Whoa A Lot of Germany!

So it has been a little over 2 weeks and, as many of my friends have reminded me, I have been once again slacking with the postings. But I am here now :) OK soooo the reason I have yet to make a second post is because I have been one busy girl! So last time I told you all a little about my loft and was going to meet up with MB (Marybeth) and Anna for orientation. That was quite the experience! Alexander dropped me off at the Silberlaube (FU main building) so I wouldn’t get lost and be late for my first day, but gave me the simple instructions on how to get home alone. After some time of trying to figure out how to get into the building (because Alexander had something about it being under the building) I noticed a group of students being led by a man with a Fubis name tag. SCORE! So I followed them into the building and was able to get my orientation folder. After I got all of that it seemed like we were just supposed to sit around meeting one another and waiting for the big intro meeting. So I began my search for Marybeth. I looked in the line that she should have been in and no Marybeth. I wondered if she was late, lost, in the bathroom, or all of the above. THANKFULLY I found Anna wandering around looking just as lost as I was. I asked if she had seen Marybeth, and she too said no. Hmm getting a little worried… I guess I was just super early, but it felt like we had waited forever. She was only about 15 minutes late, because Perot, a boy she by chance met on her way here noticed she looked lost, asked if she was from fubis and then found the way there together. The rest of the orientation while interesting and useful to me would be rather boring to you all so I will be kind and skip it. The next morning we (Marybeth, Anna, & I) we all had very early interview time slots. I mean in reality 8:45, 9:15, & 9:45 isn’t that early, but when you have sever jet lag all things that early are evil! Anna and I met up at Onkel Tom’s Hütte, got to our interview rooms on time and even grabbed a bite to eat. Meanwhile I hear Marybeth’s name called and see no Marybeth. ONE HOUR goes by and I am just a tad worried. I go on facebook though and notice her status says she is coming and it was posted an hour before, so ok she must have made a mistake on the U- or S- bahn. 30 more minutes go by and I STILL don’t see Marybeth. I occasionally check in with the ladies running the interviews and they still hadn’t heard from her. I write Marybeth a message telling her where Anna and I will be and how worried I am. This is all made much more frustrating by the fact that none of us has a working phone. Finally as the SECOND HOUR rolls around I check in with the Fubis ladies and they tell me yes Marybeth is up giving her interview! OMG relief rushes over me. Of course it would be Marybeth that gets lost and walks the wrong way off the U-bahn for an hour and 30 minutes. It was totally fine and she made it before interviews were over, but omg my heart was pounding! OK so result time (drum roll………) Marybeth, Anna, and I all had wanted to be in beginner 2. I really wanted to fix my grammar so I wanted the lowest class I could take. Well Anna and Marybeth got their wish and are together in beginner 2. I on the other hand did better than I thought in my interview and was placed into intermediate 1. At first I was upset, but I think it is a perfect fit for what I want to accomplish here. The people in my class are really awesome, and I think I am going to make/making some good friends here.
First day out!
We only have class 3 days a week for 6 hours, so Tuesday Maryb, Anna and I all went out. First thing we did was buy phones, so of course we spent our first few hours of freedom in a mall :-P. After that we went and found the tiergarten (literal trans: animal garden). It is like central park in NY. Historically it was filled with animals for the kings, Kaisers, or other aristocracy to hunt. As Julia (cousin) explained to me last year. I was totally caught off guard though when while trying to find my favorite café from last year we ran into caged animals such as llamas and exotic birds. We also kept hearing this crazy sound that Anna decided could have only come from a dinosaur (We later realized this was the backside of the Berlin Zoo). After our exploration of Jurassic Park, we FINALLY found my café! Café am den Neusee. We sat and shared pizza, which was absolutely amazing (!!!) and some beers. I have found that really will never like beer. So from now on the rest can have a beer and I will have wine or mint tea. Maybe I just need to go back to Landenhausen and drink that beer again. After we ate and drank, we decided to do the rowboats, just like Julia and I did last year. Unfortunately no eastern European men were yelling catcalls at us, but the ride was just as hysterical. Since we had foolishly drunk the beer prior to entering the boat we nearly tipped ourselves over due to our poor coordination. Anna and Marybeth got us caught a few times in the bushes, which was fantastic! Don’t worry, I definitely messed us up a bit too… LoL. At the end of the ride I my whole torso hurt from laughing so hard. I really enjoyed that beer! All in all the day was (to steal a word from Marybeth) phenomenal!
Class!!!
Ok so my first day was phenomenal! I love my professor and my class! We all seem to click really well together. No one is incredibly better than anyone else so it feels incredibly comfortable and relaxed. Claudia (professor) is super patient with us and gives us lots of good and helpful constructive criticism. I have made a few friends in my class so far. I haven’t hung out with them yet outside of class really, but that will come… So far I have turned in 2 journals, one essay, and learned konjuntiv I and II. We also have gone on an awesome outing all around Berlin on June 17th which is a very important day in German history, because it is the day East Germans held a strike against the DDR. We went to the memorial on that day and it was covered in roses and other flower arrangements! SUPER COOL! I will be stealing pics from friends of this stuff because I didn’t find my camera in my purse until the end of the day… typical me; it was in there the entire day! We went to a bunch of memorials for communist rebels, a train station (Anhalter station) where 9.600 Jews were shipped to concentration camps during WWII, a haunted bunker, the place where Hitler’s bunker formally stood, and Treptower Park. The last was definitely one of my favorites, just because it was really well huge and beautiful (in an odd way). It is a memorial built by the Soviets to remember their fallen soldiers of WWII. There are lots of quotes from Stalin on huge marble blocks, which on the sides have scenes from the war carved into them. Then at the end of the park you see a GARGANTUAN Soviet soldier carrying a Nazi baby and stepping on/crushing a swastika. Definitely interesting! The class stayed for a while after Claudia left and enjoyed the day of sunshine. Oh I forgot to say how INSANELY cold and rainy it has been here! It’s JUNE and I feel like it is March! But this day was the first gorgeous day since we have been here and we all enjoyed lying on the monument and absorbing the sun. I personally absorbed a little too much and my face got burnt.
Ok So there has been a lot skipped or missed in this post so far so I am gonna try and back track a little to get everything in. One of the days, I don’t remember which, we all went to the German history museum, which was fantastic once again. I will have to go at least 1 more day to get the rest in though. It is an absolutely massive museum! Anna I got to unter den linden first, because Marybeth’s family had prepared her a huge breakfast and caught her just as she was walking out the door to leave. So Anna and I went down to the Brandenburger Tor and saw an awesome breakdance street show. Anna thinks she got it on video, but we aren’t sure lol. We then walked to the museum, and after a few hours of waiting for Marybeth (who apparently did show up, but had forgotten her phone and thought we were supposed to meet downstairs) we went out to get some food. We ate some sausages on a TINY brotchen. Marybeth saw us and got one herself. Her sausage was super long and looked ridiculous in the tiny bun lol. Totally wish I had a pic of that! We ended up going through as much as the museum as we could before 4, because we had been invited to eat cake with Marybeth’s host family. Kristin is the mother, Peter is the father and they have 2 children, Felix (13) and Charlotte (11) (LOVE THAT NAME!). We ate the cake, a wild cherry jelly cake that Kristin had made from scratch. Then Charlotte hopped on her UNICYCLE and she and her mom brought us to the wall. They showed us where it had been and gave us a little background on the neighborhood. After we took some great pics, Anna had to go, so she could cook the fish her guest mother (Rosemarie) had left out for her. I stayed and went on a walk to the park with them and played on the trampolines with Charlotte. This girl is absolutely adorable!!! She started to pose and play model which Marybeth and I completely indulged and took lots of pictures. Afterward Kristin invited me to dinner and Marybeth and I helped by slicing and dicing the carrots. The meal was OMG fantastic! Pork in some sort of gravy (made from the juices) with mushrooms and then carrots and potatoes! After dinner Kristin and Peter pulled out the Pastis’ a French liquor that tastes like anis and we talked a lot about German and American history and politics. It was SOO fun! I love hearing this stuff from the German perspective. I then stayed the night with Marybeth, given it was so late, I the Pastis’ is pretty strong, and we had already had wine.
Speaking of nights of drinking, our first Thursday, Anna, Marybeth, Perot (Marybeth’s savior from the first day), and I went out to Oranienburger Strasse. That evening was truly PHENOMENAL! We found a totally random and AWESOME Indian restaurant and had some great food and cheap drinks there. Perot was getting a bit tipsy and very outgoing. Then we went a few doors down and got a few more cheap drinks there. And Perot got much tipsier. After a while there we decided we ought to go home, but when we got to the S-bahn station the gate was closed. Completely shocked we eventually got a taxi and went back to Marybeth’s. Perot was just ridiculous at this point and kept insisting on going home. Since he lives not far from me which is about a 40 minutes by train from marybeth’s we made him stay in her apartment until the trains opened at 4:30. He apparently still had all of his homework to do.
On Tuesday Anna, Marybeth and I went to the zoo and took hundreds of pics of the awesome animals. We also found ourselves getting very lost and at the end of the day we found everything we wanted to see except Knut. How sad is that I went to the Berlin Zoo and no Knut . Well not too bad because it was fantastic anyway. After trapsing the whole day through the zoo we decided we wanted to get more pizza and drinks at our fave café. I instead of beer got a fantastic Pfeffeminztee which had fresh mint floating inside and honey in a jar. It was absolutely delicious!
OH OK so again with Marybeth’s family. This past Monday, they invited all of us (me, mb, and anna) to see a play at Charlotte and Felix’s school. The play was hysterical even though I didn’t understand the words most of the time. At the intermission we went out to get some snacks and they were serving WAFFELS with nutella and applenut sauce. It kind of tasted like apple cider. Totally delicious and unexpected, Thank you Kristin! After the play, Charlotte invited me to come for a “show and tell” in her English class with Marybeth. We were basically going to teach a class on America and our two states. We gave the presentation Friday and the class LOVED IT! They asked tons of questions and were really excited about talking to us. Definitely one of the best experiences I have had here! Later that night I went with my family to see Maibritt’s choir concert. It was really cool. They had the band and choir perform in the same evening. They sang lots of American songs from musicals, for example Mama Mia, All I Want, and Summer Days. They also sang a Jewish song, which is pretty significant. 60 years later and Jewish songs are being performed by German students. After that we (the fam, their friend christiane, and Maibritt’s friend lili and I) all went out for drinks.
OK soo I haven’t put everything in order here, or even gotten all of the wonderous details, but this is the best of what I have done thus far. I will try to update every few days from now on. The biggest problem I am having with it is the unsteady internet… even now I am having problems connecting. Ok well check back soon for more updates and pics

LOVE AND MISS YOU ALL!!!
Tschuss!

OOOOH also if I am being negligent once again in my blog Marybeth is doing a Fantastic job with her’s and I am in almost all of the posts. SOOO check hers out at http://petescma.blogspot.com/ her blog has lots of those fun details mine is missing right now.

And it Begins...

OK sooo i had written quite a bit here, but then Firefox crashed... soooo I'll write a shortened version. On Thursday I got to the airport with my mom at about 3 pm. Security and everything went super smooth and once I got to my gate I got to talk to a few friends before I left. All in all pretty good. I get on the plane and after the flight attendants announce boarding is finished I realize no one is sitting in the seat next to me. BOOYAH!!! So I start getting settled for the 8 hour trans- atlantic flight when not an hour in air the pilot comes on and tells us we are having a technically difficulty and they are not sure what is wrong, so we are going to return to Dulles immediately. When we land several fire engines swarm under the plane and disappear. The pilot tells us that our breaks are too warm so the firemen are hosing them down. 20 minutes later we taxi to a gate and several firemen come down the aisles and rush to the back of the plane. People start taking picture and calling family to let them know what's going on. About 20 minutes after that we are told that we are going to leave the plane and should take all our belongings with us. So we get off and wait or about 3 hours and they us that we are going to leave tonight, but the problem was with the oven so they are giving us 20 dollars to use at the restaurants in the terminal. I go and get some pizza and drinks down the way since everyone went to all the closer places and the lines were ridiculous. As I am walking back they say over the loudspeakers that is is final boarding call, and everyone starts to freak out! They had never had a first boarding call! Turns out the attendants thought it would be cute or funny to do that to get us back faster, and that this was hopefully the final boarding call for our flight. haha. SOO finally we do get on the plane and everything is working just fine. I couldn't sleep, but that had nothing to do with anyone else. In the last hour of the flight the begin to tell us what and where our connecting flights are. My flight from Copenhagen was now supposed to be at gate D4 at 14:15 ( or 2:15 pm). When we land I go with basically the rest of the people on my flight to the transfer center to get my new boarding pass. Unfortunately my US phone wasn't working as I had hoped and wouldn't keep a signal. The German phone did work, but I had no minutes on it so I was stuck and had to somehow let my host family know when my new flight was. ( I had e-mailed them before, that my flight had problems and would now be arriving later.) I did eventually get to text my dad the info so no worries, but at the time I had no idea if he had received it and shared it with Alexander (dad in host fam). I get to the gate and wait 3 hours with another girl from my flight headed to Berlin. We chatted a bit she was really nice. We notice that no one is coming to our gate and it is almost time to leave so she runs to look at the departures board. We then both realize that our plane is at a gate at the complete opposite end of the airport and we only have 10 minutes to get there! So we get all our crap and haul some seriously exhausted ass to the other gate. Thankfully we see as we get closer that it is full of people and have not yet begun boarding. The attendant tells us after she swipes our passes that our flight is being delayed due to... you got it, TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES! So we just look at each other and laugh. Thankfully this wait was only about half an hours so not too bad. Finally I get on the plane and arrive at Berlin-Tegel with shockingly all my luggage and as I exist the baggage area Alexander greets me and takes some bags. So in the end not too terrible lol.

The Horns live in Zehlendorf, it seems kinda like a suburb of Berlin, but since Berlin is HUGE it fits well within the limits. They have a 2 story home with second story used for students like me and as Elisabeth's office. The parents (Alexander and Elisabeth) sleep in the basement, the kids (Jannik 16 and Maibritt 13) sleep on the middle floor with the kitchen and living/dining room, and I sleep in my loft upstairs over looking the awesome backyard (pictures to come soon). Alexander has so far done all the cooking and is REALLY good at it. The first night he made 4 diffrent pizzas from scratch, dough and all! And last night he made this really awesome potato, bacon and egg dish, kinda like quiche with no crust. It was OMG awesome and for breakfast this morning we had rolls with cheese, Nutella, butter, and or strawberry jelly. Some of you may have notice I skipped a few meals, that is because I slept until 4 yesterday. Jet lag really bothered me lol. Today I am going to meet up with Marybeth at the Uni (short for university) for our orientation. OK well That is basically all that's happened so far... bis später!

Tschuss!!!

Packing!

I am so not a fan of packing! But I love the shopping :-P. I leave in 2 days and I just can't believe it! It still feels like a dream that I'm going to Berlin for 6 weeks with Marybeth! I have been dreaming of going with a friend since I started german in 7th grade!

ANYWAY... I have been packing for quite some time now and now that both of my bags are almost completely done I just want to get on the plane already! I have a few things coming in the mail still, aka my new camera. I might change my smaller bag for a slightly bigger bag. I have 30 more lbs. I can use with that bag if I want. The only real problem I am having began this morning. My computer decided to go nuts and will not allow me to use internet. EVEN if I have a wifi or ethernet connection! Hopefully my dad can figure out why it is doing this. BUT I found out I. Can still use my phone's wifi in germany so I can still blog and facebook! However, when I get over there I am only going to speak german except for on the 4th of July and during blogging. I figure one day of full english will not undermine the trip :). Well I best be off to finish off my last bits of packing. Check back frequently for updates from Deutschland!!!

One year later

Last year's trip was absolutely amazing! Truly a memory I will will last a lifetime! I got to see the small town german life and festivals and then I got to visit the big cities of Frankfurt and Berlin. It was an absolute whirlwind of a trip. I can never thank the wohnigs enough for those experiences and their generosity. A lot has happened since last year though. I have taken more german courses, I have been accepted into my Education Program, I turned 21 and my little sister got her driver's liscence. About a month ago my official favorite Aunt Joy, offered to send me to Berlin for a six week program at the Freie Universitaet Berlin. I am beyond excited about this trip and opportunity. I am going with one of my very good friends Marybeth and another german student Anna, and I am certain we are going to have the most amazing time ever! We are all staying with Berliner Host families and can't wait to meet them!!! I am going to blog on my trip as often as I can since will have very limited access to everyone from the US this year. I have 10 days until I leave, so until then I will be packing and planning like crazy.







RIP Robert Crosser,Jr.