Fussball

Last weekend i went to my first german football game. Like all europeans Germans seem to love their football, the german soccer league has 6 (i think) levels. We went to a small game for the 2nd lowest level. There were ONLY afew thousand people. I went with my friend Philip Lamse and some of his other friends who don't go to our school. I had to get up at 7am in the morning on a sunday to catch my train, absolutly brutal for me. We all met at the train station and i got introduced to everyone as "that canadian exchange student". There were afew hundred people who came with us on the train, along with about half as many police and members of the riot squad. When we got to Oldenburg finally (the game was Meppen vs Oldenburg) we were greeted by even more police. When the group came out of the station the police had made a U shape around the exit outside so we could not run away. After we were all outside they closed the U at the end with more police officers and we had an escort of 5 police riot vans lead us to the stadium. About 20min later and after alot of cheering for our team and burning the others teams flags and banners we got to the stadium. We all bought some food and beer (i just bought food), and went and found some seats. We waited about 15min and the game started. The way they had the stands set up was quite different from canada. One half was for Meppen fans and the other half was for Oldenburg fans. Between us was a 2m tall fence with barbed wire on top of it. Out side the feild they had probably about 50 riot police waiting just incase. It was a prety good game despite the fact it started raining half way through the second half. But in the end Meppen lost 2-1 to Oldenburg. Now was the fun part, afew 100 fans who were now very drunk and angry that their team had lost had to walk through the city of the team they just lost to. Basicly when we got out of the stadium some people started rioting, we got to the opposite side of the group and made it to the station. Thats about it...

P.S. sorry for the spelling my chell specker is not working

Long time no see

Well i havent posted anything in about a month now. Since than alot has happened. I had 2 weeks of holiday in there and i saw alot of stuff in that time. I went to the north sea, stayed in berlin for a week, watched a germany movie in german, made new friends, etc. Im just uploading all my photo's on facebook now and i will post a really long post about my germany trip with rotary.

First inbound meeting

Well the first inbound meeting was this weekend. It was a day plus an overnight stay. It was held in Oldenburg which is about 100km away from Meppen. I went with the other guy in my city, Patrick from New Zealand, and two rebounds. Originally we were supposed to get the train at 9:00 but Kiwi called my house at 9:15 saying that the first class we had to go to was canceled so we could catch the one at 10:00. Kiwi's host father picked us all up and was at my house around 9:55. We literally got to the station ran to the ticket machine and jumped on the train. We had a short lay over is some random small train station so we all had coffee and chatted about exchange stuff. We caught the next train and arrived in Oldenburg at about 11:30. We walked about 1km to the rotary hall where the meeting was. There were probably about 200 people in the main lobby so we all wandered as a group for a few minutes. After talking with some people Kiwi told me that we didn't not have any classes until 18:00 and we were free to wander in the city. He left and i stayed back and talked with a bunch or rebounds and outbound, mostly trying to convince the outbounds Canada was a better choice than USA. After a while all the outbounds went for a giant meeting into a lecture hall and the rebounds and me stayed out side. I talked with a bunch of rebounds from USA and New Zealand and they all gave me just general tips about exchange and told me about what the rotary clubs here are like compared to North America, this surprisingly was very useful. At about 14:30 a Rotarian came up and talked to us and asked us some questions, when it came to my turn I told him in German that i didn't understand and i was an inbound from Canada. He got quite angry with me and started asking why i wasn't in my classes, and literally dragged me into a room where i found 50 some odd inbounds all listening to a presentation. He called over an older Rotarian who was sitting at the side said something in German really quickly and left. This Rotarian spoke enough English to explain to me that apparently classes had been going since 9:00 (it was not at least 15:00) and that it was a requirement of my exchange to be in them. After i explained my side things got sorted out, apparently because my friend from New Zealand was already here for 6 months he didn't need to do orientation and since i had not been to a local Rotary meeting yet my club had not given me my information.

I joined the class at the end of this presentation which was basically the same the we had done in Erindale and all the other exchange students said i was actually luck to have missed it all. After that we went up stairs to do some role playing stuff. Basicly there were 2 different classes, one would do role playing the other would have an information sesion. Well it was our turn to do role playing. In my class it was about 90% mexicans and brasilians afew americans and one canadian. We had a really bad skit about drunk driving and after one hour of pure torture we went to the lecture hall where both classes met up and we would preform our skits for eachother. This is where i found that infact we didn't have 90% mexicans and brasilians, it was really more like 95%. The other group was entirely mexicans and brasilians plus a Finish person, a French Person, and two canadians, and afew Americans. The two Canadians were both a year younger than me and girls, one came from a tiny town in Manitoba very close to Selkirk (where derek is) and the other came from somewhere in B.C.. We did the presentations for eachother where i realized exchange students are not picked for their acting skills. We got out grabed all our bags and headed to a school gym across the street where would spend the night. Dinner was at 19:00 and it was only like 18:30 so we all mingled. I met two cool Americans (well as cool by American standards) and we talked about all the halarious stuff that has happened on our exchange so far. Before eating dinner we had to bring our bags into the gym, they got checked to make sure we wern't sneaking in drugs or alcohol. They guy who checked my bag was talking to me and asked about where i was from and how things were so far. After he finished checking my bag he told me i had done a very good job of hiding anything i shouldn't have brought. We ate dinner which was just some plain bread and spagetti.

After we finished eating dinner the Rotarians told us we could go into the city and just wander around. On our way out the same guy who checked my bag yelled at me not to get TOO drunk well i was gone. Me and the two Americans wandered around the city together for about 2h, again we talked about all sorts of stuff. Sometime around than i got the nicknames "Prodigy Child" (hahaha i know) and "Human GPS" (Because i always knew where we were). We got back to the gym and met up with a large group of people leaving and decided to join them. They asked me to lead them to a street with a lot of bars (this was the Mexicans and Brasilians) so we walked to one. They all stood infront of afew bars for about 30min but no one was willing to go and try and buy some alcohol (even though it is legal to buy at 16 here) so they went to a pizaria and bought some. The group went to the river which was just outside the down town and sat around and talked. One american was COMPLETLY drunk and was trying to jump into the river. Another group of exchange students walked by who were going into the city and the non drunk people (which was only me and 3 Americans now) very quickly joined them. We went to a nice bar in town and just sat around talking. No one in this group got drunk, but eventually the other group found us (along with the really drunk American). We all stayed around until the bar started to close, probably about 23:00. So we all walked back to the gym, well i walked, some people had more of a drunken crawl.

When we got back to the gym i went and sat with the two other Canadians. they were having an argument about abortion. It was not my best idea of the night to join a debate like that. After that ended we all talked about how the school system compared to Canada and realized school in North America is a joke, 2 years ahead of Ontario and 3 years ahead of Manitoba and B.C.. I left after they decided to try sleeping and rejoined my 2 American friends. Earlier that night probably around 22:00 some Brasilians and Mexicans had turned on some music and started dancing. It was currently 2:00 and they were still dancing. The 3 of us sat there talking and watching the dancing people as we slowly fell asleep. At like 4:00 we realized that they would never stop dancing so we decided to try and get some sleep. Probably about 3h later at i woke up and they were still dancing!!! I don't know how they do it. My American friends and I all decided to get some breakfast so we went into town and found a nice Bakery. They each had muffins and coffee and i had a croissant and a coffee. They were astonished i drank it black because one girl had 6 sugars and 6 creams. We walked back to the gym and packed our stuff. There was a large group picture. Me and the other Meppen people had to leave early to catch our train. We said goodbye and left. I slept most of the train ride, than when i got home i also slept.

Ridiculous

Ok well I'm just going to write a quick post about how ridiculous class is here. Yesterday i saw my schedule and saw of my 6 classes today 3 where canceled. Well that's kool, no school really. Well i arrive this morning at school and look at the schedule and i see now that 5 of my 6 classes are canceled. I am really starting to wonder why the teachers actually cancel class...honestly...

Sports

Well I don't have anything really exciting to write about now so ill just talk about how my sport schedule has changed.

I run everyday I don't have something else happening(or i try to at least).
I have a spinning class every Friday which is crazy.
I do weight lifting twice a week, usually Wednesday and some other day.
I have a track and field class every week on Friday(will start doing this twice a week in the future).
I have gymnastics class every Thursday.

It is odd here how they have gym classes, you don't have a "gym" class instead you have a sport class. You can either choose swimming, track and field, gymnastics, or team sports. I plain suck at team sports so i didn't choose that, and I'm too lazy to bike to the pool for a class.

Holland

Well this weekend i went to Holland. It was about a 40min drive to the City we wanted to go to and only 20min to the border. I went with my host mother and one of our neighbors who is an english teacher for young children. When i got there it basically looked the exact same as germany except alot more bikes and the houses were smaller. We wandered in the city looking for a cheese shop (apparently dutch cheese is the best in this area), when we finally did find one i was amazed. It was a store about the size of something you would find in the camberidige mall with cheese from the ground to the roof. Organized by type age color and some things a person who doesn't make cheese would not even try to understand. We spent about 30min having one of the people take us around explaining all the different cheeses and when we heard one we might like we would try a small peice. In the end we left with 3 KILOgrams of cheese. After that we went to licorice shop(apparently the dutch also have the best licorice) and got some licorice. We hah lunch in town, and than drove back to Meppen. Only spent about 3h in Holland.

P.S. i forgot how food french fries with mayonnaise was

Two Weeks

Well I've been here two weeks now. But ill write more about that later.

This weekend i went to Munster which is basically the super shopping centre of the area. We went 1h by train to get there. I went with my Mutti, Brother, host grandmother. First we went to this REALLY weird place to get my brother some clothes. It was a outlet for skater clothes but outside were a bunch of people dressed in medieval out fits selling wooden swords and other things. After that we went down town and saw the farmers market. It was literally about 4 city blocks just people selling stuff. I think we spent more than an hour there just looking at things and trying samples. We went to what i was told is the best bakery in Germany and we got some really good bread. After this we went to a special cafe that only serves high quality ice cream. We saw afew churches and the rathaus (said rat-house) which is the city hall. We spent about 6 hours there and than took a train home. I had a nasty head ache so i slept on the ride home. After dinner we went out and got a movie to watch in the evening, We decided on Oceans 13, it was pretty good and they put on English captions so i under stood.

Sunday i slept until noon, spent the rest of the day studying German. Went to bed at 9:30.

Now about the whole two week thing. Its hard for me to believe that it has only been two weeks here i have already done so much, met so many new people, and learned so many new things. I am really starting to understand when people are talking and slowly I'm able to ask questions or participate in a conversation. I have made quite afew friends and my entire class is always willing to help me with my struggle to learn German, they think it is funny when i start making verb charts or if i use the wrong Die Dar Das. It is getting hard not to talk to any of my friends back home for the pure fact afew of them wont leave me alone, but in 2 weeks they can bug me all they want.

Now i must go to, i have alot of school tomorrow, unlike some people in Canada.

Stuff

I didn't bother posting for the past few days because nothing has happened. I spent most of the weekend studying german and playing games. School is funny, in sciences they are about 3 years ahead of us but in math they are about two years behind. My math teacher showed me the hardest question in this years book and i laughed. I also found out my family loves asian food?!?! Been doing alot of running and thats about it.

O ya and apparently in this town of 30 000 we have more than 60 bakeries.

Second day of school

Well this was a rather interesting day. I got to school and checked the *big fancy German word* or the board with everyone’s schedules. And well I had my first, second, third, forth, and sixth classes cancelled. So I only had one class all day. I met up with some people in my class and we hung out and went into the city to look around. After the second period they went to go smoke and I met up with some of my other class mates who had the same schedule as me except there 1st and 2nd classes weren’t cancelled. We went off into town and we ate a late breakfast at a bakery in town. Than they started complaining that the waitress put the glass on the left side of the plate when she should have put it on the right, I thought it was funny. We ate and than headed back to school, we still had a period left so they showed me the buildings and what not. After the 4th class there was a 15min break and they showed me some other thing like 2 teachers who got drunk at a school trip and the apparently only 2 “ugly” girls in the whole school. We got yelled at by a teacher for sitting on a bench that they were using earlier that day for class pictures and told to put it away in the gym. Well we were in the gym we decided what the heck lets play a game for the last 10min of break. We grabed a ball and started playing soccer. OMFG, I told them I wasn’t good at soccer and 2 of the 5 guys said they weren’t either. Well about 5 min later im standing with my jaw wide open watching these people who “can’t” play soccer jump into the air and kick a ball into the net. After getting completely shown up in soccer we went to class and the teacher spent the whole time rearranging the chairs over and over so everyone could see and hear. Mean while I was studying my German and Philip was introducing me to everyone. After there was still one free period so most of our class hung out and talked. After class I met Nicolas and we biked home. Ate dinner, watched funny German T.V. and played some xbox with Nicolas.

First Day of School

Ok well today was my first day of school I woke up at about 6:30 and started getting ready. I had breakfast and got my bags packed. Me an Nicolas took our bikes to school on our way we saw at least 100 other bikes. We than got to the church (1st period was replaced by a service for the first day of school), and there were probably 200 bikes there. It was basically like the polish church service except in German and no walking around the church. After that I went to container eins and Nicolas showed me some of Janik’s friends. They spoke enough English to explain to me what I had to do. I sat through 3 solid periods not understanding a thing that was going on. During the breaks between classes the guys showed me around. For my last 2 classes I had a sports class, none of Yakik’s friends were in the class so on of the other people from my home room came with me. We went to the gym, but no one was there, so we went to the other gym and no one was there either. On the way back from the second gym we ran into 10 guys who also had the class and walked back to the second gym, still nothing. So we went to the secretary she was just confused and told us to go home…so apparently I get 2 periods off every Thursday. After school Nicolas and I biked home, We had lunch (which is the biggest meal of the day here in Germany). After that me and Nicolas played Xbox for 30min, than I went with Wolfgang to get my self a German bank account. After about 20min and a lot of photo copying we finally got myself an account. We came home and my mutti said I could come shopping with her. Nicolas and I decided to go and I spent the time wandering around looking for interesting German things. We ended up getting a marzipan bar, fanta, thai chilli chips, this weird looking soft drink, a cheese that smells like feet, and all the normal groceries. We came home and had dinner where I got to try the foot cheese and some other German foods. I loved all of them and the family seemed confused. After that I tried the weird soft drink…and it tasted like…GINGER BEER!!! PAT IF YOU ARE READING THIS YOU SUCK!!! THIS COUNTRY IS AMAZING IT HAD GINGER BEER!!! After that I waited for about 30min and Nicolas and I went for a run. We got back after 20min or so and I showered and now I am writing this.

Paper Work

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH so much to do. I woke up today at about 7am and played GTA for 1h until breakfast. After that me Wolfgang and Nicolas went to go register me with the police and get my insurance. That all went well I spent probably about 2h listening to people speak German I didn’t understand and signing papers. After we got everything sorted out I went to the school to get registered there. Well I have I think 9 courses in my first semester alone and I dropped a course also (no bio for me). Than I will have another 9 or 10 courses next semester. School starts tomorrow! I have no idea what I am going to do. I will probably just smile a lot and try and explain I don’t speak German. I also met with my counselor today, he sat with the family for about 1h and talked to them in German a lot about bank accounts and how I must go to school. After dinner my family started helping me with my German, The language is pretty simple just a lot of things to memorize. Also I still have no internet connection. Ill have a lot to write about after my first day of school.

Sleep

Wow…well about that passing out I slept for 19h until someone thought to wake me up for dinner. We had pancakes which in these peoples minds is literally deep fried dough so I will have to get a real recipe soon. After that we went on a bike ride, we made it probably about 1km before it started raining and we came back, So we decided to drive instead, I didn’t know where but I said sure. Well apparently there was only 1 place in meppen they hadn’t taken me…the bar. They got me something the translates to a tight max (max as in the name). It was a plate with a thick layer of meat. No joke a layer of ir, underneath were 2 pieces of toast, and on top was 2 sunny side up eggs. And there is one thing I love here, If you ask for water in Canada you get…well…water. But here is you ask for wasser you get sparkling water. Considering I have only been up for about 4-5 hours that’s all I have to write.

First Day

Well this was my first day in Germany. despite the fact I have only been her about 6 hours I love it. My family is great. Well I left home at about 1:30 on the 17th. We got to the airport and we said all our good byes. I waited for about an hour in the terminal most of which I spent talking to people over msn due to the use a free wireless network and a power plug for my computer. I met some interesting people who traveled around the world teaching at a new international baccalaureate school every year they wished me a good trip. I didn’t really talk to anyone on my flight to Frankfurt but the guy beside me did have an ipod photo. We landed in Frankfurt at terminal B17, my next gate was A15. Those are close in the alphabet right, they cant be that far away. WRONG! the airport was shaped like horse shoe, and my terminals were on opposite sides. I had a 6h lay over so I copied some music to my ipod and started reading a book (The universe in an atom). After 4 cups of kaffee, 200 pages, 120 songs, and that whole 6 hours. This plane ride was more interesting I ended up sitting with 2 people, one who was a German exchange student who had been to the USA (not through rotary), and the other was someone from Calgary who was going to her cousins sons wedding. We had a good few chats and it was only an hour flight so we parted paths. I got off the plane, grabbed all my luggage (it was like the 1st off the plane), and walked into the greeting area. I looked around and I had no idea who the hell my most parents were. After looking around a few times 2 adults and a kid finally waved at me. I walked over and we exchanged greetings in German. They bought me another kaffee (including one on the plane this is now #6). They drove me the hour and a half to meppen from bremen. I was pretty sure I was completely delusional on that car ride because its all a blur, it was either all the caffine or the lack of sleep but ya. Well we got to their house which for a house in Europe it pretty big by my standards. We sat in the kitchen and talked (mostly in english). After that me and nicolas when upstairs to my new room where I have a large LCD tv and an xbox (lol pat and tyler). We played a game until dinner. Dinner was basically cheese meat and bread. After dinner I gave my host family the presents and we went off to explore the town. The town its self is beautiful there is a main road with major stores that you would see in a normal city but there are all in nice old buildings. But behind all these buildings is the town square and the churches. We had some ice cream there because there wasn’t much to do due to the fact everything was closed. The ice cream I had was quite odd it was called spaghetti ice cream. It was ice cream but it was formed into strands and looked like spaghetti when it was in a bowl. Apparently it’s the in thing in Germany so I guess all you North Americans will catch on after I am back for like 2 years. After that they took me home at about 9pm and I said I was going to bed….I wrote this and im on the verge of passing out.

No posts in a long time

It's been a while since i posted so ill give another update. School is over, thank god. I got my hair cut SHORT last week so the Germans do not think i am a freak, and i finally got my plane ticket booked. Other than that i have been doing a lot of shopping for gists and getting stuff for next year.

I have also made contact with my first host family finally. They are pretty cool and we have been sending emails back and forth.

Thats about all i have to say.

Erindal weekend

Well i just got back from Erindal weekend. A lot has happened again since my last post. I often forget about this blog. I have switched to linux now and im going into the last month of school which means lots of projects.

I found out im going to Meppen Germany, I'll be leaving around the 13th of August, and thats about it.

I just had another orienation weekend this time at the Erindal Campus in Toronto. Nothing that interesting lots of talking, got to meet some people who have already gone to germany and got their opinion on things. My parents showed up and started asking every question possible, and thats all that happened there.

As for the future im telling everyone im leaving soon, and i really need to learn some more German.

PEACE!

GERMANY!!!

Well its been more than a month since i got my country selection and there was way to much going on to be able to post right away. If you can't guess from the title I'm going to Germany! That's about all i knew for about 4 weeks...i know know I'm going to be going to district 1850, which is kinda north west Germany. That's really all i know...

With the rest of my life i took a trip to Australia for like 3 weeks, but I'm way to lazy to write everything down from that...so...ya...bye?

Wanakita

Wow almost forgot about this blog but from Thursday to Sunday i cant have forgotten that much. OK so past week i was at camp wanakita near halliburton with all the inbounds and outbounds. We caught the bus on Sunday morning and i car pooled with Jared. I got to the bus point really early and just waited there. Two inbounds showed up first, one from Germany and one from Finland. The girl from Finland was pretty cool and we listened to some of the same music. Everyone showed up slowly and eventually we all were there. We bussed for about 2 hours until we got to our rest stop, doing the Canadian thing I ate at Tim Horton. Well we were all safely inside eating one of our out bounds, Elizabeth, was our first casualty by getting hit by a car. She was fine but still a funny way to start our trip. We got to camp and got split into two groups, i cant quite remember my group all i know is that we had Connor Yuki and Julia. Our group went and built quinzees, if you don't know what that is don't bother asking. We did the hard work compared to the other group because we had to clear the base. After that we went off to cross country skiing, I'm more of a down hill skiing person but it was pretty easy to pick up. After that we went to the core for dinner. Surprisingly the food there was pretty good. After dinner we did something really interesting, we wrote letters that will be delivered to us one year from the time we wrote them. We wrote 3 in total, one each day. After that we just kinda hung around and talked. At 11 we closed down the core and went to our cabins. All of the cabins went to sleep pretty early, except the guys cabin. We played poker, i could go into details but i can just say i won, both games, by a land slide. Next morning we got up, than nearly ever guy took a shower. We were worse than the girls. We went to the core, ate our breakfast (more good food), and split back into our groups. My group went out snow shoeing...yay?...that wasn't that fun bot o well i talked to a lot of people and made some more friends. After that we went to orienteering...i wont even bother talking about this because i was in scouts for enough years that i could find north if you threw me in a windowless room. After that we went back to the core for lunch (more good food! its madness) and once we were done we all joined into one group. Than...we went to dig out the quinzees. Sounds pretty boring but being one of the only guys there i was a power horse and spent the entire time inside a quinzee. After about 3 solid hours inside a quinzee we walked back but this time we took a detour across the frozen lake. We went back to the core and ate dinner, than wrote our second letter, this one we did outside along a path. WE than had a camp fire. Nothing else really interesting happened that day. I went out with 5 of the guys to go sleep in our quinzee. Again morning...arg...but i got up because today was going to be the best day, we were going to do a full day snow shoe trek. Basically we were given a compass bearing and we went off. I spent the whole time checking the bearings and looking for animal tracks. When we finally got there they started making soup and i tried lighting a fire with flint and steel. I eventually gave up and just used a single match to light it. We got back ate dinner than we had a dance. The dance was pretty cool mainly because i was the DJ i managed to sneak some finish music in and the finish girl and me were singing along well everyone looked at us weird. We all headed off and i went to sleep in the quinzee for the second night in a row, the only ones who ended up doing that were me and the japanese guy Yuki. We woke up int the morning and swept out our cabins than left on our bus but not before getting a group photo. It was a great camp and brought all of us outbounds and inbounds a little closer, it showed us that no matter where we came from we were all the same. (yes that is corny)

The First Day of The Rest of My Life

Well to start this blog is going to be my way of keeping track of everything that is happening to me over the next year and a bit. But for that to make any sense you have to know what is happening in this next year and a bit. In the beginning of December i got accepted into an exchange program and i am going to be spending my whole grade 12 year travelling abroad.

I can say sorry to the people who found out long after this blog.

But now that that is all over i can start to write. I was at my first meeting this weekend and i met all the other exchange students. My dad drove me and the other girl from Cambridge (Riley) to the rotary hall in Bolton. We made name tags when i got there and waited as everyone showed up. Than we all got in a big circle and Kathy (Farelly?) one of the Rotarian's gave us this huge speech about how we are a select group and we have to be committed to the program. It's hard to explain in words but i felt like i was getting ready to be trained like borne. Well after that did some games to help remember peoples names and i know have the wonderful nickname of moose because of that. Ya well after all of that we went off in pairs to the local Rotarian's houses...but lucky me there was an uneven number of people so i got to go alone. It didn't turn out badly luckily i ended up with a guy named Doug and his wife Carol who were very welcoming to me. We stayed up to about 11 talking and we all headed off to bed. I got up in the morning had a great break fast, a good cup of black and off to the Rotary club again. We spent the entire morning in interviews, 4 each GAH! After that our parents showed up and got to go to some sort of orienteering. Us kids stayed in the room and did skits until they were done. After that my dad left for a 2 week trip to singapore and i went home.

The people there were are pretty cool. I am still confused as to why girls always outnumber guys in these Rotary things. Well there was 4 guys and like 16 girls. Probably coolest people there where Bam, Julia, and Connor. From what i heard most people there wanted to go to Japan so this is going to be interesting.

And now i am out of stuff to write about...how do you end a blog?