Elephants, Integration, School, Repeat.

 I do believe I can now say I am partially integrated into German culture. I understand Germans, and why they do the somewhat strange things they do. When I got here, I saw these differences as weird, but now I see it all as perfectly normal. I have slid into a daily routine here, that I am very comfortable with. It was changed very suddenly when Raul left two weeks ago, but I have managed to get things back under control. Nonetheless, it's weird that he isn't here anymore. He was such a big part of my year here, and with him gone, I've realized that a big part of my exchange is over. And that scares me. About a year ago I created this blog. The purpose? To write about my exchange year in Germany. Which I kinda have followed through with, no matter how seldom I actually post. When I created this blog, I had just discovered that I would be going to Denmark. I was so excited, but so extremely, nervous. At that point, I had been accepted as a Rotary Youth Exchange Student, but I wasn't sure yet if I was capable of doing it. Did I want to spend the year in Europe? Of course! But as a fourteen year old girl, the idea of being away from my mom for an entire year, was pretty much the scariest idea I ever thought of. So why did I do it? I honestly don't know. But I can honestly say, that going on exchange was the most right thing I ever did. It felt right, and I followed my gut, instead of my head. And something surprisingly wonderful happened. I'm experiencing the best year of my life. So much changes in the course of a year. Exactly a year ago, I was with the other outbounds, in Charleston, for the Rotary District Conference. At that point, I had still thought I was going to Denmark, if I was even going at all. I was scared, nervous, and honestly, didn't know that much about anything. And now a year later, a year older, here I am. In Germany. Having the time of my life. Experienced so many emotions and feelings in the lapse of one year, that I don't think should even be possible. I've been given so many wonderful oppurtunites, and chances. To excel. To learn. To love my life. My life is completely different from how it was one year ago. Back then, I was afraid of leaving home. And now that feeling has returned. But it's because I'm leaving my new home, knowing I will never come back to it as it is now. I am afraid of my life for when I come home. I'm not sure what it's going to be like. I know that not that much has changed. But I wish it has, because I have. And it would make everything a lot simpler. I love my life here so much, and I wouldn't trade anything in the world for the time I got to spend here. I came here, not really knowing what to expect, just knowing that I wanted to get away, and to change. Find myself if you will. And even though I don't really know what I came here to find, I feel content. Like any questions I held before are somehow miraculously answered. Naturally I owe a lot of people for this year. So thank you to my wonderfully brilliant mother, who supported me even when I drove her crazy. Thanks to my sister, who puts a smile on my face every single time we skype. And a huge thank you to Rotary, for all the amazing work they do, and putting their trust in me, and giving me the greatest chance of a life time. Thank you, Thank you, Thank you.

Time flies, and you never realize what you had until it's gone!

Being an exchange student is fun, and contains all those wonderfully glorious moments, but at the same time I am ever changing, ever growing. Learning more about life and how things work than I could ever have thought possible. Last week, I found out that my best friend, Raul, is being sent back to Brazil. This has given me a lot to reflect on, and made me realize just how important time was, and now that I look back, I also see, just how fast time flies by. Before going on Exchange, I looked at this year as intimidating, thinking it would be long and drawn out. But it's been the complete opposite. Here I am, more than halfway through, and I am wondering where the first half disappeared to. The thing with Raul is, I have never had a friend as close as him. Ever. And I thought that I had five more months left with him. Five more months of fun, laughter, carelessness, friendship. Five more months before I had to say good bye. Due to the sudden change of events, I now only have a week. A week to say unspoken words and enjoy his presence all the more. When on Exchange, exchange students are your best friends. But Raul is more than that to me-he's family. Only now that he's going, it's different than saying good-bye to my own family. When I said goodbye to them at the airport, I knew exactly when I would be seeing them again. With Raul, it's a mystery. There's a chance I will never see him again. I have never cried so many tears as I have in the past two weeks. He, Kait, and Akseli, have become my family here. People I will never forget-that I never CAN forget. They are such a constant in my life, I simply can't imagine what it's going to be like without them. I didn't think that I would have to wonder about this for another five months, but now it's all thrust into perspective. This shows me how truly special every moment was, and how much I value it. But now I value time even more. It escapes from you in the blink of an eye, leaving you not realizing what you actually had. I knew I had a friend in Raul, and thought he would always be there for me. I know he is, the only difference is, now we are continents apart. There's an expression, "life each day like it's your last" and another, " don't regret anything, because at one point it was exactly what you wanted." I plan on living my life by these. I don't want there to be regrets, only love and fun. I want to jump on all these opportunities, and enjoy every glorious, happy, tragic, hilarious, unbelievable moment that life has to offer. Raul has taught me a lot, and I love him for it. He's shown me how a true friendship is, and I will not forget it. So live for every moment, cause in the next, it could be gone.

I am an Exchange Student!

So this has been going around facebook for a couple of days, and it is so philosophical sounding, I thought I might as well share it!
I am an exchange student.
How do you know what is a dream if you never accomplished one?
How do you know what is an adventure if you never took part in one?
How do you know what is anguish if you never said goodbye to your family and friends with your eyes full of tears?
How do you know what is being desperate, if you never arrived in a place alone and could not understand a word of what everyone else was saying?
How do you know what is diversity if you never lived under the same roof with people from all over the world?
How do you know what is tolerance, if you never had to get used to something different even if you didn’t like it?
How do you know what is autonomy, if you never had the chance to decide something by yourself?
How do you know what it means to grow up, if you never stopped being a child to start a new course?
How do you know what is to be helpless, if you never wanted to hug someone and had a computer screen to prevent you from doing it?
How do you know what is distance, if you never, looking at a map, said “I am so far away”?
How do you know what is a language, if you never had to learn one to make friends?
How do you know what is patriotism, if you never shouted “I love my country” holding a flag in your hands?
How do you know what is the true reality, if you never had the chance to see a lot of them to make one?
How do you know what is an opportunity, if you never caught one?
How do you know what is pride, if you never experienced it for yourself at realising how much you have accomplished?
How do you know what is to seize the day, if you never saw the time running so fast?
How do you know what is a friend, if the circumstances never showed you the true ones?
How do you know what is a family, if you never had one that supported you unconditionally?
How do you know what are borders, if you never crossed yours, to see what there was on the other side?
How do you know what is imagination, if you never thought about the moment when you would go back home?
How do you know the world, if you have never been an exchange student?

Just another lazy week...haha just kidding, I'm in Europe!

Oops, I haven't updated my blog in a little bit, but hopefully this will suffice! In the life of an exchange student, there are never lazy weeks, and hardly ever lazy days. Today is one of those rare days! The past couple of weeks since my last post have been fairly productive. In the last blog I wrote, I had talked about my AMAZING  praktikum, and that the woman I was with was going to let me do a little bit of reporting with her. Well she did something way better! When I walked in that morning she looked at me and said, " Katherine, we all think it's awesome that your're so young and an exchange student! What would you think about doing todays segment on yourself?" umm YES! So that day, it was all about me. Not to sound conceited or anything. We went to my house and had an interview with my host mom, and then one with me in my room. We had shots of me riding my bike, and then also at school, hanging out with my friend Kait! Then we headed back to the office and pieced the segment together! I had to leave before it was finished though. I had to catch a train to Bremen, because a friend was leaving to go back home and I had wanted to go and say good-bye at the airport! Unfortunately I arrived five minutes too late. After the airport I went and hung out with some of the exchange students for a couple of hours, and when I got home that night, I went to watch the segment online! It was so cool! It also aired on the television. I will attach a link at the bottom of the page so you can watch it. Look up 7000 kilometer vom zu haus! All in all, my praktikum was very interesting and a good experience. That weekend, my host family and I packed our bags, and headed for Spiekeroog. Spiekeroog is a small Island located on the North Sea and is about a two hour drive for me. To preserve this Island, cars and other forms aren't allowed on the island, so we had to leave the car in a parking garage and go on a huge cargo ship. It was very cold, and the water was beginning to freeze, so the ship had to make its way through a lot of ice. We went with another family, and all in all there was 11 people. When we got there we had to walk about two miles, and then we reached the "cottage" we were staying in. This cottage was humongous and we all got our own rooms. It was beautiful! The majority of the time we played board games, as it was too cold to go outside. When we did venture out into the cold, we layered up..every time I walked outside i wore three pairs of stockings under neath my jeans, two pairs of gloves, two hats, an undershirt, a shirt, two hoodies, a jacket, this neck warmer thing and another scarf that was long enough to also cover part of my face. I was still freezing. It was about a five mile walk to the beach, and every day we decided to go to the beach, but out of the four times, I only made it there twice. The other two times, I stopped halfway and went back, because I was so cold! But it was a good weekend overall! The next week I went back to school, and it was nice to see my class again. We talked forever, and filled each other on everything that had been going on. That week passed by being pretty uneventful, seeing as it was only a three day week. Then that Saturday, I went to Brake, which is a city about 30 minutes from Oldenburg, and attended the exchange student sleepover. The ski trip to Austria was that week, so about 20 exchange students were missing, and some didn't show up, so out of the 89 exchange students in my district, only about 35-40 exchange students were there. These sleepovers are organized by Rotex, and Rotex is an organization kind of part of Rotary. Its a group of past exchange students, generally all between the ages of 18-24! They're pretty cool, but the sleepovers aren't all that great. The only reason why I like them, is because I get to see everyone again. This was a pretty good sleepover. It was nice to have everyone together again, and I was hanging out with the american girls the whole time, with a couple of the brazilian boys. We had wanted to all sleep together on one of these big mats that they had set up around the gym, so we were lucky enough to be one of the first to grab one, but as we were dragging it to our corner, the boys kept hopping on, making it practically impossible for us to move it. Eventually we were able to claim it for ourselves and set up camp. The ironic thing is we all pulled an all nighter. Not by choice though. Paco wouldn't stop singing "we wish you a merry christmas" and "we found love in a hopeless place". How would you like to be awake from 12, until 5 hearing a mexican exchange student singing very loudly and off key? Very annoying, but positively hilarious. Then Jakub, one of the American boys, came over to us in the middle of the night, and said, "guys, lets make whale sounds" so we did. I must say, I came away from that sleepover with some fond memories.Then this past week was pretty good. On Wednesday I went to Bremen and hung out with like 20 other exchange students, and on Thursday I went to Raul's house with Kait and Akseli, and we had a movie night, which was pretty fun! Then this weekend was really, extremely fun! I went to Norden for another exchange students birthday party, and we spent the night there. Unfortunately my Jugend-Freizeit ticket doesnt work all the way to Norden so I had to pay 7 euros and split a Niedersachsen ticket between me and four other exchange students. Pierre and Larissa met Hanna and I at the train station in Oldenburg and we met Kait and Raul on the train. Train rides are always more interesing when with exchange students! Then my friend Crystal hopped on in Augusfehn and then Gabriel and Rene got on in Leer. It was about a two hour train ride, so we had to keep ourselves entertained, so we ended up singing songs from Disney Classics aka Mary Poppins, Lion King, etc.. Then when we arrived at around 9 in the evening, Piotr's host brother was there to pick us up, the only problem was he could only fit four people in his car, and there were nine of us, all with a ton of luggage. So Hanna, Larissa, Crystal and Gabriel squeezed in the back, and Rene sat in the front, and I sat on his lap, with all the luggage on my lap. A very funny car ride. We had the music full on, and rolled the windows down and we got a lot of stares from passing cars. Anyway, Piotr had rented out this old abandoned factory, so thats where the party was, and we just kinda slept wherever we fell! It was a lot of fun, and there were a lot of people there. The next day we woke up early and walked to the train station to go back to our cities, but we were going to go straight on to Bremen for the Carnaval. We missed the train and had to wait an hour at the train station. Luckily I didn't have to, because my friend offered to drive me home, because Oldenburg is on his way home. Then I dropped off my things, and got on my bike and rode to the bahnhof and got on the same train that my friends had gotten on in Norden. Unfortunately I wasn't able to sit with my friends, because the train was so crowded I couldn't move a foot, let alone look for them! It's always really crowded on Saturdays, cause those game days, when the soccer team Werder Bremen is playing, and the public transportation system is crazy! Anyway, when the train arrived in Bremen, I found them, and it turns out that Kait, Raul, Akseli, Rene, and Gabriel and gotten off in their cities, so it was just me, Pierre, Larissa, Crystal, Hanna, and Gustavo. So then Crystal and Gustavo went off to find the Carnaval and the rest of us went to Pierres house so Hanna could drop off her stuff. Then we went and joined the others at the Carnaval. It wasn't as great as I thought it would be. I had been expecting more people, and more entertainment, but it wasn't bad! Then I got on the train with Hanna and Crystal and went back home. This upcoming weekend, my host family is taking me and my friend Kait to Aachen for their Carnaval, and for that one, I'm dressing up. Carnaval is like this big festival almost all the cities have annually in February, and there's a lot of music and dancing, and crazy costumes. So this week my mission is to find a costume! Wish me luck. Well that's all for now, and I will update soon, I promise. So once again, leave questions or comments! Liebe immer, Katherine

Pshh I'm an Exchange Student!

Something the world ought to know about Exchange Students; we get away with EVERYTHING. Literally. No train ticket? " I didn't know, I'm an exchange student!" No money? "I'm so sorry, I'm an exchange student, therefore I am very broke." The perfect excuse that works every time..I am an exchange student. You would think people wouldn't fall for it, but I don't think they actually care- they just get a kick out of it, and continue on just to humour you. Well as long as the excuse works, anything goes. I do believe I am getting better at this whole blog thing. AKA I am actually updating this two weeks in a row! Wahoo! Not too much has happened since the last time I wrote. The weekend was pretty boring, because I was on house arrest. I was getting very sick. German weather and I do not agree with each other, and my host father who is a doctor said that there was a great chance that I might get pnemonia. So no going out for Katherine. I stayed in bed all weekend, and watched Pretty Little Liar episodes online. Then my best Brasilian friend Raul came over to keep me company on Saturday night, and I made him sit through Little Miss Sunshine. I love that movie so much, it never ceases to make me laugh and I could honestly watch it a million times and still love it. On Saturday there had been a Rotary function, and unfortunately I couldn't go since I was bed ridden. My Rotary Club (Rotary Club of Oldenburg) went to the local Kohlfart. Which means I was super jealous of Raul and Kristlaug (the two other exchange students in my club) who got to go. A Kohlfart normally occurs in every town in Germany once a year- generally in the winter. Why it happens in the coldest time imaginable, I have no clue. Sometimes Germans are just a little bit crazy. Anyway a Kohlfart is when you walk around the city and at different points in the city, there are stations, and at every station, you stop and take a shot of some sort of alcoholic beverage. This was also something I thought odd- Rotary has four main rules :No Dating, No Drugs, No Driving, and NO DRINKING. So then why would the Rotary club take their Exchange Students on a drinking trip? One can wonder for the rest of their life- these things only happen in Europe! Maybe South America too.. On Sunday I woke up at an ungodly hour and went to watch my host brothers band performance at the local library/cultural center. Rasmus (My host brother) is ten years old, and pretty much the cutest little boy ever. He looked pretty grumpy at having to play on stage in front of everyone. According to my host mom Heike, he's been doing this for a long time. After the concert we went back home, and I wrote in my diary for a bit, and then went and slept. During my time here, I have been keeping up with a diary, and I have been much better with that than with this blog. I try to write every day and if I don't I always try to catch up with what I have been up to! Right now, I am on my third diary. You could say that I have a lot of thoughts, and points to make. I like writing in them, and I've started to reread them. I have to say, it's really interesting to see my thoughts and feelings from when I first got here nearly five months ago, and how different they are now. Who would have thought it! On Monday, I still had praktiukum. If you couldn't tell from my last blog post, I felt that praktikum was the boring, and basically the worst thing ever. Last week I was working in advertising, and now my opinion about praktikum has totally changed. I LOVE it. This week I am working in the broadcasting department of the newspaper, and I am so happy about it, because reporting is something I am seriously thinking about pursuing. So this week I am following the news team, and we drive through the city, and film different segments, make interviews and get different angles, and it is amazing, fascinating and I am so happy that I got this opportunity. The woman I am working with is very nice, and extremely interesting. She speaks German, English, Spanish, and French, all fluently. She was born and raised in Germany, lived in the US for a year, did a study abroad program in Madrid, and lived in Paris for a year. I'm really glad that I was paired to work with her this week. On Monday afternoon, I hung out with my friend Kait in the Schloss Hofe, aka the local mall, and we window shopped a bit, and then headed back to my house. As I was unlocking the door, I remembered that I had a Rotary meeting in ten minutes, so I ran upstairs to get my jacket, and ran back down, hopped on the bike, and rode it to the Bahnhof (train station). The Rotary meetings take place in this building that's attached to the Bahnhof, and is what used to be the waiting room for the royalty when they were waiting for their trains. Pretty snazzy if you ask me. As usual the Rotary meeting was okay and there was good food. At these meetings I normally sit next to the other Exchange students, and we pull faces at each other...often enough a Rotarian will notice and start laughing their heads off. Busted, but oh well! At least we are quiet..for the most part anyway. Today I went with the film crew to a new spa that opened up and we filmed a segment on this new Chinese massage. The owner was all excited and happy, and gave us all a voucher for a free massage at the spa. I know what I'm doing next week! Not only is it the coolest job ever, you get added bonuses like that! Who wouldn't want that! Tomorrow we are doing an actual news segment, and the woman I'm working with asked if I would like to try  reporting a little bit. Hell yes. Pardon the french. But this is amazing. Back to Rotary for a second-my Rotary blazer. We basically attach anything we can to them, and try to beat each other as to who has the most junk on it. Compared to the others, mine has a relatively small amount of things on it. Nonetheless it is getting there! This weekend is a four day weekend and my host family is taking me to the Ferien Islands, and we are doing some sort of bike tour. Wish me luck, because I suck at riding a bike. Not so sure what else will happen this week, but I will keep you informed! I will also be making a vlog for those of you who prefer to watch instead of read. Let's face it, we are all couch potatoes at some point! So once again, I ask for feedback-comments, questions, anything, talk to me! Liebe immer, Katherine

Pictures! Finally :)

http://s1220.photobucket.com/albums/dd453/kag2663/
http://s1220.photobucket.com/albums/dd453/kag2663/Deutschlandreise/
http://s1220.photobucket.com/albums/dd453/kag2663/Spain/
These are almost all the pictures I have taken all year! There are more, but I have yet to even upload it onto my computer, so those will come later! Hope you enjoy, and please leave me comments, or questions, I would love some feedback, so I can answer your questions, or just tell you about anything you want! Liebe immer, Katherine

Praktikum ist LUNGWEILIG.

Praktikum. Something old german men made up so that they don't have to deal with annoying students for two weeks. It's where you go and do an internship for two weeks...generally it could be fun, but all I do here is insert data on a spreadsheet and it's pretty boring. I'm doing my praktikum with the local newspaper in my city, so the first two days it was very interesting, but now, not so much. I'm working in the advertisement section, which would probably explain my lack of interest. Anywho, I am going to Bremen tonight with friends, so I will be saved from complete boredom. This Saturday I also have a big rotary event, so I am kind of excited for that. I should probably stop playing on this computer, but when you sit a teenager down in front a mac book, what else should you expect? Oh well, hopefully next week is more interesting. And I have also changed the format for my blog-hope you like it! Liebe immer, Katherine