my title: i noticed today while reading over some of the other exchange students blogs that they all come up with creative titles (or some just dont give titles) but mine are always the same. I dont know why this is but i like posting a title with how long ive been here and the current date. during this week i even when through my agenda from school and wrote the numbers of days i have been here on every day that way every time i do a new entry i can just look up the day instead of counting all the way from July 30. it kinda  saddens me though that i do not take the time to come up with a cool title ... so i think that after this post i will start having subtitles... sounds good.

but anyway back to what you want to hear... this week was all about german. I was told last weekend that Thursday would be the day i go to get my Visa! the guy who issues the visa doesnt like to give them to people who cant speak german so this entire week was OMG i have to learn now! it was actually a lot easier to have time for German since most of america started school on Monday... so as soon as i got home from school they started school so there was no time for talking to them so it was all german all the time. everyday in school i worked in my german workbook and talked to people in german as much as i could. when they started speaking english to me i told them german... except when it was a word i didnt know. i think in just a week ive made a lot of progress. its kinda weird reading some of these other people's blogs and seeing them talk about the language barrier. i dont think i really experienced that because i am in the bilingual class and my host family speaks really good english for the most part.  on tuesday i met with Anke (my councilor) to go over some paperwork for the Visa and we talked about my german and how people who speak english to me are only holding me back... she said the next time we talk she will only speak german.  on wednesday i had a German lesson with Herr Stichert and it went pretty well. they are from here on one on one so its more at my level and if i think its too easy i tell him and we move on. Thursday came and when i got home peggy told me it had been rescheduled because they had issues with the computer program.  so no visa yet (yay more time to learn). Friday was another Stichert lesson. that one went pretty well minus the 10 minutes of making me say the difference between "s", "ß" and "z" ("zzzzz", "sssss", and "ts"). (-.-)

this week has also been full of me teaching. first, John started school and is in German for the first time so i am helping him learn numbers 1-20 and his alphabet for the first test. Thursday night i met all of peggy's friends that she meets with once a month. we talked in german and things and i taught them the word "polka dotted". I also taught one of my future host moms the difference between american and English spellings (why do english people put a "u" after every "o"? its not necessary).  then at school theres been a lot of talk about tests and things (german teachers like to give pop quizes a lot) and so clara thought we might have a Geography pop quiz and since it is in english i would be talking it too... well i taught Clara the meaning of "B.S.ing it" in english. she had a little giggle and went back to what she was doing. Clara is definitely the goody goody of the class. her notebooks are so organized and colorful. all german students have these weird pens that are the modern Quill and ink (like with the tip like that) and to erase the ink they have these magic marker thinks that you write over it with the white side and it makes the ink disappear and then you write over that with the blue side (blue because the weird pens only have blue ink). so when clara writes she uses the weird german pen, when she makes a mistake she erases it with the magic marker, then writes over it with the blue side, then if she messes up with the blue side she gets out the Whiteout and then writes over that with a ball-point pen. As an american i think it would just be easier to use the ball point pen in the first place and just use white out all the time (in classes where you are required to use pens and just use a pencil in all the others) but maybe its just an american thing. I also attempted to teach Clara the "THIS" game ... where you write "this" across you fingers inbetween you knuckles then you say "THIS IS buggy, buggy says HI, THIS IS buggy when a car goes by" and you move you fingers to spell the words... i know most people wont understand that description but i tried... but clara already knew it... it surprised me that they know these little kids games that american kids play in school.

When i met with Peggy's friend (all of my future host moms are her friends) we planned out when i will be changing host families and i also found out i will have 4 host families instead of 3.  so on september 18 i go to stay with Christel for about 6 weeks then im back with peggy until the end of january then im with Astrid until end of march then i go back to peggy for about 3 weeks then i go to Sigi from the middle of april until i leave.  so i am constantly coming back to this house, which i am ok with, it just seems kinda odd.

Thursday i also had a while by myself in the city. i spent about two hours just walking up and down the main drag looking in every store and seeing what places i might like to buy stuff from. there is a "tourist trap" store... one that is jam packed with tons of stuff... i like these stores i could go in there everyday that i lived here and find something new that i never saw before. i also treated myself to an ice cream cone which i ordered by myself without using english at all (yay).

then friday was KuchenTag (cakeday) at school. It was Katharina's birthday and they made her a cake ... it was marble cake that was covered in chocolate ... not icing.. chocolate.  it was really good. then Saturday i went to Katharina's Party. It was me, Katharina, Clara, Jenny, Luisa, Luise, Franzie, and Charlotte.  we loaded up in the 2 cars and drove to an area around koblenz. This was the first time ive seen Koblenz in the day light so my face was plastered to the window. all there was was mountains full of Vineyards! then we drove up a mountain through all of the vineyards and the switch backs and came to this little restaurant. i am in love with this place! everything on the menu has blackberries in it. the place is a blackberry farm with a restaurant. i ordered in german a chocolate waffel with vanilla ice cream, blackberries, and whipped cream and i was in heaven! they also had alot of drinks that were made of blackberries but it took me so long to decipher the menu of food and choose (which i did right on the spot being the last one to order) i didnt have time to look at the drinks so i just got fanta.  after that we drove to a castle in Bad-Honningen called Schloss Arenfels and we had a private tour. the castel is in the middle of renovating so there were some rooms that were nice and some that were blah. there were a bunch of towers and we went up in like 2. the first one was a small one. the second was the biggest tower in the castle. we started in the attic and started walking up the spiral staircase. at this point there wasnt very much bird poop anywhere but the higher we got the more there was (me not liking hights + creaky old stairs +bird poop = me holding on to bird poop covered railing). after we got to the point where you couldnt see the stairs through the bird poop guess what there was.... DEAD BIRDS! so we had to step around the dead birds and then we are almost to the top and theres a dead bird that looked like it had been there for a few years and was practically part of the stair.. and guess who stepped in it because they didnt see it... me. but after 5 mins of climbing stairs we finally got to the top and got to go outside on the 1 and 1/2 foot wide balcony that wrapped the whole way around the tower.  you could see forever it was so beautiful. it was warm and sunny and i just wanted to stay up there for another hour (partially because i didnt want to walk around the birds again lol).  but we only stayed for 10 - 15 mins then went back down... missing all the birds this time.  after the tour we walked through the "castle gardens" (the woods surrounding part of the castle) and we found Wonderland a few times lol without the white rabbit even (Katharina is a Johnny Depp fan and so of course she likes Alice in Wonderland). after that we loaded up in the car and went home. i was so tired the whole way home i was dozing and couldnt keep my eyes open - clara just kept laughing at me. when we got back to Katharina's the Pizza had just arrived. i have never seen pizza this big... it was easily 3 -3 1/2 feet wide. one what a combo of different toppings and the other was just cheese.  we ate the pizza and drank non alcoholic cocktails with lime, brown surgar, and "american ginger ale". i asked if there is another type of ginger ale that isnt american and they said no... i think they just put american in the name so people think it tastes better ... personally i think american drinks are better than german drinks (maybe there is some type of restriction on what can go in drinks in germany but not america).  after pizza we had ice cream with pears and freshly melted chocolate on top.  then clara left and we watched a movie.  The movie in america is called "Taken" but in Germany its called "96 hours". why is the title still in english? but apparently these girls do something like this about once a month and everyone brings a ton of candy... i mean a ton. there were probably about 10 bags of gummy bears and others of the sort, chips and others of the sort, and a huge box of sour gummy things. i took some of my american candy and the people who tried the Reese's cups really liked them so that is a plus. after the movie we sat and talked a little bit then her parents took us home. next week is Franzie's birthday ;).

Another thing ive noticed about germans is they have some weird ways to drink.  we were at the store the other day and there were packs of drinking straws that were easily 4 feet tall! i was like omg why are they so big. peggy and laura explained to me that people get a bucket and mix a type of wine or champagne with juice and fruit like pine apple and then put these huge straws in the bucket and all stand around and drink out of it!

oh yeah another thing i found out this week... apparently my school is having its first prom/ball (not exactly sure if its going to as formal as a ball or if its just a prom but no one else does either because it is the first one) and so laura's dance studio is offering ballroom dancing lessons to the 10th grade so i will probably be doing that with most of my class if it isnt too expensive... just so i will know some type of dancing for the future.

                                          P I C T U R E S   O F   T H E   W E E K                                                   

hand painted walls

this is the tower we went up in with all the dead birds... the highest you could go was to the ring just above where it narrows.

if you look in the background you can see the chalk board i was talking about  last week

FRED the sail THERE WILL PROBABLY BE MORE PICTURES FROM KATHARINA'S PARTY POSTED WITH IN THE NEXT FEW DAYS