An American Girl in a Dirndl

I'm posting a blog today because I'm not sure when I'll be able to post another blog... that's because, starting next Wednesday, I'm going on a ten day long trip around Germany with the other exchange students! It seems impossible that this trip has creeped up on me so quickly. Time feels like it's flying here, next Wednesday also marks my two month "anniversary", if you will, in Germany. I've been excited for this trip since long before my arrival, and I'm sure at the end of the ten days I'll have an extremely long blog post to tackle...
I've realized something recently that I find pretty interesting and that I wanted to share. You spend your entire life being told that it's good to try and stand apart from the crowd, but as an exchange student, you want nothing more than to fit in. You're constantly trying to assimilate; learning the culture, the language, the fashion, the way of communicating, etc. Constanze, Vera, Laura, and I are always joking that by the end of the year I'll be a typical "german girl". Laura and I went to a market in Hoxter the other day, and I tried on a scarf, turned to her, and said, "Does this make me look like a German girl?" (we ended up voting yes, and both bought a scarf :) ) I find it all in good fun. Just an interesting thing I noticed.
As an update on the language: I'm making progress. Slow progress, but progress nevertheless. I can't see day to day improvement which makes me feel like I'm not learning anything, but when I have an 'event' that I can compare, I can. For example, last night my host family and I skyped Jule, and I was able to understand the whole conversation, and sometimes add in in German. Comparing this to the first time I was with them when they skyped Jule, I was pretty excited. I'm left kind of confused as to why I can't understand more in school and in everyday life though. I think there's a few factors that make it easier/harder for me to understand.
1) The amount of people that are involved in the conversation. I have a much harder time at school when I'm sitting in a big group of people than when I'm sitting with 2 or 3, because the topic of the conversation switches so fast in a bigger group.
2) Whether or not I know the general topic of the conversation, or if I have "background information" about the topic. For example, suppose my host mom is telling my host dad something that happened while her and I were out at the grocery store. I can much easier follow what she's saying and connect the words she's saying to what happened, since I was there. But if I'm sitting in a big group of people at school and trying to understand what they're saying when I have no clue what the topic is, I'm hopeless. Last week or so, I was listening to Vera tell Constanze a story, and all I caught was "singing" "dancing" and "turning on the light". I was really confused, and I had no clue how that fit together to make a story. Turns out Vera was telling her she had a dream that there were a bunch of people in her room singing and dancing, and the dream was so vivid she woke up and turned on the light to make sure that they weren't actually there! So I catch a few pieces of the puzzle when I'm listening to a conversation, but obviously not enough to put together the whole picture.
3) And lastly, the content. Derivatives in math class, the 1848 revolution in history, DNA/RNA in biology? Forget it. I have a hard time understanding that stuff in English.
So in conclusion, I'm making a lot more progress than some of the people at my school sometimes realize :) The other day I passed someone in my class a piece of paper, and they said "Danke!". Then, realizing it was me, they said, "Oops.... I mean, thank you!" Oh, I wonder sometimes...
This past Saturday definitely was one of my best days in Germany so far, and probably will be one of the best of the year. That's because this Saturday I went to an Oktoberfest! I think the best part of the entire night was that I got to wear a dirndl. In case you don't know what that is, picture a typical German woman, and the dress you picture her wearing is most likely a dirndl. When Vera first told me that everyone wears a dirndl to Oktoberfest, I seriously thought she was just trying to trick me into being the only person to there wearing one. But as it turns out, all the women wear them and all the men wear lederhosen. It was definitely an "exchange student moment" to go to an Oktoberfest wearing a dirndl, and it was an experience I'll never forget. (It's also nights like those that make sitting in math class trying not to fall asleep worth it :) )

                                                 

Vera, Celine, Lea, Anna, and I

 Huxori, the three day market that takes place every fall in Hoxter

 This picture would be a lot cooler if the flag were hanging down and not wrapped around the wire. Dang it.

 My favorite "festival" food, calzones.

 Laura and I with our matching scarves.

 We also both bought flannels at H&M (hilariously pronounced here as "ha" und "em") and decided to both wear them to school today. We got one picture in front of this pretty tree.......

 ......and one in front of "the ugly school" :)

One of my friends at school, Johanna, started passing these blue pieces of paper around. I assumed they were invitations, and sat there wondering if I would get invited to whatever event she was inviting people to. Imagine my surprise when Constanze bit into one. Paper candy.... and they think our candy is crazy :)

I Have an Ear Worm

I think my favorite German phrase is "ich habe ein ohrwurm". In English that translates directly to "I have an ear worm", but in German it means "I have a song stuck in my head" Needless to say I was very confused when someone at school told me, in English, that they have an ear worm.
These past few weeks have been great. I feel like I'm becoming closer with my friends at school, and I'm often invited with them to do things after school or on the weekends. Last Tuesday a few girls and I went horseback riding and it felt really...normal, in a good way. It wasn't a big group of us and there was no big event we went to, it was just a few girls talking and having fun (well, and riding horses). This weekend there's a festival in Hoxter and I'm going to go with a different one of my friends from school, and possibly again on Friday (there is literally a festival every weekend in Germany, I swear everyone always complains about how boring they think it is here but they have noooo idea).
Speaking of boring, school is going better friend-wise, but at this point I've mostly given up trying to follow the lesson. Now I'm just trying my absolute hardest not to fall asleep in class. Some classes are okay, like English of course. And I've only had two art classes so far because they keep getting cancelled, but I think I'll like that class. But other than my music teacher who tries to include me in the lesson, most other teachers just ignore me. This is good in a way because I don't want to always be in the lime-light, but odd because I'm so used to always participating in school at home. I don't even think that I'm on most of the teacher's attendance sheets. But oh well, I have a routine now that I'm happy with and am starting to get used to!
As promised, I made up a list of some of the general differences I've noticed between German/American culture and style. This list was actually kind of hard for me to make, because a lot of things are starting to feel normal to me. Again, I speak only from my experience, not the whole of Germany!
-It's not rude for you to eat with your elbows on the table. You hold your knife in one hand and your fork in the other throughout the entire meal, which was really uncomfortable for me at first (and I'm sure I looked like an idiot trying to saw away at my food), but now I'm used to it. I'm going to look so weird if I get back to the U.S. and still eat like that.
-Parents seem to be a lot more lenient here, which I think is just because the towns here are a lot safer and smaller to live in. You can walk home late at night with nothing really to worry about, and you don't have to be as worried about people stealing from you.
-The driving age here is 18, and to get your license you have to jump through so many hoops. First of all, you have to pay about $2,000. Everyone has to go to a driving school and has to be taught by a teacher, and you have to spend a certain amount of hours with the teacher driving at night, on the highway, in the neighborhood, etc. You can drive with a parent/teacher when you're 17, but you don't take the test until you're 18. And the test isn't just parallel parking and a trip around the block, like mine was. They have to drive for 45 minutes with the instructor. (But even after all this, a lot of people still drive extremely fast and whip around every corner, interesting. I frequently find my head slammed against the window)
-This is one of the biggest things I've been made aware of since I've been here. U.S. 'stuff' is everywhere. They listen to way more music from the United States than from Germany, and everywhere you look someone is wearing an American flag shirt or a shirt that says either L.A. or New York City. They use some english phrases in their language too, like "ladies first" or "sorry" when you bump into someone. Actually my host brother said "Shit happens" the other day, (something a ton of people here say), and then he said, "What even does that mean?". I didn't know the German translation, so we looked it up on google translate, and what do you know..... "shit happens" in German, is "shit happens", because everyone here only says the english version instead of the German translation. How weird is that?
-Doors at home are always closed. This might seem like just something my family does but I've noticed it in other houses I've been in here too. I have no clue why.
-People look at me weird if I crack my fingers? Another one of my exchange friends said she gets the exact same reaction when she cracks her fingers at school too
-Bread. Always. I think I've eaten twice my body weight in bread since I've been here.
-Another small difference, but they write some of their letters and numbers differently. They write their 9's like lower-case g's, their 1's like upside down V's, and their K's and H's in something that looks like hieroglyphics. Makes things that the teachers write down on the board really tricky for me to copy down, by the time I've figured out what one word is saying, most of the other students are done copying an entire sentence. Oh, the life of an exchange student.
-When you greet someone, you shake their hand and make eye contact. This gets overwhelming when I'm at a Rotary meeting and I have to go around the room and shake everyone's hand.
-You have to pay for a lot of the public restrooms here, usually about 50 cents.
-French fries are eaten with mayonnaise. It's actually so good.
-In general, Germans are much more ecologically friendly than a lot of Americans. At least I think. For example, their cars are so much smaller and use a lot less gas. And plastic bags aren't given out at the grocery stores unless you pay for them, 99% of people bring their own bags. And windmills. Everywhere.
The Style (at least among teenagers):
-It's not weird for guys to wear skinny jeans. They all do, no one wears straight-legged jeans.
-Girls wear their hair long, parted to the side or in a middle part, and guys wear their hair shaved down on the sides and long on top.
-Everyone dresses nice to go to school, all the time. Oh how I miss wearing my favorite comfy sweatshirts to school. And another thing I'm still getting used to, all of the girls wear their newest nike sneakers with their skinny jeans. In the U.S this is a big no-no. They wear the nicest outfit, straighten their hair, do their makeup... and then wear sneakers. Still trying to understand this.
-A lot of girls use something that looks like an old spiral cord to a telephone as a hair tie.
-Like in the U.S, girls wear fancy watches with their outfit.
-Like I said, shirts with sayings in English, or New York City/ L.A., or the American Flag, are EVERYWHERE
-Big, giant, ginormous scarves. Sometimes I'm worried the girls are going to accidentally choke themselves with them. (Just kidding, but seriously they cover half their face sometimes)
-Everyone has a black leather jacket, including me now! My host mom and I did some serious searching so I could find the perfect one.
-Everyone wears their clothes two days in a row. At first I thought it was just something my family did, but after my first week at school I realized that it's completely normal here. I find it kind of funny because it makes me think they're all saying "I looked cute yesterday and you all needed a memory refresher" lol.
So before I start with pictures, I wanted to share some good news... I get to stay with the host family I'm living with now for Christmas!! It's nothing against my next host family, (I've met them and they seem wonderful) but I know that Christmas can be a hard time for a lot of exchange students, so I think it's good that I'll be with a family I know better and am really comfortable with. I'm actually pretty excited for Christmas here, because everyone that I've talked to says Christmas in Germany is wonderful. Already people are getting excited for it (one of my friends at school wrote "98 days till Christmas!!!" on a piece of paper the other day, and a few girls are already planning all of the German Christmas movies they want me to watch). So maybe all the excitement will keep the holiday homesickness away!! Let's hope.

 Elias and I made a popular food here called the "Amerikaner". Ironically, I've never heard of it. When my host family found this out they were shocked, which lead to a bake session that night. (Unlike my cookies, they were really good)

 Visiting a famous factory in Germany that makes many of Germany's plates, pitchers, cups, etc.

 Me pressing the company's logo onto a plate

 I got to glaze a plate, but ended up messing up royally. The man kept telling me what I was doing wrong in German but I couldn't understand him so I just kept doing the same thing wrong, which is why he is laughing in this picture. I'm really sorry for ruining 3 of your plates.

 I told Elias I needed to bring a costume to the exchange student weekend on Friday, so he runs upstairs and comes back down wearing this.  Is it even a blog post if I don't have an embarrassing picture of Elias in it? I think not. 

 My mom sent me a care package, and included lollipops with bugs in them for Elias. When I told him to say something in a video to send to my mom about them, he said "Thank you for this disgusting lollipop!" in German.

 My lovely American friends and I posing with the ridiculously sized water bottles here.... the best thing is when people pull these out in the middle of class and drink from them. It takes everything in me not to crack up every time.

 Lia, an exchanger from Ohio :) (yes dad, she also likes the Buckeyes. OH!)

 A structure we hiked to to get a view of the city we all stayed in for the weekend. 

 Not only was it titled, but it also wobbled.

 With the other exchangers at a coal mining museum this weekend.

 This isn't my picture because I didn't take any, but last weekend I went to something called a "kletterpark". I don't know the English word, but its like an obstacle course built in really tall trees. I thought it would be fun because I've never really had a fear of heights, but I sure was wrong about that. It was single handedly the scariest thing I've ever done in my life. I'm pretty sure it was even scarier than leaving the country for a year. At one point I had to walk a tightrope, and I was 99% sure I was going to die. Still alive, but scarred for life.

 Nothing makes my day like getting a package from home <3 I brought the jolly ranchers to school and handed them out to my friends. A lot of people here keep telling me about the trend in Germany to post a video of yourself on youtube eating American candy (appropriately called "The American Candy Challenge"), and they always ask me if our candy is as crazy as it is in the videos. I watched a few and apparently Germans don't understand Warheads or Spicy Cinnamon gum, so I brought some normal candy so they don't think all our candy is "crazy". 

 Horseback riding with Marie and Laura!

Marie and I with the horses

"Scheiß Cookies"

I bought an umbrella!
I never know how to start these posts off, so I figured I would start with that. I think it rains here more often than not, and I experienced one too many walks home from school in the pouring rain, so I decided to fight back by buying an umbrella. Take that, German weather.
Ich bin jetzt einen monat in Deutschland! I have been in Germany for one month! My first month in Germany has had its ups and downs, but I can definitely say that I feel more settled here than say, my first week. Last Monday was weird for me though. That was the first day of school at my school back home, and its hard to explain but I felt really disconnected all day long. That's the only way I can think to describe it -- disconnected. It's the weirdest feeling to know that all of your friends are back home, going to the school you've gone to for the past three years and should be going to this year, but you're not. And this Friday is the first home football game, so I'm sure I'll probably feel that way again. I expected to feel sad during these sort of times back home, but I didn't expect this weird disconnected feeling. But hey, it's just something I have to live with. I knew times where big events back home are taking place would be hard, and I wouldn't trade the experience I'm having right now for the world.
Last weekend was the Rotary inbound seminar for exchange students in my district, something I was really looking forward to. And it didn't disappoint! I had to ride a train by myself to get there though, which was extremely scary. Not because I hadn't ridden a train before, but because I had to switch trains and figure out how to navigate the station by reading signs that I couldn't understand. And I didn't know how to work the ticket machine. A lady helped me but my ticket on the first train, but on the second one I couldn't figure it out so I just sat down and when the lady came around to check tickets I just showed her my old one.... I was sure I was going to get kicked off the train or something, but luckily she didn't notice it was an old ticket. At the last train station I met up with the other exchange students and we rode the last train to Petershagen. After all the initial hellos, everyone pretty much split into groups based off of what language you spoke, as we all enjoyed finally speaking in our native languages again. When we arrived at the youth hostel, we were assigned to rooms, and then after listening to a few speeches about the rules and what not, we were allowed to explore the hostel. There was a zipline, volleyball court, soccer field, swings, dance floor, etc. When it started to get dark out we all split into groups based off of our countries and prepared a skit to preform the next day in front of all our host families. Along with the country presentation, we all also had to take a German test which I was really nervous about, because in the email we received about it they said if we didn't pass we would be excluded from the Germany tour in October. Well when we got to the testing room they told us that it was just to see where we were with our German, but we have to take another test near Christmas that determines whether or not we can go on the Eurotour in the spring. After we took the test, I got to meet all my next host parents, who had come along with my current host parents to listen to a presentation from Rotary about how to be a good host family and all that. The whole weekend was just a lot of fun, and it was so nice to talk to people who are going through the same thing as me. Luckily I get to see everyone again next weekend, at the next exchange get-together.
On Friday my host family took me on a weekend trip to a city called Rothenburg. The town is like a fairytale. I suggest that if you ever go to Germany, don't miss out on seeing Rothenburg. The city itself is separated into two parts, "old Rothenburg" and "new Rothenburg". A giant wall surrounds the city like a haphazard circle, which nestles the old town within the new town while keeping old Rothenburg inside the circle. My host mom chose this particular weekend to go because there was a medieval festival going on, which made it feel like you were living in the past. Everywhere you looked there were people dressed like people from medieval times, and there was always music being played. Over the course of the weekend we watched a firework show, walked along the wall, visited Iris's mom's best friend who lives in the city, climbed a tower to see a beautiful view of Rothenburg, went to the criminal museum, and shopped in the town's many stores.
Okay, I'm going to let my pictures cover anything I've forgotten to write about!

 Me with my current and future host families at the exchange seminar :) How weird is it that they're all friends? 

 Paddle-boating on the Weser with Elias and 2 of my next host brothers! 

 Work it, Elias.

 Can you believe this is the view from the library window? Have I been sucked into a fairytale? Seriously, I ask myself this at least 20 times a day (Except when I'm in school, that's definitely not a fairytale)

 Me collecting my absolute favorite thing in Germany, bubbly water. 

 Elias bought a BVB soccer ball (which is his favorite soccer team) and then promptly went home and changed into this. Gotta appreciate that dedication. 

 The place we stayed at while in Rothenburg.

 A shop in Rothenburg...so German.

 Where the firework show was held.

 Looking down onto the town square from the tower.

I don't quite understand this, but when the clock strikes on the hour, the two windows to the left and right of the clock open to reveal the famous scene of the governor (or someone, I forget who) drinking a gallon of wine in order to save his city from enemies. What a brave man. 

 I am told that Bayern (where Rothenburg is) has quite a different culture than other German states. To quote my host mom, "There's Germany... and then there's Bayern". I ate a lot of foods typical to Bayern over the weekend, such as these things called "snow balls",  and also soft pretzels and flammkuchen. 

 All of the Rotary exchange students in my District!

 We went on a 40 minute "walking tour" of the Weser over the exchange weekend, which I'm pretty sure it was just a way to get us from the youth hostel to the place where we had to preform our country presentations without having to pay for a bus. Still fun though.

 The famous little house you might see if you google search Rothenburg. I think I took a picture of it every single time I walked past it.

I'm famous!!! My next host mom works for Beverungen's newspaper, and she wanted to interview me as a way to encourage people in the area to host exchange students, so I happily agreed. People keep coming up to me at school and telling me they saw me in the paper :) Today my math teacher even said something to me about it (in German), and I was really happy to actually know what he was saying. It would have been really embarrassing if I sat there clueless, because the whole class was watching me to see if I understood him. 

 I thought that it would be fun for Elias and I to bake chocolate chip cookies to celebrate my 1 month mark in Germany, since the only time Germans tend to eat chocolate chip cookies is if they buy them packaged at the grocery store. I brought the ingredients with me from the U.S. -- yes, the flour, sugar, vanilla extract, even measuring cups. Mom, I should have listened to you when you told me this was a bad idea because I cant cook to save my life. Elias and I quickly realized once we put them in the oven that they didn't look the way they were supposed to. When we took them out, Elias loudly exclaimed, "Das sind deine scheiß Cookies!", which in English is essentially "These are your shit cookies!", to which we couldn't stop laughing about. Although they didn't turn out exactly as planned, Elias and I sure had a good time making fun of them for the next hour.

Elias and I at the criminal museum. I think the sign says that our crimes are littering, and forgetting to clean our chimney. Hm.