Me with New Prague in the background!

Getting ready to board the boat

Just one example of the really pretty builidngs in Prague!

HerbstFeiren started on October 10th! The year we have two weeks of fall break! For the first week my family and I drove to Prague. WE stayed about a half hour by car away from Prague! Our plan was to stay one week Saturday to Saturday, but we ended up leaving a day early because where we stayed there was a TON! Of snow. We didn’t have snow/winter clothes with us or snow tires for the car. I was so shocked that I saw snow in the beginning of October! I still think it’s too early for snow, but it didn’t faze my host family. They were like ehh that’s normal! The weather was really cold and windy, but the beautiful city made up for the fact that I was freezing. Every building had some really cool architecture of some sort. On Sonnestag (Sunday), we went to Schloss Jemniste. It was cool. The tour was in Czech, but we were given books to follow along. I had one in English, and my family had one in German. It was pretty cool. At the beginning of the tour I took a picture with the flash, and the tour guide said something gin Czech, so I didn’t understand it. I figured she meant that we were not allowed to take pictures. At the end of the tour the tour guide translate into German, and we were allowed to take pictures. We just couldn’t use a flash. I was sad I didn’t know that before, but o well. I guess things happen like that when you in another country. When we went upstairs we had to put on slippers over our shoes, so we would not scuff the floor. The slippers were way too big for Sussi (my four year old host sister). It was funny to watch her try to walk in them. Then on Montag(Monday) we went into Prague! It was soo beautiful! I’ve never seen so many building that pretty! We went on a boat ride to tour along the river. It was really nice, just really cold! We then, later, had lunch at Kentucky Fried Chicken. That was my first “American” fast food restaurant that I had eaten at since I arrived here in Germany. On Tuesday we went to a Burg (fortress). I don’t really remember the name, but it was a simple Burg. The interior wasn’t very brightly painted, or jeweled like the schloss on Monday. Then on Mittwoch (Wednesday), WE went back onto to Prague. We took a bus tour, and saw Prague from the bus. On Donnerstag, It was too cold to do anything. Where we were staying (about 30 minutes outside of Prague) we had a snow! My host dad didn’t have winter tired, so we couldn’t go anywhere. That day we just chilled at the house, and watched movies on the laptop. We lost power several times that day too. We decided that we would go home a day early because of the really bad weather. So on Freitag (Friday) we packed up and drove home. When we arrived home, my host mom and I went shopping for a winter coat and boots for me. I don’t have a super thick jacket for the winter here, so I needed to buy one. My host dad told me that normally it is around -15 degrees C (5 degrees F) during the winter here. The second week of break was more of a chill week. Bo another exchange student from AFS that lives about 30 minutes away from me came to stay at our house for the week. We went into the city a couple times, cooked “American and Thai food”, and just relaxed a bunch. The Thai food was really good! I loved it a lot! Also, on Thursday, my Liaison (Max) came over to our house to check and make sure everything was going good. It’s pretty cool that Max is my liaison because I knew him when he was on his exchange year in the U.S.A. He was an AFSer in Missouri the first year I started volunteering. That was fun. He came over for dinner we all talked, and Bo made Thai food that night! It was really good! All in all my entire break was very good! I had a nice relaxing time!

AFS Camp! :DDD

all the excahnge students in our area team!

The Americans! Moira from Lopez Island, Washington, Johannes from Massachusetts, and Me!

The Awesome broken umbrellas that were at the entrance of the Youth Hostel we stayed at! (Moria, Me, and Bluette from China Town Paris, France)

The Volunteers! (Roman from Russia, Nolwenn from France, Martin from Germany (AFSer in Maryland last year),and Louisana from Venezuela.) Yes only one of our volunteers is actually German. The others had thier AFS in Germany. Roman and Luisana now live in Germany, and Nolwenn just came from France for our awesome orientation!

Moira and I playing on the playground!

The first weekend of October I had my first AFS orientation! It was amazing! There is only 15 or so foreign exchange students in our area team, but the weekend was awesome! It was great to hang out with other exchange students! There are three Americans including me in our area team. From one country we are the largest group. All of the orientations were in English since most of our German is not good enough to understand. We had a lot of energizers that we did. I remembered a lot of them from when Max did them at January orientation my first year I volunteered with AFS. We had several group sessions where we broke out into smaller groups and talked about how things were going so far. My favorite activity we did was when we went in to the city center of Muelhaussen (the city where the youth hostel was that we stayed at). We were broken into three teams given 5 questions about the city, and we had to run around the city looking for the answers. It was really cool!, and fun! After the activity we were given time to just walk around the city. It was really nice to just chill in the city center with 15 awesome exchange students! We had a talent show Saturday night, and that was a lot of fun. We (The Americans) did our own version of the Throwdown Hoedown. It was pretty funny. We didn’t have music so I sang and Johannes kept the rhythm, which I kept forgetting about, and Moira danced. The original plan was for Moira and me to both dance and sing, but I hurt my knee so badly that it made it hard to walk. So I just sang. There were other talents too such as salsa dancing from the South Americans, singing from the French, a Thai dance, the national anthem from Finland and Brazil, and skits. The whole weekend was just absolutely amazing! We all had soooo much fun! I can’t wait for the next orientation in January!

Mein Geburgstag!

my presents

i was sooo not awake at this time!

the yummy cake we made!

My birthday was definitely different than what I am used to! I woke up to my host parents coming into my room with a tray of candles and my birthday candles. I don’t remember much of this time because I was still asleep during this time. Lol! Then I opened my presents in my room while I was getting ready. I then went to school. When someone would remember it was my birthday they would hug me and say “alles zum geburgstag.” It was nice though that they remembered since I’m the new kid on the block. Then after school my host mom picked me up from school, and we went home. I went on my computer to start checking all my facebook messages. I had over 50 notifications when I got home! Then we had the cake we had made the day before. It was really good! It was chocolate cake, with pears, and whip cream on top! Then we were all done with that, and my little sisters went to their room to play, so I went back to facebook and I had 20 more notifications. Later we went out to eat at a Italian/Greek restaurant! I was missing pasta sooo much, so it was great! My birthday was great, but it made me VERY! Homesick. I really really missed my friends and family back home. I cried a lot because I missed them on my favorite holiday of the year. To tell the truth, I even missed having to carry around the HUGE! Balloon bouquet around school. Although it’s a pain and I always hate it I really missed having it. I guess I secretly like it, and it’s such a secret that I didn’t even know it! Lol! SO yea my birthday was nice here, but I missed a lot of things from home that day.