Meine Freunde

The weekend:

I don't recall what I did on Friday, except maybe sleep. But Saturday was a really good day. I spoke to my parents which was very nice. After that, I got ready to go out with my friends. Like the past few weekends, these were my exchange student friends. This was our last weekend all together because a couple of them are leaving next weekend. They're all wonderful and I love seeing them. We all met at McDonald's and hung out there before walking back to the school for a concert-- or at least where we though the concert was. Once we got there we discovered that the concert was 2 kilometers in the direction that we had just come from. But it had begun to rain at that point, so instead of walking 30 minutes to get to where the concert was, we quickly made our way to Escobar where we hung out for a little while; it was a good spot because it had shelter from the rain. From there, Paulina, myself, and one other kid were picked up by one of our classmates so that we could go to a party with him. Everyone else stayed behind as they waited to be picked up. My parents asked what language we all speak when we're together and I told them that it really depends. A passerby could hear us speaking English, German, Spanish, Russian/Slovak, and sometimes Portuguese.

The party was fun. It was a party. There was some dancing, alcohol, talking, and loud music. Now when I say loud music, I mean loud music. There weren't too many people there but many kids were from our class. I always suspected that I would be the mom friend at parties and I would be the one to help the others who may have had too much to drink. And let me tell you, I was right. I am absolutely the mom friend. I'm not a huge fan of alcohol and I have no desire to be drunk, so I am the friend that takes care of the drunk people. I try to calm them down, I give them whatever actual food is there, I get water for them. It makes me really happy to do it too.

Today (Sunday) was pretty relaxed too. I worked on this blog post, watched some Netflix, read a little bit, and had some fun with my host family. Michael, my host dad, made burgers that were really good. We had a whole spread of toppings but I only used ketchup and mustard. I had a pickle on the side that made me think of my best bro because she loves pickles and they were really good and sweet. After we all ate, we played a couple games. I was good at the second because it was like those mind puzzle games where you have to organize pieces to fit together. It's called Ubongo, I think. I liked it. We had some tea and cookies while we played the games which was really cute. Germans drink a lot of tea, which I happen to love.

Upcoming:

I don't have too much else to write or say so I'll write about upcoming events. I'll start by saying that since we're about to have a school break, we've been having a lot of tests. I survived my first week of German testing with minimal problems. My ethics class test was the only one that didn't go well. But I had a test in Math, Biology and Deutsche. History and English are this week. My teachers are very understanding of my situation. They do their best to make the tests as easy as they can be for us. My math teacher translated what I didn't understand (but I understood most because it was math, mostly numbers), my biology teacher said I could write in English and he explained what each question was asking, and my Deutsch teacher gave all the exchange students a separate question to answer ("how was your first day at Gymnasium Papenburg"). I wrote my Deutsch test in German so it probably wasn't too good but she just wanted to see that we were all trying. And I tried very hard.

After Wednesday, I have a month off of school. The 5th through the 10th will be my Rotary trip through Germany. Thanks to Rotary, I will not have to pay for very much of this trip which is making it even better. When I get back, I will still have some time off before my Praktikum at the bakery. That's going to be amazing and I'm so excited. So next week's blog might be delayed until after the trip. I'm not going to do a rhapsody for this post but I'll have another one soon. Don't worry, I'm not quite done spreading my infinite wisdom and methods of improving the way one lives.

Gallery:

First picture from left to right: Paulina, Andrea, Aube, me, Julia. This is one of the best groups of girls that I've ever been a part of. Unfortunately, Andrea is leaving but we have plans to visit each other in the future; I'll go to Spain and she'll come to Colorado. The girl in the other pictures is Celine; we hung out a lot at the party. She's from our class and she's so sweet and kind. The boy is Arthur; he's one of the exchange students and he's in our class too. He taught me how to spell "blood" with my hands. There's also a picture of Michael with his amazing burger creation. And a documentation of my glow up from September 2017 to July 2019. I got my actual visa card and I'm very happy because it's pretty and the picture is good and it's my actual visa card! :D