You have given me wings to explore new horizons, and home where my roots will always be.

Sunday, October 24, 2010

Something smells fishy

During my vacation I went and visited my friend Carly, she lives in a small fishing town called Eckernforde. It's right near Kiel, and is around a one and a half hour train ride from Hamburg.

The town itself is really nice, well the part I got to see atleast, it's really long so hard to walk and see it all. Carly and I walked into town and grabbed a coffee while walking through the shops, then went and sat down on the beach. Sadly it wasn't exactly beach weather, but it was still a nice enough day to sit down there. After we walked along the port for a bit, it wasn't the nicest smelling walk though, there are boats that sell fresh fish so it stunk a tad bit.

Later that day we went into Kiel to do some shopping, and I finally found a winter jacket to help me last through this weather. It's already there winter weather here, luckily it's not too cold usually around five to ten degrees, but the rain makes it feel a lot worse.

I had a good trip up North it was nice and relaxing, I really love all the small fishing towns though. I think they have been my favorite to see so far, especially the ones along the Baltic Sea.

Santana

Last night Karmen and I went into Hamburg for our first concert, and it just happened to be Carlos Santana. The concert was amazing, the band he had with him playd so good, and Santana is a singer who actually works the crowd as well as play. The whole arena was standing/dancing for the majority of the concert. I also think I have gone deaf in my one year from Karmens shreaks of delight, I think the concert made her miss home.

I love being so close to Hamburg, they have such a good music scene, and artists from all around the world playing there. I'm hoping to see many more shows this year, the hart part is just finding someone who likes the same music as me, Santana was easy, now I just need to find someone to see Xavier Rudd with me. Any takers?? :)







Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Fliegen und Bremen

One of the rotary members from my club owns and works at a small airfeild that specializes in glidder planes. At the beginning of the break I was able to go out and actually fly in one of these planes with him. I'm not going to lie I was terrified for this, I can barely handle the little planes that take you from Calgary to Abotsford. However it ended up being really fun, and no where near as bumpy as I thought it would be. This airfeild is right beside the Baltic Sea too, so I got an amazing view of the Sea and beach area. We really lucked out on the weather too, and only had a bit of mist, but still had great clarity to see everything. I think I can officially say I enjoy flying again, well as long as theres no turbulance.
On Monday I went with Karmen and her host mom to the town of Bremen to go shopping, and look at some of the old architecture. Bremen is a beautiful city, it's got a really big mix of old and new architecture all right beside eachother. The town hall was also the only building in Bremen that survived the war, they packed sand all around it to keep it safe. We did take a tour of the city hall, but since it is still in use we were only able to see two of the rooms.
My favorite part of Bremen was a small section that no cars could fit in, and it has random different streets, and pathways.

Project Week

I've gotten a little behind with updating so I'm just going to try and back track on the past weeks and tell everyone what I've been up too.
I am currently on my October break, since in Germany they don't get as long of a summer they throw in random breaks. I'm just finishing the first week of vacation, but before vacation our last week of school is what they call project week.
I'm still not very sure what project week actually means, I think it's just based on doing some major project based on your profile. For my class since it's a sports profile the students had to teach the 8th class twice. The group i went with just did a class in the gym, playing things like dodgeball, soccer, handball. Then on the second lesson it was a class of just fitness training. For the next two days I would come to school around nine, just sit around in the classroom, maybe take a walk to get a coffee, then usually leave around noon. On these two days we didn't have teachers there, I'm not really sure if anyone actually did any work these days though. So it's easy to say I think my vacation started a week early, and that I rather enjoy when they have project week.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Was that just our train?

This weekend one of the exchange students from further north came to stay with me for the weekend, and on Friday we spent the day in Hamburg with some of the other exchange students. This was defenitely a day of learning about the good and bad of the train system here in Germany. Usually during the week there is a train to my town atleast every hour, well on the weekend it's a bit longer usually between trains. So we spent allot of time waiting around in the McDonalds at the train station, since it was the only warm and comfy place to sit.

On Saturday night we went with my host family to the Jersbek version of Oktober fest, so I can now officially say I've been the a German Oktober fest, sadly it wasn't all I expected it to be. It was still a really fun night, even though we were both dead from the day before.

Sunday we dropped Carly off at the train station than my house father and I headed up to Neumunster to watch Freddy's soccer game, and on the way there we stopped at an animal park to watch a feeding. I'm not going to lie this isn't something I enjoy seeing, I'm not the biggest fan of zoo's, and seeing animals being cagged, but he really enjoyed it so I tagged along.
Now i just have project week left at school, which I have no clue what we do during it, then I have my two week break from school. Since the summer holidays are so short here, we get allot more long breaks inbetween, it's pretty nice, I'm looking forward to it.
Oh and I've now started my German lessons, lets just say they've been interesting, I don't have the best German accent, so everything I saw doesn't make much sense. However I do understand allot more then i did a month ago, which is a relief. Hopefully these lessons will help speed everything up!

Exchange students

Last weekend I had my first rotary orientation with all the other exchange students in my district, and it was one of the funnest times I've had since being here. Even if the weekend did start of with us missing train after train trying to get there, and arriving three hours late, and not getting supper, and taking a three hour boat ride which almost everyone got sick on.
The weekend started off on Friday night in a small town called St. Michaelsdonn, up in Northern Germany, closer to the North sea. We spent most of Friday night doing introductions (in German), then just swapping pins and business cards. There was close to fifty of us there so it was a little hectic all running around trying to exchange pins with everyone. I know I didn't get everyone, however my Jacket does feel a couple pounds heavier so I think I got the majority of everyone.
Saturday morning we got up bright and early to take an hour bus ride to Busum to catch our boat; Funny Girl. Sadly the waves were massive and I think a majority of the students got sick, including a girl sitting right beside me. So I think it's easy to say that was the low part of the weekend. We went to two small islands that day, the first one we had our lunch at and walked around the beaches for awhile. Then the second one; Helgoland, we spent about one hour on shopping. Everyone was a little excited since this island has no tax so everything is so much cheaper since taxes in Germany are around 19% I believe. To put into perspective how small these islands are know that vehicles aren't allowed on either, and the larger of the two, you can walk all the way around in less than an hour.
Once we returned back to the hostel everyone got busy preparing there songs/dances for that night. We were all required to play or sing a song, or do a dance that represents our country that we come from. It turned out to be quit an entertaining night in the end, there are allot of latin American exchange students who got up and danced, which was gorgeous to see.
All in all it was a great weekend of meeting allot of new people, and learning about all these cultures from all around the world. This is in my oponion one of the best things about the youth exchange, you don't just learn about the country your in, you also get the oportunity to learn about all these other countries as well.