Settling In

Hallo! I’m now ending my Herbst Ferien (fall break), but I’ve still got some free time, so I’m going to try to get completely caught up with all my posts. I’ve got quite a few to write, but hopefully I can get it done. My last post left off at the beginning of my second weekend in Köln, so I‘ll pick up there.

   After an exhausting first week of school, trying to make friends, and attempting to speak in broken German, the weekend had finally come. I was so happy I could finally relax a bit from the busy school life. Friday afternoon we didn’t have anything planned, so my host sister had a friend over and I wrote some postcards.  The next day started relatively early, as we had some guests coming over. They were all friends of my host mom, most were friends from college. Once all our guests had arrived, around 2:00, we had a short Kaffee und Küchen in our back garden, thanks to the wonderfully sunny day. Afterwards we all walked to the enormous park near my house, to enjoy the nice weather. The adults sat down on the side of the pond and talked, while I, my host sister, and Linus (the son of two of our guests) took a boat out on the pond. It was a lot of fun, and we had a good time. Afterwards I taught them both how to skip stones, which we had fun with for a while.

   Eventually we went back home, and spent some time on the trampoline until the barbecue was ready. Now if you’re American, this barbecue isn’t really much like what you might know. We had kabobs, grilled vegetables, all types of sausages, and plenty of grilled meats. It was absolutely delicious, and I was absolutely stuffed by the end of it all. Afterwards Linus and I played Wii for a bit, and then we all went to bed. The next morning we had another big, delicious meal for breakfast. We ate breads of every type, with plenty of cheese and deli meats along with them. Afterwards Linus and I had some more fun, but eventually they all had to leave. That was our first weekend, which flew by really quickly.

   School went along mostly normally for the next (second) week, but it was starting to get pretty warm. This wasn’t that too bad for me, because I’m from Texas and our summers are hot to say the least, but with no airconditioning in the school, it started to get pretty warm. Due to this, school was shortened on Wednesday, so we got out significantly earlier. My host family took this opportunity to head to Frühlinger See, a lake about a 20 minute bike ride from our house. It was a really nice lake, with clean water, no motorboats, and a man-made beach. The water was a bit chilly, but it was nice and refreshing from the hot sun.

   I also wanted to pick up a few new hobbies while I was here, and I had heard about a fencing school nearby my house, which I thought was pretty interesting. And because I wasn’t already good at any one sport, I thought: “Why not take up fencing?” So on Thursday I showed up for practice at a nearby Gymnasium, and was immediately put in a jacket and a mask, handed a sword, and told to fence. The results weren’t actually bad though, and I won 2 of my first 3 matches. My technique however, was awful (as expected). Once some more people had showed up, we started learning some more technique. It was pretty difficult though, especially with the language barrier. When the trainer explains a parry to us, I often don’t understand it very well and have to see other people do it first. However I slowly got the hang of it, and eventually I knew a few parries. Then we got back in the jackets and fenced some more, trying to put into use our new knowledge. I don’t think I quite accomplished that, but I did end up winning 5 of the 9 matches I played that night. Afterwards I had a few bruises and a really sore hand (it’s not easy holding that thing up the whole time), but not much else.

   On Friday I decided to try to bake my favorite pizza recipe that I love making back home. I had made the dough the day before, just before I headed to fencing. It needs a long rise, so it was good for it to be able to rise for so long. After visiting the store to get all the ingredients and preparing the dough, I baked the pizzas, which I thought turned out pretty well. I had a lot of fun making them, and I think that making food was a really good way to try to connect with them.

          

   We had finally made it to the weekend, and it was so nice to relax a bit. On Saturday we woke up pretty late, and headed to Krefeld, for the birthday of my host-cousin. The drive there was only about an hour, but it was also my first time to ride on the autobahn, and I’ll tell you: they do drive pretty fast. The party was lots of fun, and it was really good to get to know some of my extended host-family, like my host-grandparents. I also got to see a really cool vintage car (turns out most of my host-family are gear-heads).

   That night we decided to watch a movie, and we ended up picking Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Now I’ve been a huge fan of Star Wars since I was about 8, so it’s absolutely amazing that I was placed with a whole family of Star Wars fans. I’d already seen the movie about 6 times, so we watched it in German. It wasn’t bad by any means, but it doesn’t feel right after having seen it so many times in English.

  On Sunday we met with our local representative, our CR, for the first time. We had him over for breakfast, so we could get to know him and vise-versa. Our CR is our first contact to PI, the organization that we exchange through. They keep in touch with both the host student and the host family, and are supposed to resolve any issues we have. We’re required to meet with them once a month as well, so this would be our meeting for the first month. When he arrived, we welcomed him in and introduced all of ourselves. He was really nice, and it was super helpful that he was an exchange student in high school as well (in America). After he had left, I met up with my friend from language camp, Marc (he’s got a blog as well, you should check it out: https://marcgoesgerman.wordpress.com). We met up in the Innenstadt, in front of the Dom. I was a bit late, but when I got there the first thing we did was buy tickets for the “Kölner Climb,” where you climb the tiny, steep, and crowded 509 stone spiral staircase to the top of the left spire. 509 might not sound like too many, but it’s quite a distance. About ¾ of the way up you stop in the bell tower, before continuing on to the top. The view of Köln from so far up is absolutely amazing, and it was definitely worth the work.

  After coming back down from the top, we walked around the Innenstadt a bit more, and got some ice cream. It was good to speak some American-English again, and good to catch up with each other. Eventually we both had to leave, so we said bye and I biked back. Marc is one of my 3 friends also placed in Köln, so we can always meet up pretty easily.

                    

   That covers my 2nd and 3rd weeks in Köln, I hope you liked the post. Tomorrow I should hopefully be able to post my 4th and 5th weeks, and that should be shortly followed by a post about my Fall vacation. And then I’ll be all caught up, yay! Thanks for stopping by,

Bis Gleich!