A Couple of Pictures from Germany!

A view of a castle wall from one of the castles we visited. So very cool.











Some classmates wrote on the board in the not-so-productive-at-the-end-of-the-year Physics class.

It's late and I have to go to school with S tomorrow, so I'ma go sleep. G'night.

The Awesomeness of Germany!

Ky: I'm in Germany right now. With my penpal. It's really cool. I may or may not have mentioned it before, mainly because I didn't want to keep blogging every day about how excited I was.

Anyway, almost everything is a bit different here. I'm in a small town with narrow streets and narrower sidewalks. Frankfurt is only an hour away driving, and Dieburg can be reached within fifteen minutes. Darmstadt is also nearby. I would upload pictures, but I don't think my penpal's computer has the drivers and I forgot the CD-ROM. Oh well; maybe when I get back.

I'll be here for two weeks from this past Tuesday, speaking Denglish (German-English for those of you not familiar with the term; check it out on Wikipedia), going to school with my penpal (her school ends July 4th), and even going to her prom (Der Abschlussball; for graduating students only. She goes to a Realschule, so she graduates at the end of 10th grade and gets an internship.). The keyboards are different here, so don't be surprised if I type a z instead of a y or a \ instead of shift. Heh.

Germany is really cool so far, as I wrote a couple of paragraphs ago. I'm still a bit jetlagged, and waking up at 6 AM to go to school has not helped. I keep nodding off everywhere. But this is Friday night, so I should be able to sleep in tomorrow. At this point in both countries' Daylight Savings Time programs, Germany is 6 hours ahead of EST.

Anywho. Things are a bit smaller here, from the houses to the road lanes to the cars themselves (SmartCars aren't the only tiny cars! They're all tiny! I could probably count the number of SUV's I've seen on one hand.). It's cool, though. One can walk nearly everywhere in the town, and to go much farther, there is an extremely convienient, extremely comprehensive bus system. Driving is sometimes neccesary, for sanity's sake (taking a bus to Frankfurt would probably take twice as long as driving, due to all of the stopping.)

Some things are not smaller. My penpal (I'll call her S) showed me a department store. I didn't even try to count the floors. It was HUGE. (S just said it has 5 floors. Wow.) And there was so much there! Candy, clothes, postcards, school supplies...everything. And apparently it has a restaurant on the top floor. The only stores in America that are comprable are those huge expensive New York stores. Maybe.

Today, I heard my penpal's choir rehearse. It was soooooo pretty--I have never heard so many kids/teens sing in tune! We also went on a tour of the building, but I had a bit of a meltdown because so much German was coming at me so fast I didn't know what the guy was saying. I could only pick out individual words, and by the time I had figured out any of the sentence, he was discussing something else. But Americans speak quickly as well. I just never realized it before.

I'm running out of things to say. So.....

S: Hi @ all I'm the penpal of Ky.She is a nice girl and she is very good at german if she is speaking it. I was very happy when she came to me , because i counted the days till the arrival.
Most things are very different here in germany than in america.
we were at a big city and there it was great to go shopping whit someone who didn't know the language very very well (She can speak german)!!!!!!!!!^^ <(^§^)> <(°§°)>
That's all for the moment!
I like to do some more things with her.
Bye

Ky: Cool.
Oh--by the way, for those of you who don't know, almost ALL drinking water here is carbonated. All of it. Tap water is not carbonated, but S has a machine in her kitchen that carbonates it. I haven't decided whether I like it or not. = )

Hol&J: I started that meme. I just have to finish it. Maybe when I get home... It's a good one, so it's taking me forever to perfect. Ha ha, Ky the perfectionist.

I'm logging off now. Tune in next (undetermined) time for more News From Deutschland!

Drat.

You know those Crest Whitestrips I mentioned in my last post? They expired four years ago.

By the way, I am working on that meme, Hol. I'll post it soonish.

Blech.

Finals are this week. Today was the last full day of school for me; the rest are days that are about 4 hours and 20 minutes long. I can eat lunch at a reasonable time (i.e. not 10:30 AM, as I have had to do this year because of my lunch period classes) and maybe get to work more than two or three measly hours a week—get some serious filing done. Sweet. I'd rather get paid than sit in class and try not to fall asleep. (I don't usually fall asleep in class, by the way. I do get drowsy, though!)

Anyway, an explanation for the title of this entry: I am using Crest Whitestrips right now. The old ones, because my mom insisted in using up the 30-minutes-twice-a-day-year-old variety before buying me the five-minute-once-a-day-for-a-week kind. Which makes sense, but oh man, these things are annoying. When my mom gets home from work soon, she may be greeted with "Ewwo, Moh! Ow wuuh wuhk?" translation: Hello, Mom! How was work?". Lovely. Typing or handwriting is the only way I can communicate until 5 PM. *looks at clock* And I am afraid to swallow my spit because I'm afraid one or both of the Whitestrips will try to go down my throat as well. (Sorry. That sounds gross to me as well.) And to make matters worse, the gel on the strips tastes bad. I'm not deliberately trying to taste it, but since I put these pieces of plastic in my mouth, I am bound to taste them at least somewhat. I've heard that tastebuds die every seven years and regrow after that. I hope that happens right now and they regrow after I stop using these torture devices stupid teeth-whitening things. I hope this works well, though. I'd love to have non-yellow teeth. But I'm glad these are obsolete. The five-minute variety seems heavenly compared to these. I just hope that those don't leave goop on your teeth after the strips come off like these do!

Awwwww…

Short post today. I have my German final exam tomorrow, and while I'm not worried, I'd like some sleep.

Anyway, Radar had to have surgery again. He had to have his right leg's ACL fixed up a few months ago, and the other one decided to get messed up as well. He is doing well. The anesthesia has worn off, and today he hasn't been in much pain. Yesterday, the day we picked him up, he would start whimpering and making squeaky noises whenever his leg started hurting. That, and he was still woozy from the anesthesia and the IV. He has a cast that is multiple inches longer than his tiny little leg (this is a chihuahua, remember) and he has to drag it around, but he's doing well. He made it through one of these already; he's a trained professional. Still, please pray for him!