So yeah let's go. On the 13th of February I was at a soccer game (already in the last post). Game was fun...yeah, that's about it. On Tuesday the 15th, I only had 3 hours of school, so that was pretty dang awesome. Heike and Andreas also left for Berlin. Tuesday afternoon I went running with some of the Rockstedters, and yeah Youth Group was to follow. Was a pretty dang fantastic day. Wednesday I only had 4 hours of school, so that was still pretty awesome. Wednesday afternoon I put a new rug down in my room, so that's pretty cool. Wednesday night Heike and Andreas were back from Berlin. A relatively short trip. Thursday was pretty normal, not a whole lot happened.
Friday (18th) after school, I ate lunch and not long after that I was under way again; this time to Bremen with Bjarne. We checked out the city a little bit and went and saw Gulliver's Reisen 3D (Gulliver's Travels?) After the movie we missed our bus back so we went into the train station and bought some Mt.Dew and then ate some McFlurry. After arriving back in town, Bjarne came over for about 2 hours and we played some PS3.
Saturday (19th) was supposed to be the greatest day ever, but upon waking up I read that I'd been canceled on. For Christmas I got tickets to see A Day to Remember in Hamburg. I was supposed to go with a friend of mine and Christoph. When I woke up Saturday morning I had an e-mail from my friend telling me that he couldn't come with me to the concert. Awesome. So I was on the search for somebody else to come with. It's not all that easy to find somebody to come with you to a hard rock concert last minute, so in the end Christoph and I went to the concert, with our third ticket going unused. So yeah. The concert was super duper awesome. Greatest, of the few, concert that I've ever been too. Afterward we drove back home and I went to a party in town (Sportlerball) When I got there, I thought to myself...yeah I can leave now, there wasn't a whole lot going on, but after a while it started to pick up and I ended up staying there with Markus until about 02:15. All in all the day was pretty great, even though it had a rocky start.
On Tuesday (22nd) I accidentally skipped the first two hours of school. I thought that they were canceled, but it turns out they weren't. So yeah, only 2 hours of school. Tuesday night at Youth Group we played Werewolves the entire time. Which was pretty dang awesome, I was a little surprised that they knew the game. Oh, and Tuesday is the day the McDouble (or any type of burger with 2 meat patties) became available for purchase in Germany.
On Friday (25) I went bowling with Maarten and Lennart. It was a lot of fun, we only played two games, but still. We were all really terrible. But somehow better in out first game than our last. Being bad at bowling is half of the fun. After bowling we decided to play Billards, since the found it cool that I knew the rules. So yeah we played. Lennart and Maarten against James, two rounds....and James lost both of them. Naja, it was still fun. Afterward we went back to Lennart's and watched a few movies. The typical North German 'Werner' films, and some German zombie comedy, which was actually super hilarious. All in all the night was great. I was, however, excited to be able to sleep at the end of it.
On Saturday I went to the mall with Johannes, Florian Sauer, and a few of their friends. Didn't buy anything, but yeah still cool. We also went to McDonald's where I had my first McDouble bzw. McDallas in Germany. Not really all that cool, but hey. Saturday evening we went to an A Capella concert in Zeven. The concert was tooo long and more for the older folk. After the concert I went to a friends house for a couple of hours and yeah. On Sunday (27th) I went with Lennart, Jost, Christoph, and Maarten to Bremen to a soccer game (once again). The game was a lot of fun to watch. They played 2:2 (Bremen v. Leverkusen). After the game we went to McDonald's and since we were 5 people we ended up ordering like 10 McDouble's and yeah, that was somehow some crazily amazingly huge order. After waiting 15 minutes are burgers were there and we could finally start our "McDouble Party" as the manager called it.
From Feb. 28th to March 4th, nothing special or interesting happened.
On Saturday the 5th of March (Hauptsache es ist schon März) Lennart and Bjarne came at about 14:00 and we played PS3 until around 15:00 when we left for Ronolulu, a 'water park' in the capital of our county...Rotenburg (Wümme). Markus was also with. We were there for about 2 and a half hours. It was a good time, there weren't a ton of super amazing attractions but still. It's about the people you're there with, not where you are. On our way back we stopped at McDonald's and ordered 25 burgers for our "McDonald's party" as the lady called it. For some reason the people always associate our large orders as having something to do with a party. The lady also gave us a bag of party favors (flags, ballons, Gummi Bears..etc.) Then we went back to our house and ate and watched 'Winnetou' which is a series of 16 films about an Apache Indian whose names is Winnetou. The movies all take place in the US, although they were filmed in Yugoslavia and are only available in German. Everybody here was surprised that I'd never heard of them, but yeah now I have and I've started watch the compete 16 part series.
Monday! After breakfast we were back in our small groups in which the topic of discussion was 'Retrospect'. It was actually really cool, we talked about the differences that we've noticed between the US and Germany and also made graphs depicting our evolution with Friends, Family, School, Language and homesickness. After lunch we were for the first time in the city. We were probably 2 and a half hours there and pretty much just checkout out all of the main points. Afterward we split off into small groups and every group went to a different part of the city. My group was in the Altstadt (Old City) where we first visited a super cool Cafe at which out table was 'carousel' and spun the entire time. Then we went to a church in the city, and took the 256 stairs up to the top of the tower for an awesome view of the city. Then we went and checked out the Shopping Street and stopped once again at McDonald's. After dinner on the ship we went back into the city to watch a play. The play was called 'Sein oder nicht sein' (to be or not to be) it was supposed to be a comedy...and it was actually kind of funny, but it was really long, and yeah, one mustn't see it. After the play we went to...McDonald's. Back on the boat Markus and I sat in the dining room and wrote a few postcards, then all of the sudden there was a crying girl there who was having an allergic reaction and half an hour later an Emergency doctor was there to giver her a shot. It was a little spice in the night.
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| Skyline - Dresden |
After eating breakfast on Tuesday we all loaded up in a bus and drove to Bautzen. Bautzen is the location of a former Stasi-Prison. (stasi = State security of Eastern Germany) The prison was really cool. It was cool to be able to see where political prisoners were held and how they were treated. After checking out the prison we had some free time to check out the city a little bit. I went with Markus and Konrad to a mall where we stopped at....McDonald's. After eating we did a little shopping, before stopping at Subway to buy a cookie. On bus back to the ship I slept for of the way. After eating lunch back on the ship we moved into 'school mode' having to read and summarize texts about German history. Which would've been ok had we not've been walking around for multiple hours before hand. After dinner we had the option of watching a movie, learning to dance, or playing a game. After a short time by the 'dance course' I decided that I was tired and went somewhat early to bed.
Wednesday morning we left at 09:00 for the art museum in the city. After looking at a few pieces we broke off into small groups and did some more work with some texts. We then moved to some specific pieces and tried to identify the art pieces with our texts. We 'analyzed' the meaning of the photos, in the context of the era. After lunch back on the ship we heard a presentation about our Inneres Team (Inner Team) After the presentation, we broke into our small groups once again and discussed the topic in a little bit more detail. Wednesday night we went into the Neustadt (New City) and went to a really cool Chocolate bar, milkshakes and chocolate cake was on the evening menu. Afterward we were at a bar that is called the 'Ost-Pol' it was a bar in which everything is exactly how it was during the DDR (Eastern Germany) time. It was pretty cool, but it was really full, so after about 25 minutes we decided to head back to the ship for the night. We then ended up playing werewolves until about 02:00.
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| Me in front of the Frauenkirche |
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| Markus and I |
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| Me with a Martin Luther Statue |
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| Me with Frauenkirche in background |
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| Our Group |
Friday was our last day. After eating we went upstairs and the 'staff' said some goodbyes and wished us a good rest to our years. At around 09:45 Markus, Ryan, and I left for the train station and upon arriving at Dresden Hbf tried to find some sweets that we could buy for the train, but that was more easily said than done. We did, however, eventually find what we were looking for. We were alone in our compartment until we got to Berlin. Once we got to Berlin there was 6 of us in the compartment, which wasn't really all that cool, but hey, can't do anything about it. Ryan, also from Minnesota, lost is bag, or rather it was mistakenly taken by another passenger who exited the train in Berlin. After arriving in Hamburg Markus and I had about 4 hours to kill before our hockey game started so we went to...McDonalds! Yeah by this time I'd had enough Micky D's to last a while. We decided that we'd jump in the S-bahn and go a little bit earlier to the Arena. We also decided that we would get out a few stations earlier and go to visit his aunt and uncle, whose house we never found, considering the fact that lived on the other side of Hamburg. We then got back in the S-bahn and ended up at the arena around 17:45. The game didn't start until 19:30, we both had suit cases with, and we didn't have our tickets. So we waited. Christoph wanted to come at about 18:30, but didn't end up getting there until 19:00, so we sat outside in the cold for over an hour. It was pretty......awesome. So yeah 19:00 Christoph, Maarten, Bjarne, Lennart and Tim arrived and we proceeded to the game. The game was pretty cool. Hamburg is a super terrible hockey team, but hey there were a lot of goals. We ended up losing 3:5. After the game we made a quick stop at BK, before heading home and going straight to bed.
Saturday started pretty late for me. Afternoons HSV played against FC Bayern and lost 0:6. Pretty depressing. Afterward we showed our pictures from Dresden, and yeah, back into bed. Sunday I accomplished absolutely nothing. Ended up watching another film from the Winnetou series and yeah, just kind of chilled.
On Tuesday (15 March) I gave a presentation about the US to a class of 8th graders. It was pretty cool, and they thoroughly enjoyed it. After school I took a nap, and at around 17:15 I left with Johannes, Florian, and Simon for Bremen to see Beatsteaks live in Concert. The concert was pretty dang awesome, but it wasn't the greatest thing ever for my ankles. Doesn't matter it was fun. Wednesday morning I was lucky enough to be able to wake up at 04:40 to go on a trip to visit a University. It was a pretty cool day, definitely better than going to school, but I dunno, so incredibly interesting is something that it wasn't. The highlight of the day was probably losing our guide while eating.
On Friday I had an interview with a guy from the Newspaper....so that was prettyyy cool. Evenings I went with Markus and Bjarne bowling in Zeven, and afterwards Bjarne came over and we had pizza and chilled for a while.
Saturday I went to Hamburg with Markus to watch Hamburg play against Köln. Before the game we had about three hours in Hamburg so we decided to check out this super cool model train museum; or at least attempt to. Upon arriving at the museum there was an hour wait, and wouldn't have been able to make it to the game in time so we went back to the train station and ate some Stuffed Crust pizza from Pizza hut before buying a cookie and sitting for about an hour and a half at Subway trying to kill the time. We arrived at the game a little bit early, but that was good. The game was super cool. Hamburg won 6:2. After the game we came back home before heading back out to the Disco for the night.
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| HSV v. Köln |
Sunday was the first day with good weather. So we took advantage of it and played a little soccer out side and did some grilling. That's about all we did.
Today is pretty laid back. I had 8 hours of school so I'm pretty tired but yeah.
