand them!  Mostly.)

-         Money (overall 70 eruos or something like that)

-         Candy

-         Ticket to the circus (a good one too)

-         A big book of pictures from around germany taken from a plane.  The descriptions are written in german, english, and french.  It’s nice.

-         Some nice shower gel

-         A cool little wind up car (not really impressive, just cool in a lame kinda way, know what I mean?)

-         An eraser for a pencil that says “life is full of mistakes, thats why pencils have erasers” (which I thought was ironic, because the reason I have that eraser is because my pencil does not have an eraser)

-         Back to the future 1-3 in German on DVD

-         Other assorted goodies that I can’t remember at this time.

Overall fun stuff, and I enjoyed it.

Dezember 25-28 – Visited my grandparents on my host fathers side in Koblenz, and saw King Kong.  Good movie, but long.  I would suggest seeing it.  Other than that, it was their grandparents house, and nothing interesting happened.  Oh, except we had a snowball war of epic proportions (me, my host parents, and my host sister), and I almost lost my ring.  Which was scary, cus it is one of the only things that I always have with me, that I really really don’t want to lose.

Sylvester (new years) – Okay, I would just like to say, whatever I have said about germans being crazy with fireworks before, I double for hollanders.  For the entire day before new years, until like, almost half a day after, they were shooting off and blowing up fireworks.  At 12:15 we walked out to the fields down the street, and lining the skyline was the most fireworks I have ever seen.  It was simply amazing.  I would have taken pictures, but I know how well my camera handles things like that, so I didn’t even try.  But still, it was incredible.

Januar 2 – Okay, this may sound like a lame thing to put up on the things important to me, but I went to this water park thing with my friend chris.  The only reason I consider it that cool (the water park was pretty lame, like a small, indoors, crappy section of schlitterbahn) was because it was my first real experience with a german friend, that we were together just cus we wanted to hang.  Needless to say, a big step in the friend making department, as you will soon see.

Januar 4-5 – You see it here, in case you were wondering.  Chris and a couple other guys invited me to an all night gaming party.  Those of you that know me know that this is the kinda thing I enjoy best, and shows my best personality (to make friends I mean).  It was awesome.  X-box until about 2 in the morning, and then talking about the most random stuff till 4 or 5.  And I could actually keep up with almost all of it!  It was a nice night, and a good step towards getting good friends to have something to do with when I am bored (often).

Januar 6 – Visted Rapheal and practiced some juggling and watched a couple movies.  Nothing really important, but another german that I hung with.  Cool stuff.

Januar 7 – Visted aachen with Kym, another exchange student with my program...fun, but nothing worth mentioning imparticular...oh, and I came home and rented 5 dvd’s.  I finally got a way to copy them, so my dvd collection is slowing growing.  As of now I have at least 15 dvd’s in german, including the first 2 lord of the rings (extended editions), my myself and irene, braveheart, and countless others.  Well, not countless, but you know what I mean.

Today is Sunday, and I got some time to...I have no idea what I amgonna do, I have an art project that I probably should start/finish, but I have no directions, and not quite sure what the requirements are...but we’ll see what I can do.  Tommorow school starts, and my life goes back to being slightly more dull.  Wish me the best of luck, and I will write you all again somewhat shortly.

Hey everybody,

So it’s been yet another “amazing” 2 weeks.  I left off on the Friday directly after thanksgiving…I would like to add that I also got a gift for a secret santa thing, and it was a giant monkey head that was a pillow/blanket.  Pretty cool stuff, gotta say.

            Saturday – Snow!  Not like, the wussy Texan snow most of you know, I mean 2 to 3 inches deep snow, covering the houses, yards, fences, and small woodland creatures.  Real snow.  It was awesome.  I spent a lot of time playing in the snow, just to let you know…I made the first Texan snowman this place has ever seen, he was about 10 inches tall, and melted by the end of the day.  Still, the snow was really fun, and I got a lot of pictures, which might make it up online someday before I leave to go home.  I am still working on my birthday pictures, so I can’t make any promises.  We also visited the Christmas market, and that was really cool.  Imagine a giant empty city square, and then fill it with little booths and a bunch of loud and festive germans.  Exciting stuff, needless to say.  I ate a crepe, which has got to be one of my favorite, favorite things I they have here often.  I am almost positive all of you know what it is I am talking about.

            Sunday – I am pretty sure nothing really cool happened today.  Nothing I can remember at this current time, at least.

            The rest of the week was actually pretty not exciting, despite the horrible English in this last sentence.  My last night of language camp is the 14^th, and I believe it will actually be a party type thing.  Cool stuff.

            Saturday – My first real german party (a.k.a., a party that has no point other than to be a party).   Pretty fun stuff.  We talked a bit, drank some, then talked a lot, and watched Shuh Des manitu…still a hilarious movie, once I get back to America, I’ll have to show it off once I get back home.  It’s good, to say the least.

            Sunday – Preformed some Christmas songs for a church in the morning, and sorry to say, it is still as boring as I have always found it, and the fact that I could understand half of what the priest guy said made it even less exciting.  If you can imagine that.  And then, after an hour and half of that, I went home for about an hour, and then off to a study session for the math final.  I could only spend an hour and a half there, because after that I had to go to another concert thing, but I actually get paid for it!  Coolness. 

            Monday – Nothing really cool, just really, really tired.  I don’t know why either, but I was.  Best part was the my german class was canceled, so I got to go home early.  Fun stuff.

            Tuesday – Today was the math final, and I have to say, the LONGEST time I have ever taken on a math test.  It was a total of 5 problems, each one had an average of…let’s say 3 sub-problems, and I took 1 hour and about 45 minutes to finish.  Part of this was having to translate all the parts of the problem, and part was because in the german grading style, you have to write out EVERYTHING that you do, and actually write what your doing, or you get points off.  Pretty lame, I think.  Oh, and we sparred in my Free Fighting course today, and I was against this guy that was probably 25 or 26, weighs the same as I do (200 pounds or so), and has boxed for many a years.  Needless to say, I got my ass kicked.  But still, it was fun, and I learned a bit.  Like boxing is so much harder than it looks on TV.

            Wednesday-Friday – Well, not a whole lot, sad to say…except on Friday or Thursday, I finally got my Christmas package for home sent off.  *Whew*.  Heavy little bugger, let me tell you, 7 ½ kilos, so about 17 or 18 pounds.  But I finally sent it off, and all with that is well.  Unfortunatly, my package from home was supposed to come here on Thursday, but didn’t yet, so I was disappointed.  It also didn’t come on Friday, so I was disappointed again.  On Friday during my free fighting I got a jab in the mouth and bit my lip.  So it’s finally getting exciting!  But no worries, it is still safe.  Mostly.

            Saturday – today was going to be a lazy and pointless day (so I thought), until….MY PACKAGE ARRIVED!!  Yep, the highlight of my day.  Technically, it’s my Christmas package, but there was a late birthday gift too, so I got the new Stephen lynch cd.  Funny stuff, but for people over 18, and under 40.  Unless you’re daring.  In which case, go for it.  And then I wrote this, and watched the first lord of the rings in German.  I got about 5 dvd’s in german, so I have something I can do when I chill out.  American Pie in german is a little strange, but I get to learn a lot of slang stuff, so it’s pretty cool.  I Am supposed to go to a family friends birthday party tonight, so we’ll see how that goes.

Tommorow I have a Christmas party with my orchestra, but other than that, nothing, so it’s chillin some more.  I don’t have too much homesickness now, but I know that when it comes to the Christmas celebrations I am gonna feel terrible.  I just can’t wait!  But, with 4 months behind me, I am almost half way through the year, and it’s a lot easier to get around alone and I feel more comfortable speaking german mostly.  I can’t wait to see how much better I get before I get back home.

So, Until I write again, which should be (according to calculations) the 24^th, but will most likely end up being the 26^th or 27^th, have a great holiday, especially all you Americans who are pretty much already out of school for the holidays.  My first day of break is the 24^th, so…feel lucky.  Anyways, Merry Christmas, and I wish you all the best for the holidays.

-Dane

So, relatively a lot has happened since my last post!  I will just talk about the “important” days.

Wednesday – I left after school to catch a train to visit Daniel Mai for his birthday.  This turned into a huge ordeal which made me hate german train system oh so very much.  The train was supposed to come at like, 4:43, and it did…later, we found out that was a train that was 30 minutes late, but came in exactly when mine was supposed to.  Needless to say, it didn’t turn at a Düsseldorf like it was supposed to…so I overshot, and then called my mom on info what to do, and was informed to go back to Düsseldorf and take this certain train, and I would be picked up by Daniel.  I thought sure, no problem, and left on the train on my gate on time again…and yet again, it was the wrong train, but I found out faster than last time, so I soon went back to the other train station, and then back to Düsseldorf, and then finally to Daniels town.  The whole thing should have taken an hour and a half, it took 5.  Yeah.

            The party was all college kids who couldn’t believe I was 18 (I had to fake at least that old, so they would think I was at least out of highschool, or no one would believe it even a little) and they all thought I was like, 23.  Crazy stuff…guess my goatee thing probably helps with that, which, by the way, I have now.  I came back home later, and it was on overall good night.

Friday – My host mom’s brothers birthday, so we went to their parents house, sat around a table, ate amazing food and drank and talked about random things.  Then they showed us their indoor pool (my host grandparents are loaded, its insane), and I played around in it (it was drained).  Then we came back in, and all the kids got bored, so we watched the “Domino day” on TV, which was simply amazing.  I won’t even try to explain it, just imagine 4,364,270 dominos falling creating pictures and stories.  It was awesome.

Saturday – I met up with Jared in aachen, and we walked around a bit with Tracy and Kym (all Americans), and then later, we ditched them and came back home (it’s okay, they come back later).  Me and Jared watched Charlie and The Chocolate Factory on my laptop, laughing at nothing for a while, and then watched some family guy episodes to waste time, cus that night was….MY BIRTHDAY PARTY!!  Exciting, eh?  Anyways, first people to come in were all Americans, kym and tracy, and jared was already here, so we reminisced about good ol times, and all that good stuff…and then Germans came, and we played some twister and uno, and then this really weird game kinda like pool.  It was pretty fun.  About then it was 1, all the germans went home, and the Americans stayed up for a while longer and talked, and then went to sleep.  For those interested, here is a list of all the birthday gifts I received that I can remember of the top of my head.

From home-

Bag to carry my juggling stuff (nice one, by the way)

Fuyons and Cheetos.  Heck yes.

Other food makings (for tacos and stuff like that)

Star wars III DVD

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory DVD

This cool puzzle book of math thingies called sudoku.  Look into it, its cool.

Some really nice pictures that I love dearly

My incense

M&M’s

Probably more stuff that I can’t remember now, I am pretty tired (I’ll tell you why later)

From Germany-

Shuh des Mantiu DVD (funny stuff)

Single Album DVD (also funny)

6 good juggling balls

6 juggling rings

lots of candy

combined total of 70 euros or something.  Probably more

And theres also money that people gave me from home, which I thank them dearly for.

Also, I broke my drinking record on my birthday, me and Jared both drank over 4 liters of beer, so booyah. Oh, and I will be posting pictures of my birthday party eventually, just because I owe you guys some new pics.

Sunday – The rest of my host family came over and we talked for a while, and then another gift I got for my birthday was seeing the new harry potter!  It was pretty sweet, let me tell you, and I understood almost everything.  Awesome. This is where all the germans gave me their money.  Which was cool.

Thursday – I left to Cologne for a thanksgiving seminar, which lasted til Friday, and I won’t describe all of it because I can’t remember it, but I will point out that for 1, its me, 2, there were 3 other guys that were just like me, and we hadn’t all been together for 3 months.  I didn’t get to sleep till 530 in the morning, and then we awoke at 8 for breakfast.  It was fun stuff.  Then we did a tour of the Dom, which would be my third tour, by the way…Oh, but funny fact, the youth hostel we stayed at in Cologne was the exact same one we stayed at when I came with Frau Parris and that group, and I got the exact same room by chance.  Isn’t that just eerie?  I almost had the same bed, but then I noticed what I was doing and chose another one.  Then, the trains were insanely late, and I got home at 5, and so I just wrote this, and I am dead tired.  That was such a run on sentence.  Anyways, I hope you enjoyed a quick, quick, quick recap of the past week and a half…and I am planning on getting online Saturday afternoon, lets say about…3.  It won’t be for long, and I will be slow responding, but anyone who wants to chat with me online, that’s when it will be.  On AIM.

Much love everyone, and I will get those pics up as soon as possible,

Dane

Okay, so this it’s been a while guys…so you know what that means…That this will be a long blog entry, and pretty vague, ‘cus my memory sucks!

            I believe I left off saying I was off to free fighting, and I hoped I didn’t die in it, or something like that…correct?  Something like that…Anyways, I came back home after it, and I was fine.  It was hard though, and I hadn’t worked out that much in so long that it made my stomach hurt…some of you know what I mean probably.  Not like, aching muscle hurt, but like…almost want to throw up hurt.  But still, it was fun, I learned some cool tricks and stuff.

            So that was Tuesday, and Wednesday was pretty much normal, as much as I can remember…In fact, the rest of the weekend was the same.  On to the weekend!

On Friday, I went to this cool concert thing…it was honoring a greek composer into this special music society, and I heard his music played, and got to hear an explanation of what it meant from him, and stuff like that…it was cool, except that I found out germans talk waaaay to much in a concert.  Litterally, the concert started at 730 or so, and went until like, 11, and they only played 5 or 6 pieces.  Yea, it was harsh…though, most of it was because of the special award he got, so people talked about how they knew him, and what kind of guy he was.

Saturday was pretty normal, and Raphael came over to hang out for a few hours…we played around on my laptop a little, and then fooled around with our juggling stuff some…he has a Diablo and some juggling balls, so it was fun.  That evening we had our concert with the club that I rent my tuba from, and that was fun…but once again, I say germans talk too much, and the concerts are too long(have too many pieces for each band).  The concert started at 7, ended at 11, and we played, as the youth part, 5 pieces, and as the adult like…8 or 9.  It was insane.

Sunday was relaxing and fun.  And Monday went same as usually.

Tuesday I changed my schedule, so now I have art class too.  Woohoo art!

Wednesday was same as usual…Oh, except I went on this marching thing instead of my language course!  It was fun…we got together (there was only about 10 or 15 of us), and played music whilest little kids walked through the streets with little lanterns.  I am not sure why, look it up if your that interested…but it was fun stuff.

            Thursday was also quite similar to normal, except that evening we also had another marching thing…only, afterwards we went to where we normally have our orchestra practice, and drank hot cocoa and ate these little bread men that were delicious.  I got a lot of homesickness here, cus I usually only ever drink hot cocoa at home on the couch watching a movie with leah or some other friends.  So pretty much, it was fun, but at the same time sucked, cus it reminded me so much of home.  When I got home I called my mom and wished her a happy birthday…she’s half a century old now, to quote my aunt.

            Friday…let’s see…it was a normal day with sport and all…Except now in sport we are no longer doing volleyball…thank goodness.  Now we are doing acrobatic stuff, and we’re balancing on top of each other, and all that jazz.  Fun stuff, more or less.  Oh, and in the free fighting training we did moves on how to get out of a hold when your on the ground, and then we wrestled…it was fun.

            Saturday I had band practice for almost the whole day…pretty crappy, and then I had another one of those marching things, but we played for all the people who died in world war II…it was pretty cool.  And that evening was the concert, another long and arduous adventure…crazy germans…