Feeling moderately bad about my recent lack of updates and with nothing better to do, I thought I would type up another one.
Currently I am sitting on a train at some random German station which I cannot spell due to my lack of German … special letter things on my keyboard. I spent the last 3 days just out side Karlsruhe with the old landlords of my parents and am now headed back to Friedrichshafen for the last month of Bible school... tear, tear – but those are quickly wiped away by the thought of my last 3 weeks… So long Germany, hello Europe!
This weekend I learned 2 main things. The first being schizophrenic weather is not exclusive to the lower mainland. Germany has its own fair share of messed up weather… I just hadn’t experienced it before as the weather in Frieds is pretty simple: sunny and dry or foggy and cloudy. I didn’t see anything unusual the first evening I was there as it was dark – an expected characteristic of night, the morning however, was a different story. At breakfast, it was sunny. Cleaning up, it started to hail. Slowly the hail turned into snow and after about half an hour began to stop. Then I was given a tour of the barn aka – hay and FATTY rabbits.
(Incase this turns out to be unclear, italics = thoughts, non italics = words)
Christian: opens the door to 2 of the pens (out of 8)
Alicia: Oh, these are cute. I really hope they aren’t growing them to eat like everything else that they have… but they do look rather plump. Why does he [the father] have them, are they just pets?
Christian: Yes, pets. He enjoys growing them. But then when they are big we eat them, the rabbits.
Alicia: Oh… I suppose it would be a stupid question then, if I asked if he names them. Maybe I’ll just make a remark about having never tasted rabbit before. You eat them. I’ve never had rabbit before. Does he still name them anyways?
Christian: … Um… I don’t think so.
Contrary to popular belief, I do think about what I’m saying before I say it… sometimes my mouth just doesn’t pay attention to what my brain decides.
After the rabbits he took me into the other part of the barn where there was a legit hay loft and I felt like such a city child when I asked if I could climb the latter that went up to the third floor. I climbed the ladder… then he asked if I wanted to see the small church of their town. I said sure, it had a sweet looking tower thing and I wanted to see how old it was. (only about 100 years old)
While we were inside the sky had been nice and clear, but on the way to the church it started to snow. Lightly, but still snowing. We went in, 5 minutes later we went out. By that time the snow had picked up considerably. Then he asked if I wanted to walk to a place where I could see the whole village. It wasn’t very big (hence the term village) and so I didn’t imagine that the walk would be incredibly long. It wasn’t… but the snow made it seem like it took years. By the time we got back to the house it had snowed so much that the front of my jacket was completely white and my hair was so wet that I had to blow-dry it. 5 minutes after we got back the snow stopped – completely. It was insane. Then we had dinner (but German style: cake, bread and coffee) and as we were eating I looked out the window and it was POURING rain.
That was yesterday. This morning was similar. It stopped snowing during breakfast, we went for a walk at noon and it starts snowing again! This time big, fat and fluffy flakes as before but much more wet! I wasn’t so much of a snowman when we got back as a …drenched waterman. 5 minutes after changing out of my wet clothes I looked outside and it was completely sunny. Weather is a strange thing.
The second thing was not so much something that I had not been aware of as I learned over Christmas and on outreaches that Germans don’t seem to think that I eat enough, but it became much more difficult to refuse food when I couldn’t decline in German. My mother had warned me that they would feed me lots, but I should have been preparing and stretching my stomach for this weekend months ago. I don’t think I have eaten so much in one weekend – ever.
The moment I walked in the door was the moment my freewill regarding food was lost. When I got there, she (the mother) was making what I thought looked like biscuits because she had rolled the dough and was in the process of cutting them with a glass cup when I came in – as far as my cooking expertise bring me, I feel as though glass cups will assuredly make nice, round biscuits – perhaps it is, but that’s not what she was making.
Mother: aslkdj lakdjeoij lskdjfawieojalkj vlakjseijfsa f (German)
Christian: Would you like to have some tea or coffee?
Alicia: Non-bodenseehof good coffee! Coffee would be nice, thanks!
Christian: Would you like bread or cake?
Alicia: (Not knowing the perils of this answer) Cake is always nice, I love cake.
Mother: laksdfa ;asldkfa poeksg ljkwesf
Christian: You must be very hungry as you missed lunch.
Alicia: Oh, no. I made myself a lunch package at breakfast and ate that on the train here, I’m okay.
Mother: alskdjfaei lkjsdfaolejifa lskj
Christian: You should have bread instead of cake.
Alicia: I’m not that hungry (truth), a little cake would be enough (I really wasn’t even hungry enough for cake but if I was going to eat something, at least it would taste better than bread)
I felt rather proud of myself for being able to convince them of my lack of hunger, until minutes later when I was ushered into the dinning room and found, to my dismay, bread, cheese and meat but no cake. It wasn’t that horrible, until I was GIVEN the two largest pieces of bread… I would have taken the smallest one.
Then she left … and came back a few minutes later with the first batch of dumphlesomething (what she was making – I’m still not 100% sure how she made them, I was curios so she gave me a crash course… but I can’t cook and am hopeless when it comes to remembering directions. The biscuit-dough things were placed in a pan with hot oil and then she quickly added a solution of water and salt, closed the lid and waited until all the water was off the lit before opening it and flipping them over.) They were really good but rather oily and salty. I had one.
Sometime after coffee we had (a light) dinner – potato soup and salty biscuit things. Then desert – more coffee and then she made me try a piece of cake.
Day 1: 2 pieces of bread, cheese, meat, 3 cups of coffee (it magically kept refilling itself), 3 salty biscuit things, 1 bowl of soup.
I will spare you the details of HOW they managed to feed me so much on days 2 and 3, nor will I list all of the ways I tried to get out of eating so much (I tried, I really did! But to no avail) … I’ll list off what I was fed:
Day 2:
Breakfast: 1 giant bun thing with cheese & jam, 2 cups of coffee. Breakfast somehow managed (in my mind… but I’m pretty sure in reality as well) to extent into lunch…there was no end to it all.
Lunch: 1 Giant bowl of noodle soup (If we had stopped here, I would have been content.), roast beef, gravy, … dumplings? Fruit salad, ice cream.
Mid-afternoon tea: There were 4 cakes on the table… She served us each a piece of the first one. Then each a piece of the second… nobody else had the 3rd… I only, very reluctantly, let her put it on my plate because I thought everybody else was going to have some as well… but no, just me. I had 3 HUGE pieces of cake in one sitting… I am positive that my digestive system hates me. I probably burned more calories digesting the food than I would have doing anything else.
Around 9, I was still stuffed, but somehow the conversation found its way to typical German stereotypes – lederhosen, beer and pretzels… Cue the pretzels. I think the fact that they couldn’t understand my refusals (if Christian didn’t translate) in their mind gave them the liberty to put anything and everything they wanted onto the plate in front of me. What do you do, as a polite person, in that situation in a country where it is dreadfully rude to leave uneaten food on your plate…? What can I say, I’m a Hufflepuff.
Today was also more of the same… although it was good because they let me serve myself (that is, after the pre-served soup) so, still full from days previous (and the soup), I took very little and refused anything else.
It’s been 6 hours since I last ate anything and I am STILL full… I gave my stomach a poke a while ago and still found it to be solid – and I don’t have abs. She gave me a package of food (2 sandwhiches, 4 pieces of cake) to take with me… I think I’ll have to give it away once I get back to school as I won’t be eating for the next 2 weeks.
Later - Walking back from the trainstation to the school, I ran into 5 guys from here and wouldn't you know it, they were hungry. I don't think I'll tell them who ate the food, but I think I will say that it was thoroughly enjoyed.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Monday, February 15, 2010
Superbowl... monday?
Sorry. I've been busy. You know when you know that you have to do something but you keep... not doing it and then you put it off even more because you've already put it off for so long? Well, that's the way I've been feeling towards my blog over the past 5 weeks since I last updated this. However, there is no escape from blogging today as approximately 85% of the inhabitants of Bodenseehof (... thats all of the North Americans) are currently sitting in the lecture hall watching the immensly anticipated Superbowl. Some people avoided the internet for the week inorder to not accidentally stumble across the score. Personally, I could care less about the score and went on facebook anyways, and I'm sure somebody posted the results and I'm sure I saw it, but it didn't register. I'm really just in here for the commercials... As I type, people are gawking over repeats and fumbles or something football-y like that... I just look up every one and a while. You can't tell but I just took a break because it went to commercials, I give those my full and undivided attention. But since theres more game than commercials anyways, this will be a long one to make up for the lengthy break. (... or not because as soon as I wrote that it went to yet another commercial, what's up with that?)
So much has happened since I last updated this thing that I honestly have NO idea where to start or any insite into what you all might find interesting or relevant. But I'll give it a shot.
I think that I am almost ready to come home to real life. Being here is great and I'm having a blast but getting ridiculously sick of routine over here. Everything here is on a schedual. It's not to say that we don't have free time or anything but even the free time is scheduled. I would also wish that they believed in spares here at the Bode because it would be really awesome if I didn't have to be somewhere at the exact same time every morning. If there is anything I I am definately not a routine person. The freedom to eat whatever you want and whenever you want is probably something I am very much going to appreciate once I come home. There are sometimes when you just CRAVE something so much and knowing that the only way you can get it is to fly halfway across the world is starting to become frustrating. For example slurpees. I would love to do a Sev-run right now and be sitting here with a slurpee... but I can't. I also can't watch tv whenever and as I am sitting here I'm wondering if commercials have always been so ridiculously lame (but AMAZING at the same time) and I'm just noticing now because I've been away from real media for so long and they're all brand new and awesome.
This past weekend my sing team went on our final outreach to Schonwald (with a little double dot thing over the o) in upper Bavaria or, as Peter Reid puts it, 'We're heading up to German Siberia.' There was A LOT of snow there. Probably the most I've ever seen in one spot. There was about 3 feet in most places and they said that it had been melting for a while before we got there... it was insane. There were some spots beside the streets that had been plowed where the snow was almost taller than I am. It took us about 7 hours to get there... including the 40 minutes we spent sitting at a standstill. We had a couple chinese firedrills, they were grand. We got to the church in Schonwald and had a late dinner (it was like 8:30?) and then went home to our host families. My host family consisted of: Danica, a 14 year old Konfi - very cute and pretty good at english; Damijan, her 8 year old brother - INCREDIBLY ADORABLE and not so good at English. He showed me his english hw book and it was just basic simple stuff like 'hi, how are you' 'what is your name' 'my favourite colour is blue' etc. but he knows more English than I know German so I was undoubtebly impressed. He also played some guitar for me, it was also just beginner but he was pretty good at that as well. He also spoke to me a lot, but I didn't understand anything... it all sounded nice though. Sometimes when he wanted to tell me something important he would run out of the room and ask his Dad or Danica and then come back in and repeat what they said to me... when he did that his accent was so perfect I had a hard time believing that he didn't actually speak english; Rudi, the father. I'm not acually sure how its spelt. He was really nice and talked to me about porcelain. Apparently Schonwald is the practically the porcelain capital of the world and he is a designer at one of the major companies; The mother. I feel terrible, however I can't remember her name. She was really sweet but she didn't speak much english. She tried though, it was nice. I liked my host family. On friday morning we all got up super early went out, in the cold, and handed out invites with a mini rittersport chocolate attached to our 2 open evenings at the church. I wonder if German children were ever told not to accept candy from strangers... 'but they seemed nice...' Friday was a busy day - we went to a middleschool and spent 45 minutes with a class of 9th graders and then we went to a special design school that started out as a porcelain school but has expanded to include snowboard designs, incredible graphic desgin stuff and car/motorcycle desgins. They said that people from huge companies like BMW and Mercedes come and hire students right after they've finished the program all the time. One guy showed us this motorcycle that he was making (he took apart a simple one inorder to have all the basic parts and then was adding his own stuff to it) and said it was a cross between his own ideas, a lambourguini and some special motorcycle.. or something... it was sweet. After the design school we went to sporthalle and then to our host families for dinner and then back to the church for the open evening which meant: we sing, the dramma team ... drammas? there was a message and then we mingled... or not so much on the part of some. On Saturday we hung out with the Konfi kids and then went to ‘the Basillica’? … some old church. It had this library that was built like 700 years ago.. it was old and sweet. We had a tour guide which made it a lot more interesting as well. However, the best part of the afternoon was definitely not the church, though it was sweet, the highlight was stopping on the side of the road to take pictures behind the boarder sign. I can officially say that I have been to the Czech Republic!! Check the Czech! :) It was sweet. On the way there and back… and half way home on Saturday, Amy, Braeden and I played the country game (where you say a country that starts with the last letter of the previous country) with Harry Potter terms… lame? Yes. Fun? Also yes. Took our mind off car sickness? Most definitely. It was a great diversion. After that we had dinner with our host families again and then came back to the church for a second open evening. Church in the morning was cool because it was in a church that was originally built in the 14/1500’s they said that it has been renovated a bunch since then but everything in it was crazy old. They also gave us all mugs as a thank-you gift. Germans are so nice. The ride back wasn’t as bad as the ride there and seemed to go by way faster, it was great.
So, ya. That was a basic summary of my weekend. I have no idea how on earth I am supposed to summarize everything that has happened between today and January 5th. So maybe point form of the things I can remember off the top of my head? Note: these will not be in correct chronological order.
- Trip to IKEA, it was grand. Although I forgot my camera which was a bit of a bummer
- Movie night: the emperors new groove
- new roommates: Randi and Katie… Kareen for a week
- burger king twice with amy after failed attempts to find ipods at media mart and the apple store
- photo scavenger hunt with konfi kids
- Mexican food with josh, Austin, amy and Stephanie
- k-group breakfast for dinner
- social event: make a movie
- superbowl party
- lots of food
- igloo building
- snowball fights
- work duty
- h&m adventures
… my computer is running out of battery and I cant remember anything.
I’ll update this… eventually. But no promises :P
So much has happened since I last updated this thing that I honestly have NO idea where to start or any insite into what you all might find interesting or relevant. But I'll give it a shot.
I think that I am almost ready to come home to real life. Being here is great and I'm having a blast but getting ridiculously sick of routine over here. Everything here is on a schedual. It's not to say that we don't have free time or anything but even the free time is scheduled. I would also wish that they believed in spares here at the Bode because it would be really awesome if I didn't have to be somewhere at the exact same time every morning. If there is anything I I am definately not a routine person. The freedom to eat whatever you want and whenever you want is probably something I am very much going to appreciate once I come home. There are sometimes when you just CRAVE something so much and knowing that the only way you can get it is to fly halfway across the world is starting to become frustrating. For example slurpees. I would love to do a Sev-run right now and be sitting here with a slurpee... but I can't. I also can't watch tv whenever and as I am sitting here I'm wondering if commercials have always been so ridiculously lame (but AMAZING at the same time) and I'm just noticing now because I've been away from real media for so long and they're all brand new and awesome.
This past weekend my sing team went on our final outreach to Schonwald (with a little double dot thing over the o) in upper Bavaria or, as Peter Reid puts it, 'We're heading up to German Siberia.' There was A LOT of snow there. Probably the most I've ever seen in one spot. There was about 3 feet in most places and they said that it had been melting for a while before we got there... it was insane. There were some spots beside the streets that had been plowed where the snow was almost taller than I am. It took us about 7 hours to get there... including the 40 minutes we spent sitting at a standstill. We had a couple chinese firedrills, they were grand. We got to the church in Schonwald and had a late dinner (it was like 8:30?) and then went home to our host families. My host family consisted of: Danica, a 14 year old Konfi - very cute and pretty good at english; Damijan, her 8 year old brother - INCREDIBLY ADORABLE and not so good at English. He showed me his english hw book and it was just basic simple stuff like 'hi, how are you' 'what is your name' 'my favourite colour is blue' etc. but he knows more English than I know German so I was undoubtebly impressed. He also played some guitar for me, it was also just beginner but he was pretty good at that as well. He also spoke to me a lot, but I didn't understand anything... it all sounded nice though. Sometimes when he wanted to tell me something important he would run out of the room and ask his Dad or Danica and then come back in and repeat what they said to me... when he did that his accent was so perfect I had a hard time believing that he didn't actually speak english; Rudi, the father. I'm not acually sure how its spelt. He was really nice and talked to me about porcelain. Apparently Schonwald is the practically the porcelain capital of the world and he is a designer at one of the major companies; The mother. I feel terrible, however I can't remember her name. She was really sweet but she didn't speak much english. She tried though, it was nice. I liked my host family. On friday morning we all got up super early went out, in the cold, and handed out invites with a mini rittersport chocolate attached to our 2 open evenings at the church. I wonder if German children were ever told not to accept candy from strangers... 'but they seemed nice...' Friday was a busy day - we went to a middleschool and spent 45 minutes with a class of 9th graders and then we went to a special design school that started out as a porcelain school but has expanded to include snowboard designs, incredible graphic desgin stuff and car/motorcycle desgins. They said that people from huge companies like BMW and Mercedes come and hire students right after they've finished the program all the time. One guy showed us this motorcycle that he was making (he took apart a simple one inorder to have all the basic parts and then was adding his own stuff to it) and said it was a cross between his own ideas, a lambourguini and some special motorcycle.. or something... it was sweet. After the design school we went to sporthalle and then to our host families for dinner and then back to the church for the open evening which meant: we sing, the dramma team ... drammas? there was a message and then we mingled... or not so much on the part of some. On Saturday we hung out with the Konfi kids and then went to ‘the Basillica’? … some old church. It had this library that was built like 700 years ago.. it was old and sweet. We had a tour guide which made it a lot more interesting as well. However, the best part of the afternoon was definitely not the church, though it was sweet, the highlight was stopping on the side of the road to take pictures behind the boarder sign. I can officially say that I have been to the Czech Republic!! Check the Czech! :) It was sweet. On the way there and back… and half way home on Saturday, Amy, Braeden and I played the country game (where you say a country that starts with the last letter of the previous country) with Harry Potter terms… lame? Yes. Fun? Also yes. Took our mind off car sickness? Most definitely. It was a great diversion. After that we had dinner with our host families again and then came back to the church for a second open evening. Church in the morning was cool because it was in a church that was originally built in the 14/1500’s they said that it has been renovated a bunch since then but everything in it was crazy old. They also gave us all mugs as a thank-you gift. Germans are so nice. The ride back wasn’t as bad as the ride there and seemed to go by way faster, it was great.
So, ya. That was a basic summary of my weekend. I have no idea how on earth I am supposed to summarize everything that has happened between today and January 5th. So maybe point form of the things I can remember off the top of my head? Note: these will not be in correct chronological order.
- Trip to IKEA, it was grand. Although I forgot my camera which was a bit of a bummer
- Movie night: the emperors new groove
- new roommates: Randi and Katie… Kareen for a week
- burger king twice with amy after failed attempts to find ipods at media mart and the apple store
- photo scavenger hunt with konfi kids
- Mexican food with josh, Austin, amy and Stephanie
- k-group breakfast for dinner
- social event: make a movie
- superbowl party
- lots of food
- igloo building
- snowball fights
- work duty
- h&m adventures
… my computer is running out of battery and I cant remember anything.
I’ll update this… eventually. But no promises :P
Monday, January 4, 2010
'I AM NO MAN!'
Karl asked me to give him an update of my life - he hadn't been reading my blog, you see. But even if he had been, there still would have been some unanswered questions such as 'where are you', 'how was christmas', 'what have you been up to aside from skiing'. 'how was skiing' and stuff like that - he told me to just copy and paste off my blog, but since there have been no recent updates, I'll just copy and paste off the message I sent him. I hope you guys don't mind second-hand information - it's the same stuff, really, just worded slightly differently than it would be if I re-wrote it right now. It's not super detailed either, but I'm not using my laptop and therefore it is rather frustrating to use a german keyboard while still typing properly, and this space bar has issues so I have to keep going back every couple of words to add a space, so I really don't want to make this long. 'Hooray for copy+paste!'
Just as a bit of background information, he asked me how I've been doing. Any additionaly add-ins from right now will be un-bolded.
I've been doing pretty good actuallly. I just got back from a week of skiing in Switzerland..and by back I mean back to the house of a friend of my parents in Gummersbach, near Köln, where I've been staying. And most recently, I just got back from watching Return of the King (extended edition!! they know how to properly watch LOTR here in Germany) in the youth room of the youth group I went skiing with. It was a bit unfortunate because they watched it in german and put on the english subtitles for me... but i've seen it enough that I almost didnt need the subtitles so it really wasn't that bad. Javier and Grant, we need to have a marathon when I get back, a full one... none of this heading up to camp in the middle of it stuff, okay?
I think skiing was a really good lesson for me.. I'm not bad at it (because I’ve been many times before and obviously havn’t killed myself yet) but at the beginning (for some stupid reason, probably to teach me a grand life-lesson or something like that) I was terrified of going down a stupid mountain on two thin waxy sticks. And I'm pretty sure I looked like a huge loser because the first day mostly consited of me taking baby steps (they should have given me snowshoes) down the mountain, telling myself to suck it up and not be a wuss and reciting verses such as Joshua 1:9 saying 'God, I'm pretty friken terrified right now.. if you're with me and for it, I'd like to make it down this mountain alive and in one piece!' I was always the last one to join the group. Then at the end of the week, I was almost always the 1st or 2nd one to finish a run... it was a lot more fun by day 5.
So I basically learned three things last week:
1. The Alps are awesome - God is rad.
2. You can do anything if you choose to do something and don't let your feelings get in the way.
3. Being a Christian is like skiing, (generally) you see others doing it and want what they have, rent skis/ invite Jesus and that jazz, get to the top of the mountain/ get to a point where you know you have to change or do something and freeze. Baby steps willeventually get you to the bottom but to really enjoy yourself and actually do it the way it was intended, you have to let yourself go and trust your skiis/ Jesus to do the work for you.
Tomorow we are going to take a trip to IKEA (be stoked for me, IKEA... in Europe - it promises to be a grand occasion), wednesday promises a trip to Köln (likely visiting cathedrels and that jazz, but hopefully some shopping) and a switch from this house back to the house of a second family where I spent the first few days of Christmas break. On saturday I return to the school. My train gets in at 4:24 which means I'll catch the 4:36 bus and get back to the school around 5. Rather unfortunately, I wasn't really thinking about my arrival time and therefore I will probably have last pick of a bed and closet space... top bunk and top shelves that I will hardly be able to reach are looming over my future.
Christmas in Germany was a tad strange; they have 2 christmas' here... the main part (church, big meal, get togehters) is on christmas eve day and then they have a little small family deal on christmas... it was a bit sad not being at home this year, but it wasn't too bad.
On boxing day, we went to Frankfurt and went on a walk (as did hundreds of other Europeans... apparently it's a popular activity here). On the way to Frankfurt I thought of you (Karl) and your (Karls) suggestion to"Have a Berliner in Berlin and a Frankfurter in Frankfurt." I havn't been to Berlin yet so I've had no chance to have a Berliner and unfortunately did not have a Frankfurter in Frankfurt... but on the walk I saw a sign that said Frankfurter and so I took a picture of it in honour of you (Karl).
Erm, ya. Anyways, I hope that was a reasonably satisfactory snipit of my recent life over here.
TTFN, ta ta for now.
Just as a bit of background information, he asked me how I've been doing. Any additionaly add-ins from right now will be un-bolded.
I've been doing pretty good actuallly. I just got back from a week of skiing in Switzerland..and by back I mean back to the house of a friend of my parents in Gummersbach, near Köln, where I've been staying. And most recently, I just got back from watching Return of the King (extended edition!! they know how to properly watch LOTR here in Germany) in the youth room of the youth group I went skiing with. It was a bit unfortunate because they watched it in german and put on the english subtitles for me... but i've seen it enough that I almost didnt need the subtitles so it really wasn't that bad. Javier and Grant, we need to have a marathon when I get back, a full one... none of this heading up to camp in the middle of it stuff, okay?
I think skiing was a really good lesson for me.. I'm not bad at it (because I’ve been many times before and obviously havn’t killed myself yet) but at the beginning (for some stupid reason, probably to teach me a grand life-lesson or something like that) I was terrified of going down a stupid mountain on two thin waxy sticks. And I'm pretty sure I looked like a huge loser because the first day mostly consited of me taking baby steps (they should have given me snowshoes) down the mountain, telling myself to suck it up and not be a wuss and reciting verses such as Joshua 1:9 saying 'God, I'm pretty friken terrified right now.. if you're with me and for it, I'd like to make it down this mountain alive and in one piece!' I was always the last one to join the group. Then at the end of the week, I was almost always the 1st or 2nd one to finish a run... it was a lot more fun by day 5.
So I basically learned three things last week:
1. The Alps are awesome - God is rad.
2. You can do anything if you choose to do something and don't let your feelings get in the way.
3. Being a Christian is like skiing, (generally) you see others doing it and want what they have, rent skis/ invite Jesus and that jazz, get to the top of the mountain/ get to a point where you know you have to change or do something and freeze. Baby steps willeventually get you to the bottom but to really enjoy yourself and actually do it the way it was intended, you have to let yourself go and trust your skiis/ Jesus to do the work for you.
Tomorow we are going to take a trip to IKEA (be stoked for me, IKEA... in Europe - it promises to be a grand occasion), wednesday promises a trip to Köln (likely visiting cathedrels and that jazz, but hopefully some shopping) and a switch from this house back to the house of a second family where I spent the first few days of Christmas break. On saturday I return to the school. My train gets in at 4:24 which means I'll catch the 4:36 bus and get back to the school around 5. Rather unfortunately, I wasn't really thinking about my arrival time and therefore I will probably have last pick of a bed and closet space... top bunk and top shelves that I will hardly be able to reach are looming over my future.
Christmas in Germany was a tad strange; they have 2 christmas' here... the main part (church, big meal, get togehters) is on christmas eve day and then they have a little small family deal on christmas... it was a bit sad not being at home this year, but it wasn't too bad.
On boxing day, we went to Frankfurt and went on a walk (as did hundreds of other Europeans... apparently it's a popular activity here). On the way to Frankfurt I thought of you (Karl) and your (Karls) suggestion to"Have a Berliner in Berlin and a Frankfurter in Frankfurt." I havn't been to Berlin yet so I've had no chance to have a Berliner and unfortunately did not have a Frankfurter in Frankfurt... but on the walk I saw a sign that said Frankfurter and so I took a picture of it in honour of you (Karl).
Erm, ya. Anyways, I hope that was a reasonably satisfactory snipit of my recent life over here.
TTFN, ta ta for now.
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