Thank Yous and Advices and Updates

At the end of November, I made the very hard decision to change my host family. This was a decision that I spent a lot of time and energy thinking about- I consulted everyone I could think of, I made pro and con lists, I gave myself designated thinking time- in short it was not a decision I made lightly. The reasons I have for switching are not something that I feel I have a right to put out on the internet, but I promise it was nothing bad. This things just sometimes don't work out, and I am 100% sure that both parties involved are happier because of it. 

After switching, I ended up moving in with my hosting coordinator and his family. The month I spent there will always be a great memory for me, making friends and playing with my host brother and having a totally fabulous German christmas. I cannot thank the Baving family and the awesome people at Borghorst Gymnasium enough for making a period that could have been a chunk of wasted time into one I know I'll never forget. Even though I was only there for a month, I really feel like I found a place there, and I know I will always be able to come back. 

So that brings us to now. I am living with my permanent host family in the little town called Moorrege, which is about an hours public transportation ride from the not-so-little town of Hamburg. I've been here three weeks, and I have already celebrated two birthdays (one of them mine), been introduced to the sport of Handball, and seen a whopping 20 (ish)  episodes of Shaun the Sheep. I am enjoying the heck out of being here, and I can't wait to see what the next 6 months here bring! 

Now that everyone is up to speed, I want to take a few minutes to address anyone who is reading this who is currently/ hoping to be on exchange. 

Before I left for Germany, the thought of switching host families was something that I thought other people did, but would never in a million years happen to me. No one really addressed it at our orientation camps, and I feel like I was a bit unprepared to deal with a situation that I was really unhappy in. So I just want everyone to know a few things about host family/ exchange in general, and because I love me a good numbered list, here it comes: 

1. Number one most important thing- SWITCHING HOST FAMILIES IS NOT FAILING

 I stayed in a situation that I really wasn't happy in way longer than I needed to because I convinced myself that changing it would be a form of failure, and sticking it out would be the strong thing to do. This is true for some situations, but really, you only get a limited time on exchange, and there is absolutely no reason to spend it in a place that is simply not a good fit. Sometimes these things don't work out. It's no one's fault, no one failed, host families are just really hard and they all can't work out.

 2. Use the people who are there for you. They want to help you. 

Again, I spent way to long in a situation I knew was wrong, and it was partly because I didn't tell anyone how unhappy I was. I thought it was some sort of weakness. It is not, it is simply using the resources provided to you. That is why these people are there. They want to help, and most of the time they are helpful. 

3. Your exchange organization will respect your wishes. They want you to have a good year as much as you want you to have a good year.  

I told my hosting coordinator after I switched that one of the reasons I didn't ask sooner about switching was because I thought AFS would say no, and he told me that as soon as an exchange student says straight out that they want to switch, it will most of the time happen. Obviously they don't want kids switching for no reason, but if you are unhappy they will move you

4. Switching families is totally common and OK. 

20% of exchange students switch host families, and it is totally possible and probable to have an awesome year, even after switching families. People do all the time :) 

So ya. Please please please if you are an exchange student and you need someone to talk to who's been there do not hesitate to leave a comment. I really want to help. 

For all my BMore people-  I am doing grand. I'm having adventures and eating weird foods and speaking a funky new language, so I want you guys to know you can all stop worrying. The cards and texts and Instagram DM's have meant so much to me, but I am happy to say that I am once again feeling pretty darn happy. Thank you for helping me get there. 

          

Update: It's Raining

I'm supposed to be doing something for my school in America but I don't want to, and so I've gone 'round the procrastination bend and am back to doing something productive- blogging! I missed this Sunday's post because I was in Paderborn (turns out that is how you spell it) for my AFS Late Orientation Camp, which was very fun and actually helpful. After the camp I feel like my exchange year has really started, like I'm not in my "first few weeks" anymore, which is good and weird. It's good because I feel more comfortable here now, like it feels like a life and not a vacation, but I am also freaking out because it is literally going by SO FAST. I have almost been here for two months already, it's crazy.

I didn't get a chance to update for a while due to the aforementioned "feeling like life thing", so I'll just give everyone a quick rundown on what I've been up too :)

The past few weeks have been super busy. So super busy, in fact, that I am just going to write down what I did in bullet points. I'm all about efficiency!

• I took a German math exam, which I got a B on (I very proud of this B) 
• Jens Spahn, a German politician, came to my house for an interview and brought a photographer, which was pretty wild. He's essentially a German senator and he might be a candidate for Chancellor one day, or so my host parents tell me 
•  I began playing volleyball with an awesome team of girls who don't usually mind that I actually suck (like really suck) at volleyball. 
• I had my AFS late orientation camp, which I feel fulfilled it's purpose entirely in terms of orientating me. 
• I celebrated Halloween in Germany (I'm sorry but America wins on that front) 
• I redecorated my room a little bit, which I know is very exciting 
• And then last week I started my Praktikum! 

So Praktikum in Germany is a two- week internship that all students in Gymnasium (at least where I live) have to do in their 10th grade year. Normally you try and do something that you would like to do when you are an adult, so kids end up doing pretty varied things. For my Praktikum I'm working at a Grundschule ( a German Elementary school) as sort or a teachers aid, although I'm not really helpful because of the whole language barrier thing, but I thinks she's ok with it. I'm working with Fourth graders, and they are so awesome; they always ask me about America and my friends and everything, and because I'm an exchange student the whole school knows me and asks me to visit their class. It is so cute!! The kids absolutely love to correct/ laugh at my German, which is also super cute (joking) but it is really fun and I'm kind of sad I have to go back to real school on Monday. 

So ya I know this blog post was really short, but I am pretty busy right now. I really feel like I'm settling in here. I have things to do after school and I have friends who I can do things with and it's starting to get really fun, despite the fact that it is literally always (and I mean always) raining here. I am eagerly awaiting the arrival of Christmas markets and I miss you all in Baltimore!

Herbstfeiren and I finally know how bells are made

I just read through my last post, and it occurred to me that I should probably proofread these things before I post them on the internet. I'm just going to claim that my English is going because I only speak German here (haha jokes) and that is why I can't figure out how to use the correct "your".

Moving on, the last two weeks I haven't had school because it's Herbstferien (or fall break) for my area of Germany. The first week I went on a cruise with my host family, which was absolutely amazing. It was a cruise around the Mediterranean, and every day we got to see a different city. We saw six cities- Marseille, Barcelona, Palma De Majorca, Rome, Florence and Pisa. It was totally amazing, and I loved all of the cities. I think Rome was my favorite because I want to be an archaeologist when I grow up, and seeing all the ruins was one of the coolest things ever. Here are some pictures that I took. I took like 300 pictures in the whole week so it took forever to pick out which ones I wanted to post on here.

Day One: Marseille

A little market in Marseille

The view from the Notre Dame 

The Notre Dame Bascilica

Barcelona!

My first Gaudi building

And the Sagrada Familia

The Catedral in Majorca

More Catedral in Majorca

The Colosseum!

Add caption

St. Peters Basilica

The Panthenon

The Trevi Fountain

An archaeological dig site we stumbled upon 

Cathedral in Florence

Bridge in Florence

And I couldn't go to Pisa without taking one of these pictures. It was raining really hard, hence the poncho

After we got back I still had another week with no school so I had a lot of time to do stuff with my friends and just kind of chill. I went into Munster with my friend one day, and we found a knitting store, so now I'm learning to knit which I'm very excited about. I had to ask the woman at the knitting store many questions about what yarn and needles to buy, so I know more knitting vocabulary in German than I ever thought I would need to.

My German is ok, but it's not anywhere near perfect, and I have trouble understanding people when they talk really fast or use big words. I have found though that people are so nice and helpful when they find out I don't speak that much German, and especially when they see my trying to speak it instead of just using English. Some of the best moments are when I successfully do something in German, like buy knitting needles or mail a box or order something with no sauce, and people are always so ready to help me get there. It's been one of my favorite things about exchange so far.

Wednesday I spent the day with friends, and then Thursday my host mom had of off work so the two of us spent the day together. She randomly found the Bell Museum a few towns over from us, so the two of us decided to go there in between getting the winter tires put on all the cars (a German tradition). I love tiny museums like that, and this one was actually pretty cool. They had so many bells, even some really old ones, and I got to learn about how a bell was made, which was interesting and not at all what I thought it was, not that I had spent a lot of time thinking about how bells are made, but still.

Look at all those bells

This is how bells are actually made

Friday I went with my liaison to see Finding Dory (for the third time) in Dulmen. It was the first time I had used the train by myself. Mostly I bike or use the bus, so I was very excited about my first foray into solo train travel. That is until I got stranded for 45 minutes at a train station 30 minutes drive from my town because my train got canceled. It turned out fine, my host dad and some of his neighbors came and picked me up and we all went to McDonald's (it was a very weird outing), but the whole incident forced to face the cold hard reality- even German public transportation isn't reliable.

All in all I really enjoyed the whole concept of a two week break two months into school, and I 10/10 would recommend it to American school systems.

So next weekend is my first AFS sleep away camp. I'm going to take the train up to Paderborn (that is not how you spell it) and spend the weekend with all the other exchange students from my area. I'm pretty excited and I'll write more about it next week, but I have to go to sleep because I have a math exam tomorrow first thing. Yay!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

I know this post has gone past regular late and reached the extra late stage, but your just gonna have to forgive me.

So, like I said, on Monday, I had my first German lesson with Frau Stuber, which was actually fun, for a German lesson. She doesn't have us use books or anything, it's more just a conversation in German, and the other two exchange students worked on this presentation they have to do about their home country for their exchange organization. We have a three week break because the next two weeks are Herbstferien (Fall Break) for Germans, so no one has school, and I'm going on vacation with my host family.

Normally in America I never come right home after school, I always have some sort of activity, like a sport or club, or I go and do my homework with friends or something. One of the things I've been struggling with in Germany is that I don't know what to do after school, but on Wednesday I decided to go to my homework in a Cafe. I sat down and ordered a Spagettieis (my fave) and just did my homework alone, and it was so nice and relaxing. Also there is great people watching in the little pedestrian zone, and if you know me you know I love some good people watching. So I came home after doing my homework, and I told my host Dad where I had been, and his reaction was so funny. He looked at me like I had three heads. Apparently it is not normal to sit in a Cafe by yourself and do homework in Germany! (Is it gonna stop me? No. I don't play by the rules. I'm a real Maverick)

Thursday was normal, I had my German course and then I went home. The weather was a little rainy for the first time since I've been here though. Friday was very fun. I talked to my parents and then I went to my friends house. Advice for other exchange students- people invite you places, which is very good, but always make sure you talk to the person hosting the event before you go. My friend invited me to the party on Wednesday, well she invited me to what I thought was a party  but turned out to be just four people eating pizza. I felt a bit bad for crashing their little hangout, but they were cool with it and it turned out to be very fun, and I felt like I got to know the other 4 people better, which was good, and we spoke only in German, which was also good.

I had to get up at 7 the next morning for what I thought was going to be a breakfast with another exchange students family, but turned out to be 2 hours (OK more like 45 minutes) of manual labor. We had to move an entire truck full of firewood from the truck to our backyard, and we had 6 people doing it, so it actually wasn't that hard and didn't take that long, but still, I had to touch firewood (a first for me) so it was labor. Then we got to eat breakfast, and thank god we did because I was famished from all that work :)

Sausage with pictures in it is a thing here (this is a tractor) 

Saturday night was the birthday celebration for my friend Anika, which was held at the fabulous Ahaus Mongol, a giant Chinese food buffet that rivals any American equivalent in both size and MSG usage. It was hilarious and delicious and I smelled so much like fried food after that I needed to shower, so all in all a success I think.

We had Monday off, so the other exchange student to who I am always referring stayed with us on Sunday night. ON Sunday we went to the Ahaus Staadfest. It was a pretty small festival, just a few food stalls, but Olivia and I made our way to almost all of them. Below is a photo diary of everything I ate while there...

Waffle on a stick (Delicious) 

Pastry that was like a huge cream puff (also delicious) 

Fried fish, apparently a Dutch specialty (yes I ate them in this order) 

I also ate Latkes but there's no picture of that. Sorry.

We also got a chance to go inside the Schloss Ahaus, which I was super pumped for because I thought it would be all done up in like 18th century style, but it turns out it was just a small art gallery as well as classrooms for one of the schools. A little disappointing. But the we found the tiny Schulmuseam, which was all about old schools in Ahaus, and it was so cite and I talked to the man who was working there and his kids went to my school and it was kind of awesome, so all was right with the world after my crushing schloss-disappointment.

The lovely Schloss from up close

The art from inside the Schloss

Statues also inside the Schloss

Die Schulmuseam!

We got caught in the rain walking home from Ahaus, so we decided to duck in to the only store near us- the Garden Center. Little did we know that in doing so we were leaving our world and entering a crazy universe where it is totally normal to have your Christmas decorations up on October 3rd. I absolutly love Christmas, so I am all for this new way or Christmas thinking. I actually asked my host parnets about it cause I thought it was so weird, and they said that it's actually pretty normal for a lot of German stores to have their decorations up this early. The whole rest of the day felt really weird like it was almost Christmas though and it messed with my brain.

Christmas Decorations at our lovely neighborhood Garden Center

Monday was the Tag der Deutsche Einheit (the day east and weest Germany reunified) We had off of school and my host parents had off of work, so we, along with everyone else in Germany, headed to the Netherlands to do a little shopping. I bought a few things, and there was another market for Oliva and I to eat our way through. It was another fun day.

My new love, giant warm Stroopwafeln

Next week is Herbstfeiren, so I'm going to be on a cruise with my host family!!!! I won't be updating this week, but I will definitely have a super long post with lots of photos for you guys when I get back. Miss everyone back in Bmore!!

I Mailed Something

So this week was pretty chill. School is starting to feel less fun and more like an actual education, waking up at 6:30 is no longer working out well for me, and most of my classmates think I'm from Canada, (it’s still a mystery as to why). I ate the world’s largest sandwich, took like 20 naps, and had my first experience with the German postal system. I also found someone to bike to school with, which is awesome and all thanks to my friend who walked around school for 3 days asking people where they lived before she found someone close enough. All in all a pretty successful second week.

School, as I said, was pretty normal. This week I had a lot of free periods, so I have had a lot of time to walk around and explore Ahaus. One of the things I was not expecting about exchange was how much time I spend alone. Part of it might just be my situation, but none of the other students have free periods when I do because they all take more classes than me, so I have no one to hang out with then, and then I come home at either around 1 or around 3:30, and my host parents don’t normally get home until close to 7 or 8. Nevertheless it has given me a lot of time to explore, and I have found some pretty great spots. I’m gonna have to find some sort of hobby or something to do with all my time though. Who knows maybe I’ll learn how to make candles or spin my own cloth something. 

Some of my favorite spots

A Bench Across from the Schloss

On Wednesday, I think I made a friend at the post office, which was nice.  I had to mail a package, so I go in to the post office, and of course I’m freaking out a little because I have to deal with mailing a package in German and that’s kind of scary, so I go to buy the box and I’m struggling with my German, and the woman is getting really frustrated and finally she realizes I’m American and just gives up and starts speaking English to me. While she’s ringing up my stuff I drop all of the change in my purse on to the ground and she just looks at me and decides to not notice and just continues checking me out. Then, I have to come back to actually mail the package, but the box I bought was too small, so its taped shut and bursting, and the poor post office lady looks so done with me and it was so hilarious. And after I did it I felt so awesome about myself because I just mailed a box in German, but looking back on it, it was kind of a disaster, but a funny disaster so it’s all good.

On Friday, I went to my first professional soccer game with my host Dad. He’s a huge Dortmund fan, so I’m glad I got to go to a game with him.  It was Dortmund vs. Frieburg, and I had an awesome time. Dortmund's stadium is the biggest in Germany, and there were SO MANY people there! It was just a regular game, and there were around 80,000 people in the stadium. The atmosphere was so cool. There was so much more team spirit than any sports game I've ever been too. They have like a million songs they sing, and all of these different chants. They even sang Black and Yellow, which I thought was hilarious and my host dad did not understand why.

The Dortmund Stadium

Dortmund won, and after the game all of the players sat down on the field and just watch the "Gelb Wand" (Gold Wall, which is the standing room only seats on one side of the stadium) cheer and cheer. I think they do it after every game, but it was still a really cool thing to see.

Saturday started out with some yard work, and I've never had a yard so it was actually kind of fun. I got to weed things and play in the dirt! After that we went on a whole adventure that involved like 4 hours of driving, a little bit of summer sledding, and waffles (which were delicious). First, we drove like an hour and a half to this Alpine resort place, where they had a ropes course and indoor skiing and something called Sommerrodelnbahn, which translates into summer sledding but is more like a roller coaster with no mechanical stuff. It was very fun, and something I would not have gotten to do at home. It was my host parents and I surrounded by all of these groups of either children or twenty somethings just chilling at the indoor ski lodge thing. The place is in this super industrial part of Germany, and it’s on a big hill, so you have a great view of all of the coal mines and the electricity plants and it was just so funny and such a random thing to do but turned out very fun.

 

After our alpine adventure, we drove to Munster to get waffles, which is apparently something my host family does a lot, which I can totally get behind. And these waffles aren’t just regular waffles. They are giant delicious waffles that the kind people put Nutella and Strawberries and chocolate sprinkles on, and they are, according to the sign, made using the recipe from the best mom in the world.

Post-waffle, we walked around Munster for a little bit, and I am a bit in city-love. There are all these old buildings, and a giant cathedral, and the way the streets are set up there are a bunch of side streets and stuff. And Munster is a college town so everyone is young and all the stores are hip and cute and they have a Lush which I’m very excited to visit. There is also a natural history museum that, according to the advertisements, has a temporary deep sea exhibit. I got to share a few of my lovely fish facts with my host fam, and I think they appreciated them almost as much as my parents do (or they had no idea what I was saying because my German is so bad) After that we went shopping for groceries, and I found Sour Cream and Onion Pringles, which I am very pumped about.

 

Today I went for another run, and when I got home I found out that we were going to a corn maze with the family of another exchange student. The corn maze was HUGE and had all of these games and things in at, and they gave you a card when you first entered that you could get stamped at four different places around the maze and it spells out a message. Sadly, we only made it to two so I will never know what the corn maze wanted to tell me. After the corn maze we all when out and got ice cream, and I went to see a movie with my friends. We saw Nerve, which came out like 2 months ago in the US but apparently just made it to Germany. It was pretty cool because the whole thing was dubbed in German, but I could understand almost all of it. TV and Movies are easier to understand I've found because characters tend to speak better German than real people.

 

So now I'm back home, and once I've finished this post I'm gonna do a little bit of homework and then go to bed. Tomorrow I have my first German lesson with a woman who lives down the street from my host family. She works with exchange students from a different organization, but I get to have language lessons with other exchange students, which I'm really excited about. Tomorrow is also the first day of volleyball, which is good because all of this German food is making me feel very out of shape!

I didn't get a chance to post this yesterday, Sorry!

This is the last time I ever try to use an American Recipe in Germany

My first week in Germany was a pretty full one. The last time I blogged was my first day of school, which feels like a million years ago. I have done so much in the past few days!

Wednesday I went for my first jog in Germany. I have definitely gotten a bit out of shape in the past few weeks, and I ended up just going to a park and sitting on the swings for a while instead of really jogging. It was actually really fun because I got to explore more of my neighborhood. I have been doing a lot of exploring the past few days, and I think after a week I can say that I have biked all over Wullen! I think the whole tiny town thing is gonna take some getting used to :)

On Thursday I had my second German class. Funny story about the class- I needed a very specific book, and so I come in on Tuesday thinking I have the right book, and it turns don't I don't. Its fine, I go to the bookstore with my host dad and we talk to the woman working and we order a new one. I go in Wednesday to pick the book up, and then I bring it to class on Thursday, turns out it is again the wrong book. So I go to the bookstore (by myself this time, I'm very proud) and I order the book. Hopefully this time it will be right. I'll keep you updated. (After I write that it doesn't seem so funny but I promise it was very funny to the lady who works at the bookstore)

Friday I went over to my friend's house, which was very fun. I have been lucky enough to be sort of adopted by two girls who just came back from exchange years in America. They felt bad for me because I don't have any host siblings or a buddy that the school assigned me to show me around, so they came up to me on my first day and said, essentially, "This is sad. You need help" I thought it was pretty funny, and it has been very good to have someone to sit with during lunch and breaks and stuff. It has been interesting to talk with them because they want to practice their English, and I of course want to learn German, so we have been speaking a weird like mostly English with German thrown in hybrid of languages and all of their other friends are always yelling at us to speak German and it's pretty funny.

On Saturday we went fort the first time to the Netherlands. It was so nice to be in a big city again. I miss it after only 1 week, I saw a big building and I wanted to go and hug it. There was a little farmers market in Enschede (the city in the Netherlands we went to) and almost every stand was selling some sort of fried fish, which I have been told is a Dutch delicacy. Almost all of the stalls were also selling something called Matjias, which are essentially raw herring. My host dad apparently loves them, and so he bought some to eat for dinner, and of course made me try them. Now if you've ever had an oyster, you know that the only way to describe how it tastes is "like the ocean". These fish taste like that, except a bit fishy-er and like 10 times stronger. Would not recommend.

Before we left the Netherlands, my host mom wanted to stop and buy some coffee because it is cheaper there than in Germany. So we went to this store, and it's whole thing is that it sells cheaper products like right on the border, and it looks sort of like a very small Costco, which I thought was hilarious. But, the day we were there was the "Truck Sale" where all of these people were selling stuff for cheap like directly off the pallets. It was such a weird combination of stuff like medicine and soft drinks and Hairbo gummys and then the sausage person was also selling headphones. There was also a DJ from the local radio station there and he was playing Drake and Rihanna, but he was like 80, and it was just such a funny experience.

Saturday we also had to make some sort of baked good for my AFS "Survivial Camp" that was today. I found a chocolate cupcake recipe online and decided to use that. I thought it would be simple to just convert the measurements from the American system in the German system. Oh how I was wrong. Lets just say I had to whip out a calculator, only to find out I was doing all of the conversions completely incorrectly. We eventually found a chart that did most of it for us, but the cupcakes still ended up being almost black from all the cocoa powder in them. My poor host dad had to run back to the store twice because we kept thinking we needed way more of an ingredient than we did. They turned out pretty tasty, just a little bit to dark and flat, I think because of a lack of baking powder. Thankfully the people at the orientation still ate them!

Today was our first AFS orientation in Germany, the "Survival Camp" as its called. It was just of few hours of like meet and greet type of stuff, but it was really cool to have everyone from all over the world all together. We would start talking in English, and then people would break out in Spanish and a bit of German. It was just so interesting to watch us all like moving between languages like that. After orientation, my host family and the host family of another exchange student all went to this Restaurant in Coesfeld together. It was really fun, and I the other exchange student's five year old host brother is my best friend in Germany. he calls me an alte Kuh, but I'm sure it's out of love.

All in all it was a pretty good week! I miss you guys back in Baltimore, and I hope you enjoyed this entry. Love you Mom!!

First Day of School

So, as the title of this post suggests, today was my first day of school! Yesterday, my host family ad I went in to the school to talk to my teachers, and I got my schedule and books and so I was all set for school the next day. At 6;15 I woke up and showered, and then I ate breakfast with my host family. During breakfast, my host parents gave me a giant Schultute. For those of you who don't know, a schuletute is a German tradition for the first day of school. Each kid gets a cone that they bring to school, and they are supposed to share it with other kids to help them make friends. It's super cute to see the little kids with their cones, but thankfully my host family didn't make me bring mine to school because I think that would have been embarrassing.

Once I got to school, I found my art class pretty successfully  (I'm pretty proud of myself) and I sat down. I met a really nice girl in my art class who pretty much hooked me up for the rest of the day with someone to walk me from class to class. She even added me to the gorup message for our grade, which was super awesome. I added a picture of the icon our our group message, to try and show you how much dabbing has infiltrated Europe.
                                                                
After my art class, I had gym (Sport in German). It was just as mediocre as in America, and I even got hit in the face with a ball, which is typical of my performance in American gym class as well. After gym, I actually met this girl who had gone on exchange to America last year, and the two of us have a bunch of classes together, so I stuck with her for the rest of my day. We went to the Backerei for lunch after English class and I got a sandwich and an Italian ice type thing for only 1,20 euro, which was very exciting for me. We got of early today because of the heat, so I didn't have physics (it's about 90 degrees here) and we don't have afternoon classes tomorrow or Thursday. So my host Dad just picked me up after I ate lunch. It was a pretty good day!

There are some major differences between American and German schools that I noticed my first day, most of which I actually really like. The first one is that you can leave school whenever you don't have class. There is a Backerei and a Pizza/Doner place right across the street, so most kids go there, but we could potentially go home for lunch and come back, if we wanted too. That's the other big difference. My lunch is now almost an hour, which is awesome compared to my 22 minute lunch at home. In addition to that, I have at least a 10 minute break in between each class, and we can go get food then too, if we want. German schools also work on block scheduling, so I have 10 classes, but I only take 3 or 4 a day, which I'm not sure how much I like yet.

Today was also my first German class at the Volkshule. This is sort of like a community center, and anyone can take classes there. They offer a ton of classes and they are really cheap, and I think it's a really awesome idea. The class is pretty cool because it's a bunch of people who recently immigrated to Germany. Most of them are from Poland, but there is also a couple from Afghanistan, a woman from Bangladesh, and A woman from Mexico. It's kind of cool to meet a whole new set of people that I wouldn't have met otherwise.

That's it for now. I'll try and start updating more on Sunday night from now on. This week I have my AFS "Survival Camp" on Sunday, and so my next post will probably be something about that.