Weekly Post #21

 Hey everybody!

I hope you all enjoyed Christmas. To all of my friends in college, I hope you guys are safely home enjoying your time with your families. The Packers winning against the Lions yesterday was a late Christmas present for all of us Wisconsin fans. To my Lion fan friends, sorry 'bout that (hihi).

22. December 2014:

Monday was my first official day of my two week Christmas vacation. I felt almost back to normal from my cold thanks to the anti-biotics. What did I do my first day of break? College work of course. I don't mind though, now that I know exactly what my plan is. If I went to college last year I wouldn't have been happy going to UW-Milwaukee, because I wanted to go to University Twin Cities. But I really wouldn't have liked Twin Cities, because it's too big. I would have also studied business, which isn't what I find truely enjoyable. All of this would also have been very expensive. Lesson learned: Do what you love always with an open mind. That night after little Justus was in bed, my mom and I wrapped presents. I have always been the gift bag type of person. All of the sudden I have become the master gift wrapper. Maybe it is the German food.

23. December 2014:

On Tuesday we set up our German Christmas tree. In America normally people have a string of 800 lights or more. When my parents pulled out a box of 21 electric candles, I immediately thought, "The tree is going to be so empty!" My family also has enough ornaments to rotate them every three years. Here we only put on maybe 30 ornaments. Besides a green fir tree, the German and American Christmas trees are completely different. Even though they are very different both are pretty.

24. December 2014:

On Christmas Eve my host uncle, aunt, cousin, mom and I went to the church service. When we came home we ate sauerbraten. It's marinated beef in English, but a very German dish. I thought it was very tastey in the way that it tasted different. After dinner my host cousin distracted Justus with the race track that my dad and I built earlier that day. While they played the rest of us set up the presents around the tree. We spent the rest of the evening talking while Justus played with his new presents.

25. December 2014:

Christmas Day my family went to my host grandparents house. It was a pretty big get together as usual. Although they are getting less overwhelming. I think it really helps to know even the names of the people around me. Everybody seemed really happy, outside of the drama of sharing new toys among the kids. It is still hard to always concentrate on what everybody is saying when they are in a big group. I often take 'brain breaks' while everybody is conversing. It is nothing against anybody, I just do it so I don't run out of energy by the time noon comes along.

26. December 2014:

On Friday my family and I built Justus' lego presents. The age suggestion on the box said 6-12, I firmly believe a 6 year old would not be able to build the police headquarters. Although I did have a bunch of fun putting it together. I can't imagine how cool that job is to create these set ups. Lego has so many specialized pieces to make use of all the tiny nooks and cranies. Later that night family and friends came over to help eat the rest of the gyros we got from Christmas Day dinner. We played several games on the ps3 and race car track. It was such a nice night to close off our Christmas celebrations.

27. December 2014:

On Saturday we stayed home to avoid the throngs of people who would be in the city exchanging their Christmas gifts. Later that night Kristina and Marco came and we played this game called Buzz. It was alright, even though it was a mix of German and world music trivia.

28. December 2014:

On Sunday Kristina and Marco met us at Monkeyland. Monkeyland is a sort of into play park thing. The first thing I tried out was a little sky bike thing. As I got off I fell down the flight of stairs. I wasn't seriously hurt, just bruised all over. But I swear December is trying to kill me. Non-stop colds, and a flight of stairs. Needless to say, I am fed up with it. The Monkeyland got me a bit confused though. From what I have seen Germans are super clean, but these indoor playlands are notorious for being germ infested. Are they just kept super clean?

Thanks for reading!

Sandra

Weekly Post #20

Hey everybody!

So sorry this post is coming a day late, I kept thinking yesterday was saturday. It was just one of those days. Sadly I also don't have much to report on this week either because I was sick again. I have been sick three times in four weeks. I am really done with being sick. I have heard some of the other exchange students are also getting sick more than normal. Hopefully it's not just me. The road to recovery is going fairly quickly, I hope to be better to enjoy all Christmas has to offer here. Thus I do not have much to report on this week. I will report up until sunday because of it.

13. December 2014:

Saturday was my mom's birthday. She also has a twin sister, so we went over to Verana's for lunch. I got to walk their huge dog Leo. Everytime Leo sees me he runs up to me and buries his head in my lap. I took Leo for a walk through the neighborhood. Verana lives in a neighborhood with hills and a bit of farm land. It is really beautiful. It has been raining a lot lately, so the path that I take him on was muddy. Germans have a dislike for dirty shoes. I see dirty shoes as somebody with adventures. I should probably try to keep my shoes more clean in the future. We celebrated my mom's birthday that night in the basement, a ton of people came over. It was fun but that was the day I started getting sick, so I turned in early.

15.+16. Decemeber 2014:

On Monday and Tuesday my brother, mom and I were all sick. We took a huge materess and put it downstairs in the living room. That was really fun and made being sick a bit less terrible. We all went to the doctor and got medicine. Luckily we all had the same cold so we really couldn't get each other any more sick than we already were.

19. December 2014:

On Friday I went to see a doctor again. My cold had progressed. I had no voice and it hurt to talk or eat, I was also not catching our family cat. This would be the first day to my permenant recovery.

20. December 2014:

On Saturday I felt two times less sick than before. Although my voice has not completely returned I can eat and sleep now. Today was also Natalya's birthday. I got to talk with almost my whole family. Kimblerly, Natalya's friend, told me she was replacing me. Kimberly is always keeping things real. I got to talk to my nana and mom too. It was nice to talk to everybody over there too. I guess when I talk with them I start mixing up my words without even knowing it. They pointed one out to me. I would have never known I said it poorly. I think that is so cool. YFU warned us that we would feel more homesick around the holidays. I wouldn't say I feel homesick, but the traditions here are somewhat different than the ones at home. There is no snow on the ground and it is raining all the time. Having a small brother who believes in Santa makes things more tricky because I haven't had to live with that for several years now. But it is Christmas in Dortmund. That night I started to catch Puppi, the cat, again. As I came back into the living room with her my dad said, "She's healthy again!" That's my thing, I am the master cat catcher.

21. December 2014:

On Sunday I felt even better. We went to visit Katja in the evening. When we got home Justus went straight to bed and we were able to wrap his presents. I was never really been a good present wrapper. Im more of a bag person. This year I love to wrap presents. I have no idea where it came from, hopefully my new talent stays.

Merry Christmas

Sandra

Weekly post #19

Hey everybody,

I hope everybody's week was good. I have been kind of slacking on my daily journal entries lately, so this week is going to be spotty. I'm sorry for my laziness I will do better next week.

6. December 2014:

On Saturday my friend Maja came over and we baked sugar cookies together. We put only about half the amount of sugar normal Americans do. Germans tend to not like super sweet food. So we only put in half the amount of sugar. I think they tasted even better with less sugar. Even though both of us aren't very good backers I think we did pretty well, and we had a quality conversation.

7. December 2014:

On Sunday I studied most of the day for my history klausur on Thursday. I am learning that many people take advantage of knowing about tests weeks. Some study for tests a couple weeks before hand. Maybe that's why they say American school is easier than German school.

8. December 2014:

On Monday in my art class many people weren't there because of a klausur. This way I got to make up some time for the weeks I missed. My hand also is turning out pretty well. Maybe I will post a picture of the finished product. I hope it is German quality.

9. December 2014:

Empty

10. December 2014:

On Wednesday I got to sleep in even longer because my German class was canceled. I was able to go to the store with my mom before school. When I got to school there was a meeting about Hochschule. A hochschule is the equivalent of a technical college. As I am looking for my future school I always look through the program to see if there is time for a year abroad. I think it would be really cool, and hopefully doable.

11. December 2014:

On Thursday I had my history klausur. The klausur is sort of like the ones I took with Mrs. Nimmer. We had to analyse a political cartoon. This political cartoon was by a Frenchman, disagreeing with Bismark on how he governed, and interacted with other countries. I didn't think the history klausur was as bad as my English one. I guess we will see how much better my grade is. I had such an early school end day that I was able to buy some Christmas gifts by the Weihnachtsarkt. I think the market is much prettier during the evening, but it is always so crowded you can't do any proper shopping.

12. December 2014:

On Friday my literature class went to a children's play, because we are writing a children's play. The play was called The Three Robbers. I could understand almost all of the play, because it was so simple. I thought it was a sweet play for children. After the play Gina, Lotti, Maja, Sarah, and I went to go get hot beverages. I learned that yellow car is like our punch buggy. If they played punch buggy their arms would be falling off.

Thanks for reading

Sandra

Weekly Post # 18

Hey everybody!

Here is my weekly update. I don't really know what to say for my intro this week, so I'll just jump right into my week.

29. November 2014:

On Saturday my family and I celebrated our own little version of Thanksgiving. In the morning my mama and I went to the market and the grocery store to pick up all the needed ingredients to make cookies and two amazing chickens. The chicken we picked up fresh at the market. They ended up being the tastiest chickens I have ever eaten. We stuffed them with celery, onions, and garlic. I also tried making my families sour cream cookies. But I learned baking soda, and sour cream without anything doesn't really exist in Germany. Two vital things for my recipe. So I made a new type of cookie. I'm not quite sure what it was, but it was good. Marco and Kristina came over to enjoy the wonderful food with us. They also brought up an interesting point while about my German. They said my German is so good that people don't automatically realize that I don't know perfect German. I also want to know more Gran so badly that I don't always say when I don't know something. These two are a deadly combination for a recipe of misunderstanding.

30. November 2014:

On Sunday I studied most of the day for my German klausur. I still don't expect to do to well on this one, but I hope to not be translating the whole time. We also had a much easier book to work with that wasn't in old German. I think that really helps to lessen the work load. I think my reading skills are becoming much better. Looking from some of my first worksheets to the ones now there is definitely an improvement.

1. December 2014:

Monday was my German klausur. I only had two periods to work on it. Even so I was able to work through the first point of the assignment. Whether or not it made sense is another question. I also had to compare my "Hiob" book to Franz Kafka.

2. December 2014:

In my sowi class on Tuesday we had a weekly update. I got to read part of an article about Michael Brown. (No I am not going to talk about Michael Brown here) I read the German parts of the sentence in German with German pronunciation. But when it came to the name I read it out in an American accent. Apparently some people in my class thought it was hilarious how easily I could switch back and forth. There are also now officially only 2 people of my learning course who haven't switched families. I am hearing that the switch rate of families this year is double of what it normally is for Americans (50% this year). My theory is that we are now in the internet age, these exchange students have never lived without the internet. A vast thing that has changed every aspect of how we see the world today. This could give reason to why so many of us just don't fit with the families even though we may on paper. After school my family and I went to the Weihnachtsmarkt. I thought the market was beautiful during the day. During the night its like a magical forest of Christmas. There are lights hanging from the trees, the food smells amazing, and there is a band playing on top of the church. The little stands with hot drinks and stars and village pieces are all dressed up with their own holiday cheer. What I think really makes the whole thing is the band at the top of the church playing carols. So well known throughout the world almost everybody can hum along.

3. December 2014:

On Wednesday I got to have an extra slow morning because my mama and Kristina made Christmas cookies. When I got back we invited our neighbor friends, Verena, her daughter, and Elka to come and bake as well. Verena's other daughter Charleen came over. She had just bought a horse and heard I like horses. She asked me whether I wanted to help take care of the horse with her. Me loving horses if course I said yes. We baked a lebkuchen which is really tasty.

4. December 2014:

On Thursday after school I met up with a group of exchange students in Dortmund with YFU. It was really cool to sometimes just sit back and think, we come from different countries, from all over the world, all with different languages. But we have been brought together to one country, all speaking the same language. If we hadn't all learned German, we would have never been able to speak to each other. I think, as an American with everybody speaking English these days, being able to speak German with other non native German speakers who also don't speak English, alone makes my trip worth every penny.

5. December 2014:

On Friday after school I took a trip to see Charleen's horse. Unfortunately there was an accident while we were there which ended up cutting our time there short. Everybody is all right and recovering now. I learned that I don't get too rattled in emergency situations like the one on Friday. I also learned the number for an ambulance is 112 here. I never really thought about different countries having different emergency numbers. After the stable incident. I went back to my house and there was a soccer game that night. Brossia finally broke their loosing streak to win 1:0. Hopefully they are on the road back to the top. *Fingers crossed*

Thanks for reading!

Sandra