It’s hard to believe that I’ve already been in Germany for only two days, it seems like so much longer. And I’m already behind on my blog posts… so anyway, Friday. Friday we were able to sleep a little later. We were forced to sit through some more ridiculous sessions, this time “travel, safety &; responsibility” (which turned into how many pointless questions about drinking can people ask) and “carrying the mission forward”. Finally after what seemed like forever we boarded the buses for the airport. Darrin wasn’t kidding when he said there would be a lot of “hurry” and “wait” at the airport. We waited in line outside the airport, and in line inside to check-in and then in line again to get through security. Everything went fairly smoothly until I thought I had lost my green card, which was not the case (mom or dad, if you’re reading this, relax I have it). And then we were finally at the gate. There was more sitting around and waiting and then we at last boarded the plane. So being as unlucky as I am, basically everyone sat next to someone else from AFS except for me. But since almost everyone slept it wouldn’t have made much of a difference anyway. So I spent the 8 hours watching movies, listening to my ipod, and trying but failing to sleep a little.
At around 8:40 we landed in Frankfurt. Though it actually took around an hour, getting our luggage and going through customs seemed to go by really quickly. Finally all of us made our way out of the international arrivals hall to be greeted by a sea of blue shirted AFS-Germany staffers. They called out the names of those whose train would be leaving soon and I was one of them so I quickly said goodbye to my friends, grabbed my suitcases and sped walked after the blue shirt I was supposed to be following. Well it turns out that since our plane landed early we were supposed to be on the platform yet, so after sitting there for about 20 minutes they made us walk back to this waiting rooms where all the AFS kids were waiting until they needed to catch their trains. So after sitting there for about 25 minutes all the afs students from all around the world that were heading to Bavaria left for the platform, again. It was really cool to talk to other kids from around the world, there were some from Italy, two from Finland, some from Latin America, and one from Australia. I felt so incompetent speaking to them, because they all knew English, their home language and quite a bit of German.
It wasn’t long until our train got to Würzburg and myself and other students got off the train. The rest of my first day is a bit of a blur. My host family is super nice. I have my own floor with my own room and my own bathroom which is totally awesome. So the next day I had a real german breakfast complete with brötchen und wurst. I then looked through the New Jersey coffee table book I gave her. which was a little difficult because she kept asking me to translate the little captions which were very metaphorical…. Then we went to my first german soccer game. I wish I had taken my camera but unfortunately I didn’t. It was really interesting to see how into it everyone got and it was only a local game, Uettingen vs. someother town whose name I forget. Then I met my… hostsister I guess though she’s like 30 something. I also met her daughters Nele (age 3) and Jule (age 5). They’re both really cute and love to build puzzles with me. That evening we ate a Deutsche Kochen restaurant which was really good.
Monday I had a lot of errands to run. We went to a photographer and I had pictures taken for my bus pass and my german id. Then we went to Würzburg to ger my german id, which wasn't that successful. This afternoon Inge, Nele, Jule and I walked around Uettingen. We stopped at a farm and my host nieces called the goats who at once came stampeding down the hill where we fed them all stale bread.
It was pretty cool, especially since we don’t have anything remotely like that in chatham. So tomorrow is my first day of school, and I’m pretty nervou I think it’ll go ok though. I’m excited to finally meet some other people my age.
New Jersey Time
Würzburg Time
