so after my last blog post i went and had dinner with the family. after dinner the dog was sitting on my lap looking out the window and he farted... like it even made a noise... everyone looked at me for a second and then realized it was the dog, partially because i was already laughing. it was a pretty funny way to end dinner... even though it was pretty gross that the dog farted on my lap.

Wednesday i got up and went to school. i looked a bit in my new german book but didnt really like it... its pretty much the same thing my last book was minus all the grammar exercises, which is pretty much all i did in that book. so since it was only the 2nd day in november , i started to get thanksgiving fever.... the rest of the day i spent drawing turkeys lol (see pictures of the week). i even taught clara a song ... " the turkey is a funny bird, his head goes wobble wobble, the only thing a turkey says is gobble gobble gobble." i need to  find out if i can find the macy's day parade online somewhere and watch it, or record it. i have to try to figure out how to explain all of this stuff in german... ive explained about thinksgiving dinner and black friday but not the reason behind thanksgiving or the parade. my host families have told me about St. Martian's Day that is November 11 that is a religious holiday (no getting off school)... this is the day that starts off Karneval (a huge celebration where everyone is drunk and dress up and theres parades... different cities have karneval at different times of the year... Cologne is the biggest city for it)... and people celebrate is by eating a goose sometime in November, and they also have "st. martian bretzel" (st. martian pretzel) which is like the donuts at a chinese restaraunt but really big and shaped like a pretzel... at my school they also have jack-o-lantern ones that i ate a few weeks ago. but anyway the goose eating isnt as big as thanksgiving (probably because most people have karneval in mind).

Thursday my thanksgiving-fever was put on pause. we had gym (eww). that meant that my group and i had to perform our dance that we made. we had time to practice and then we we the last group to go . one of the girls in my group missed like half of the gym classes and the weekend session so she didnt know the dance and she had a twisted ankle so she didnt dance. we did our dance 2 times (so the teacher could see everything) and then we got our grade. we got a 3 overall which is like a C because it was apparently too short even though it was over a minute long and over 8 sets of 8 beats like it was supposed to be and our song was "Mr. SaxoBeat" which is extremely fast. the teacher told me that i had no life in my face and that i  looked like i wanted to kill someone...   i was just thinking why dont you get up and perform a dance in front of a bunch of girls you know know and i want to your face ... not to mention that if you mess up it effects the entire groups grade and if they get less than a (2-) most of them consider it failure. so now we have to perform it this week in gym again with the girl that could never show up and it has to be longer. after school thursday i got to take Merlin for a walk ... at least i get out of the house a few times a week. then i went shopping. i got my november allowence and i still had 40 euros from the money i took out of my USA account. i went and bought markers and colored pencils and my first fountain pen (the weird pens that all germans use) and some other stuff... it totalled 20 Euros... oops. then i went and bought stamps for 7.50 euros ... so there went my 40 euros. then that night i also tried to buy the Red Hot Chili Peppers shirt that i wanted from the concert but didnt have enough money for... but its online as limited edition now so i wanted it and its 10 euros cheaper but it wouldnt take my Bank Card so i had to ask my mom to use her credit card and then it worked so i hope it will be here sometime soon... i cant wait! then i tried to buy john an anniversary present (our 1 year anniversary is 11.11.11) (i cant say what the present is in my blog on the rare chance that john actually reads it) but i have to actually transfer the money into the business's account but i dont know how to do that so i need to ask somebody.

so after my shopping sprees, friday came around. i spent the day at school drawing a cover for my new german lessons binder with my new markers. we only had 5 classes again (3rd week in a row) so i had to sit in the student lounge area for an hour again and wait for my german lesson. after german lessons i got to go home and relax for a bit and then my friends Alejandra (with rotary from Bolivia) came over and went to a disco with me. my dance school had a disco and pretty much the only people who were there were kids from the dance school. i think since most of them have just turned 16 (and you usually have to be 16 to get into a normal disco because you usually drink) most havnt been to a normal disco. i hadnt wither but i have heard about them from the other exchange students. none of the people danced normally, they all tried to do our ballroom dances which was really dumb. so then i got a few people to dance with us and i helped them out... i mean im not a good dancer but my motto (that i am still getting used to) is "I am an exchange student. i dont care what people think" and when around other exchange students that is how i am. so i just did what ever and tried to get others to do the same. alejandra was definitely very popular. she could dance really well and the one kid from my class was all over her (i think he had quite a few beers) and was talking to her the entire time... he even bought her a coke and asked her to dance (which didnt work out too well). all of my friends and i found this extremely funny because he is the know-it-all hid in the class and doesnt seem like that type of guy. it was funny when Alejandra and i were dancing and some of the guys would come over and attempt to dance... basically they were jumping from one foot to the other... literally jumping like kicking their heels back and everything lol but they probably had at least 5 beers so i can understand. after the disco we went home (in the porsche... i dont think that andreas realized that i had a friend with me ... so i was in the backseat) and we watched tv while both being on Facebook. the date of this night was November 4th... the next day was novermber 5th. john was going on and on about how "Anonymous" was going to hack into Facebook and shut it down and hack into wall street and reset everything back to 0 ... facebook because they are "giving out people's personal information to companies to spy on you" and wall street because "99% of the population owns 1% of the wealth and 1% of the population owns 1% of the wealth". this was all supposed to happen November 5th... If you've seen the movie "V for Vendetta" you probably understand it a little... if not you can read bout it here : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_(group)  so in honor of the possibility of facebook possibly shutting down, alejandra and i watched "The Social Network" which is about the making of facebook. alejandra didnt really understand understand it because it didnt have an option for spanish subtitles so we watched it in english (which her english isnt well enough to understand it all) with german subtitles (which werent very helpful). by the time the movie was over it was about 2 am so we went to bed. the next moring i got up and alejandra was already ready and was going to go into town with peggy. peggy told me tthat they would go to town and i could take my time getting ready and i miss unerstood and ended up throwing some clothes on and threw my hair up in a bun and went downstairs to go with them. we we went and bought cheese then bread and then meat (shocker!). when we got cheese we all tried some and i thought it tasted like onions but neither of the others thought so. then when we went to buy meat. peggy asked me if i wanted anything and i said yes but i didnt know what it was called so i just said its pink and thin... that included everything in the meat wagon (literally a meatwagon... a mobile deli). everyone including me and the staff of the meat wagon kinda laughed at me. i now the things i like when i see them but not by name. turns out what i was talking about they were out of that day so i didnt see it. we ate breakfast and alejandra went home. then i went with Andreas to a Porsche dealership. on the way there the speedometer was on 300 km/h (189 mph) the entire way except for the few people in the fast lane that werent paying attention and didnt move out of the way fast enough. we got to the dealer and i got to look at all the porsches and all the other things they were selling with the word "porsche" on it. andreas had to get snow and ice tires on his car. they put a sticker on his speedometer that said max speed 240km/h (150mph). that sticker didnt really help all that much we were probably over that a few times. before leaving the house i sent john a message saying i was going to look at porsches and when i got home he's like i hate you its not fair you got to go more than 180mph on the autobahn in a porsche the fastest ive gone is like 130 in zack's SAAB and it was only for like 3 seconds. i spent the rest of the day listening to how its not fair lol. i FINALLY had my last german lesson with Herr Stichert. we had a skype session for a half hour and just talked a bit and that was it.... skype sessions with german teachers are pretty good... then if you get frustrated you can just hang up lol. Sunday i got up a little after 8 and got ready and went to pick up dad at the train station. he didnt look too happy when he got there. the suitcase he brought me weighed 58 lbs (27 kg) and most of the escalators werent working that early in the morning so he had to carry it up and down the stairs along with his carryon and laptop bag. while i was getting my bag out of the back of the car, i dropped it on my foot... now i have a giant bruise which is in the same exact spot where my shoe laces go (i tie them on the inside) which makes it even worse. we went in and ate breakfast. dad didnt eat that much because they gave him breakfast on the plane. after breakfast i showed dad around the house a bit and then we spent sometime in my living room and cracked open my suitcase. i dug through the layers hugging almost everything i pulled out. then i saw them ... my wonderful new Shoes! they are my anniversary present from john... because they cost over $100. after going through the suitcase we went with andreas and had a tour of Montabaur and Koblenz. we went to my school , the castle, and then to the pedestrian zone where all the shops are. of course it was sunday so all the shops were closed but there was really nice weather so we walked around a nit and then we drove to koblenz. 5 minutes after we started driving dad was sleeping lol. when we got to koblenz we walked alot, and dad didnt have good shoes on so by the end he was in a bit of pain. we went to the palace and looked around and then walked to the Deutsche Eck.  On the way back to the car we stopped at a cafe that is a little tower with the dome (wow just had a "im forgetting my language" moment... i tried to spell dome "dom"(the german way) and the "domb" ) as a cafe and you can see over the river and everything. we had something to drink and then drove home. dad fell asleep again but at least he go a little bit of sleep. when we go back to the house dad and andreas went and sat on the deck and i went and repacked dad's carryon with the stuff i had to send home... then i joined them, then peggy, then laura. we just sat and talked for a while. dad's not used to the whole "germans dont understand american slang" thing so i am pretty sure my host family didnt understand half of what he said lol but thats ok. then we drove him back to the train station and we said goodbye. i heard from mom that he ended up having to run for his train because when he came he arrived at track 4 and when he left he was supposed to be at track 1 but he went back to track 4. so he had to run to catch his train ...he almost didnt make it. the rest of sunday was spent going through my suitcase and talking to john. when monday rolled around i didnt was to get out of bed ... i was so tired! i went to school and spent the whole day writing this blog entry on paper.... at this point i am on the top of the 4th page all front and back. after school i had to stay late to work on the gym class dance. this time the girl who was always absent was there but 2 others werent... its like can we get a break please! afther that i walked home, ate lunch, and had 2 hours until dance class. at dance my partner wasnt there so i had to dance with another girl... she danced the guy part at least. after dance i was exhausted.... not much sleep on the weekend and 3 1/2 hrs of dancing on a monday i just came home and plopped down in my chair and didnt move until i went to bed.

this morning i got up and curled my hair... everyone likes my hair curled it just takes forever. i didnt really do anything at school until art class... we are working with clay now! i like clay. after art it was time to go home. i got a letter in the mail saying that my Visa was ready but that i needed some letter with a pin number which i dont have so i have to wait to find out whats up with that and i have to pay 50 EUROS! there goes all of the money in my bank account!  Today was also "Hug an Exchange Student Day" which i only got a facebook hug from john older sister tiffy. (-.-) (<---- this is a face for those people like my mom who always have to ask... shes always like what is ":D" mean and im like mom its a face lol) Well i think thats about it....

what happened to my hair while we were supposed to be finishing our gym dance

all my food items that dad brought with him

all the clothing items dad brought with him

saying goodbye

the sticker from the porsche with snowtires

porsche car seat anyone?

ice cube tray

porsche shaped computer mouse and usb stick (usb is hard to see on top to the left)

this is more in my price range

me and alejandra

i no i spelled gobble wrong but germans dont know that lol

my first fountain pen :)

mini mushrooms

theres still apples on the apple tree

the rose is taking shelter in the bush

holly

fungi yummy