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