Hello November.

Hello! I know what your thinking. KENZIE. Why have you not blogged. I have been quite busy!  I just switched host familys, so now I am living in the next village over. I am now in Jersbek, the country side! I am glad I get to expierence this, I have always wandered what it would be like. Across the street from where I am is a   "little"  castle. Next to the castle is a nice forest. I really like it. It has besutiful nature and it reminds me a lot if Indiana forests.

I am only 3 kilometers from Bargteheide so I am still going to school there. Every morning instead of taking my bike, I ride the bus. 

It is rather interesting, here they do not provide busses for school. You must get a city bus card to be able to ride it. This ends up being about 40€ a month. I feel like I took those free busses back home for granted! :)

So far school is going well, but it has been rather boring. During the day I study my german, or read. The school I am in is a Gymnasium so all of the students are very focused. It can be sometimes diffacult because of this, but I al really glad they all care so much about  school.

My new host family is great! I am really enjoying my time with them. I think they are a wonderful fit for me. I am the only kid in the house, there son is on an exchange. They are a very musical family and this is a major part of both of our lives. They also have an adorable dog. Its so cute.

The weather here is getting colder and colder. It is ridiculous that the sun sets at 5pm! It starts to set at 4, and it is totally dark at 5. This I am not yet used to. There is no snow on the ground, it is not cold enough for that just yet. I have heard about all the snow back home, that must be crazy!

All is well here, until next tome! Xoxo Kenzie

This is at 4:15pm :0

This is Curry Wurst the most delicious food you will eat in Germany.

I really liked this quote. 

Fall Fun

I am officially done with the two week fall holiday...oh but wait a minute. No school for 2 more weeks? That's right. I HAVE A INTERNSHIP. 

So my mom could tell you, I definitely am too obsessed with college. Im going to be honest its one of my favorite topics. When im bored, I actually Google acceptance rate statistics and compare them to sat scores etc. Im pretty sure this is actually a nutty thing to do. But I don't care. I have always wanted to do something elaborate. Like International Law, or Business Management. But deep down, the serious black and white business world just seemed a little "unfun" for the wholeness of life. I most likely will walk down one of those fields some day...but I will always say "Hey! I can always be a kindergarten teacher" and fellows and lads...thats Just what I am doing these next two weeks.

I will be working at a bilingual kindergarten. Today was my first day! In the school, kindergarten is from age 3-6. When the child is over 6, they move on to another school for 1st grade. So technically these kids are in Kindergarten for 3 years. Teachers are only allowed to speak English to the kids. I think it is quite  impressive, these kids are learning German, as well as English at such a young age.

The strange thing is, in this school there is no direct teaching. Students learn while they do activities. So in the morning learning a new song, (packed with English words) they get new vocabulary..But they don't really know that they are.

Today I colored, sang songs, and played outside. It was actually quite fun! Most of the staff at the kindergarten come from English speaking countries. So the teacher I worked with grew up in South Africa. It is very interesting to hear of all of the teachers lives, and what initially led them to living in Germany. The typical reason turned out it be there husband or wife was German. 

Talking with many of the children, I was learning quite a bit of German from them. Them being so young, they couldn't really form direct sentences. They knew basics like numbers and colors but not really much else. We communicated in "germlish" and it was surprisingly educational for both of us. 

Today while I was outside with the children, I saw a boy sitting alone digging a hole in the sand pit. I went over to him saying "hello, what is your name" and he was really shy. I figured he would give me the confused look I had been getting all day, but he answered in great English. I was so surprised. This kid was only 3 and knew more than the older children. It turned out, his mother was from California, and his English was better than his German! From then on we became very good friends!  I am excited for what I am going to learn at the Kindergarten. It has been quite fun so far. 

With Halloween coming up, I carved a pumpkin, and roasted the seeds. Although it is not so common to do anything for Halloween in Germany, I had to have my own fun! 

My hosties wanted scary, but we settled for cute and scary 😁.

Norway!!

Last week I went to Norway!! We went to the city of Oslo, by Cruise Ship. We passed Sweden, and Denmark on our way there. We left tuesday afternoon, and we arrived Wednesday morning. 

The boat was very nice, it had tasty restaurants, shops, and entertainment in the evenings. Going to the entertainment was very fun, they always sang American songs. One night, they had a Cowboy themed show. So it was Norweigen people, using a southern american accent. Imagine that! I found it quite funny.

In Oslo, we took a bus tour so we could see all of the sights in the time we were there. We saw a boat that went to the north pole, a beautiful garden, the parliament building, and an Olympic Ski Jump. It was all very unique and interesting. 

I really enjoyed hearing the Norweigen language being spoken. It is really a beautiful, quirky language. I challenge you to listen to it on google translate.

Norways thing is Trolls. They have them at all of the tourist attractions. Before I left, my grandma showed me a troll she had from Norway, so grandma if your reading this I got yours a friend! I don't know what the story is behind them, but I think they are great!

The ship we took was ran by a Norweigen Company. So many of the meals accomidated germans, but also Norweigans. We had som great Scandanavian "danishes" and breads as well as cheeses. The food was delicious!

I had a wonderful time in Norway!

The garden was by far my favorite. It was created by a poor artist, and in exchange for creating the garden the city of Oslo fed him and payed his rent. The theme of his artwork is the many different generations of life.

Here is the boat that went to the North Pole! It is called Fram.

Here is th famous bridge that connects Sweden and Denmark. 

Here are my Trolls

Call me Queen

This past friday was a Holiday in Germany. Everyone got off of work and school! It was the Reunification day of Germany.  Although it is a big holiday here, there were no celebrations. It is celebrated as much as we would presidents day. The people here feel as though if they get too prideful of there country, they will be looked down upon by the other European countries. In time the mood will change. It really suprised me because they said it is comparable to our thanksgiving. 

On friday my hosties took me to a Castle in Schwerin! It took 1 hour and 30 minutes to get there. Considerably a long time for Germans by car. The castle was sold to the government, because the royal families no longer were living there. In 1918 after the forst world war, the "royal power" ended. ISINT IT CRAZY not even 100 years ago there were princesses and princes?! I was sort of a little too excited about this.  As little kids we read stories of royalty, and we are set to think that all of it is fantasy, or has been taken place centuries ago. But to think not so long ago it was really real. 

Walking through this beautiful castle, you could feel the magic. The design was just georgous. Spirling marble stair cases, oak floors, and satin walls. It was just ridiculous. They had a winter room, library, dining room, smoking room and much much more.  My favorite room was the library. Instead of what you would imagine, the room had what was a sort of cabinet for books. So walking in you would not see any books. It kept the room looking "more classy". The most interesting thing, was that the well known private collection to the castle had been missing since WW2. The library had NO books in it! It is a bit of a mystery.

Walking through this castle, my mind was set loose. I could imagine the life of a royal, what had happened in the castle. The beautiful balls, dinners, walks in the great garden. I knew royalty was real, but I didnt really realize it until I was there. 

It made me a bit sad no one was actually living there. I was so glad I was able to see it. 

Mom, Dad, forget college I am going to be a Queen. Much love, your soon to be royal daughter. ( I will just take over the vacant castle no worries) ;)

Unfortunately I could not take any photos inside, so I pulled some off of the web. However all of the outdoor photos I took. 

The garden!

Staircase

A walkway

They built caves out of rocks!

Im having a great time here, much love.

Kenzie 

HELGOLAND

Hello all! 

HELGOLAND. I spent last weekend at my very first inbound orientation. This is a weekend spent at a touristy location to get you pumped up for the year and meet the other exchange students. We stayed in the town of Heide, but we traveled to the island Helgoland. 

It took about 3 hours to get to the island (by bus and boat) and 3 hours to get back. Although the transport seemed like ages, getting there was the most fun. When you put 50+ exchange students in one confined area..you can expect dancing and singing. Of course we got strange looks from the fellow travelers, but thats just all the fun.

Helgoland has 2 parts. One half is more of a beach setting, and the other half is the actual town. We first went to the beach. There were many seals on the beach! You were not aloud to get close to them though because there are laws on possibly disturbing them. They were still so interesting to see.

We continued walking the beach, until all of the sudden there was no longer sand, but what seemed to be millions of rocks. The rocks were beautiful. It was such a challenge to walk along the beach, but every rock had a different blue or grey tone. 

The town part of the island was very touristy. They had many stores that sold giant oversized candy, beer, and postcards. I even came across a 30 dollar jar of Nutella that was massive. Even the "tourist trap" type of stores are different in Germany.

After we returned from the island, we had to represent our country through a 5 minute presentation. The rotarians suggested we sing a song or dance. Our group settled on doing the song "oh beautiful". After several debates of doing party in the USA we ended up sticking to an old classic.  I played the guitar, and we all sang. But that was not it..we needed to truly represent America. So after we sang our song, we made the kind transfer to doing the dance of the hiphop song "wop". Im sure you can imagine how that went over! DANCE PARTY

Overall, it turned out to be a great weekend! We have a lot of South Americans in our district. I am learning about many cultures! Until next time!

This is all of the exchange students on the beach

The Americans!

My snazzy blazer

The exchange students of Bargteheide in Hamburgs train station

Singing oh beautiful

American Pride

Helgoland!

Boat Ride!!

Labskaus

Hello all,

This week, I had the chance to go to a friends house, and eat a traditional German dish. It is called Labskaus .It looks horrible, and by horrible I mean HORRIBLE.  I tried to keep an open mind about it, but as they opened the can of Corned Beef I could not help but feel a little gag-y. I definitely wanted to keep an open mind about the dish..so I carried on as if there was no issue. The dish itself looks like pink that was banned from McDonalds years ago. The dish itself consists of mashed potatoes,corned beef, and pickles. To make it look tastier people dye it with the juice of Cranberry pickles.

The dish dates back to sailor times, when you needed dinner but you had leftover breadcrumbs and fish. You basically mix together all of the materials that you have laying on board, and you serve it up as dinner. I definitely salute those gentlemen. The dish made it out into the city of Hamburg, and is now well known and quite popular.

Even though it did not look very tasty, I gave it a try! To my surprise, it was actually not so bad. It helped when I closed my eyes and ate it. After a few bites, I really started to enjoy it. Eventually everyone got that I was a little wigged out by the dish..but in the end it turned out to be great fun! I definitely experienced something quite out of my element.

This weekend I will head off to my Inbound Orientation. In my district we have 60 inbounds, so this should be great fun! It will be on an island called Helgoland. I am so excited! I will be sure to keep you updated.

As for now, I will go eat dinner. Then pack, but you know me, I may pack 1 hour before I leave. Lets hope I will be adapting more and more to this german "prepared" lifestyle.

Have a great day!

1 MONTH AAH

Ladies and gentlemen, caution before reading. The author has decided to not care about checking spelling because her computer does not recognize English. She tried however, but judgers may now exit the page. :) Thank you and enjoy.

Ok, so I have officially been on my adventure for 1 month now. Assuming I will be here 10 months I am 10% complete with my exchange. That fact makes me very sad and realize that the next 90% of my exchange will go a bit fast. These past 4 weeks have felt like only one week. I am really in awe of how time passes.

I have now been in school for 3 weeks, and my new class for 2 weeks. I have made friends! I don't really know why I was nervous about this. I am a very social person typically, but because culture is completely different here, I was nervous that maybe they would not understand me when I say things. Now, this happens at least 30% of the time. I will say "Wow, your preaching to the choir on that" and they will look at me so strangely, and then I realize, that didn't go through. This is just a mere example of what it is like. It is probably because the Danglish (Deutsch/English) does not match what I am saying.

Here they are taught British English, so I have noticed that I am picking up on there English...especially in English class. Do you ever speak to someone and they use big complicated words, and you just think "gosh, how annoying you are trying to sound smart" Well they are not trying here, these are just there vocabulary words they learn very young.

Yesterday I was invited to do Pilates with my new friends. In exchange they say to say yes to everything...so I did. Let me tell you, I am that person you don't like in your workout class. I cant do anything they tell you to. I sincerely was trying, really, I REALLY wanted to be able to do the exercises. I have no upper body strength though...and I just fail at it all. I was rolling on the floor laughing, literally. If I didn't have such positive attitude, perhaps I would have cried. It was an ugly sight. The instructor eventually gave up on showing me the correct form. I felt so out of shape. 

The girls here are all so tall, and thin. I feel so out of the ordinary. It is like they are Taylor Swift and I am Beyonce (maybe that was a bad comparison because Beyonce could do pilates) but I think you get the idea. 

After pilates, the group went to a bar for a glass of wine to chat. WHAT.  My mom does this with her friends and usually I am the one drinking milk shakes at steak and shake. That was definitely a major cultural difference. They dont look at ID cards either, it is so interesting.

So lately I have been feeling out of sorts, it has been the feeling like I had a while ago: low blood sugar. IT IS NOT A FUN FEELING. My mom told me to stop eating bread just for a little because the starches may be messing with me. Well, that is nearly impossible. They eat bread so much. I told them I will take a little break from bread and they looked at me like a shattered their fine china. I immediately felt guilt...but I really didn't do anything bad. I am trying this no bread thing! And the bought me salad stuff.. its all good. :)

Also, the real problem may be the chocolate addiction, but there are no support groups for this so I shall continue to feel no remorse.

*update ladies and gentleman...someone else enjoys salad...its all gone.Sorry mom i'm going to eat bread *

I am enjoying myself so much here. I have experienced so many wonderful things. I will be sure to share more and more with you. XOXO . Kenzie. 

I asked them what my German name would be and they said...Claudia. Mmm..lets think on that. 

    

IT IS FALL HERE :)

Also the noodles were my lunch, and are typical German. These photos I took on my run. I keep stopping to take photos which is a funny sight. Here is some motivation :) Go do something new.

"The secret of getting ahead is getting started"                  -Mark Twain