Ein Schwer Woche (A Hard Week)

So, it was a bit of a hard week. My grandfather passed away last Friday and I wish I could go to the States for his funeral, but I realize that he wouldn't have wanted me to. So I will say rest in peace Humpapa, and I hope you enjoy watching my exchange year from above :)

As for other things, this week week has been rather uninteresting, although I recieved a letter from my friend Audrey and a care package from my Mommy yesterday. I still haven't opened the package...I will open it later today though!

Last week and this week I had Rotary meetings. I will talk about the one that was yesterday. I was picked up at my house by a nice Rotary couple and they brought me to the meeting, but we didn't sit together because their table was full. I was all alone (because my fellow exchange student Matti wasn't there). I ended up sitting across from the president. That is when things got interesting. We held a conversation pretty much entirely in German for the majority of the meeting where we could talk! I found this to be extremely fantastic because I was speaking with the President of the club that payed for my Deutschlandreise coming up, and the club who found my host family for me! My German of course wasn't perfect, but I am glad I only had to revert to English twice in the conversation; I have come a long way from when I arrived nearly 2 months ago.

Speaking of two months, it is totally a lie, you DO NOT understand just about everything in two months. Whoever came up with that number is crazy. I can understand about 90% of what is said directly to me and about 50% of what is said in groups and still barely anything in classes such as Religion. WHERE in the world did they get that number....exchange students reading this please comment on how much you can understand and speak after being in your host country for two months. My speaking is worse than my understanding, I can hear and understand but I don't really know all of the words and the word order. I am now hoping that I can speak really good German by 5-6 months because I believe the magical three month mark will be similar to the magical 2 month mark....

Oh and I must tell you about this wonderful thing that happened today. I was walking out of the office and I eavesdropped on a conversation. Then I was confused because the words sounded really strange and un-German-like. These two young women were speaking English with an American accent!! I believe they were either basketball players or basketball players' wives because my city has a giant Basketball team with many foreign players.I felt the need to tell you this story, because I haven't eavesdropped on a conversation for 2 months....at least not one that I understood. When I am in a public area and bored I find that I will listen to those around me speaking mindless conversations that will be forgotten the next day, but that is rather difficult when I can't understand all of what they are saying. So therefore I enjoyed my small English encounter today.

More will be coming in a week or two, because my exciting weeks begin tomorrow where I will travel with some students from The Czech Repiblic to Bremen!

Tschuess!!!
Kelsey

Deutsch Test (German Test)

So nothing is really new here, but I will give you another brief update on my life here. So I will start with 2 weeks ago. I began that weekend with a wonderful visit from my friend Sarah! She lives in Cloppenburg (a small town near mine) and she is an exchange student from Florida. She arrived by train and we went with my host family to Osnabrück, which is about an hour away by car. We first toured the Rathouse or townhall. Later we also toured the Evangelisch and Catholic Churches. We ate at a restaurant that I have forgotten the name of and Sarah and I went to different stores than my host parents did. I ended up buying a black tanktop, a blue flowy shirt and my first ever sweater! When we came home my host parents soon left to go see a movie and Sarah and I were home alone. We ate abendessen together and pretty much just talked, it is a relief sometimes to just speak some English. Sarah left the next morning and I went for a long walk with my host parents and host dog in the forest. After that we went to taste apples and I ended up petting some Huskies :D I am not sure why they were there but I love dogs!

I then had 2 days of school and Wednesday of because it was the German "4th of July" I made pumpkin bread, went to a concert and also watched a film about East Germany. My host family also shared with me their knowledge about German history, as they believe it is important I learn it before Deutschlandreise in a few weeks. I also only had one class on Thursday and no school on Friday. I dn't know why, but I dn't really care because no school is no school! Saturday was the start of my most recent exciting weekend. It started off with a GERMAN TEST! Wait? How is that fun?! Well my friends we exchange students love any chance we get to see everyone so one German test and a whole day of seeing exchange students isn't too bad. I met Matti from Paraguay on the train and we rode together. We didn't know what to do but we met up with 3 more exchange students pretty soon after getting off the train. We found the place to take the test and had some free time. We went and bought bread to eat for lunch. The test was boring. I introduced myself and then I had to tell a story in German from just seeing pictures. Sarah had a late test so luckily I had a long time to talk with other exchange students. Matti, Sarah, Joel (Canada) and I all walked to the train station together. I bought a crossoint (no I can't spell that) and it had warm chocolate in the middle and it was SO GOOD!!!! Mati, Sarah and I ended up having phone troubles on the train. Matti's had no money left, Sarah's locked and mine is a brick....but everything worked out in the end! I walked home from the train station and didn't get lost; SCORE!!

Then on Sunday I lso had another wonderful day! I went swimming with my friend Leah for a while and then later I went for ice cream with Rebecca! The cool thing is I spoke pretty much only German in both conversations :) Later that night I went with my host mom, her friend and her son to a local Greek reastaurant.

Currently I am back in school.....so not much to report there. I was going to add some photos...it is taking too long to upload one so maybe I will add more in my next post.

Talk to you soon!
Kelsey