Guten Morgen!

I haven’t update in a while…again…so I think I will break this up into sections so it’s not so long.

First, speaking to Charlotte’s class went pretty well. I forgot to take a picture of them while they were all still in their seats but I got a picture of the classroom. Her school is neat because it’s at least 100 years old so it has a Harry Potter Esq. feeling to it.

Charlotte and two of her school friends

The kids were great and asked a TON of questions about the US. It’s so sad that their 11 year old English is 100x’s better than my 22 year old German. But they asked a lot about the size of our cars, malls, and if we had a lot of money. I thought that one was funny. I guess the size of our “stuff” equals money in their mind. Maybe once it did, but not anymore. They also really liked the part on the Palisades mall because of the roller coaster inside. It took a little bit to explain to them though that not every mall has one though. I think that was disappointing.

The classroom

This is also hard to see but its what a piece on the outside of the school looks like

Anna, kathleen, and I made our venture to KaDeWe which is like Harrods in England...aka WAY TOO expensive for me. It was a really cool mall because it wasnt like they had stores but just floors with designers on them and different merchandise. (Kat you would have gone nuts in here) It actually felt weird to not be able to walk into individual stores. They had a large kitchen and food section upstairs which I found some spices. I bought my Uncle (hi Uncle Rob) a spice that I think is very German? I couldn't read all of the ingredients so that's how I could tell it was full German :).

KaDeWe

I also went on an excursion to Hamburg with Anna and a lot of other students from Fubis. I had to get up at like 5:00 am in order to make it to the school by the time the bus left for the excursion. Unknown to me, the trains do not run as often on the weekends. So I literally JUST made the bus. But on my way down to the bus, tons of kids not older than 16 kept getting on the trains, coming in from their night out. It was funny for me to see these kids that are so young out partying until the morning but it’s because the drinking age is so much earlier here. Still, I can’t imagine my parents ever allowing me to disappear all night at age 16.

Then, when I switched trains , I walked on with my bag and my head phones on an sat across from three Turkish men. They were probably like 40 but immediately one said in German:

„Das ist ein Englische Madchen.”

„Wo?“

„Uber da! Sucht!“

Which translates to them saying, „Look that is an English girl. Where? Over there.” And them all staring at me. Then they started talking about English people in Turkish because I kept hearing the word, but I don’t get it! How do they know? I literally only had on a jacket, jeans, and my ipod. I didn’t even say a word for them to know my accent. How do I have English written on me? My host mother thinks it is the flip-flops. Maybe so, but it was funny because they thought I couldn’t understand them. That made me happy because they were saying it as if I had no clue what was going on.

Anyways, I finally made it to the bus and sat with Anna. I don’t know how I do this, but I always manage to make friends with people who are early risers…Rachel meaning you. Anna is one of those people who is up in the morning and wide awake…Mom, that’s you too. Those people are like another breed of human. So, Anna is one and we ended up talking for the entire 5 hours down to Hamburg. I was so tired we were almost a little delirious and laughing at everything. Everyone else around us was completely passed out but Anna and me.

Once we go to Hamburg we checked into my first youth hostel! So, first off, I am sure there are Hostels that are not so nice but WOW. This one was awesome. Ill put up a picture of our room. It was nicer than a lot of hotels I’ve stayed in and what makes it better is it is made for people our age. It’s affordable so it has a bar and everyone our age in it. There were some adults too but I liked the young atmosphere there.

Here is our hostel room...kind of hard to see but it was really nice trust me!

We put our stuff down and then went out into Hamburg. They were having a fair that weekend so there were tons of stands out everywhere and games. Mom and SJ, you would have gone crazy because they also had a flohmarkt (Fleamarket). But within the first 10 minutes that Anna and I were standing beneath a tent to look at stuff, it started DOWNPOURING. It came out of nowhere. It went from pure sun to pouring harder than I have seen in a while. There was also a period of hail balls that fell. We were caught under this little tent without jackets or an umbrella. There were a lot of tables under the tent so we really has like an inch of protection from it all.

Some of us once it was sunny again

Eventually it stopped, and we made a run for it. The sun came back out only to down pour again 15 minutes later. We took cover in a café this time and got a sandwich for lunch. Later that day, we went on a tour of Hamburg. I took the tour spoken in German because, well, that’s why I’m here. It understood most of what she said but every now and then I would ask one of our leaders to translate something. After the tour, a bunch of us decided to get coffee at what was pointed out as the best coffee in Hamburg. So we all ordered and Irish Crème coffee…bad decision. It was like drinking straight liquor and it made me so jittery from the caffeine that I was still a little shaky by 9:00 that night. Ugh. Gross.

The Death of me

We ended up going out to Hamburg’s red light district that night. More so accidently than on purpose but it was really interesting. We went to a club or two which were semi-normal and sandwiched between 100 or more strip clubs. There was literally a strip club every 5 feet. There were people out everywhere too. I was glad I was with a big group of people because not everyone there looked so friendly. At the end of the night we stopped at a German McDonalds….it had to be done. I am a little ashamed that we did but nonetheless it tasted the same as ours.

The next day we went on a boat tour, which was not too good. They took us all around the giant barges but there was nothing “pretty” to look at. Plus our tour guide was a little crazy and kept saying “yo” at the end of every sentence.

Hamburg Boat Tour

After that we went to Hamburg’s Immigration Museum. That was cool. W
e went to the place where almost everyone went before they left for Ellis Island. It was like seeing the other side. They had computers for you to look you family up in and I found ours. They also had an old draft card on file that was filled out by my great great something. He had handwritten out where he was from (Pozzilli Italy) and signed his name. Everyone from my family was on there…including my Mom, Dad, and older brother. SJ, Jeffrey, and I weren’t there though so…maybe we need to register? They had records of everywhere we have moved too and our addresses. It was very interesting and also a little crazy that someone knows so much about our family.

Immigration Museum

We decided to get in the beds that they would have slept on...not sure if that was allowed

Kelly and I on another bed

Picture I took of an unsuspecting boy...I got a weird look from him when he realized I was photographing him.

We didn’t get home from Hamburg until really late and I had an extremely hard time getting up for school the next day.

P.S. Finally! I meet the childhood obsession of my life (forgot to post this)

Oh and I just thought these pictures looked interesting