What I've learned in class so far...

My teacher Norbert doesn't have the best English in the world and speaks to us mainly in German. But when he doesn't know a word in english or how to describe something to us he will draw us a picture. For the past 3 weeks I feel I have been playing pictionary as a way to learn German. But hey, I love it. 

Week 3

So, this week my cultural adventures included a guided tour of the Bonn Fire Station and another trip to the Cologne Cathedral (Koln Dome). 

I also managed to twist my ankle on Monday. I went to see the doctor about it. The office was small and clean. The nurses I met were nice and wore outfits of all white. They wrapped my foot and wrote me a prescription for a cream which I rubbed on my ankle a few times a day. Germans are not big into hard drugs or anything like that and are more into herbal type treatments. Obviously you can still get medicine here but something as simple as headache medicine is much weaker here. Since Americans are so used to having a stronger headache medicine, you have to take three times as much to be relieved of your pain. 

The fire station was interesting, but it wasn't really any different from the fire stains back in the states. The coolest part was that every truck has a ladder on it that goes up 23 meters and I got to go up on that ladder. It was scary, but I got some good pictures of the city from there. 

The Koln Dome is beautiful and shows off gothic architecture at it's finest. They started to build the Dome in 1248 and didn't finish until 1880. There are two towers to the Dome and you can actually go up one of them to get a great view of the city of Cologne. So, we did. The tower consists of 517 steps to the top. There's no other way to get there. And even with my bad ankle I made it up. YAY! 

On friday our group got together that evening for a BBQ in what seemed like the middle of nowhere. It got cold and rained but we still had a blast. The Eagle scouts in our group (all 3 of them) put themselves in charge of making the fire and managing the food (this BBQ did not consist of a grill but a small fire and food wrapped in tin foil and placed on hot coals). It was a pretty fun night and it proved that no matter the circumstances, with the right people and the right attitude you can always have fun in Germany.

On saturday there was a beer festival where you could buy a beer from almost anywhere in the world. A few of us decided to go check it out and taste some beer. I had a special Guiness that had an alcohol content of 7.5 % and can only be bought in somewhere like the Caribbean. That was the only beer I had that night for an obvious reason. Then we went out clubbing for a second time. I love to dance and the clubs are fun but sometimes I dislike it for a number of reasons. The smoke, the sweat, the temperature. You come out smelling god awful and then when you get home at 2 or 3 am you're too tired to shower and you don't want to wake anyone so you go to bed smelling and feeling gross. And you can never fully get that smell out of your hair in one wash. But when in the club and dancing with friends, I do have a lot of fun. 

From Monday to Saturday

Aside from the usual four hours of German language lessons, my group has been keeping up with our activities to experience German culture and history. 

Monday we had a guided visit of Beethoven's home (known as Beethoven Haus). It holds many of his instruments like his first and last violin, his last piano, many original pieces of music he wrote, and even a few strands of his hair. When he died people came from all over and took a few strands of his hair to remember him.

 

Tuesday we learned about the Waste Management of Bonn. A woman explained what is recycled, how, and where we should dispose of things. Then we were given a guided tour of a garbage incineration plant.

 

Wednesday night we went to a classical concert played by Collegium Musicum (student orchestra of Bonn University). They played the 7 original pieces for The Planets. It was wonderful. Mars was played with a great intensity and Jupiter was without a doubt my favorite, although Neptune was close. 

Thursday our group skipped class and took a bike ride along the romantic Rhine River to Remagon, ate lunch at a cute Italian Restaurant, and took a guided tour through the Peace Museum in Remagen with Mr. Kurten (former Mayor of Remagen and founder of the Museum). 

Friday we went to the Haribo Outlet after class and I found more gummies than I knew existed. 

Saturday several of us met up to go to the biggest flea market in Germany that only happens for one weekend. I got a beautiful necklace. Then later that day my friend Niki and I went blackberry picking by the U-bahn tracks and then went to go see Harry Potter 6. 

Now out of all the things I did the past week I would recommending doing all of them (except maybe the garbage tour unless you plan on living in Germany for a while or are just really into that kind of thing). Take the bike ride even if your a not a big bike rider because it's worth seeing the sites (or at least walk along the Rhine for a good hour). The Rhine is so relaxing and you can enjoy it with someone you love or by yourself. 

Things I've Noticed in Bonn Germany...

- Lots of spiral staircases in houses and other buildings.

- Orchids as a decoration in houses.

- Cobble stone walkways and streets (beautiful).

- Nestle and Hershey's has nothing on Nutella. 

- Most everything taste better. Fruit, bread, beer...

- Nudity and curse words are nothing. 

- Scarves are a fashion statement for women and men don't wear shorts, they wear capris. 

- You have to pay to use the bathroom. 

- Haribo. 

- The Ice cream is amazing. 

 

Kolsch

The night before last it rained quite a bit here and ever since then it's been quite cold (about 60 degrees) and very wet. I never expected to need to wear my sweater and jacket and a scarf with an umbrella in the middle of July. 

Today we went to Cologne where we toured parts of the city and learned about its history. This is just one of three tours we will take in Cologne. Next trip Cologne Cathedral! However, on this trip we only saw the outside of the Cathedral. It's so big and beautiful that when you look up at it and walk towards it, it doesn't look real. Seriously, it feels like your walking up to a giant picture and it's not until you get right next to it that you realize that it's real. 

We also had a bakery tasting where we got to sample 5 or so different bakery pastries and then rate which ones were the best. If there's one thing you can count on in Germany, its the bakeries. They bread and sweets are always made fresh and they just can't be beat. The bread here is much heartier and the flavor has more depth. Food is just as important as anything else.

 

After the tour most of us went our separate ways. I stayed with two of my guy friends, Chris and Ryan, and we met up with two German kids that went to Chris and Ryan's school for a while this past year. They were pretty cool and I had my first beer in Germany. I was waiting to have a really good beer as my first one here, even though it's hard to get a bad beer in Germany. The beer was called Kolsch, which is a light beer made in Cologne. Supposedly Cologne is know for its beer called Kolsch and Dusseldorf is known for its beer called Alt. Cologne and Dusseldorf dislike each other so much from this stand point that if you try to order Alt in Cologne they will tell you to "fuck off" and visa versa. On the menu of the beer garden we went to they even had Alt listed on the menu but next to it it said "go 50 km north". haha. 

Overall, I would say another great day. 

July 5th

Yesterday I slept til 11.  I got up and met Sara (the other exchange student staying in the house. She's a few years older then me and in a different program) and then watched an hour or two of German MTV (mainly Pimp My Ride with German subtitles) with the family. I don’t even watch MTV at home.  

Nikki called around 1pm and asked if I wanted to go to Cologne to see the Gay Pride Parade going on that day. I accepted and invited Sara.

It was so much fun. I love Niki.  And gay guys. Haha. After the parade we just walked around and then decided to stop at a bakery called Merzenich. I had an interesting raspberry jell-o type pie. It was okay. I’m not a huge fan of Jell-O and the crust was a little too soft.  

My first experience in Germany

So, I'm a few days behind but I've been busy. What can I say?

The day I left for Germany and the day I got into Germany blend two days into one long day. With a sleepless 8 hour plane ride, leaving at 7 pm from Washington DC and arriving in Frankfurt at 9:30 am, I had a hard time comprehending what day it was. 

I’m in Bonn now and will stay here for the next seven weeks with a host family while I learn German and about the German culture at AIB (Akademie fur Internationale BIldung or Academy for International Education).

July 4th was my first real day I feel I spent in Germany, seeing as my first day in I was to zonked out to stand up straight and understand how I suddenly got from the Frankfurt airport to the home of my host family in Bonn.

We (my group of 25) were taken on an excursion to Monschau. A lovely town filled with shops and a beer garden. I could easily live there for a time or possibly own a summer home there. We hiked far up a hill to get an amazing view of the entire town and we ran into a ram on the way up. My first ram. J

We then ate lunch at a local restaurant where I got a colorful salad with carrots, cucumber, lettuce, cheese, hard-boiled egg, and something else I couldn’t quiet make out. It was different and delicious (and I don’t even like hard-boiled eggs). This salad was followed by an interesting vanilla pudding with chocolate flakes.

Then we went bobsledding and played in the park before heading back to Bonn. 

After a few hours of rest at home we all decided we weren’t done for the day and headed out to an enormous out door concert called RheinKultur. It was filled with bands with pounding basses, beer, pretzels, and most of all people. The craziest thing they had was a place for bungee jumping.

The next thing happened so quickly that my friend James threw up. Because beer and running do not go together. Some of us had buses to catch, so a small group of us left the concert early. But seeing as one girl was running late for her bus all seven of us had to run for like hell across town to catch it.

Once we got there Chris and I decided to take the same bus back together because we live four blocks apart. The only problem is we only knew his bus stop and not mine seeing as I don’t take the bus. Long story short: He walked me to my house, then my host dad and I walked him back to his house where everyone was asleep, and then my host dad and I walked back home. The end of day one. 

P.S. To see more pictures, check out facebook.

Leaving Tomorrow

When I was a junior in high school, a bunch of chinese exchange students came to Baton Rouge for a week. When my family was offered the chance to be a host family for one of them, we jumped at the opportunity. The experience was fun but it didn't last nearly long enough to get as much out of it as we would have liked. But the best part was that now I was involved with an exchange program called Nacel Open Door. 

That July I was able to host a French student named Ana for a month. It was then that I started searching the NacelOpenDoor website for my own opportunity to study abroad. That was when I stumbled upon the Congress-Bundestag Vocational Youth Exchange Program. It's a scholarship program which allows 25 students that have just graduated from high school to live in Germany for a year to not only learn German and experience some of the German culture, but also do an internship in a field of their choosing. 

Well, after months of working on papers and going through an interview, I got the scholarship and tomorrow I leave with 24 of the coolest people to Bonn, Germany (where I will be staying for the next 7 weeks). 

LoveLoveLove

                Kelsey