Winter holidays :D

Its been a while since I last posted... just been lazy haha The winter holidays were pretty amazing! I celebrated Christmas with my first host family and had alot of fun with them. We had a amazing xmas dinner and exchanged presents and enjoyed each others company. On the 27th of December i changed host families. The 28th was my Birthday and i Spent that with my new host family, but the next day we were going to Switzerland so i unpacked from the move of the host families and then started packing for the ski trip to Switzerland. I finished off my birthday with a nice dinner in a Italian restaurant. Driving to Switzerland was about a 6.5 hour drive from Frankfurt and it was soo beautiful its hard to describe! The place we were going to was a very small mountain village with about 300 people living there, it was situated high up in the mountains and had a very nice ski hill in the town. Driving from the bottom of the mountain to the town was about 30 min in the car and honestly one of the scariest car rides i have ever been in. The roads were soo small and were big enough for about a car and a half and to one side of the road there was rock and the other a cliff straight down. And on top of that there was busses and trucks driving up the mountains and the locals drive kinda crazy cause they are used to it. I kinda had to just listen to my music and hope we didnt die on the drive there. Once we arrived we settled into the apartment and chilled for the first night. The next day we hit the ski hill and had some fun. The alps are unbelievably beautiful!

We were there for 2 weeks skiing and one day we even went to France and skied there for a day and that was pretty awesome! overall it was a great winter vacation! Now im back into a normal school plan and next week i will do a German language test Ill try to post again in a week or two cause my grandma is getting irritated with me cause i never post anymore haha

Time of my life :D

So I have not wrote in this in a while and I'm sure my dear grandmother will give me a lecture about it when I talk to her next ;) So in the last few weeks I have done alot! In mid October we had 2 weeks off of school and during that time I went to München with my host family and stayed there for a few days and toured the BMW Factory and stuff which was really really cool but sadly they would not allow pictures in there or anything so I can not post anything about that. I have noticed my understanding of the German language is getting better and I am starting to be able to follow the language in a conversation. The speaking part is still a challenge and I'm going to start putting more effort into that. After the two week break I switched from grade 9 to grade 11 so I pretty much had to start all over with making friends but that only took about a week and now I am social withing my grade. Its a strange feeling being so far from my family, I don't feel homesick but its just strange not being able to talk to them in real. Skype is good but its just weird haha. The weather is starting to get a little bit colder, not even as close as it is in Alberta but its about 5 degrees out now and with humidity its kinda cold :p I will be switching into a new host family on Dec. 9, I'm excited but will also miss my current one cause they are soo nice! In my town they have set up the Christmas decorations around town. On the pedestrian street there is a Christmas market during the day that just started up which is similar to a farmers market in canada. There is a ton of people, good food and a huge tree at the center of town that looks soo cool! next weekend i will attend a culture weekend orientation for the outbounds here going to different countries and i have to do a presentation in German about Canada and i am kinda nervous about that but all the inbounds have to do it so we are all in the same boat, but being the only Canadian i will be doing it alone...

hanging with friends in frankfurt

Frankfurt at sunset

my "oldie" exchange friend

Over two months now!

well it has been a little over 2 months now and I am still having the best time I have ever had. Its been a while since I posted last but my routine has pretty much stayed consistent. A few weekends ago I attended my Host Grandmothers birthday party and for that we went and walked through grape fields at a winery and then had lunch at the restaurant on site. We then went to My host fathers brothers house for cake and tea to continue the celebration.

The next weekend I went to marburg for a birthday party with my friends and then the next day I slept over at my friend Jaunius's house. Last weekend I went to a rotary function where we went to a old castle and toured around it then went on a 11km hike and at the end of the hike we walked to a clergy monastery that dates back to 1100 AD and that was really cool! The next day I went to a Rotary youth exchange function in the city Kassel which is a hour and a half drive north. It was the first outbound orientation and all the inbounds went so it was nice to see them and talk with them again. This coming week my host family is taking me to München for a few days so will get to see a little bit of that side of Germany. I will write again soon :D

Happy and Content!

Well I was sick for a few days but have recovered now. That was the first time I got homesick was when I was sick in bed... nobody can comfort you when you sick like your mommy lol My host mom was amazing when I was sick she made me soup and brought me food and such and I am very thankful for that! school this week was rather uneventful, I just show up and go to my classes and Try to understand what is happening but there is a difference from trying to understand and actually understanding haha. Slowly I am being able to understand more and more German but the understanding is not the hard part the hard part is speaking it! I have realized my tongue is totally not made for speaking another language, my pronunciation sucks! but i shall learn eventually! Yesterday I went to Frankfurt and met with the other Austauschschüler friends i have. We went shopping and then chilled by the river and talked and such. Was alot of fun, and I hope to have alot more moments like those :D Today I attended a choir concert of my host mothers and it was very cool! I was only the 3rd time i have ever been in a church and the inside of the church was beautiful!! listening to the choir was amazing too sounded soo nice! but made me tired, it was like listening to a really long lullaby to me but it was really nice to hear at the end of the day! tomorrow i shall attend my first lesson of german class with the other Austauschschülers so i will see how that goes! good bye for now! will write again in another week or so :D

One Month Tomorrow!!!

Ok so it will be one month tomorrow! let me give you a update on what I have done since I last posted. I attended school for one week after I came here and got a feel of the school and made some friends there. Although it was a bit strange being back in grade 9 because I cant move up till my German improves enough to do so. But overall everyone in my class is very nice and only the first 2 days were awkward for me than everyone wanted to talk to me and be my friend etc. After that first week I went to a language camp with all the other exchange students for 2 weeks and during that time we did so much stuff! I started off the two weeks by taking a train with another exchange student from Frankfurt to Fulda which is about a hour and a half ish train ride, when we bought our tickets we got on a later train by accident but the tickets were already paid for so it so happened that we would be 20 min late. when we got there we were the only ones but we found a Rotarian that stayed behind for us and he took us to the hostel and everything was good! When I arrived we started off by a lecture from the Inbound exchange student coordinator. After that we got to know eachother pretty well! During the two weeks we did tons of activities such as a team tower thing where we wore a harness and climbed this 50m high tower that is a vertical obstacle course. for some in our group it presented a challenge but I did it without a problem. Another day we camped out in Native Tipi's for a night and did a bunch of fun stuff at the camp there such as making traditional German Bread, walks, and of course learn German. after one week we switched hostels from being in a small town outside of Fulda then we moved to another one in Wassekuppe which it the highest town in the state of Hesse. there we toured the town and learned more German of course. My favorite part of Wassekuppe was when in the evening we went on a really long scavenger hunt and ended up at a sheep farm where they had these awesome dogs haha I fell in love with the puppy Mozart they had there haha I did not want to leave! one of the following days we went to this amusement park right behind our hostel which we did not notice there the whole week... and they had this cool ride because it is a ski resort in the winter but in the summer its like a down hill rollercoster that you control the speed of and stuff its really cool! i also realized im getting fat cause I never stopped eating junk food there haha. but that is just a short little blurp of what happened in the two weeks. After we said our good byes i headed home with my counsellor and soon i was home :) even though i was sad to leave the other exchange students i was glad to get back into a normal routine. I went back to school this week but to my suprise today they changed my schedual so when i get to school i am in a new class so i have to make new friends and all of that again... but that only took like 2 hours before people started talking to me and stuff so it all turned out good i guess but i still wished i would have stayed but i guess everything happens for a reason. i will try to post weekly but the problem is finding the time so until next week ish i guess! Tschüss!

little over one week now :D

Well I have been in Germany a little over one week now and it has been a extremly busy week! I started off by living with my counsellor to get to know him and his family for the first few days and they showed me around the town and took me into frankfurt for lunch and we went shopping. I also had the chance to see my school that I will be attending and it is very old compaired to the school im used to in Canada. On wednesday I moved into my first host family and unpacked my things into my new room and everything is just awesome! My host brother David took me to the local swimming pool which was sweet cause they have these huge diving boards which I did a back flip off of once than was to nervous to do it again haha. This past weekend my host family took me to Fraenkischen Schweiz which is a old town about 4 hours away and we met up with all of the uncles and aunts and cousins of my host brother and we went camping there. During the day while camping we played soccer, which I soon realized that I sucked at playing soccer compaired to pretty much everyone there hahaha but I still participated. We also went on a hike that was about 6-10 km long where we went through a few villages and such as we were walking and then we stopped for lunch at a local restaurant/pub and had some good food! All the young peoples stayed in the village as the oldies walked back to the car to drive and pick us up, so while they were walking back we chilled on a hillside in the sun then went to a cafe for coffee. That night we went to a different village for supper at the local restaurant/pub and I tried a new German dish which was tasty! Overall it was a very fun weekend and the whole family was very nice and welcoming. Tomorrow im off to school (I didnt go today because it was to busy and the school wasnt ready for me yet haha) and im pretty excited.

one day!!!!

Well I leave tomorrow!!! Bags are packed and I am ready to go! Suprisingly I'm not that nervous or stressed, guess rotary has prepaired me well for this adventure. Right now all I wanna do is get on that plane! Today I am just having family over for good bye dinner/party. Its nice to see the Famjam one more time before I go! Its hard to believe that in 24 hours I will be at the airport getting ready to get on a plane! Even though I am leaving I am not really fealing sad or nothing... dont know if thats a good thing or bad thing. But tomorrow at the airport will be a mess, I most likley will be bawling like a baby... but oh well :p This is the start of my amazing adventure... I will try to keep updating this as often as I can, which will be at least once a week! My facebook will be constantly updated with small statuses and such so the next time I write on here I will be in Germany!

One Month!

Less than one month till I leave!!! I'm starting to get very excited! Suprisingly I am not that nurvous about leaving home and living in a different country. The only thing that im nervous about is the language, but I'm hoping I'll pick that up in time. Currently I am taking Social 20 in summer school so I am not too far behind when I come back. I am also working for a Carpenter during the week to make a little more spending money for when I am abroad. The countdown is on! Soo Excited!!

getting ready to go!

Just attended the exchange student send off BBQ and I was given my rotary blazer and business cards! I was so happy to see all the other outbound students and had a few good laughs with them and had a great afternoon!... miss them already! I am so excited to go on my exchange now!!!!!!! let me tell you this, if everyone knew how much fun a exchange student has/will have than I think everyone would want to be a exchange student! I found out my town!!: i will be staying in Bad Homburg, right outside Frankfurt. And i will be Leaving Canada on August 4! I also talked to my first host family and they have a son my age and he is currently on his exchange in the USA and he will be back when I am there so that will be cool! GOSH I cant even express how excited I am!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! will try to keep updating this more frequently, but for now ya'll are up to date! -Spencer June 2

Alberta!

Orientation!

This is when we sang to our parents at dinner on saturday night of the orientation. Im pretty sure all the moms cried when we gave them a rose! This is the flag march we did to enter the room on saturday night! I was holding the German flag followed by the two rebounds and two inbounds from Germany!

orientation!

Spring Orientation

I just attended the spring orientation for my exchange and it was amazing! I have learned so much and met some awesome people! They have helped me learn what kind of stuff I should expect on my exchange and all the things I should do before I leave and also what I should do incase of an emergency. With all the sessions and socialization going on I probably had a total of 10 hours of sleep the whole weekend! Aside from all of the information I retained and learned there were so many fun activities and strange activities that got us out of our comfort zone. We had to give speeches in front of the other exchange students on the spot without any preparation. We had a dance that was so much fun and they even brought in a DJ for us. We did drama games one night as the evening entertainment. All in all it made me more excited to go on a exchange to Germany! Thanks to all the people who put this awesome weekend together!!!

Hey! I'm going to start posting more after the exchange orientation next weekend and start posting frequently when I go on my exchange :)