Oktoberfest

Yesterday I went to Altendorf's Oktoberfest!  I hadn't realized that my family was helping with the festivities, but I had fun doing so.  I stayed behind the bar the entire night, washing glasses, drying glasses, and learning how to serve beer.  Saige was also helping out behind the bar with the same tasks as I, and Jana was taking orders in front of the bar.  A man, whose name I failed to learn (it might be Chris, I don't know), talked to us the entire night in English and taught us how to serve good German beer.  I don't think I was half bad at it.  The man taught us some German songs and made it a little less boring for us.

I had my first German beer!  It was a Pils and it was pretty good.  I also ate pretzels and Leberkäse.  I even bought a famous Oktoberfest Lebkuchenherz!

There was tons of polka music, beer, of course, lederhosen, and dirndls.

It was a very, very fun night!

Liebe,
Meredith

Learning how to perfectly portion beer

So. Many. People.

So. Much. Beer.

My Lebkuchenherz

Beer-stained dirndl :'(

First German beer

A glimpse of my task. Oh, the guy left for 2 minutes and beer flooded the bar

Warm Wednesday Walk in Wolfhagen

It was a warm Wednesday afternoon, when I decided to take a walk around my town with the other exchange student, Saige.  There was still more of the town that I wanted to see.  I took my Nikon with me, and by the end of the day, had taken over two hundred photographs.  Oops.  We found a cute little park that had so many different colored leaves layering the soft ground (I say soft because my shoes would sink in as I walked.)  There was a serene pond with a crazy-looking duck caw-cawing over it like I was trespassing on his territory.  The pond was accompanied by a couple rustic bridges.  We eventually found our way to the Marktplatz and spotted the town's fountain, which was designed with a wolf and lamb because of the town's history involving the Brother's Grimm.  You could say I had fun in the unusually balmy weather, walking through the park, taking loads of photographs, and mindlessly wandering through town.

Note: Every town's Marktplatz (market place) has a fountain.  Cool, right?

Hope you all enjoyed the dab of alliteration I threw into this post's title.

Liebe,
Meredith

Someone's backyard, wow

I don't know what to caption this because I'm not quite sure what it is.  Okay, I just came up with something really intelligent and witty: ROCK

Cute playground set in the cute little park

Just daydreaming on the pond

The crazy bird being not-so-crazy the second I snapped the camera

Marktplatz

A street downtown

Wolfhagen, hence the wolf

I'm sorry, but this sign cracks me up

Late Orientation Camp

I boarded a train for the first time by myself on Friday, in Kassel, Germany.  The ride took about two or so hours to Gießen, where I had to get off and catch another train.

I was picked up from the Grünberg train station and shortly after met fifteen other exchange students from around the world.  Two from Turkey, one from the Czech Republic, one from Poland, one from Chile, one from Venezuela, one from Honduras, one from Thailand, one from Hong Kong, and six from America.

We played various games, including Princess and Dragon, Ninja, and Duck Duck Goose, and had several seminars regarding host families, school, friends, and free time.  It was a fun and informative weekend.

One of the activities we did was to go into town with an apple and a hard boiled egg with the task to get the egg boiled and to trade the apple for something else.  We had to keep trading items in hopes of winning a prize.  I was teamed up with John and Adriana.  First we received four Euros for the apple.  Then a woman gave us a free bag of cookies.  We then traded the cookies and four Euros for a bottle of wine.  After that I bought some ice cream and John and I really wanted to try Döner.  While waiting for our Döner, a man gave us a free bottle of wine and kept asking us about our year for a solid thirty minutes.  We finally received our Döner and finished our game with two bottles of wine.

Sadly, we did not win the game, but we had some more fun at the talent show.  I played flute for about a minute and then drew really awful caricatures to German pop music.  Shortly after, we had a dance party with music from each of our countries.  Naturally, we danced to Cotton Eye Joe.

We had a barbecue with brats, steak, and potatoes, and it was also Carlos' birthday, so we ate cake and played with sparklers.  It was quite an evening.

It was such a great weekend with really awesome people.  I'm really excited for our next AFS camp!

Exchange students are great!  :)

Liebe,
Meredith

My AFS Chapter

Overcoming the H2O

Before this month I absolutely hated the taste and feeling of mineral water.  It felt like an army of aquatic bubbles were attacking and burning my throat and taste buds.  I've been drinking one glass at a time, and now, after almost two weeks, I can't even tell that it's different from bottled water, like Deer Park, in the States.  My question is, will bottled water in the U.S. taste really strange when I return?  Hmm...

Settling In

I left Washington DC, on September 6, at 5:30 pm ET, on Flight 989 United Non-Stop to Frankfurt.  The flight was uneventful, but I did have time to watch a few American films and television shows before landing in Germany.  When we arrived, I quickly got a taste of German weather -- raining and chilly.

We slowly moved through customs and finally gathered in the main section of the airport with other AFSers from the rest of the world.  I met several people who I had met over Facebook, which was nice.  I spent my last few hours as a normal, American teenage girl playing BS and an idiotic card game with a few friends.

I boarded my train around 2:45 and arrived in Kassel around 5 (I'm not positive on that.)  My host family and a family friend, Valeska, warmly greeted me with a large, painted banner that read, "Herzlich Willkommen in Deutschland, Meredith."  My host brother, Timon, and Valeska then began to play the American National Anthem, and then proceeded into the German National Anthem.  It was quite nice.  We then got into their car and drove to our town, Wolfhagen.  The beautiful landscape I saw out of the window was extraordinary, nothing like what we have in Virginia.  The mountains sculpted with many dark-green trees, fields of all different colors, and on top of that, several villages consisting of one hundred or so houses each.  It truly was beautiful.

My first official meal in Germany was... WIENER SCHNITZEL!  Quite good, I might add.  I say first official meal only because we had some German pastries and sandwiches in the airport provided by AFS.  I had a comforting first day.

On the second day of being in Germany, I made acquaintances with a few of my host sister, Jana's, friends, and a few family members.  We at delicious cakes and brownies that had been wonderfully baked by Jana, Valeska, and my host dad's parents.  I feel very welcomed, which is great!

After exploring the town and getting over jet lag for a few days, I finally attended my first day of German high school.  I attend a Gymnasium, which is the advanced high school here.  Many students attend my school from several different villages from the surrounding areas.

My first class was English!  My teacher was quite excited to have me in her class because it will be great to have a "native-speaker" in her AP-styled English course.  Without the pressure to have my English perfect, I have realized that I really like writing, so maybe I will keep it up!  There's also another exchange student, Saige, from Kansas who is with FLAG-CBYX.  She is in a few of my classes which is nice because I'm not the only one wondering what the heck is going on.  

My other classes are German, Spanish, Religion, Math, History, Physics, Chemistry, Politics, and Art.  I got out of gym for the year so I'm quite happy with my schedule.  A lot of the classes are quite confusing at times if not always (that excludes English, of course.)   I have very nice teachers which helps a lot.

Differences between American and German schools:

1. A teacher doesn't have a specific class room, they change most days, but follow a schedule
2. Students are not assigned a lot of homework
3. Students are not given a lot of classwork
4. About 60% of your grade is based on class participation
5. You are not forced to sit in a lunch room for 20 minutes
6. You sometimes have breaks in between classes where you can go home
7. Students snap at teachers to get their attention
8. You can wear clothing with any swear word on it
9. You can wear anything you want (tank tops, shorts, leggings, you name it)
10. Not everyone goes to the Gymnasium

Differences between the U.S. and Germany

1. A lot of bread is eaten in Germany
2. Radio is not censored whatsoever
3. There can be nudity on TV at 4 PM
4. Smoking is completely normal, and from what I've seen, not really frowned upon like in America

So far I'm loving it and I'm happy with the decision I made to go abroad.

Liebe,

Meredith

Pre-Departure Orientation

I'm not going to lie... The orientation was pretty boring because we repetitively went over topics that we have talked about so many times, like the iceberg.  Don't get me wrong, we did learn some vital things and meeting everyone was great.

A few of us had ordered a pizza, but by the time a few of us had returned to the hotel some guys had already scarfed the medium-sized pizza down... THANKS.

All-in-all, I had a fun time with the other AFSers!

Host Family

So I thought I would write a more detailed description about my town and host family.  I will live in Wolfhagen, Germany, a town situated not far from Kassel, and the birthplace of the famous folklore authors, the Brothers Grimm.  To give you a better idea, I used Google to calculate the distances, and Wolfhagen is 33.3 km west of Kassel, around 204 km north of Frankfurt, and about 449 km southwest of Berlin, the capital of Germany.  You can easily take a day trip to another city or even another country!

It seems like everything is in walking distance, which will be a significant change from having to drive everywhere in the U.S.  I will walk every morning to school, which is a few blocks away.  I was told that it is about a three-minute walk.

Meine Gastfamilie (my host family)

• Bernd, my host dad
• Christine, my host mom
• Jana, my host sister, 16
• Timon, my host brother, 11

From Skyping and messaging  my family, I think that they're the perfect fit for me.  I'm so excited to meet them this weekend!

Two days from now I will be departing from Washington, D.C., and heading off to Frankfurt!!!

Tschüs!