Back to school

January 3rd

We left Vreden for Cologne. Janina's dad and Petra took us to the station and we said goodbye. It was a lot of fun staying with them and I hope they enjoyed having us as much as we enjoyed staying there. They were great hosts and such kind people. In Cologne we had to store our luggage and then we could leave the station to go sightseeing. I had already been to Cologne once before, so I played the tour guide after we grabbed a map from the tourist info. shop.

First, we went up to the Cathedral or Dome which is the most impressive one in Germany. After going inside there, we headed for the Chocolate Museum. The museum basically tells the history of the development of chocolate and how it is made, but also shows how it is made on conveyor belts, which is just as interesting. This took at least an hour and from here we walked back into the city and decided to sit at another cafe. Yes you are probably thinking this is all I do here. It is simply a part of the German culture and one I really like. Having coffee and cake in the afternoon is more like a conversation hour with the people you are with. Of course this can also be done at home (as one would do in the U.S.), but this is simply what you do if in a city in the afternoon and if it is cold!

After the cafe, we walked down the pedestrian zone where all the stores and shops are and went to the Kaethe Kollwitz Museum. The largest collection of her works is housed in Cologne. Janina and I had been to an exhibit of hers in Berlin and this is why we wanted to go this one (I hope Kim enjoyed it as much as I did). For those of you who haven't heard of her, Kaethe Kollwitz was an expressionist artist. A lot of her works reflect social issues (war, poverty, hunger, mothers and their children, etc.) and she used her art to express her feelings towards these issues, inspired by her husband who was a doctor, and the loss of a son in WWI. Her art was banned in the late 1930's as one can imagine because of her stance on these issues. Her message is quite universal and her works consist mainly of black and white prints and sculptures. Anyway, the exhibit was fabulous and this was a highlight of my day.

For dinner, we went to a Baltic Restaurant and the three of us order Cevapcici with sheep cheese...mmmm! It came with a salad, rice and fries, which was way too much. We could have split one meal amongst the three of us! After eating dinner, we decided to make our way back to the station and on the way there we passed the Dome. There were a lot of people running around in costumes holding banners and were lined up along the entrance to the Dome in a tunnel-like formation. The only thing that Janina and I could think of that they were doing, was kicking off Karneval in Cologne, hence the costumes and music. Karneval is the fest that leads up to Ash Wednesday and the biggest ones in Germany are in Cologne and Mainz. Little did we know, that this was just the beginnning of our excitement for the day...

When we got to the station, we retrieved our luggage and headed for the track, where we were to meet the assistants from the Deutsche Bahn who would help Janina get on the train. We were waiting and they didn't come so Janina went to find them. Of course, there was no elevator on the track that our train was supposed to leave from and the escalator option was out because it was also not functioning. I personally am not sure what other option this left us but the assistants SEEMED to know what they were doing. The one told Kim and I to meet him at the top of the stairs at the corner of the escalator. We were standing there for at least five minutes when I decided to start looking around. Finally the man found us and he proceeded by telling me that Kim and I had to go all the way to the other end of the train because that was where Janina would be. Kim and I took off running with our luggage for the other end of the train (we needed section E and were in A). We had to push our way through the crowd of people who had just gotten off of the trains and I was afraid that Kim wouldn't make it through the crowd. (In Germany, when you want to get from point A to point B, sometimes you have to just push your way through and not say excuse me or I'm sorry, most Germans will be offended by this, but they too do it on numerous occasions for example at the grocery store when the line is already clearly formed). Back to the story, so we made it to the other end of the train to get on, only to find that Janina was nowhere to be found. I started to panic, meanwhile Janina was too and I went to ask the conductor if he had seen her or knew if she was on the train. He told me that there wasn't anyone in a wheelchair on the train, or even registered for it! Now I was really freaking out, so I started running through the train trying to find her. When I got all the way to the other end she was sitting there trying to cal my cell phone to see where we were. This was a huge relief for the both of us. I went to gather my luggage and Kim and then we had a pretty quiet ride from there on out. We arrived in Frankfurt, said goodbye to Janina who headed back to Heidelberg, and Kim and I left for our hotel near the station. We were exhausted from all the traveling and basically just crashed.

January 4th-8th

Kim and I left the Frankfurt Hotel early the next morning to get Kim to the airport. We checked her in, sat around a bit, and then said our goodbyes. It was strange because I had jsut gotten used to her being here. I had a blast showing her around and I really hope she had a good time, even if she did say we were feeding her too much! (we wanted her to try everything foodwise, who knows when she will be back!?) After she went through security, I went to purchase my ticket to get back to Kiel. As I was doing this two American boys came up to me and asked me if I could help them buy a ticket. They saw me getting mine from the machine and I guess that they assumed I knew what I was doing. They were on their way to Bayern to visit a friend and so I helped them buy their tickets. I think they were quite relieved that someone helped them (they looked desperate) and they told me they wouldn't have figured it out on their own. I jumped on my train back to Kiel (which ended up being delayed by 20min.) I was so exhausted and still had a bit of a cold that I got while at Janina's dad's so I spent the next few days resting and cleaning my room and our apartment. I also went to the library and got some books on the Kentucky reading list for the German Master's program. Nothing like trying to get a head start. That Sunday, I went for a nice bike ride along the harbor. I realized how much I had missed being along the water, while I was traveling. When I'm in Kiel, I see it everyday. I was happy, though, to get to see some snow and to get to see the sun shine more than it does here. The sky is usually cloudy and grey here, but while I was in the South, we had some blue skies and longer hours of sun!

On Monday the 8th of January, I went to visit host family. I hadn't seen them for a little over a month and I thought I would drop by and surprise them. Normally, this is not something you would do in Germany, drop by unannounced, but it dpends on your relationship with the people. I was informed by my host family when I left, that I was more than welcome to stop by anytime, even unannounced. When I got to my host grandmother's (she lives beside my host family and it was the afternoon, so I knew my host mom and her were having tea) her and my host mom were really excited to see me and I was the same to see them. My host grandmoteher had a bad cold. She made me tea and placed a plate of cookies in front of me as was the norm, when I was there before. Not too much had changed in the meantime. Tiki, the 101 year old great grandma was still kicking (well not literally, I guess more appropriately just still breathing) and they didn't have too much news to tell. My host parents had been to Barcelona over New Year's and had a really great time there. We just shared stories about Christmas and our break and we talked about their daughter, who is still enjoying herself in Australia. I also told them that my sister is coming in March and they told me to stop by so that they can meet her. It was very nice to see them again and spend time with them.

January 9th

My Christmas break came to an end and school started back up. However, there was not much for me to do in those 3 days. Most of the teachers were stressed about giving out grades and were trying to catch up.

January 10th

I went to school and after school I met Ryan for a walk along the harbor. We were heading towards the Kunsthalle, which we have passed on numerous occasions and this time we decided we had time to go in. Most of the exhibitions were from artists from the region, for example, Emil Nolde. It was mostly contemporary art, but there was also a sculpture exhibition at the entrance with a lot of statues from Athens and Rome. I found the art museum really nice. I had expected it to be smaller and not to have too much but it was definitely worth seeing. After that we continued walking and spent the late afternoon in a cafe.

January 11th

One of the girls in my 13th grade class ave a presentation on her semester in Capetown, South Africa to my 12th grade class. She did this with a powerpoint of photos that she had taken. Each photo looked as if it was professionally taken. She also gave the presentation without notecards and only made only a few verbal/grammatical errors! This shows how high the standards are at my school! The presentation was really impressive and made me think about Namibia. South Africa is really similar to Namibia, in that the whites have all the money and the blacks live in the projects. The girl, her name is Shoreh and I believe she is originally from Iran, lived with a black family in a house with no running water that was miles from the main city. Her living situation, the conditions at her school, and the experiences she had and things she saw while there were overwhelming. Keep in mind that she was only about 16 at the time that she did this semester abroad. Her presentation did not focus only on the positive aspects of such an experience, it also made clear the various dangers she was in while there, but I, myself think that it demonstrated just how quickly kids grow-up/mature here. They go abroad at a much younger age and usually don't have any problems doing so, even in difficult situations. I wish I could say the same for all of the people who leave Bethany or the U.S. in general and study abroad. Perhaps this has to do with Germans being able to travel easily to other countries with different cultures and therefore "different" is more common to them, but I also believe, that you can see how being independent is engrained into the German society a lot more than in the U.S. Kids learn from an earlier age to be dependent on themselves and are given a lot more freedom to make decisions on their own which eventually they will have to completely rely on in the future (making their own decisions that is), in comparison to the U.S. where children are spoon-fed "at least" until they finish college and until then and even sometimes after, the world revolves around their needs and things should be the way they want without much thought of their own and effort.

After school, I wanted to catch a movie with Ryan but there weren't any good ones playing, so we went to the Metro (a movie theater with a cafe) and had milkshakes instead.