Real Cool Month

I think I'll just skip the part at the beginning where I should say how embarrassing it is for me to be failing so miserably at writing my blogs regularly. You all know it's true, I am humiliated, but it's because I'm having such a good time. It's hard for me to justify writing this when there are so many other things to do, that actually interact back. You know what I mean? Good.

I've got a few good stories this time too. I don't think this post will be too boring, and I'll do my best to keep it less than a novel, but we'll see what happens...

I'll start with the rest of January: Vacation ended, we got report cards, mine was good, and I went to a couple birthday parties. Riveting stuff, I know. Soccer also started up again. You may be thinking, "Oh, that's wonderful how Tommy has an indoor soccer field available to him so he can play soccer inside and not freeze outside where it's 20° or less!" Well, that was not exactly the case. Starting, I believe, on the 16th, we practiced four days a week OUTSIDE on a full dirt field so the nice field wouldn't get wrecked. It was rather frustrating for me to realize that it was plainly cold enough to allow for snow, but that instead of feeling that soft, forgiving, wonderful substance under my feet I felt bumpy, solid-frozen dirt. Nice. Good thing I like this sport as much as I do.

February rolled around and the preparation for the soccer season continued. Practice four times a week, sometimes a scrimmage on weekends. As my money continued to dwindle, my patience with overcast, cold, windy days did the same. I spent every week day looking forward to the weekend, when my boredom would be replaced with a few hours of excitement found at an 18th birthday party. I had no school for two weeks straight at some point, I'm not really sure anymore when it was. On the Monday of the first week was a school wide volleyball tournament, and then the 12th grade had all the other days off becasue local universities had openhouses and seminars for prospective students, which means basically everyone. At the end of that week, much to the dismay of many of our female friends, I gave one of my good friends dread locks. I stared at his head for more than seventeen hours in three days, but it was worth it. Now he owes me a beer and a schnitzel sometime.

The second free week was "Project Week," during which every class prepared a project on the topic of their choice and then presented at the end of the week. My English class decided to act a few scenes from the play A Raisin in the Sun, and that ended up being a blast. I bonded a lot with them, and we did a fair job on the performance, but I don't think a single person in the entire audience understood a single thing that happened. The only stuipd thing about it was that we had such short school everyday that I'd get home and have nothing to do for six hours until soccer. I ended up baking a few cakes out of boredom, and they actually turned out quite well. I was surprised, and since then I've been cooking and baking more regularly. I want to get good at it; I feel like it's an awesome way to make friends and get respect from people, but mostly it just tastes good.

Oh yeah, I also tried kick boxing at some point in there, and it was awesome. I really want to pick it up, but I just don't have any time now. I think I'll start next year if there are opportunities at college. I feel like I'm made for that sport. Big, muscley, tough, violent... those are just all words that come to mind when I think, "Tommy Symmes."

On the 14th I took a train to Hamburg, a harbor city in northern Germany. There I took part in a week-long seminar for exchange students in my program. The purpose of the seminar was to discuss the first half of our year abroad, see a cool city, and make friends with some other exchange students. It was one of the best weeks of my year. It was an unforgettable experience to have German as the only common language for kids from all over the world. Out of forty of us, three spoke really good English, so German was THE language. I made friends from Moldova, Estonia, Japan, Mexico, Switzerland, Denmark, Ecuador, China, France, Russia, Hungary, Thailand and a number of other countries. I heard German altered slightly by both native language and the dialect of the area from which any particular student might come, and there are A LOT of different dialects here in Germany. On top of wonderful company, the location was amazing. Hamburg has a thriving music scene, active night life, and a rather... interesting... red light district. It's rich with its own history and culture, and you can just tell how the people who live there are proud to be, you guessed it, Hamburgers. And that's not a joke. A citizen of Hamburg is a Hamburger.

I climbed from a sad goodbye to my new friends into a train headed to Cologne, the capital of the German holiday called Karneval. Mardi Gras is very similar, in case you have any more experience with that, but it's basically a week long, costumed, happy party in the streets. There are parades, concerts, themed balls, and creative costumes everywhere. A friend I met in my orientation month now lives in Cologne, and she had invited me to come experience the holiday in full. She met me at the train station and handed me a Kölsch, the traditional Karneval beverage, and we walked out into the party. I really don't have enough room here to describe the feel of Cologne besides a good mood. Everyone had a costume on and everyone was happy (probably partly due to the fact that everyone was at least slightly drunk). Emma was dressed as a nerd and I was a bunny rabbit. Five friends and I had ordered the same one-piece rabbit costume, and I ended up spending three days walking around in it. I must say, I make an adorable rabbit.

I spent seven and a half hours in a club starting at 10:30 on Saturday night, and then walked around a recuperating Cologne on Sunday night. I thought it was a really cool city. There is a fascinating mix of old and new, and, like Hamburg, it is a very proud city. I would have liked to spend more time there and really see a few things, but the next morning I headed towards home to celebrate the last real party day of Karneval in Mainz, a city right near where I live. I met my furry fellows at the train station and, accompanied by two lady friends of ours dressed as angels, we marched forward into the... I don't even know what to call it. It was the most amazing, positive, good chaos I have ever seen. We watched the parade, which was full of political commentary in the form of floats. We danced, sang, cheered, danced, drank, ate, wandered through the city, danced, laughed, laughed some more and danced. I don't know if I will ever experience something like that again in my whole life, but I know, if I ever come back to Germany, what time of year I'll be coming back. It was incredible, and these few words did absolutely no justice to the experience. If you really want to know what it was like, ask me sometime when you don't mind me getting really excited and talking for twenty minutes without taking a breath.

And here I am, back to normal life. The uneventfulness is a bit depressing, but Constantin's birthday is coming up, so I'm really excited for that. I'm also running in a road race sponsored by a brewery in the end of March, so that should be interesting as well. I had my first real soccer game in the 2009 season today, and my host-grandma patched some holes in a really old sweater of mine. I also ate a lot of pie.

I miss everyone out there a ton, and I think of you all at the funniest times. We'll hopefully be seeing each other in not too long.

Take care,
Tommy