Saturday, November 29, 2008

Thanksgiving in Deutschland!

Tut mir leid, I know I haven't written in forever!
Everything has been very busy here, my time here is going by so fast!
Next week I will have been here three months!
Not too much until this week has happened.
I've been in school taking tests with my class, I actually have the best grade in math in my class!
I had originally thought I needed grades for Bryn Mawr, as it turns out I don't, but I thought I would get some Universities perspectives of how that would look for a transcript. One University said it was fine if I had no grades, as long as I met the other requirements, the other said I needed grades or evaluations of some kind. So I'll be requesting some kind of grades, hopefully starting based on effort and eventually moving to what the rest of the students are graded on.
I'm freaking out slightly becuase I have my SAT next week, and I'm a little worried about the quality of my english, especially (don't know if that's spelled right) my spelling!
This week I made Thanksgiving dinner for my host family and a couple other exchange students.
It was so much fun, I enjoyed cooking so much, and I think my host father did too!
Two of my host cousins came, and it was just all around really nice evening!
My host parents asked me and the other exchange students to show where we lived on GoogleEarth. When I looked there were these little camera things on our street, and I clicked on it, and it gives you a real view of the houses. I could see my house, and one of my family's cars, and I was like "Oh my God that's my house!!!!!!!!.....and my car!!!!!!!" and I continued repeating that for about two minutes, much to the amusement of all the other people in the room. I was just so astounded, I hadn't seen the house in so long, and the pictures were of this Halloween, and we had purple netting on the bushes, and I don't know, it was very surreal!
I'm very close with all the other exchange students and around Karlsruhe. One of my best friends moved families today though, because her original family is vacationing in Brazil for a month. Anyways she lives near Stuttgart now, and that's not that far away, but it's really sad for me and all the other exchange students here.
I have three really good friends in the school, and next weekend I think we're baking Christmas cookies together. I have, however, talked with all the other exchange students here, and we've all agreed, we have good friends in the school, but 95% of the time when we do something it is with other exchange students.
This doesn't bother me, I'm kind of used to having two groups of friends, because in the U.S. I have all my friends in my current school, but also old friends from SFA.
My German is getting pretty good, I speak a lot accidently in German, during my English class. Today I was thinking in German, and I didn't realize until an English word popped into my head, and was like "hmmm that's a different language."
Pictures to come soon!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
HAPPY (late) THANKSGIVING!!!!!!!!!

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

München etc


































Ok so these are basically photos of München (specifically churches in München, and I won't even attempt to name them all), but there are also pictures of Bavaria Filmstudio (Das Boot!!!!!), Wangen, Kempten, an old monastery (not in München), and Neuschwanstein a really cool castle in the Alps that belonged to Ludwig II. It unfortunately was not the fantastic weather like the day we went hiking. For a view of the castle in good weather go to
http://www.neuschwanstein.de/
and then click on the UK flag in the bottom right corner (if you want Enlgish).
There you can also find pictures of the interior of the castle, which I could not do on the tour as it was not permitted.
Oh yeah and it's a castle on a mountain, built for the "fairytale prince" of course I found horses!


Saturday, November 1, 2008

Vacation etc














































Ok so these are absolutely ALL my photos from the Alps. So there are some from my very first views of the Alps, which were really cool because everything below was in the clouds, but then it was very very clear all of the sudden!
There is another particular picture of the Germany/Austrian border on the mountain. Part of our hike was in Austria and another was in Germany. The lake is Bodensee, which is Germany's largest lake. You couldn't see to much, because as previously mentioned it was cloudy below.
I have lots more photos of Wangen, München, etc, but I don't have time to upload them at the moment so maybe tomorrow!