So sometime in mid-January, not 100% positive on the date, Christoph, Markus, Lennart, and I went to Hannover to watch our hockey team, The Hamburg Freezers, play. Which would have been super awesome, had they not of lost 0-5. Although they lost it was still a lot of fun to go and watch them play an away game.
During the last two weeks of January the house was very quiet. Johannes was gone on a ski trip in Austria, and a few days before he came home Andreas left for a 10-day trip in Brazil. It was actually nice to have them gone for a few days, as the two of them are somewhat hectic, but after a few days it was boring here with out them. So on the 22nd when Johannes came home I was pretty excited to see him again. We picked him up from the bus station on our way to a party. As soon as he got in the car I thought to myself "Maybe it was [doch] better with out Johannes around". After a week of skiing and entire day in a bus back home, he wasn't in his best mood ever. So we continued on our way to the party. Finding the house was our first adventure. Markus and I walked through the 'town' looking for the house, but couldn't find it, so then we asked some random guy that was standing outside, who told us where it was. 'Twas a birthday party for three girls from my class.
The next day Heike and I went to a YFU get together in Bremen. As always, it was a lot better than I had expected. It's actually really cool, I think, to hear the problems that the other exchange students have, becuase then I feel super extra lucky to have such an amazing family here. For the meeting I made Chocolate Chip Cookies! And almost all of them turned out, somehow some of them got a little burned in the oven, so they didn't look all that appealing, but you couldn't really taste the difference. The cookies were a big hit, especially among the former exchange students to the US.
A few days after the YFU get together I booked a few trips. My traveling plans for the rest of the year are as follows:
- Dresden(YFU) with Markus; March 6th-11th
- Munich with Johannes; April 19th-22nd
- London with Christoph; April 25th-28th
- Berlin (YFU); May 24th-27th
The end of January I received the information for my return flight to the US. I leave Frankfurt at 11:00 on Friday, July 8th and I land in D.C. at 14:00. My flight from D.C. to Minneapolis is still in planning but I'll most likely be landing at MSP at around 20:45 on the 8th. The current plan after that is that Christoph will fly in to Minneapolis on July 18th, and they we want to do a little sight seeing before school starts again.
On the 28th I was at another Birthday party, from two guys in my class. Horst and Tim. The party was great. Probably the best party I've been to since being here.
The next day Lennart was here. We watched soccer and then played PS3 for a while, before the three of us decided to break my video camera out of the case that it's been sitting in for the last 6 months and make some videos. The videos are actually super funny, but not necessarily something that should be made public. I also attempted to skype my parents that night but the connection was crappy so the video didn't work very well. The next day I was up early for a 5,8km run through town, that is apparently in a different town every weekend in winter. That evening Andreas came back from Brazil. It was cool to see him again, 10 days is a seemingly long time.
That Monday I started working on my PSEO application(if your not from Minnesota, you don't know what that is), which is no easy task while living in a different country. I do, however, have a pretty good support team back home in MN that are helping me out with everything. That evening I went with Lennart, and York (from my class) to see 'The Green Hornet' which I'm pretty sure is one of the worst movies I've ever seen, but it was fun anyway. It was a little weird though, since Lennart and York didn't know each other, so I was kind of back and forth the whole time between who I was talking to.
On Tuesday I was up early again as we went to Grandma and Grandapa's for the day. We didn't leave punctually, but that never happens, so we got there a few minutes late, ate lunch, had some coffee, and then Johannes and I were on our way to pick up the cousins for a day in Oldenburg. In Oldenburg we ended up just shopping the entire day. Johannes and I were both on the hunt for a sweater, but neither of us had any luck in finding one. I did find a shirt though. Yeah, it was surprisingly exhausting though. Afterward it was back to Grandma's to pick up Heike, then quick back home to make it to Youth Group in time.
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| Castle - Oldenburg |
On Friday February 4th, I went with my class to Hamburg to see Romeo and Juliet. I like Romeo and Juliet a lot and I know the story pretty darn well so I was excited about it. We arrived in Hamburg about an hour and a half early so we were allowed to go into the city and whatnot. I went with a few kids from my class first to the train station, to which none of them had been beforehand, which I thought was a little weird, then we went into the city, and again, none of them knew their way around. But I did, so I felt pretty dang cool. We ended up at McDonalds before heading back to the theater. The play was pretty good. I found it a little too modern. Instead of tights and whatnot, the characters went around in Suits, and superman costumes. The message was the same, but it was a little strange to watch. One of the really cool things about the play was that it was like a 'Deaf Night' so there were a bunch of deaf people there and there were two sign language translators on the stage the whole time, so I basically just watched them the whole time becuase it was really cool! There was another school class sitting in the row behind ours, but they were really rude, they were talking the whole time and it was pretty darn annoying. In the intermission I wanted to buy a bottle of water, yeah it was totally 2,50 Euro! and was only 0,2 Liters. But it was still a super good water.
On Saturday I went with Manu, our youth group coordinator, and Miriam(...) to a church festival thing. So at the beginning there was like a short keynote, and it was pretty good, then there was a expo for religious companies and organizations, that was ok for about an hour but the three hours after that were pretty mind blowingly boring. Then there were some more speakers and then some more sitting around, so it was actually not all that bad of a day but we were there for like 7 hours, and we totally could've accomplished everything in 4 hours or less. After that I went with Johannes, Florian Sauer, Lennart, and the others in the Ostereistedt/Rockstedt area to Ta-Töff, the disco in the Area. The night was pretty dang awesome, probably the best time I've had at the disco so far.
On Sunday I slept until about noon. Then I kind of sat around the house all day, without a whole lot to do. At Midnight on Sunday I went downstairs and watched the Superbowl with Christoph until 4 in the morning! It was totally worth it though, seeing the Packers win, made up for the tiredness that I felt the next day during my 8 hours at school. Monday night we had a surprise visitor standing outside our door. Ate, from the Netherlands, an old friend of Andreas' was here. Apparently he just kind of randomly pops up every few years and stays for a few days. So yeah he was here, and he was actually really cool, I'd say he was, in my mind, a typical Dutch person. On Tuesday afternoon, since it was sunny, I went out side and took some pictures of the little compound that we've got here. Later Tuesday night Christophs' new Ikea couch was delivered and assembled by two very unfriendly delivery men.
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| The Meyer Family Compound |
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| From the top of a Silo |
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| Heika |
Today I'm going with Jost and Lennart to watch Bremen play against Hannover in Bremen. and yeah that's about all that's been going on for me in the last few weeks.
Oh, and this blog was written specifically due to request from my Grandma and the Z.
