we all live in the red schnultz bus, the red schnultz bus...

so, i just got back from chor-fahrt. now, i'm not going to lie-- i was pretty nervous about going to chor-fahrt. spending a lot of time cooped up with people is something that's out of my comfort zone, even in english. i figured that in german it was going to be downright catastrophic.

fortunately, i was wrong.

it was a lovely time, full of communal singing-times and noshing on all sorts of german delicacies (including potato pancakes and apple sauce? what's the name for that?) and togetherness and hugs.

oh, i gave my camera to trumpet-boy for a while. he took a lot of pictures like this.


so, i showed up to school on wednesday morning with my trusty raspberry wool timbuk2 (although I think she's going to be traded in for one of those snazzy Dakine backpacks that everyone carries, shhh....) and a clarinet. Most people brought ginormous dufflebags and hardback suitcases. i was impressed.

so, we got on the bus and rode up to the mountains. apparently the teacher for our ag was sick, so the instrumental ag was alone and music-noteless. but that was okay.

the youth hostel we stayed in was lovely. the beds were really soft, the food excellent. we made our beds and ate and then got into our ags. i spent a lot of time making silly faces and cursing at my awkward clarinet, although it sounds lovely when I actually manage to play. (it's wood, and it shows in the tone).




we debated for a really long time about what we would play. we'd been practicing memory for a few weeks and frankly it still sounded like we were sight-reading it. there aren't a lot of us, so a piece like memory is really hard to play.



then we scrapped memory and wrote a song and scrapped that too. (somewhere around here it became thursday). we ate some cookies and drank a lot of tea and then started a new song. it wasn't in the right key, so i spent a lot of time trying to put it in the right key.



here's me failing at trying to transcribe the music. note the hair: it's being grown out, so the favored bed-head style as of late is to just half-heartedly pin the pieces of bang that prevent me from seeing back. but that day was really just bedhead.

sometimes i swear that i'm dyslexic or something because it was a really easy translation thing to make (c to b, for any music nerds out there) and it took me like 35 minutes to do. I also finally remembered why i always pawn key changes off on other people-- i suck at it.

eventually doerte and the horn player left and i put together a little version of joy to the world. they came back and we played together some more.

on our breaks, we got together in the cafeteria and sang some more.



here's the group working on our finale number-- 'let it snow'



I think I want to learn to play the ukelele. y/n/mb? discuss?

i taught a little girl (like 10, i think) how to play the tequila song on her recorder. borderline sacrilegious, methinks. but still fun. so we ate dinner and then we had a talent show! there were a bunch of ags together at the chorfahrt, so there were a variety of deliciously-scented morsels for us to enjoy.

these girls did some (sad) attempt of spoken word.


oh, i also found the write club of my school. i'm going to their literary cafe on wednesday... we'll see.

this is the guitar ag


there was a band as well.


see the guy in the black shirt? that's my history teacher. (now, i actually really enjoy history here, and it's not just because i can understand it. it's really refreshing to analyze the moves of our country instead of just assuming that they were correct and moving on).

he's 'rocking out' to grave digger. it was really cute.

this is one of the theater ag pieces. i'm not even going to pretend that i know what was going on.



this was another piece by them.


(they're elves that killed santa claus... by the by, the kid in the blue shirt was trying to look a bit special.)



it's him again. he had a band too. we call him the german equivalent of "mr. doctor."

i hope that when i get my doctorate people will call me "miss doctor". i think that would be quite nice.

our group played joy to the world and then the tequila song. the dun-dun-dah,dun-dun-dun-dah-dah-dah one. so, everyone was dancing and really excited and then we were finished and went to go sit down. So, the main hoo-ha or what-have-ye started talking and I picked up the words exchange student, and then i realized that he was going on about how we were international and how great it was to have an exchange student.

so i went up front and curtsied and everyone applauded for a long time. i got blown kisses and hugs and a lot of smiles. it was quite nice. then, all the upper-class students sat down in the hallway and had a hall-party!

the lights kept turning off every three or so minutes, but we just sat and sang and ate and drank suspiciously flavored "hot chocolate" and "sprite" and "orange juice" etc. it was really nice and i felt lovely and at home and... sometimes i feel like this is the best thing in the world that i could be doing and given the chance i would stay here forever.

but then they played "leaving on a jet plane" and i had to do the whole blinking-back-tears thing. I really do miss home, now more than ever. It's the holidays and as of Sunday, we start baking christmas cookies and that makes this whole experience a lot more tangible-- this is the first christmas i'm going to spend away from home and that's really hard.

there are pictures from this but not on my camera. they're coming, though.

eventually the teachers came and broke us up. I went to bed along with one other girl and everyone else went to do a bit more heavy drinking. when we woke up on friday, there was snow everywhere!



It was so beautiful! a lot of the older-folk looked a bit green around the gills and had the extra-protective scarf wrapped around their neck, which i find amusing. we had breakfast and then we went and played in the snow.



we made a snowball fight. and a snowman. it was the perfect kind of snow for throwing and it was so cold!

on the way home, we all squished in the back of the bus and sang some more. singing is really nice-- we made it through most of the alanis morissette (spelling? or is that even the right singer? jagged little pill and the like) discography and ate some more and went from a winter wonderland back to the brown and green of late-fall.



Martin is playing the guitar here. you can sort of see it.

but almost as soon as we got back to the school, the rain turned into big, fat flakes of snow that clung to our eyelashes and hair. i ate some awkward cherry gummies with mich-ai-yell and tried to explain the concept of his brother going somewhere with a bass drum. it wasn't very successful...

tomorrow i'm celebrating thanksgiving take two, so wait for more pictures of that. i've baked a pumpkin and apple pie and there's going to be a bunch of rotary kids there, so it should be a wonderful time.

lots of love
katie