Monday, August 15, 2011

"Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore."

Well, it has been a very exciting, exhausting, peculiar week.  It started with a very nervous good-bye in Minneapolis.  Thankfully the person next to me was a former exchange student to Sweden who was visiting his host family.  He told me stories about his exchange and helped cool me nerves.  The plane ride, otherwise, was pretty dreadful.  Not only was I unable to sleep, I couldn't see anything news worthy until I got to the English Channel where I saw a town that was defined by its street lights.  As I prepared to land in Amsterdam the view of the city is indescribable.  It has to be one of the most beautiful towns in the world.  When I finally landed in Amsterdam after the eight hour flight I was running on fumes.  One of my biggest worries was navigating the airport, but to my relief it turned out to be very simple.  One of the biggest shocks was hearing a different language spoken by seemingly everybody else but you.  Since I had a four hour layover I walked around.One of my reminders that I was in Europe was the dirty magazines are out in front with absolutely no cover so everything is out for everyone to see. I bought my first item with Euros and my change came to 4.20 but I only got three coins which is weird  because I'm only use to 25 cent coins.

 After I got on my connecting flight I fell asleep before the plane even took off and I slept the whole flight.  When i got to Bremen it was raining and my plane was so small it couldn't be hitched to a gate so we had to walk out into the rain into a bus.  One of the worst decisions I made was wearing shorts because it was 50 degrees and raining.  After I got my bags I met my host mother and brother, who helped me out greatly with my seemingly 400 pound suitcases.  Before we went back to Wiesmoor we had to stop at an Ikea which I've never been to and they sold hot dogs so I had one, though I wasn't really hungry just exhausted.  Once we got to Wiesmoor I went to bed almost instantaneously only to be woken up for dinner. After dinner we went to a local soccer game where the home team lost to Dornum. I went directly to bad after we got home.  Saturday was spent getting to know my host siblings Fritz, Hans, and Julius.  I played soccer with Hans and Fritz, and I played Legos with Julius. For dinner we had a German Barbecue which was fantastic. We had some kind of pork chop and some kind of wurst.  To drink we had apple juice mixed with carbonated water which is very typical in Germany and very good at that. After dinner we watched Pirates of the Caribbean which i fell asleep to in the beginning because I was still severely jet lagged. Sunday was spent playing board games because it rained.  So I got to play German Monopoly, Lebens (Life), and Wii.

Monday started with me delivering flowers to my host father's dad to be replanted.  It was the first time I had gone into downtown Wiesmoor and it is a very beautiful city.  Every house has hedge fences and clay tile roofs.  Wiesmoor is considerably small compared to its neighbor Bremen with only 13,000 citizens.  After we dropped the flowers off and had some hot chocolate, Fritz took me to see the school I'll be going to.  After we saw it we headed back home.  When we arrived I played soccer with Hans at the fußballplatz.  I don't know if we were allowed to play there but we did which tired me out considerably.  Once we finished we went back to the house and played chess (I won but then lost).  Earlier Julius wanted me to play Eisenbahn (trains) with him. So, I did until it was time for my first Rotary meeting in Germany.  Once we got there I shook everybody's hand and took my seat.  There were five other exchange students but only one spoke English but all of them were from South America so they all spoke Spanish the whole time.  When we were served dinner we got a pig's ankle, which I didn't know how to eat so i had to look around, on Apfel-Sekt-Kraut with something that my exchange brother didn't even know.  It all schmeckt gut (tasted good). Following dinner the exchange students had to introduce ourselves. While this was happening the waitresses were passing out a small glass of something.  After all of the introductions were done the room erupted with "Brost" to which we drank the glass.  I found out it was Schnapps so I immediately made a sour face to all the men's delight.  When we got home I went straight to bed seeing as I am still a little jet lagged.  That is all for this post.

1 comment:

  1. Hey tony im glad your having fun but i did find 2 mistakes!! at the beginning you said the other exchange helped cool me nerves, and the other 1 when when you went to bed after the soccer game it said you went to bad. you mixed my mistakes after we chatted so now im doing the same! I hope your liking your new home. mom started cleaning your room so when you come home its going to be spotless :)well i hope you make the best of your trip i love you
    -Brooke

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