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Hey,
I have to say that I am having the time of my life in Germany. In my
Bundesland, Nordrhein-Westfalen, we're still on harvest break. My
last update, was about our family trip to Köln (Cologne). The next
day we went to my first REAL castle, Freusburg, which is almost 1000
years old and really beautiful. It's not a major castle or anything,
but for me, it was pretty impressive. Today it's a youth hostel and
as we walked up, we could hear people singing songs to a guitar,
campfire style. From there we went to a little fair. That was
interesting. Have you ever seen a 300 pound, 50 year-old man with
piercings, purple hair, in leathers, ride bumber cars. I have and let
me tell you, it's not pretty. :P The rest of the week, I hung out in
Siegen. I spent the night at a friend's house and we went Salsa
dancing until late. That was fun. We went shopping for winter
clothes. :) I can now say, if I'm not warm this winter, it's only
because I'm running around naked. I should have enough warm clothes
to keep me at least body temp. for one week without washing. That's a
real accomplishment, let me tell you. :D But they have the coolest
socks here. hehe. They're called Strumpfhose and they go all the way
up to your thighs and they're all different colors and I'm having fun
with them. hehe.
Anyways, enough about clothes. Friday, we went to this museum in
a town called Hagan that had all sorts of old
manufacturing...ummm..businesses. There were blacksmiths,
coppersmiths, brushmakers, bakeries, and tons of others. It was
really interesting.
So, on Sunday, I hopped in the car with my host-grandma and we
drove up to her daughter's house in Jesterburg, right outside of
Hamburg. I've spent the last week there having the time of my life.
Corinna, my host-aunt, was an exchange student in America when she
was 17 and we have so much in common. Most nights, we would stay up
until 12 o'clock at night, just talking; the rest of the family would
have gone to bed much earlier. The whole family made it a group
effort to make sure I learned as much German as possible while I was
there, which was fun. At the same time, they insisted that I was on
vacation from being an exchange student, saying it wasn't necessary
to say how wonderful everything is, or that the food was amazing,
etc. You get the picture. I was treated like part of the family. It
was so much fun. Almost everyday we went horseback riding. They have
seven ponies, although three are Shetlands, so they're too small to
ride. But they are so cute. They come up to your waist and are just
like really heavy dogs. On Tuesday, I went with Anne and Julia, the
two cousins, to their school, where I participated in their classes
and did a presentation in Julia's English class about FL, the US, the
differences between FL and Deutschland and Space Camp. That had been
a subject in their English books and they wanted to know all about
it. The questions they asked were really funny: how big are the cars?
Can you go fishing out your window? etc. It was very entertaining.
Thursday
we went into the city. Hamburg has to be the most
beautiful city, at least what I saw of it. There were hardly ever
corners, everything was rounded. We parked in the trading district,
right next to the harbor, where you could see ships for miles. The
buildings themselves are so strange. I'll post some pictures so you
can see them. We went to the Michel Cathedral and went to the top.
From there we could see the whole city. It's beautiful. There are
parks every couple of streets and a lot of rooftops have gardens, or
at least lawns. There are huge lakes in the middle of the city, where
you could see sailboats enjoying the afternoon. It was gorgeous.
From the
church, after a brief lunch, we headed over to the
center of the city, right by one of the lakes. We spent the time
shopping and sightseeing and just having fun. It was so wonderful.
The rest of the week was spent in leisure, riding and having fun. I
left this morning and felt like I was leaving my family behind again.
It's amazing how close we got in one week. But I really felt like
part of the family. Just this morning, I was woken up early to go
help clean the feces from the horse paddocks, in my pajamas, in 40
degree weather. It was so much fun.
So now
that I've written this amazingly long email, I wish you
all well and hope you're having at least half as much fun as I am.
Love you all lots and miss you all,
Suzie
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