a good quote

"To succeed in life, you need 3 things: a wishbone, a backbone, and a funnybone." -Reba McEntire

SAT

I am taking the German SAT subject test in 10 days. My head is currently whirling with coordinating conjunctions, subjunctive moods, and auxiliary verbs... not to mention I'm trying to shove as much vocabulary in as I possibly can. So I apologize for my slight lack of communication... between June 5th and June 9th I'll get on that! And then I'll be gone again for our AFS END OF STAY camp. That means we're almost at the end. I believe the current count is 44 days. Holy guacamole!!

And we're off!

Tomorrow, at 10:10 am (promptly- we are in Germany, you know), I am leaving on a flight to France! Well, actually a flight to Frankfurt am Main, and then a flight to Toulouse, Frankreich. It's only a one-hour layover, though. And then I'll be spending four days in the lovely south of France! I am quite excited, and all my stuff is packed (I'm guessing I overpacked like usual) and I'm prepared to leave the house at 7 am (yippee...) to take various buses and UBahns to the airport.

I'm looking forward to:
-seeing a new country
-meeting new people
-eating French pastries and various other delicacies
-relaxing
-sleeping
-relaxing

I'm not so much looking forward to:
-cheese

(My uncle thinks I'm crazy that I'm going to France and I don't like cheese.)
There will be much Frenchness to come, I'm sure! Tschuss! Bonjour! Arrivaderci! Ciao! Goodbye!

Kiss Kiss

Our favorite American smooch...



and its German equivalent.

Gesundheit

It's a German word ("Healthiness"). You'd think the Germans would use it. I'm pretty sure I've heard about a total of ten Gesundheits the entire time I've been here. In America, if you sneeze in class, you'll often get about 10 "bless yous", including from the teacher. In Germany, I think sneezes are treated more like coughs- just kind of ignored. Although apparently (I have not experienced this for myself but have heard it from other exchange students) if you sneeze three times in a row you get to make a wish. Now I'm shuffling my feet on the carpet trying to get enough dust to rise that I'll sneeze three times.