Foto post!

I have gotten very good at snapping photos one-handed while riding my bike.  Here's Lubeck by day.

Karstadt's impressive badminton racket selection.

Mia, Hannes, and Stine's head, flying kites.

 

Lubeck in the very early morning.  This one was also taken from a moving bike.

The front and back of Charlottenburg castle in Berlin, modeled after Versailles.

The first Hooters in Germany.

 

Another photo from a moving bike.  Pretty proud of this one.

 

This is what the traffic light for pedestrians looks like in East Berlin.  In West Berlin, it looks just like the ones we have in the US.

 

And of course, the Wall.

Berlin!

Hallo! 

My tests are over!  No more SAT for me.  Hopefully I'll have some more time to post, sorry for the absence.

SO.

Alex, Hannes and I went to Berlin- we left on Friday and came back earlier today.  The trip was fun!  I was expecting a longer drive, but it was only a few hours.  We stayed with Alex's Bruder, Martin.  We didn't get in until late Friday night, so we had dinner (Thai) and then turned in.

Saturday I had to wake up early for my tests.  It was neat, though, because I met Claire at the testing center- Claire is another CBYX/AFS kid.  You can check her out here, if you like.

The tests weren't so bad.  Math I feel pretty good about.  I could have used five more minutes for Chem, but it wasn't too bad.  I felt like English Lit went okay, but I never have any idea on those- the questions are all so subjective.  But who knows?  Maybe it'll be like my Critical Reading, and be fantastic.  Maybe not.  The way I see it, worrying makes no difference.  I'll find out when I find out.

After the tests Martin showed us the city- we had brought our bikes along.  I have a lot of pictures, I'll post them tomorrow.

Berlin is kind of cool in that it has so many flavors- no only is there East and West, but there's also the French sector, the Russian sector, the American sector, and the British sector.  You can really find everything there.  Touring it by bike was the right way to go, too.  And, what do you know, we ran into Claire again, this time with Jack, who she's staying with this weekend.  Jack is another AFS-USA student.  In a city with 3.4 million people, what are the chances of that?

This week is all vacations for Schleswig Holstein, but I still need to go to my language school.  :(  Too bad.  One of the kids in my class wanted to jam sometime this week though, so that should be fun.  Other than that, I still have all my college apps to worry about, so I'm keeping busy.

Mmmkay.  That's all for now.  Berlin pics tomorrow!

ich bin exhausted

Today was really tiring, and I have a feeling all week will be tiring.  Don't expect to see too many posts this week.

My SAT II's- Chemistry, Math, and English Lit- are in Berlin this weekend, and every day I'm studying Chem und Math a lot.  I've also been trying to finish college essays, but that's on hold for now.

For the last week I've been trying to get mein Monatsfahrkarte, and every time I think I can get it it seems I run into another problem.  A Monatsfahrkarte is basically an unlimited-use bus ticket, for one month.  Except I'm buying twelve months worth, because it's cheaper to do that than ten months separately.

Anyway.   I need to print another picture for Stadtverkehr Lubeck.

Today after the language course I had sport!  There's a funny thing about sport- not only am I one of only six kids in the class (and the only guy), but our teacher is Ms. Penny.  They're like the same person.  They look the same, they talk the same (albeit in different languages), they dress the same.  It's weird.

Sport is also much more of a workout that gym in the US.  By the time it's over, I'm exhausted.

Oh!  And today was Stine's Geburtstag.  She also got a bike.  Anke and Alex gave me a light and some fenders to put on my bike today, too, so now I'm all set.  Alex was worried about me biking to school, because here in Germany it's a law that you have a light when you ride at night.

Camera batteries died again.  I still have some new ones, though, so I'll change them tomorrow.  Batteries here are expensive, though!  They're very pricey.

Also today I had bigband- we played I Wish, Birdland, Thieves in the Temple, and Spain.  If anyone from the LHS jazz ensemble reads this, suggest Thieves in the Temple to TC.  It's a really fun song, and not too hard.  It would have been amazing back in the days of Bone Power (it has a trombone feature), but I'm sure that you'll make it sound wunderbar.

mmmkay.  Back to studying.  We'll see when I get to post next.

Tut mir leid!

Sorry I haven't been posting- I had gone to an AFS Post Orientation Orientation camp this weekend, and there wasn't internet access.  I wrote posts anyway, but couldn't put them online- I've back dated them, so you can check them out, if you so please. 

This morning Alex and Anke picked Vincent and me up from the camp.  We stopped at the beach on the way home, and it was kind of funny- the tide was out, and all over the beach were jellyfish that hadn't swum out fast enough, stuck in a little puddle in the sand.  We didn't stay too long, though, because it was a little cold.

It was nice to come home- I was really exhausted, and it was nice to take a nap in my own bed.

That was kind of weird to say... my own bed is in Germany.  Go figure.

Alex, Hannes, Mia, und Stine and I all went flying kites after I woke up from my nap.  I'll post some pictures later.  It was pretty good, but the wind was inconsistent- when it was good it was good, when it was bad it was bad.  It sprinkled a little, but then there was a nice rainbow.  They have nice rainbows here in Germany.

Dinner was ziti and meat sauce!  Nom nom nom.

But now I go back to college essays and chemistry.

Later!

AFS Late Orientation Camp

So.

Camp was not bad.

Cons:
Bad timing.  It would have made more sense to do it last weekend- this weekend kids are finally starting to get busy, last weekend there wasn't much going on.  Also, this weekend was the only weekend of the extremely small Okotberfest here in Lubeck.

The camp was in English!  I don't know why, but there was very very little German spoken at the camp, even by the leaders.   I would have welcomed the chance to practice my German, but... oh well.

Dinners were very small.  Most of us bought candy bars after dinner.

I didn't get much sleep, but that's to be expected- it's not really a con, it's just the way things are when you put  a bunch of kids together.

Many of the workshops focused more on our home countries than Germany- I feel like I learned more about Italy and Canada from the girls in my group than I learned about this country.

Pros:
We all got to meet each other- everyone from the Lubeck chapter and the Kiel chapter  was there, 17 kids total, so we have all have a bigger network.

The leaders were all kids, 17 or 18 years old, which was nice.

The location- a Jugundherberge (Youth Hostile, and I'm sure I spelled that wrong) was very nice.

One of the games we played, Ein Apfel und ein Ei, was really fun- they split us all into groups and gave each group one apple and one egg, and then dropped us off in Scharbeutz (which I also spelled wrong), a nearby town.  There, we were told to trade the apple for something and cook the egg.  This was problematic, because it wasn't very nice weather, so nobody was outside, and only one or two of us spoke any considerable amount of German.

Anyway, we did pretty well.  My group, which was me, Kita, and an Italian girl, ended up going to twelve houses- we traded our apple for three candies, we offered to trade our three candies for two pens, but the man just gave us the pens, we traded the pens for a shell, but the lady told us to keep the pens, we traded the shell for some honey, we gave the candies to a lady and she cooked our egg, we traded the pens again for a candle, and then traded the candle for the lamp.  By the end of the day we had turned an apple and an uncooked egg into a jar of honey, a lamp, and a hardboiled egg.  Not too bad.

The other houses told us to go away.  But in general, people were very nice!

And the last pro- Vincent.  Or Phat V.  Or Vince the Prince.  Vincent is a student for China- he's in my Fremdsprache course- and he's pretty cool.  Spending the weekend with him was fun.

Freitag

So.  We have an AFS Late-Orientation-Camp this weekend.  That’s why you’re getting this post and the last one and maybe the next one very late.  Blame it on AFS.

Anyway, Fremdspracheschule in the morning, and then Cesar, Bruna, Vincent and I went to the ZOP were we were supposed to meet Geo, but he was MIA.  Anyway, we went into town and got some delicious food before we left for Ponitz, where we were picked up by someone from the camp. 

So far, the camp isn’t really anything new.  It’s just the rules again, and ice breakers, and talking about how we feel.  I’m a little disappointed, though, because it’s almost entirely in English- I would have really appreciated the chance to practice my German.  It’s getting better every day- I’m starting to understand more- so I think it’s a shame that they don’t use it so much here.

Anyway.  It’s fun, although I can’t help missing what I would have been doing in Lubeck- I had been invited to some things this weekend.  Oh well.  Next time.

Sometime I need to talk about Vince the Prince, but now I need to go to bed… hopefully if I forget, I’ll see this post and talk about him one day.

Until then!
Tim

Fremdspracheschule

Thursdays mean no Waldorfschule, so it was only the Fremdspracheshule today.  The Fremdspracheschule is kind of cool- yes, it is a little slow, but it’s neat because the class is really Deutsch being taught in Deutsch.  There’s more than a dozen languages in that class, and not even half of the class speaks English, so the teacher can’t teach in another language.  Surprisingly, though, it works.

Before taking this class- and living here- I always wondered how on earth people like Cleopatra and Squanto ever figured out enough English to speak with the settlers and Mrrs. Lewis & Clark.  I mean, it’s easy to conceive learning nouns- point and name.  But verbs, especially more abstract ones, always seemed hard to learn.  It’s possible, though!  I promise!  We even manage to have some interesting conversations- we talked, in Deutsch, along with some Greek and Latin queue words, and lots of charades, about mythology for more than half an hour.  It was fun.

After school today I went into town.  First stop was Karstadt (I hope, last time I spelled it wrong).  I had to buy some new Federballe, and I also picked up a squash ball.  Here’s a pic of the racket selection- probably nobody will appreciate this except maybe my dad, but it really is impossible to find nice badminton stuff in the US.  This isn’t even that big of a store, either!


I also bought a book of short stories- English on one page, German on the other.  We’ll see how I do with that.


My last stop was at Wandels Apotheke, a drug store.  I haven’t needed it yet, but I picked up some Vitamin D- I’ve been told that I’ll need them in the winter.  Then it started to rain, so I went home.


Also!  I tried to teach Hannes the baseline of Chameleon today.  Hannes likes everything, so he had fun.  Maybe if he gets it good we can play with it a little more.  It’s a lot of fun, playing with Hannes on his Cello.

Okay, enough for today.

Gute Nacht!