School... has once again started xD

So homies. What is up with the world in California? Or where ever you are reading this from....

Okay so. Basically. Update on yours truely, me.

School started again, which means no more going into Nürtingen or Stuttgart everyday to chill out with friends. It also means Teeniekreis and DRK has once again begun (Is that correct English? My English is really starting to slowly die. And the worst part is I think that maybe, JUST MAYBE, I might just need to use it again xD ) so I get to chill with some of those homies that I didn't get the chance to see over the break.

I'm thinking it would be really interesting for all you if I started to keep a list about what is different in Germany and the USA. I think that will be my next blog post. Why do I bring this up, you might be wondering? Well, Monday night I was at my friend's house for dinner. And his family asked me what was different. We started to make a list and it was funny and interesting. Some of the things I learned that are different, I never thought about before. Sorry I hope that made sense. Like I said, my English is deteriorating. So I'm going to write them ALL down, and trust me, there are a LOT! And then I'll post 'em here xD

"The problem is, and this sounds really obvious, is that when you go to a foreign country, you are a long way from home. What I mean is, you're a long way away from your friends and family. You're forced to fit in with everyone else. You don't have the comfort of knowing that later on, at the dinner table or the usual meeting spot, you can tell everyone 'And then she poured coffee in my cornflakes!' and get some sympathy." This quote pretty much sums up what I'm sure every exchange student feels. It was written by an exchange student from England to France. This also helps explain why Rotary Youth Exchange Students stick together. Because we DO get sympathy from one another.

Well, I don't really have much to post here.... I started to write a newspaper article for my local newspaper here in Germany. I hope my grammatics in German aren't TOOO bad xD If I get it finished and put in the paper, tell me if you want a copy!

School class tests are ganging up on us poor innocent children now! We had 3 this week, and we have 4 next week! The insanityyyyy!!! Ahahaha just kidding it isn't so bad for me since my grades don't count. But it does mean that my friends are all busy studying!

And snow.... OH MY GOD the amount of snow.... It's really ridiculous. We have 2 feet of snow on the ground. I made a snowman. Unfortunatly my friend decided it would be hilarious to decapitate poor Mr. Snowman. He's now headless.....

And the boys in my class think it's HILARIOUSLY funny to through snowballs at one another. Sometimes hitting the girls in the process (I don't know if it's and accident or not...) At first it was annoying, but now I find it mildly entertaining.....

Well, that's all for now! I'LL BE BACK.... WITH WEAPONS!!!!

Snowboarding+Austria+Nicole+cool people=one AWESOME VACATION!

So! Happy 2010! I'll say it has started out QUITE well for me! I spent my Silverster (New Year's Eve) with 2 other exchange students, Olivia and Hayley. We had sooo much fun! Then on the 2nd it was Hayley's birthday! So we had a little party! It was really awesome and fun and everything!

Thennnnnnnnnn........ on the 4th, we left for Austria, for the Alps! It was sooo pretty up there! The snow covered all the mountains and the trees, and it was just like it looks in all the pictures and films! You'd really have to see it, its AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I really thought I should skip through the snow singing about how the hills are alive with the sound of music! Somehow I managed to refrain myself, though...

So we stayed in this tiny little cabin with a bunch of other people! It was crazy, there were around 30 of us in a tiny little cabin! It was awesome though! I quickly gained a following of little children; 7 of them, in fact. They all thought it was just the coolest thing that I was from California. They all wanted to learn English and hear about what my life in America is like. AND whoever said the best way to learn a langauge is to hang out with little kids... was completely correct. I learned sooo much German in these 5 days, just from listening and talking with them.

I decided on the second day, Tuesday, that I was going to take a snowboarding lesson for 2 days. Kai, my host brother, and I signed up for a course, and rented out snowboards, shoes, and helmets. Then, at 9:30, we started to learn. It was sooo awesome! I'm not half bad! The first day, we learned to stand up, stop, and fall down correctly. It's not so difficult, I got the hang of it pretty quickly. Except I did spend a LOT of time on my butt the first day.

The next day, we learned to turn, and how to really SNOWBOARD. It was awesome! I had a small problem with stopping though. Let's just say I ran into a tree once. Only once! But by the end of the second hill, my teacher told me that I could graduate from the bunny hill to something a little bit bigger....

The third day Kai bailed out on me. We didn't have any course more, and Kai had fallen a couple times and hurt himself, so he said he didn't want to snowboard anymore. Leaving me on my own. I decided to take my teacher's advice and try something bigger. I did great! Someone asked how long I'd been boarding for. They were SOOOOooooOOOOO surprised when I told them 2 and half days!

The fourth day, that would be Friday, or today, we were going home. But I wanted to do a little more snowboarding so I got up REALLY early (6:15) and went from 7 until 10. My entire body is now sore. It's funny... I didn't notice the pain while snowboarding, only afterwards!

Alright, well, I'll update again soon! Hope you all had a great beginning to a new decade!

Ciao!

frohe Weihnachten! und alles gut für neues Jahre!

Merry christmas everyone! This will probably be the last blog post before then, so...

Alright, we are now OFFICIALLY on Winter vacations! Today, to kick it off, it's snowing, and I'm going to the movies! Yay! Should be insanely fun!

Tomorrow is the main day of Christmas, on the 24th, which is VERY different than in America, where the main day is the 25th. But that's ok, here we celebrate from the 24th-26th. 3 days of Christmas! How AWESOME!

New Year's is mainly not a family holiday. I should be going out with friends, but our plans aren't set in stone yet. Hopefully they don't fall through! Otherwise I'll be sitting home... alone... on New Year's Eve (called Silverster here, like the cat in the cartoons :] ) But I'm pretty much certain that won't happen!

I wrote a math test on Friday, and I did VERYYY badly. I got a 4,75 which is like, a C- or a D+ in California... But don't worry, it doesn't matter for me cause I don't really get grades! And I couldn't really read the problems, they were in German (obviously) so of course it was difficult. I did much better on this than I did on the last math test.

We watched the Hangover in English class on Monday, and Step Up in Math on Tuesday. It was pretty sweet.

I had a choir concert Monday night and last night (Tuesday night). It went well, I think :] My choir friends and I are pretty cool! We sing in German now, no more English Beatles songs!

So that's pretty much it! I'll update again later, but I gotta eat lunch and then get to the Kino! Oh, our dishwasher's fixed, so I don't have to wash by hand anymore! Whoo-Hoo!

Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays everyone!

Until 2010!!!!!

snow is amazing...

Just a short blog post...

Snow is awesome! I LOVEEE it! I had a VERY epic snowball fight with my host brother yesterday. I lost, but you have to remember, I don't have NEARLY as much experiance as him. He's lived in the snow his whole life. I haven't.

So when he started pounding me with snowballs, I just HAD to get back at him. Unfortunalty, I don't have such good aim, and almost hit an old lady casually walking down the street (this caused Kai to laugh INSANLY hard, but I'm sure the old lady wouldn't have found it very funny, had I actually hit her).

There wasn't enough snow for a snowman, or for a snowman, and my jeans aren't waterproof, so I wasn't about to lay on the ground and make a snow angel. Sledding was out of the question cause 1. Not enough snow, 2. I don't have a sled, and 3. I live on a pretty flat part of land. Skiing and snowboarding is out of the question, because I like being all in one piece and not breaking my leg/arm/head, thanks.

But still. Snow was SUPER exciting for a girl from California.

In other news, our dishwasher broke, and guess who's on dish duty this week? ME! Kai is counting his lucky stars that he doesn't have to handwash them. I'm learning how to handwash dishes, and guess when it gets fixed? When Kai has dish duty. UGH!

I'm updating this simply to tell you those two small insignificant things! But you know... I don't update enough, so...

Until next time! BYE!

The adventures of Nicole and public transportation!

Yep, like the title says, I'd finally gotten used to public transportation...... well ok, 2 quick stories....

Once, I thought I was going to Stuttgart but I actually ended up going the wrong way, to Tübingen. So, I figured out (when it said that this was the last stop, and it certainly wasn't Stuttgart, I realized I went the exact opposite way....) And got to Stuttgart. And nothing went wrong since then.

Well, this weekend, I was going to meet with the other exchange students, to go ice skating and shopping in the christmas/middle ages market in Esslingen. WELL, I was walking to the bus stop... and SAW my bus drive away. "Whatever!" I thought, another one came in 15 minutes, and I'd only be about 20 minutes late (the train to Stuttgart (and goes over Esslingen) comes every 20 minutes or so) Well, bus came 20 minutes late, and then the train 15 minutes late. I am now an hour late. Luckily, the two boys from Brazil were nice enough to wait for me! Thank you, Fernando and Eric! Anyways, we ended up going on the wrong train, then waiting to get back, then we couldn't find the ice stadium... So, we get there (2 1/2 hours late) and... everyone's done ice skating. Yep, I drug my ice skates from my house to Esslingen for no reason. It's actually quite a funny story... I think it is NOW, at least (wasn't so much at the time...)

Anyways, then, Thursday, I lost my bus card that gets me all around Stuttgart. I was SOOO afraid to tell my host family, but luckily they just laughed, and I get a new one VERY soon. So no worries. I really do love public transportation though. I can go anywhere I want, whenever I want. It's quite nice, and good for the enviroment. America really needs to get up to speed with it.

So... Esslingen Weihnachtsmarkt on Sunday... with the exchange students.... so fun, but anything with exchange students is fun. I bought something for my mommy, and something for my host daddy. And me and Hayley decided to make candles, which I gave to my host mommy. My first one... sucked. But the 2nd two were AWESOME!

And this week, absolutely NOTHING in school was cancelled. It's the first week in the 3 and a half months I've been here that nothing has been cancelled!

Anyways, we celebrated Saint Nikolas day in Teeniekreis, it was soooo fun! My friend Tobias and I went a little bit crazy. We drank to much Kinderpunch... which has no alchohal in it, by the way, so.... You know, we were just having fun!

Today someone asked me if I spoke English. I guess I don't scream AMERICAN quite as loud as I used to! I guess my accent isn't quite so bad anymore, either, because they didn't notice it. This made me excited, as did the fact that I realized a couple days ago that I was thinking mostly all in German now! And I had my first bilingual dream, in both German and English, but mostly in German, just like my brain. It was really cool, I've finally arrived as an OFFICIAL EXCHANGE STUDENT!

Speaking of exchange students, I hope everyone knows that Wednesday, the 6th of January is International Hug an Exchange Student Day. I am expecting hugs! And you all in America should also hug your local exchange students!

DRK is amazing, I'm actually LEARNING first aid! Maybe I won't be quite so useless at first aid when I get back! Although, my friend Sven and I (yes, his name REALLY is Sven) "killed each other". We both failed epically at saving each others lives. I couldn't STOP laughing.... it was sooo funny. And Sven (when we were demonstrating, and I was laughing) acted like Dr. Frankenstein, looked up at the sky, and said "ES LEBT!" If you don't know what that means, look it up.

Christmas is coming up! I can't wait! I'm so excited! It's celebrated on the 24th of December here, not the 25th. I love that, because it's interesting and different!

It's going to snow again here tomorrow. I love snow, I can't wait! I'm going to a family lunch thing. Which reminds me... I ate fruitcake. Yes, you read that correctly. I ATE FRUITCAKE! Did I like it? Not at all. Did I choke it down for my super-nice host Oma's sake? Yes, yes I did. You outta be proud of me!

Alright, I will try and update more often! Ok? But for now I gotta go! So, until later!

Another update on me!

I actually have a life here in Germany! Isn't that exciting???

Well, I have a couple of interesting things that happened in the past few... days? Weeks? I guess weeks, huh? Well, let me start....

I joined German Red Cross! I can't remember if I already said that in my blog or not, but it's really awesome. I've been having a LOT of fun with it! I've made a good handful of new friends with it, but now it seems like I can't even go out into town without running into someone I know! Which is GREAT!

Also, the youth group thing that I'm in? Sooooo much fun! Last week we played a game where we had to be the other person's arms! My partner and I had quite a difficult time with it... he had to feed me pretzal sticks with nutella and I had to put makeup on him! It was super fun! But he looked HORRIBLE (I guess I'm not very good at doing makeup when I can't see what I'm doing!) and I ended up with nutella ALL over my face. God, it was sooo fun!

The weekend before this one I took the train all alone up to Heidenheim (thats an hour long trip or so!) It was somewhat scary, and I was terrified I would get lost, but nope, it all worked out! I stayed the weekend with Olivia, another exchange student, from Washington. We went to the mall, watched Brokeback Mountain and Shark Tale (no joke) and visited another exchange student in the city, Mitch. It was an exciting weekend, and I came home with a cool new pair of jeans and a rocking hat! Olivia's just might be cooler, though... Just maybe... :]

Then I went to school, did school-like things... Blah blah blah... and thennnnn... I went to see Twilight! New Moon was pretty good, Taylor Lautner is ridiculously hot. I watched it all in German, which was awesome! Cause I understood ALMOST everything. I saw it with a big group of my German friends! They made me laugh, and helped me with the few things I didn't understand.

Then Olivia came and stayed with me this last Friday night. We saw Twilight (yes, I did see it twice!) and then on Saturday we went to STUTTGART! Yes, I do go into Stuttgart about once a week, thanks for asking!

Weihnachtsmarkt starts (like, really starts) in Stuttgart next week, but for today, I went to the Weihnachtsmarkt (Christmas Market) in Wolfschlugen, the little village where I live! It was really fun, but I didn't buy anything, except for lunch :]

The mat I just finished nicely rolling up from where I slept when Olivia was here Friday night just mysteriously unfolded itself.... This is serious stuff, people. It really did... Yes, I did sleep on the ground while Olivia was here. She slept in my bed. How does that work? I don't know.

Anyways, I just got an email from Rotex saying that we will all meet in Esslingen at 9.30 AM on Sunday morning (next week) and go to the Weihnachtsmarkt there! YAY! Every town has a Weihnachtsmarkt, in case you didn't quite get that. It's certainly not a Rotary weekend, but a Rotary daytrip is pretty awesome too, assuming we all end up going!

Alright, well now you are caught up on the major things I've done in Germany lately!

16th, Rotary Weekend, Stuttgart, and other exciting things that make me love my life

I'm soooo sorry I haven't updated in so long, I've been pretty busy! Well.... Basically, it's been... 2 weeks! Wow! Ok, a LOT to catch up on! Where to start, where to start... hmmm...

Well, Thursday, November 5th was my sweet 16th! It was relatively uneventful. I got many hugs and such from school friends. It was very fun, and now I can officially go to the DISCO! Whoo hoo! This fact excites me greatly, you have nooo idea. I am SOOOO going...

Changing the font a little here, just to mix it up! Then on Friday, I went to Stuttgart and met with Hayley, Fernando, and Andrés and together we travelled to Göppingen for a lovely weekend of exchange students, halloween parties, violent games, and other stuff such as this.....

The weekend started with us screaming, greeting each other happily, Olivia practically tackling me to the ground, and you know, the works. I had seen most of the others the weekend before, when we chilled in Stuttgart for Halloween, but some I hadn't, so that was very exciting. Plus, a WHOLE week is a really long time in the mind of an exchange student. A lot could have happened!

Then we went over the rules. This time, no one translated them into English/Spanish for us, they only said them in German. Luckily this wasn't a problem for me, I understood most of what was being said, and who needs rules anyways? Ahaha... Then we ate dinner and then we were FORCED to split into 3 groups. It's ok, it was only for a little while. We designed shirts for the District 1830 exchange students (thats... umm... us!) and then talked with Rotex about problems we had (trust me, we all have at least one problem) and then we wrote letters to our future selves that we'll get back at the end of the year. My letter is... retarded. I didn't really write anything interesting in it, and the other homies in my group drew on it and stuff... so ahaha... can't WAIT to get that back!

That font was boring me... This one sucks too. Ahhh well. Anyways. Then we had to go to bed, but the others in my room (Olivia, Hayley, and Bryn) and I all stayed up and talked. Then, when I finally started to fall asleep, a knock on our door woke me up. I got up, got the key, struggled to get it to open the door (it seriously took me like, 10 minutes) and saw a couple other exchange students, who then realized they were at the wrong room. I was tired, so I said whatever and went back to bed.

Next day... oh this font is actually pretty neat! Next day we went into Schwäbisch Gmünd and did a scavenger hunt thing where we had to ask people questions in German and stuff. My group (Me, Brianna, and Mercedes) cheated and got most of the answers from the tourist information center! We're just that cool. Then we still had like, 2 and a half hours to kill, so we went to get Döners (really amazing food that everyone should eat) and yep. We should have had 4 in our group, but the other team member didn't stay for the second night, so we were at a disadvantage, but Brianna lives in Schwäbisch Gmünd, so it was all good! We met with a couple of the other groups, gave them the answers, and then chilled like the awesome people we are. Unfortunatly, we did not win this challenge (my group, I mean). We ate lunch, and went to a VERYYY long hike. Then we came back, ate dinner, and had a HALLOWEEN PARTY! We played dangerous games, I was serandaded, and a chair was broken. It was a very fun party. Then I was so tired, I just went straight to bed (as did most everyone else, I believe)

Unfortunatly, all good things must come to an end, so we went home sadly the next morning. I went to school (uneventful) and then yesterday (saturday) I went to Stuttgart (I LOVEEE STUTTGART) with school friends and met with a few of the exchange students, and we "shopped" and chilled and were cool. And yes indeed.

I have many pictures which I will someday put up here, as well as a rather large amount of stories from the past two weekends, but I'm quite lazy, so ask me about them!

Ok I'm gonna go eat bread with nutella now. Byeee!

Woah check out that font! Anyways, ask me about some funny stories from the past 2 weekends, if you really want to! I gotta go eat bread with nutella now (yes, I do have to, thanks for asking...)

OK byeee!