Okay. Where to
begin? It fells like it has been FOREVER since I have written a blog post but I
have been extremely busy hanging out with my friends and family the last few
days and being at language camp for the last week and a half. So how has my
life been? Get ready for a really long blog post and many pictures ….Hope you
have a few minutes to read this.
So the week before I
left was my "goodbye weekend" and I said my last goodbyes to my
friends and family.
Tuesday:
Father-Daughter baseball game. We went and saw the Arizona Diamondbacks play
the Tampa Bay rays...This was going to be my last baseball game for a year
considering they don't really have baseball anywhere either than America. And
guess what? D-Backs won! Great last baseball game to go to.
Wednesday: Can't
remember what I did that day.
Thursday: Said my
last goodbyes to friends and gave my hair a highlight. I had some of my closest
friends come over to my house to say goodbye; we just talked for a few hours
and we all cried when everyone had to leave, knowing this was going to be the last
time I would get to see them for a year. And when everyone was gone, I got to
go and get my hair highlighted as a going away present from my mom.
Friday: Last day in
Arizona! I started the day off by finishing packing all of my stuff for the
flight and then my mom and I went to go see We are the Millers (best fricken movie ever by the way- highly
recommended). After the movie, the whole family went out to dinner at my
favorite restaurant: Oregano's; and I even got to have my favorite food in the
world which is this rigatoni pasta covered in chipotle sauce and chicken. Then,
when dinner was done with, my mom took me to the Jonas brothers concert! It was
amazing getting to see them again considering the last time they were on tour
was three years ago, but they were still just as good as they were before, if
not better. And, to top it all off, in the end, one of the opening acts- DJ
Mike Tompkins- had a meet and greet, so I got to get a picture with him. Not to
mention he signed my shirt and proceeded to write "Good luck in
Germany".
Saturday:
Departure day! I ended up only getting about 3 hours of sleep since we didn't
get home till about 11:30 pm and I had to get up at 3:00 am to get ready to
leave; This included weighing my bag and having to take stuff out of them,
since I didn't weigh them properly, along with saying goodbye to my lovely
rabbit and dogs and what was left of my room. After my last goodbyes, we were
out of there and made it to the airport around 5:30. I had to pretty much
immediately say goodbye to my parents and go through security...it was a weird
feeling knowing I wasn't going to see them for a year. It's still crazy to
think about. (in the pictures below: in the car on our way to the airport, just
leaving my parents and security, view from the plane before leaving Arizona.)
I ended up having a
flight with another CBYX girl that lived near me in Arizona. So we both flew
together to Washington DC; but before we could meet everyone there, we had an
hour layover in Chicago, so the other Arizona girl and I decided to roam the Midway
airport for a little while, getting to get our picture taken with the blues
brothers. Then, as we were heading to the gate we were going to be boarding the
plane from, we ran into two more CBYXers: Finn and Saige. This was really
exciting cause that was the moment I felt this was all really happening!
Finally, we all made
it to DC (around 5:00 pm) and got to transfer ourselves to the hotel we were
all staying at so we could see all of our lovely friends again...it was like
one great, big family reunion! The whole night was spent hanging out around the
hotel just talking to everyone about our summers and our excitement of Germany.
Sunday: The big
travel day! This is the day I was not exactly looking forward to considering I
knew how long it was going to be. We ended up having to leave for the airport
at 7:00 and our plane took off at 9:30. (There was a lot of waiting at the
Dulles airport.) Unfortunately, this plane wasn't going from Washington DC to
Frankfurt; instead, it was going from Washington DC to Dallas and THEN to
Frankfurt. But the plane from Washington DC to Dallas was really cool cause I
ended up having a seat next to this kid from Germany coming on exchange to
America and was going to be living in Alabama. I got to ask him some of the few
questions I never got answered and then he ended up asking me a whole bunch of
questions about America and it was really cool cause not many exchange students
have asked me questions like that before.
Once at the Dallas
airport, we had a three hour layover, so my friends Finn, Celina, and I decided
to roam the airport, get something to eat, find some last American chocolate,
and then just do a lot more waiting for the flight.
I got to spend it
with some amazing people. It was weird getting free movies and getting food on
the airplanes and stuff since they don't really do that on regular flights- it
was totally a completely new and different experience. (In the pictures below:
the plane we were flying on, map from starting point, view outside the window
during the sunrise, map when we were flying over the UK, Finn and I being
really tired, and the last picture we were so happy to finally land in Germany
and get off the plane.)
Once we landed in
Frankfurt, we got the news that our bus had broke down so we were going to get
the pleasure of waiting a the airport for 4 hours. Not only that, but the bus
ride to Hedersleben was 5 hours- but the views out the window were amazing...along
with the monastery itself. (pictures: first German food/ pretzel, I guess you
can say the first sign I saw written in German, outside the airport, the
Frankfurt city skyline, the German landscape- most of it is farmland, and the first public toilet I came across realizing I had to pay to use it.)
Language Camp: So we've been here for just about 2 weeks now and it can be a lot of fun and also be really boring. However, the monastery and the town is really pretty...and the food here is fantastic! Not to mention the people here are amazing, especially the teachers, and they try to make learning German as easy as possible. My scheduled for the day is as follows:
6:00am- wake up in the morning and run with a group of people around town
8:00am- breakfast
9:00am- German Language class
12:00pm- lunch
1:00pm- study time
2:00pm- free time
3:00pm- more language class
4:00pm- cake and coffee time
4:15pm- even more langauge class
6:00pm- dinner
7:00pm- German news
8:00pm- free time/study time
10:30pm- curfew
Other than that, I've been working on this post for a couple days now, so I don't really remember what I've been talking about. So I'm just going to post this, read through it later, and make a better post later.
~Hallo from Deutschland
