The Last Days in Germany.

My fellow Americans:
We have been ripped off. No lie. Look at this pretzel:

It was my lunch on Wednesday. And on Wednesday afternoon, at 1:30 pm, I made a vow to never eat horrible American pretzels again (although I will probably break this my first week of college). This pretzel (and the Jeckman, and all the other photos) are a result of a fabulous week of Cologne and school. The day-by-day recap is as follows:
Monday: nothing spectacular. I continued to recover from my illness given to me by my kindergarten. The end.
Tuesday: Tuesday I took the train to Cologne! I spent the day with the lovely Miss Lotta Schneider, and I must say that we literally brightened up the city. We walked out of the train station into the pouring rain, and found the nearest bakery (so I could buy a pretzel, of course!). When we emerged, it had stopped raining and the sun continued to shine throughout the afternoon. I am no weatherwoman, but I think the Lotta and Gabbie duo is a fabulous treatment for bad weather, and I'm pretty sure the Itsy Bitsy spider was thanking us, too. After we bought my delicious pretzel we went shopping, ate Spaghetti Ice, and went to the Schokolade Museum. Here are some pictures:

It looks like spaghetti, but it's ice cream!

Schokolade- straight from the factory :)

I highly doubt these women enjoy people taking pictures of them while they work.

The Chocolate Museum has the best view of the Rhine!

This is how truffles are made.

The story of Red Hood- in chocolate!

The indoor rain forest for the cocoa beans. 

After that we went to dinner at a Mexican Restaurant. Why Mexican? Because besides giant pretzels and Haribo, the Germans really have no spectacular foods to their name. The daily diet consists of potatoes, broccoli, and bread. Sometimes there's salami, cheese, or Nutella on the bread. But basically, that's it. So Mexican it was, and I ordered a Burrito Dito. This was the first meal here in Deutschland that did not contain one of the following: bread (except the tortilla), broccoli, or potatoes. I was absolutely thrilled!
After dinner we walked and shopped a bit more, until finally returning to the bakery to buy a Jeckman and an Amerikaner. I got a picture of the Jeckman, but not our namesake. An Amerikaner is a little pastry with a rounded bottom, flat top, and a glaze over the flat top. It's good, but there's definitely not anything like that in America. But don't ask. I, too, have pondered the question of the name's orgin and I can't come up with anything.

The Jeckman. See how cute it is? Mine is a bit mutilated, but I think you still get the point.

Gabbie and Lotta take Cologne!

Wednesday: Wednesday I boarded the train to Cologne for the second day in a row to check out the King Tut exhibit that is currently in the city. It was way cool. The only thing that could have made it cooler is if the artifacts were real. But they are exact replicas of the real stuff, so I guess that's close enough. Then I went to the Kölner-Dom (or Cologne Cathedral, in English) and took bunches of pictures. Luckily, tourists can get away with that kind of stuff :) But you know what amazed me? The construction started in 1248, and wasn't completed until 1880. I mean, men dedicated their entire lives to the making of a building that they'd never see finished. I mean, who would do that today?

Writing on the Rosetta Stone

Statue of the man himself.

Part of the presentation- King Tut's burial chamber.

One of the four big boxes he was found in.

Then he was in three of these mummy-box things.

Another mummy-box thing.

The famous face of King Tut. He probably didn't actually look like this, but it's all they have.

Some of his jewelry.

His ultra-cool headband crown thing.

One theory of his death: a fractured leg. 

The other theory: murder by a blow to the head.

Mummy boxes of his miscarried daughters. Had they lived, his family would have continued to rule.

Mummy boxes with locks of his grandmother's hair.

The king's throne. One day I will have a chair like this in my living room.

The Cologne Cathedral. It wouldn't fit in one picture!

The recently repaired window in the Dom. It is one horrible work of art, if you ask me.

This is the window across from it. I like this one better.

Remember the bridge with the locks on it? Well I went back and took a picture. Sorry it's so blurry- it was raining!

My lock!

Wednesday night: S, my house mother, sent J and I to a cooking class. A German cooking class. The funny thing? Most of the food wasn't German. We cooked soups. From around the world. See? I told you Germans have no real spectacular diet. The menu was: Apricot soup (gross.); Hot Carrot soup (insanely delicious); Sweet Potato soup (also insanely delicious); Red Beet soup (very purple in color, which ruined any opinions of taste); Cheese and Broccoli soup (eh); and Chili con Soja (mine and J's creation. The best-by far). The class was fun, I'm not gonna lie. I mean, I was pretty clueless the whole time, and the only person who didn't catch on to the fact that I didn't speak much German was the instructor. She totally didn't take a hint from my deer-in-headlight looks I gave her. Now she probably just thinks I'm a creep.
Thursday and Friday: School with J! Guess what? School is so much better when you're not actually under pressure to learn anything. I know this because school for two days in a foreign place was GREAT. Thursday morning I went to history with J, which was a total snoozer. I mean, if you think history in your own language is bad, try listening to it for an hour and a half in German. And German schools don't have pretty posters on all the classroom walls to keep you entertained. This is because the students don't have history every morning from 9:00-10:30, and the teachers don't teach history all day, every day in the same classroom. The students have a schedule that resembles college. For example, on Thursday, J has history and Deutsch. On Friday morning, he has math and physics. On Monday, he'll have Math and English, etc. So, getting back on track: the classes are quite boring. But on Thursday, I didn't go to Deutsch with J, but rather to Biology with his friends because they all insisted that I would die of boredom in Deutsch. So Biology it was. And you know what? It was awesome. The teacher wore a belt that said "Punk is not dead" and we watched a movie about bugs that live in the rivers here. The rest of the students hated it because they had to take notes and pay attention to the movie. I, however, just watched the screen, mesmorized by the funny moving creatures. Then I imagined these bugs climbing into the showers of my worst enemies. That made me smile :)
On Friday we went to school by motorbike! On Thursday we went by car because it was super cold outside. I've never been on a motorbike on the open roads, in traffic, with a 40 pound helmet on my head and everything. I felt very rocker chick-ish (actually, I felt like an astronaut with the helmet and gloves, but on the inside I felt pretty awesome). I went with J to math, which was once again a snoozer. I'm not sure why all of J's classes are boring. They just are. Then, I opted out of J's physics class and went to English with his friends. SCORE! America: we are dumb. Here's why: I went to English with J's friends, and they had just finished their unit on Shakespeare. Today, we analyzed the poem Dreaming America by Joyce Carol Oates and argued different points made in the poem. This is stuff we did in my AP English class. And here, in Germany, English is their second language. I would hate to see what they were doing in their own language. The Germans put us to shame, America. We need to change that. But on the bright side, I actively participated in the class and took notes and everything! I haven't done that in a long time. Like I said, school is much better when you don't actually have to do anything.
Saturday: Pretty much a relaxing day. My house family showed me a view of the brown coal mine, which provides energy for the area. We had seen it at night, but they were pretty adamant about showing it to me in daylight, so I went along. Then we went to the Auto Museum in Bergheim, a nearby town. Here's what I thought: I've been to countless museums, one of my favorites being the Henry Ford in Michigan. And this museum in Bergheim was nothing compared to what I've seen. But, nevertheless, I enjoyed my house parents' effort to show me around. Saturday afternoon I went with my house brother, J, to his friends' house to play games and eat warm cheesecake. This was by far the best part of the day! Of course, we played Pokemon Monopoly in German, but I was okay with that. Guess who landed on Free Parking six times in a row? Me :) When we came home, I discovered that my internet was out, and therefore spent my evening visiting with S and M's (my house parents) friends. I suppose it was an evening well spent.
And so, ladies and gentlemen, I must bid you adieu. Tonight I am going to J and D's orchestra concert, and my house mother is doing my laundry in preparation for my departure, which is on Tuesday! I can't believe my time in Germany has flown by so quickly. Deutschland is a pretty great place, and I think my German lessons have been a huge help. I believe I could easily get along in Germany alone, speaking German. Well, if it were a necessity I could. I will return one day (probably to Cologne during Karneval, a massive festival every February where people dress up in costumes and have parties). But for now, I must go pack and track down one last giant pretzel!

A Cootie-Infested Weekend

Guess what? This morning I slept in! Without the morning kindergarten rush and without the constant waking due to my congestion, I had a better night's sleep than I've had in the past two weeks! I am almost recovered from my Kinder-cooties, which unfortunately followed me this weekend to Marburg. Well, actually we went to Homburg, which is near Marburg. But it's almost the same thing.
My house mother's brother, B*, lives in Homburg. B is a  pastor at a really old church. He also speaks English, so we had a long conversation about the differences in the American and German church systems. But I won't bore you with that right now. Last August B married T, who has a son named Felix. I think that Felix is the coolest name on the planet, besides Nebuchadnezzar. Felix would make an excellent American. He doesn't like to practice his English or Latin, insists on eating donuts for breakfast, drinking Coke instead of water, and plays video games in his room for 15 hours a day. He only emerges to eat and feed his cats. Surprisingly, he didn't eat any of the chocolate chip cookies J and I made last weekend. This puzzled me for a fat kid named Felix. (My house mother calls him fat, so I think it's okay to say that.)
 The rest of the Germans, however, stuck to German-y things, such as eating delicious bread and Nutella for breakfast, playing classic Karneval board games, and visiting Marburg, a nearby city with a castle, the Elisabethkirche, and a pretty cool well, all dedicated to St. Elisabeth of Hungary (she was the princess). She was married at 14 to a very important German guy to help reinforce alliances between Hungary and Germany. She was a pretty remarkable gal. She liked using her power and wealth to help the poor and the sick. She died at the young age of 24. Thus, everything in Marburg is Elisabeth something-or-other. Here are some of the Elisabeth things we visited (you'll have to excuse the blurriness of some photos. It was snowing that day):

This well was built in 1596 in honor of St. Elisabeth. Apparently, it was where she quenched her thirst and had a chapel built. 

The inside of the well.

Elisabethkirche from the back. It's the oldest Gothic-style church in Germany.

The new million-Euro organ they put in the church.

One day I will have doors like this on my house :)

Statue of the Kolner-Dom in front of the Elisabethkirche. That thing's EVERYWHERE.

And here are some of the non-Elisabeth things we visited:

The watch tower we visited. I'm not sure how to rotate it :(

Here's the really foggy view from the watchtower. In the center is the Landgrave Castle.

These little bricks in the sidewalks are in honor of Jews who were killed in the Holocaust. They are all over Germany's sidewalks and streets. These ones are to the Isenbergs, a couple killed at Auschwitz.

The seminary B studied at.

The view from the Landgrave Castle!

The city of Marburg.

One view of the Landgrave Castle.

Castle...

The castle again.

The castle from the bottom.

B and T going down the 150 steps. My house brother counted.

Church that B pastors at.

We visited these places by car, which involved getting in the car, driving for five kilometers, getting out, taking pictures, and hopping back in the car and driving again. The Germans have this funny thing about riding in the car with coats on. So, before we got in the car we had to take off our coats, hats, scarves, and gloves. Then, when we arrived at the next location five minutes later, we had to dig everything back out again, layer it all back on, and take pictures. This was repeated multiple times, adding considerable length to each stop. I got pretty annoyed at the dressing and undressing, so I simply said "Maybe next time we should leave our coats on in the car!" The looks I got from my house family were so horrific, I was suddenly convinced I'd grown a second nose. Or not. 
Besides the stripping and dressing, the trip to Marburg made for a pretty cool weekend. In church on Sunday B made me stand up in front of the congregation so they could welcome me. Of course, I didn't understand much of what he was saying, so whenever the people laughed I felt the need to make sure I didn't have snot on my nose or something. Oh well. I suppose that's just another embarassing moment in my life.
This week I have many adventures planned. Tomorrow I meet my bestest German friend Lotta in Cologne (I also saw her last Tuesday). On Wednesday I will go back to Cologne to see the King Tut exhibit, and then come back home to have a cooking class with my house brother, J! On Thursday I will go to school with J, and on Friday there's something big going on. Unfortunately, my brain translator wasn't working while my house mother was explaining it to me. Therefore, I'm not too sure what it is. I just know it's something big.
Until then,
Gabbie


*My house family has asked that names and faces do not appear on the internet. I'm not sure if this means their relatives as well, but we'll play it safe. Except for Felix. That's just too cool of a name to pass up.