Drei Amerikans

My best friends here are the American exchange students, because we know what each other are going through and its funny if people ask if we all went to the same school because before our exchange we did not even know each other exsisted. We more or less had to be friends because we are all we've got. There are times where we laugh and tell each other that if we were not on thsi exchange that there would be no way we would of ever known the other, or talked to them, or became friends. We have polar opposite personalities but we can connect on a level that not alot of other people can connect on. So I would like to say some things about my american friends.

These pictures by no mean does any one of us justice...

That is Clint, he is 19 years old and comes from Wooster, Ohio. He is my guy friend here, and this is us before we went to the Hollywood club. Margy actually paid him so I could fix up his hair, It took half a thing of hairspray and a thing of gel to master his hair, but after I was finished it was as hard as a rock but atleast it stayed. What the picture didnt capture though was how many times he opened my window/door. I didnt think the hairspray was that bad, but when my friend margy got a hold of it... it was a deadly weapon looking to burn his eyes. Margy was bansihed to the chair during the process because of her incident with the Hairspray... It was a fun night though.

That brings me to margy... She is 18 years old and is from Northfield, Minnisota...doncha kno... Oh and she wants to make a shout out to Holly my sister telling her she is representing the best state... This was us before we went riding together. Her and I spend alot of time together and I got her involved in Volleyball with me, and now she rides with me too. Its great because although we are completly differnt we can really connect about topics. She is always a ball to have around because she is just so funny about things, she is one of the biggest hippies I have ever met, and is all for the green. She can eat a whole resturant and I still dont know where she packs it all. I have alot of fun hanging out with her because she makes me become more outgoing, which it a necessity here.

Well those are just a few things about my New found american friends, and I am sure that when we get back we will still keep in touch, well at least for a little while anyway :D

Oktober Wochenende

This last weekend I had a Rotary meeting with former exchange students called Rotex. We were suppose to meet in a town outside of Koln called Solingen. I have never been to good at trains or buses so luckly I had my friend Clint who seems to know everything, and has all the times down. I just followed him for the most part and nodded my head if he asked me a question if i think we are on the right train, even though i really didnt know if we were. My host mom likes to make sure that i am fully prepared for everything so when Rotary gave us a list of things we should take, she made sure i took all of them. So I had a backpack, and a large gym bag full of clothes, a sleeping bag, a pillow, and a sleeping mat. I told my mom i only needed two pairs of clothes and a sleeping bag, but she insisted that I take it all, so going through the busy train stations, and bus stations were a task. We made it to where we were suppose to be, and were assigned a host family for the night. I was in the same host family as my friend Heide whose from brazil and a girl from mexico named marianna. We had alot of fun together, and they taught me how to do some traditional dances, and laughed when they talked about how americans dance. We woke up in the morning and went to a gym where we unloaded all our stuff, and were sperated into two groups. My group traveled first to a castle, I never quite got the point of why back in the day they made it so complicated to get around the castle, we had to go through different rooms that lead to different doors, that lead to staircases and finally made it through the rooms. The castle was beautiful though, and people in germay do a great job of maintaining the castles to keep them in good shape, after that I went to a scissor factory, where i got to see how they are made, and even got to polish one of my own, although they are not polished very well. It is alot harder than it looks to make them shiny because all i had was a file and some sand paper. I also got to see the largest knife and the worlds smallest scissors, which needed a magnify glass to see them. After i visted all of that i came back to the gym where we played soccer, it was the americans and brazilians, vs. the mexicans... we lost but it was still a very fun game, after that we had some pizza and split into another group so we could write a letter to ourselves in german so that at teh end of our exchange we can see how much we have improved, I did not know that was the point of it so i actuallly had Clint write some of mine, well a sentence and than i resorted to small english sayings just to make me laugh such as " Learn to ride a bike better", or and these are my words " stop sucking at germany" that is a saying margy and I say because we are hopeless when it comes to german buses, or trains, or trasportation, we guess most of the time, and usually just end up back where we started. I wrote things like that, and clint wrote something in german. Finally we were all done and than we had a Dance, well more of a fiesta because the number of mexicans out weighed the number of everyone else. It was alot of fun and they helped me to learn some more dances, but after a good 3 or 4 hours of dancing i was tired, but that did not stop them from finishing their fiesta. So as i was trying to sleep the only ones left were the mexicans and their loud music, i am still not sure how much sleep i actually got, and than in the morning i woke up to soem more spanish music. Its great to see how proud they are of where they come from, and i wish that we as americans could do the same. It was a great weekend filled with alot of fun, and well funny moments. Im glad that i got to go, and even though on the way back clint and i got in a train jam, and ended up in a train for abour 4 hours, it was still worth it... Rotex threw a great Oktober Wochenende

Its all downhill from here!

For the last week I have been in Silandro Italy. The first thing I thought of when my family said Italy was the alps, and than snow, and of course snowboarding. Little did I forget that it is still late summer, and there woudl be no snow, but it did not take away from the beauty of the mountains with their white peaks.

I usually am the type of person who likes to view things from a distance. I would be perfectly happy going on a vacation and sitting in the room and watching television, my parents can witness that fact about me on traditional family vacations where I am lounging on the couch with the remote. Its not that I do not love vacations, I just like to have the small fact that I have been there and thats it, I do not need to explore every oportunity to feel satisfied that I have been to that place, just sitting in it is good enough for me. My host family on the other hand likes to think other wise...so I have come to notice. We woke up at 2 in the morning to set off for Italy, I can understand leaving at night, or leaving in the morning, but it was such an irregular hour to leave that I half thought they were joking untill at 2 in the morning they came and got me, I think i slep walked into the van because i do not remmeber ever waking up or even opening a door, i just woke up when we were getting out of the vehicale to eat breakfast and by that time we were in austria. We stayed a little while in austria viewing some of the sites before leaving towards the alps. From a distance I could see their white peaks poking above the clouds, but as we apporaced closer i realized their true height. Once again I fell asleep and than we arrived at our hotel the montani residence. I half laughed when i saw the name, but the rest of the family did not catch the humour in such a name. I was expecting maids, or a dishwasher, or even at least towels, but none were present in the rooms. The rooms by no mean lacked beauty, but I would of enjoyed not washing dishes by hand or hanging the wet hand towels on the line, but none the less it was still a great place to stay. The montani had a pool, a sauna, and a fitness room, it also had a lounge place where there were tables for events that happended during the week. We attended a noddle dance, which was like how it sounds you ate noddles and you danced. I was even able to learn the Disco fox, and a folk dance while i was there. There was also cake served their in between lunch and dinner. The swimming pool was the place I spent alot of my time with my host family. Carina and I had an unanounced challange of who could hold their breath the longest, and I won by doing three laps in the pool in a single breath, Jona had a blast dragging me into the fitness room where i showed her how to work a treadmill, and she made me run on it.... alot. She would make an excellent fitness trainer some day because every moment that was not being used she would bring me down to the fitness room and tell me to work out as she watched, i actually have never worked out for so long in a fitness room before that or hard because she controled all the speed, weight, and incline buttongs on all the machines. Outside of the residence we walked down the markets where they sold fruits, and we went to outside stores, and a small shopping center, and ate Italian pizza. I am not a fan of onions but how they made them taste so wonderful was beyond me, i also had peperonie which was suprisingly spicy for the first time. I think that is because i have not had any thing such as salsa, or anything remotly close to being hot for a long time. I also even rode a mountain bike, which was really comfortable compaired to a regualr bike.

What made me realize however that my host family likes to experince a vacation and not just look at it was when we first arrived in Italy, the first thing they took us too, before the room, before lunch before anything else was the mountains. We drove to the base of the mountain where a ski lift was running. Everyone got out of the vehiccle and started putting on their hiking shoes so I did the same. We each got on the ski lift as starting out way up the mountain. I looked to the top of the mountain and saw that I would be on the ski lift for some time, and me being afraid of falling off of anything that seemed like an eternity away. Finally we reached what I thought was the top of the mountain and the end of the ski lift but as we reached the top I saw that we were not even a quarter up towards the end of the ski lift. Finally for what seemed an hour we got to the top. We started walking down our path and after 15 minuetes came to a barn, i was thinking this was teh end of the hike but as fast as the barn came into sight we soon walked the opposite direction. We hiked for 3 hours over water, snow, rocks, grass, and slim, winding, and not so friendly paths. Some of the paths were so small that if you stood with your legs shoulder length apart one foot would be off the side of the mountain, not a fun place for someone who like me has never been hiking before and was not to fond of deadly mountains. After three hours we came to a hut where we ate lunch, and had real apple stroodle, pepermint tea, and anything else to keep the cold away. I did not know we were hiking so I did not wear warm clothes, all i had on was a long sleve shirt with a vest and of course pants and hiking boots, but the bitter codl of the mountain could not be sustained by a mere cup of tea. We finished eating and the family said well we are almost half way there, my jaw dropped... almost half way there... My toes had no feeling, my knees felt like they were going to buckle and would need oil to losen them up and we were not even half way there. I did not once complain though even though there were moments where i was thinking of just rolling down the rest of the way instead of walking, but after all was done I was more proud of myself for that one day than I have been in a long time, becasue i had not given up. I was satisfied that I had finished and hade some great pictures to show for it, but little did i know that that was just the first day. The entire week everyday we went to new heights, new mountains, and the same agony of hiking. We hiked on Sonneberg which like the name meant sun, and after the first day i decided to be smart and wear nothing less than warm clothes, and when we got there it was so hot that i was getting sunburnt. Than another time i decided to wear medium clothes and i was freezing, it seemed i coudl never fit my wardrobe just right. The hike that stands out the most was when we were at the bottom of the mountain and my host father pointed towards a cross on the top of the mountain and said thats our goal, I though he was joking because the hight and distance to get there would take all day, but he was not joking we climbed the entire mountain to the top. I have never walked on such steep trails in my life, or climbed over rocks larger than me before in my life, every half and hour we had to take a break because we were so tired. My calfs felt like they were on fire, but i did not want to say that i liked it better when we went down the mountain instead of up because as hard as it is to hike down a mountain it is even harder to hike up. Finally we reached the peak and started to hike over snow and ice, we had made it to the cross but just as i thought we were done we started walking towards another even higher peak, we walked forever and the snow was getting into my hiking boots, when finally i saw the peak and the words i loved to hear it is all downhill from here. we tried and failed to make it over the top of that peak becasue the slim paths, the large rocks, and the steep drop of cliff side made it impossible and deadly to try to cross, we were temporarily stuck on the mountain as we watched carsten who is my host father try to fid a way out, i was without hiking sticks so i had managed to take to rocks and cracked them into the snow on the side of me to keep me from slipping. After a long while we had decided we had to turn back and could not go any further, it was even harder going down on ice and snow than it was coming up on it and it made it very tricky for us to get down, but finally after a few bumps bruises scratches and falls we made it down the mountain past the snow and ice and the rest was all downhill from there.

Even though at the moment I was not happy to be hiking, it really made me appreciate things alot more and it made the vacation more memorable, and my host sister todl me something that i think was wise for a 14 year old to say.. she said " as hard as it was at least we got some great photos, and can say haa I finished and have the photos to prove it" so Im glad that I went and that i was able to finish the mountain trails each day, even though I had to struggle to get up the mountain, just as im struggling to learn german i just have to think after that peak it is all downhill from there:D

The Horse Race

I was able to get the chance to see a real proffesional horse race. For me I always dream of the life of the funny big hats, and the glamour that comes with the track style. For one day I got to be a part of that life. Three other exchange students and I got the chance to go to the largest horse race in Köln. The race itself was on the fron page of the newspapers, and not everyone could get into this race. With rotary we were able to have a gentleman give us a tour. He use to be a steward at the track so we got to see and expereince things that not all the people who have been to a race could. We got to see where the jockey had to weigh in, we got to stand in the winning circle where the winner would go after the race was finished, we got to take a look into all the strategies to bet, and we even were able to bet. I bet on the first race, and to my luck I won, but that was the only race that I bid on that won. It was still the highlight of my day to be able to bet. We also as a souvenier were able to get a picture of the finish where all the horses heads are counted to see who won, just like in the movies when they take the final snap shot. I am not sure if we are suppose to have that photo because there are alot of regualtions in the races with that sort of thing, but we still have them though :D. I also got to see a famous person from germany, and although I dont know who he is I saw people asking for his autographs and he was able to stand in the center of the viewing stable to see which horse looks the best and could possibly win. Of course I took a photo of him, although it is not the best photo in the worl, it is still one all the same. Now I will say some of the strategies that I was taught to bet on a horse.

First they show the horses in a circle where the groom will walk the horse around and you can view it from all sides to see the height of the horse, if it looks more stout of muscular than the rest. Than you are able to see the horse being saddled, and than walked around again with its number represented on it so you can see what the horses name is, and the jockey who is mounting it. I was also able to notice how the horse reacted, for example there was this horse that had to have two grooms walk it around because of how big it was and for the fact that it was lets say really high spirited, no bush was left unkicked, so in my mind I thought that this horse had alot of energy, so I bet on it. Than you can also check the newspaper so see what horses are highlighted, or you can go to a building that has the number of the horse that each newspaper will think will win, and these are from the experts so it has alot of impact on the race. Than you can also look inside your packet, or brochure to see the numbers the trainers or the horses, and even what the Köln tip says who will win placing them. In that there are three possible horses that could win, or be in the first three horses to place. Finally if you are done looking at that you can look onto the screen where the favorite picked horses number flashes, and than you can see the amount you will receive back for each euro you bet. Usually the favorite hores amount is less, and than the least is the most, these numbers also have alot of affect because if you want more money back than you will pick the horse that could possibly win and has a higher amount of money that can be returned per euro. Finally you pick up your betting ticket and you have to mark what race you betting on, the amount of money you are betting, and what type of bet such as this horse will be first, or it will be in the first three, or combonation bets such the horse being either first or in the first three.. and so on. Than you bet on the number of the horse you think will win, and than you can either watch the race, or some people go into another room where they can do all of that and just watch the race of the TV screen. After the race allo the horses go into the circle, and the winner comes in last. No one will shake the winners hand though until after they are weighed in. That is another thing you can look at when betting is how much the rider weighs so you will know how much the horse must carry. There are also what is called a handycap race where all the horses have an equal chance to win because everything is the same in that race. Although this makes it harder to bet on, the money is higher in this race. Finally if the jockey passed the weigh in then they are called the winner of the race, and only after all of this is runned in can you return you bidding ticket and recieve you cash back. There are alot of things people consider when they are betting, or some just go with the first choice of the newspaper, or the favorite horse for the race.

The race itself was also very interesting, they had different races that had seperate lenghts, or different starts, and the starting gate was actually just a little movable box. All the horses had to be trained to get into this box because they had a time limit and if the horse did not go in they would be fined and disqualified because the horse was not trained enough. They were also only allowed to whip their horse 7 times. Another rule was that if the rider did not try all they can to win they were also fined and suspended. There were also tests on the horses to make sure that they were not given any drugs and the jockeys were tested as well. The horse also had to be trained enough to withstand the racing or the rider could not race for 3 weeks until the horse was once again up to raceing stamina. Overall I had a great time at the Horse Race, and I even got to see how the upper class live their lives on the track. I would love to go to another horse race, and I will never forget this experience.