Bleh. I spent most of the day today sleeping, with a couple Grey's Anatomy episodes thrown in. I guess the sick bug I got during my ski trip decided to stick around after all. Monday I was fine- I still had to blow my nose every fifteen minutes but was feeling pretty good. Tuesday I woke up feeling crummy but figured it was just a morning thing, but instead of getting better as the day went on it got worse. So I actually had to leave school early, which I generally don't do unless I've got pink eye or something. Today I woke up feeling just as gross- mucusy cough, sore throat, stuffed snot locker, and general exhaustion. Luckily yesterday I got not one but TWO packages so I am thoroughly entertained during my waking hours. I've been drinking a lot of apple juice- that seems to be the German method of getting better. It hasn't worked too well so far but I'm hoping to be better quite soon! I called my friend Dani today to tell her I couldn't tutor her brother and she said I was missed in school (except better than that but I don't remember what she said exactly and I don't have the brainpower to translate). I was missed! Woohoo! Which doesn't really seem like that much of an accomplishment if I think about it but it made me feel a little better by any means. And now a little piece of wisdom:
The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.
-Mark Twain
Monday, February 8, 2010
Sport.
We are no longer doing volleyball in Sport (thank goodness). Instead we are learning to somersault. Only two major injuries have occured so far- one girl fell on her arm the wrong way and sprained her wrist, and my friend Kaja got kicked in the eye. Eep.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Home Again
And back in Berlin! That week went remarkably quickly, although the first couple days I legitimately expected that my legs would just keep swelling and I'd come home in a wheelchair. Perhaps not. We left promptly at 11 p.m. (23.00 Uhr) on Saturday, which was very German of us. We watched Slumdog Millionare (auf Deutsch), which was really good, and not as intense as I'd expected it to be. Good thing, because there were 11-year-olds on the bus... it was still pretty intense. The Germans don't really follow the whole movie rating system. Anyhoo, we stopped at Mickey D's for breakfast (huh? Who knew they had muffins?) and already I could notice some differences in the language, because by that point we were in Austria. For example, they say Erdapfel (earth apple) instead of Kartoffel (potato). And their accents are really thick and remarkably difficult for a German to understand, so needless to say I was pretty lost when they spoke to me until they repeated it about three times.
On Sunday we had our first ski session in the afternoon, just to get used to the slopes. I've only ever done beginner slopes, and I don't think I've skiied since freshman year when I dumbly attempted the ski team. However, I think one of the things about being an exchange student is that it makes you more confident to just jump into something having no idea where you'll go with it. So, I just followed my group down the mountain and tried not to die. We spent most of the first day on an intermediate slope, and I lived! I think I fell over once but I didn't lose poles or skis, which all my other groupmates did at least once. The lifts are funny too- on our mountain there was a cable car, with closed "cars" that fit up to 8 people, and then a bunch of pulley line cable things... I don't really know what they're called. At Berkshire East the only one is at the bunny hill, you know, the one that rips your arms off? Yeah. Except these actually come from behind so it pulls you from your butt. Which is much more comfortable and easy.
Monday we were put into our groups for the week. There was a group of older kids who were studying theory and taking a test to be a ski/ snowboard teacher, so they were all together. The remaining skiiers were separated into two groups: advanced-ish and non-advanced-ish. I was in the non-advanced-ish. But we still stayed on intermediate slopes, one that was super steep and went the whole way down the mountain so we got to take the cable car up. I fell over a lot. My calves have these small muscles in the middle that apparently never get used outside of skiing, because they were KILLING. Plus at one point I made a particularly nasty fall and twisted my knee a bit- I woke up Tuesday morning and it was enormous. So I took the day off and enjoyed the gorgeous panoramic view from our bedroom. The rest of the week went smoothly except Friday, when I woke up with a wicked sore throat, headache, fever, and nausea. So day off number two. Luckily it's all better now except a kind of gross cough.
So, accomplishments/good parts of the trip:
-I can officially call myself an intermediate skiier!
-I made friends! Mostly who were younger, because most of the people closer to my age were in the theory group (although there was only one other 16-year-old so I didn't feel left out.)
-Food= delicious. We had a traditional Austrian dish called Kaiserschmarrn, which is hard to explain- basically it's chopped up Eierkuchen, which is the same as Linda's German pancakes. Somewhat crepe-like. We ate it with applesauce, and it was quite wonderful.
-The view was AMAZING. Except Wednesday when it was snowing so hard and so cloudy that we couldn't even see any mountains out the window. And with the lack of sunlight the sky and ground were the same color, so I skiied with a combination of trust, hope, and squinting.
So yesterday we hopped on the bus again- I had a great seat until one of the leader guys told me to get up and find another seat because he (a very small balding middle-aged guy) needed two seats. So I got stuck next to a boy (luckily pretty quiet) but right in front of all the other boys, which means I was surrounded by game systems and iphones and chips the whole time. We watched- count 'em- THREE movies. (It's about a 9 and a half hour drive.) First: Don't Mess With the Zohan. Stupid. Don't bother watching. The boys loved it. The men loved it. The girls couldn't wait for it to be over. Second: Hancock. Not bad, not exactly my type though. I do love Jason Bateman though. Third: Snatch. Definitely the best, although they couldn't figure out how to turn off the English subtitles and I have a feeling I wouldn't have been able to understand it without them. The other two were fine but Snatch had a pretty confusing plotline. It took me until about halfway through to figure out who everyone was.
So anyway, Simon picked me up (I like having an older brother) and I walked in the door and got a little whoosh of a smell that I distinctly remember as one of the first things I noticed on Sebtember 12 when I arrived. I guess I don't really notice it unless I've been away for a while. It's not a bad smell or a good smell, it's just a smell.
On my sick day I watched Juno on my ipod, and I particularly liked this bit:
"I never realize how much I like being home unless I've been somewhere really different for a while."
On Sunday we had our first ski session in the afternoon, just to get used to the slopes. I've only ever done beginner slopes, and I don't think I've skiied since freshman year when I dumbly attempted the ski team. However, I think one of the things about being an exchange student is that it makes you more confident to just jump into something having no idea where you'll go with it. So, I just followed my group down the mountain and tried not to die. We spent most of the first day on an intermediate slope, and I lived! I think I fell over once but I didn't lose poles or skis, which all my other groupmates did at least once. The lifts are funny too- on our mountain there was a cable car, with closed "cars" that fit up to 8 people, and then a bunch of pulley line cable things... I don't really know what they're called. At Berkshire East the only one is at the bunny hill, you know, the one that rips your arms off? Yeah. Except these actually come from behind so it pulls you from your butt. Which is much more comfortable and easy.
Monday we were put into our groups for the week. There was a group of older kids who were studying theory and taking a test to be a ski/ snowboard teacher, so they were all together. The remaining skiiers were separated into two groups: advanced-ish and non-advanced-ish. I was in the non-advanced-ish. But we still stayed on intermediate slopes, one that was super steep and went the whole way down the mountain so we got to take the cable car up. I fell over a lot. My calves have these small muscles in the middle that apparently never get used outside of skiing, because they were KILLING. Plus at one point I made a particularly nasty fall and twisted my knee a bit- I woke up Tuesday morning and it was enormous. So I took the day off and enjoyed the gorgeous panoramic view from our bedroom. The rest of the week went smoothly except Friday, when I woke up with a wicked sore throat, headache, fever, and nausea. So day off number two. Luckily it's all better now except a kind of gross cough.
So, accomplishments/good parts of the trip:
-I can officially call myself an intermediate skiier!
-I made friends! Mostly who were younger, because most of the people closer to my age were in the theory group (although there was only one other 16-year-old so I didn't feel left out.)
-Food= delicious. We had a traditional Austrian dish called Kaiserschmarrn, which is hard to explain- basically it's chopped up Eierkuchen, which is the same as Linda's German pancakes. Somewhat crepe-like. We ate it with applesauce, and it was quite wonderful.
-The view was AMAZING. Except Wednesday when it was snowing so hard and so cloudy that we couldn't even see any mountains out the window. And with the lack of sunlight the sky and ground were the same color, so I skiied with a combination of trust, hope, and squinting.
So yesterday we hopped on the bus again- I had a great seat until one of the leader guys told me to get up and find another seat because he (a very small balding middle-aged guy) needed two seats. So I got stuck next to a boy (luckily pretty quiet) but right in front of all the other boys, which means I was surrounded by game systems and iphones and chips the whole time. We watched- count 'em- THREE movies. (It's about a 9 and a half hour drive.) First: Don't Mess With the Zohan. Stupid. Don't bother watching. The boys loved it. The men loved it. The girls couldn't wait for it to be over. Second: Hancock. Not bad, not exactly my type though. I do love Jason Bateman though. Third: Snatch. Definitely the best, although they couldn't figure out how to turn off the English subtitles and I have a feeling I wouldn't have been able to understand it without them. The other two were fine but Snatch had a pretty confusing plotline. It took me until about halfway through to figure out who everyone was.
So anyway, Simon picked me up (I like having an older brother) and I walked in the door and got a little whoosh of a smell that I distinctly remember as one of the first things I noticed on Sebtember 12 when I arrived. I guess I don't really notice it unless I've been away for a while. It's not a bad smell or a good smell, it's just a smell.
On my sick day I watched Juno on my ipod, and I particularly liked this bit:
"I never realize how much I like being home unless I've been somewhere really different for a while."
Friday, January 29, 2010
Okay, yes, I'm a total fail blogger. So from now on I'm going to promise not to make any more promises about what I'm going to write about. Because I'm trying not to live in the past. (No, not really, but I've already written about my holidays in about four different places, and they seem pretty boring to me now.) Anyhoo. It's January 29! Guess what that means! It means tomorrow, at 11 pm, I am leaving for ÖSTERREICH!!! (Austria for you non-Germans out there). I have my Koffer packed, camera batteries charged, and muscles pumped (or they will be after rowing and dance lessons tonight) for seven days of skiing in the Alps! Woot woot! I get back February 7 at one in the morning. My host parents and Clara are spending the weekend in London (Sebastian has work and Clara has a friend) so Simon is picking me up from the bus, and then I'll probably spend the whole day sleeping. Hopefully I'll get to upload pictures as well! Because the coming week won't allow a lot of time- today we got our new school schedule, which is wayyy more intense than last semesters' in my opinion. I don't really like it at all, although we do have a free period on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, so I get an extra half hour of sleep... frankly, I'd rather get up a little earlier and be done earlier, rather than at 2:30 (my shortest day). Plus, my favorite classes (English and Biology) have been reduced to twice a week each, whereas my least favorite (German and Physik) are three times a week, with one double period in German. Luckily, I have my AFS trip to Bad Honnef February 23-28, so I get to miss school, and then we have easter break for two weeks, and then in May we have two four-day weekends on which I'm hoping to do some travel of sorts. We'll see. So while I do rather detest the idea of my new German schedule, I do appreciate the vacations.
For a while during my Praktikum it was FREEZING- hovering around 0° fahrenheit, and going down to -10 at one point. And I was walking around Frohnau and Hermsdorf, wearing my black overalls and black jacket, but with no scarf or gloves... so that bit wasn't that fun. It wasn't a terribly complicated job, and I didn't find it all that exciting, but it was a fun experience. I didn't get to go up on the roof ever because a) I'm only a praktikantin and b) Jörg is my host mother's younger brother, and if I fell off a roof I bet he'd really get beaten up. But I did get to see a whole lot of pretty cool houses, and quite a few stinkers as well. They gave me some ideas on how not to live.
Yesterday I saw AVATAR! It was pretty much the coolest idea ever. And now I really want an avatar. Plus I saw it in German and understood the whole thing, so score one for me! I think I'm starting to get to the place where I can begin to call myself conversationally fluent. I would often be talking with people whose chimneys we were sweeping, and they would look at me curiously and ask me where I was from, and when I said America they were momentarily shocked, as though they'd expected me to say Bayern or Dortmund or something. Which is kinda cool, if I do say so myself.
Until February...
P.S. February 12 is my 5-month mark. 5 months out of ten. That means I'll be halfway through! Which is a really ridiculous prospect.
For a while during my Praktikum it was FREEZING- hovering around 0° fahrenheit, and going down to -10 at one point. And I was walking around Frohnau and Hermsdorf, wearing my black overalls and black jacket, but with no scarf or gloves... so that bit wasn't that fun. It wasn't a terribly complicated job, and I didn't find it all that exciting, but it was a fun experience. I didn't get to go up on the roof ever because a) I'm only a praktikantin and b) Jörg is my host mother's younger brother, and if I fell off a roof I bet he'd really get beaten up. But I did get to see a whole lot of pretty cool houses, and quite a few stinkers as well. They gave me some ideas on how not to live.
Yesterday I saw AVATAR! It was pretty much the coolest idea ever. And now I really want an avatar. Plus I saw it in German and understood the whole thing, so score one for me! I think I'm starting to get to the place where I can begin to call myself conversationally fluent. I would often be talking with people whose chimneys we were sweeping, and they would look at me curiously and ask me where I was from, and when I said America they were momentarily shocked, as though they'd expected me to say Bayern or Dortmund or something. Which is kinda cool, if I do say so myself.
Until February...
P.S. February 12 is my 5-month mark. 5 months out of ten. That means I'll be halfway through! Which is a really ridiculous prospect.
Saturday, January 2, 2010
happy thoughts
Something that made me cheery today: I was showing Clara my bucket list, and she decided to make one of her own. At the moment it's very short, but its contents are the following: visit Thailand, visit Jakob's host family, go to Sweden, become an aunt, go to Legoland, and visit the Landrys. (The last was actually higher on the list, but I wanted it to have more punch.) HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!! longggg post coming soon... or many shorts...
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