But, anyway. For the non-bike-nerds out there... It's been a month since I wrote and I'm really not sure where January went. I am suddently halfway through my exchange. It feels like spring here and I am loving it.
Since the last time I wrote, I drove with Pati to Berlin and met up with Lissa, Colin, Felix, and Katrina. Lissa and Colin are friends from my high school German class who are also exchange students this year. Katrina is another friend from German class and was visiting her aunt in Germany for a month, and Felix was a German exchange student in my American school last year. I hadn't seen anyone from home in over four months, and it was SO great to talk to all of them. It was also really nice for me to be able to introduce Pati to friends from home. We spoke a strange hybrid of German and English, since Katrina had only been in Germany for three weeks and was having a harder time keeping up. Together we explored Berlin, traveling via U-Bahn and S-Bahn. Highlights included Alexanderplatz, the DDR (East Germany) Museum, the German History Museum, vegan burgers from Vego, and an Irish Pub. It was kind of strange to be sitting with people from back home drinking beer openly at a bar, but fun. We tried to get into the Reichstag but it was closed due to terror alert... Too bad.
Last week I had Winter Ferien, and I traveled to Austria for a ski vacation with Simon and his family! We left reaaaaaaally early in the morning on the first Saturday of vacation, and drove at least ten hours, maybe more, to Katschberghohe, Austria. I should probably remind you that Simon's family is Belgian, and while they all speak German, they speak Flemish with each other at home. While Flemish is something like a blending of German and English, I still can't exactly speak it (although sometimes I could understand it, which was really cool). They were really nice about trying to speak German with each other so that I could understand, but at times it was like I was back to my first week in Germany with little understanding of the conversations around me. They also own a chocolate factory and I definitely ate way too much of the sweets they brought with them (did you know the Belgians invented the Praline? Do we say Praline in English? I can't remember... They're small chocolates with various fillings and shapes.).
But anyway, we met up with some friends of Simon's family and got our ski passes and rentals and were on the mountain the next day. I hadn't been skiing in a couple of years, so I was a little nervous to start but it came back quickly. For six days in a row we skied from 10 am until 4 pm, with a break for lunch. I had never been skiing for even two days in a row, since in Maine we always just drive up to the mountain for one day... so the muscle stress and endurance took a little getting used to. But by the end of the week I had conquered my first ever black diamond ski trail - and I skied it 5 times in total. I pretty much stuck with Simon, but I also got to know his parents and siblings (Marie, 13 and Johannis, 6). His family is wonderful and so nice and I had a great time with them for the week.
Other than that... I have some exciting news regarding school! We just started the second semester and I finally feel like I'm (almost) on an even playing field with everyone else. We've started new topics (color and light in chemistry are proving to be muchhhh better than sugars and proteins), I switched out of biology and into ART ART ART(!!!!!!!), I finally have my real history teacher and not a substitute, I can understand what's going on in politics and I even took the test today with everyone else... things are looking up!
Funny story from my first day in history class: I wanted to see how long I could go without my new history teacher finding out that I was an exchange student, so I didn't specially introduce myself or anything. But, as part of his lecture, he had us write down the five most important things to us in life on a piece of paper. I wasn't sure how I should write 'knowledge' (Kenntnis? Wissen? Bildung?), so I took out my dictionary and tried to figure it out. Herr Berno saw this and asked loudly and sarcastically 'You need to look this up in the dictionary?' I replied 'I'm the exchange student...' and he was really embarassed and everyone laughed. I'm not sure if that was one of those 'You had to be there' stories or not, I hope you guys find it as funny as I did.
Tonight I'm going to Jana's birthday party, and since it's Fasching season we all have to dress up as a character from a Märchen (fairy tale). I don't exactly have much for costume materials, but I have a blue dress and Ramona helped me to make wings and a wand... so I'm going as a fairy. Should be interesting. On March 1st I get to take a train for something like 10 hours from Spremberg to Bad Honnef, where I have my AFS Midstay Camp until the 6th. Unfortunately the timing means I have to miss my school's Fasching celebration, along with the local Fasching Disco... pretty bummed about that, but there's nothing I can do to change it. In other news, I'm getting very excited to see Philipp Poisel in Dresden with Pati in a week and a half!
I figure since I'm five months in I should do some sort of reflection...
Over the last five months I have:
- Moved across the Atlantic Ocean and joined a new family in a foreign land and culture
- Improved my German skills drastically (more on this point later)
- Visited Dresden and Berlin multiple times
- Participated in anti-Nazi demonstrations in Berlin and Spremberg
- Made great friends at school
- Taken math, music, and politics tests in a foreign language
- Fallen in love for the first time
- Skied in the Austrian Alps (and skied my first black diamond trail)
- Visited Königstein
- Gone to Poland
- Gotten drunk for the first time (sorry mom)
- Had a romantic candlelit dinner for two
- Biked along the Spree
- Attended the Rosa Luxemburg Conference
- Celebrated Silvester (although I wish I could remember more of it...)
- Cooked Thanksgiving dinner for my host family
- Had my first German Christmas, visited my first Weihnachtsmärkte, and drank Glühwein
- Learned how to make Kartoffeln mit Quark and German Christmas cookies
- Eaten my first Döner
- Sang in a chorus concert for the first time since the 5th grade
And definitely more stuff I can't think of. Also my grammar is really bad. Speaking of, here's a note on the current state of my English and German:
I've gotten to the point where I can speak German better than most of the kids in my English class can speak English (with the possible exception of Simon). Kids will ask me what English words mean and I can finally give exact translations without much effort and without a dictionary (most of the time). My English grammar and spelling have really deteriorated, and a lot of times I just can't think of English words. It's really strange when I hear English outside of English class and a lot of time I don't even realize that it's English. I write a lot of my journal in German or at least in English with German sentence structure. I don't have trouble understanding class or the news or conversations around me when I pay attention and have context. I dream regularly in German. I have two more weeks of German lessons and I feel like I'm ready to be done with them. I don't write perfectly or always say things the way a real German would, but I'm comfortable in my ability to communicate, even if I'm still afraid of using du/Sie incorrectly. I don't put (German) subtitles on TV movies anymore, because I can understand from the spoken word well enough that I don't need to read it too. I look up words in a dictionary (for everyday conversation) maybe once or twice a week. I don't even use it for school that much anymore, and my notebook of new vocabulary is contains less words than average for the last few weeks.
If anyone has any questions, I could really use some more blog ideas. I am looking forward to Philipp Poisel and spring and summer. I hope my AFS Midstay camp will be fun. I am mostly happy and not homesick (although sometimes I really crave certain things from home, especially roadbiking with my parents and downtown Brunswick in general). I'm looking forward to seeing my friends and family from home in five months, but I'm also glad to be here.
Viele Grüße, Dani
