Let's pretend for a minute that it's still December and I didn't actually miss two weeks of writing in my journal on account of being lazy...ok, enough pretending, the imagination door has been closed. So therefore, I've got a bit old fun pile of catching up to do. On Friday the 19th we had our last day of school. First period class that day was Biology and we ate breakfast together. Everyone brought their own silverware and dishes and then contributed by bringing one more other food item such as nutella, orange juice, brötchen or cheese. I brought peanut butter, because [View Full Entry]

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This morning I had forgotten that one of my classes had been canceled so I woke up at 6:45 only to realise that I now had narly two and a half hourse before school started. Therefore, I hvaea bit of extra tie to do some writing. on Saturday I went to a christmas party for the Karneval people with my host family. It was in a bakery and ended up being super fun. The teenagers all sat at a table towards teh back and played poker. One of the male karneval members dressed up as St. Nikolous during one point in [View Full Entry]

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This morning I awoke at 7:30 and prepared myself for the day trip to cologne that Kairi and I had planned a while ago. The trip ended up being a huge hunk of awesome Christmas shopping fun. Both Kairi and I got some great stuff for ourselves as well as for our families. The christmas Market in cologne was open and I swear to you my dearest reader there is no better atmostphere than that of a German Christmas Market. There were a ridiculous amount of people there I heard languages and accents from all over. Kairi and I bought chocolate [View Full Entry]

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The Christmas market is finally open! Although I suppose I shouldn't really say finally because it is only about two hours until thanksgiving day is completely over and actually the christmas Market has already been open nearly a week. Regardless though I find it to be an absolutely marvelous tradition and I love the atmostphere. this is the first year ina long time that I have hactually felt like using the phrase 'Christmas Spirit'. I'm totally stoked for Christmas this year, no joke. It gets dark very early so going for a walk at five in the aternoon is usually done [View Full Entry]

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This weekend I was in Monschau for a choir trip. It was nothing extraordinary really. Monschau is just a little village near the edge of Aachen, only like an hour long drive. The elevation is higher there though which makes it much more friendly to snow. I never would have guessed that I especially being a North Dakota girl would have been so excited to see even that small amount of snow. The sun was shining and the mountain air made everything amazingly clear and definite. The temperature was perfect for making snowballs, warm enough for the snow to stick together, [View Full Entry]

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I got to bake cookies for my Germany Course yesterday evening. Our teacher told us to translate a traditional recipe out of each of our own countries into Germany and then bring it to class for the others to try. This excercise seems fairly dull until you consider thatour class consisted of natural born cities from Brazil, France, Spain, Greece, Italy, Thailand, China, and Korea. That truly was a prominant culture lesson. The Italian guy in our class discovered Nusspli (similar to Nutella, but made directly in Aachen) The French guy had brought it along to spread on the crepes that [View Full Entry]

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I was surprisingly nervous about going to Orchestra practice for the first time. I found it intimidating because no matter how many people I asked I couldn't find anyone else who was also in it. Today I found out why...there are only nine members, including myself. I absolutely loved it though. I had to sight read which is something I'm not particularly good at. This made my first pratice with a small group mildly humiliating. Added to that is the fact that I was the only flute. There was one other wind instrument, a clarinet, played by a guy in the [View Full Entry]

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Let me just quickly tell you about my day. This week is Praktikum. Last week was Praktikum as well. This is a two week time period were allt he eligable students in the eleventh grade go to work in place of school. I, being an exchange student, stayed behind with a few other kids who had either already done Praktikum at a different school or couldn't find any place open for them to work. So for this period of time the remaining 17 or so 11th graders have a different class plan that allows them to do some catching up. In [View Full Entry]

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Today was my last day of break and I spent it doing the exact same things I've been doing every day for the past two weeks: read and sleep. I finished The Picture of Dorian Gray and I'm going to be so bold as to pick it out as deserving of the title of being my favorite book. Oscar Wilde is a fascinating, however, controversial, man. I suppose I should say 'was' though, because similar to the majority of my other favorite authors he has been dead for a considerable amount of time. I love his book though. I purchased it [View Full Entry]

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The past two weeks have been very uneventful. Apart from my trip to the North Sea I have not left Aachen. Most of the free days were spent doing nothing more than sitting around in my room and reading books that I shouldn't have bought when I already had too many to begin with. Partick came over a few times just to sit around and visit or play cards with us. Today, though, we went to a waterpark in Würselen called Aquana. It was totally freezing in there. And one funny thing about hot tubs in Europe: they are not even [View Full Entry]

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