Hüften schwingen in Uelzen und deutsche Mode

Another week done! Tomorrow will be exactly one month after I left all that was normal and started my ambitious journey. Last weekend I attended AFS's late orientation in Ülzen, a town of similar size, but far less charm than Celle about an hour away. Other people in my position from all over the world and I participated in monotonous, but mandatory workshops including "When to say 'No!'", a personal favorite of mine in a lovely youth hostel. Yes, lovely is a good word to describe it. Fortunately, some of the more boring activities were paired with quite a bit of fun. My personal favorite activity was being downtown Ülzen with a series of peculiar tasks we had to complete. These tasks were everything from taking a picture with someone in a red coat, to trading an apple we had for "something better". The AFS volunteers were great and my fellow exchange students were even better. Being the politics junkie I am, I took this opportunity to talk to Ignacio from Venezuela about the upcoming election, with Victor from Colombia about the peace talks between his government and the FARC, and with Seda from Turkey about the recent violence betweens the Turks and the Kurds. Ok, I know some of you probably think that's boring, but to me it was a highlight. On a more interesting note, I was taught how to move my hips to Latin American hits last weekend as well. How often do you get to have a spontaneous dance party with a bunch of Latinos in Germany? I've never heard so much Spanish music in my life! Overall, I enjoyed the opportunity to be able to speak English for a couple of days, meet some neat people, and share stories from our adjustment period to Germany.

Now it's time for something completely different. No, it's not Monty Python, but the section you've all been looking forward to about the clothing here in Germany. If I had to describe how people dress here with two adverbs, they would be nicely and femininely. Nicely is easy to explain because people wear nicer clothes everyday to school than we do in America. I say femininely in the nicest way possible. I even would argue that because they dress more "femininely" they look nicer. Tight shirts, scarves, excessive cardigans, and a lot of hair gel would be looked at strangely if they were spotted in America, but now I am wondering why that is? I'm not planning on changing my fashion too much, but perhaps I will be in the market for a scarf sooner or later. In addition to a scarf, I need to buy new pants as well. In the short month I have been in Germany, I have lost six kilograms. I was 104.5kg. (230lbs.) when I left, now I am 98.5kg. (217lbs.). My pants are literally falling off of me. I have even had to make new holes in my belt! Back to German fashion now. The popular companies that I have noticed are Hollister, We Are the Superlative Conspiracy (WESC), and Jack & Jones. All three of these companies most people think are American, when in reality only one is. Hollister, which is in fact an American company, is moderately popular back in Vermont, but not anywhere near as popular as it is here. Hollister is THE thing to be seen in here in Germany. WESC and Jack & Jones both sound pretty American and the clothes look like they are from the USA, but that is not the case. WESC, a company from Sweden, and Jack & Jones, from Denmark, are capitalizing on the demand for American stuff by selling American-like clothes for ridiculously high prices that the consumers don't know aren't American at all. I find it quite funny when I tell someone that we don't have any Jack & Jones in America and I had never heard of it before I arrived in Celle.

Hope you all enjoyed my post. Here it is only 20:00, 8:00pm for those of you who are scratching your head in confusion because you think the hours only go to twelve, and I am already tired. Constantly thinking in German makes me so tired. My brain is getting an intense workout 24/7. Anyone, including Arnold Schwarzenegger, (Austrian, not German), would be impressed by my brain workout routine. Ich bin immer müde! Well, good thing it's the weekend.

Please reread my "Was? Warum?" post if you haven't already. I will continue to add things to my list as I think of them.

Musik

I find the whole music scene in Germany pretty comical. Most of the time radio stations play American hits. However, these are not the songs that are popular in the United States now, but rather tunes at the top of iTunes download lists three to six months ago. Remind me again, when was Price Tag by Jessie J popular in America? Songs currently hot in the US, such as Some Nights by Fun, haven’t even made their way over here yet. Perhaps I should jump on this opportunity and become Celle’s music guru and use magic - no B.o.b pun intended (another popular song here) - to predict what songs will become popular in a couple of months. For those curious, yes, Germany is still in the "We love Adele" phase. Having said that, not all music here is foreign. Germany is a country of 80 million, so naturally they have their own artists and bands. A couple of the most popular bands I’ve discovered are Cro and Casper. Unfortunately, Bushido isn’t as popular as I thought before moving here a few weeks ago. German songs, in general, don’t flow very well, thanks to all the hard sounds in the German language. So, in order to compensate, German performers resort to throwing seemingly meaningless English phrases or verses into their songs. Have a listen for yourself...

Was? Warum?

For those of you who enjoy my blog posts, you are in luck. Over the past week I have found myself saying "Warum?". Why is _____ done this way? So, in honor of the differences between the United States and Germany, I have decided to create a list on this blog of things that have presented themselves to me as strange.

1. When going into a building or a room the doors open in. In the U.S. the doors are the exact opposite. We pull doors open when entering.

2. Eichhörnchen, the German word for squirrel, cannot be said in a manly way. I'm confident of that.

3. In Germany they have segregated music sections. Along with Pop, Indie, Reggae and Rock is "Black". Yes, the word Black....in English.

4. Before I left for Germany I heard about how eco-friendly they were over here. Two words - Not true. All Germans I have seen drinking water are drinking store-bought water in plastic water bottles they do not reuse. Nalgene most likely doesn't do a good business here.

5. Germans have two verbs for "thinking" and "knowing". Ich weiß and Ich kenne both mean I know. Ich denke and Ich glaube both mean I think. I still really don't know the difference.

6. Who was the person who thought it would be a good idea to have all nouns have a gender? Why does my bus have to be masculine, my house neuter, and my door feminine?

7. Soccer teams play both in the playoffs from last season and the current regular season at the same time. Think about that. That makes no sense.

8. In America safety is a big issue. What surprises me here in Germany is that no one wears bicycle helmets. A large percentage of students bike to school, but none with helmets.

9. I am the only one in my class that uses pencils. Back in Vermont all we use are pencils. I definitely prefer pencils because mistakes are very easy to correct. I don't understand why everyone uses only pens.

10. The commercial breaks here are around ten minutes long, but occur much less frequently. By the time the shows comes back on I have forgotten what was happening.

11. Germans do not wear sunglasses. Even when it's extremely bright, I am the only one wearing sunglasses.

I am sure I will think of plenty more "Was? Warum?" moments and when I do I will update this list.

Mein deutsches Leben beginnt

Ok, I did say this post would be in German, but there is no way that my German is at that level yet. As I described in my previous post on Thursday, I travelled Friday and Saturday, relatively uneventfully by car, plane and bus, until I arrived in Hambühren after 33 hours without any sleep. Oh, did I sleep well Saturday night! Sunday, when I was hoping I could sit back and relax, I was whisked away to a dog show in Dresden, four and a half hours from Hambühren. Fire and Ice, one of the two friendly huskies here, won second place in his category, competing with 500 other dogs. Although Ice's victory should of been my only highpoint, I was ecstatic for the nine hours of peaceful napping time I had in the van.

Monday brought even more new experiences to the jet-lagged and utterly confused me. I woke at 6:00am (for those who know me, you know how much I love waking up early...) and got ready for the short walk to the city bus stop to catch bus 3-85 at 7:10. The bus ride took about 15-20 minutes and dropped Marja and me off right in front of the school. The Gymnasium Ernestinum at first gave me a strange impression. I wouldn't describe it at all as run-down, but the outside reminded of a location you would see in a Tony Hawk video game. The school doesn't consist of just one centrally located building, but rather several buildings, all with their own purpose, located in a way that gives the school the feel of some sort of compound. What also struck me was the graffiti all over. Some of the "art" looked like it was some sort of school project, with names neatly signed near the bottom corner, but other designs were clearly not encouraged by the school. This stuff is all over the school, on every possible surface, both high and low. Inside, the school is pleasant - everything that I expected. Unlike my high school, this school has ten possible blocks that they call the German word for hours, "Stunden". Here is a picture of my schedule, my days all start at 7:55, but depending on the day I can get out anywhere from 1:10 to 4:50.

My School Schedule

Going from class to class on my first day, I can't remember how many times I said, "Hallo. Ich bin ein Austauschuler aus Amerika. Ich spreche nur ein bisschen Deutsch." This sentence, of course, means "Hello. I am an exchange student from America. I speak only a little German." The classes are extremely hard to understand for me, but I can already notice I am understanding more and more. Thank goodness I am not in the 12th grade! Oh yeah..just when I thought I was going into my 12th grade year, I was put into the 10th grade, two years back. The sad part is that presumably tomorrow I will be transferring into a lower grade level German class - Perhaps 5th or 6th grade would be appropriate? So far, in the first three days, I have had every class except for physics which I have tomorrow. Everyone I've talked, well, attempted to talk to seem very nice in my class. Unlike in America, a group of students stay together for the most part and take the same classes in the same room. My class has roughly 20 people, but only three other boys; I'm part of the extreme minority! So that's it for now. Here are a few pictures for your viewing enjoyment!

Just a sample of what I have to deal with!

Left to Right: Me, Michaela, Alaska, Andreas, Ice

Me in front of part of the Celle Schloss (Castle)

Marja and I returning from our quick jaunt to the grocery store 

Unterwegs

Here I sit in room 331 of the Crown Plaza Hotel, minutes away from Dulles International Airport. I have half an hour to kill before lunch and then another couple hours to wait until the orientation officially begins. I have said all of my goodbyes and now all that lies between me and Germany is a day and a half of seminars, workshops, and speeches. United Airlines Flight #916 leaves tomorrow at 5:26pm, so this might very likely be my last post from the good ole' United States and last blog entry in English.

I woke up before the sun this morning at 4:00am. A quick ride got me to the airport and fortunately for me, checking my luggage went smoothly with my suitcase weighing 49.5lbs, just half a pound below the limit. I said goodbye to my family, which was clearly very difficult for some family members, and proceeded through security. Both the flight from Burlington to JFK and the flight from JFK to Dulles went smoothly. As I waited to board my second flight I met a fellow AFSer, Janeen, who was headed to the orientation as well. In Dulles, as the blue sheet of paper that was sent to me indicated, I was greeted by an AFS volunteer named Joe. He guided Janeen and me to a shuttle to the hotel. I met the few kids who had already arrived and went to my hotel room to freshen up and write a blog post. That's what I'm up to right now!

Meine Gastfamilie und neue Stadt.

Today I finally received my host family. With just eleven days left before my departure, I received an email from Michaela Röse, my host mother. I will be staying with Michaela, her husband Bernd, their fifteen year old daughter Marja, their thirteen year old son Fynn, a cat named Roxy, and two Huskies named Alaska and Fire and Ice. They all live in a town of 10,000 people called Hambühren. By car, Hambühren is a 45 minutes north of Hannover, a city of 585,000 people, 90 minutes south of Hamburg, 75 minutes southeast of Bremen, 60 minutes northwest of Braunschweig, 195 minutes west of Berlin, and just a few kilometers from Celle, a city of 70,000. I will be attending the Ernestinum Gymnasium in Celle, which was founded in the year 1328 as a Latin School. I am looking forward to all the new experiences with my host family and my new community in Germany!

The location of Hambühren in Germany

Timber-Framed Houses in the center of Celle

I forgot to mention, I am officially a Hannover 96 fan!

Reiseverlauf, aber noch keine Gastfamilie

Oh, when does the waiting end? I haven't posted in a while because nothing worthy of a blog post has happened...until now! I just received my travel itinerary, but still I have no host family. I will be flying from Burlington, VT to Washington, DC early on September 6th, spending a day at an orientation, then flying from Washington, DC to Frankfurt, Germany the next day at 5:26pm. From Frankfurt I'll either be picked up by my host family or I'll take a train to meet them. I am excited to get this news, but I will be far more excited when I find out where in Germany I'll be staying for ten months.

I have found myself checking the AFS Germany Facebook page dozens of times a day throughout the past few weeks following their "Gastfamilie Countdown". Their host family countdown posts come usually once a day and I always wait for them with baited breath. When I started checking these posts there were around 170 students who still needed host families out of the roughly 800 who are going to Germany from around the world. As of last Friday, because they uncharacteristically did not post today, there were 111 students in a position similar to mine. I don't think I have ever anticipated anything so much in my life! I was told that I would find out who my host family was 8-12 weeks after being accepted and 6-8 weeks before departure on separate occasions by people associated with AFS. I went through a calendar and determined that the dates that correspond with these ranges were July 12th through July 19th...Those dates have passed and I have heard nothing.

 A person in one of the Facebook groups I have been following has created a map that has the locations where students have been placed in Germany this year. When I was accepted I was told that most students are put in rural areas, but upon inspection of the map,  many students are in cities! I would be happy in a small town, but I would be ecstatic to go someplace dramatically different from where I live now.