First off, one of the most interesting things I’ve been experiencing is watching Charlotte, age 11, deal with what she feels is a tragedy…Michael Jackson’s death. This little girl began researching Michael Jackson’s life and trying to fully understand all of the things he went through. She has fallen in love with his story and is personally and internally struggling to deal with his death. It is the craziest thing to watch because she truly and passionately feels effected by his death.
Every day and every night she talks about him. She has explained to me that before his death she only saw him as a strange person but now, talking about him actually brings her to tears. I have watched her cry when she talks about all of the wonderful music and other great things that he did during his life. It is so interesting to me because she is so small yet feels so much for someone she does not know. How is it possible that an 11 year old can understand more about people, life, and emotion then most adults I know? When asked what famous person you would want to have tea with dead or alive, I am sure there are people who would now choose Michael Jackson. I would say I would like to be in the room in which Charlotte meets him because her questions would undoubtedly venture further and deeper into his soul and mind then I could conjure myself. She is such a small person with such a big heart. It is astounding to watch.
Anyways, besides Charlotte’s new obsession with Michael, things have continued to be great here. I went to another school play of Little Red Riding Hood in which Charlotte played the role of a bunny. It was cute and she did a good job.
I also went to my first opera! It was really interesting. I think it is true when people say that some people love it while others don’t because I thought it was incredible and two other people I was with hated it. It was all sung in German but they had the German words projected above the stage so I could read most of it. It was beautiful and cheap! We got a student discount so it was only 13 euros and we came as it was about to start so the usher just told us to sit right where we were which was like a row from the stage. We were so close that when the actors came out onto the walkway area, I could see one guy’s spit when he sang. Gross, I know, but that’s still how close we were. What I thought was interesting too, was that during the intermission many of the actors and extras came out and were hanging around with all the audience members. We got a picture with one but it came out really blurry.
Us with one of the actors...blurry though
After that we went out for the evening. It was a lot of fun. We went to a couple of bars and I saw my first prostitutes. Quit an interesting occupation they have and funny to watch. All in all it was a fun and eventful night.
This is one of my favorites because Ben is doing some sort of a ballet move, Anna...I'm not sure what that is, and Kathleen is losing it.
An early morning Doner...I know I've talked a lot about food...but I must explain this one. It is a turkish sandwhich and its similar to our Gyro but BETTER. It has lamb or chicken, tons of vegetables, amazing bread, and yummy sauce. The best part? They're almost always only 2 euros!
Hey Anna, you have Doner on your nose
Later that week, I took Charlotte to Sea Life, which is basically the exact same thing as sea world in America. But she loved it and they had this elevator that went up into a fish tank so you were surrounded by fish and she LOVED that. We got ice cream and a crepe. It was quite and expensive little trip but I wanted to spend a day with her so it was good.
We couldnt use a flash so sorry for the blur ahead of time
And last weekend we went to WEIMAR!!! Ohhhhh I loved it. It actually made me a little jealous that I didn’t choose a more Bavarian-esque place to study. Don’t get me wrong, I love Berlin, but there was just so much to look at in Weimar. It is one of the most incredible cities I have ever visited. It thrived with history from all of the arts. It was home to Schiller, Goethe, Wagner, Bach, and so on and so on. No city has ever had such famous artists like Weimar.
And the buildings are beautiful. They are absolutely picturesque. They have amazing schools there too for design or all fields. We went into Goethe’s house which was my absolute favorite because almost everything was left exactly the way Goethe left it hundreds of years ago with all of his things, furniture, and even the chair he died in sitting exactly as it was the day he died. I love that kind of history because you really feel like you stepped into their time for a minute. And the things inside were incredible.
We went to an international potatoes restaurant the first night which was really delicious. Then we ventured out and found a club with 70’s music upstairs and current downstairs. There were a lot of people there and everyone from my program went so that was fun. It is interesting to watch Germans dance…its different. They swing their arms a lot more and its funny.
MMMM Potato
The next day we did a bunch of tours and got a lot of free time. There is this huge area that used to the queens garden but is now a park type thing. It looks like something out of the Grimm Brother’s fairytales. There were meadows dotted with wild flowers, huge trees, rivers, and old ruins everywhere. A couple of us bought a book and laid on the grass and read for a little. I chose Wuthering Heights for 3 euros which I have already read, but I felt it was an appropriate book for the type of Romanesque setting we were in. Plus I love that book and now I have something to read on the trains in the mornings.
A ruin in the park where we read
Re-enacting Rapunzel
That night was the fourth of July and believe it or not we saw fireworks. They were having an American classics concert in the center of Weimar and we could see the fireworks from our hostel. (By the way, this hostel was different than the first one. It was still fine but not as nice as the first one we went to. They had a community bathroom and it felt more like a college dorm but fun nonetheless.) We all got beer and celebrated the fourth together in the hostel. When the fireworks went off we stuck out heads out the windows and sung the national anthem which made a German woman across the street quite mad…oh well. Then two random German kids joined us and celebrated the fourth with us.
Beautiful Weimar
Our room
Leaving the Hostel
Writing with feather pens in Schiller's house...PS if anyone wants to get me the best gift in the world it would be a feather pen haha. They are so much fun
The next day we went to Buchenwald, the concentration camp. Of course that was incredibly disturbing but really interesting to see. Our tour guide talked about how when Obama recently visited there he stayed more than three hours which was incredibly amazing to them because most “States Men” as they call them, stay only for a little to make the appearance. I must say it is quite nice to be loved for your president for once. Everywhere I go Germans always say, “Oh and American, ah OBAMA!!!! JAAA!!!”
You can't even grasp something so terrible happened in a place so beautiful
A Buchenwald memorial which is always heat at body temperature
Then on Tuesday, we (Kathleen, Anna, and I) went to another school to present about America. This was a Realschule which is a step below the Gymnasium. The kids in this school are in training to practice a trade. They wont go to a university unless they take night classes to graduate with the same degree as those kids in the Gymnasium. The school also was a lot more run down than Charlotte’s school. The teacher expressed that she wished they would get more money to help the school and that a lot of the kids in the school come from poorer families. She was such a sweet teacher though. She was like one of those teachers from the movies where they go into a school and change the lives of the kids that aren’t as privileged. She had the boys in the class meet us outside the school with flowers it was so nice.
The kids were very interested in our presentation and asked so many questions. They were definitely not as well behaved as Charlotte’s class who sat perfectly still and quiet but they were all characters. After the bell rang, the teacher said that those students who had a free period and wished to sit with us and ask us more questions could. We figured everyone would flee but at least half the class pulled up chairs and flung their hands into the air with questions. One girl sang for us and another kid beat boxed. It was so interesting and such a great experience.
Us and the kids
So, time is really running out. Kathleen is going around to different cities this weekend and Anna is going to visit her family but I decided to stay here for my last weekend. One reason being the limited amount of funds I have left and another being that I want one last weekend to really submerge myself tin German with my family. That is the main reason I came here and I want to absorb the most I can before I leave. Also, there are some other things I still want to do in Berlin before I go. I will be hopefully going out with a group of people from my class this weekend too so that will be fun. Part of me feels that I am ready to return to the US soon and definitely ready to see my family in Munich J but I know that as soon as it is over I am going to miss so many things from here. For example, the coffee. I am going to have to ask them to put foam on top of my coffee and make it extra strong. Before I came here I had trained myself to be a primarily tea girl because I think it is much healthier…buttttt that is no longer the case. I am addicted. There is nothing like a MilschKaffee and bakery good in the morning. Or a tafel of Milka! Small things like strawberry stands and fresh flowers everywhere, I will miss. But I so miss many things about the US and I think we are a fantastic country to live in as well.
Alright that is all for now. I miss you all!!! I hope everyone had a great 4th of July and rach…..HAPPYYYYYYY BIRRRTTTHHHDAYYYYY (haha belated a little). I miss you!
Picture of my class
Me and Anna after school one day
A beautiful art gallery we went to for our last excursion
Playing the coolest game of chess ever...felt like Harry Potter
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