Frohe Weihnachten!

So I had my Birthday.  On which I turned 17.  It started out with my parents coming into my room at 06:00 with a cake, and singing Happy Brithday to me, and giving me some super awesome HSV tattoos!  Then I got ready, after that we had breakfast 'together', and I opened up my presents.  From Christoph, Johannes, and Markus I got a ticket to the Hurricane Festival in June, which is like the greatest music festival ever.  From Heike and Andreas I got some socks, totally awesome stereotypical birthday present, and a sport, warm up-ish, suit.   I probably got some other stuff, but it was like two weeks ago, so I'm not 100% sure.  From my Parents in the US I got an iPod nano to replace my now broken iPod touch.  Then from a friend of mine I got a book, a used book at that, and some reeces, from another friend a got a scarf.  Then I went to school.  At school I gave out some candy, as is tradition in Germany, and was wished a happy birthday by everybody.  Two guys from my class, Daniel and York, still wish me a belated happy birthday everyday.  After school we went to Bremen, where we ate some awesome Mexican food.  Upon arriving home I found in front of the door a bottle of beer with a bible taped to it, a gift from our youth group coordinator.

Me on My birthday with my cake and presents in the background

The next day....I went to school.  After school we had a Christmas party at my English teachers house, which was pretty fun, we had a snow ball fight, did a secret Santa, read Christmas story's, and ordered pizza.  After that, I went with Johannes, and a friend, Lennart who had had his birthday on the 5th, to the Disco.  That was kind of how I celebrated my birthday.  It was a pretty great night.  Saturday, the 11th, was Christophs 20th, Birthday.  Saturday night we went to a Chinese restaurant and had roast duck, which is the greatest thing ever.  After that Johannes and I went to a friends house to watch basketball, the only thing was that the game didn't start until 3:30 in the morning, and it went until 5:00.  So at 5:15 on Sunday morning I finally crawled into my bed and didn't leave it until 2:30 that afternoon.

Random picture of Lennart, Markus, and me

On Sunday I woke up, and there wasn't any more snow.  Which was weird.  Sunday was also the day that my 8-Day-Headache began.  But on Tuesday the snow had somewhat returned, in any case enough for school to be canceled (7cm).  So Tuesday was a pretty great day.  We went and packed some stuff in envelopes for Andreas at work.  Wednesday we were sadly back at school.  On Thursday we were also at school, but this time, we got out early, because of the snow.  and on Friday coming to school was 'optional' which means that I had to go, but 8 people from my class weren't there.  Friday night Markus and I went to Lennart's house, at which we attached three tires to a Bobcat-y, Frontloader-y thing and went driving through a field in the snow.  The next day (Saturday) Lennart, Markus, and I went to Hamburg to check out the Christmas Market.  I met up with some exchange students: Ashley Mikkola (Michigan), Alison Thon (Illinois), and Ryan Pritchett (Minnesota) and we hung out for the day, did some shopping, got bored, and yeah, the normal stuff that you do when your in Hamburg for 8 hours. 

Our photo for our Holiday Newsletter

Sunday, yesterday, I had the joy of translating our holiday newsletter from German to English, which isn't as easy as you might think.  There are many many words and phrases that I can read in German and know exactly what it means, but then I'm just like, wait a minute.....how do you say that in English?  So I spent a good part of my day trying to make the letter make sense and not sound stupid in English.  Sunday evening we had an exchange student from Japan here to bake cookies and decorate Gingerbread houses.  Which was a pretty good time.  I didn't really realize that gingerbread house decorating could be so awesomely fun.

Today I woke up with hopes that school would be canceled again, but that didn't happen.  So I went to school and in my free period I started to read the bible that I received for my birthday.  It said that if I read it with an open mind it would change my life, so we'll see.  So yeah, tomorrow is my last day of school before break starts, and on Thursday Markus has his brithday, which he is celebrating on Wednesday.  Then this week is Christmas, which is crazy.  Like I totally cannot comprehend it.  So December did prove to speeed by.  Then after Christmas I will be traveling to visit my first host family for four days, then I'll be sleeping for the last week of break. 

Merry Christmas to everyone.

and the time rolls on....

My thoughts on December:
December is and always has been my favorite month, December in Germany just helps to reassure that. Advents calenders...so I guess I knew what they were in the US, but I never had one, and I didn't really understand what was so great about them.  I know have a different opinion about them though, my advents calender is pretty dang fantastic.  Where I live is a part of Germany that generally doesn't get much, if any, snow.  In the last two-ish weeks, however, it's been snowing; not a ton but enough for the ground to be white and that's enough for me.  The temps have also been down in the 20's.  These two things together makes everything super funny, considering that in Minnesota it's considerably colder and we get a considerable amount more of snow. Was the last sentence grammatically correct; I think not, but I diverse.  So when they've got  0.4 to 0.8 inches of snow everybody freaks out.  Nobody drives faster than 30 miles an hour and they assume that just becuase it's 26 degrees that the roads are covered in ice and therefor unnavigable.  So whenever anybody says anything about how bad the roads are or how cold it is or how they have a crazy amount of snow, I just laugh to myself.  In Germany most people don't put up their Christmas trees until a few days before Christmas or not until Christmas eve.  Which is pretty crazy, who wants to spend the time decorating a tree when you're only gonna have it up for 5 days?  And since there isn't a tree up until Christmas tree up until Christmas eve, that means that there aren't any presents under the tree until Christmas eve, and Santa comes on Christmas eve while you're at church, so you open the presents from Santa on Christmas eve, and technically you don't get any gifts from your parents because they all come from Santa.  German Christmas schedule run down.  December 24th, Christmas eve; December 25th, 1st day of Christmas;  December 26th, 2nd day of Christmas.  The multiple days of Christmas are pretty cool I'd say.  We made Christmas cookies a few weeks ago, which was cool, but there was no eating of the cookies allowed until the 1st advent, and they weren't the kind of cookies I would associate with Christmas.  I do think that I will be able to survive one year without American Christmas cookies though.  Buying Christmas presents is near impossible in Germany, or that's how I see it at least.  So nobody made a Christmas list, and when I asked them what they wanted for Christmas and they were just kind of like "yeah I don't know" so buying gifts sucked.  On Thursday the greatest day of the year will occur once again, yes you guessed it, my birthday.  It'll be a pretty awesome day, I'll finally be getting my iPod and all of the mail that my family has deemed "Birthday Mail" and has been holding for me.  Oh, and we're going to a Mexican restaurant!  Everybody knows that Mexican food is the greatest thing on the planet and it's totally unfair that I've had to live without it for the last 5 months.

So it's been about a month since I've posted anything and I haven't really done a whole lot but what I have done, as you probably guessed, I don't really remember a whole lot of, but I'll do my best to recall as much of it as I can in a somewhat chronological order. 

So on  the 17th of November Markus and I went to a friend of ours, Jost, house to 'celebrate' his 16th birthday.  Played some games, watched soccer, ate some food, and of course drank some beer.  It was a pretty good Wednesday.  Then on the 19th I went with Johannes and some of his friends to Harry Potter, which was fun, it was followed by a trip to McDonald's, where I won a cookie playing Micky D's Monopoly.
After that there was a week in which I went to school and nothing eventful happened.   On the 27th (a Saturday) we had a school bazaar, so that meant no sleeping in.  On the 26th, however, we didn't have any class, becuase we needed a day to get everything ready.  So on the 27th I got up and went to school, not really all that excited that I had to go, becuase I though it was going to be dumb.  My group had two people dressed up as "Africans" so there were in caveman like clothing and they had some make up to make them look black, and my job was to take pictures of them with people that wanted a picture with  "Real Africans" with a African safari/dessert back round.  We sold the pictures for 1 Euro, and a girl from my class' dad had a photoprinter, like at target, where it's all with touch screen and what not, so that was pretty cool.  Some of the other groups in my class sold cake and make a movie.  Other classes did other stuff, sold food, played games, and yeah I'm not really sure, but it ended up being better than I thought it would be.  After the Bazaar we went to my Grandma's house to celebrate her birthday.  I wasn't super excited about it becuase the whole family was going to be there and I had only met them once before, but it ended up being a lot better than I expected.  We ate some meat that I'm not really sure what it was but it tasted good, and I also had some Weißwurst, which if you know anything about is notoriously disgusting, but it was actually super good.  By that point in the day though I was super duper dead.  I didn't get a ton of sleep the night before plus I had the school thing all day, and no nap, so I was happy when we left a little bit earlier than we had originally planned to.  On Wednesday the 1st of December Andreas had his 50th birthday.  So we open birthday presents at breakfast, which was a little strange I thought, but it's cool.  He celebrated three times on Wednesday, twice with his co-workers, and then once for dinner with some people from town.  So yeah I was lucky enough to help.  Which involved running up and down the stairs a million times to bring plates of food to the tables, and whatnot.  It wasn't really that bad, but I was up tooo late for a Wednesday.  The highlight of the night was that we had Duck for dinner.  I'd never had Duck before coming to Germany, and I'm not really sure why, becuase it's sooooo goood!  So school is pretty good, homework sucks!!! But I've decided that if I don't have enough time to finish it all on a given day that I'm not gonna worry about it anymore.  If it's not done then it's not done.  On Friday, the 3rd, I went into town to do some shopping with Christoph, and after that a friend of mine, named Jost, went to Bremen to see a movie.  Took the bus to Bremen, made a stop a Micky D's of course then proceeded to the movie theater.  We saw Stichtag (Due Date in English) which was pretty dang awesome if I don't say so myself.  After the movie we went to the train station and took a walk through becuase we had a half an hour 'til our bus came and it was freaking cold outside.  Walking past a shop I looked in the window and I saw a bright green bottle, and it was you guessed it, Mountain Dew, so I bought some.  'Twas quite awesome.  Then we went to the bus stop to wait for a while, the Christmas Market is currently open so, as we were waiting a lady and her husband came up to us and asked (very drunk) if we were up to no good and if they needed to call our mothers, which I thought was pretty dang hilarious.  Then came the bus ride home, on which I almost fell asleep.   Then on Saturday the 4th we celebrated Andreas' birthday once again, this time at a restaurant with the family, which was pretty good, but I was dead, as always.  Today I was able to sleep in finally, got up and started to write this at about noon, then I went out and played soccer in the snow with Markus and one of his friends, then I went and worked at a Christmas Market for a while and now I'm back to writing this.

Oh, on the 27th of December to the 30th of December I will be going to visit my first host family in Hessen so that should be pretty cool.  I'm looking forward to it. The month of December is already proving to fly by equally as fast as the month of November flew by.  I actually can't believe that November is already over.  I'm excited for the new year though.  On New Years Eve I'm going to a party here in town, so it should be pretty awesome.  The year is proving to fly by, which I don't really like, I tend to procrastinate to make it seem like time is going slower but it doesn't really help. 

My thoughts on the German Language.
So yeah German....it's a language that I don't recommend learning.  It's pretty much impossible.  When you think you know a rule you learn that there are in fact many exceptions to the rule.  Accusative and Dative are also pretty much impossible.  If I'm not saying 'you' or 'I'  then I don't know whether I should be using Accusative or Dative and at the end of the day I actually wouldn't be able to tell the difference.  The words are getting better though, but as German words get better my English gets worse.  I now find myself looking up words becuase I know what they mean in German but not in English.  Which is actually kind of cool, but also a pain.

Oh, and a quick Happy Birthday to my mother and my aunt Cheri  who will be 48 on December 7th (yeah it's pearl harbor day, it's a day fitting to the two of them)

Until later

Mtd Code Red!

What's worse than not getting mail?  Knowing that people have sent you mail, but not having received it yet.  Damn you, slow international shipping!

So, the week of October 25th-29th, wasn't a very good week for me.  I was pretty down for the entire week, don't really know why but I was, the constant rain probably didn't help any.  I didn't really do a lot that week, I did sleep a lot though.  Heike was gone from Thursday to Sunday on a spa type weekend, where she walked on the beach. On the 29th I went to see RED, which was good, it was something to get me out of the house, so it was good.  On the 30th, I was again all good, I went to a party in town,  that was a lot of fun, I got to talk to a lot of people, and whatnot.  On the 31st, I didn't celebrate Halloween, becuase the Germans don't celebrate it, which kind of sucks, becuase it's one of ,if not, my favorite Holidays.  I did go and watch some soccer in the rain though, which is always fun, then we went to this super duper boring choir concert, which I probably wouldn't have hated so much had they not of kept saying that the next song was going to be the last one for like half an hour.  Then I came home and Skyped with my Aunt Cheri and my Parents.

Monday.  Went to school. Wasn't really anything special, oh, but on the way to school Johannes was backing out of the garage and he backed into a tree, which was pretty hilarious, especially becuase the car has back up sensors.  He didn't think it was as funny.  I also noticed that I can now function without using a dictionary, which is nice, becuase it's kind of a hassle to always have to look up words.   Monday was also good because my 1st, 2nd, and 7th hours were canceled.  On Tuesday I had no first hour.  Tuesday was actually just a super awesome day for me, nothing special happened but I was in a really really good mood.  Then on Tuesday night we went shopping at the two really big shopping centers in the 'area', I bought nothing.  Then we went to Youth Group, which started out good, then we started playing soccer inside, with a bunch of tables turned on their sides in a circle so that they ball wouldn't go all over the place.  As I was going over one of the tables to enter the arena(?) my foot caught the edge of the table, causing it to fall, on my foot and scrape the skin off of my heel/Achilles tendon area.  It hurt a lot, not just becuase of the cut, but also becuase the table smashed down pretty hard.  So I was done with soccer for the night, I sat out and held a kleenex to my foot while it bled.  On Wednesday we, my class and the other 10th grade classes, took a trip to a concentration camp.  I was actually really excited to go there, until I got there.  So most of the buildings that were still there were original, but they had been heavily renovated twice, so you would never know that it was  concentration camp.  Plus all of the cool buildings that I would've liked to have seen had been torn down.  So with these factors combined with my foot that didn't really feel to great with my shoe over it, they day started off not as great as I had expected.  We did get to see some original stuff, and a lot of diagrams showing how the camp was originally set up, but a lot of it was super boring, just becuase it was in German and I had to stand the whole time, so at the end of the day I was super worn out, and had no desire to hear anymore German.  Thursday, I had school, which wasn't anything special but it's whatever.  Friday at school, was pretty normal.  Friday however was a super awesome day.  Here's the run down:

Woke up.  Got ready for school.  Didn't have to take the bus to school.  I only had 6 hours, and only 4 subjects, of those six hours 3 of them we were working in groups.  At the end of the day I saw that on Monday 1st, 3rd, and 4th hour are canceled.  I didn't have to ride the bus home.  When I got home there was roast beef and rice waiting for me on the table.  When the mail came, I had a letter.  I then laid down for about 45 minutes.  When I got up we went to Zeven where I bought some good 'ol American Oreo's.  At about 5:00 Markus, Christoph, and I left for Hamburg.  Upon arrival in Hamburg we stopped at McDonald's on the Reeperbahn (pronounced Rape-er-bah-n), we then made our way to where Jimmy Eat World was playing, and proceeded to see Jimmy Eat World play an absolutely amazing show!  After the concert Markus and I ran into a random gas station on the way back to the car, and I just about fell over when I saw that they had Mountain Dew Code Red!  I bought a 4 pack, of course.   So that was my Friday.  Pretty great if I do not say so myself.  

Saturday.  I slept in, and didn't really do a lot the whole day.  We went for a walk in the woods, raked some leaves, and I watched a few soccer games.  Later in the day Markus and I started playing poker, it started out good for me, I was pretty much winning the whole time, then Christoph wanted to play with us.  That was the exact opposite of fun, he played like 10 minutes and in those 10 minutes I lost at least 6 Euro.  Then Markus and I made a cake.  An American Chocolate cake, with Vanilla frosting.  It was interesting.  Baking in Europe is a lot different than baking in the US.  We haven't eaten the cake yet, so I don't know how it turned out, but the frosting is super good.  We then ordered  Pizza.  After eating Markus and I resumed our game.  I was winning for a while, then I was losing a ton.  We ended up playing until about 01:00, I had about a 9 Euro loss for the day.

Today, Sunday, is my lazy day.  I slept in, ate lunch, and now I'm writing a blog.  I'm gonna do my homework here in a few minutes then get a package ready to send off.  I then have a night full of skyping with my Grandma, parents, and a friend of mine before me.   School again tomorrow, but it's not too bad becuase I have at least 3 hours canceled, and with some luck there will be more canceled when I get there.

That's all I've got at the moment.  

Straßenbahn, ACT, und Freimarkt

Ok so I've got 4 picture frames which hold a total of 10 photos, and they're all hanging on my walls empty, and they've been like that since I've been here, so if you have a picture of me with you and you'd like to send it to me that would be fantastic! 

So on Friday (22. Oktober) we went to a hockey game in Hamburg.  Before the game the Zamboni went out to resurface, they guy was also shooing t-shirts, then he shot one that landed on the ice, which the Zamboni then drove over, breaking it.  So we had to wait 15 minutes while they got a Zamboni from the practice arena. The game was pretty great.  The team is actually really bad, but it's fun to watch.  So at the end of the third period it was tied 4-4, so then it went into overtime.  After which it was still 4-4.  So it went to penalty shots, that was pretty exciting considering it was the first time that I've seen that happen, so we ended up winning 6-4, it was pretty awesome.  At the beginning of the game I noticed that the guy sitting behind me was speaking English, fluent American English.  I decided I wasn't going to talk to him though, so I sat and watched the game.  Then between the second and third periods I decided that I'd talk to him.  So I turned around and asked him where he was from, turns out he's actually Canadian.  He's living in France and works for Airbus, and was visiting Airbus Hamburg for the weekend.  After the game we basically ran to the car so we wouldn't have to sit in traffic (the soccer game, located next to the hockey arena, ended at the same time) we were lucky, we got out just in time.  Then the stupid Autobahn is being rebuilt so it's only one lane, or two but it's not wide enough to drive next to or pass anybody.  The night ended with a trip to Burger King!

Yesterday (Saturday 23. Oktober) I started the day by waking up at 05:15.  That tells you how much fun I had right there.  I had on jeans, and a hoodie, I wore my glasses, and I had a backpack.  When I got the the bus stop my mom asked me if I had an umbrella with, I didn't but I also didn't think it would rain.  So I caught my bus at 6:15 and was in Bremen at about 7:15.  I jumped on the Straßenbahn (Tram, streetcar, trolly).  So I got off where I thought I needed to, according to Google maps, and I started walking where I thought I needed to.  After five minutes, however, I realized that I wasn't in the right place.  So then I turned around and walked in the other direction.  So it took me about 15 minutes but I did finally find where I was supposed to be.  I should've actually gone to the next stop before getting off.  Thanks a lot Google maps.  So, I then found my way the the International School of Bremen where I took my test.  I went on in then we went up stairs and got  situated and whatnot.  There were three of this.  Me (American), and two Germans.  I couldn't understand why they would want to take it or how they thought that they could handle it, I even had trouble with time on the reading and science tests.  I later found out that one had lived in Kansas for a year, and the other in Australia.  So that explains their English skills.  The one had to take it for something that she was doing in Germany, I didn't really catch why.  The other wants to study in the US.  So yeah I thought it went really good.  After I finished the English section I still had 11 minutes, so I'm not sure if that's good or bad, we'll have to wait and see.  Math went pretty good, reading also.  Science, went ok, on the last passage I wanted to just quit, it used a ton of words that I've never hear before, and I just didn't want to do it.  So we'll see how I did there.  Then came the writing, I'm pretty sure that was my worst test.  I hated my prompt so I had trouble answering the question.  Also, before the writing test he gave us a break becuase he had some kind of issue.  Turns out that issue was the fact that he locked the door and went up stairs with us 10 minutes before 8, and the last person wasn't there yet.  So he had him do the writing test with us, and then he let him take the rest of the test, which I'm pretty sure he's not allowed to do, but it's whatever.

After I finished the test I made my way back to the Straßenbahn, this time without any problems.  I rode it on back to the Hauptbahnhof, while I was sitting there listening to my music, I thought I heard English, so I paused my music, and sure enough there were four American teenagers standing in front of the ticket machine on the Straßenbahn in Bremen buying tickets.  I couldn't really think of a reason that they would be in Bremen of all places.  So, upon arriving at the bahnhof I went inside and grabbed something to eat.  Then I met with Dobrina, an exchange student from Bulgaria, and we went around the city for a while, there was a parade and yeah lots to do and see.  Then about an hour later we met with Irina, another exchange student, and we went to the city center(it was then sunny), and watched some of the parade and looked at some of the stands.

  We took a lot of pictures too.  Then we went to the movie theater and saw So Spielt das Leben (Life as we know it).  Afterward (it was now raining) we made our way back to he bahnhof, where we (the exchange students) were supposed to meet at 5:30.  So we got there and slowly we had the entire group there, except for our organizer from YFU, who was supposed to meet us there too.  She didn't show up until probably 6:05 though, then we took a group photo(I think there were 16 of us or so) and made our way to the Freimarkt (mini-Oktoberfest).   So yeah the Freimarkt was really cool.  There was a lot of stuff to see and do, but by this point in the day I didn't really have anymore money, I was wet, I was cold, I had a headache, and I was tired.  So we walked around for a while, then we came upon a roller coaster that we decided we wanted to ride, then I found out how much it cost.  I didn't want to ride anymore; but I did anyway.  It was a super awesome roller coaster actually, the only things wrong with it were that it was raining, and that it cost me 6 €, plus it made my headache a lot worse.  After that we moved a little bit further, then we came upon another ride, that some of us wanted to go on, I didn't want to, I was about to die at this point.  Instead I got some Schmalzkuchen ( little dough things that are deep fried then covered in a chocolate, vanilla, caramel, etc. sauce and powdered sugar) which were really good, but with the combination of headache and cold, I just felt more sick.  So I then wanted to get something to drink, I really wanted a radler, or Alsterwasser, as they call in here in the north; but they didn't have it in bottles so I settled for a beer, after which I felt a little better.  Then we kept moving until we came upon another ride (can you see a trend here?) there I bought a Pretzel, and ate that, trying to find something that would make my headache go away.  I had two choices for buses home; there was one at 8:30 and one at 11:30.  My original plan was to take the 11:30 bus, but at 8 I decided that I wasn't feeling good and that I wanted to go home and get out of the cold and rain that is Germany.  So I made my way back to the bahnhof, got on my bus and was so happy to be able to actually be sitting somewhere somewhat warm.  Then I got picked up at the bus stop and went on home.  My plan was to lay down for a few minutes then get up and converse with people, but that didn't happen.  I ended up falling asleep with all my clothes on at about 9:45, and got up at about 11:45 this morning.  Headache was still there, so I finally took some advil, which didn't really help.  After lunch I went to Zeven and watched a parade, and went through the city center, where there was a bunch of stands and whatnot.  Then, the bottom of my pants now soaked, we went back home, where I had cake and coffee in front of the fire.  Then we looked at pictures from our bike trip, and now I'm writing a blog.  I'm thinking I'ma hop in bed somewhat early tonight, since school starts again tomorrow.  Which I'm not really all that excited about.  It's nice being here and not having school.  I would actually prefer to be here when there wasn't school.  



Side notes about Germany:  
The people here are freaking crazy with dogs.  They take them everywhere!  Like everywhere.  Oh I'm gonna go grocery shopping, hmm, I should probably bring my dog with.  That is the kind of thinking that they have.  I was at a parade to day and people had their dogs with.  I was on the bus yesterday on my way to Bremen and a lady got on with her dog!  What they hell is she bringing her dog to Bremen, on a bus, for?!  It's not really all that big of a deal I guess, but it's just weird!  


General consensus of Exchange students that I talked to yesterday:
Germany isn't as fun after you've settled in to everyday life of school and the awesome (sarcasm) weather, and things like that it's actually more of a hassle to be here.  I'm pretty sure that everyone of them said that they would like to go home.  That's just how it is.  Everything is soooo much easier when at home, where I know the language and the culture and becuase I know where people can and can't bring their dogs.


That's all I've got for now.  


James Sullivan
bei: Familie Meyer
Landstr. 25
27404 Ostereistedt
Germany


jsullivan93@gmail.com

Bike tour, and a day in Dubai?

First off I'd like to say that the application process for the scholarship that I'm here on has been updated so if you are interested in doing an exchange year in Germany for free, like I am, head on over to http://www.usagermanyscholarship.org/ .  If you have any questions you can also feel free to shoot me an email, or a letter or post a comment here.

So last week, on my first week of break, I went with my father and Markus on a bike tour/trip in Bavaria (Southern Germany, the place you think of when you think Germany.)   We left early on Sunday morning, and rode the train for 4 hours or so before arriving at our destination of Würzburg, our starting point.  After a quick stop at McDonald's, we biked up to the castle and took a look, and then we started biking.  We only biked about 20 km the first day, but that was good.  The Youth Hostel that we stayed in on the first night was the old city gate(?) [There used to be a wall, and this was the place where you could go through, and it was tall] so it was like 600 years old or something, it was pretty interesting.  We then went and got some pizza and saw the most boring movie ever made. Then it was back the the Youth Hostel, the worst part about it was that there was a spider on the wall next to my bed and then I couldn't find it so I had some trouble sleeping at first. The next day we biked around 75km, I think.  The Hostel that we stayed in on the second night was a ton nicer, and it even had wifi, so that was a big plus.   Third day we biked around 65 km or so, I think.  We stayed in an old folks home, or rather in a hotel that was there for people visiting the old folks.  Then we went out again for Pizza, and then watched the German national soccer team play.  Fourth day, we biked 60-ish km? Then we stayed in an actual Hotel.   After dinner Markus and I stayed downstairs for a while and surfed the web, then upon going back to the room, I apparently took the wrong staircase, and asked Markus in very bad German where he was going.  It was pretty hilarious.  For the record, the stairs that I wanted to take ended up going to the same place.  Fifth day, we biked 46-ish km,  before stopping at our destination city, we went to subway, then to the Youth Hostel.   We then searched for a very long time, to find a swimming / spa center for old people.   That was pretty boring. ha.  Then we ended up at a Japanese restaurant, and we all ended up ordering duck.  Which was delicious.   Then it was back to the Youth Hostel, for a somewhat good nights rest, plus we were finally able to sleep in so that was pretty nice.  The last day we woke up and ate, then we biked into the city and did some shopping, Markus and I went to one store and Andreas to another, a book store to be exact, where I ended up spending way too much of my time.  Then it was too the train station, and McDonalds, then on the train back home.  On our last train there was this guy who asked me a question, and it turned in to a half hour conversation that everybody in the train car could hear and was very annoyed by.   He was maybe 19 and he was in the army, and we now know everything there is too know about his life.  His brother for example weighs 139kg (306 lb). Haha.

The bike trip ended up being 190 miles, with all of the biking through the city's and whatnot that we did.  It was a pretty good time, a lot better than I thought it would be.  We had really good luck with the weather, it was maybe 60 the whole week and it was sunny pretty much the entire time, so it was perfect.

Sunday, Markus left for a week to do something with church, I think he's like a camp counselor or something... but I'm not exactly sure, it will be a nice quiet week without him.    Oh, and I ordered an iPod for my birthday, and it came, but I don't get to open it until my birthday, so that's kind of a bummer...

I went and got a hair cut on Monday, against my better judgment.  But it's not all that bad.  I was thinking a stripe of blue would look good in the middle, but no body else did. 

Today, Tuesday the 19th, I went to the German Emigration Center, basically the exact opposite of Ellis Island, so I got to see how every thing was for the emigrants, and I was able to search my family's history, and trace it back.

The town that it's in is called Bremerhaven, but I could've sworn that we were in Dubai, there is a clone of the famous hotel in Dubai, in Bremerhaven(photos on Facebook), so that was pretty cool, we were able to go up to the top and look around.  The day was ended with Ice cream in a mall that was designed to look like an Italian city and then the drive home.

On, Friday we will be going to Hamburg to watch some professional hockey.  Saturday, I am taking my ACT in Bremen in the morning, and in the evening I believe that I'm going to be going to a mini oktoberfest thing in Bremen, and if not then possibly to the disco.  We'll see.  I'm not really all that excited for school to start again, I could get used to the sleeping til noon everyday.

I still enjoy receiving mail, I am however extremely lazy in writing back, but be patient a reply will come eventually. 

James Sullivan
bei: Familie Meyer
Landstr. 25
27404 Ostereistedt
Germany

Email: jsullivan93@gmail.com

Moin, Moin!

Moin!  First off I’d like just to say that I really, really enjoy getting mail.  So if you’re bored, and feel like writing me a letter, that would be pretty cool.   My address is as follows (address it exactly as it is!):

James Sullivan
Bei: Familie Meyer
Landstr. 25
27404 Ostereistedt
Germany

So yeah in the last few weeks, (?) I’m not exactly sure how long it’s been since I’ve written on this, not a whole lot has happened but a little bit more than last time I wrote.  But since I don’t write down what I do every day, I forget it pretty quick so I’ll try and recall it…

Well, first off, as you all surely know, I have first hour free on Mondays and Tuesdays, and there is only one bus in the morning so I have to go in at the normal time.  I decided one day last week that I was going to ride my bike to school so I didn’t have to get there so early.  It started out pretty good.  About half way I noticed that my tire was low on air so I called Johannes and asked if he could bring the air pump with so I could put air in at school.   I then continued on my way…. For a while.   It eventually came to a point where the tire was almost completely flat, but I was still a pretty good ways away from school and I wasn’t doing all that good on time so I just kept on going.  I made it into town and I made my first turn, I rode for another 10 meters and then the tire basically fell apart.  So I started to walk to school with my bike, since it was my first time biking I wasn’t 100% sure where I was going but I had a pretty good idea, because we have a crane at our school so I could see where it was.  I took a turn which I thought was correct, but of course it wasn’t so after walking 7 minutes I realized that I was going in the wrong direction so I turned around and went the other way, I did end up making it to school, I was 15 minutes late though.  When I walked in the teacher looked at his watch, than he gave me a weird look.  I just said that I biked to school and my bike broke on the way and he was like “yeah it’s whatever.”  So that was the one time that I rode my bike to school.

I went bowling last week, it was pretty normal, I am, surprisingly, as bad at bowling in Germany as I was in the US.  We played two games and I managed to get the amazingly high score of 52 in both games. 

On Tuesday, September 28th, my class (and the rest of the 10th grade) took a trip to the Kunsthalle in Hamburg.  Apparently Kunsthalle is the name of the museum because they had every other word translated into English, Kunsthalle literally translates to Art Gallery.  It was surprisingly boring.  I thought that it would at least have a possibility of being interesting but as soon as I got there I knew that that wasn’t going to happen.  I tried to pay attention, but it was loud, I was tired, and our tour guide was a little bit crazy.  We were there for 2 hours or so, and I’m pretty sure that we looked at a total of 5 pictures.  It was utterly boring.  After the tour, though, we were able to go in to the city.  So I went with Markus and a couple others to you guessed it, McDonalds, which is conveniently located in the Hauptbahnhof, a whole three minute walk from the Art Museum.

I went once again to a professional soccer game in Bremen.   I’m actually a fan of Bremen’s rival team but it’s still fun to go and watch; it’s better when Bremen loses though.

On September 18th, Johannes had a party for his 18th birthday.  I didn’t really know a whole lot of people there, but at the end of the night I had to of met 30 new people, the names of whom I immediately forgot, but that wasn’t really important.  I went at 10:00 and I left at 12:45, and I was dead, the party didn’t end though until 6:00 or so in the morning.

On September 26th, I was in Bremen for an exchange student meeting with YFU.  At first I didn’t really want to go, and when I got there I didn’t really want to be there, but at the end of the day I was super glad that I went.  It’s really a lot of fun to do things with other exchange students.  We pretty much just played games, ate (I brought brownies), and talked about what we liked and didn’t like about Germany so far, and we also talked about problems if we had any.  It’s really cool to be with 20 people that you’ve never met and the only language that you all have in common is German.  All in all it was a pretty good time, we’re meeting again sometime in the next two weeks for a mini-Oktoberfest type thing in Bremen, I think.

One of my favorite activities in Germany is sleeping!  I could seriously be on a competitive sleeping team.  Every day when I get home from school I eat lunch, and then I take a 1-2 hour nap.  It’s sooo nice, but after my nap I don’t really have the desire to do anything, which is a little bit of a problem. 

So I now watch a lot of Soccer, and I play soccer (badly), and all everybody ever talks about is Soccer.  So yeah I am a fan of der Hamburger SV (Hamburg Sport Association) and I’m the only person in my class that is a Hamburg fan everybody else is a Bremen fan.  I, at the moment, only go to Soccer practice, I don’t have a Player Pass yet, but besides shooting I’m not all that bad.  I’m a somewhat decent defender.  So I’m pretty happy about that, I’m not amazing yet but there is finally some improvement.  I go almost every Sunday and watch our local Ostereistedt team play, and they are actually really good.  At the sport club in town they have wurst and fries and a TV with all of the soccer games.  So it’s kind of a hangout spot in town on the weekends when there are big soccer games.   Oh, so here if you want to watch most of the soccer games you have to have a certain TV subscription, called Sky, and apparently it’s somewhat expensive so before last week we always had to go to the sport club to watch it.  Now, however, we have it at home, so we can watch every soccer game in most of Europe, and we now have ESPN America, and finally MTV, and some other channels which is nice because now I can watch more American shows. 

On the 24th of September my Betreuerin (Counselor) from YFU came.  She sat and talked to us and asked me how things were going and what not, she was actually here for two and a half hours, but it didn’t seem like that long.  I told her that everything was going good, and yeah.  Since I’m here on a special scholarship she has to call or meet with me at least once a month.
At first when I got here, I was having trouble controlling my spending, but there were a lot of things that I had to buy for school and where a lot more expensive than I thought they would be. Now, however as long as I can stay away from McDonalds, Pizza, and the Döner Man then my money lasts pretty good.  It is however tempting to spend it… :)

So in Germany the way we take tests is really weird.  We take usually two tests in a year.  In the last two weeks we’ve been taking all of the first tests, so in Geography we had the topic: America.  I thought that I did pretty good, then I got it back.   In Germany a 1 is perfect, and 6 is the worst, 5 is like a D-.  Anyway, he graded mine different than the others.  I actually got a 5, but since the only reason I did so bad was because of my Language barrier he gave me a 2+.   In art we were drawing.  I don’t draw.  So for our test we had to draw a part of a hand with as much detail as possible.  When she gave them back she said that I actually got a 5, but since I hadn’t ever done it before she gave me a 4.   I think that’s all that I’ve gotten back so far… But I’ve also taken Math, Music, German, and English; I take my religion test on Friday topic: Buddhism. 

On Saturday, October 2nd, I went to Hamburg to meet with Ashley Mikkola, one of the other exchange students that I know.  So I took a bus to a train to get to Hamburg, alone.  I was stressing out about that though like you wouldn’t believe, I didn’t sleep the night before I was so worried about it.  The busses and trains are very punctual.  So I wasn’t sure if I was going to have time to go from the bus, buy a train ticket, and have enough time to make the train.  Luckily I was able to buy the ticket for the bus and the train on the bus, so my stress level went way down after that.  We walked up and down the main shopping street (Hauptstraße) for a while, then we went into a few shops, and I bought a Hamburg Jersey (Thanks mama).  After that we went on a bus tour through the city, which was pretty cool, it was a good way to see the entire city.  Oh, so we went through the Red Light District, which was pretty interesting.  The main street through the red light district is called the Reeperbahn (pronounced Rape-r-bahn).  I guess it’s not a very good part of town, but didn’t look that bad to me and it actually had some tourist attractions.  I’m going to a concert on the Reeperbahn in November with my brothers.  After our bus tour we went to a steak house for lunch.  All I asked the waitress was if there was a bathroom, she said yeah and pointed to it.  Then she brought us menus.  After reading it for 5 minutes I realized that it was in English.  From my one sentence she was able to mark that I was a native English speaker.  I thought that was pretty good, but it also says a lot about my accent.  After we ate we went to Saturn, which is the largest electronics chain in Europe, as I learned on my bus tour.  I bought an Alarm clock.  At this point in the day we we’re pretty bored.  There is only so much you can do in Hamburg when you don’t have that much money to spend.  So we went and got some ice cream and drank some coffee.  Then we left.  My train ride back wasn’t nearly as stressful as the one there.   When I got home I ate, laid down for a little bit and then I went with Johannes to the Disco (the word for club) for the first time.  That was a good time, it was actually really cool, and a lot of fun, but I’m only allowed to stay out until 1:00, so that’s kind of a buzz kill, but at 1:00 I’m ready for bed anyway so it’s really not that bad.

On Sunday, October 10th, Andreas, Markus, and I are starting our bike tour.  We are starting in Wurzburg and we’re going for 5 days but I think we’re only biking for 4 of them.  Anyway we have to get up really early on Sunday to catch our train, which I’m not all that excited about but the bike trip should be a ton of fun. 

I take my ACT on October 23rd, I bought a study book, I have to find some time when I can use it though.  We’ll see how it goes; I’m hoping well, I’d prefer not to have to retake it.

I’m going on Saturday to a birthday party of one of the guys in my class, so that should be a good time, finally able to spend time with people in my class outside of school.

That is my life.  Questions?  Send me an E-mail or even better a letter! 

Junge!

So in the last two weeks my life has been pretty normal.
So yeah I went to a professional hockey game last Friday in Hamburg, it was fun.  We lost…bad…. But it was fun to go to; and surprisingly cheap.  I don’t really think I’ve done too much that’s all that exciting lately.  I went on a couple of bike rides, and I went running.  I meet a lot of new people and forget their names instantly.  I haven’t taken any pictures since I’ve been here.  That really is just an example of how I haven’t done anything exciting or seen anything cool…yet.  I’m sure I’ll do some stuff when we have break.

I go to school every day, I’m slowly starting to understand things at school, and I took my first test last week.
Besides school I haven’t really done a whole lot.

 I’m still attempting to play soccer.  Not really getting all the much better, but it’ll come eventually, I hope. 

I was reading “Apologize, Apologize!” by Elizabeth Kelly, which is the best book I’ve ever read I recommend it to everybody, then my host mom suggested I read it in German, so I went online and ordered up a copy, it came a few days later and now I’m reading it in German, “Die Verrückten Flanagan’s”, with a different title of course.  It’s good in German too!

I went last weekend to my grandparents’ house; they were having a grilling thing, so I’ve met the entire extended family now.  It was weird though because we were playing soccer in the yard and they were sitting on the patio talking, and I’m not sure if they thought I couldn’t hear them or it they thought I couldn’t understand them but they were totally talking about me.  I wasn’t really sure what they were saying but I would hear my name every once in a while then I would hear them say something that I knew was about me.  I don’t think they were saying bad things, asking questions.  Natural curiosity I guess.

The other day I was in town and I bought a watch, I really needed a watch, they don’t have clocks in the classroom so I never had any idea what time it was and it drove me crazy!  It’s a nice watch, I felt pretty special when I bought it.

During fall break we, Markus, Andreas, and I, are going on a bike tour for 3 or 4 days through Bavaria, so that should be pretty fun.  I guess they go like 70km a day (44 Miles) so well see if I can keep up with them.

Yesterday I went to a mall, and I bought a hoodie, a t-shirt, and some new shoes. It was a pretty good day; I also searched the aisles of a grocery store for some mountain dew, but I had no luck in finding it.  It was soo easy to buy in Hessen but here it’s actually hard to find.  So if I can find some I will probably buy all of it.  Later in the day I went to a fundraiser festival type thing at the church.  I played a couple of games, ate some cake, drank some coffee, and rang the church bell, then I hit a wall and wanted to go home; but as we were getting ready to go, my mom saw some people she knew (I’m actually pretty sure she knew every single person there) so we stopped and talked to them for a while.  Everybody asks me the same questions, which is nice, I always know how to answer but it gets a little boring, I want them to ask me some exciting questions.   Oh and yesterday we were sitting at the table drinking our coffee when this guy that they knew came and sat down and started asking me where I was from.  He first asked if I was from Mexico, when I told him no he asked if I was from Brazil or South America, when I told him no I was from Minnesota he asked me if I had ancestors from Mexico.  It was really funny.  I told him that I come from Norway and he couldn’t believe it.  Like he completely thought that I was lying to him.  Then he went on telling me how much he hated the United States and how he would never, in his entire life, go to the US.  It was very fun for me to sit there and listen to that; especially because I had to be polite.

This was really short, and relatively boring.  I’ll have to start writing down what I’ve done again, I forget things like that really fast.  Life is going good, however.

die Geschwindigkeitsbegrenzungszone

So yeah, it’s been a long time, and a lot has happened…. So I’ll try to remember it all so I can write about it.

First off…. Saturday August 14th, 2010: My host family and I went to this super awesome castle in Runneburg (I think that’s how you spell it). Afterwards we drove to a town called Gelnhausen, which was really cool, it was very stereotypical Germany looking. On the way home I met with some of my other Exchange Student friends at the train station, and we took the train to Fulda to see a movie. We saw Eclipse, which is as good in German as in English. The movie theaters are weird though. The popcorn is sweet. It’s like kettle corn, but even sweeter; but it’s still pretty good. Plus everything is super expensive, and they sell beer, and weird nacho things. Ha. While I was in Fulda I also bought a wallet, because I decided I’d had enough with all of the coins falling out of my pocket all of the time.

Sunday August 15th, 2010: My host family and I went to Wurzburg, which is the prettiest city I’ve seen so far. I like it a lot, we went into this super giant castle, and then into the place where the royalty actually lived, which was crazy because it took them I think five (5) years to build the structure itself and then sixty (60) years to finish the inside.

Tuesday August 17th, 2010: I came home and my host mom told me that she got a letter from the German customs saying that my package got stopped and that I had to go and pick it up; which wasn’t really a big deal. I also learned a super long word: die Geschwindigkeitsbegrenzungszone, which means ‘speed limit zone’.

Wednesday August 18th, 2010: We, the exchange students, went to the Rathaus (City Hall) and met with the mayor (Bürgermeisterin) which was pretty cool.

Thursday August 19th, 2010: We were in the newspaper; it had an article (which I still haven’t read) about who we were and why we were always so loud when we walked through the town. Also on Thursday we went into a couple of class rooms, and observed how school in Germany worked. Thursday night we had a going away party for ourselves, haha.

Friday August 20th, 2010: So on Friday we made a year book type thing, we all wrote a page for it and we put in a bunch of pictures and stuff, and we signed them on Friday since it was our last day of school together. After we made those we made some cards for people in town, such as the Baker that let us observe him, and brought those to people. Then the teachers decided that we needed to take a 20 minute uphill walk, which was a ton of fun, to a watch out tower thing that was above the town; it ended up being really cool. After that we went back to the school and went into one of the English classes for an hour and a half and made a poster thing with the Germans, it was weird, but it was fun. We somehow ended up outside again, and when we were going in the music teacher was sitting outside with six (6) guitars and he asked if we wanted to learn a song, so we all played the guitar a little bit and we sang a song. When we went back inside we all sat together in a circle and passed around a copy of “Oh the Places You’ll Go” and we all took turns reading aloud from it. After that the teachers gave us our big surprise, which was our Schultütes, which is basically a really big paper cone filled with candy that they give to little kids on their first day of school ever year. Then us exchange students went to the Eis café together for one last time, walked to the bus stop, and said goodbye to each other for the last time. Which was hard. It’s crazy to think that you can make so good of friends in four (4) short weeks.

Saturday August 21st, 2010: Saturday morning I was up bright and early to finish up my packing and what not. I left the house for the last time at 09:30, and I was on the train at 10:08. There were supposed to be four of us on the train together, but when we got on there were only three of us, but we thought the fourth was just going to be getting on at the next stop because it would’ve been closer for him; but he didn’t get on. So when we got to our stop where we caught our connecting train, we searched for him but had no luck. My friend Ashley and I had to get on our train, so we left our friend Stella alone on the Platform, without her travel companion whose name her ticket was in. When Ashley and I got on the train we tried to find our seats, which we had reserved. We passed them but didn’t know that at the time, so we just kept walking and finally decided we were just going to stop and wait, and grab a seat when somebody got out at the next stop. Well the next stop came and nobody got out, so we went again on the search for our seats. We came to mine first, so I kicked the guy that was sitting there out, at sat down. Ashley went to find her seat which was in the next wagon. I did then talk to Stella and she said that she did eventually find the missing David, and they had no other problems on their trip, besides a 45 minute delay due to a cow on the tracks. At one of the stops everybody in my little room thing got out so I called Ashley and told her to come. Later on the controller (ticket checker) came by and asked us all for our tickets. YFU sent us all our tickets but apparently they didn’t send Ashley hers because she went through her entire folder and there was no ticket, and what she thought was her ticked was actually just her seat reservation confirmation. So she had to buy a ticket, but she got a good deal on it since we lied to the guy. The ride was pretty uneventful after that. I rode for about an hour longer and then I got out in Hamburg and got on to a regional train which took me to the town where my host family was picking me up. …and they were there.
The new host family is fantastic. I have my own room here, which I didn’t have at the other, it’s not really all that big of a deal but it is nice. Parents are very nice (Heike and Andreas), and the kids are great (Christoph, Johannes, Markus). My brother, Johannes, speaks fluent English but we don’t speak English to each other, so it’s nice that I never got used to speaking English here. When I got home I took a nap, then got up and ate dinner, and went back to bed. After a fun filled day of spending 6 hours on a train I was dead.

Sunday August 22nd, 2010: On Sunday we went to church in the morning, I understood most of what was going on and what was being said, but it was still boring. I don’t think it’s possible to make church fun. After that I went with Markus and Christoph to a soccer game, in which Johannes was playing. Later that night we went to a going away party for one of their family friends who is going to the US for a year as an exchange student on the third of September. I also played soccer for the first time on Sunday.
Monday August 23rd, 2010: First day of school. Let me give you an example of how much I understood: my first class was Latin 5, So yeah I didn’t understand one thing the entire day, plus I didn’t have any books, or notebooks or anything, I was very unprepared. The good news was that all of the kids in my class are super nice. I’m in the class 10N1, which is one of the four, 10th grade classes. My brother, Markus, is in 10N2. I have 14 subjects. They are as follows.

Monday: French, Music, Gym, Gym, Math, German, Physics
Tuesday: French, Biology, German, Geography, History, and Chemistry.
Wednesday: Politics, English, Math, Biology, Art, Art, Chemistry, French.
Thursday: Music, Physics, Politics, Geography, German, French, Religion.
Friday: History, Math, Math, Religion, English, English.

Also on Monday I went with my host mom to the bank and finally opened a bank account so that I can get more money and not have to carry cash. I’m glad I brought cash with me though since it is impossible to use a credit card here. So in like a week I’ll be getting a EC card, which stands for Electronic Cash, the accept that card EVERYWHERE but not credit cards, and it kind of ticks me off. I then went to soccer practice. Well, yeah I sucked. A lot. But I had fun, so I will continue with it I think.

Tuesday August 24th, 2010: Second day of school. I didn’t understand anything again; until my last class… Chemistry. Oh how I love chemistry. I completely love what we’re currently learning so it’s super easy for me and all of the other kids in my class think I’m some kind of Genius because I can understand it. After school everyday my mom has lunch made for us, so as we’re eating my mom tells Markus that he got a letter from YFU and so he opened it up and it said the he was accepted to be an exchange student in the US next year. So he was pretty excited, I was pretty excited too. Tuesday was also Johannes’ 18th birthday, but their dad was in Köln on Tuesday so we drove to Bremen and met him for dinner at this Brazilian restaurant. It was super delicious, the only problem with it was that they brought you more food every 3 minutes, so I was full super fast. But it was good.

Wednesday August 25th: I finally got my school books, and I was pretty happy because I didn’t have to pay for them, usually you have to rent them but they were nice and just gave them to me. Yeah, my English skills are waning. I try to write emails and stuff but the words are very hard for me to find, so at the moment there are a lot of words that I cannot say in English or in German.

Thursday August 26th: On Thursday I felt a little better at school. I finally had all of my books and most of my supplies that I needed, but not quite all of them. So after school my mom and I went into town, I needed to register as a resident. So yeah, I am now an official full pledged resident of Ostereistedt, Germany. Anyway, after that we went to Aldi. After Aldi we went to a school supply store, so I bought a Pencil bag (?) (Hamburg SV) and some colored markers. I also bought my very first fountain pen; Fountain pens are a super big deal in Germany, and they are also really cool, but really expensive. You can write with them, or attempt, it’s quite difficult, and then you have a special marker with which you can erase the ink and then rewrite over it, it’s really awesome. I still become covered in ink when I use it but I’m sure that I will eventually learn. Later on Thursday I registered to take the ACT on October 23rd in Bremen. I wanted to take it as early as I could so my English would still be good, but we’ll see it’s waning quickly. Also, highlight of the day, we bought tickets to see Jimmy Eats World in Hamburg on November 5th.

Friday August 27th, 2010: So on Friday I finally had English. It was weird. It was actually a chore for me to speak English. The teacher asked me a question in English, and I started to answer in German and he said no speak English, so I tried to but for what I was trying to say I couldn’t put a sentence together in English. It was also kind of hard to understand because it is a mix of British and American, so I’m not really 100% sure what the book is always talking about. The teacher wasn’t very good either, I think his English is just a little bit better than the students, he asked me a bunch of questions about if you could say certain things. Friday was also the first day that I had to ride the bus home alone. So I got on what I thought was my bus, then two minutes later as we were pulling out I was like ‘crap this isn’t my bus’ so the bus driver let me off, then I got onto the bus that I thought was the right one and I asked the bus driver if she was going to Ostereistedt, she told me that the bus that I had just gotten off of was the one that went there. She was nice though and radioed the other bus driver and they met up so I could get back on the right bus, the original bus driver was a little angry and asked me if I could read. I thought that was kind of rude. As I’m writing this I’m getting ready to go to a going away party… more on that later…Perhaps?

General notes about Germany:
I’m not exactly sure yet how it is here, but in the south you are no safer on the sidewalk then you are in the middle of the road. When there is somewhere they want to go and there is only a sidewalk that goes there, you’d better bet they are driving on the sidewalk. I’m pretty sure that we drove straight through a park last weekend.

I had something else to add, but I can’t remember it at the moment.

If you’d like to send me some mail I’d love that. Send it to the address exactly as it’s written below.
James Sullivan
Bei: Familie Meyer
Landstr. 25
27404 Ostereistedt
Germany

Eclipse ins Kino....auf Deutsch

So, it's been a really really long time since I've updated my blog but I've been a pretty busy guy, so cut me some slack.  I've done a lot in the last, how long has it been, like a week? 

Last Friday, August 6th.
So everyday in Germany it rains. It's almost a guarantee.  So my host family let me borrow an umbrella, on Friday I was sitting on the bus, and I was super tired.  I set the umbrella on the seat next to me.  When we finally got to our stop, I got off of the bus, and started walking towards the school.  It was raining.  So I thought "I'm pretty sure I had an umbrella earlier"  then I realized that I left it on the bus.  So I was pretty ticked.  I went after school any bought two umbrella's.  One for me and one for my host family.  I got home and it wasn't really a big deal to them.  Then I told them how much the umbrella's cost, and they told me that I paid way to much for them.
There was a thing, I think it was called Disco am Straße (Disco on the street), in a town called Aufenau, which is like 20-ish minutes from where I live.  So all of the Exchange students decided that we were gonna go together, since disco's are super popular in Germany, and see what it was like.   We'd been planning for the entire week, since the buses didn't run late enough we had to make other arrangements to get there and home.  The night finally did come, however.  I left home with my brother Christopher around 9:38 p.m., we stopped and picked up some other people and drove to the Disco.  We had already purchased our tickets.  But that didn't really matter because we still had to wait in line for like 10 minutes when we got there.  When we finally got to the front of the line they gave everybody a wrist band.  --In Germany there are two different drinking ages: at 16 you can drink beer and wine; at 18 you can drink everything else-- So they check your ID and if you're 16 you get a red wrist band and if you're 18 you get a green one.  Well it just so happens that they didn't check my ID or ask me how old I was they just threw a green wrist band on my arm; I'm totally only 16.  So I walked in found my friends, and decided to buy a drink.  I went up to the 'bar' (this is all inside of a tent) and saw the bartender mixing something with coke, I had no idea what it was but I decided I wanted one.  So I got it, went back to our 'table' and took a sip.  At first I thought it was the worst thing I'd tasted in my entire life.  But I kept on drinking it, by the time I was finished I decided that it wasn't really all that bad.  So I was gonna go and get another one buy my friend told me that I should just try a beer instead.  So I got the cheapest beer I could, which was a pilsner.  I walked outside, and took a sip.  I thought the other drink was bad, but I'm now positive that the beer I had was the worst thing I've ever tasted in my entire life.  So I finished that, after like half an hour, and decided to get something else.  I ended up getting a weizenbier ( which isn't as bitter) mixed with cola; and that's what I drank for the rest of the night.  Everybody else left at about 12:45, but since I was the only one that wasn't spending the night in Aufenau, I had to wait for my brother.  I was chillin' with some new German people that I had met, when he found me and said that we we're going to leave.  We then entered the tent where we stayed for like 45 more mintues.  I did finally make it home by 2:30, and I was completely dead. 

Saturday, August 7th.
After I finally woke up I ate breakfast and got ready.  Soon after that we were out the door.  --Checkpoint Charlie, is a place in Berlin where you could cross the border between East and West Germany--  Our first stop of the day was at Point Alpha, which was a US Military border patrol zone.  It was a ton of fun.  When we got there we toured the American's base and went up in the watch tower and through the barracks and whatnot.  Then we went out to the border.  The actual border.  With all of the original stuff.  The actual border markers, which look really cool, the border fence, and an East German border patrol road.  So we walked along that for a while and we saw an East German watchtower, and then some of the other border fences that they used.  Then we went into a museum that had all of the East German stuff.  It had uniforms, and vehicles, and guns, and also another part of the actual border fence, completely unaltered.  That was probably the coolest part of the day.  After we walked through that we went into another room that had a bunch of hypocritical quotes from East German officials, which we actually really funny.  When we walked out I saw this big blue thing, so I went over to it, and to my surprise it was a piece of the Berlin wall.  It was super cool, and I was able to get a picture of it. 

When we left point alpha(it's cool when you drive over the border, there are signs that say that there used to be a border there and what time it opened at that point.), we went to lunch and then on to the highest point in Hessen.  Which was a complete surprise to me, but it was a lot of fun. We hiked to the top, where I was able to get some super awesome photo's.  Then we went down a little and my brother Max and I went on a summer luge, which was a lot of fun.  Then we went home, I was going to go to another party on Saturday night but we ended up having dinner with my Grandma, they asked me if I wanted to go after that but I was super tired from all of the walking that I had done that day, so I decided to just stay home.

Sunday, August 8th.
I got up, as always.  We went to Bavaria.  We toured a castle.  It was pretty cool, the guide spoke English and German so I was able to understand everything.  There were also two other people there who only spoke English, they were from Australia, and they were pretty nice.  That's pretty much all that I did on Sunday.  I did go to church on Sunday night, yeah they have night service's, which may have been more interesting but I had a pretty bad headache so I wasn't really trying very hard to comprehend what was being said.

Monday, August 9th.
My YFU rep for the month lives in the same town as I go to school, and her parents own a butcher shop, so we eat there everyday.  Anyway, on Monday we went and took a tour of the butcher shop (butchery?) which was pretty cool.  Didn't really understand a whole lot of it.  We did get to see some pig heads that were cut in half though, and we got to wear some really awesome clothes.  After school I went with my brothers to the 'grocery store' to try and find some food that I could make for them that would be very American.  As I'm walking through the aisle I see a green bottle.  I walk over to it, and to my surprise it's Mountain Dew, which is pretty hard to find in Germany.  I asked my host brothers and they both said that they hadn't tried it.  So I bought some, as a gift for all of us.  My headphones, that I use to call people, finally died after two years so I ordered some new ones.

Tuesday, August 10th.
Tuesday was a very boring day.  The only thing that happened that is worth mentioning is that I went to an Opera.  I guess it was a pretty famous Opera, but that didn't really matter to me.  I was very bored and I couldn't understand anything that they were saying.  So at the intermission we decided to leave.  It was free since we were exchange students.

Wednesday, August 11th.
On Wednesday I did a lot of stuff.  I took the train for the first time, from my town to Fulda, which is about 38 minutes on the train.  The train that we took, however, was a slow one; the train that I'm taking on Saturday (21st) goes 300kph (186mph) and the one that I was on, on Wednesday went probably 65 or 70 mph.  It was however a lot of fun, and cool to see how everything worked.  So anyway we all went to Fulda for the day.  When we got there we did a Stadtrally (City rally?, kind of like a scavenger hunt) which was pretty cool.  We went in to a really old church that is called der Dom, it was super cool and super pretty.  After that we went into the old city castle.  Which was cool to see don't get me wrong, but the tour itself was soooo boring.  There wasn't anything in any of the rooms at the castle so it totally could've been a lot more interesting.  After that we climbed 1,000,000 stairs (yes I counted) to a turret type thing where we were able to get a super awesome view of the entire city.  We then ate lunch.  After lunch we broke up into groups.  We walked for a while then we went into this store that is called Karstadt.  It's basically like a really big walmart, it had everything.  The biggest difference was that everything there was really nice.  So we went up to the top floor and looked at movies and cd's.  I thought it was weird that you could buy a movie for 12 Euro, but a cd cost 18 Euro or more.  Kind of backwards.  We were at the store for a pretty good amount of time, I as the only person that bought anything, what did I buy do you ask?  Nail clippers.  My host family doesn't have any, they use these nail scissors that are very hard to use.  We were then going to go and get ice cream but we somehow ended up going to another store to try on Lederhosen.  I didn't try them on because we only had 15 minutes before we had to meet at the train station.  After the lederhosen we went back to Karstadt to buy German wallets, yes they are that different. I didn't have enough cash with me to buy one, which is probably a good thing.  Then we started walking back towards the train station, and being the stereotypical Americans that we are we decided to stop at McDonalds.  Which would've been find, except half of our group was unsuccessful with ordering in German so they had to do English.  We got on the train after that, and about half way though, David, another exchange student, asked us if we had his camera.  So yeah he lost it, but our teachers were nice enough to call the stores for him and they did end up finding it.  When I got off of the train we went to another grocery store, I was looking around and I found some oreo's, which my host family had also not tried, so I bought some.  It was great because on Wednesday I made them homemade 'American' hamburgers and fries, and the Oreo's were a great American dessert.  Also on Wednesday I decided that I really didn't want to have to bring all of my luggage with me on a train so my host mom told me that I could just ship my luggage and they YFU sent them a sheet with a webaddress.  So I looked and it only cost me 17 euro to have my luggage picked up from my house on Tuesday and dropped off at my next house by next Friday, a lot easier than dragging it through a bunch of train stations.

Thrusday, August 12th.
Didn't do anything.  I wrote some letters and did some homework, but I didn't really leave the house after I got home from School.  My headphones did come though, so that was pretty exciting.

Friday, August 13th.
On Friday at school we went to a bakery.  The teachers had told us not to expect anything special as it was a really small bakery.  It ended up being the highlight of my life.  It was so much fun.  We got to see how they made everything, and we got to help them.  We made cinnamon rolls, and these other things that had custard in them.  We did some other stuff too.  After the rolls came out of the oven we frosted them and they told us that we could all take one of each of the things that we made.  So that was super nice of them, and it was also really delicious. My friend David, asked the guy if he could go and work with them on Monday from 3-7:00 a.m., and he told him that he could, so we'll have to see if he actually does.  After that we went back to school and did some boring learning.  After school I got on the bus and the bus driver (who is a super nice guy) had my umbrella that I had lost the Friday before, so that was super awesome.  When I got home I kind of just wanted to be alone so I went up stairs to watch tv and before I knew it, it was 6:30.  So I went down stairs and ate dinner, and then I went through all of my clothes and brought all of the stuff that I wouldn't be wearing last night upstairs.  Then we went on a walk with the dog, so I am now super confident walking though the city alone.  When I got back I went up and packed my suit case, and weighed it.  So yeah I'm pretty much prepared for next weekend. 

Tomorrow, Saturday the 14th,
We're going to a few places, one of which is a castle I believe.   Then I'm meeting some people at the train station and we're taking the train to Fulda again to see Eclipse in German.  Which should be a lot of fun.

One thing that I'm not really very happy about is that my school started on August 5th, so I have to start two weeks late.  Oh, and I apparently mis-read my blink-182 tour dates because I looked again last night and they are totally playing in Hamburg on the 24th, which is 3 days after I get there, but I asked my host brothers, and none of them like blink-182, and I'm not gonna go alone, so that was kind of a disappointment.  I did however find out that a German band that I like, called Sportfreunde-Stiller, is playing in Hamburg on my birthday so I'll have to ask my brothers if they'd be interested in going to that with me.

That's basically been my life for the last week.  I would upload pictures, but the internet here is slow so it takes me like 20 minutes per photo.  They are all on facebook anyway.   This took me over an hour and a half to write so you should appreciate it.

Brothers Grimm

Saturday, we had the birthday party for my host grandma.  Let me just say this.  Family gatherings are painful to begin with, then throw in the fact that it's not actually your Family, then it's just awkward; and to top it all off you can't understand any of these people, so yeah I'd prefer not to do that again.  Besides the awkward not knowing anybody it was ok though.  Food was good.  I did however grab what I thought was orange juice, took a drink of it and it definitely was not orange juice, but instead champagne mixed with orange juice, it was good I just wasn't expecting it.  After we ate, and had ice cream of course, we went for a walk(?) to an outdoor foot spa (which are apparently very common here, it's the third one I'd been to) where you basically walk on a bunch of different surfaces (wood chips, broken clay shingles, sand, etc.) and then you walk through a long trough of really cold water, and it's supposed to do wonders for your feet and make you live longer(?).  We then went back to the restaurant where there was an actress "from" the 14th century who had a bunch of vegetables and gave them to people as she made fun of them I guess, I couldn't understand her for multiple reasons; but I guess she was hilarious, I was the only one in the room not laughing.  After she left we had cake, there was 13 different kinds, all but 1 with fruit (which I don't like in pastry's) so I decided to just have some banana cake.  It was delicious.  Then it really slowed down and we kind of just sat there for a while, then we started playing a game called  'Wer bin Ich?' (who am I?) where somebody else puts a sticker on your head with 'your' name on it and you have to ask yes or no questions to figure out who you are.  I won, I guessed who I was four times.  Then went home and kind of just sat around, the nights go by really really fast.

Really old building

Entrance to the cave

Inside the cave

Today, Sunday, I was awoken by the sound of the fire department siren (basically a tornado siren) that they use to call the fire department, crazy I know, because some lady went missing in the next town a few days ago.  I got up and got ready, and after being ready for about 2 hours we finally made it out of the house and went to Steinau a.d.Str. (Steinau an der Straße) which is the hometown of the Brothers Grimm (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brothers_Grimm) who are famous for going around and collecting folk tales and publishing them, there was totally a movie made about them like two years ago.  So I got to see a lot of really old and really well preserved stuff, as well as see where they lived.  It was a pretty good time, I also had my first Döner which is kind of like a gyro, but not really. ha.  It was really good.  After lunch we went to a limestone cave, that was really cool, I didn't understand the tour at all but it was cool to see.  That concludes my adventures for Sunday.  

Some other notes....
I have perfected the art of wearing the same clothes multiple times before rewashing them, which is weird at first, but it's actually really convenient.  Also, last night I purchased a phone number through skype that you can call and talk to me on, you'll probably get the machine most of the time, but if you leave a message I'll be sure and call you back.  The number that you're gonna want to call is (612) 293-4299 it's a local call if you're in Minnesota. I totally had something else to write about but I'm completely forgetting it right now.  I really don't like the coins.  They're all really small denomination, and everything always costs more than you have in coins and the smallest bill is a 5 so you always get a bunch of coins back anyway, so I right now have a huge pile of coins on the desk that adds up to 1.32 Euro.  The bottles are also kind of a hassle, because when they're empty you have to still carry them with you, because when you buy them you pay an extra 15-50 cents to pfand, which you get back when you bring the bottle back; so there is no throwing them away.

But that's basically my life so far, 9 days of my year on complete, but it feels like it's been a lot more than that.
Until next time, Tschüß!

First Beer

Also, yesterday after school I was totally dead, but instead of taking a nap (which I'm not really allowed to do) I went with my family to a bierfestival  in a town called Lohr a.M. (am Main), which is in Bavaria, we went in to the super huge beer garden tent and sat down, looked at the menu, which is very hard to do in a different country because you really have no idea what anything is, but luckily Caro was with us so she explained to auf Englisch what everything was.  So I ended up ordering a Radler, which is a beer with citrus, (later came to find out that it was actually half beer and half lemonade) and it was really good.  It was one Liter, and of the four of us, me and three Germans, I finished mine first so I felt pretty accomplished.  For dinner I had the most typical thing that you can have in Germany especially in Bavaria; Currywurst mit Pommes, and ein Brezeln.  It was super delicious, a lot better than I thought it was going to be.  One thing that is really weird is that everybody eats everything with a fork, I had fries.  I ate them with my hands for a while until I noticed that everybody else was using a fork, then of course I started using my fork, but it really just made it harder.  After we ate (and waited half an hour for everybody to go to the bathroom?) we went out and it was pretty much like a county fair, but not as many rides, but equally if not more dangerous.  We walked around for a while then we came upon a little stand that was selling chocolate covered stuff, so I went up, alone, and pointed to what I thought looked the best, didn't understand what the lady said to me, three times, then paid and walked away;  When I took my first bite I was surprised to find that it was chocolate covered hazelnuts (which I hate) that I had just paid 2.50 Euro for, but I was a trooper and I finished the whole thing.  We continued to walk (it was really small but we apparently just walked slow) and then went and played a game, I won a flower?   Then we went to a novelty tee-shirt shop and I bought one as a gift for someone, it's pretty funny.  My little host brother, Max, then said that he wanted to go on the bumper cars, so I said I'd ride along with him.  Let me tell ya', they are super dangerous in Germany.  In the USA when you're in a bumper car you have to fully seated, and buckled in; not in Germany.  You can totally be standing in the car and nobody would say anything to you.  Also there wasn't a fence or anything around the Track(?) so anybody could totally just walk through whenever they wanted while the ride was going.  Despite the danger it was really fun.  Then we left.

The Beers

Me with my first beer

Currywurst mit Pommes

Today at school we had a scavenger hunt which was a lot of fun, but it was the one day in the entire week that I wore pants and it was also the only day that it was hot and sunny.  So I was a little uncomfortable but it didn't totally ruin my day.  We went all around Bad Orb (which is where my school is, about 10-14 minutes away) it was a lot of fun, we got to talk to a lot of different people and see pretty much the entire town; and everybody was super nice to us, which is always a plus.  We eventually just gave up on the scavenger hunt after looking a for a bakery for a half hour.  But we went in to a few stores, I bought some super delicious chocolate, and then went to a bookstore where I was going to buy Breaking Dawn in German but it was really big, really hard to read, and most importantly really expensive.   So I instead bought three mini children's books, and one book which is narrated in German and has the dialogue in English.  Then we went to lunch, and back to school, which was really a drag, I thought...  We did the thing where you have an egg on a spoon and have to do an obstacle course, which was fun, then we went inside and up the three flights of stairs (which really suck) and made a collage of what we think Germany looks like in our minds using pictures from magazines. 

 My scavenger hunt group

After school I went to the bus station and got on the bus as I always do, but then like 1.5 km from home there was a bunch of anti nuclear energy people biking on the street like 150 so we had to stop for like 5 minutes and wait for them to get out of the way.  When I did finally make it home I was welcomed by two packages for me, one containing my new handy and the other with my new plug converters.  I threw the sim card in my Handy and walked to the store to buy a notebook and some candy.  Got back and decided that I should probably clean up the giant mess that had some how formed on my bed, and in the process I put some stuff in my video camera bag;  Which was lucky because when I opened it I was pleased to find my long lost plug converters that I thought were taken from my bag by the TSA sitting on top.  So I went from having no converters this morning to now having 4.  Pretty good day I'd say.

Tomorrow morning we're going to a party for my host mom's mom's (my host grandma's) 80th birthday, but it's really early, like 11:30 and it goes until 16:00.  After that though, I have zero idea what we're doing. 

If anything interesting happens I'll be sure to post something about it.  Tschüß!

In dem Eis Cafe!

So today, I went to school again, naturally.  This morning, however, I was in my room, putting on my hoodie, and my host mom came in and said, you have to go Christopher is gonna be late, and I asked her where he was, she said he was already in the car.  Ha.  I felt bad that I had him waiting, but I had no idea, had he had said something, then I of course would've been ready on time.

When we got off the bus (Rosemary, David, and I) we had a half hour before we had to be at the school so we decided to walk around the MarktPlatz (town square) for a while we came upon a bäckerei (bakery) and went in (which is a very German thing to do in the morning, so we felt pretty cool) and saw this pastry that looked super delicious so we just had to have one, it ended up being an apfelstrudel (apple strudel) und es war lecker!

School is pretty boring though, one of my teachers is very strict and doesn't really let us have a lot of fun while in class so it gets old really really fast.  But the other is a lot of fun, and is glad to answer all of our questions. 

At school yesterday we decided that we were all gonna go to the Eis Cafe (ice cream parlor) after school today.  So we all asked our host parents and checked the bus schedule to make sure we would be able to catch a bus home.  So today at school we were all super excited to go out in the city with out anybody to babysit us.  We went to the Eis Cafe and ate our Eis, and it was super delicious by the way.  But after that it was only 16:00 (04:00 for you Americans) and our bus didn't come until 17:27, so we walked around for a while but it isn't all that big of a city so there wasn't really that much to do, especially when you don't know anybody, or anything to do, or speak any German.  So we decided that we were just gonna walk to the bus station and wait for the bus, but I had to stop at the post office first, where we had another adventure with the automated stamp machine.  Then I was like, I want a drink, so we went to the store and I bought a Mezzo Mix, which is a mix of coke and orange fanta, it was good. Then we went to the bus station, and waited half an hour for the bus, when the bus arrived we asked the bus driver, as always, if he was going to stop in Mernes (where Rosemary and I live) and he said no(even though he was going straight through it), that the bus to Mernes didn't come for another hour; it did however go to the town where David lives so he left.  Then Rosemary and I were just sitting there, and it started to storm, so we went in the little house thing that they have at bus stops (there were some middle easterners that were like dancing in the rain in the street, it was weird) but the roof of it leaked so it was just dumb.  My bus did eventually come though, but I forgot my iPod at home so I had to ride it alone without music (Rosemary's parents were coming to Bad Orb so they told her to wait there).  But the night was very laid back, showered, ate, and talked with my brothers.

I've definitely noticed that I'm having a lot more trouble with my English however.  All of us Americans speak English with each other, just because it is faster and easier for us. But when we're talking at lunch, it takes me a long time to think of words, and yesterday it took me 10 minutes to come up with the word aggressive.  So yeah it's weird how fast my English skills are waning,    I no longer have to translate everything that is said to me, or what I say, it just comes out, which is really really nice, last night I talked to my host parents for 3 hours or so and it was soo easy for me.  It's really like English is now the foreign language that I really have to think about, not that my German is perfect or anything, it still needs a lot of work.  For my homework last night I had to write a summary of something, and I would be writing in English and then I would re-read what I had written and half way through the thought it switched over to German and I totally didn't even notice that I was writing it in German, it was cool be weird.

But that's enough for today, tomorrow should be pretty boring so I might not post anything, my camera will not longer be coming to school with me, the screen got damaged somehow today and I'm not very happy about it.  Egal.  Tschüß!

This is me posing with my ice cream