the egg and i

2009-05-22T21:13:00.002+02:00

on wednesday, several things occurred.

i stood up and presented part of a physics proof auf deutsch. it was wordy, something about sunbeams or sunstrands or something and i was, quite obviously, completely lost. my physics teacher told me that she thought it was really nice that i did so much with the class.
i gave my english presentation and my class enjoyed it. prom? school buses? cafeteria lunches? sounds like magic.
i also went to a grill party in one of those little garden-house parks and ate sheeps cheese and baked a really, really delicious cake.

on thursday i had a class get together with my speaking course and made friends with some children while playing in the sand in a themed tiki bar. i also stole a glass.

a big glass.

and today i went and bummed around the city. got my bangs cut, bought hair dye, bought ink and hairbands and eyeliner and toothpaste. it rained and got cold, i spent a lot of time inside. i ate a pretzel and a cookie and an ice cream. now it is cold and stormy. i am tired and ready for beds.

lots of love
katie

i am sorry for the use of you. ms jarnot would slay me

2009-05-18T15:30:00.003+02:00

you know you've been an exchange student when you meet someone, briefly (and i do mean briefly-- tea and cake will do) and you think, hmmm, i really wouldn't mind living with them. an exchange year is an experience, an adventure; one of those things that creates stories on a daily basis. but the excitement of september-- of, oh my god, i'm in a foreign country, i'm eating foreign bread, the novelty of trying new words, the newness of a language where every word understood is a triumph-- fades. the novelty wears off, and you're left with life. a startling mononity, but without the comfort you've grown to expect. you have new parents, but they're not your parents. you have a new family, but they're not your family.

you're a new person-- an old person, the same one as you were, in the beginning, but without this support that you'd gotten used to, hardly ever noticed any more. it makes an interesting panic moment the first time you realize how much you rely on the people you never notice. but you learn a lot-- as the calendar months fly, and believe me, they do, even though in real-time it seems like forever, you discover so much, cornily, about yourself. you learn how much a part of you culture is-- how your culture defines you and changes you and, cast into a sea of somewhere else, you may be suddenly at a loss.

some days are challenges, others breezes, others, still, end in tears, others in the confusing feelings of never wanting to leave this place that you call home. the year is harder than you thought, harder than you expected. perhaps, a lack of preperation, the glowing promises of, signing onto the best year of your life, made you think it would be easier. expect to work for it-- work hard for it. friends do not come easily-- the wonders wear off, and you have to just, work hard for it. bus as far as years go, it is a rewarding one. friendships, both internationally and domestically, are strengthened. you start to get the feeling that if being physically uncapable of understanding math isn't going to break you, than not so much will.

the idea of going home leaves me with equal parts excitement and fear. i'm excited to start university, to see my family and friends, to be allowed to drive and not be afraid that misunderstanding a word will send me into previously unthinkable amounts of confusion.

so it i with qual parts trepidation and fear that i say that i am finished. i am heading back to the united states on june 2, approximately a month before the end of the program, in order to firm up the future.

love
katie

practical tips. part 1.

2009-05-17T15:56:00.003+02:00

as my year draws to a close, i have been thinking about some of the things i learned about being an exchange student, and i thought that i would pass them on to other exchange students in a convenient blog form. let me know if you guys have any more questions, and I'll do my best to answer them.

preparation is don't sweat it, too much. if you're feeling adventurous, a quick nip over to culture shocked is enough to send your pulse to new levels of claminess. check out facebook and see if your group of inbounds has a group. Ask an AFSer is a great place for questions and answers, as well as networking. The book, The Exchange Student Survival Guide, is a very realistic portrayal of what to expect, as well as some interesting peaks into the mind of a hostfamily. Try learning some basic phrases in your new language, or brushing up on some helpful vocabulary that you may or may not have learned in school. (The first words I learned were "home" words-- foods, furniture, and so forth.) I didn't speak German when I came, and I survived. However, if you have the opportunity... learn a bit of your new host language.

packing is a pain in the butt. just getting that out there, right now. no matter what you pack, i think, you end up regretting what you forgot and what you didn't bring. I've ended up buying a lot of clothes here, but I think if I packed better, I wouldn't have had to. In Germany, the dark skinny jeans and converse look is super trendy, and converse are wicked expensive here. I wouldn't have come without a laptop, or an iPod, and I wouldn't recommend bringing a phone with you. I wish that I'd brought my favorite hoodie and a few comfort items. I would pack less more than more because you accumulate so much stuff over the course of a year.

budget oh man, i bet my mum's laughing about this again. but germany and europe is expensive, and you're dealing with a dollar to euro switcheroo, which is... not a very good rate at this point in time. I am meant to get 100 dollars a month from my parents (ca. 70€), and I don't think I've ever had a month where I haven't used extra money from somewhere else or had to ask for more money. Clothes here are very expensive comparatively, and kids (in my school at least) are very into brand names. We wear a lot of H&M-- it's the same price as it is in the US (EXPENSIVE) and because of the price difference, it's cheap. There's also the issue that you're paying for a lot of things that you didn't in the US-- shampoo and haircuts and school supplies and a bus pass or train tickets, perhaps. You might have the opportunity to travel-- train tickets are expensive, even if you buy them well in advance. I don't feel comfortable 'snacking' from my family (i.e., when I have my German class, I end up getting something to eat. plus, in germany, you're faced with the possibility of going out. a night in the disko (without drinks), will set you back, in my experience, normally about 7-8€. A movie ticket on a Friday night, bottom seating with student discount? 8€. A lot of kids are spending in the 150-200€ a month range.

coming next:
school, weight gain, host family gifts, rush week, homesickness

wooooooooooooooommmmmmmmmm

2009-05-17T13:55:00.005+02:00

so, i got my nose pierced.

i ended up going for the more expensive studio, because it was cleaner and there weren't needles sitting on the counter and the guy at one studio was... creepy. and there was no one else waiting there. so, a speedy walk around the city later, I ended up at the slightly scary piercing place where all of the hipsters go.

I signed up, went upstairs (to where they were selling bongs and postcards, lol at germany) and panicked for the 5 or ten minutes until the piercer got there. he was a young-ish man, who shook my hands and went over the sheet of rules and made sure I understood everything. He gave my his phone number for if I had any questions, made sure the girl I was waiting with was waiting for me and we went into his little room.

He made a mark on my nose, stuck the bits into the sterilizer box and put on gloves. He cleaned off my nose, handed me a tissue and told me to lie back. Now, this is when I'm not exactly sure what happened. But he grabbed my nose with a pair tweezers, stuck a cork up and said "this is going to hurt. So don't freak out, and don't move."

So, he got the needle in, asked if I was okay, and then PULLED THE NEEDLE THROUGH MY NOSE and twisted the stud in. this entire procedure took maybe... 20 seconds? a minute? it was an uncomfortable undetermined amount of time though. And then I was like "is that it?" and he was like, yep.

So, I told him i was going to sit in the chair for a few minutes and he was like, take as long as you want. My eye was running and my nose was burny and that was it. I went and got ice cream and dragged Cat to the Apotheke to buy all sorts of antibiotic things. After, it is a little bit burny and red. The day of, my nose ran pink, and there was a bit of blood, but not as much as i was expecting. I'm super pleased with it. I can't wait to swap out the starter stud (a little crystal stud) for a star. or maybe a ring. maal sehen. Total cost? About 50 euros. Getting my nose pierced on my own and being able to understand the piercer? Priceless.

Or, at least, until my mum checks my bank account.

love
katie

2009-04-26T13:19:00.001+02:00

in german

2009-04-24T21:48:00.001+02:00

also, i am thinking about getting my nose pierced. yes/no/maybe/stories?

yes

2009-04-24T20:11:00.000+02:00

Professor, rolling up a blackboard to reveal a second blackboard that is covered in general chemistry: Oh god! Oh god...get it off! Ew!

(class laughs)

Professor: No, not the ideal gas law! We don't need that, we're organic chemists! There is no such thing as gas! No such thing as gas!

Student #1: Organic chemists are very sensitive.

Student #2: This is kind of tragic.

2009-04-23T19:33:00.003+02:00

yes, i am pleased to announce:

i have OFFICIALLY written a 5, which is a practically passing grade.

i'm not in love with the modern world

2009-04-12T14:10:00.003+02:00

it is weird to look back at 7 months, to think that three more or so and i will be home. it is odd now, because now that uni is sort of settled, i feel sort of... finished. finished like i was with highschool when i learned that i got this scholarship, finished like i am with knitting when there is less than 1/4 less, finished like when i finally put the dough in the oven.

but there is still time, and it is a good and bad feeling together. i have seen so much, learned so much, experienced so much, (cornily enough) grown so much that sometimes i wonder how much of katie there is left. i just spent two weeks hanging out with fellow exchangees and meeting new families and must say that germany is a beautiful, beautiful land.

this post is just going to be pictures, i think.

first off:

these are some of the bigger places I've been. The blue is homebase, the green is potentially planned travel, depending on time and money and so forth.

ferien:

love
katie

and we go yo-ho over the sea....!

2009-04-02T18:19:00.003+02:00

so, i am currently sitting somewhere in berlin and the screeen is slightly blurry.

there are several potential reasons for that.

the first is, that i think i might be going a little blind.

the second is, that i can also not type and it is clearly past 5 o' clock somewhere. irgendwo. kelly and i (who's internet connection i am currently stealing, and bedroom couch i am currently sleeping on), made baileys. lots of it. and cool labels. for the bottle.

but we did other stuff toooo.

i left bonn on monday morning and arrived in berlin almost half an hour late at some point in the afternoon. the berlin bahnhof is ginormous and their are multiple levels which apparently is what is meant by the words "tief" on the ticket that i bought.

so i changed traisn a few times and then i got on a train heading somewhere in poland.

i didn't go to poland. i got out in berlin. and molested by some small children, who thought i was pretty coools.

btw, i have pictures. somewhere. they're just refusing to load because of some sort of thing involving readers blah blah blah etc.

on tuesday, i went to schoools, with kelly. i bought a month ticket, which may or may not be valid, depending on one's view of the term "student". however, i plan not to speak any german if someone asks.

"es toooot mir liiiiiiiieeeeeeed,iccccccckkkkkkk kaaaaaannnn keeiiiiiiinnnn deutttsch."

aber ja. mal sehen.

then, on tuesday night, we went to the synagogue that was partially destroyed during world war two and had today been rebuilt. there is a museum inside, but we didn't see it. we all saw some of the white yuppy part of berlin, where all of the arty kids moved because it was cheap and remains sort of destroyed because arty kids tend to grow into lazy adults.

but i still loves them.

then, we walked to the fernsehturm (spelling questionable) and looked around for a while. amayingly, some sort of glorified beast has decided to grant us lovely weather (prolly has was zu tun with my trip to the mormon church). so we have been parading about without jackets enjoying the sunshines.

so, on wednesday, kelly and i hit the krankheits museum, which is the sort of place i would live at if they had beds. it was filled with dead things and the ways people get killed. like one eyed cyclop babies and dissected livers. there was also an interesting section about the evolution of certain ways diseases are treated (ranging from the early treatments of glaucoma to sepsis and a rather interesting example about difficult births in the 19th century, with an absolutely terrifying looking birthing chair. as a side note, there was a quite entertaining english translation whoopsie, which directly translated one of hte words for midwife to "diaper changer", which was sort of lols in context. over all, major thumbs up for the charité krankheits museum in berlin.

then, on wednesday night, after hitting ka de we, which is this ginormous shopping center with things like 17,000€ bottles of brandy and more clothes than we could shake a forest of sticks at, and writing some postcards bought from a lovely turkish lady, kelly and i went to visit the lovely looking pub that i had earlier remarked upon. there is this typical berlinisch beer, that is fruity, and i wanted to try it. strictly experimental, of course.

so, we went to an irish pub (where yes, kelly, the waitresses spoke ENGLISH, because they were NOT GERMAN) called the oscar wilde, which was playing beirut when we walked in, and had some red and green coloured beer. which is surprisingly nice and not terribly alcoholic.

or so i thought.

then we had apint of guinness (pictures coming later) and then i stood up and the floor was like woooooooooooooooooooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh hey there! and it was like, okay.

but the berliner beer is pretty very cools. there is raspberry and waldmeister, which is green and tastes yummy.

so then we rode the u-bahn homes and talked to kelly's host parents for a little bit. and then beds.

today, we went to the holocaust memorial museum. i've posted pictures of this memorial before (it's the one with the many cement blocks), but it turns out there's quite an involved museum underneath. it's quite lovely, quite detailed, with lots of information-- including a lot of personal stories. one of the rasons why i think that the holocaust is so well sort of... forgotten, as it were, is that too frequently, thousands of deaths are simply a statistic. this museum was chilling, because it sort of reversed the process, the ocncept-- it focused on the individual victims, the names forgotten and the lives destroyed, all while not completely obliviating the overwhelmingness of the holocaust.

on a lighter note, then we went to karstadt. i got ided for like the first time ever in germany. then, we came home and made noodles. and baileys. and ate poptarts.

which i also bought at karstadt.

that's all for nows
lots of love

katie

battle of the blogs

2009-03-29T19:19:00.000+02:00

On Friday the 27th, Katie Came to Town.
And the world was changed.

Before this happened, a few other things worth noting occured.
First of all, Creepy Sunglasses Guy was on the bus. As usual. AND, he asked to borrow my pen. Which I allowed, because I don't know what he would have done otherwise. Scary scary man.
Then, Katie did not come. But her phone call came, and I answered it. And in Denglish, she told me that because of snow, her train was coming late. She says that isn't what she said, but that's what I understood. I love it.
Much waiting occured, and I bought a crazy looking bread thing for Andelyn. And some other stuff of goodness.
After much more waiting, Katie arrived! And the world was, as before stated, geändert.

after a 50€ train ticket, 2 ices, a 30 minute verspatung, a bottle of fanta, and a rogue encounter of the english variety (there was an english speaking man on the train), i finally made it to the bonn hbf.

thankfullz, meg was waiting for me.

A good chunk of my waitingness had been spent with a Ticketautomat, attempting to save katie as much money as possible. I ended up failing, but that wasn't my fault. So, prepared with infos, Katie and I boarded an U-Bahn to Anya's house.

this is sort of actually a lols story. i couldn't exactly figure out, why meg had switched host families TO LIVE WITH TWO NATIVE ENGLISH SPEAKERS. anywsays, it turns out we didn't go to her house, we went to anya's.

the general plan was to dye my hair.

the general plan sort of... dissolved. into teeny, tiny, bitsy pieces. the first thing the "professional" did was dump the conditioner into the dye, making it unusable. didn't like the color anyways, and we hop back on the u-bahn and make a flying trip to rewes.

The funny thing about that story is that Katie was not under the impression that, despite my assurances, Anya really is a professional. She is, like, trained and stuffs. In Cosmetology. Yup.
I take full blame because I was distracting Anya the whole time with my incessant chatter. I lost my voice eventually.

Anywhos, we went to ReWe. Turns out they don't carry hairdye. Not in the the hair section, or the fruit section, or the cleaning products section. We checked.

So we returned to the House of Anya, and Katie and I both got our self-done haircuts smoothed out by Anya the Amazing.

i was going to make a totes brilliant meg equals pithy squirrel reference. it's forthcoming, promises.

I have yet to understand from where this forthcoming reference is supposed to come, but it will most Definitely be brilliant.

well, have to have some incentive to keep the readers at it

Oh right. It's part of the evil plan of all bloggers. *had forgotten*

At this point it became run-to-the-bus time.

so i bought another bus ticket. hence the meg failing at saving katie money thing, that you'd remember if you just didn't skim to the dirty parts.

anywhooos, so we rode the u-bahn back to the bahnhof. when we were walking out of the hallway, i got confronted by two germans of the teenage variety. they did not seem to be drunk.

they approach me. i whip out the "es toooot meeer leeeiiid..." and look to meg for reassurance. i thought SHE SAID THAT THE BONN FOLKS WERE FRIENDLY.

LIES!

and then the guy starts speaking english.

he points at his wrist and says, i saw you on the tv yesterday, can i have your sign?"

and then they rambled some more and then meg pulled me away, so i could be harrassed by the next one in line.

which was the bus driver.

i get on the bus. i must buy another ticket (this is a reaccuring theme; i hope you're not bored by it yet.)

me: can i buy a ticket to... meg?
meg: blah this is my stop blah
me: what she said
bus driver: now you say it!
me: ??????
me: meg?

and then meg fed me the words and the guy asked me from where i'm from. no one knows where braunschweig is down here, so it's a bit odd.

i think he meant my nationality. but i whipped out the german, srs bsnss style, so all was in ordnung.

I personally found the busdriver rather friendly.

sure, meg. sure. i thought bonn was family-friendly; now i'm thinking again.

It is, except when you are here. The trade-off is that when you are here, the trains come on time. So I win.

By the way, the name of my stop is Bßhövn Abzg. Ganz simple.

that's for privacy protection

Then Samstag occured, bright and early the next day - we were awoken by the brightness of the sun at apprx. 7:40. How deceiving of it.

We made ourselves ready (as the Germans say) and went downstairs for shoes and stuffs, when we ran into Regina the hostmother.

Mama: Ack! If I knew you were leaving early we would have breakfasted earlier!! Here, smear yourself a Brötchen.
Me:...Bus in 5 minutes?
Whatever. We made it with only minimal light jogging.

Then Katie attempted to buy a Tagesticket (bus and train ticket for a whole day).

me: hallo, ich hätte gern eine tagesticket. region four. köln.
him: bonn?
me: köln.
him: bonn.
me: köln.
him: oh! köln (he says it the exact same)

and then he prints me a four card.

so we went and talked to him again, and he complained and gave me a day ticket.

then, on the bus, i was introduced to sunglasses man, meg's secret loooove.

the sparks were flying as he dozed romantically in the back of the bus.

clearly, it is forever.

Only because he refuses to take a different bus. Or a bath, I should say. There is nothing sexy about greasy hair and cut-up knuckles. Or bleeding eye sockets, but I suppose that was just once. Sorry, Katie.

sure, meg.

she's just in denial. THE SPARKS WERE FLYING; I TELLS YOU!

That was because the bus is reallllllly old. Honestly, the middle turny section is going to fall out some day.

We decided that, since we had put so much effort into getting a ticket that lets Katie go to Köln, we may as well go there. So we did. And, guess what?
It was raining.
Hard.

The wonderful thing about the Köln Dom is that it is like a massive wind maschine. It is like Chicago in the middle of the Köln Innercity. Ergo, umbrella = useless = we are wet.

and we blowdryed our hair and everything.

Luckily the rain was all, 'just kidding!' and we did not become soaked through. We eventually arrived at my personal favorite haven, The English Shop, which I find much amazing. Unfortunately the counter was not being manned this time by a hot British boy with one of those accents that melts the bones in your knees. Or maybe that was a fortunate thing - I was planning on doing a lot of walking this weekend.

well, i saw a llama. and that made me all melty-kneed, even though i was planning to do a lot of walking this weekend.

We then wandered a bit more until we came upon a S-Bahn. As we approached, the rain picked up. As we attempted to decide a direction, it picked up more. As it started down-ouring so hard that the rain - yes, rain, not hail - started bouncing off the ground, we ran for the side that we were closest to: and hid under the covering until the Bahn came.

We ended up on the other side of the river at a Bahnhof that I didn't know existed and took a train back to Bonn that I had never taken before and that went through stops that I had never heard of and I was very confused, but eventually we ended up on Track 3 in the Bonn Hbf so all was well again.

so then we were in bonn.

and we went a-walkin'.

we found a seriously cuties little store with odd things and went upstairs.

at the foot of another very intriguing set of stairs, there was a sign that said "private, but please come in. everything is for sale."

it turned out that it was a little overpriced thriftstore. i bought an amazing yolked blue fuzzy skirt and meg almost bought a magenta-themed pioneer dress and then bought like a 70's style shirt dress.

then i was hungry, so we went and nommed some noodles.

i learned to use chopsticks.

apparently, i am right handed.

Anya and I, through the invention of the Telephone, planned ourselves a ron-day-voo. And then it started hailing.

We found ourselves an S-Bahn and were magically (after a good 15 minutes) in Bad Godesberg. We went to the Haribo Fabrik!! (read - factory.)

me: So, where is this factory thing?
Anya: this will soon become apparent.
me: ... ?

After like 3 minutes: Large Red Arrow!

This is no cool thing like a factory tour or such. No no, it is a very large store fulllll of candy. The gummi bear kind, and other assorted varieties of amazingness. Also, a bear that talks. And gummi candy in the shape of Arnold Schwarzene... yeah. Him.

We wandered in a very interesting fashion, when suddenly I spotted a cooler! I like cool treats, so I peeked through the glass and spyed myself some FREEZE POPS!! Amazings. I bought one, and also a packet of them to take home. Calm yourself, it was only €o,65. Mmmm. Sadly, I had some difficulties with my package due to a lack of scissors. Photos forthcoming.

german precision engineering my oversized black eye-podular. i am experimenting with parental guidance non-required blogging.

Then - Kinopolis! Yays! Costing of money, of which Katie did not have im Moment. So,

me (what i heard): Gibt es in der nähe ein Geldautomat?
me (what everyone else heard): Gibt es in der nähe ein Geldmaschine?

I am officially going insane.

After ths getting of moneys, we returned to the theater, bought tickets, were confused about how to get in, and then were told that Katie's large camera of coolness was not allowed in the theater.

so i stuck it in a locker. it was not a positive experience. i experience seperation anxiety when parted from my camera.

We watched The Shopaholic. But before this occurence, we discussed glasses and their uses. And Katie's glasses, which she left at home, were described as "They're like a Bright Eye for Cutie glasses."

I died of laughter.

Scary talking mannequins. Otherwise good.

We then searched us a drug store to try this hair thing again.

except we got out of the kino at 6:02.

and we're in germany, so apparently people don't need hairdye or toothpaste or nailpolish after 6 o'clock.

so we went to karstadt. and bought like THE MOST obnoxiously coloured red hair dye ever. ever. ever. ever. it was like orange. i was like, okay!

so then we went back to anya's house and we had dinner with someone from the un and i got climbed over by a toddler for a while.

and then we dyed my hair.

it was suspiciously not-burny. but as we washed it out, we were sort of like... katie, your hair isn't really red.

but we almost missed our bus, so we went running with the soaking hair and then we did not miss our bus, but it turns out that on saturday evenings, the bus only runs every other hour.

so we went to meccas. and met some german gangstas, with mullets and overly tan skin and sweatpants and fanny packs. they were quite infatuated with one miss meg.

We were speaking English.
Dude #4: lol hehe Ich kann English! lol
me: Ich kann Deutsch! (said to myself/Katie)
#4: Oh, du kannst Deutsch?
Kontact had been made. So I sold them a dollar.

We discussed many topics: famous people (I'm from Iowa), drinking (he didn't until 18, when his gramma died), hamburger prices, Monster Energy Drinks, spring break, exchange year, spring break, $/€ exchange rate, so on. And then,

#4: Hey, can I buy your dollar? For a euro.
#3: Yeah! That's a 20 cent profit!
me: sure you can.
#4: Oh, I don't have a euro.
me: ....
#3: I'll buy it!

Sweetness.

Except now I don't have a dollar, and those things are great conversation starters. Obviously.

Then they randomly left. And the bus came. And Mr. Sunglasses was somehow not on board.

but meg was missing him, i could tell.

she was practically pining away.

No, that was just my throat from talking all day. *croak* *croak*

because she was talking about SUNGLASSES MAN.

i win.

anyways, so we came home and went to bed and the time sprung ahead and then it was this morning and i went to church.

meg is the first real mormon that i have ever met. but now i know a lot of them.

they are semingly very nice, but no one knows with these types and their "people jackets".

it was sillies, because they kep saying "zeugnis", which i know as report card.

which actually also means report card. and testimony. everyone also thought we were sisters, because apparently our hair and our eyes are like the same.

The retro-ness of our clothings may have also played a part in that.

sure, meg. i TOTES believe you. secretly, i am from iowa. you heard it here first.

and then one of the missionaries asked me if i wanted a book of mormon.

i was like, sure?

so they came and visited my house. well, meg's house. but whatever.

spreading the gospel and all the jazz.

with his "people jacket".

well, that's all from this end of the spectrum.

all the love (tooth and nail)
katie

I'm not much of a sign-offerin, but I am feeling the peer-pressure.
warm-fuzzy-feelings from buschhoven!
-lauren margaret

2009-03-19T16:27:00.002+01:00

several things have happened since the last time i wrote.

i was waitlisted at macaulays
i was actually allowed to read something in english class
i answered a question correctly in religion class
i think that i've bruised my tailbone
i had yoga
the new franz cd is brilliant
and i am learning for a biology test tomorrow. promising to be a-- you guessed it-- epic fail. we'll seas, we'll seas.

love from the underground
katie

2009-03-16T22:14:00.000+01:00

so, i got waitlisted.

BURN!

fortunately, they gave me a decent amount of moneys anyways.

we'll sea, we'll sea.

lick your cigarette and then kiss me

2009-03-15T19:51:00.002+01:00

on friday, i went to see the Seltsame Fall des Benjamin Button. with my host mum. it was her birthday present. I still don't know how I feel about it, but it was certainly interesting. I think I like films better in German.

every once in a while, i'm struck again by how much i understand. this was a really texty movie, and i found myself explaining it to my host mum. (i don't know if she was just humoring me, but it was still really nice.

yesterday was so, amazingly beautiful and warm and sunny. i went to the city and met up with my au pair friend and we ate ice cream and mumbled about my failure of a love life and then i bought, in no particular order: a formelsammlung, pastel kreide, hair dye (apparently, i am going strawberry blond), ANOTHER new journal (starting number 3, kiddos, my fault for using the pocket sized, i imagine) and a new notepad for school. which blows this week budget already.

yesterday was a really big soccer game between the braunschweig team and the berlin team and braunschweig lost tragically. the riot police were out en masse (i'm not kidding-- they have knee pads and riot helmets and riot sticks), masses of them walking around, paramedics at the standby and so on and so forth. when i went to the train station, there were approximately 10 of them blocking the entrance to my gleis.

there were some people allowed to go through, some people that were id'd and some people that were turned away. i couldn't figure out WHAT was going on, and I didn't have my passport/residency permit with me (okay, i am scared of the police here, i don't know particularly why-- perhaps because they are not as friendly seeming as the one's in the US?) and so I was pretty nervous. Eventually, I went up and asked in my best German "am I allowed to go through?" one of the police officer's looks me up and down (i don't know if he's serious, or just making fun of me because I am so obviously nervous) and eventually says "sure."

so i go up and there are about 8o million drunk germans trying to get on one regional bahn. there are police officers standing by as people run around with plastic cups of beer and smoke cigarettes, yelling chants and argueing with old women with headscarves. i would NOT want to be on that train.

Eventually, my train came and i got on and went home and made pasta.

like, i really made pasta. it was pretty good. more about that later.

here are some pictures of the pasta making process. my host family was quite entertained.

today i checked my mail compulsively waiting for a decision from macaulay and made focaccia and creme brulee. with salt. omg, fail. but my host family (other than my host sister) ated it and said it was good.

then i drewed a picture for art and studied a bit for physik.

that's all for now

love
katie

2009-03-15T10:52:00.000+01:00

MACAUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUULLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYY

just post the decision already, pleases?

2009-03-14T12:38:00.001+01:00

oh heavens, it is so gorgeous today, i am thrilled.

i am wearing my trench coat and getting ready to go out shortly for tee and pastel-kreide buying and perhaps a haircut. we'll see.

tomorrow i am making my host family dinner-- the menu as of now is: handmade noodles with a white sauce and chicken or mushrooms.

i'm at a bit of a loss topic wise (except for 'moaning and bitching') so if anyone has any ideas, be so kind as to leave me a comment.

coming soon: the osterferien plans, katie rambles out the recent happening in stuttgart and ???.

love
katie

2009-03-11T22:38:00.000+01:00

this

is terrifying

thank you, and good night.

2009-03-10T18:52:00.002+01:00

"I always look forward to reading people's CBYX blogs, but I dont know why I continue to check here when all you do is whine and whine. Alot of kids apply to CBYX every year who want to go but all you have to share about the experience is bitching and moaning. Wth. "

I don't know why you continue to check here either, kid-doe-doe.

wth.

maybe i should just write a disclaimer.

2009-03-08T18:02:00.001+01:00

okay, now i'm just like lolling about in sloths of english.

yesterday was youtube and english and letters and baking a cake and long talks about politics with a jewish rabbi

today was a horseshow and finishing almost 1/6 of my online english class in about two hours i read i ran i slept and my german is terrifying, right about now

have a lovely week
katie

drachenläufer

2009-03-07T10:08:00.003+01:00

last night I saw this movie and it made me cry. i think, for the first time in ever, the film was actually better than the movie. (the kite runner)

i saw it in the community center and we had a smoking/beer break. which never fails to make me lol.

anywho, off for a bit of studying and tea, more later.

wake up all bleary eyed and small

2009-03-05T20:33:00.002+01:00

yesterday i went to the swimming pool and did some thinking. and a bit of swimming. my mind seems to be persistently recycling several points of varying importance and until they are resolved, i seem to be stuck in a rut. my decisions as of yesterday: i am going to start playing violin, if i get the scholarship to macaulays i am going to get a degree in liberal arts, i don't know if i want to be here, i am not going to be graded, i am spending too much money, i need to buy new socks and maybe write my name in them, i miss my friends, there's not enough space in this house, hiding in my room is not-acceptable, but i am content to do it anyways, i can not wait until vacation, i am going to paris, i want to go to amsterdam, i am possibly a watching buzzcocks reference, i think the muslim man in my german class hates me, javier makes my week sometimes and that is okay, i had a panic attack in the changing locker and when i got out someone had brought my backpack to lost and found, and i thought someone had taken it-- but despite the ipod in plain view and change purse and everything, everything is in it. i am quite pleased
today i am sick and making flashcards. so many flashcards. i slept for 3 hours this afternoon and it's 8:40 and i have the twitchy eye syndrome. i am going to watch germany's next top model with my host sister and my host brother's girlfriend who has even noticed that something isn't right.
my eye is twitching
thank you and good night

love
katie

2009-03-05T19:16:00.001+01:00

oh ps- guess who my host sister asked for help with her english project?

not me

2009-03-05T19:09:00.000+01:00

i am made of fail. but i am sick and i am tired.

there are, however, new pictures up on flickr.

BETTINA!

2009-02-22T21:09:00.003+01:00

okay, so my parents finally took my none-too-subtle hints and bought me a pro flickr account. thanks guys!

as a reward, you get pictures. by the way, i'm leaving tomorrow night for a week of english in bonn, so i shan't be around to dish dirt.

first off: this video makes my die. this song makes me lol, hardcores.

love
katie

she's watching the detectives (it's so cute)

2009-02-21T12:15:00.002+01:00

january seemed like forever, but now february is almost over and it seems like it has been only days. somehow i am eighteen. i bought a certain substance yesterday and was not asked for an id. i am going next week to bonn, leaving on monday afternoon and coming home on sunday.

last saturday, i said goodbye to an exchange student from the us, karen. she was only here for a half-year, and we'd hung out a bit, but weren't incredibly close. nevertheless, i went to the trainstation on saturday morning to see her off.

it wasn't a terribly glamorous affair-- it was cold and rainy, and she almost missed her train, and nicha and i were running around, looking for her. but her host mum was crying and her friend was crying and then, to my surprise, i was crying too-- i don't think it was really that i will miss her, although she was lovely-- i think it's more some sort of jealously, knowing that she was going home and that i am still 5 months away.

it's not that i'm not having fun, but exchange is just not what i expected. it's a lot of hard work, and it's a lot of misunderstandings. it's a lot of frustrations, long-lasting moments of confusion-- interspersed, of course, with moments of laughing and perfection and other things. i can't decide sometimes, when i have bad days, when i am exhausted, when even the german i KNOW i know can't be used, if i would be happier at home.

but other days-- i couldn't be happier. it is odd, but i suppose...

i've started my new speaking course, and have discovered that skipping approximately 2 books into the final level and being in class with people who've been in germany for 1-2 years makes the class difficult enough to be interesting. i've missed some grammar stuff, and i still win at speaking, but i actually need to work at the exercises. which is nice. it's nice to be challenged.

on thursday, i went with my old class to berlin. i was reminded again why i moved-- because they are somewhat inconsiderate, incredibly clique-y and well... i don't know. i ask a question, and no one bothers to answer. and on friday, we had to make posters (in english) and they were just... meh- meh- meh translate! and it's annoying, but my new class is love. my old class has two folks that were exchange students in the last half-year, and they are back. the girl was in canada, and i think that perhaps we will become friends.

so, berlin was snowy and cold and wet and my belly hurt. i think i am getting sick. but it was a nice day, full of galavanting about and riding public transport. we started off the day at the airport where the candy bombers had dropped their loads that supplied the allied sectors of berlin for almost a year, and then saw the brandenburger tor, potsdamer platz. i got to go to the ddr museum, which was also quite interesting. i bought a new shirt, since i no longer fit into like any of my old ones. we ated pizza, and listened to a man speak who was held in solitary confinement for 9 YEARS by the DDR. he was amazing to hear, and i only wish i had understood more of it. there is a museum at checkpoint charlie (the mauer museum) which has all sorts of information about the wall and ways people escaped from the ddr. the links are in english, by the way, so if you want to read more about them.

then, on friday, we made posters. on friday night, i helped set up a surprise birthday party, made baileys, baked a cake and then celebrated. today i am packing for my trip to bonn, and then tomorrow is karneval and the survival camp for the new afsers. unfortunately, no pictures, since i killed my flickr upload limits for february.

lots of love
katie

2009-02-13T14:41:00.001+01:00

the new exchangees are annoyingly optimistic and write cute blog entries about how they have been changed by their weeks in their respective countries.

in the mean time, i get 6/25 points on a math quiz, managed to completely misunderstand a conversation that might have ended in a date (with a real german, no less!), love my new history teacher and am getting ready to celebrate my 18. i have approximately 3 blog posts that are partially written. promises.

'cuz everybody's drunk loud and pissed off

2009-02-12T17:51:00.006+01:00

well, officially i'm five months in. it was, if any one was wondering, the sixth of january. i'm somewhere in the range of halfway done, which is a cool prospect and a chilling on at the same time. so, in one of the myriad of entries you will today become: the official five month reflection post. sort of.

me:

physically, i am conservatively about 10 pounds heavier than when i left. my hair is scraggling now about the bottoms of my ears, and when carefully styled, resembles an odd bowl cut. i wear trousers almost everyday. i can walk in high-heeled boots. i drink black tea with milk. i own a backpack and wear a scarf without fail. i have stopped carrying around my camera and a dictionary around with me. most of the time. i swear a lot. in german and english.
mentally, i've either grown a pair or had a pair all along and just only discovered them? i don't know. but now i seem to have no problem approaching strangers or volunteering to read passages in a language i can barely put my tongue around and i tend to feel pretty fierce. look at me.

language:

i actually feel pretty comfortable in conversational german at this point. by this, i mean conversational german. nattering on about the weather, a bit about books, what i've done, what i'm planning to do and all of that
on a conversational level, i am extremely comfortable switching between german and english. sometimes, i speak what is called "Denglisch"-- that is to say, a random mix between my two languages. once i delve into more 'intense' german, say... school... when asked to call up english, i struggle like no one's business. i have moods where my german is better than others, and i dream pretty regularly in german (including with people at home speaking german... it's weird.) I can not easily change words between german and english-- like the word for the word that i've forgotten is something like "ubersetzen", but i can't for the life of me remember what it is in english. i don't associate german words with english words, just their meanings. like i do in english. does that make sense? i also remember conversations in english, which is weird.
my spoken and written english has definitely begun to deteriorate. if i'm not being careful, i sort of randomnly switch into german randomly or use german structure sentence or find myself missing the really good words that germans only seem to have.
i am reading a lot in german and understanding books that i have not read in english. not books that require honest to god interpretation, but children's and early teen books. the speciality vocabulary for my classes are coming slowly.
i am still terrified of using the formal Sie tense incorrectly. And I do, quite frequently, since I don't use it that frequently.
i understand a lot more than i can say, and tend to be quite frusterated by this. for example, i can hear a word, understand it, repeat it, write it down... and then 5 minutes later, go and try to use the same word and boom-access banks DENIED. if i hear the word, i know it, and can spell it, but i can't independently recall it. annoying.
i am pretty pleased with my german. i get a lot of compliments. i know that most of them are like "be nice to the girl, she's no idea what's going on." but when you pass as a native, or a german teacher (?) it's nice. and like, being able to ask people for directions? ace.

school:

well, i am probably not passing any of my classes. but i'm understanding i'd say about 80 percent. depends on whether or not i'm listening.
i take back any previous statements, my new class is made of love. they are seemingly thrilled to have me and think my fail!german is adorable. they have yet to discover that i am not a worterbuch, but that will come in time. example: (katie: points at object): how do you call that? classmate: that's a ______________. der ______________. (slowly)... should I write it out for you? It's amazingly sweet. And I understand my new class a lot better. but in class and everything as well. it's weird.

life

i am starting to make friends, although not really with the germans
i think i am going to start volunteering
i am writing, a lot, but not poetry
i have been accepted (as of now) to all of the colleges i applied to. i am just waiting for one, which is my top choice.

more later, about things i like and things i don't like.

2009-02-05T19:29:00.000+01:00

this may become a regular occurrence.

lives of imperialists leave me with aching wrists

2009-02-03T10:17:00.005+01:00

our journey begins on the 6:09 Regional Bahn towards the Bahnhof, which smells suspiciously of urine and is filled with sleepy old business men. Karen has been up already for the better part of two hours, having proven herself incapable of either setting an alarm or reading a clock. I have been up since shortly after five: we are brushed and primped, excited and getting hungry for our breakfast as we arrive at the train station.

We all but rush for the bus station, since we are already a little bit late. Fortunately, we needn’t of worried: our bus didn’t show up for another forty-five minutes. Which for, of course, we waited outside. By 7:05, we couldn’t feel our pinky toes. By 7:15, we couldn’t feel our bums. By 7:20, we’d pulled out all the stops and gone as far as to pull up the collars of our jackets and turn our scarves into little breathing tubes. It was cold. So we fidgeted and waited and waited until something like 7:35, when our salvation turned up in the form of a gold-colored bus.

we met some lovely folks on the train, two native germans who were amazed by our rapid transitions between english and german and the moments in between. we listened to music and looked at our tour-guidey books and ate our brotchens and some cookies. as the minutes ticked by, it became increasingly clear that it was not only unlikely that it was going to be warmer in Berlin, or perhaps even sunny—it also became clear, that we were also going to be quite late.

we arrived in Berlin almost an hour later than planned. the bus driver, charmer that he was, provided the first amazing quote of the day-- auf Englisch, no less! He says, "We reach our destination. The weather outside is shit." The entire non-English speaking bus remains silent as Karen and I burst our laughing and clapping and generally carrying on. we run about the bus pavilion in a sudden burst of energy, having finally found a WC. Searches for an U-Bahn station prove less fruitful, and we follow a lot of signs around for a while, sharing our confusions with other tourists.

eventually, we find the u-bahn station and we buy a day ticket! and we're off...

by this times, we've given up at pretending that we are not tourists. I have my giant camera on my chest, and Karen is carrying a map and a guide book. People keep offering to help us, in English-- but we power through.

our first stop was the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtnis Kirche. This church was heavily bombed and left to stand in the middle of Berlin as a tribute. Most of two sides have been largely destroyed: perhaps the most shocking part of it is that the beautiful tiled mosaic has largely survived. There is a small memorial chamber inside, with artifacts from the original church.

next, we popped back on the u-bahn and headed for the french and german churches. i honestly don't know which was which, but they were pretty anyways.

and then we found a statue of the ampelmann, which is the pedestrian walking indicator in the former east. karen also looked up and randomnly discovered the fernseher turm, which is sort of a symbol of berlin.

it was cold enough at this point that it was time for a warm drink. so we found a cafe that did not seem to be terribly corporate or soul-sucking, although i feel this might have been a lie. it was, at this point, terribly cold, so i suppose allowances must be made. but anyways, so we're in there, drinking our ridiculously over-sweet drinks (i had some sort of thing in which they made coffee and then melted tablespoons of chocolate in the bottom, which my spoon stirred up every time i stirred. but sort of irrelevant...) anyway, we were mumbling on about in our merry little way, embracing the easy bilingualism of being an exchange student-- or perhaps the curse, seeing as I am incapable of having a conversation with another english speaker in only one language.

and then we were attacked. a group of approximately thirty english speaking tourists infiltrated the cafe. nowhere is safe! so we quickly drained our drinks, turned out the corner and ran smack into checkpoint charlie.

(check out the cuffs on those jeans!)

a bit later, we went and got our "visas" stamped. the officer got amazingly confused when I forked over my residency permit and told him that he could stamp it. Apparently he thought I was British and Karen was German? It was odd.

another thing i found odd was that one can easily buy things such as gas masks. in fact, there were a handful of stands that provided easy access to things such as communist pins, russian berets, gas masks and other sorts of memorabilia. once can also buy pieces of the berlin wall.

there are also pieces of the wall all over the place.

we waffled back and forth about going to the holocaust memorial, but in the end, we just ended up running into it. i wanted to have enough time to see the museum, but there really wasn't enough time.

the holocaust memorial, or 'denkmal', is scary and terrifying and overpowering. from far off, it just looks like a bunch of gray-coloured blocks: however, as you walk in, the blocks become taller and taller until you are surrounded and overpowered by dark gray columns. some of them are tilted and others rise from the ground at perfect right angles: regardless, it is a terrifying monument. the stones are neatly laid out, so at a single turn, one may see an easy out, but it gives one the sensation of being surrounded and trapped. perhaps the oddest thing was the look on people's faces: a look of awe and quiet terror, even the children oddly silenced.

it was somewhere around here that we started to get cold. like, really, really cold. so we rushed rushed through the brandenburger tor, through the bundestag building, where merkel works... our jeans were chafing our legs because they'd gotten wet and then cold and then stiff and then ouchy. so we were doing odd dancing odd steps because our legs hurt and we were cold. fortunately, there were no restaurants that did not appear sketchy or bleedingly expensive, so we got a bit more of a workout.

we walked past the american embassy, an unfriendly looking building. we loitered on the edge of it for a while. we couldn't decide whether or not we were allowed to go visit, since we were americans, but the guards looked pretty unfriendly, so we just kept walking.

eventually we found a cafe like restaurant that served italian food and we got some seriously yummy pasta and a bottle of mineral water. when we peaked at the damage done to our legs, we discovered rashes and, in Katie's case, the beginnings of black and blues behind our knees and where the seams of our jeans were. ouch!

after lunch, we found another u-bahn station and hopped on, heading for one of the remaining segments of the berlin wall. unlike when karen went to berlin last, the chunk of wall we saw was not an art installation-- it was a length of graffiti-ed, crumbling wall with a dead man's land in between. i'm not quite sure of the story, but there was a pile of broken, weathered gravestones in the dead-zone.

from the deadzone, the western wall

gravestones

if one wanted to escape from the east to the west, this is the distance that you would have to make it through.

all in all, the wall is a scary thing to see. there were two walls enforced with steel cables, with a circa 100 meter dead man's zone between them. we saw the lights that would have lit up the street at night to prevent people from running across. but the freedom would have been so close-- and it's scary to realize that the wall only fell something like 20 years ago.

beyond the graffiti-ed wall was a stretch of wall that was only gray-- there were no paintings, no broken strips of steel-- no nothing, a strip of sterility in the environment of berlin...

the scary divide of east and west berlin is just that-- scary. even as a first time visitor, i could normally easily distinguish which side of the 'wall' we were on-- the architecture to the streetlamps to the signs in the underground stations-- the former east has still not caught up, and i can't imagine that it easily will.

but one thing seems the concept of beautification-- we saw countless old ddr builds that had been repainted into bright colours, beautiful and thoughtful paintings made as well as destroyed on almost every available surface. i found myself wondering about the old folks we saw, about their stories and their lives before the fall of the wall-- and after. one cannot help but be curious, i can only imagine.

however, as things must, our time in berlin drew to a close. we headed back for the bus station, exhausted and cold and, once again, having to pee. when we handed our tickets over to the ticket man, we were quite confused when he started mumbling on about them-- for reasons that i do not understand, our return tickets were booked for march. so we forked over for new tickets, stared on in confusion as the ticket man made like 4 copies of my original receipt, tried to explain how i could return it, made copies of my new receipt etc. etc.. quite the adventure. apparently i can get my money back-- i'm just glad we got home!

and as summary of like my entire life in germany: i go to a cafe. i wear a beret. i write postcards. and yes, i would like some back, children.

it was this big!

lots of love
katie

they're outside, smoking cigarettes

2009-01-30T19:56:00.003+01:00

i started this blog post about a million years ago, and figured i'd better post it.

a day in the life:

it is thursday morning. my host mum comes and wakes me up by turning on the light on my desk. i push my legs out from under my duvet cover and it is predictably cold. it is always cold.

she laughs and leaves. thursdays are early mornings: i am up at 6:40. mondays and wednesdays i sleep late and also shower. today i have not packed my bag and have no clothes to wear, so getting ready invoves a bit of running around and cursing. mornings are awkward and my mind is normally like OMG KATIE, PICK A LANGUAGE AND STICK TO IT, CHILLUN

eventually i manage to get dressed. i don't even bother with my hair on these days-- i just sort of half-heartedly push at my bangs and then brush my teeth. then i eat breakfast which is bread and more bread and then some fruit and tea. normally by this point i'm running late, so i do the whole where's my coat what shoes am i wearing where am i going dance and try to find my bus pass. then, at approximately 7:16, i leave the house at a brisk clip. it is still dark and most of the time the sidewalks are slippery.

at the bus stop, i make horrid attempts to socialize with my classmate. mostly, it is like "oh, it is cold. i hope the bus is on time. did you do the maths homework? etc." thankfully, sometimes the bus comes on time and i escape from awkward conversations and gain some time with my ipod and my knitting. it is early and my brain hurts. cut me some slack.

at whenever the bell rings, i start school. thursday begins with a riveting double period of chemistry, which involves me drawing molecules with faces and knitting. my science teacher swings between putting random sentences of english into his lectures and asking me if i understand. i don't really, since he has some sort of terrifying accent, but i do my best. then, we have math. math is terrifying. i understand even less than i did in the us, and that's saying something.

the teacher has sort of given up on me, which is good most of the time. sometimes though i understand what is going on and could totally pawn the germans but then i realize that i can't actually read the math solutions aloud, which would make my contribution viable. whatevers. then, we're on to my two english classes.

history is quite nice. we're learning about the cold war and i have extensive chances to discuss the way that america feels about russia. it tends to quickly become clear that i am a communist and then i am like "i bet my parents were really scared of russia." and then everything is okay. it's getting weird now, because i really have trouble composing english sentences and then i'm all like "hey! let's speak german, please!" and it's awkward. i'm going into the non-bilingual class next semester though, so it should all work out.

then i have erdkunde, which is my most lol-orrific class. i spend the hour complaining that my teacher can't speak english and busting a gut at the same time, do to the many entertaining mistakes that are perpetually made. (take, for example, the extra syllable between "organism" and "orgasm"...) We talk a lot about AYE-cids, and stones.

Finally I have german class. at first i pretended to follow along in german class and now i just read. i am reading the wave, which is quite nice. the teacher seems quite pleased by me-- he always wants to know how i'm doing and what i'm reading and isn't insulted at all that i don't pay attention.

then it is the end of school. i should have art class, but our teacher had a baby and so now we don't have a teacher. i ride the bus home and eat lunch with my host mum and sister before heading to a girl's house to bake a cake. at 5, i do an awkward skitter-jog thing to catch the bus that is always late except for when i am. we always miss the strassenbahn, so i am forced to do more of my awkward dance-hopping in order to keep from freezing for the fifteen minutes until the next strassenbahn comes.

i get on the strassenbahn and ride for a while. then it is time to get off and walk briskly for approximately fifteen minutes until i get to my german class. it is normally so cold that my eyes water and i am normally not properly dressed, since i fail to appreciate the wind factor. my german class starts at 6:15. it is filled with working professionals and we muddle through german grammar and awkward reading/speaking exercises for a few hours. it is odd because i think i am the only one who uses german on a daily basis. it is also odd because i think that this course is hte only time when i actually speak english conversationally. there is another exchange student and an au pair that i hang out with during our break. today we learn about the conjunctive tense. i am quite pleased.

at the 9h00, the class is over and i catch the strassenbahn at 9h30. there is a margin in there of approximately 20 minutes, which i spend freezing and normally wishing that i was not in germany. i ride the strassenbahn back to the bus station, where hopefully my host dad is waiting to pick me up. if not, i get to wait and be cold for a while longer. i am excited for when it is warm and i can bike to the bus station. on the way home, we make awkward conversations about our days and i learn words about cars.

at home, it is time for a cup of tea and a quick check of the emails. i wash my face and brush my teeth and talk to my host mum about what i did in german class. and then it is bed time. it will be approximately 11:00, hopefully, when i fall asleep although as of late it has been far later, because of bad dreams and an overactive mind. friday i will wake up late and then it will be time for school and then the weekend.

and that is a day in the life. sort of.

i just had someone tell me i was introspective to a fault

2009-01-29T21:33:00.002+01:00

10 thing thursday

i used to be better at updating this blog. i am breaking the rule that i always break, saying sorry for not blogging because of Real Life. soon, i may even apologize for the fact that i am too lazy to capitalize my letters and sometimes put periods at the end of the sentence.
so apparently i am either moving or not moving. in any case, i'm looking for a potential host family. i have the word out, and now it is just a question of waiting. i am getting ready to move from my room, and i'm amazed at how much STUFF i have. not clothes, but things like books and notebooks and newspapers and things
today my german course had a course meeting at an indian restaurant. unfortunately, i didn't get to stay and eat (since i had to come home with the bus), but i had a really delicious cup of tea. i will be returning shortly for some of the delicious looking things they had on their menu.
i am going to berlin on monday! i have no idea what we're doing really, but it promises to be amazing. my friend becca is coming to see me on sunday and i'm going to show her around a bit, then we leave bright and early on monday morning.
tomorrow i have only one hour of class and then i am going in the city with the girls from my class. we get our report cards tomorrow, and i'm sort of nervous what my host parents are going to say. despite the fact that i've told them multiple times, they still seem to think that i'm getting graded in my classes.
i cast on for a sweater today! i am making thermal from knitty in a delicious cotton yarn that i scored fifteen balls of, in a lovely blue colour, for ten euros. i already have almost the entire bottom cuff done. hopefully it fits-- my gauge is doing weird things as of late.
it is cold here now (as the germans say, ass-cold), but it is the good kind of cold. it is the kind that i gallavant about in flats and tights and the kids in my class are like OMG WAT R U DOIN?
on that note, i got my first teasing because i am an exchange student today. apparently, outside of my class, people didn't realize that i was an exchange student. so we were walking past some kids today and they were all like 'i hear she can't speak german!' and then someone was like 'ask her!' and then we walked away. there's also a precocious little boy on the bus who's going to get what's coming to him if he doesn't wise up. english is a weapon, my friends!
i find this article quite intriguing. i haven't really been following the science news so much as of late, but i find this interesting. it delves briefly into the ethics of doing multiple ivf at once.
i bought a new backpack! now i am like a german scenster kid. backpacks are sort of status-symbols here, and my bright pink messenger stood out tremendously. now i am all trendy and stuffs.

next post should hopefully have pictures, if i ever manage to remember my flickr password.

lots of love
katie

if she has a brother-- ooh la la la la la

2009-01-25T12:28:00.004+01:00

freitag war ein Tag, wenn ich so viel gelachte habe, dass mein Bauch hat weh getout. ich bin nicht zu englisch gegangen, und wir haben zum Meccas mit dem Strassenbahn gefahren. Ich habe meine Klassenkamaraden geschockiert, wenn ich meine Pommes in die Milcheshake eingetaucht habe. Sie hatten das es war ganz lustig gedacht, aber für sie es haben nicht geschmeckt. Unsere underes Klassenkamarden haben einen Spaß gemacht-- sie haben gesagt, dass wir eine Entschuldigung haben musste, weil wir nicht im Englisch Klasse waren... aber die Lehrnerin hat gedacht, dass wir alles krank waren, oder nach Osterreich gefahren.

Nach dem Schule, ich bin zu Hause gefahren. Ich habe einen Kuchen gebacken, weil es Mikas Geburtstag war! Ich konnte nicht eine "1" Kerze finden, so ich habe 2 "9" gekauft. Ich bin in die Stadt gefahren, und ich habe mit Mika, Cat und Mattheas getroffen. Wir haben in ein Turkisch Restaurant gegessen, und wir haben Mika ihren Kuchen gegeben. Denn, wir sind zu "The Wild Goose" gelaufen. Wir haben ein bisschen Bier getrunken, und Kuchen gegessen. Es war ein Saenger, und er hat vielen Lieden gesungen, dass wir kennen. Kat hat ein bisschen betrunken geworden. Um 24:00, wir haben Kat ins Pub gelassen (es war nicht eine gute Idee...) und wir sind nach Mikas gefahren. Wenn wir haben Cat angerufen um Samstag Morgen, sie hat ihr Fahrrad verloren und hat keine Ahnung wo sie war.

Wir sind in die Stadt gefahren, und wir haben Briefmarken gekauft. Es war richtig schwerig mit der Maschine, und eine Frau hat uns ausgeschimpft, weil wir so viele Zeit gebraucht haben. Wir haben Cat getroffen, und wir waren beim Friseurs. Meine Friseuse hat mich erinnert, und sie hat gesagt, dass mein Deutsch ist viel besser! Es war ganz net... und jetzt kann ich sehen! Cat und ich haben Heiss Schokolade getrunken und Kuchen gegessen, und denn bin ich nach Hause gefahren. Willi hat mich abholen, weil es kein Bus war. Er hat gesagt, dass Almut und er mogen es gern, ob ich hier bleiben konnte, aber das er weiss es nicht mit Dorte. Ich auch nicht, und ich denke ich wird umzehen.

Das ist alles!

love
katie

translation: this weekend has been fun!

2009-01-22T14:06:00.002+01:00

i wrote a five in my (english) erdkunde class. the teacher hates me-- the answers aren't wrong, but apparently I didn't follow the perfect format for writing an answer. blah-blah-blah etc.

I am sort of annoyed, but it has helped me to bond with my class.

2009-01-21T17:04:00.003+01:00

ach, mein handgelenk toutes richtig weh... ich habe heute badminton fuer 2 stunde gespielt, und ich denke jetzt, dass er nicht eine gute idee war... und ich muss mein zimmer aufraumen... ick.

but all is well.

love
katie

2009-01-20T21:59:00.002+01:00

i have nothing productive to say, except that maybe today i am proud to be an american.

obama's speech made me cry. i am so amazingly, amazingly pleased, words cannot describe.

2009-01-16T23:00:00.002+01:00

today was a good school day. then i rode to the city and met up with mika. we pretended to sign up for new german classes for a while and then went and ate. we spoke english, a novelty, and drank coffee and went to the oxfam shop, where i bought: a vintage copy of don quixote in german, buttons and a framed butterfly.

after a while i went home and i baked a lemon merengue pie. i would like to express (pardon any family readers), a ginormous WHAT THE HELL? my peaks totally all collapsed in the oven. It was the MILE HIGH pie. I am not very impressed. I blame it on the lack of proper tartar sauce.

tomorrow we are having a birthday party. sunday i am going to work on a project for school. i get to go visit zoe soon! i am quite excited. i am also going to see my friend becca in the end of january.

love
katie

ps-- topic ideas would still be very much appreciated.

2009-01-15T14:52:00.002+01:00

so, all is well here in germany. i am having a good day, even though i wrote a 3+ in English history. I got to really talk with some of the girls in my class and told them about Obama and my high school and other silly things and I feel... functioning. i even met a new person today!

tonight i am going to bake a cake for a girl's birthday tomorrow. and then i have german class. If anyone has anything they would like to hear about, i am running out about things to write about-- but i'm journalling a lot. not writing, not for an audience, but actually honest-to-god journalling. it is nice.

that's all.

lots of love
katie

i am the king of the wild frontier

2009-01-11T12:21:00.001+01:00

oh, heavens to betsy and praise the lord, it's the first of the pop-culture posts that I have been promising to do and haven't.

interpipes: i am addicted to the internet. it is true, and highly unfortunate. here are the sites I've been enjoying, in no particular order.

wardrobe remix is a group on flickr where everyday people post pictures of their fabulous outfits. i also enjoy sites like the satorialist and facehunter, but wardrobe_remix is a bit more userfriendly and a bit more real.
leo.de is the most amazing only english-german dictionary ever, I've decided. And it talks. For language learning softward, I've only heard good things about LiveMocha, although I'll confess I haven't used it.
Post Secret is a website where secrets are shared. it is difficult to explain, but ever so lovely. and someday, someday, i will buy those books.

music: i am still living off my iPod, although I haven't found any amazing German tunage yet. here's what I'm sort of listening to.

The Worried Noodles CD is approximately the best thing ever. Words cannot describe, but it makes me die of laughing everytime one comes up on shuffle.
The amazingly awkward cover of Prince's When Doves Cry by Patrick Wolf and Charlotte Church. I swear there used to be a video on YouTube, but I can't find it now.
The Awkward String Arrangements of the Smiths, CD! (Excluding their 'original compositions'. Makes for good study music, and music when I am in an ambigious language state.)

things:

Haribo, MACHT KINDER FROH! they include: gummi bears, licorice bits and all sorts of good things.
I bought an iPod just before I came. Contrary to AFS' suggestions, I brought it with me and I am absolutely amazingly pleased that I did. I don't want to be silly and things, but it's really nice to have. not only do I have pictures (most requested: pictures of prom and the dogs), but I have music and my German podcasts, which help make me feel less awkward when I am failing at being sociable.
I just bought a new planner. I bought a ginormous (okay) the large soft-cover moleskin for the new year and it is love. I also bought a fountain pen, which is also love.
Also, one more thing that I have bought: it is called a picture dictionary. It is from Duden, and it has a lot of really specific vocabulary, (i.e., cooking, food, shopping, horse back riding, school...), all drawn with pictures. It is really lovely and helpful, especially with the science words.

that's all for now

lots of love
katie

2009-01-09T20:52:00.002+01:00

i'm always pleased by the blog posts that AFS chooses to spotlight. Unfortunately, my remark about the pepper chunks didn't make it, and my lack of punctuation did.

the latter half of this week i've been rolling on some sort of cloud, although i'm pretty tired today. i swore to god i wouldn't say this, but it's like one day i rolled out of bed and i could understand almost everything. speaking? it's in the works, although i am getting more adventurous with my topics. yesterday, brave new world. today, adoption. tomorrow... perhaps learning how to pronounce reich correctly? (i still haven't mastered it in English).

but now i am tired and my throat hurts and i am ready for sleeps. expect a sort of long scientific discovery/pop culture post this weekend, since I've been storing up topics for a while.

lots of love
katie

2009-01-07T22:07:00.003+01:00

today i saw a sad cooing bird beside the gym class door. he was pudgy and sick and some kids had thrown the remains of a canteen-wrap at him and his feathers were covered in suspicious white sauce and pepper chunks

but other than that today was good. i feel like i'd made a substantial german jump from the last day of school and today with understanding and speaking and the big C confidence, so it was nice. i think i want to be in the other class for the next semester. i might be switching host families, due to prior family commitments. i have started thinking about home-- and telling people about things other than the weather (because people want to hear-- i used to feel silly being like "oh at home we..." because i'm here to experience germany, not ramble on about gym class and maple syrup, but it seems like people want to hear about the way things are in the us) without feeling homesick and it is a good feeling.

i got to talk to my best friend for a whole two hours and i learned for geography and it is almost the weekend.

lots of love
katie

techno remixes make for bad titles

2009-01-06T20:10:00.002+01:00

my hopes for a quiet night were quickly and completely destroyed as my bus failed to arrive as scheduled at 6:36, as well as 6:37, 6:42, and 6:54. At shortly after seven, I finally broke down and did the thing I hadn't done since I arrived in Germany four months ago: I called for help.

Despite my complete and utter failure to understand German, my seeming inability to get off at the right bus station and and my lack of time management, I have yet not failed to get myself home. But standing there in my Converse (I managed to break my winter boots today, my amazing boots that are the right color brown and warm and without a big heel and don't look like space-stomper boots), in the -13* C cold, I finally broke down and called my host parents.

So my host dad came and got me. According to him, I just spent over an hour standing outside on the coldest day in germany in three years. i am thrilled, frankly.

today was my last day of ferein: it was a good one. a lot of reading and thinking, rationalization. i did a lot of english work, got into my two safety colleges.

i am off to finish a bar of chocolate and an essay.

lots of love
and hair of the dog

katie

and we now interrupt your broadcast...

2008-12-28T11:26:00.001+01:00

hallo, meine Lieben!

I'm off to the forest for a better part of a week, so no gossipy new words to keep you entranced.

lots of love
katie

oh we wish you a merry christmas

2008-12-25T09:51:00.001+01:00

apparently I've lost a bit of momentum. This is just a filler post, hopefully it will get me going again.

I am alive and well and not as manic-depressive as I thought I'd be. We celebrated Christmas yesterday and it was nice. Not as sad as I was expecting.

So, Merry blah etc whatever. I am very politically correct.

love
katie

you have to invision (the fiery crash)

2008-12-18T22:23:00.002+01:00

today was not a good school day. sometimes i just have bad days-- i fail to understand and am just utterly unmotivated to talk to anyone, since it inevitably leads to complications and misunderstandings. i am realizing that i have been dropped from the sylvester plans of my class, so now i am trying to find new plans, which is not so nice. (not officially, but in the oh-you-can-come-i-guess)

anyways. last night i worked for... an hour on math. i felt really good about the problems and i was like "this totally makes sense! i am amazing!" etc., etc.,... i wrote the problems out nicely in my new math notebook which we are required to keep with my shiny new fountain pen and packed my bag for school

and they were all wrong. every single one of them. we'll just use this as a metaphor for today. except for my knitting... i got a lot of knitting done today.

but after school was really great. i came home and made a cake, a baumkuchen! (which is one of those cakes with about a million little layers and jam in between). i literally pulled the cake out of the oven, ran for my bus and almost missed it. i made it to language class early, learned new words, sang a song and ate. and got fed champagne, which is surely going to make tomorrow fun.

tomorrow is a late morning. my class is writing a math test and i am going to go to the city and pretend that i shouldn't be attemping to write the math test with my class. then after school i am going to the autostadt to the christmas markets and perhaps ice skating!

that's all for now
love
katie

she lives for the written word (and people come second, or possibly third)

2008-12-16T16:27:00.005+01:00

1. yesterday i sort of understood math. i would not hold any high hopes for me actually passing, but it was nice to actually be able to do something. i have no idea what i was doing or if by solving the problem i actually did anything (i have my doubts, honestly), but still. math! and the teacher was so pleased. he came over and pointed in my book and tried to explain it to me. this is why i largely hate math-- the teacher could be totally lying and i'd never know. ever. and he draws these double sided arrows everywhere and i cannot for the life of me figure out why.

so now i feel obligated to do my math homework. I've managed about one problem following the example, but I have no idea what I'm solving for. This is making the problems... difficult. As far as I can see, we just pretend the exponents are general terms and then subtract them and then wiggle our fingers and pretend we have rediscovered x. i don't buy it, so i'm going to throw in the towel pretty soon, i think.

2. tuesday i wrote my first real german test. it is called religion, which i actually for some reason enjoy, although it might just be for the vocabulary. okay, so i flipped the test over and it's a poem. (i think: shit.) and then i have to analyze the poem and determine whether substantive religion is in it.

The first question was to describe the situation in the poem. I wrote that "this poem shows that a man must defend his religion and belief in God to his society. it is a narrative that shows that he has a lot of faith in God, even when others don't. The writer talks about he has faith for God everyday and it makes him stronger." I couldn't remember which possessive pronoun was for he and which was for she, so I just used them interchangeably.

The second question was to write about whether substantive religion was shown in the poem. I wrote that "yes, there is a lot of substantiated religion. It is clear because the man is referring to a society's faith in God through the use of the pronouns "us" and "ours", not just his own. Except this maybe is just his writing-way (I want to say it might be a stylistic mechanism, but unfortunately my German is not that good) and is not intended to indicate the society. Then I made a little bit of detour and talked about Marx and how this is a prime example of how religion should not be, since the man's faith was so devout that it seemed he was not privy to rational thought. (except, i didn't use those words because i didn't know them). Then, an army of souls could be easily controlled by their religion. Then I started going on about the opium of the masses. And then I realized that that was the third question, so I just stuck a random three next to some of my words and hoped for the best. We'll see what I get-- hopefully a smiley face (what I got for my French test, an omg!you totally suck at french, so i'm not even going to try to grade this!) or at least a five. most likely a six.

3. yesterday i wrote my second french test, also known as a complete fail. i'm pretty sure the passage was about sex without complications, or i did a whole lot worse at understanding than i thought. as a fun note, when i write in french now, i do it with german sentence constructions, which are rarely correct in french. i think i am going to drop french. i keep saying that, but i haven't yet. maybe after christmas break, which is 2 MORE SCHOOL DAYS I AM SO PLEASED IT MERITS CAPS LOCKS

4. today was one of those weird days. i got woken up from a really, really deep sleep (normally my body is sort of... tuned? to the time I wake up if it's humane, and it's not so much of a cold start.) but i was really, really sleeping and then i went to school. i am understanding a LOT of the conversations I here and I piped up in religion class today to say something about the seperation of church and state and lack of christmas decorations in the united states. then i had two free hours (one had a substitute who just... walked out after approximately 3 minutes) and then biology, where kids got their tests back, and physics. now, boasting: (be proud, physics teacher and/or father) as soon as physics dips practical-- i.e., we're building a little ferris wheel and we needed to do math to figure out how much power we needed in the engine and stuff and the kids in my group were lost as I bing-bang-powed on the calculator and did the math. the physics teacher was impressed.

then i had sport. we got graded on our lay-ups today (did you know that you have to start with a certain foot/take a certain number of steps/jump within the right distance of the hoop to make a 'proper' lay-up?). i didn't get a grade, but the teacher did her squinty face. so i don't imagine it went that well. at least i didn't trip. after break, we get to play badminton.

today after sport i came home and then rode the train back into the city. i then solved sudoku with my amazing new fountain pen (it is silvery-lilac and was the result of my old fountain pen exploding one time too many) that makes me write like a grown-up. I am pleased because the ink color is called "Koenigsblau" which means royal blue. and i got a haircut! i am sort of pleased because:
a)the hairdresser didn't try to speak to me at all, but still did a really good job;
b)my bangs are crooked. not too crooked, but enough that it's noticable;
c)the haircut took like... 5 minutes (not kidding)...;
d)i was handed the blowdryer and told to dry my hair. I am normally used to the hairdresser drying the hair and all of that, so... it was odd. nice, though.

and now i am trying to make my math homework, which i'm going to safely say i'm not going to finish.

all the love
katie

ps at the bus stop there was a kid practicing his dancing. it was adorable. he kept doing the mental shake-off and restarting when he messed up and i pretended to be very interested in my gloves so as to avoid distracting him.

maybe you're just like my mother...

2008-12-14T10:34:00.004+01:00

of all the things I have to do today, blogging is on the bottom of my list. of course, it will probably be the only one thing I finish, since the other items include: trying to translate something like fifteen pages of religion notes, most of which are probably spelled incorrectly, writing 1200-1500 words about alzheimers disease and finishing the presentation I'm supposed to give at a party this afternoon.

yesterday i went and baked a gingerbread house with the other exchange students. the bus-transport segment of this journey deserves a point of it's own. So, for some reason the bus I normally take to get to the strassenbahn station wasn't running it's full route at the time that I wanted to go. So I ended up getting into a tiny-little people carrier car. It's like... a mini-van, with a laminated plastic sheet.

The bus driver asked me where I was going. If I was going to visit my boyfriend. I said no, that I was an exchange student and was going to bake a gingerbread house. There was another guy sitting in the front seat and they argued about immigration. Apparently, the bus driver was from Kazakhstan? Anyways, they were really, really arguing-- loudly and with hand-motions and all of that good stuff.

So, after that I caught another bus and then rode the strassenbahn for a while (keep in mind that it is absolutely freezing and I have two giant baketrays which are making my wrists cramp). I wait for like half-an-hour, catch another strassenbahn which I ride for another fifteen minutes. Then I wandered around for like another thirty because the directions of the deutschbahn website said that the street i needed to walk down was right next to the halt-point. in actuality, it was a 20 minute walk or so, which involved turning down several streets. so i was pretty cold when i got to the house.

i made gingerbread on friday night and it was really big... but that was the size the templates were, so it never occured to me that we'd never get it to stay. the icing wouldn't set, and the house kept falling apart. so in the end we decided that we were going to pretend a star fell and imploded one side of the roof.

putting it together

the damage-- left to right: hong kong, katie, host sister, costa rica, canada, thailand.

the grown-ups came out nicer than ours. just a bit.

after a while, nicha and i rode the strassenbahn to the christmas market and ate some fluffy marshmallow things.

that's all for now
love
katie

if you're feeling sinister, go off and see a minister

2008-12-12T23:12:00.001+01:00

ACHTUNG! I am in a sort of depressed mood. I swear to God I actually am enjoying myself sometimes. Mom and Dad, you should probably skip over this and wait for tomorrow when I post pictures of me baking a Lebkuchenhaus.

Point 1. As of late, I've been sort of struggling with the concept of home. Since I've left NH, home has been the place where I can block my knitting and charge my iPod.

I'm comfortable pretty much anywhere-- in a freezing room sharing a bed with strangers, in a hostel. in an appartment. living with strangers. wherever is sort of... equal. in the states, i really liked being home. but here, things sort of just... are. i have really no home-- sure, i have a bedroom and an internet cable and a rabbit that enjoys my company, but... my parents? nope. gnome quilt? nope. comforts of home etc.

Today, in politics, we talked about immigration and, by extension, the idea of home. I manage to tell a classmate that "being in Germany is the time I feel most like a stranger" and she just looked at me and nodded. Apparently, I'm not fitting in so well, but I suppose I never really expected to: these kids have had their 6 years of together time-- they grew up together and, as for me, I'm a recent aquisition. They're a bit jaded-- they've had exchange students. I am American, far from a commodity. Once I have clarified that life is not an episode of Gossip Girl and that the ocean where I live is really cold, America is sort of just... like England. (although, as a note, whenever I show people where I live, they get excited and say "OMG YOU LIVE LIKE, RIGHT NEXT TO NYC!11! etc."

So the conversation progresses. Kids define their idea of home: being with their family, their friends. Understanding the language and customs. (if you're not being all analyzing, think everything right now that I don't have) At this point, I'm praying to some sort of God that the teacher doesn't call on me, because if he does I'm probably going to start crying. He asks us what we'd bring with us from home-- I finally say my guitar because it sounds better than "my journal" or "my teal tights, 'cuz they make me feel invincible" (those are the one's from you, Kirsten) or "my iPod, because I sometimes need music more than it feels like I need air.", even though i don't really need my guitar or my toothbrush or my journal, even though that's what you can bring with you. home is where the people who love you are, and well, folks. that's homesickness for you.

Point 2. Contrary to popular belief, I don't actually enjoy crying. This is perhaps hard for some of you to believe, since I spend so much time doing it. I have cried to: Elton John, Little Miss Sunshine, papers and poems, strict words and words with Good Intentions, perhaps the worst kind. Long story short. I do it a lot-- perhaps that is the reason why I (think I) tend to be largely catatonic in between my crying/yelling jags-- I have bled out all emotions to the point that there is nothing more to express.

Anyways, my host parents had been talking about having a "you've been here for a fourth of your exchange!" talk. So yeah. I cried. I got hugged. I cried some more. It was good. I am cried out. Tired. Shakey. Ate some chocolate. etc.

It's really nice to know that my host parents are really watching out for me.

Point 3. Ich glaube, ich solle ein bisschen Deutsch proberien zu schrieben. Ich kann nicht so gut Deutsch schreiben, aber ich mochte besser werden. Heute war ein nicht so gut Tag. Ich hatte die erste Stunde frei, so ich ein bisschen langer schlafen konnte. Dass war ganz gut: ich war richtig muede-- gestern war das Weihnachtenskonzert, und ich war spaet zu Haus gekommt und habe nicht so gut geschlafen. Aber Schule war richtig Scheisse. Meine ganz Klasse gehen ins Disko heute Nacht und, fuer die erste Mal, ich war nicht eingeladen. Ich mag nicht ins Disko gehen, so es ist egal, fuer mich. Aber ich habe angst, dass ich keine Einladen bekommen wird, und ich wird allein sein.

Wir haben viel uber Heimat gesprochen, und fur mich dass ist schwerig: jetzt, ich weiss es nicht was Heimat ist. Wenn ich kann nicht der Sprache gut verstehen, ob ich keine "gute" Freunde habe, kann ich zu Haus sein? Ich weiss es nicht. Nach die Schule, ich bin zu Haus gefahren. Morgen, ich wird mit underes austauschulerin treffen und wir werden Lebkuchenhaus schmucken, so heute musste ich ein Tieg machen. Es gibt viel Tieg-- 1000 g Mehl und 450 g Honig. Das Tieg war klebend, aber es reicht richtig gut-- das ganz Haus reicht gleich Weihnachten! Wir haben ein Film gesehen and ich glaube, dass ich fast halb verstehen habe.

Jetzt bin ich nicht so muede, aber ich wird gleich ins Bett gehen.

Guten Nacht und Schlafen Sie schon, meine Lieben.

Love
Katie

my ipod is charging

2008-12-10T15:58:00.003+01:00

1. yesterday was an english class test. of course i was intending to write it-- i thought that by the way i actually participated in my english teacher's horribly piddly and had set out my paper and fountain pen with the four fingers of room on the right for easier correction may have been a clue.

of course, she asked as if she was surprised-- as if heavens, i wanted to participate in her english class! so, i wrote like a whole page. (in my writing, that's quite a bit). my fountain pen exploded on my hands. It's a brilliant, sarcastic essay about her interpretation of forrest gump that is probably sarcastic enough that she won't understand it. it had foot notes. and i actually checked my grammar (which is becoming more necessary, since i sort of am having trouble keeping things in friendly english orders)

and when i handed it in, she said "that's all you wrote?"

i'd really like to call her a mean word.

2. so i had an hour of religion and then i had two whole free hours! so i rode the strassenbahn to braunschweig and had a cup of tea in the lovely little cafe i found. and they have earl grey. the real kind, and didn't disturb me or get weirded out when I read out a sentence and asked if it was right. so i get the feeling i'm going to be a return customer. i also bought a new journal (i'm dangerously close to running out on my old one) and thought about going to try and find another pair of jeans. but then i just ordered another cup of tea. without milk. it was lovely.

3. after biology, we had another free hour! except it was with the entire class, not just me. eva asked if i wanted to go to "mecca's". now, i'd heard about mecca's and didn't really know what it was, so i was like yeah, sure! turns out it's mcdonalds. i had a mcflurry. it wasn't... bad, actually. i haven't imploded yet, although i do have a bit of a belly ache. and then we legged it to the strassenbahn and came back for gym.

4. gym actually wasn't so bad today. we played just girls basketball, which is a lot of running back and forth, so it wasn't so aggressive and i actually get passed to. next week we start badminton! i do enjoy badminton. so that's good. i'm also starting to realize that i can pass for german in basic converstation-- people just think i'm from a different area. or maybe... austria? i don't know, i think my intonation is horrible. and my classmates are really impressed with my german, and have started teaching me new words and/or showing me when i make a mistake in the nicest way. like today i learned whistle, baptism, fanatic.

5. tonight i am going to the small kids christmas concert. it's in a little town that requires approximately eight different busses to reach, so getting there (and getting back) will be an experience. i'm sure the concert will be lovely, though-- and there will be cookies.

as a bonus, because this is apparently what afs-exchange students do when we get together:

cuddles!

love
katie

i am the walrus!

2008-12-09T15:45:00.002+01:00

i think my host mum is mad at me.

this is completely and totally unreasonable. she said eighty million times that she's tired (I imagine having a stir-crazy eighteen-year-old stuck at home might have contributed to that), that's she's exhausted, etc. Which is a good reason that we wouldn't be speaking as much as usual, today. But still, I'm worried she's angry. That I'm wearing a skirt. That I've pretty much decided to drop French (even though she doesn't know that yet). And I wonder what she's wondering. I wonder that a lot, actually-- why someone would actually want to have a student who didn't speak German when there are quite a few who... can. Some sort of allure in teaching them, I suppose.

I am having one of those amazingly low self-confidence days. My voice is feeling pretty sad as of late, and apparently most of the six pounds I've gained (I finally weighed myself...) is manifesting itself in my cheeks. And I wore a skirt today and instead of feeling like Katie, I felt silly-- flamboyant with my blue legs and pink bag. This is an awkward feeling. I'm not used to this, not at all.

I am home for another hour or so and then it is time for language class. i think i must my clarinet practice-- the concert is thursday, and we've decided to play the silly song in another (really impossible) key for the clarinet.

love
katie

give that baby his bible back!

2008-12-07T19:01:00.002+01:00

saturday was nikolaus!

on friday night we cleaned out our shoes and put them near the door. overnight, 'nikolaus' came and left sweets and tea and alcohol and tickets to see Tarzan in our shoes!

saturday night we went to see a really, really awkward a cappella concert. like, really really awkward.

on sundays, our kitchen gets hit with the cookie baking stick. i didn't get a full picture of the damage, but estimated counts predict cookie production was above 200.

first we baked spritzers. apparently the thing we use to push the dough into shape used to be used with meat. willi manned the machine and i twisted dough into shapes and occassionally almut helped. my oldest host sister was home and helped with the chocolate dipping.

then i made ginger-chocolate cookies which involved dicing 200 grams of candied ginger and shredding 300 grams of chocolate. the cookies taste quite good, though.

then we nommed lunch. i'd like to point out that reason 900 why I'm gaining weight is that a light lunch consists of: faux chicken nuggets, cauliflower with butter sauce and breadcrumbs, mashed potatoes (flesh eaters eating wurst) and a dessert of baked apples and ice cream.

then i took a bath and learned some new words. i need a haircut. my feet are cold. chocolate coma. worked a bit on english. read my book. etc.

love
katie

dear diary

2008-12-07T10:02:00.001+01:00

yesterday was sort of my three month anniversary of being germany. i'm going to start this post with a preface-- it's been an experience. there are fabulous days and good days and bad days and mediocre days and days that are so mortifying that i'm ready to say "germany has been great, but I'm ready to head for home."

Since my very first AFS conference, I've been hearing that "three months is your turning point" and, honestly, I'm feeling a little bit like a failure, because I'm definitely still pretty not... turned. I'm probably not having the time of my life yet, but I'm trying to remember that I've only been speaking German for three months and the fact that I manage to make my way to school everyday is almost a miracle. It's really hard to forget the fact that three months is supposed to be huge and I'm still mostly lost and very confused and sort of homesick.

I've decided to put this in sort-of list form, since I can't make my points flow cohesively. Also, no numbers since I feel like this is some sort of order in my mind which makes public transportation more pressing than my ability to speak german or something.

Public Transportation i am still pretty thrilled with the public transport in my area. riding in a car is becoming pretty novel and i seem to be developing some sort of motion-sickness from being in a car, what with the gear changes and all. the train is nice. i talk to strangers on the bus, sometimes. there are two pleasing stories from this week to tell:

first, on thursday: i was riding to my language class on the strassenbahn and there was an old man that pressed the stop button for every stop, pressed the door open button (which you're not meant to do when the strassenbahn is in motion, since it clings annoyingly up front and distracts the driver) and then grinned maliciously at me.

second, yesterday: i was waiting in the bus while the bus driver talked to the other bus driver (apparently we take random breaks so that the driver can have a smoke, talk about his/her feelings, etc.). a boy with a mohawk who was decidedly anti-nazi got on (written on his trousers and everything!) and started drinking from his bottle of vodka. I looked over (in confusion/mild distaste-- I still find it really weird that people are so... blatant about alcohol poisoning) and he thrust the bottle towards me and offered some.

School is still largely frustrating. I can't understand most of being said, although I optimistically rate my understanding at about... 25%. In all of my subjects except math and politiks, chemistry, biology (when it isn't written on the board), I can understand generally what is going on. I have decided to drop French and have asked to be put in a lower-level German class so that I may learn a bit more grammar. I still can't do most of (re: almost all of) my work, and when I try to do homework, it is mostly translating and then getting frustrated and confused. I can't read most of what the teachers write on the board, so I rely on the kindness of my neighbors to copy down out of their notebooks. thankfully, i have a girl who lets me copy her notes and a lovely dictionary.

Language I feel as if I have hit a bit of stumbling block with German. I am still learning, making my index-card with my ten words of day and working in my book (i have the best grammar book ever), but I feel a bit as if I've flatlined. My language skills allow for one-on-one conversations within in my vocabulary and a pretty decent grasp on what my host parents say, but stick me in a circle or in a classroom and I'm lost. Everyday it gets a little bit better, and I understand more-- past conversations 'click' with alarming regularity. And I've started to do things like count my knitting in German. Which is weird. And then I realize I'm doing it and get excited and lose count. Nerd.

I do feel as if I'm one the cusp of some great wave of understanding-- that I will wake up one morning and understand more than I don't. It's inevitable, I suppose. I've started reading in German, which is really helping. I've also found the right level of books that I can puzzle out without the constant aid of a dictionary, which is helpful. I still am a big, fat cheater on german-- i read in english (okay, so i'm rereading books as this point, but I'd love more) and listen to music in English (although it's not my normal taste-- I've barely played a certain-celebate flower and his band since I got here) and write in English because there's no way I can explain my feelings at this stage of the game in German. I try to write a little bit in German everyday, but it comes out a lot like

"today was good. i ate bread for breakfast. i don't understand school. that is not so good..." etc.

on the plus side, my spoken english is starting to well and truly suck. i sound a little bit more like a brit everyday (side effect of the fact that almost all of the english i speak is with my teachers who were trained in the uk) and am incapable of forming long complicated sentences or following my point. The garbled English of my classmates and geography teacher is actually starting to make sense. Losing youer mother-tongue (or bits of it, at least), is a scary process. Also, when I'm not focusing, I write sentences like:

"it is frustrating both, because of i can not understand and because i am trying very hard."

Family Everyday I get a little closer to my family, and they seem to get a little bit more annoying (which is good, because they're sort of like my real family?). I'm having troubles with my host sister and I find that, occassionally, my host parents are incredibly strict. I'm sure that has something to do with the fact that I could probably not get myself out of a desperate strait (if one should arise) in German. Plus, I'm sort of on-loan, so I think they feel the pressure to send me back in one piece.

I think my host-mum is trying to break me of vegetarianism, and if that should progress, we're going to have Words. They will be funny instead of serious because I fail at German, but they will be Words anyway. My host sister is being especially nice as of late, which might be because it is almost christmas and might be because head-trauma suits her. We'll see if it continues.

Friends I'm still working on friends. I have casual German acquaintances and everyone in my class is very nice, but it's not quite the same as having a group of folks that think it's perfectly acceptable to spend a friday night watching david bowie in his various incarnations parade around in tights.

I'm getting close to another exchange student from the US, so hopefully that friendship will continue to blossom. I'm also hoping that my chums from school and I get closer-- I'm still sort of novel (and an asset in English classes), but it's mostly because I fail at speaking German and they think it's cute, not because we're friends. I think.

Drinking I think at some point I may have to accept the fact that I am not made to be a drinker. I do not like beer. I think wine tastes largely like paint stripper, although it is redeemed by the fact that if I can manage to drink enough of it (about half a glass, if anyone is wondering), the world gets all pleasing and warm. I do enjoy champagne, but that is largely because of the bubbles and only partly because it is acceptable to drink it in a tumbler as one would scotch. It tastes disgusting and makes me giggle because of the bubbles and man does it burn coming out of your nose. Again, though, if I can get enough of it down, the world is a bit lovelier looking around the edges.

Home I still miss the folks at home. I'm not in contact as much, but it's still hard, especially with the upcoming holidays. Being sick without my mother was terrifying, even though my host mum was a sweetheart. I have faith that this will get better.

An Impassioned Rant about the American Dream is forthcoming. At this stage it's a bit too impassioned, so I need to calm it down a bit.

Pre-emptive PS: "Margot", I swear to God that I've been working on this post for a few days. It's not really a direct copy of yours.

Also, more later about Christmas and Nikolaus.

Yours
Katie

i'm waking up to us-- we're a disaster

2008-12-03T16:30:00.000+01:00

I said my first well, anything, today in religion.

"i would like to become a god-mother. I think, I will not have children, but I think it is good when I can a child help. It is good when a child has extra eyes and ears for asking. sometimes, one cannot ask one's parents, and so it is very good to have a godmother. Also, it is good when the parents know that their child is okay and does not have to live with strangers if they become dead."

I was impressed. So was everyone else.'

PS-- the teacher said "excellent understanding, Katie!".

nom

2008-12-02T14:36:00.000+01:00

lunch. reason number 800 why i am gaining weight.

killing me softly-- with his song!

2008-12-01T18:10:00.000+01:00

So, I met up with all of the other exchange students on Friday morning at the train station. It was great to see everyone—Italy and Norway, Flo and Poland. It was funny to see that almost everyone’s cheeks are a little bit pudgier (including mine) and those from the southern hemisphere seem to of become significantly paler. At this point I was pretty sick and pretty sure that going to camp was going to be a bad idea.

I was pretty much right. We rode the train for a while and then piled into a couple of giant-people carrier Volkswagen car/busses, which drove us up to where we were staying. it’s a big, proper old-fashioned german house, with the wooden beams and stone work in between and oh my lord, it was so cold. we had to start a fire when we first got there and turn on the water and the only reason I didn’t freeze to death was because I spent most of the weekend in the kitchen. we could barely get the girl’s room above freezing, even with the heaters on and the door closed.

So, there weren’t enough beds for everyone, so in the big girl’s room we slept 5 in three beds times two and 3 in two beds. I spent the first night in the crack between two beds, which wasn’t terribly comfortable. it was however, warm, since I was sleeping under a girl from a chile and a girl from Thailand.

when we first got there, it was past time for lunch. chile made the fire while Italy and I started making Hawaiian toast, which is white American bread with pineapple, ham and cheese on it, baked in the oven. then we made a salad and tomatoes with mozzarella and started feeding the troops.

girl. make. fire.

girls. make. lunch.

(yes, it was the most american meal i'd had in the while. the next day we had hotdogs. not wurst, hotdogs)

we played ‘Spiels’ for a while (note: spiels are not actually spiels. they are times when you write about things and then talk about your feelings) and then had a break. one of the volunteers made hot chocolate and one of the girls from Thailand (I’m terribly sorry, but I’ve forgotten her name—she’s amazingly sweet, though--) got so excited. “We’re having chocolate soup?” she asked, with the most adorable look on her face. It turned out she had never had hot chocolate!

And by the way, all the hot chocolate that I’ve had here has been about a million times better than the run-of-the-mill American hot chocolate. Even the quicky stuff is made with milk and is so, amazingly good.

This is also the first time that I can remember meeting people who haven’t seen any snow. So, tell me about how sometimes you don’t go to school because there is so much snow on the ground… (they say). and it’s like, you mean, snowdays? and they’re like… ja! zomg! so cool! etc. I think it’s lovely.

So, as I previously mentioned, I spent a lot of time in the kitchen. I made tea a lot. I made warm milk (something I now drink—be still, the beating hearts of those who wish to prevent osteoporosis everywhere!). I made lunch twice. Feeding that many people is a pain, especially when everyone wants to eat now and consequently stand in the admittedly small kitchen and take up space. (I finally understand the frustration of this. Sorry, mom.)

Cooking dinner.

I sucked up not feeling well on Friday and most of Saturday. I finally learned how to play the cup game, a process in the making since my days of 4-H Camp every summer. I was productive and smiled and showed leadership and initiative and tried to keep conversations in German (but failed). I learned how to roll a cigarette. I learned that Turkish people are pretty cuddly. At some point in the afternoon we went for a walk in the drizzling rain, an I learned how to say your hair is pretty in Thai. (phonetically: pommes tu soja!). When we came back, the volunteers had set up a Christmas tea, with cookies and cakes and you guessed it, more hot chocolate.

walking!

The acronym for AFS? Another Fat Student. Not kidding.

Italy making pizza dough.

But by Saturday night I was having trouble breathing and had a constant, pounding headache. One of the volunteers told me I could go to bed, so I went. I had just managed to get warm and fall asleep when another volunteer came and woke me up. What? We had to play another game. In a premise of being touching, we all sat in a dark room and blew out candles to symbolize bad experiences and lit them to symbolize good ones. there were silly moments and touching moments and moments that would have greatly benefited from a cricket soundtrack.

I suppose this is when I in turn becoming touching: (disclaimer, melty thoughts ahead).

I’m worried that I won’t recognize the tremendous gift of this year until it’s over. It’s so easy to be caught up in the mundane nature of the day to day, to become displeased by the build up of tiny little unhappy things and forget the amazingness of what I’m doing.

And everyday when I dread a little bit, school or the afternoon or what-have-ye, it’s hard for me to understand. In the US, I was always busy: I was tremendously involved in everything. I had a job, a car, friends that I could call when hungry or bored or tired or all of the above. And here, despite the fact that I’m making friends, I am tremendously nervous sometimes even to speak to the people in my class. I am so exhausted most of the time and my idea of a big day involves going to both the library and my german class. I feel a little bit hopeless and a little bit as if I should be having my Very Meaningful Experience now, but… eh. I don’t know. In the long run, I suppose.

This camp was a bit different than our first because we were mixed in with the kids who are heading home in February. The entire camp was tinged with a bit of sadness, the recognition that the next time we are together in a camp, we will be the ones heading for home, the ones who are experienced, the ones with the crazy stories to tell. There was also a lot of Spanish speaking.

One time I was sitting at the table and listening to someone. I got really excited because I thought maybe I understood a little bit of Spanish, but then I realized that he was just speaking German. But the speaking patterns and the rise and fall of his voice really made his words sound Spanish. It’s interesting to hear the end-of-year german speakers, and even with the new exchange students, and how our mother tongues really influence the way we speak. Italy enunciates the ends of words, where I sort of trail off on them. Norway speaks ploddingly, as if each word were a somewhat temporary life-partner and the boy from Hong-Kong struggles to make r sounds.

In these camps, it’s always interesting because you are your country. For some countries that’s not such a big deal—but for someone for the US, who deals with the most amazing stereotypes every single day, it’s a really amazing opportunity to show that America is not one giant entity that is evil in its existence. But it’s also really neat because well, every time I think of Brasil I’ll think of Franko, who keeps a journal, of Columbia, a boy who rolls his own cigarettes and easily explained the differences in derivation between Spanish and Portuguese—in English! Norway will be Norway and Bilen will be Turkey and it’s just… it’s really powerful. The chance to share life with people from everywhere is not a chance that frequently crops up.

peeling fruit?

It’s also lovely to have a chance to talk with other exchange students. What we’re going through is quite an experience that is really difficult for non-exchange students to understand. so the chance to communally laugh at our mistakes is quite a lovely one. but it’s not always fun and games. it’s also interesting to compare how much german we’ve learned—I’ve almost caught up with the kids with high school german, but there are kids that spoke the same amount of german or more when they got here that I’ve surpassed. there are, of course, also folks who are better than me. not many. and more still—there are kids who have barely learned any german in the past three months. which I find really impressive.

Back to Saturday night. Anyways, so we played the candle game. Eventually, the leaders found their right answer and we started a talent show. About fifteen minutes in, I begged off and I finally got to go to bed. As I curled up in my bed for the second time, cold and exhausted and so amazingly sick, I started crying. I was just so… eh. In the US, if I was that sick, I would have been in control. I would have called home, I would have gone to bed—I would have been able to communicate how the world was pleasantly blurred around the edges. I would have had real medicine. I felt like… I’m okay with this being the low point in my exchange. So we’re calling it that. Hopefully it sticks.

But anyways. I was pretty sick. I came home and I was just… I felt disgusting. And my hostmum was amazingly sweet. She made me noodle soup and warmed up a hot water bottle and gave me a wide variety of homeopathic remedies and sent me to bed at like six o clock.

of course, I couldn’t sleep so I tried to answer emails. when that failed, I turned to youtube and caught up on some quality entertainment. Eventually, I fell asleep—but I kept waking up and just feeling more and more miserable. I was hot and cold, I was drowning in mucus. Etc. When I woke up this morning I still wasn’t feeling great. But as of now, I’m feeling a lot better. Which means I’ve avoided my first brush with the doctor.

Funny note: your nose runs in German, too!

Today was a really bad understanding day. Some days I have them—things that I know that I know don’t want to work and I can’t even seem to force my tongue around simple sentences. Other days, though—there’s no stopping me. And when I try to speak in English, I carry over the German word orders and switch back into German when I stop focusing. It’s really… odd. Exciting, though. Today was a not good day, but it was also a really weird school day (three hours in the library, two in ‘real’ class—religion and german.)

I’m actually starting to understand religion, and it’s quite interesting. I signed up for religion because I thought it would be interesting and because I didn’t understand what the other class was. (It’s ethics, apparently). It turns out there’s sort of two sorts of people in my class—those that are fanatically religious and those who are adamantly against religion, almost Marxist in their opinions.

I’d also like to introduce the concept of the English hangover. When I speak a lot of English, the next day my brain sort of… hurts. And the German is really stumbly and interesting and involves a lot of swearing in English. Which I seem to do a lot of these days, even though I very rarely swore when I was in the states. But here swearing is a lot more culturally acceptable, and after hearing our math teacher call us little shits, it seems somewhat natural to throw a bit of excitement into my vocabulary.

Also, today is the first day of advent! yesterday when I came home from camp, my family had started decorating and I got to help hanging up things and the like. When I went into my room, I found an advent calendar! I don’t ever remember having an advent calendar, so I’m calling it my first. I can’t wait to open the little box tonight!

the advent wreath!

decorating with Willi!

Actually, I sort of can, since I’ve been eating Christmas cookies all afternoon. Apparently we make 15-20 varieties for the holiday seasons, so today I rolled out two and am baking some right now that seem to be muesli and fruit rolled into little balls. They don’t look terribly appealing, but they taste quite good.

these are not them.

Oh yeah. Reading back through this blog, it seems as if a lot of my experiences are highly negative. It’s not really that—it’s just that when I’m having a fabulous time, I’m not documenting it so much—I’m out there living it. This blog has taken over as a bit of a journal, since for some reason composing at the computer makes me feel much more productive than filling line with ink. So when it seems like things are negative, it’s because that’s what’s keeping me up at night: that’s what I need to ‘get off of my chest’, corny metaphors etc.

That’s all for now
love
katie

PS—I’m slowly switching the picture formats over to blogger ones, so bear with me.

2008-11-27T21:42:00.001+01:00

i am sick and i miss my mum. and everyone, but mum's the good sick-take-carer.

thanksgiving is sad when it is not with your family.

hopefully i will feel better tomorrow.

won't make it through high-noon sun

2008-11-26T21:09:00.001+01:00

after a riveting hour of religion (actually, now that i'm starting to understand, it is pretty interesting. from a third party stand point-- today we debated over whether or not parents should 'force' a child to be religious. my sentence was something like "it is better when children find religion themselves so that they themselves can believe." i was pretty proud of myself), i found myself with two delightful free stundes. these seem to be cropping up pretty frequently since my teachers don't want me in class when the class is writing a test. so they sort of just tell me to scram.

today, i headed for the libary. i'd seen the outside and it looked beguiling and fascinating, but i'd never had the chance to see inside. it is big and lovely and sunny and smells like old books.

while i was avidly pursuing the children's section, who should arrive but mich-ai-yell! we hugged and made awkward conversation for a while (if you guys think I'm awkward in english, wait until you hear me in german. it's an... experience.) We talked some more, and then he told me about an author. He got really excited and I had no idea what was going on. He asked the librarian and she pointed. It turned out that he was talking about...

Which I can actually read! For the most part without a dictionary! So we sat down at the table next to the window. He showed me his book-- he's reading Eragon. (oh, lulz). After a while, I made the monumental task of actually going to talk to the librarian.

I managed to introduce myself. as soon as i said that i was from the usa, she knew who i was. apparently, the man who interrogated me about my clarinet playing has been singing my praises, even though i taught the aforementioned 8 year old how to play the tequila song. i was in. i got the library card, even though i'm pretty sure i wasn't supposed to. and i got to bring home my new book! it isn't due until january, which is another thing i love about germany.

so, i read for two hours in the watery sunshine and then i went to biology. except, you know, there was no biology teacher. so we waited for a while. about half the class just wanted to go to meccas. (mcdonalds). we talked about new years. then we sat in the cafeteria and, with fifteen minutes left, the biology teacher showed up. he asked me if i was going to write the test with my class-- and that he was supposed to give me a grade?

news to me. off to the counselor tomorrow, i suppose.

last week everyone missed entertaining stories from sport land, since i didn't have it. but this week, it's back, and with a vengeance.

right now we're playing basketball in sport. that's not so bad, right? okay, let me tell you how we're graded.

first off, we had to learn to do lay-ups. and you have to count your steps. so you step right. dribble once. step left. then you can run, but only sometimes. then you have to jump and throw the ball. i have to do this step by step-- i can't make it look fluid and even remotely practical and the ball normally goes over backward, instead of trying to hit the basket. yeah, it's ridiculous.

and for making the grade: we're allowed to shoot twenty baskets. in order to get a one, you have to make 19 of them in a variety of different styles. likely, right? and then we played basketball. i was told to guard the defense area "like a dog". which is pretty much a fail. i kept getting shuttled around with one other girl as the fourth player of the team. pretty depressing. but still fun, i suppose.

so after sport i hopped on the strassenbahn and headed for braunschweig. while i was waiting to cross the road, i bumped into scruffy spaniard i, from my first language class! apparently the class is worse now than it was, and they've hit a virtual stand-still. it was really kind of cool to see someone i knew in the city.

after wandering around for a bit, i finally met up with mika. we had an hour or so before the markets opened, so we went and nommed falafel and talked about our feelings. it's always really nice to speak with other exchange students, since it's kind of isolating when there's no one who knows what you're going through and the tremendous awkwardness of living life in a language that is hard to understand. (we've changed now from don't understand to hard to-- i'm understanding quite a bit in day to day conversation).

then, we went to the christmas market! it was full of bright lights and a ferris wheel and lots of warm, spicy wine, that i did not drink today. instead, we ate warm almonds and these amazing chocolate-marshmallow puff ball things. the marshmallow is fresh and they are so. good. i didn't get pictures because the light was gross and it was raining, but next time i go i will.

after we walked around for a while and got coffee. we talked about planners and haircuts and the stupid things i don't have the vocabulary to talk about in german. it was really lovely.

you might notice that i talk a lot about food. that's because i eat a lot. today:
breakfast:
tea
half of banana/apple
bread with cheese, marmalade

snack:
reis-milche, handmade, so good, with cinnamon sugar

lunch:
sandwich with cheese and lettuce!

dinner:
falafel!

snacks:
milch-kaffee
mandeln
schokolade etwas.

(that was a lovely unintentional switch into german. sorry-- milk coffee, almonds, that chocolate thing).

normally substitute the lunch with something hot (noodles, potatoes) and dinner with bread and cheese. add in afternoon tea, coffee and cookies or cake. and it's a lot of good food.

so, we were sitting drinking coffee and mika was like strassenbahn? and i was like oh, yeah, and i totally had to book it to not miss the strassenbahn. it was early. running in the rain with a school bag is not fun. and at the bus station, i told an old woman about america (eating, school, driving, working)-- she was really impressed with my german. i actually understood her. i was impressed. i continue to be impressed by my progression-- it doesn't seem like a lot sometime but the sentences that i used to have to force now come easily and it's pretty amazing. i think.

in other news:
i think i am getting sick. it is sore throat and swollen gland times. i'm drinking lots of salbei tea and vitamins, so hopefully that'll kick this. we'll see.

also: those who know me know that i'm a fan of amanda palmer. she's just released a relatively brilliant solo album and is currently releasing a series of videos to compliment the cd. leeds united is the latest and she got flak for her belly. amanda palmer is amazingly beautiful and the perfect size-- i find it really, really sad that her record label wanted to cut out shots of her because she wasn't 'thin' enough. Videos on youtube, I'm pretty sure.

now, i love bellies. i sport a buddha-belly of my own and i hate to hear girls moaning about their bellies and hips because they're too wide or too whatever. hips are wide for babies, loves. your body is structure and function and it is lovely.

and i find it really, really depressing that this twisted world is preaching a tiny waist without chubs-- be healthy and be lovely. etc.

that's all for now,

love
katie

england owes me a living

2008-11-23T21:02:00.000+01:00

it's the weekend!

well, actually. the weekend is over, but still.

on saturday i went and celebrated thanksgiving with rotary kids. i suppose the fundamental difference between rotary and afs kids (in my world-wizened opinion) is that when i get together with other afs kids we speak a weird medley of german and english that becomes more and more english as the day progresses. with rotary kids, their was no pretense of speaking german.

but the day was quite nice. it started out with a bus ride and another bus ride (part of the strassenbahn was being fixed) and then a strassenbahn ride. then, i hung out at the train station for a while, met up with a british girls and approached a clutch of people i thought might be exchange students.

they were. and so we introduced ourselves and then the brit and i took a couple of them through a crash-tour of the schloss. somehow we picked up more of them who proceeded to complain a lot and show that the reason why i don't like a lot of americans is because they are loud and annoying. they kept wanting to get on any bus and kept insisting on calling the girl hosting thanksgiving even though we knew where we were going.

so, we ate and talked and i drank really, really disgusting red wine. it was like paint-stripper. not even kidding. then i caught the last bus home and slept for a while.

i have pictures of this but they are not on my camera. forthcoming!

my host sister fell off her horse on saturday and banged herself up pretty badly, so we went to visit her in the hospital today. it's really different from an american hospital in a good way. the patients all wear their own pajamas. there's mineral water in the waiting rooms and really, really explicit books explaining procedures. in the us they draw pictures about anesthesia and surgery-- there were amazingly gory photocopied photos of all sorts of different procedures.

i was quite pleased. i also read a picture book about going to the hospital for kids. (there was only two people allowed to visit at the same time, so i said hello to doerte and then i let willi go sit with her and almut). i'll write more about that later, i promise. there were nurses wearing birkenstock sandals and wool socks. she's doing really well, so there's not much to worry about.

this afternoon we baked the first christmas cookies (pictures and recipes also forthcoming) and i studied for my history test. it's really nice the way history is taught, and i think for the first time i actually understand the cold war and it's ending.

tomorrow is school, followed by a few more days of it. on tuesday i am going shopping for a much needed pair of jeans and maybe a long winter coat. wednesday the christmas markets open and i'm going to meet them. on friday i leave for my second afs camp. on sunday is the first advent, so if i get back in time, i'll go see the concert in the local church.

that's all for now
love
katie

ps-- i'm fooling around with the layout of this blog, so i'm sorry that the pictures are giant.

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

2008-11-21T20:48:00.000+01:00

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

This is not a real post.

2008-11-21T13:21:00.000+01:00

I'm afraid that this blog may have been thoughtfully misconstrued by a few folks who feel the need to use words borderline incorrectly.

Pre-PS... I will post later about the Chor-fahrt, since it was absolutely lovely.

As a disclaimer, or a warning, or an ACHTUNG!

This blog is me being sardonic and witty. It's really difficult to explain yourself in a language that you don't speak really well, so I use this blog as means to... well, express thoughts. They're borderline personal, but they're also quite silly.

I hate when blogs are all la-la-la, wonderful and happy, everything is lovely. i can't honestly write something like that without feeling like an ass. I'm not trying to turn people off of Germany or even really express an opinion about Germany: I'm just profiling my year. And my year is full of triumphs and scary dreams and stereotypes and awkward class periods, moments of clarity and blinding confusion. I think all of them deserve the same amount of attention; they're what i'm feeling and what i'm thinking and what i'm doing and when i look back at this year, that's what i want to remember.

i don't want to have a picture perfect scrapbook that glosses over the hard stuff or denies the humor in watching the same four minutes of forrest gump eight times in a row. So, what I write is also truthful. So if I say English is kind of boring, than it's not because I'm not 'embracing the gift of being an exchange student', I'm saying that English is boring. I spend it making faces and drawing creatures and passing the time. Fact of... exchange. What-have-ye.

I find with each passing day that I fall a little bit more in love with Germany. I really do love this country and the folks that I call friends are starting to seem like friends. I just got back from 3 days of lovely singing and eating and being wonderfully content where I feel like I never want to go home... but at the same time, I am amazingly homesick. I've never been this far away from home (or for so long) and now that my the 'super fast' German learning is over, (i.e., from the beginning to the end of the second month, when I can make sentences and the like), I'm starting to really feel separated from my friends and family.

I read about the night of broken glass in the history book that I'm reading. While I'd heard of it before, I never quite understood the horrors until I finally poked out the meaning in stumbling German. My over-active, over-worked mind substituted my family and friends as victims. I know that I'm not alone in this happening-- I've spoken with a few other exchange students that are experiencing disturbing dreams involving their family members. It stems from not immediately knowing if something is wrong or something has happened-- I know that I would get called, but at the same time, I'm still terrified.

I am tremendously in awe of the fact that Germany has seemingly recovered from the horrors of World War II. I am terribly sorry (on behalf of America, I know) that America didn't do more to stop the horrors that were occurring on the other side of the ocean. I am not judging Germany on its history-- the people here are not evil, just as the people everywhere are not evil. The folks of Germany were dealt a rough card and have done so much to overcome it.

I am not expecting people to adjust to me... in fact, I have (already, I believe) begun to completely and irrevocably change, which is a scary sensation. School is awkward. But so is living with (what were) complete strangers. But awkward isn't bad-- I thrive on awkward. At my very core, I can be nothing but. So, I suggest that certain-commenter (and there has been more than one, honestly... I've just deleted the other comments because they were incredibly rude instead of just one giant assumption), please take things with a grain of salt. This is merely a profile of what I'm thinking, and really. It's not your place to judge.

Edited for clarity.

awkward string arrangements of the smiths, take two.

2008-11-18T15:35:00.000+01:00

ah, tuesday. it's really cold today and now it's raining and I'm dreading my foray into the city tonight, seeing as it involves walking through the cold and the rain. Yesterday was so beautiful-- the sky was properly blue and it was cold, the lovely kind of new hampshire cold that I already miss. but today, as if to say 'heh-- as if you thought that weather would stick', it's cold and disgusting and I am debating crawling back into bed and sleeping until tomorrow.

tuesdays are kind of weird, actually. i only have one hour out of six in real german, and everything else is sort of a medley. we start out with a double hour of english, then we have geography. also in english. then maths and two hours of French.

english is pretty boring. we've been watching the same scene of Forrest Gump for about 3 weeks now, I'm pretty sure. Not that Forrest Gump isn't lovely, but (SPOILER ALERT) the scene where Bubba dies is only touching the first eight times. my english teacher doesn't like me to answer questions except for when she does and then she gets all pissy when I wasn't paying attention.

geography is pretty annoying. the teacher is really hard to understand and we spent today describing a leaf. which might have been nice, except it was all like "the leaf is fat and not wide. it is leathery." but then you get to hear the kids try to pronounce photosynthesis. It's cute.

math is normally a complete fail. but today, omg, i actually understood something! i was so pleased. synthetic division. who'd of thunk it? i mean, completely lost in everything else. but i thought i was going to cry, i was so pleased.

french is awkward. i tried to speak for the first time today and managed to get about three different languages in one sentence. i think this just shows how sweet and lovely my class is though, because one of the girls said "hush, let her try, it's hard when you're learning a new language" and everyone was quiet and let me make a bumbling fool of myself without feeling like an idiot. well, i felt like an idiot. but not because of them.

then i ride the bus home. we have a hot lunch and then dessert (sometimes... today was pudding. and ice cream. at the same time.) and then a nap. Then we have coffee and cake or cookies in the living room. I pretend to read the newspaper, (except now it's going beyond pretending-- sometimes I can understand entire articles!) and then work on homework. or blog. or whatever.

today is tuesday so just before five i leave for my german class. i'll come home late and then try to get ready for the chor-fahrt. i won't be back until friday or so, and then i will be baking. i have thanksgiving take two on saturday, and i've promised a pie.

oh, and college. the applications (minus final edits on two essays) are finished! i've already applied to stonybrook and albany (via suny), and now I'm just holding my breath for Macaulay and Cornell. We'll see.

my english is getting pretty bad already, so i'm starting to struggle with my english course work. I did my first switch into german because it was easier to explain thing yesterday, which is really disconcerting. i'm sort of melding between two languages, which is a really awkward sensation. my english is starting to disintegrate, all while i'm still pretty incapable of being normal in german.

so, without further ado:

Things I have begun to learn.
1. if my host mother explains that she is making a 'typical german lunch' it probably means that i am not going to enjoy it. i have also learned that i will eat it anyway.
2. when restaurants say "vegetarian", they most likely mean that they will have picked out the larger chunks of flesh and that I should probably watch where I stick my fork.
3. public transportation does have it's drawbacks. and it is not always on time.
4. answering the phone in germany is even scarier than answering it at sunbridge.
5. a word is not automatically incorrect if there are more than four consonants in a row. in fact, you're pretty safe as long as you keep it under six, I think. Applying these phonetic spellings to English is not culturally acceptable.
6. physics makes the same amount of sense whether or not I pay attention. It's highly more productive just to knit.
7. licorice is a comfort food. as are gummi bears. the candy here (including the chocolate, heavens!) is lovely.
8. math is not universal.
9. baking in ounces isn't as fun as baking with cups and spoons.
10. the true way to prove how exhausted I am is to look at my feet. When I'm running on empty, I've left the house in my house shoes, clogs with little flowers on them.
11. it's really nice to sometimes speak english.
12. subtitles are funny. they are more-often-than-not (in my experience) incorrect.
13. it's really helpful that you can just squish a whole lot of words together to make a big one in german. it's also helpful that you can sort of make up the word orders for sentences, which is good.
14. the weirdest things trigger homesickness.
15. i understand more than people think I do, and am starting to think about using it as an excuse.
16. i hate pants.
17. would like you to know that moving halfway around the world does not automatically make you better at sports.
18. bread is really good, and so is cheese. somedays that's all i eat. than and chocolate, of course. and it's doable. but it does make you a bit pudgier, I suppose.
19. somedays i understand things. others I don't. it's seemingly random and uncontrollable and sometimes quite entertaining. (i.e., but katie, you knew that yesterday!)
20. dreaming in german is disorienting and scary. i tend to have really graphic dreams (i.e., nightmares) in German-- about the night of broken glass and world war ii and everything. except it's my friends and family instead of victims and it's really unfortunate. i think my brain is tired and is spinning tales around itself.

that's all for now
love
katie

my name is geraldine and i'm your social worker

2008-11-17T16:09:00.000+01:00

i mentioned earlier about my moments with german. and after a particularly frustrating day at school (one of those days when I just don't understand-- which is never really pleasing), I'm in the mood to ramble. About German. And learning it.

Okay, so the premise is simple. You learn nouns. you squish them together and modify them with adjectives. then you put them into sentences with verbs, modify those with adverbs, throw in some commas and you have a language.

So German is a pretty spectacular example of why I am never going to be an English major. (reason being: grammar). etc. It's not russian and it isn't chinese, so it's not a proper 'hard' language to learn for english speakers, but it's quirks are kind of pleasing.

So, German nouns inflect into cases, genders and numbers. The genders and numbers are no new concept-- I tackled that in French. But the cases are... interesting. Now that I'm starting to understand them, they're kind of cool.

So, there are three genders in German. Der is masculine, das is neuter and die is feminine and plural. There are some pretty handy clues for what gender a noun is. -ung, -schaft, -keit, -heit tend to be feminine. -Chen and -lein are neuter key words and so on and so forth. Die plural is sort of the forth gender, which makes it handy. It's also sort of confusing because there is no one way to pluralize nouns and to me it all seems a bit hap-hazard. Sometimes they stay the same. Sometimes they get an umlaut. Sometimes there's an s. etc.

Okay, so on top of the gender of the nouns we have cases. In English, we have direct objects and indirect objects as well as the messy presence of apostrophes. In German, there are four cases: nominative, accusative, genitive and dative.

The nominative case is the general, natural case. Not terribly fascinating. Next! for example, The cheese.

der Käse.

The accusative case is used largely as a way to indicate the direct object of a transitive verb. The masculine gender goes from being "r" to being n. So, der becomes den. ein becomes einen. kein becomes keinen. That is to say, Can I have the cheese? We don't have any cheese.

kann ich habe den Käse? Wir haben keinen Käse.

The dative case is mostly used to indicate the indirect object of a transative verb. In this case, the male/neuter (der, das) becomes dem. female (die) becomes der. Plural becomes den. Ein becomes einem, eine becomes einer. For example. You can't have any cheese because I got the cheese for the dog.

Du kannst keinen Käse haben, weil ich den Käse dem Hund hole.

(nice use of because in there... look at the word order. You can not cheese have, because i the cheese for the dog got.)

The genitive case is used mostly to show possession and the relationships between nouns. Der becomes des, ein becomes eines. Das become des, die becomes der and eine becomes einer. For example, that cheese is not the cat's! The cheese is the dog's!

Der Käse ist nicht der Katze! Der Käse ist des Hund!

Up next time:
Capitalizing
Word Order
Prepositions

all the love
katie

ps-- i make no promise of this actually being right. this is just simply my understanding, which is sketchy at best. plus, i am listening to Glasvegas, which is sort of distracting.

(i'm listening to awkward string arrangements of the smiths)

2008-11-16T11:27:00.000+01:00

friday night was my first official german party. it was the eighteenth birthday of my friend eva. so, about 9.30 i bundled myself up and biked over to her house. ironically, i managed to hold several regular conversations, introducing myself to a clutch of new folks (including a really tall boy named Mich-ai-yell, who I think might become a friend?) and talking like a normal human bean. moral of the story is that, as long as we keep it in my vocabulary, I can sort of speak German like a human bean. Not always, but...

It's nice. My vocabulary isn't huge, but it's getting bigger. So... wait. Plus, you get to see the progression of girl/boy from normal to spilling odd-cocktail all down their front.

Also, I had my first proper sip of German beer! Story being:
Mich-ai-yell (it's actual spelled Michael, I believe). "Do you drink?"
Me: No?
Him: You haven't had a beer yet?
Me: No? (casting about) Uhm, I don't like the way it smells.
Him: Here, have a sip. (Goes on about "Good German beer", not that "pissy American beer"
Me: (takes a sip). Is disgusted.

But then people take it like a proper challenge (but not a scary one, just kind of funny). My host brother keeps asking. So, have you had a beer yet? Yet? Why not? You're allowed to, you know!

Yesterday we had the annual Arbeitstage, where my upstairs-neighbor and my host family winter-proof the garden. I've never been one for manual labor, but it was actually kind of fun. We ate a lot and I raked for like six hours.

We got up early and ate breakfast fast (a rarity, especially on the weekends). By 9:15 we were all outside, reading out the plan of attack. And then we started raking. By 10:00, Steffan, my older host brother, came around offering the first round of beers.

I mean, honestly... we were climbing ladders. There was a chainsaw. Doesn't seem like a good idea. And it was 10:00 in the morning. I don't even think that's five o'clock anywhere.

So I said no. He pointed at the box. See, look. It's non-alcoholic. You'll like this one better.

I still say no.

Flash-forward to lunch. Steffan hands me a bottle. It's still gross. It takes me about 5 hours to drink. It is rank and... just ew. I'd rather have tea.

But for some reason, this offends people, as if I am personally insulting their heritage because I don't want to drink their beer.

/end alcoholic times.

So, after we finished working, we all went inside and ate. Then we watched a movie and went to bed. This morning we had a huge breakfast (my two older host-siblings are home) and I'm going to work on English today, as well as learn a bit for school.

I think I might take a bike ride, too.

That's all for now
love
katie

PS-- I finished my first christmas gift, a green-teal slouchy beret in seed-stitch. it's blocking at the moment, but it's quite pretty. also, the christmas market opens on november 26... i'm pretty excited.

safety pins are none too strong, katie

2008-11-14T15:45:00.000+01:00

This is my blog and consequently I can talk about whatever I want. I’ve decided. So, if anyone is actually looking for deep, quality thought today (which, as clearly evidenced by my prior posts, runs rampant), you can scramble off.

Jeans

I can’t do justice to the frustration of trousers. I hate them. With a fiery, burning passion. This is just the first post about them. So prepare yourself.

Recycling

My German teacher took my recycling today. It was very nice. We were reading (it was the strike, so there weren’t a lot of kids) and he was like “katie, come with me.” so, he took me to the recycling bins and told me about where they went. He was very pleased that our school recycled paper.

Essays

I have a love hate relationship with the written word. Mostly it is love, sometimes it is hate. But I write a lot, and I’m writing a lot now, although it’s mostly just summaries of what I did today and what I ate for breakfast and other fascinating things.

I used to write a lot of poetry. Now I’m writing a lot of essays. They are angry essays, silly essays, essays that have way too much ‘voice’—aka the way that I think.

So I decided to put together a portfolio think for college and I’m just so pleased with the corrections that I would like to document them. (Apologies if it offends, mr. l—honestly, it’s the first time I’ve been utterly pleased over something in English in a few days)

My name

Last night on the strassenbahn, I was pretty pleased when ‘what katie did’ and ‘what katie did next’ came up back to back on my shuffle (this is almost as pleasing as the time I got three bouts of “I love the valley, oh!” in a row because I apparently have that song at least three times on my iPod.)

Now, I really like the name Katie. When I introduce myself, I normally give people two options: Katie or Kathryn, if the nick-name offends you. But I hate it (and HATE IT) when people use Kate in some attempt to be ‘chummier’ or because… I don’t know why. Someone explain it to me. If I wanted you to call me Kate, I would have told you my name was Kate.

But I’m not Kate. My name has two syllables. Get used to it, please.
Here, the name Katie is really novel. A lot of teachers have trouble with it. Kaddie. Kartie. Kayyydei. (with a hard eye). It’s kind of funny. And spelling is like a game—is it a C? A K? (my favorite) Two K’s with an umlaut over the a? I think I'm going to keep it

German

German is leaving me this days with largely dude wtf? moments. but whenever I’m really confused, I like to look at the things I make to clarify (I have a chalkboard that I draw the topic of the moment on). Then I don’t feel so bad.

(this is supposed to explain prepositions. i hate german prepositions)

Also, my German class if filled with lols. Like last night an Indian man spent 35 minutes trying to convince me that andefault is a word (in English). Then, we were pretending to have phone conversations. Someone turned down a party invitation. The proper response is the german equivalent of “shame”—instead, the scruffy Spaniard ii said “oh”. the teacher suggested the right word and he said “ich bin schade”.
I don’t know if that’s how you spell it. it was hysterical then, but I guess you had to be there. anyways, language class is ironically when I speak the most English. but it’s nice. talking about the weather gets really old.

School

I’m sort of starting to feel like I fit in. I get smattered with hugs and kisses every morning. I got attacked (a sign of affection) today by one of the boys. The school dynamic is extremely different here; my class is like a tiny family and I find it extremely reassuring.

So, Gym. Unlike in the US, gym here actually requires skill. Like… real skill. We were supposed to test on gymnastics today, which meant doing twisty things around parallel bars and round-offs.

Gym Teacher: What are we going to do about you?
Me: Shrugs
Gym Teacher: Oh, right. You can’t do anything. (She’s serious)
Me: Shrugs
Then I played some basketball.

Well, tonight I'm going to my first German birthday party. I just baked a cake for tomorrow's work day and have to go try and pry it out of the pan (it has some sort of braid decoration on top and i get the feeling it isn't going to stay).

love
katie

I thought she said maple leaves

2008-11-10T16:50:00.000+01:00

so, today i went to see au revoir les enfants in hannover. fortunately, we had really amazing seats. unfortunately, it didn't really matter since the play sucked (on par with the Romeo and Juliet production of my freshman year). but it was nice to have a bit of adventure and manage a sort of normal conversation with a classmate.

i also ate more awkward gummi candies-- with little sprinkles. they were good. and i rode the train. ich liebe dem Zug! (still). Not the bus, though

just for reference, this is what my conversations normally go like with classmates.

them: blehgfgfjghegfkg he fgfkjgdfkfg ja?
me: wie, bitte?
them: bleh gfgf jghegfk he ja?
me: Oh... (I've understood about 1/3 of it now)... jghegfk?
them: awkward stare
me: Ja! Gerne!

(that's an exaggeration, actually. sometimes I understand.)

yesterday i went to the saint martins day parade. (except it's tomorrow...), and then to the church to sing songs. I was really pleased by the pictures my camera made-- I didn't want to use flash because the horse was freaking out-- I thought they were going to pull "saint martin" off of it. The effects were pleasing.

Laterne!

Pferde!

Leute!

Keine Idee!

Kirche! (Da war ein klein Theater Stueck)

That's all for now
love
katie

ps-- i can't believe i didn't have a parade tag yet. honestly!

2008-11-09T10:58:00.000+01:00

so, i was invited to a basketball game last night. here's a great example of my failure of communication-- until like ten minutes before i left, i thought i was playing basketball.

take: wir spielen basketball said by a teenage girl (meaning I catch only 1/7, or so). it is not hard to mistake this: wir sehen ein Speil an. actually, they really don't sound the same. but i was invited, so i went.

the bus was actually on time and we walked around for a bit. we talked about tim hortons and dairy queen. i was asked what americans thought about germans. eva bought hair dye.

we nommed some pizza and I bought...

(great picture, huh? Purple! I was going to get black ones... but the purple was just too lovely.)

Then we went and watched a basketball game. The major lol-factor is that they were called the New York Phantoms, which I seriously couldn't figure out (also, for the first half of the game, I couldn't figure out what team was which). Eventually, I figured out they were sponsored by New Yorker, the awkward clothing store, and the reason why the cheerleaders were all dressed in really awkward clothing was because they were sponsored by them too.

There was also a really awkward mascot, who by the end was leading around the children like some sort of perverted pied piper.

Also, look, there was a basketball game!

I also took some pictures of my room.

This is my desk.

These are two of my shelves. I have a lot of them, but these are the coolest. on the far right are my school books and stuff for German learning. On the right are books that I've read/other lovely things. Also, there is a tiny sheep that I got from my first kinderegg and a button that fell off my black cardigan that i need to sew back on.

Also, look at what I made! When I'm learning new words, I draw a lot of tiny pictures to help me learn and they get stuck in relevant areas. This one is in the kitchen.

I don't think I ever wrote about last weekend. I met up with a few other exchange students and we went window shopping and nommed pizza. (noticing a trend?)

Here is the Schloss at night.

then we went back to N's house and ate some more. We played a fun game with tiles and ate gummy bears. Here we (minus the turkish boy) are. my game tiles are in the front-- i somehow managed to win, despite not understanding the rules in the slightest.

that's all for now
love,
katie

you make me want to measure stars in the backyard...

2008-11-07T17:19:00.001+01:00

i had one of those weeks that would make lesser men weep, i think.

i am so amazingly exhausted. but here we go anyways.

1. so unless no one fails an exchange student on principle, i can almost guarantee that i am going to fail school. i got a 0 on the math test we wrote-- i couldn't even read the questions. the one that i understood i couldn't answer, because i don't have the vocabulary to describe a parabola in german. i can't understand physics. chemistry i can sort of follow (but only because i know already) bio no. politiks no. etc.

2. there is a school strike on wednesday. we're talking about it. our teachers are encouraging us to skip the last half of school. (i think). i am sort of confused, but getting out of sport is good, i think.

3. zomg barack is the president! praise be! my class has heard my speech a few times by now, since almost all the teachers want to know what the american thought. but i am pleased and thrilled and etc.

4. i was supposed to go the disko tonight but instead i am going to sleep. exciting life, huh? but i am exhausted.

5. tomorrow i am going to play basketball. on monday i'm going to the theater with my french class.

that's all for now
love
katie

yay!

2008-11-05T14:33:00.001+01:00

well, i asked everyone in my class to press their thumbs for obama, and i guess it worked!

today's attitude towards 'america' was really positive-- everyone seemed ecstatic that obama had won!

me too!

more later
love
katie

what a long strange trip it's been....

2008-11-01T10:33:00.000+01:00

it's hard to believe that exactly two months ago, i was sitting on the cold floor of an airport somewhere in Germany, wondering exactly what I'd gotten myself into.

The feeling is still exactly the same, although now I'm sitting on a bed which is much warmer and softer. also, i am wearing trousers which makes me slightly less agreeable. Germany seems at points like it is some elaborate, realistic dream (normally my dreams are immediately identifiable as giant lies because adam ant seems to almost unerringly make an appearance. Anybody up on their Freud?)

yeah, that's really relevant. Say hi to everyone, adam!

I forget that I'm somewhere else until boom! i get upset when the bus is late or i actually understand something someone is saying. It's starting to happen a lot more now, and the list of things I can say is working on getting impressive. I still have a lot of trouble understanding and speaking, but... two months ago I couldn't say anything. Now, I run almost exclusively in German.

This is like a list, except not.

School: I started school on Monday. I have thirteen classes in theory (a bit more on that later). They are english, french, german, history, geography, politics, biology, chemistry, physics, math, religion, music and art. School is nice. I have no idea what's going on approximately ever, but it's great to be hanging out with people my age. My class seems to be mostly very sweet and willing to help me out when I don't understand. I've sort of been adopted by a group of girls, and I follow them around.

I've already been kicked out of English. My professor thinks I make everyone too nervous, and so I've been 'excused' from the class. I have to go speak with my counselor on Monday, though, since I need the mark for AFS.

French is a lost cause. the teacher switches at random back and forth from French to German and I'm lost. I understand her, but I can't actually say/write anything... seriously, French has been replaced by German.

German is really lovely, actually. My teacher is a complete sweetheart (he reminds me of mr. c, for any kingswood folk out there). We're reading a book that I can actually read, and so I get to read along with the class. My project will be to learn the new vocabulary words and verbs though, since I can't actually write an essay. When he writes things on the boards (like "there are too many letters!") I get to translate them. Also, we read the book aloud, (or we've read one page). It's nice to hear the words spoken.

History is in English. Unfortunately, I just missed the unit on World War II, which I was hoping to be able to have. We listened to the "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech and no one thought it was funny or that he called himself a jelly donut.

Geography is in English too. I don't really have anything to say about it other than eh. It's not so nice, the teacher doesn't speak English very well.

Politics... is all talking. I sort of follow along, but really just knit. I read the first paragraph of the essay we got though!

Biology. Well, I wrote about my homework earlier, but I'm pretty lost. Yesterday we talked about semi-permeable membranes, though.

I'm not going to lie, I'm kicking the Germans at chemistry. We're naming alkanes/alkenes though, so it's not hard. It has to be written out though, or I have no idea. Normally it's not written out. So I have no idea. I like when I just write out streams of letters and have no idea what they actually mean. Most of the time I can't read the writing, and even if I could, it wouldn't mean anything.

Physics is also complete fail. It's all deriving things and I have no idea.

Math is I have no idea. But he just talks and occassionally draws things on the board, but not the steps. If I have problems to do and time to figure out what needs to be done, I can do them.

This is what my notes sound like: du Durchschnittgeschwindigkeit zum Zeitmumkt t=10s
(that's something about the average speed...)

Religion I haven't had yet, but I'm just going to assume that it's going to be fail.

Art is fun (it's coloring, what could be bad about that, really? and I get to make collages later!). I have music too, but the clarinet is just a bit different then mine at home, which makes playing really hard.

Sport is eww. We did gymnastics this week and take a grade on it next week. But the kids in my class are really supportive and everything. So, I don't feel so silly.

I really like the way school works here. There's a lot of free time and you're with the same students, so you make kind of a tiny family. Fortunately, I have a lot of time for knitting and coloring, and the margins in my notebook are perfect for writing snide comments to myself. things to write about, etc.

i.e., "english teacher with sadomasochistic tendencies... it's better if it hurts."

Language School:
twice a week in the night i go to language school. it is filled with scruffy Spaniards and I sit next to a quietly effeminate brit who takes personal offense on the "un-english" nature of German grammar. (he also likes margaret thatcher)

I find more and more that I really like German grammar... the exceptions to the rules are few and far between and it really appeals to my scientific mind. hold out for it-- i might actually how to properly use punctuation!

Feeling Sad:
I'm not really homesick any more. I'm just tired and sometimes sad because I am frustrated. I should write someday when I'm sad, but mostly I just want to cry and sleep instead. I'll summarize, when i'm sad...
(i'm so exhausted my eyes hurt even when their shut. my brain wants to leak out of my ears. i don't really have any friends that i can call up or ask for help. i still can't hold a complete conversation. my feet are cold. i'm wearing pants. i can't really read in german without having a dictionary. there's no decent earl gray. i don't really get along with my host sister because i can't understand her. i get misunderstood really frequently. it's hard to not have anything to do really... i'm not expected to actually do things in school, apparently)

Plans: well, yesterday i met with my betreur. i got to meet a new city and we drank hot chocolate which is so much better here you have no idea. then we talked... in english, mostly, but it was no nice to have an english conversation and be funny and intelligent and talk about politics and all of the little things that are so inane and annoying that you just have to say them.

there were germans sort of trick-o-treating last night (the little ones were so cute...). they tped our house, however in traditional german eco-friendly fashion, they only left a few meters of klopapier. then i rode my bike in the dark (still getting used to that one) to eva's house and we watched the first halloween movie.

fortunately, bad horror films are bordering on universal. we ate awkward food and sat together in a big mess of limbs. i was really entertained by the unter titles, though. for example:

three minute angry german monologue
subtitle: los!

it was scary riding home though... there was a boy standing by the side of the road and i was like omg man with a mask and then it was just a drunk kid. but then I came home and slept.

today i'm riding the train to braunschweig and meeting up with two other exchange students. i'm going to go make them cards, i think. we might go see a film or just hang around. i have pants to exchange (i bought the wrong pair, we'll see if they'll actually take them back) and I'd like to find sneakers.

next friday is disko! and then this month i have an afs camp and i'm going to the school music retreat in mid november. also on the tenth i am going to the theater with my french class. etc.

Other things:
Well, I am wearing trousers. It is cold here and windy. I am knitting argyle mittens with tiny needles. It is seven weeks until the next holiday. I like apple schorle. apparently my (drunk) host brother stole the giant fake ice cream cone in the garage.

that's all for now
love
katie

and they race for a prize at the end...

2008-10-29T16:52:00.000+01:00

eh, so it's been a while. time flies and all...

On Saturday, I rode the train up to Hamburg with my host dad. The weather was surprisingly beautiful and we met up with Almut, my host mum, and Wiebke, my oldest host sister, and went on a tour of the harbor.

Lie! This is the Hamburg Rathaus.

boat!

I was really pleased by the colors of the boxes.

I liked this one's name

On Sunday, we had an AFS committee meeting in the living room. I'm not a committee member, so I just baked muffins and hung out with another exchange student from Thailand.

This has nothing to do with Sunday, but I took a picture of it. So, look. I read paragraphs! (actually, right now I'm reading Harry Potter).

On Monday, I had my first day of school. I was pretty nervous, but it isn't so bad, really. I have three courses (including gym) in English, but in everything else... I'm completely lost. I'm not holding out much hope for French-- I'm really learning German right now, and almost all trace of French has been driven out of my head. I wrote the test the other students took in my French class today (first class for me!) and I'm pretty sure if the teacher was actually grading mine I'd fail.

I had gym yesterday which was quite unpleasant. Apparently, we get graded on our skills, so I'm not really expecting to pass. They set up parallel bars and kids were swinging around like gymnasts. They learned... "a few weeks ago... we haven't practiced very much". They clapped when I turned a somersault, though.

So today I knitted. I'm completely lost in physics (my homework tonight is to 'derive' two formulas that I've never heard of. Fortunately, gravity is still the same here... that was about the only number I understood. It took me the entire class period today to decipher the worksheet.

From the "day book"

"I haven’t been this nervous about school since I was six or so, I can only imagine. I manage to wake myself up 10 minutes earlier than I actually need to get up and spend them hiding under my covers. I count backwards in German, thinking that maybe if I look pathetic I can go back to language school and never go to gymnasium. But my host mum comes into my room and pulls open the shades and pokes insistently at me until I grumble that I’m getting up.

The bus runs half an hour late and breaks down on the side of the road and the contents of the bus and I wait by the aforementioned side of the road for another ten minutes for another bus to come. Fortunately, a classmate that I sort of remember grabs my hand and pulls me in the direction of other classmates that I vaguely remember meeting. We stand in a circle for a while: I still haven’t gotten over the fact that there are a lot of really tall boys. It’s either that or they stand a lot closer, so my perception is really screwed up.

We still make it to school ten minutes before the first bell buzzes, half an hour before our first teacher shows up, her legs goose-pimpled in the cold. I stare on in abject confusion as she buzzes into the room, her hair messily pulled back, opens her mouth and starts speaking some horrid, bastardized version of a language that isn’t German. I turn in confusion to my desk-mate, who confirms: yes, she’s speaking English. When I focus, hard, and concentrate on the wild movements her hands make, I can almost understand what she’s saying. At some point, she recognizes that I don’t actually belong in this class and she switches to German, rattle-firing questions at me. Another student steps up to the plate and slows down her words. I manage a shaky introduction and pen my name in her ledger book.

Everyone else is nodding in easy comprehension, which I fail to understand until another student opens his mouth. His English sounds suspiciously similar to that of his teacher. The class continues in much of the same fashion: they’re discussing something regarding geography, although what exactly escapes me. It’s not until that I begin to copy someone else’s notes that I understand what’s happening. The teacher’s continued spiel about “beeeeeeooooohmzth” is actually about biomes.

The bell rings and the girl-woman standing at the front of the class yells test-grades over the din. Eva 4+, Wiebke 2-, you know why. Students smile triumphantly or bite nervously on their lips and zip up their backpacks. After a brief break and an extended detour, we return to the same classroom. Students are divided into groups: the teacher with the Mohawk and earring, wearing jeans and a hoodie points lazily with his finger and accepts the fact that I’m an exchange student with an easy shrug of his shoulders.

A possible skinhead slams himself down into a tiny chair that trembles in terror and rummages into his torn messenger bag, the top flap largely adorned with a patch that proclaims “WAR SUCKS, LETS [sic] PARTY”, crudely stitched on in red thread. No one else laughs when he pulls out a sage-colored pencil case with a Chuck Taylor logo and unzips the lid quite daintily with his blunt, tobacco-stained, decaying, fingernails. He rummages through pastel colored marker pens, two high lighters, an eraser, glue sticks, scissors and other school-related objects until his fingers prove triumphant. He fishes through the sea of pens, drawing a fat fountain pen with a proper nib up by the cap. He smiles and hands over the pen with a smile. No one else laughs, so I smoosh my lips determinedly together and drop my gaze to the floor. His giant feet are covered in torn, checked Vans. Brand loyalty, anyone?

After an hour of sitting around in circles, crossing out nothings in a communal hunk of graph paper, a handful of kids sit on a table at the front of the room and start talking. No one else stops talking though, and the girl rambles on for a long time about Ikea. Then a boy in a star sweatshirt talks about music for a while. Then everyone packs up their bags and heads out to the bus station. The bell didn’t ring. I am confused, someone else shrugs. It’s Germany, they say. I think."

So I've been wandering around for a few days... no one seems to really care that I'm not actually enrolled in the school (no teachers knew I was coming...). I didn't introduce myself to my math teacher yesterday and he didn't notice/point out that there was a girl coloring in the back of his class. (They were going over a test! I didn't have a copy! But I understood the math...)

At the end of the day, everyone goes around and gives everyone hugs and kisses. It's cute.

Also, I am taking a German class on Tuesday and Thursday nights, so I didn't get home until really late last night.

I also had a really weird dream. I was on the Elbe, but the tour boat was like the titantic. Donna, my old neighbor, had set up a chair on the side of the other tour boat that was somehow attached to the forest? my mum was there too. There were animals in the forest that I could see-- tigers and lions and things. And then we were on the Elbe and we convinced Donna to come to our boat because there were animals and they wanted to nom us. So we got off the boat and ran through the forest. Then we were at Johnson's Market, but there were stalls (?) with bamboo fronts and my Mom and I got in one and closed the door. I had a vial of yellow-colored liquid in a longer test tube and said "well, at least I'm an endocrinologist now..." while the animals tried to eat us. (i think it was some sort of gland-hormone from the animals and that's why they were trying to get us. So I decided we should call Dad but Mum's purse was on the other side of the fence, so we stuck our hands out and got the cell phone.

Then my host mum got me up-- but I think the dream was mostly in German. I think I know because I was an endocrinologist, and I actually randomly know the German word for that. (die Endokrinologin-- clearly my vocabulary is very sensible), and I probably wouldn't haben chosen to be an endocrinologist.

so now i'm doing homework and working on college stuff.

"the endoplastic reticulum makes the streets for proteins. When there are small dots, it is for cooking the proteins." clearly, I am destined to be a microbiologist. Cornell, here I come!

love always
katie

ps-- quote of the day "they are like peas and carrots, when you buy them together in a can. I am a box of chocolates, you never know which one you will get." (we're watching Forrest Gump in English)

also, i think my english teacher is sort of racist. Or maybe just doesn't understand the KKK... she made it out to be some sort of game society-- she said they ran around "scaring people". Very good.

i was choking on a cornflake, you said have some toast instead

2008-10-23T20:18:00.000+02:00

so, it's thursday. it was cold today and i am tired and i was going to write about how katie learns a language, but that will wait until maybe tomorrow. and holidays. and a bit of history.

today i had my strassenbahn ticket checked for the first time. oh, and also sometimes i randomly understand things strangers say. it's really quite cool. the bus was also late for the first time.

and then i got home and drew some pictures. had dinner, a bath and am now curled up in bed.

i have one more day of german class left, and then i finally, finally, finally get to go to real school. so excited. i'm going a bit stir crazy.

so, this week i've been reading articles. and little bits of my book. tomorrow i'm going shopping for trousers and sneakers and socks and maybe a hoodie. or a blazer, a lot of girls wear blazers here. and another scarf. heavens, that's going to take about a million hours!

on saturday, i'm taking the train up to hamburg to kick about for a bit, see the harbor or just wander.

this is short, but i'm making vocabulary lists and doing english things-- college applications and essays and other unpleasant things.

love
katie

reading the gospel to yourself is fine...

2008-10-21T19:41:00.000+02:00

i meant to do a ginormous post with a gajillion pictures about the autostadt, but a number of things prevented me from doing so. First and foremost, I locked my camera in a locker in the basement of the lobby in the typical Katie fashion. Then, I decided it was as good as time as any for the first official German tension headache and had the exquisite pleasure of just trying not to throw up.

I blame the sun.

(it was, after all, extremely sunny on monday, so much so that i think i burned my eyeballs. but it rained today, so all is back to normal.)

i did take some pictures of the train station, though! it was my first official solo train ride in deutschland.

yeah, the boy was not so pleased. but i wanted a picture of the inside of the train station and his shirt was pretty. so... I did the blank look when he looked around and tried to hide my camera.

here's the sign. when they say 24, they mean 24. it means the doors close and the train starts and takes off right as the second hand hits 0/60. It's amazing. and with the arriving trains as well-- i always think that they're going to be a bit early or late, but they're always on time.

it's either magic or the government is in control of the time. I'm hoping it's not the latter-- after all, most everyone seems to have radio operated clocks... it would be so easy to screw around.

(like hermioine [sic])(harry potter girl)

i'm still in awe that 18 euros a month buys me a ticket to go almost anywhere i could possibly want to go-- on the train, bus, strassenbahn-- whatever. it's amazing.

i tried to inconspicuously take a picture of inside of the train, but it's really hard when your camera is the size of your face and insists on making real-photo noises.

anywho, autostadt is where volkwagon (say it like a german-- vokeswagen) lives and manufactures 3000 cars a day. in wolfsburg. it's giant. my host family and i got the new volkswagon. it's shiny and nice. then we looked at old cars. took a tour of the auto-making land, etc.

look it up-- there's globes in the lobby and a museum filled with old cars.

today, i baked a torte (with a bajillion layers of jam and cake and then chocolate on top). if it tastes good (it is for my german class tomorrow because the class is almost finished... so glad! then i start school, finally), then i will post a recipe. because it was a german recipe and in grams and it is quite snazzy.

and now, because i'm invigorated, 10 things i love about germany in no particular order. (i've been compiling this list to look at when i have crappy, crappy days)
1. bread. there is a lot of bread and it is good. this leads me to number 2
2. cheese. there is a lot of cheese and it is also good.
3. the world is set up for biking. there are little traffic lights for bikes. my bike is purple and has a bell and a basket so i can go grocery shopping.
4. trains and buses and strassenbahns are amazing. the mass transport is so efficient here. and it's clean and comfortable and relatively not-filled-with-drunk-men
5. people speak german. this is still pretty exciting, especially when i understand them.
6. bed head. it is completely acceptable for me to wander around with bed head (and with short hair, I get a lot of really impressive bed-head. for example, today i had one normal side and the other almost spiked out. I tried to get it to lay down and couldn't, so i just went with it. and it was okay)
7. notebooks. so many good notebooks, so many good sizes. plus, i find the standard paper size (a1) much more aesthetically pleasing than the crudeness of an 8.5x11" sheet.
8. there are no sheets on the beds, so i don't have to pretend to use them. plus, my bed is amazingly comfortable and the duvet makes me all fluffy inside.
9. endless tea. i drink liters of it a day and no one makes comments about my 'habits'. also, i no longer have to pretend to understand american measurements-- it's all metric, all the time, bb.
10. euros. there are coins that have different things on the back that are worth real money. today i had one that had davinci's man on the back of it, instead of the bundesland eagle. also, euro bills are different colors and sizes and are quite shiny.

that's all for now
love
katie

and now we ride the circus wheel-- says it was good to be alive

2008-10-19T10:56:00.000+02:00

so, yesterday i cooked my host family thanksgiving dinner. all of it, except the gravy. i even stuffed the chicken (couldn't find turkeys in germany in october) and smeared them with some sort of oil/herb concoction. it went over quite well. we had the upstairs neighbors over and my friend eva and had a lovely evening.

for mum, the menu:
main course:
chicken with herbs and stuffing
vegetarian stuffing
rolls (not as good as yours, of course... they looked pretty weird.)
carrots
broccoli
mashed potatoes
cranberry sauce

dessert:
pumpkin pie/torte (they don't seem to have pie plates, so I made it in a spring-form plate: it looked pretty, though)
brownies
espresso

overall, it was quite the success. everyone seemed quite appreciative and we ate almost everything. They had never heard of cranberry sauce and I managed to explain it as the American version of sauerkraut.

Pictures!

(everyone-- eva, doerte, margaret, willi, willi, almut)

(note the peanut butter m&ms)

(everyone again, but with dessert, this time.)

and then willi, the neighbor not my host dad went upstairs and got some sort of plastic hammer. so my host mum blew it up and wandered around with it for a while.

At the end of the meal, I was so amazingly deeply satisfied (the kind that I so rarely seem to have-- it's hard here because it is rare to find a source of validation-- in the us i had paychecks and finished essays and here i make a sentence (which a two year old can do better than i can)) and just pleased. tickled pink, etc.

after dinner, some of doerte's friends showed up so we watched a movie (the first one I've managed to stay entirely awake for, I believe) and ate chocolate and chips and i answered questions horribly and laughed at sandra bullock's voice overs.

so i went to bed late and didn't sleep enough and today i am making college applications and english works.

that's all for now

love
katie

you will have a boy tonight on the last bus out of town

2008-10-18T10:59:00.001+02:00

okay, so i sort of fail at keeping this blog. but, as compensation, today you guys get excerpts from my day-book (not a diary, thank you very much!). It's going to be kind of short, just filled with pictures (taking a break from my regular shoddy photography for the even better tourist-photography), since I'm cooking my host family thanksgiving today. (more on that later).

last week/this week sort of, i went to dresden with my host mum and sister. dresden is a beautiful city located way in the east of germany that was heavily bombed in february of 1945 or thereabouts. i got to see a lot of the historic old city which is gorgeous and quite well restored.

I'll try and put the pictures in some sort of order, but I can almost promise that it will fail.

Anyways, there was a lot of hot air balloons.

This is the Fuerstenzug (Princely Procession). It's an 800 year history of the House of Wettin. It's 102 meters long, natch! Was originally created in sgraffito by Wilhem Walter (creation years 1870-6) and transferred to tiles in 1905.

The Frauenkirche was almost entirely destroyed in the air raids. It has today been rebuilt, using as much of the original material as possible: the portions of black stone are all that remains of the original exterior.

Altar (we saw two concerts here-- one with organ, the other a classical-baroque group).

Here's the view from the top

"honor and fuss over the fatherland"

This is the interior to the SS. Trinitatis Cathedral.

One day we rode the train out to the 'country' and saw the Bastei.

Then we took a boat tour back to Dresden on the Elbe River. The weather was miserable, but the tour was amazing.

The Elbe

Also, some of the pedestrian traffic lights are amazing. Here's one with a girl.

Monday:
i wake early to ashtray gray morning light, the chilly rank n' file facade of DDR apartments staring grimly over the whir-ding of street cars... there's staging up, workers working, and I'm shocked to discover that I understand very little of the German they speak...

we climb deep through the belly of the Frauenkirche to stand and gawk for our allotted fifteen minutes at the skyline... we wander about for a bit and have dinner in a beer garden. i ask for stamps in wobbly german, study a bit, drink more tea and eat schnitzel with mushroom cheese, fall asleep on the couch during a movie...

this is the first time i've ever been held back by my own ignorance, my inability to learn faster... i'm starting to become flustered by my sheer inability to understand, although i am also frustrated when people clarify things i already know. i want to say-- i'm not stupid! but then i realize that, for all intensive purposes, i am.

tuesday:
we rode the strassbahn to the train station and took an s-bahn to the bastei. i think part of the allure of dresden for me is seeing all of the beautiful restorations living in tandem with the wreckage of old buildings and the grim builds of the ddr. we climbed about a million km... to see the remains of a fortress. when we got to the top of the trail, there was a beer garden. oh, germany. so we hike down and drink coffee in the rain (milchkaffee, how i love thee!) and we took a huge boat tour back to dresden. there are so many castles here, it's ridiculous. wonderful, but ridiculous.

more later!

love
katie

i will be your ferdinand and you my wayward girl (not entirely child safe)

2008-09-28T17:22:00.000+02:00

l-r: me, italy, becca, afs, erik, afs, ellis, nicha, norway

so, this weekend was our so called late orientation. the premise is simple: a group of kids from all over the world living in their host country come together for a weekend. we talk about rules and our experiences and sex (more on that later) and eat awkward food and dance.

for me, it was quite the experience.

first off, the hostel. i was very impressed by the hostel: it was very clean and the staff were very friendly. the food was good and the bathrooms and showers were relatively clean.

this is what our hostel room looked like on sunday morning. it was messy, but there were six girls and who ever else wanted to sit on the bed in there almost always.

note the giant bottle of fizzy apple juice. i love drinking out of big 1L bottles: they're shaped very nicely.

this is most of our room, except for the girl taking the picture. we are brushing our teeth and hat boy (the only normal hostel guest, who had a room right across from ours and was always giving us strange looks from beneath his white trucker cap interrupted us while we were taking this picture.

(l-r) me, italy, karen, becca and nicha

and this is a bonus!shot of me failing at making my bed.

(in germany, we use duvets and you cover them. this is shortly before I figured out the trick to putting on a duvet cover.)

we did a whole bunch of seminars about traveling, rules, culture, communications and sex.

sorry, mum and dad. but this is too hysterical not to share. younger readers, avert your eyes. apparently, there was a boy from hong kong who had never heard of a condom/thought about having pre-martial sex. i don't know what went on in the boy's seminar, but I didn't get this part of it. So, anyways, whilst signing autographs, we had this gem:

OKAY. YOU CAN START READING AGAIN.

it was amazing to get to meet everyone from everywhere and realize that, ultimately, we're all just people. meeting exchange students is amazing, because you realize that we've all decided to go on an exchange, so it's a bit of a common thread.

people from mexico and norway make funny faces just like me!

we also like cookies. (I made 'em!)

see? universal. but really: we learned dances from different parts of the world and hearing so many different languages is wonderful. since most of the camp was in english, the americans (me, and two other girls) were perhaps the loudest.

but i am so awed and humbled by how many things are different that i just don't realize. take, for example, that before three weeks ago, I'd never met a person from thailand. or hungary or costa rica or poland, really... but all of them have beautiful, complex cultures.

(a thai signature on a flag)

the girls from thailand performed a dance, dressed in beautiful skirts. so did we. someone videoed it, so I'll post as soon as I have it. But I, Katie, learned (and performed) the Soldier Boy Dance. I didn't even know what it was.

And at the end of the weekend, we were amazingly close. we all wrote letters to give to ourselves at the end of the exchange and they handed out the little prince and then everyone hugged and it felt as if these folks are some means of family.

and here's everyone.

(this is kind of a fail-- we were all doing the peace signal and then we stopped, but only some of us)

and just for memory-- after my first international flight.

that's all for now
love
katie

as merry as the day is long-- i am right and you are wrong

2008-09-23T20:18:00.000+02:00

on saturday, i went to a historical reenactment of a wedding in braunschweig. it apparently was mostly for shopping and all of that, so my host family and i didn't stay for long. for once, the sun was shining, so it was quite the day.

there was a parade

and a jousting match. when you don't understand context, everything is kind of magical.

on sunday, we went to see a classical music performance in the church which was absolutely beautiful. surprisingly, there were recorders that i didn't hate.

i'll ramble more about the history of braunschweig someday, but essentially, the king is trying to marry off his daughter. it's really just an excuse for folk dancing, musical groups and folks dressed up in the vaguely period costumes. it was quite snazzy, and i failed epically at taking pictures. i later realized i had the camera in macro setting. but i found a wondrous little musical school and a thrift store in my forages about the city on saturday, which i'll check out when the weather isn't so bad.

because it's rainy and cold and gross. it's a different kind of cold than the kind at home-- it's windy and wet and just downright despicable.

so, we'll end this out with some brief quips, since i'm still exhausted and am just waiting for my host mum to come home so i can say goodnight and go to bed.

1. so, today i finally bit the bullet today and bought house shoes. they're just clogs (cute ones though, with flowers. the floors are mostly wood and we wear house shoes with socks in the house), but with them came a few triumphs. the first is that i actually found shoes that fit. then, i managed to communicate to the store clerk that the weather was gross, i didn't need a bag or the shoe box. success!

2. on the bus home, i sat across from a mum and a little boy, aged two or three. the entire bus ride, he was absolutely entranced. smiling and giggling and waving and all of that. so i pulled faces and he laughed and his mum stared out the window and it was very nice. but after a while they left so i pulled out my iPod (i listen to german podcasts-- david sedaris references at some later date) and a girl got on. she spent the next fifteen minutes giving me looks of various disgust. i'd never met her before, said nothing and wasn't even doing anything embarrassing. (see quip #3.)

3. this afternoon, i went swimming (for the first time in germany!) with my eldest host sister. she lives in hamburg and is here for the week on vacation. you have to get a ticket from the women behind the counter, but you have to specify. i was already, had my sentence all planned out, but in the end, i said "ich mochte schlafen", which means that i want to sleep. i totally didn't recognize what i'd done and thought she was smiling because i was just amazingly awkward until i was swimming about in the pool.
3.1. the swimming pool is really nice. it's big and there are diving boards and there are hot showers and heated floors in the dressing rooms. you rent a locker for a euro and then you get it back when you return the key. so we swam for about an hour, which is part of the reason why i'm exhausted.
3.2. apparently, it's very common for men to wear speedos. and i mean old men with pregnant bellies and teeny teeny little speedos. not pleasing. not at all.

4. i'm also working on college applications and online courses in addition to my sprachenkurs and independent studying. it's kind of gross. and when school/after school activities/possible music lessons start, it's going to be busy. i think my host mum is trying to get me to join a church group, but the church is pretty here and i won't understand what's going on, so i think it's okay.

that's all for now...

all the love
katie

ich bin muede.

2008-09-17T20:56:00.000+02:00

that is to say, tired. it's only almost 9 and I'm downright exhausted. I can't get over how tired I am all of the time-- it's ridiculous. I think it's mostly just the sheer amount of new things-- new words, new experiences, new people, all at a bewildering pace in a foreign language.

But it's wonderful. Today, I took my first solo bike ride. I got a little bit lost and quite a bit windburned, but it was nice to be out and about in the quiet. When I got home, I had a cup of coffee and then worked on my college essays for a while. I picked up an old piano theory book and learned a few notes. I drank tea, showed my host family some pictures of back home. Tomorrow, I have my language course in the morning, then art class and then I'm having a girl over-- I'm going to help her with English and she's going to help with my German. I'm tired just thinking about it!

So, for today, pictures!

Studying...

look at the word in the electronic dictionary-- it's dish-washing machine.

i'd forgotten that it was wednesday, but when i walked into the church square, i discovered that had been claimed by folks selling amazing looking fruits, veggies, cheeses and breads.

you can smell this stand from quite aways away...

this is the strassbahn, although not mine. i take either 4 or 7.

and this is where i live!

my bicycle is purple with white wheelcaps and pedal breaks.

brrrrrrrring! brrrring!

this is my room, although i cleaned it yesterday, so now i have more space on my desk.

i feel like i live in the secret garden, sometimes.

tooth and nail
katie

ps-- elvis is a rabbit. he has eyes-- they just took me a while to find.

love is letting people off the bus first.

2008-09-15T17:33:00.000+02:00

after a week, things are finally settling into some sort of (wildly unpredictable) rhythm.

this is elvis.

my first international flight was absolutely hellish: and, once cleared from the chilly purgatory of films-that-no-one-wants-to-see and reconstituted orange juice, all of the afs kids coming into germany sat in a big hallway for quite a few hours and looked around in a daze. they fed us sandwiches and lilt and herded us onto nice strassbahns and then proper trains and we were off on a jaunt through the german country side.

don't be deceived: this was gross.

Germany!

from the train...

the place that i call home is a tiny town filled with red roofed houses and odd one way streets that aren't actually one way. i live very close to a big city, though, reachable by public transport (about forty minutes away, 20 driving).

each morning, i go with my host-sister Doerte to the Gymnasium. from there, i ride the strassbahn into the city. i walk through cobbled streets of a city that has yet to wake up: workers in paper booties reset store mannequins and men in orange suits sweep the streets. it is cold and the sky is gray.

i have four hours of intensive language school all in german (it's a german-as-a-second-language deal) and then i come home. i have a hot lunch with my host-sister and mum and then i study. this week, my sister is off in canterbury, england. today, after language school, i went to do a bit of shopping: it is very cold here right now, and the wind makes it even chillier.

my language school:

a poster we made:

two brief anecdotes about shopping in germany:
1. people can tell from the moment i open my mouth that i'm not a native german. when i tell them that I'm from america, people are mostly excited. i get complimented on my german and asked where I'm from in America. I've taken to saying that I live about eight hours out of new york city, since it's some sort of holy grail. so, standing in the cash-register line is always an experience.

2. today, i went to h&m. this is not a surprise, in and of itself. i found a gray peacoat, which i liked, but the gray was not a very happy color. so, i wander off and i see another h&m! and inside, there is beautiful purple peacoat, but they didn't have it in my size. i thought that it was perhaps not meant to be and headed off again. finally, i found a third h&m (all within blocks of each other) and found the purple peacoat in my size. so, moral is: there are a lot of h&m stores. there are different things on sale etc. in each. makes for an interesting day.

in the past week, i have baked my host family apple pie and cupcakes, both of which were a big hit. they don't have cupcakes here! i baked the apple pie on friday. it was nice to do something productive, since i feel a bit as if i'm floundering sometimes, what with my somewhat horrible (but getting better in amazing leaps and bounds-- i'm making sentences!) grasp on the german language. i also officially have a residency permit-- not bad, aye?

this weekend, i went to see mamma mia in german in a small, old cinema a few towns over. it plays one movie a week: it was weird to see an english move in German, since the mouth movements didn't match up. Also, the songs were still in English, with subtitles. Then, on Sunday, I met my Betruer and then my family and I drove to Hannover to drop my host-sister off at the airport. I'm actually only 45 minutes out of Hannover-- pretty snazzy...

coming soon: more about home and school!

all the love
katie

T - 18 days.

2008-08-15T18:09:00.000+02:00

Or something like that. It is eighteen days until the day that I leave for DC. Twenty.two until I leave for Frankfurt, Germany.

That's Germany. I'm sort of in the bottom of Niedersachsen, which is also known as Lower Saxony.

This week has been quite eventful. First off...
Wisdom teeth! They came out on Wednesday. It wasn't as bad as I was expecting, but it still isn't super pleasant.

There they are. Pretty, huh?

And I just stepped on a needle.

Here's the deal:
On September 2, I leave Boston at 9h00 and arrive as Dulles Airport in DC at about 10h30. I meet up with the AFS volunteers and head for the conference center. The third, we're meeting with our Congressional Representatives (I don't actually get to meet mine, since she's going to be in NH the week I'm in DC. However, I get to tour her building and meet a lot of her staff.) The fourth, all of the other AFS-Germany kids will be joining us for orientation. Then, finally, on September 5, we fly into Frankfurt on a plane departing at 5h23. From there, we have another orientation. Then, I get to go meet my host family!

I finally received my host family a little less than a month ago. I have a mum named Almut, a dad named Willifred and a host sister named Doerte. The family has 3 other children, however they're already grown-up. My mum teaches yoga, my dad is a car engineer and my sister will be completing her final year in high school. I will be living in Meine, Germany, and attending school in Braunschweig (about 17 kilometers away). I'll be taking a language course in a separate school in Braunschweig.

Here's my host family, all dressed up for a wedding.

In my nineteen days remaining, I still have a lot to do. I'm still working, too, which might not have been one of my brighter decisions.

I'm also trying to pack. It's not going very well-- when I actually pack, I'll post a packing list. I don't have any clothes packed yet, but I really don't want to.

Anyways, more later. I'm up for a nap, since this is my last true day of recuperation.

In Introduction...

2008-06-28T23:52:00.000+02:00

This is a general introduction post, so it’s not terribly interesting. However, on the off chance that someone finds this blog (particularly a future CBYX’er!) I thought I’d start out with a list of questions that I had when I was starting out with my exchange. This promises to be lengthy, but relevant things are linked and different sub-headers are all bolded.

Who are you?
My name is Katie. I’m a girl aged seventeen-and-a-half years who lives in New Durham, NH. I attend high school at Kingswood Regional in the somewhat nearby Wolfeboro, NH. I’ve just finished out my junior year. I’m somewhat of an overachiever: I take all honors classes. I just finished out a year as Key Club President. I’m also a student leader for SAGA. I’m in NHS, World Language Club, Drama (as both an actor and a technical engineer) and Write Club. I edited Wheelbug,, our student literary magazine. I’m also in Junior Senior Honors, which is a program at our school which allows a medium for ridiculously motivated students to write thesis papers and present them. I work as a receptionist at a local nursing home on the weekends.

What are you doing?
I’m spending the 2008-2009 academic year (my senior year) abroad in Germany as an exchange student.

How are you doing it?
I applied for (and somehow was awarded) the relatively prestigious CBYX scholarship. I believe I’m one of fifty students in the Northeast and the only student from New Hampshire to be selected this year. The CBYX Scholarship allows for 250 students across the USA to live and study in Germany for an academic year.

Why Germany?
Why not? I just applied to CBYX because it was a scholarship. However, the more I read about Germany, the more I’m enchanted.

Do you speak German?
Nein. More on that a bit later.

What is CBYX?
CBYX, or Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange Program (Bundestag being the German equivalent of Congress) allows for 250 high school students to live abroad for 11 months. There are a few requirements, but it’s quite the scholarship. The official website may be found at http://www.usagermanyscholarship.org/.

Because I live in the Northeast, my application was handled by AFS, an amazing student-exchange program. AFS has programs all over the world, most of which you pay through the nose for. However, they’ve been absolute dolls when it comes to really weird questions. It’s amazing that they’re entirely run by volunteers: chances are you have a local liaison who is a great resource for getting started with AFS.

What is it like to apply?
First off, let me make it clear that I didn’t think I would get the CBYX scholarship. I had no particular interest in Germany or any of that—I just thought it might be cool to blow off senior year and go abroad. So, I did some googling and found out about the CBYX scholarship. There are a few stages of application.

The first stage of the application was the application just for CBYX. This is application asks for a lot of personal information (such as contact information), your extra-curriculars, service hours, and hobbies. You have to write a few short essays, a letter to your potential host family, and fill out some basic health questions. You have to get two teacher recommendations, snap some photos and send out the whole dilly-o to your local agency (mine was AFS).

About a week after I sent mine out, I wandered downstairs one morning and found a big packet from AFS. Upon opening the package, I discovered another application. It was a lot of the same questions and quite a few health forms. Fortunately, you don’t have to rewrite essays or your host family letter. If you’re just applying for CBYX, you don’t have to pay the application fee. However, if you’re applying for a regular AFS program in addition to the CBYX, you do. You need all sorts of interesting things like your blood type and passport photos.

After I submitted the application, one of the fabulous AFS volunteers got in touch with me to schedule a home visit with a local liaison. I ended up having my in-home interview with Marcia. We had her over for dinner and then my family and I had to answer some questions, mostly just about my personal habits. Somewhere around here I got a letter saying that I was a semi-finalist.

Shortly after that, I had to take a Saturday off from work and my parents and I drove to my semi-finalist panel interview. When we first got there, I was a bit shocked- there were only five or six other kids! Anyways, we got to grill a past AFS student (who’s from Japan and is currently studying at Northeastern), who also asked us questions. One by one, we got called in to face the firing squad. It was actually just a group of AFS volunteers. I felt like I botched my interview—I got terribly flustered at one of the questions and had to do one of my “wait—restart!” moments when I locked myself into a really awkward sentence (I also cracked a horridly non-successful joke about cannibalism). The interview seemed short. I remember somewhere around 5-6 questions.

A note on clothing: I obsess about clothes a lot. I didn’t know what to wear to the interview. I ended up just wearing something like I’d normally wear—a dress with tights. However, I’d just recommend skipping jeans or suits (we had both!). I think nice trousers or a skirt (for those who don’t wear pants among us!) and a shirt. Just look nice. Some of the interviewers were wearing jeans.

I must have done sort of well in the interviews though, since I got a phone call the first week of March saying that I had gotten the scholarship! When the phone call came, I was home alone and couldn’t get a hold of either my parents for quite a while. I was kind of freaking out. Really freaking out—I was shaking and super psyched out.

What are you doing before you leave?
AFS organizes a few conference calls. They last for about an hour: we discuss things about German culture and all of that good stuff. In April I attended the local MassBay Orientation, where we learned a bit more about the exchange experience. AFS sent out a book about Culture-Grams. I half-heartedly read about half of it before giving up.

I’ve been spending a lot of time reading past exchange student blogs, haunting the Facebook group for CBYX (AFS and entire CBYX). I’ve also been lurking on the Culture-Shocked Forum. I’ve been listening to some German radio, trying to familiarize myself with some of the language. In addition, I ordered the book The Exchange Student Survival Kit. While it’s corny, it gives you some idea of things to expect—it also talks extensively about culture shock. More on that later!

How did you convince your parents?
Amazingly, I didn’t really have to convince my parents. I think they realized that I was pretty bored with high school and was searching for a way to get out of it. I didn’t tell my dad that I was applying until the application was almost finished.

Because the CBYX scholarship is allegedly so hard to get, there really wasn’t much discussion about whether or not I was going once I was awarded the scholarship. I think it really helped my parents to realize that I was going with AFS—even though going to live with complete strangers for a year sounds sketchy, AFS seems to do a great job with placement and support, so…

What about your host family?
Right now I don’t have a host family! However, I’m anxiously awaiting. The AFS group of CBYX’ers is slowly getting their host families, so I’m hoping to get my assignment soon.

What about finishing high school?
Since I made pretty good decisions about my courses in my first three years of high school, I don’t have to do a lot next year as far as finishing high school. I went and talked to my guidance counselor and she and I talked about what I was going to do. I need to take three online classes to graduate with my class: an English credit, an elective (I think I might take Calculus) and a geography course. I’m taking all but the geography class through VLACS (an online high school that is currently free for all NH students). The other one I think I’m taking through Penn Foster.

Some students’ high schools are taking their courses from the German school as credit, but mine has decided not to. Hopefully my college will take some of my experience as a language credit.

What about college?
I tried to do as many college visits as I could over the school year just past. I still have a few more to do this summer. I’m not nearly as ready as I should be. I think I’m going to apply to the SUNY schools (particularly Albany), the honors college through CUNY, Cornell and McGill. Since I’m not going to be here, I’d like to apply Early Action for Macaulay. I’m going to do as much applying as I can this summer. I already have my letters of recommendation.

My parents and I will be in internet cohorts with my guidance counselor next year. She will note relevant scholarship information and pass it off to my parents who will send it to me so I can fill it out. Fortunately, I won a $2,500 scholarship this year. If I attend a SUNY/CUNY school, that takes quite a chunk out of a year’s tuition.

What about traveling?
I’m due down to Washington DC on September 3, 2008. We fly out of DC on Friday night (Sep 5) and into Frankfurt early the next the morning. That is on the same flight, of course.

I think I’m going to take the Amtrak train down to Washington DC. It’s about seven hours (and ironically, most of the air flights are about that long as well!) I’m really fond of trains, so I’m hoping my parents will go for it (hint, hint).

What about packing?
As I previously mentioned, I obsess about clothes. I tend to wear the same clothes over and over again. However, for our year abroad, we’re allowed one checked suitcase (44 lbs/20 kg), one carry-on and a personal item. Believe me, you’ll get a full packing list and pictures of the suitcase as I try out packing several times before the ‘big day’. I keep hearing to pack and then get rid of half of your stuff—but right now, with my list, that would only leave me with three or four days worth of clothing.

What about learning German?
I signed up for a private eight week class at a local language center. I’ll hopefully learn some basic ‘survival German’. I’m taking the class with my mum, so she can help me out at home.

What do you feel right now?
Right now, I’m kind of feeling awkward. I just finished my last day of high school and I’m not sure if I’m quite ready to be done with high school. Senior year is a big, pivotal year, so the idea of skipping it and all of the things associated with it is a hard one to grasp.

I’m starting to realize that I’m going to be leaving my parents. Since I’ve never actually left North America, I’m worried about being so far away from home. I’m also trying to spend a lot of time with my parents and friends before I leave. However, it’s proving difficult since a lot of friends are spending the summer away and my parents are very busy.

I’m scared for a number of reasons—first off, I don’t speak German. Secondly, I don’t have a host family. I’m worried about getting to Germany and not being able to fit in/begin to understand. I’m also worried about being able to maintain my vegetarian diet whilst in Germany.

So, I’m worried and excited and very, very ready to just get started!

Well, that was epic.

xxx

Katie