Bye Germany!

Last day in Germany today. Everyone slept in today (Adrian especially being tired from New York), but after we were all up Adrian and I went into the city for a last minute souvenir shopping spree.

I then had some gourmet cake with Adrian and his mom at a fancy cake restaurant. It was very good.

Afterwords we met with a few other friends and went to play on a playground for little kids for a while. It was really fun and stupid. There were these little Russian kids there that were chasing us around. There was also a zipline and a weird see-saw that I can't explain on here...but it was fun to use that too.

We used that to kill some time until we went to another restaurant called Salsaleto's (I think that's how it's spelled..) for a "Good Bye Dinner" with everyone. It was really confusing because the reserved table in the restaurant did't have enough seats for everyone...so then we went outside to eat but we were then told that we couldn't order outside for whatever reason, so then some of us went back inside and some others did whatever. It was confusing but I was able to get chicken fingers and they were good.

Everyone then took a lot of pictures with everyone and talked for a while. I wasn't able to get any pictures with my camera so I'll have to get all the ones with me from Facebook when they get uploaded.

After everyone said their goodbyes Adrian and I went back home so I could pack. Everything fit well so I'm all set to go.

This will be my last entry here since tomorrow is just going to be me going to the train station and the airport etc.

Bye Germany! It was a fun time :D See you all soon!!

Another city like Weimar.

So Thursday we took a group trip to another city. I can't remember the name of it...but it was a Medieval town that's nice looking like Weimar, but it's also boring like Weimar. Nothing to do. So we walked around and looked at stuff, ate some pizza at an Italian restaurant and then had a tour.

When we got back to Gottigen a few of us stayed in the city for about an hour and a half to wait until we would meet the rest of the people from the exchange at a restaurant called Vapiano. It's another Italien restaurant where you have a card and use that to buy your food and then pay at the end. I got another pizza. We stayed there for a while (Adrian came too by the way since he came back from New York) and then went back to the house since Adrian was tired from the jet lag.

Rain rain go away...

Today was wet :[

We were supposed to have a hike and picnic today with all the American's as a group. Too bad it rained the entire time. We ended up walking for about 20+ minutes in the rain going somewhere until it ended up raining so hard that we just turned around and went back to the city, during which the rain stopped.

Matt, Luke and I then went to Subway and some ice cream while Kevin and Jason (another American) used my bike to get back to Jonas' house so they could go swimming. I don't know how it worked out but my bike was back where it was supposed to be by the time I wanted to leave the city, so that's all I cared about.

I biked home by myself for the first time this entire trip (photographic memory for the win) and then slept a little bit because of how tiring that "hike" was.

USA vs France Womans soccer was on later so I watched USA crush France 3-1 to get into the finals (I believe) so that was a refreshing victory after their loss to Sweden.

After that I just felt like staying home and relaxing some more, so I did. Tomorrow Adrian comes back from NY.

Can't wait to come back Sunday morning :D

Bowling makes my fingers hurt :[

Tuesday I do remember more of.

We watched The 40 Year Old Virgin in the "morning" which was hilarious and went bowling later in the day.

Kevin, Jonas, a few other Americans and I went bowling and I did ok. Although I don't think there's a finger nail clipper in this house so I had kind of long nails while I was bowling...and that didn't exactly help very much. I got a score of 230.

Between 3 games.

The only strike I got was a 10 pin spare in the 3rd game. It was all for fun though so I don't care.

After that we went to McDonalds for dinner and then went back home and relaxed.

I felt like staying up a bit later so I did and around midnight I started hearing knocks on the windows and doors. Now my first instinct is to be utterly and completely scared to death. After a while of being too scared too move the door bell rang and Jonas and I went to the door to see who was there at 12:15 in the morning.

It was Kevin coming back from the city. I completely forgot he went back into the city again. I was so scared to even look out the window to see who it might possibly be. We had a good laugh at that.

I went to bed shortly after.

Monday....

For whatever reason Monday is a complete blur for me...we went to the outdoor pool like on Saturday again and had fun there with the slide they have. We were doing "trick slides" I guess you could say such as spinning and other stuff and the little kids were trying to do it too. It was so funny.

After that I think we just got bought some movies and watched one of them and then that was the night.

Lazy me.

Sorry, I was getting lazy and didn’t update this for the last few days. Sunday wasn’t too much. We went to a different pool (an indoor pool) that was nicer than the other one. Diving boards, multiple pools, a lazy river, waterslides (actual big tubing water slides) and more speedo’s. That was really fun. Then I think we just went around in the city some more for the night and then went home.

Germans wear Speedo's too much...

So today was interesting. First before I start I want to say I wrote everything here and then accidentally X'ed out of Google Chrome thus deleting everything I had written....I may or may not want to rewrite everything.

So basically to make this quick since I want to go to bed: Kevin, Jonas and Jonas' mom are going to Wolfsburg again to watch another soccer match that they had planned earlier not knowing I would be with them. I don't have a ticket so I had to do something else today. I went with a few of Adrian and Jonas' friends to the public pool.

The pool is huge. It's got multiple parts, a water slide, large diving boards, and a lot of pool toys etc. There was a 10+ foot high diving board that I jumped off of that was really fun. I've never done that before so it was exciting.

Unfortunately though.....German's seem to like Speedo's a little bit too much. There were a few too many for my eyes to handle...especially when a really fat old guy wears one.

Anyways, after the hanging at the pool for a while a few of us went to get something to eat called a Doner. It's a sandwich with lamb meat, lettuce, some sauces and onions (I didn't have onions on mine though) it was really good, but really messy too.

After that I just stayed at Jonas' house doing whatever while they are at the soccer game.

Ok, bed time now.

Standin' in line to see the show tonight and there's a light on, heavy glow.

Today I had to wake up semi-early so we could get to the train station to go to Weimar. Weimar is a very old and pretty city in Germany so it’s a very nice sightseeing place. We got an approximately 2 hour tour of the city. That was perhaps 2 of the worst hours of my life.

It was pretty hot today I’m not gonna lie, and the tour guide wasn’t necessarily the best attention grabber in the hay stack. She basically talked about something in front of us for about 3 sentences and then went off in some rant about something completely different. It was very difficult to follow her so everyone basically just was bored out of their minds. Weimar is a nice sightseeing city but it’s not a place to spend a whole day at. Matt, Steven, Luke, Ian and I all went back to where the train station was located to find the subway we saw when we entered the city to eat something. We then didn’t want to walk all the way back to the meeting place so we called Mrs. Lee and asked if we could just stay by the train station until they came back. So we then just sat in that area for the next few hours and realized how weird the Red Hot Chili Peppers singer sounds and proceeded to sing Red Hot Chili Peppers multiple times thus getting the songs stuck in our heads. Luke also can imitate the voice extremely well so that was really funny.

When we finally got back I went with Kevin and Jonas to their house since Adrian and his family are in New York. We ate some dinner there, played basketball for a few hours and then chilled in a hot tub for another hour or so. It was nice.

Boring day is boring.

Thursday wasn't much to report on. I slept a good 12 hours which felt nice. After that Adrian and I just relaxed at home for a while until we went to his dad's house for a barbecue for a few hours and then went back home to chillax some more. Adrian is going to New York for a few days actually so I will have to stay with Kevin and Jonas for a few days while they are gone.

Volks Wagon has turned their HQ into an amusement park...

So Wednesday was another long day. It was the last day of school so we went in for a few hours. Had gym first and played some basketball and then they got their report cards. They apparently get flowers with their report cards too. Kevin and I got flowers too so we wouldn’t feel left out. I just gave mine to some random girl when we were walking to our bikes.

Afterwards, Adrian and I stayed at the house for a little bit and then went over to Jonas and Kevin’s house to eat some pizza and then head out to Wolfsburg. Wolfsburg is a very large car city with the HQ of Volks Wagon in it. They basically turned it into an amusement park. They have water shows, tours, food courts, museums, kid parks you name it. We first saw a water show that was pretty cool. We then proceeded to wait for about 40 minutes for a tour around the production line of Volks Wagon. I have to say the wait was gruesome…but the tour almost made up for it. Seeing the production line of the cars in person was pretty interesting, but after we left that building and the woman started talking about all the other stuff I nearly fell asleep. I was so exhausted by the heat and the fact that I was SO hungry since it took about 3 hours to get there.

We were then able to eat and then walk through the different museums around the area. There was the main Volks Wagon one, and then there was Audi (which makes RIDICULOUSLY nicer cars than I previously thought) and one other smaller European car company.

After that we went to the real event, the Woman’s Fifa World Cup USA vs. Sweden game. That was really fun. I really like soccer now. After watching the mens World Cup last year I’ve really enjoyed watching soccer now. Unfortunately USA did lose 2-1. But at least they scored a point. At least I got to experience what scoring a goal felt like in that stadium, and let me tell you it was crazy.

After that we proceeded to drive home only to get lost while using a GPS and end up getting home at 1:40 in the morning. I put on comfier clothes and immediately face planted on my bed.

5 hour scavenger hunts are exhausting.

So Tuesday was interesting. Tuesday we got up and went to the school where everyone else goes to school at around 10:30 so we could do a scavenger hunt around the city. We were supposed to meet back at the school at around 3 or so at the latest. The scavenger hunt took the entire time...

It was all in German so forget about how difficult it was to find some of the things we had to find, first we had to translate it all to English. Some of the things we had to do were to buy a postcard with the symbol of Gottigen on it. We had to figure out how many benches were around one of the churches there. We had to find out how many CD's of the Woman's Soccer World Cup there were in an electronics store called Saturn.

One of the reasons why it took so long is because of what I said earlier. We had to translate it to English. That didn't exactly go as planned. One of the things we had to do said something about a "Richtung Bahnhof". Bahnhof meaning train station. We thought the name of the train station was Richtung. We then proceeded to walk all the way across the city to this trainstation only to find out that it wasn't the name of the train station. We were extremely tired so we sat down and ate Burger King. After that we decided to just walk back to the school to meet with everyone since it was getting near 3. Only then on our way back did we find what the question was asking for and we realized that "in Richtung" wasn't the name of the train station...but meant "in the direction of". It was a long day...

After we got back we ended up getting 2nd place so we got some candy which was at least comforting for our efforts.

We then had to do our powerpoint presentations that we prepared beforehand. They were about New Jersey and life in Montgomery and that stuff. My presentation was about the school schedule. Everyone worked in pairs. Of course my partner was sick that day so I had to do it by myself. At least it was in English so It wasn't that bad.

I think afterwords Adrian and I just went home. I can't really remember so it must not have been very important.

Getting lost in Berlin

So Monday we all went to Berlin for the entire day. It started out in the morning with a long train ride.

The weather wasn't all that great. It was pretty muggy, cloudy, wet and windy. The "bad hairday" type of weather.

We started off with a tour that took around 2 hours that brought us to multiple places in the Berlin government section. We saw the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag and the big house where the chancellor lives and all that. It was pretty cool. All the buildings are fairy modern since almost everything was rebuild after the war and after the division of Berlin. I thought seeing the Rechstag was really cool because it's the only actual place I've been to that I've seen in a video game I've played before. Last mission of COD5 World At War. Alex knows what I'm talking about.

We also got to see the Jewish memorial. That was really cool.

That's what it looks like. It's crazy how lost you can get in that thing. I got lost in it for a little bit, but was able to find everyone eventually. A few of the other people did get lost however and I had to do the "Follow the sound of my voice" trick to help them get out. It was funny.

After that we got to see the Potsdamer Plotz. It had pieces of the old Berlin Wall there that was pretty cool. You could tell how much the Germans hate the wall because there's gum all over the wall.

After that we were able to do whatever we wanted in Berlin. This is where things got interesting...

It was me and a few other Americans. We first got Subway to eat and then tried to make our way to Checkpoint Charlie. We got lost the first attempt and had to turn around and try again, which took us over an hour. We finally made it to Checkpoint Charlie and took some pictures of what we could...

After that we spent over an hour trying to find our way to the KaDeWe which is one of the biggest shopping malls in the entire world. We got very lost. Our feet were killing us. We only got to go in there for a few minutes before having to find a way to get back to the train station so we wouldn't miss our train back. Of course one of the people in our group decided he had to buy something there just to "say he bought something there" and ended up taking another 10+ minutes. We debated for another 5 minutes or so on how to get back until I saw taxi's go by and suggested that. We had to take 2 taxi's to the train station since no taxi's took more than 4 people and we had 5.

We were finally able to get to the train station though with enough time to spare so everything ended happily ever after.

Castles....castles everywhere.

So finally to today. I saw a stalactite cave and then drove for hours upon end across Germany.

The cave was pretty interesting. I had never been in one before so it was pretty cool. It was really cold though. Something like 11 degrees Celsius. We weren't aloud to take pictures in there though so unfortunately you won't be able to see what it was like. It was like any other stalactite cave you can find on the internet though, so it's really a one time see type of thing.

We then continued to drive for many hours until we had a delicious feast at McDonald's. On the way though I was able to see the landscape where many castles were. I have to say, there's castles EVERYWHERE. It's as if it's a normal thing to have 500 year old castles only a few minutes away from where you would live in Germany. I was amazed at how many of them there were. This one place we drove through had 4 of them all within the same area. There was literally a castle right above the neighborhood we drove through. The history is just so different here...

Then later in the night there was a CSI equivalent on TV that they wanted me to watch. It was kind of boring honestly...mostly because I couldn't understand them and there was no action or anything. Oh well, good thing I'm not used to watching so much TV.

Tomorrow I go to Berlin for the entire day. Expect many a picture.

I want a 500 year old castle in Montgomery...

Saturday was definitely interesting. We went to Heidlberg which is a few hours away from where I'm living. That city has a lot of old buildings and such since it didn't get bombed during WWII. It's a very nice city with lot's of shops and scenic views. There is also a medieval times castle in the city that was really cool.

We had to take a train thing up a mountain to first see a very nice and scenic view extremely high up. Then we went down to the castle. It's extremely old and is really cool looking. It has a cellar with a GIANT wine barrel. This thing is huge. It holds something of like 128,000 liters or something like that. So that was pretty interesting. The castle is just so big and has so many cool walls and interesting designs on it. I was able to use my bit of photographic talent to make something of an interesting picture with that crappy old camera. I wish I had our really good one :[

I took a lot of pictures of that and will upload them to an album and post it in another post for you guys to see what it was like.

There was also an old church in the city that I took some pictures of as well. I'll put an album to that after this as well.

After we left the city we drove another hour or so to Adrian's grandparents house up in the mountain. They speak a different dialect of German so it was kind of difficult to understand the language I already have troubles understanding. Adrian's aunt and uncle also were there and they were easier to understand. We had a barbecue at their house outside in the freezing weather several hundred feet above sea level. It was nice. After that we went inside and Adrian and I watched Austin Powers in German.

You don't need Megan Fox.

So I just got back from Adrian's grandparents house which had no internet so only now can I post about the last few days.

Friday 2 notable things happened.

First the entire group took a small tour of the city. It was pretty nice, except I forgot my camera again...I thought we were going to school when we left instead of directly to the tour so I didn't bring my camera...

We saw the old church and the very old town hall and such.

Afterwords, Adrian, Jonas, Kevin and I went to Jonas' house with some of their friends and watched Transformers 2 in preparation for Transformers 3 later that day. Of course I'd already seen it before but we still watched with subtitles so we weren't just staring at a screen watching cool action scenes. Also, I don't think Kevin had seen it before so it was good to have the subtitles so he could understand.

Then we went to go see Transformers 3 in the movies. It was in 3D. I have to say...even though I could barely understand anything the movie was really good. The removal of Megan Fox hardly effected the movie. The action was amazing and the story seemed just as good. I can't wait to see it in English.

I also just remembered that after the movie a lot of the people later went to this "Culture Night" that was around in the city. We weren't really able to do too much besides walk around and get stuck in giant mobs of people but it was still fun to walk around with everyone and such.

Normal Day is Normal

On Thursday we didn't really do too much, and I can't really remember many specifics.

We went to school and had subjects that I can't remember...then we were going to go to an indoor pool but it ended up being closed so we went into the city with a few other people from the German exchange. We went to a restaurant. I had some sandwich that was pretty good. The fries that came with it were amazing though. They were potato skin fries.

Something crazy that Jonas was able to do was take 7 or so coasters and put them on the edge of the table and flip them and catch them with the same hand.

I was able to take a video of it but afterwords the camera stopped working and I don't know how to fix it. Whenever I put the memory card in it gives me a screen that only gives me two options: Turn off or Format. When I choose format it asks me if i want to wipe everything or not. No brings be back to the other screen and yes makes an error screen. So I don't know what to do...

Afterwords we just went home and relaxed again.

What's Air Conditioning?

Today was another normal day in school. I had gym for 2 periods and then I went to see X-Men in the movies. Pretty typical.

Gym was fun, I played soccer for the first half. I did surprisingly better than I thought I would. Germans play soccer more so I thought they were going to completely destroy me but I was able to play well. I scored a goal too :D

Then during the second half we played some football. American football. German's aren't so good at American football...

After that we went to the movie theater, which is only about 2 minutes or so away from the school by foot, to go see the X-Men movie that was out. Thankfully it was in English so Kevin and I could understand it. It was for English class so that's why It was in English. It was pretty good, the story was interesting and the action was also pretty crazy.

Movie theaters don't have air conditioning though...it was hot in that movie theater. Hardly anywhere has AC. My house doesn't, Adrian's friends house doesn't, store's sometimes don't have it. I was a little annoyed that German's hardly ever have AC. So mom, I ask please that when I come home you have the AC on full blast.

When the movie was over we were aloud to leave since there were no more classes. We went into the city for some lunch. Adrian, Jonas (a friend of his and also Kevin's German partner) and Kevin went to get some German sandwich thing. I got McDonalds. :D The meat seemed a little fresher here than in America. German food is just always better.

Then we went to a Border Museum with the rest of the families. Although I didn't know we had to bike to the bus station to meet with them, so I left my backpack in the house when we stopped there so I didn't have anything to bring. Including my camera....

So we biked to the bus station in a rather hurried fashion. We got there with more than 10 minutes to spare....

The museum was about the West/East border in Germany. It was at an actual checkpoint with some of the original buildings from years ago. It was pretty interesting, but guess what?

No air conditioning.

I'll get some pictures of that place from my friend as well.

On the way home from the bus station though It started to rain. And it was raining pretty hard. I had to bike in the rain (while dying of thirst from the hot museum) all the way back home which took about 5-10 minutes. That was interesting.

After that we just relaxed at home and such.

Tomorrow I have school again but I think that's it so don't expect anything too exciting. 

I'm not very good at riding bikes...

So the next day we had school yet again.

We had Math in the morning, but then after that I went to a different class with one of Adrian's friends, Sammy, so we could go into the city to get ice cream. The other english exchange partner from my school, Kevin, came as well. The school is right next to the city so we can just walk into the city to get ice cream.

As I am typing this I now remember what Adrian and I did after school on Monday. I don't know how to edit previous posts so I'll add it at the end.**

Then when we got back we were able to leave due to an unexpected break in school. We were able to go around the city a bit more with some of Adrian's friends.

On the way home I fell off my bike though...haha. I was riding on the sidewalk, but it was getting smaller quickly and my front wheel accidentally went off the curb and I fell over. I have a scrape on my elbow but I'm ok. :D

Later that day we went to a really old fortress to have a barbecue with all the families. I was finally able to see all my friends again (because Kevin and I are the only ones that have German partners that go to a different school than the rest of everyone.) and it was fun. Though I forgot to bring my camera....so I'll have to ask one of my friends to send me some of the pictures he took so you guys can see. It was really cool. The country side in Germany is amazing and you can see so far from on top of one of the towers at the fortress. The tower that is open to go up is about 30 meters tall and has 135 steps.

 **After school on Monday Adrian and I went into Gottigen for my first time. It's basically a bigger Princeton, but some of the buildings look much older and are more German looking (of course....). They also have a lot of churches in Gottigen. There's a place that you can stand where you can see 4 different churches at different angles. That was kind of neat.(I forgot to bring my camera here too...but I'll be in the city a lot more so I can take pictures then.) We got ice cream and then walked around a bit more to see a lot of different things. I got watermelon and vanilla ice cream. I don't know why but German food is just better than American food.

First Day of School

Ok, I'll see how much I can remember since this was 2 days ago and a lot has happened the last few days.

Monday was my first day of school in Germany. First off, the school is OLD. There's no AC, there's no whiteboards, no TV's, no computers, no projectors, NOTHING. All the stuff is old looking and stuff. So much different than my school. We had Music class first which I didn't know what was going on. Then we had English class which I did know what was going on, then we had chemistry and I didn't know what was going on again, and then we had history which I sort of new what was going on. During the second half we played some sort of history memory game where my other english exchange partner played together with the class. It was a little confusing but we were able to play. Then we just played Pictionary after that.

All their grades and etc. are already in so this last week and a half of school no one really does anything. The teachers don't have many plans so we mostly just do whatever like play games and such.

I can't really remember what happened after school....must not have been anything important.

Update

I've been busy the last few days so I'll update everything tomorrow when I can.

Sorry :[

Update

I've been busy the last few days so I'll update everything tomorrow when I can.

Sorry :[

Day 2

Today was a pretty normal day.Had breakfast, went to a park to sightsee and came back and had dinner and then just relaxed.

On the weekends German's have a more fancy and formal breakfast with things like different breads and eggs and cold cut meats etc. On the weekdays is when they have cereal and stuff. I had a chocolate filled croissant and a roll with butter for breakfast. I would have had an egg but they soft boil their eggs so I didn't really want one.

A bit later we went to a sightseeing park. It had a small art museum at the bottom and then you can take a hike up through a forest to an old castle at the top of a hill. We didn't go in the museum we just went near the castle. It was nice. I forgot to bring my camera though...I'll ask my German teacher if I could have some of the pictures she took to upload for you guys to see.

Then a little bit after we got home we had dinner. It was just some sort of meat with mashed potatoes and some vegetable mixture thing. I didn't really eat the vegetables but the meat was OK and the mashed potatoes were fine.

Then we just relaxed and did whatever and now I'm going to go to sleep soon. Tomorrow I have my first day of school. I don't have to get up so early though which is nice. And school ends earlier as well. So we'll see how that goes.

First Day Part 2

The German food is really interesting. The meat is so much better than in America and everything is so much fancier. They also drink apple juice a lot with water in it. It apparently makes it more thirst quenching although I haven't tried it yet.

We eventually went to a barbecue and the food was really good. The meat was good and the garlic bread was amazing, and they were all made by the kids. It was like I was eating food from a fancy restaurant or something.

Now I'm back and I'm tired so I think I'm just going to go to sleep.

First Day

So I'm in Germany now. This is really weird...

The plane ride was fine and we got here around 1 EU time. Adrian's apartment is really interesting. The furniture is very neat and different and just so geometrical. Everything is much less bland than our houses and involve lot's of different colors and shapes and organizations of objects.

I don't really have anything else for now. It's still 2:25 PM over here so there's still lot's to do today.  So I'll post again later tonight.