SUPER, MEGA SORRY!

Believe me when I say that I wanted to update my blog. It's just that I've been doing so much! School, family, friends (american and german), vacation, parties, making plans and then taking the time to settle down from a constant moving lifestyle. So last time I blogged it was about German music but before that I was talking about Chirstmas, New Years, school, archery, and a possible concert.

February was as usual, a short month, except this year it had an extra day. Somewhere along the end of February is a German holiday called Fasching. I don't remember if I've already told you guys about it. But it's somewhere along the lines of a German version for Mardi Gras. Here they have parades and throw candy at you and other stuff. My host mom, insisted that she wanted to go to Grandma's because there is no Fasching like the Fasching in the city of Rottweil. No one besides her really knew what it was like and when we got there we were all really amazed. They all have these weird costumes and masks and they like to troll people but everyone is okey with it. And it's fun.

These are the candy givers, as well as the ones below. If you sang a Fasching song you would get more candy. If they liked you they would let you pick the candy. :)

Creepy looking, aren't they?

Now imagine hundreds of those parading in front of you. Eeeeshh! But I must say, if they liked you especially they would give you these little alcohol bottles with flavors. Which is legal, so don't freak out on me.

What you see above is a real live troll. Not a mythical troll but the kind of people that are called trolls because they like to troll others. If you could only see his face, they even resemble the troll meme.

So anyway this is another kind of masked being. He does not give out candy. He has (as you can observe in the picture above) a very long stick. At the end of the stick is a perfumed piece of furry thing. I don't know what it is, but it's soft and furry. In any case they'll single you out of the crowd and rub the thing on your face and won't go away for a while. The more you fight them, the longer they stay. Playing along is the only thing that will make them go faster, unless for some odd reason they aren't convinced by your playing along and will continue to do it. Some when you get hesitant would stick the stick between peoples' legs and make them nervous and super embarrassed. The best part was that I got loads of candy and I got to see host grandma and grandpa and meet more members of the family. 

So February ended and March began and in this month I did a lot. It was Ana's birthday. So Ana organized a big group of people, AFSers, people we met here, and host siblings and friends of host siblings. So it was a very big multi cultural group and we all went together to Giessen and ate and partied and we had a blast!

In this month I met some really cool people. One them being the first guy I've met that loves Black Veil Brides as much as I do! So yeah with that said, I'll let you guys know that I went to the concert with my friend from school and one of her friends which was this really cool guy. It was the most awesome thing. It was in Cologne and it was fairly small, but the people there were all there dressed really cool. Most of them had some type of make up or hair thing going on. If you don't know what I'm talking about just google Black Veil Brides and then you'll know.

 But it was AWESOME. There were two bands Black Veil Brides and Destroy Rebuild Until God Shows (D.R.U.G.S.). And you must know that I love both. A lot. And well for D.R.U.G.S. the lead singer Craig Owens jumped into the crowd, and he was just plain awesome. If you here his voice and how well he can sing you might think that in person he might not be that good but he was amazing! ^__^

This is Craig from D.R.U.G.S. in all his glory. 

And there was Black Veil Brides. Man were they awesome. The first one to come out on the stage was the drummer C.C. and I flipped out. He did an amazing solo somewhere in the middle and I was left absolutely astounded. 

Here was one on the only pictures I could get of him. He's so amazing!

And then there was of course the guitarists. They are both so very talented. When ever the lead guitarist (Jake) played a solo everyone started screaming. And the rhythm guitarist (Jinxx) was as epic as ever and hair was a lot fluffier in person that in is in pictures.

Jake (left) and Jinxx (right). AWESOME. AWESOME.

This is the bass player Ashley. Yes, he's a guy.

And here is Andy the most amazing singer evar!

 It was awesome. I loved it. I loved them even more than I already do. Both bands were stupendous. I even got pictures with the singer and guitarist of D.R.U.G.S. as well their autographs.

Then in that same week (weekend to be specific) I went back to Cologne. This time I went sight seeing. There I have another host sister and we slept over her house and she took us to places in Cologne and it was a great city.

Here's just a taste of what I saw. It was really pretty and really big. Bigger than I have seen here in Germany. I mean you might be able to say Frankfurt is big but Cologne felt a lot bigger to me. And it was very very beautiful.

Then the week after that I hung out with my friends from school. Somewhere in March Ploi and I dyed our  hair blue.

Now we go to April. In April we had two weeks vacation and in the first one I went in a  small group of AFSers to Amsterdam! It was awesome. It was definitely one of the most beautiful cities I have ever been to. It had water streets (like in Venice) called "gracht." There were many tiny alleys and just a really alive city. And in that sense it was a bit like New York but a million times prettier.The funniest part was the language. It's like a combination of German and English. And it sounds super funny but I could understand them most of the time.

Now here's just a little overview of what we did there.

This was the Anne Frank house. You're allowed to go in and look around and though it was sad it was also pretty interesting.

Ana and I standing in front of the Amsterdam train station.

Cheese. Cheese. Cheese.

On a boat, sailing through the grachts.

So pretty.

It's known for it's tall, narrow houses as well.

I am-sterdam. Are you sterdam?

I'm pretty sure many of you know the beer Heineken. Well it's from the Netherlands and we went to one of their "brauereis" (the place where they brew beer) and it was pretty epic.

Well in any case it was one heck of a city. I really enjoyed it and I didn't learn a word in Dutch except for "melk" which means milk. Everyone there speaks English so it was always easy to order food or ask for directions. We had a great time there. When I got back everyone else continued traveling so I spent the last week watching tv series in German and gaining weight.

And last week guess who came to visit??!!! GELLO!!! I've been taking him all over Giessen, Linden and other places with cool castles like Marburg, which is not so far from where I am but it's full of German culture. He's tried the German beer and sausage and of course, he thought they were both amazing. He even learned a teensy bit of German! Anyway we had a great time and now he's on a train on his way back to France. I'll be seeing him again in two months, that is unless I end up going to France sometime in the next two months.

As for what I'll be doing and how I'm feeling. Well, for starters I was invited to one of these really big school parties by Ana's host brother and I'm a bit nervous because it's a bunch of school people, but not from my school. I'll only know two people there. And then sometime this week I'm going on an AFS trip to Berlin! I'm so excited to finally be able to see the capital of Germany. :D So there will most likely be photos of that in the next post. Also I'm going with my host family to Hamburg so even more excitement and more photos!

As for how I'm feeling... "Wir fühlen wir sind fürs Ende nicht bereit," -Bill Kaulitz 
Songsongsongsongsong. Google the meaning of the quote, if you must. ;)