The Three-Week Month

So this is my fourth week in Germany. The thing is that I can only remember two of the three full weeks that I have been here. I don’t have the slightest clue what happened to that other week, nor do I remember which week I have forgotten. Time is speeding by faster perhaps than it ever has for me before.

Just as I am starting to consider the house in which I sleep a home, the people with whom I live family, and the characters I have met as friends, I am climbing on a train for yet another new situation. Saturday I will be leaving, once again, everything familiar for something completely new. I am nervous, but excited. I will miss my family terribly, but just the idea that I got to share a month with them helps me out of the blues.

As to what has kept me busy the past two or three weeks (could be either): where to begin?

I went to visit my GAPP host family from two years ago on my ex-host-brother’s birthday. I took a train to his general vicinity and was picked up by a friend. The two of us went to a soccer game in Mönchengladbach stadium, which was TIGHT, and then proceeded to Jannick’s and his celebration. The thing was that he didn’t know I was coming, so I surprised him and his whole family with my presence. You might say, rather than bringing presents, I brought my presence… but you probably wouldn’t. That sounds like a pun I would make and nobody would laugh at. Anyway, it was great to see all of my old friends and family again, and I got to sleep in my old bed from two years ago. The family is amazing, and they’ve all grown up a little bit. Too bad I haven’t.

I’ve played soccer with the local team for the past few weeks. It is a really different experience than what I am used to. Rather than water breaks, they take cigarette breaks, and at the end they talk about what went good and bad during the practice over beers. That was perhaps the most extreme culture shock I have experienced as of yet. Physical fitness is quite apparently considered secondary to mental contentedness, which is just about as opposite as opposite gets from the American mindset.

I wrote a song on the cello about good-smelling girls.

This past weekend I went to see a really neat memorial to the German Kaiser Reich and discovered my host-mom’s extreme phobia of heights. She did, however, make it all the way to the top, which she had never done before, so we were all very proud of her. I also went to an old underground cave that was cool. Yeah.

Also on Saturday, we had a surprise birthday party for a classmate, and the celebration went late into the night. Anna (birthday girl) and I went extreme walking in Heiligenstadt while the others looked on and made fun of us. We watched a lunar eclipse from a playground and then everyone slept over at my house.

Sunday I went to the Harz, which if anyone has read Faust, is the place where he meets the devil. That was neat, if a bit touristy, and I took pictures with sculptures of really ugly witches and devils. I know how eager you all are to see those, so I’ll do my best to make them accessible sometime in the near future.

What else… my computer is dead, my converter/adapter is dead, and my mp3 player is flying around the world on a United 747. At least I have a camera (knock on wood).

I think I’ve spent about €27 on Döner in the past less-than-a-month. It’s just so good.

On Saturday I’m moving in with my permanent host family, so the next time you hear from me I hope I have lots of good things to say. They seem to be very different from the family with which I now live, but I love different, so I’m really looking forward to it. The downside: I have to leave yet another family and group of friends.

Life goes on,

Tommy