Deutschland '10-'11
http://muko.info/English.1595.0.html
Love my host family, not sure if theyll love or hate this tattoo. Meine Mukoschutzengelchen ist jetzt immer bei mir :) Ich hab euch Lieb.
This has been a crazy last day/week/month/year. In about 10 hours, I’ll be on a plane back to America… In the past week, so much has happened that I’d love to write about, but right now it’s 2am and I need sleep and don’t want to think too much about how much I love this country. Saying goodbye to Germany sucks.
I saw that on the calendar for June 22nd, my host mom took the time to write “Abschied - Viele Tränen” across the entire calendar (she has a calendar in a similar style to this, so the message is stretched out to cover my host parents, host sisters, and my part of the calendar). It’s getting harder and harder to avoid me leaving as a topic of conversation….
oh, and overall how has your german improved?
I really have to think about this. Since I already had a few years of German and could already converse okay at the start, I learned new words and grammar so gradually I almost don’t remember getting better. I’ve learned a ton of vocab and my grammar is probably better (I didn’t have the opportunity to take adult ed german as a second language/grammar courses here, and I have no idea about all of this dative/accusative grammar nonsense….). My goal lately is accent reduction and being able to say “Schüssel” (bowl) instead of “Schlüssel” (key, lock) or “Schussel” (idiot). I just learned the word “Schwül” (humid) and am hoping I never confuse it with the word “Schwul” (gay) while talking to old people.
hey! i haven't talked to you in a while, but i just wanted to stop by and say i still read your blog posts :P i also got into the semester abroad program in spain with AYUSA, and i also recieved a scholarship (which i was so psyched about.) now i am just waiting to hear about a host family -_____-
glad to see you are still enjoying deutschland!
Hey :) That’s awesome. I remember being all nervous about my host family… My host family first applied to be a host family literally 3 weeks before I was in Germany, and I got my placement like the first day in my language camp, so, no need to feel like me and think that no one wants to host you, the right family just might not have applied yet! (Is that sentence grammatically correct? aaaaaargghh my denglisch) Scholarships = FTW though. Forreals.
So when you get back from Germany? Do you automatically graduate and get your diploma? Or do you have to do anything special?
I get into DC on the 22nd, and I get into LA on the 24th (we have a seminar in DC for 2 days). I figured things out with my online school and took classes last semester through that and am getting my diploma through online school. I’m technically already graduated, but the online school only prints diplomas in June, so yeah. Online school may not look as credible or whatever on paper, but hey, it worked for me. There’s apparently going to be an IRL graduation on the 25th near where I’m from, and even though I really could care less about actually graduating in a silly hat, I’m really curious as to how online school graduation works.
Wow. Whole year?! I wanna study abroad in Spain, but idk if i can do it for a whole year. Did you ever get homesick? And i bet its gonna be tough to leave :\ but that just means you'll have a family here in Germany that you'll have to visit again right? :D
More like 10 months (All the cool stuff happens in July! It’s not fair!), but yeah. You should do it, even if only for a semester. It may sound totally typical or corny, but studying abroad really is an amazing experience and you learn a ton. I honestly haven’t really gotten homesick, but that could be because I feel more at home with my host family than I ever did in America. AND, when I was in Berlin last week, the US Embassy gave us Dr. Pepper and Rootbeer so my misc american food cravings are also doing okay right now. My host family says they want to visit me in America next summer for like 2 weeks :D I’m so excited. They also want to see misc parts of America (NYC, The Grand Canyon, The Sears Tower, Disneyland, etc etc), some of which I haven’t even been to yet, so that’ll definitely be cool. I totally want to visit them as often as possible in Germany too though. :D
Don't forget to get legally high there Mel! lol. Wow you've stayed in Germany for how long now?
I live in Germany, not the Netherlands! All I can do here legally is drink basically. I landed her on August 16th (left DC on the 15th), so… yeah.
My god, it’s already June. I don’t even have a full month left here in Germany and it makes me sad. I was in Berlin last week for my programs end year seminar, and a big part of the seminar was about looking back on our years. I hadn’t remembered writing a letter to myself at the start of the year, and it’s really interesting to see how much I’ve changed since then. I’ve grown up a lot, either way I look at it, but on the contrary I feel so young. I may be 18, but the idea of living in my own apartment and working and being responsible for myself just… is really strange. I remember rough nights as a kid crying myself to sleep, wishing I was 18 and could -finally- have my own place. Now, I kinda just… want to stay with my host family forever. I have an email sitting in my inbox from my Email-betreuer asking me to send a progress report (like a diary entry/letter thingie) reflecting on my year, but right now I don’t think I can. I was already bawling at the seminar when I read my letter to myself, and I know my last week is going to be more of the same. I really don’t want to spend this entire last month just crying. I want to do as much as possible with my time left (If only school didn’t take up so much time!). I want to see my city’s Edelsteinmuseum before I leave. I want to eat as many Broetchen as my stomach can handle. I want to go enjoy Eis (gelato) even if it’s raining. I want to walk through the forests and just really enjoy everything this country has to offer me, because I only have around 20 days left. I don’t want to wake up without a “Guten Morgen Melissa!”. I don’t want to leave.
