Life in my new host family has been good. Before, when I was upset about leaving the Tillmanns, Iris said to me "It will be good for you to see life in Germany from another perspective, maybe we do things differently than most German families and with them you can learn another way" (or something along those lines). I've found that things are overall the same here, although there are a few differences. Of course I can't remember any of them now when I'm sitting here trying to think of them, but I would say that the biggest difference I can think of is that this family doesn't eat strictly organic like the Tillmanns. I guess I thought that all Germans eat extremely healthy, and although my new family still eats what I would consider healthier than most they don't buy only organic foods. Oh and now I have two brothers, Finn (15) and Ole (17), who both are about 6'6" and tower over me. (It's so weird being the shortest person in the family, which is saying a lot since I'm 5'10"!) So anyways, since I can't come up with any more differences off the top of my head, here's some pictures of the house.
Outside of the house (lots of houses and farms in Germany have solar panels on the roof)
Living room
Dining area
I keep hearing that this winter has been unusually warm, but sometime in January we got about a foot of snow! I didn't think Germany could look any more magical, but the snow proved me wrong.
Even the school looked okay when it snowed
I kept seeing these on my walk to school in the corners of signs and poles, wondering what the heck they are... finally I decided I didn't care if everyone else walking to school thought I was crazy and I went up and touched one. Turns out it's a frozen spider web :/ Am I just overly-observant because I'm an exchange student, or has anyone else ever seen this happen in the U.S???
The one downside to all the snow is the Germans non-existent plowing skills. Only the "main" roads in my town were plowed, other streets like this were left snowy. This really was quite maddening after a while, even the sidewalk on my way to school wasn't shoveled.
On the weekend it snowed I took the train to Lippstadt to visit Ari and her new host family. Yes I ended up having trouble with the trains, and don't even get me started because just thinking about it pains me. But we took a trip to a beautiful place called Sauerland where there was at least two feet of snow everywhere you looked. Ari's host dad told us that we were going sledding, so we went on this two hour trek up the mountain through two feet of snow dragging our sleds..... and found no acceptable place to sled. So that was disappointing, and her host dad spent the whole time lecturing us about how lazy we are (insinuating it was because we were from the U.S.) and at one point he even told us that America had no culture. That whole situation was a little frustrating, because it really sucks when someone is talking crap on your country to you and you can't properly defend yourself because of the language barrier. Ari and I both speak good German and we tried to defend ourselves, but theres a definite difference between being able to have a conversation in German and being able to argue in German.
But anyways we got some good pictures while we were there!
I finally got the chance to take better pictures of the inside of a German classroom. Only one class that I have has a smart board, the rest have chalkboards.
The highlight of the classrooms in my school is definitely the view. But Germans really have a thing with windows, meaning they always feel the need to open them. And I mean always. Rain, snow, 10 degree weather, doesn't matter, the windows will be opened. When I asked Conny what the obsession with open windows is all about, she replied, "Lauren, the fresh air is good for you!!!"
My English teacher drew an outline of the U.S. on the board in class the other day, and I just had to sneak a picture of it because it looked less like the U.S. and more like a giant blob.
Now onto: KARNEVAL!! In case you haven't heard of Karneval before, it's basically Halloween on steroids, minus the scary and double the fun. I went to two different Karneval celebrations, both of which were extremely different. Every year my host family gets together with a big group of people and competes in a costume competition, and this year their group chose to dress up as the characters of Alice in Wonderland. Usually the kids don't participate, but this year we all joined in and dressed up as the frogs. So here are some pictures from Karneval #1...
My host parents!!
Amazing, I know. I was so impressed with the amount of work everyone put into it. But believe it or not, we only won second place. Okay I'll admit it, the group that beat us was really good (star wars). And we found out the next day that we only lost by one point!
I didnt get a picture of their entire group but I did sneak this one
Barbies won third place
The snails cracked me up.... take note of the trail of "slime"
Karneval #2 took place on the Monday after the costume competition. When I woke up that morning to get ready, my host mom told me that she wanted me home at midnight. I was thinking to myself that that was pretty early, because the other times I've been in the Stadthalle (town hall), the party didn't even start winding down until 3am. But I went with it, and little did I know 12 would seem way too late... I left the house at 2pm with my costume on and went over to Vera's house to meet with all my friends. We stayed and hung out for an hour or so, then we joined the rest of the town to watch the parade that ran through Beverungen. Then someone told me we were going into the Stadhalle at 6pm, and suddenly I understood why my host mom expected me home so early. Usually we don't even go until 10 or 11, so after five hours of dancing (from 6 till 11) I was completely exhausted.
The parade
One thing that just seemed so German to me was that practically everyone walking in the parade was holding some sort of container of alcohol and drinking straight from the bottle. There were even a few people with shot glass necklaces pouring shots and passing them to people watching the parade. It was so funny to explain to my friends that this is something you would NOT see in America under any circumstances.
Last weekend I went to Paderborn for an exchange student weekend hosted by ROTEX, and we got to meet all of the new exchange students (newbies) that just got to Germany last month. It was kind of a wake up call for those of us that have already been here since August. At the beginning of our exchange we always talked about how we couldn't imagine the day where all of our oldies leave us and suddenly we're the oldies, but now here we are with only 4 months left in our exchange year. It reminded us all of how fast time goes, and that we have to make the most of the time we have left!
Paderborn
Honestly I don't know what I would do without these two.
So we took the bus from Paderborn to a neighboring town to see this castle. Well all of us are like "wow, this is pretty.. but why are we here?" because basically we never have any clue what ROTEX is planning for our weekends. Then we go inside for a presentation, and find out that this was the training center for the S.S. during World War II.
To separate prisoners based on their "crimes", a colored triangle was sewed onto their clothing to designate which category they belong to.
So I think that covered the main things I've done since January. Here's some pictures from Conny, Vera, Laura and I's "game night".
We played scrabble and allowed English words, which made for a very interesting game.
This morning we went out to breakfast to celebrate Laura's birthday. When we were finished, I asked Laura when the waitress would come with the checks. She looked at me all confused and said "Lauren you don't have to pay, I pay for everyone". I told her that in the U.S. if I were to go out to dinner for a friends birthday that each person would pay for themselves, and a few people might even pitch in to pay for the meal of the person who has the birthday. To which she replied, "What?? I'm the one who invited everyone". This conversation just reminded me of the stereotype that if it's your birthday in Germany, you're the one that has to bring the cake. I would guess that that's actually a pretty accurate stereotype.
I was worried that when I left the Tillmanns I would lose my new brother, but you'll all be happy to know that Elias and I still see each other on a weekly basis, which means.......
......more pictures to embarrass him!! (but really, what went wrong with this billboard)
