Look who decided to show up.

That would be me. I decided to show up... kinda, sorta. Thing is, it's kinda hard to blog when you have so much free time yet there's nothing really important to blog because you go to school everyday. And weekends aren't always anything big, it's kinda just like plain old living, except here. In Germany. While listening to German 24/7 and speaking it as well. But seeing as the last time I blogged was before the Holidays I suppose there are a lot of things to tell. So we'll take this by stages, as is the norm for me. ;)

Christmas
So It's already February so I don't remember much about how Christmas morning started. It didn't start with opening presents though. Here Christmas is on the 24th and presents are opened at night. I do remember that two days before Christmas we were deciding whether or not to get a Christmas tree. In my head I was flipping out. "WHAT KIND OF A QUESTION IS THAT?!! WHY WOULDN'T YOU GET A CHRISTMAS TREE FOR CHRISTMAS?!!" Where are you going to put the presents?! But then I thought, "Hmm, maybe they do the present thing different here..." So instead of arguing I just nodded and shook my head where appropriate. In the end we got a tree even though both my host siblings didn't want to. Can I say, party poopers?

But we got the tree and we fixed it up nice and pretty and we put actual candles on it, which was pretty awesome and it looked really pretty. Dinner was a disaster however. My host parents decided to try out some new fancy cooking and lets just say it wasn't the best. Truthfully it was tasteless. It wasn't disgusting but it wasn't delicious either. I ate it, my sister and parents ate it. But my host brother decided to be a whining ninny and complain during the entire dinner.  I of course felt like asking him, "Really? How old are you? It's Christmas. APPRECIATE." It's not that I don't like my host brother, I really do. But he's like just going through puberty so sometimes he's reeeeeaaaaally annoying. Like a lot. But mostly he's a really cool brother.

Anyway that was the Christmas evening disaster. During Christmas break, which is three weeks long mind you, we went to visit my host grandparents! They live in a city called Zimmern in south eastern Germany very close to the Black forest. I'm sure a few of you have heard of the forest already. In German it's called Schwarzwald (pronounced sh-vah-rr-ts-vah-ld). So yeah we stayed there for like three nights and it was really nice because I really like my grandma. Can't say much about grandpa though. He doesn't have much of a bright personality, he doesn't say much and when he does I don't understand him because he slurs words and he speaks Schwäbisch (pronounced shh-veh-bish), which is a German dialect. It's not too different but that with the slurring makes it hard. I mean, grandma spoke to me in Schwäbisch and I had no problem understanding her. 


Moving on, we went through a few towns in der Schwarzwald and it is very dark and gloomy down there. It's very, very foggy. You have no idea. And the cities we went to would be situated in the center of the forest so it would kinda feel like we were surrounded or encased by the forest. It was really awesome though. I really like it, and there was even snow there. 


The whole time there was really nice, I stuffed my face with tea, Christmas cookies, and cake because grandma likes to have tea time... everyday...in the afternoon....and after dinner. She also likes baking and she does it really well. But in general if you're reading this and you plan to come to Germany TRY THE CHRISTMAS COOKIES. THEY ARE THE BEST THING EVAR! I am not kidding you. 


But after Christmas, I was thinking that something was missing in the way that I was waiting for something that never came. But it wasn't until after it passed that I realized what it was. People in the U.S. make a big deal about the "European Christmas" and that's what I was waiting for this whole time and on Christmas day I was kinda like "That's it?" (even though I did get really nice presents). But then I saw that the "European Christmas" that everyone is talking about was not Christmas day but Christmas time. The entire month of December is what makes Christmas special here. It starts off with the special stands and the city center where they sell the Christmas wine, these pretty stars that you can buy and hang on your window all light up. They have the special cookies, the cakes, they hang extra lights in the city, everyone is starting to look a littler fatter because all their eating. Every class in your school has a small party before the break, you start doing a lot of bringing in and sharing and you feel almost like in a movie, and better yet you feel like you belong. And you feel all around good. That's what this Christmas was about that everyone keeps talking about. I only noticed that after it was over. Because once it was gone, I missed it. 


New Years
Honestly I wasn't sure what to expect on New Years. I didn't know how it was celebrated here. I don't know about you guys but in my house me and a lot of other people, mostly family, we watch t.v. and/or listen to music while we wait for the countdown and when it's officially the new year you do a bunch of good luck rituals (eat twelve grapes and make a wish for everyone, bang on pots and pans to scare bad spirits away, the infamous new year's resolution, etc. etc.). In any case here I wasn't too sure what to expect. What we did was I invited my two friends Ana and Ploi (remember them?) and my host parents invited their friends and we ate dinner, dessert, and then we played a German board game. Ten minutes before the countdown we ended the game and crowded around the t.v. waiting with a glass of champagne in hand. Then when the new year came we all hugged each other, drank our champagne and ran outside. Why? Well, this is like the one of those days where you're allowed to shoot fireworks all over the place. There was fire works from my house from the the neighbors, two houses down, two houses down in the other direction, across the street, behind the house. Everywhere! It was very noisy, but quite amazing. I really enjoyed it.The streets were all foggy from the smoke and it was really cold, but there were teenagers jogging in the streets with more fireworks going somewhere and they would wish you a happy new year. Everyone you saw even though you didn't know them would smile and wish you a happy new year. Again I felt that good feeling of belonging and happiness. 

What else did I do? 
There was an AFS Camp in mid-January. It was the mid-stay camp. The only thing about the camp that was bad was that I realized that in the blink of an eye already half of my stay here is gone. The rest of the camp was nice. We had a better youth hostel, we did really cool activities, we met a few other AFSers and best of all we had really good liaisons there to lead the camp. I met really cool people there and like the last camp I found myself wishing that it was more than just three incomplete days. I say incomplete because when you get there on the first day it's already like five p.m. and then on the last day everyone leaves at like 2 p.m. the latest. So yeah, barely three days of (for the most part) AFS awesomeness. And again like that last one I think everyone left with a twinge of sadness on their faces. I was absolutely not ready to go home. Especially not ready to sit in a train (two actually) for two hours and a half so that I have time to relive the awesomeness of those days in my head and feel sad all over again. 

But as it things went that was exactly what I had to do. So when we got to Giessen I just wanted to go home but the train I had just come off from was delayed so I missed the train to Linden. So, I had to wait for like an hour. But since Ploi lived in the middle of nowhere and there were no buses to her city on Sundays and it just happened to be a Sunday she stayed and waited with me so that at my house she could call her host mom so she could pick her up. so we did that and about an hour and fifteen minutes later we were at my house and then Ploi left. And I had school the next day. 


School
I think that no matter what most of my posts are going to include a bit about school, because whether I like it or not I have to go there for five out of the seven days of the week. But even so it's not always the same. For starters I can say that the other day I actually raised my hand in Physics class. I was only supposed to give an example of a physic thingie but at least the teacher noticed that 1.) I was paying attention and 2.) I understood what was going on in class. So bonus point for me! In English class we're reading the book Thirteen Reasons Why. If you ask me I think we're over analyzing it a little too much, but whatever. In Spanish class we're watching a movie. In German, I can't really participate because sometimes the assignments are crazy hard, so I read in German. I'm on my second book. The first one I read was a Christmas present, the Little Prince (in German: Der Kleine Prinz) and now I'm reading a goosebumps book. I can't read well enough to read something like Harry Potter. Not yet, anyway. PoWi, believe it or not I read the papers she gives us and I try the assignments only to find out that I did it completely wrong. Sport we're doing Gymnastics and I suck. Everyone is so sporty except for me and three other girls so we just hang back and watch the sporty people and when the teacher tells us we try something and land on our faces. It's not that I'm not sporty, I am, but with completely different sports. 


Math is the best class only because I can understand most of the things in this class because we're dealing with numbers. The only problem is I usually don't understand the concept, but lucky me there's this nice, really smart girl that sits right next to me. Then there's Chemistry and Biology. They're both very, very, verrrrry boring because of the teacher (the same teacher teaches both subjects). She's so un-animated. I'm not sure if that's a word, but that's the only way I can describe her. She only has like three different facial expressions, her voice is weak and low and has no emotion and she's horrible at explaining things. Anyway in History I usually don't do anything because it doesn't even count but we just started doing the Medieval Ages
 and this is my favorite time in History, even though a lot of people call them "dark times" I like to think if them as "mysterious times." Anyway so I recently started paying attention and talking in class. Art is still as epic as ever and I have good friends there. In religion I also have friends in the class isn't even that bad. I like the teacher too, she looks like Snape but she's really nice and an all around smart lady. 


Speaking about friends I have to say that things with my betreuerin are a lot better. I think that in the beginning there was just a lot of tension between the two of us because she was supposed to help me school but both of us didn't really know each other. But now that I have my own friends at school and I don't have to hunt her down if I want to talk to someone, we get along a lot better. It's that kind of a friendship were you laugh at everything because every time one of us makes a mistake we'll burst out laughing and won't let the other forget about it. And not only that but it's easy to talk to her because when I want to say something important or something I can't say in German I can say it in Spanish and it's nice to be able to speak Spanish because I don't see my AFS spanish speaking friends so often anymore. Also more about friends, you know those kids in the US most people would call goth? Yeah well, they get a lot of prejudice because of the way they look and there's this girl who would probably considered goth in two of my classes. But she's really, really, really nice. One of the nicest people I have met and not only that but she's also a Black Veil Brides fan. Remember that they're one my favorite bands in the whole entire world. Well yeah so they're coming again to Germany! And this time a lot closer than the last time and we're planning to go together. Hopefully we can! I'M SO EXCITED!!!


Last one, I promise.
This is pretty awesome. This section right here. It's very awesome. I don't remember if I mentioned it before anywhere on this blog but in my school in the US the only sport I do besides Ice Skating (not figure or hockey, just skating) is fencing. Why? Well, I really like the sound of old weapons. Swords, daggers, bows and arrows. You have to admit that they're just plain cool and if you could handle any one of them you'd feel like a boss. So in the US I joined fencing and I loved it. So here I joined archery and I'M LOVING IT!!! And all the trainers are really great. I have absolutely no arm muscles and no back muscles and I have gotten myself unused to the movement in my arm that I do in fencing but archery you really build your muscles and you posture and your aim and it's just plain freaking amazing. I WANT MOAR. kjdhlkasdfhklasd So cool!!!! Too bad it's only once a week....


But yeah now that I've come to this realization that I'm half way through and that my German is really freaking good. It's not great but it's good. But now that I see these things I realize that if there's anything I want to do I can't hold back because I have no time to waste. But at this moment in my life I can honestly say that everything is really good. 


"So forgive me for bragging out lout." -Craig Owens
Here is the song. * They'll be playing with BVB at the concert. It's a bit of a loud one, but listen to it, you might like it. I love it. :)