SCHULFESTWOCHE

Halohalo!

   This schoolweek was preeetty laid-back and easy, since we had the schulfest woche(?) thing. Our school turned 350 years old, and in honor of that we had different programmes for every day. I already wrote something in my previous post, but I just thought I´d make a new one devodet just for that. :):) And I apologize for not having a lot of pictures, I´ll promise to be a bit more productive next time :)

   Monday: we had a normal schoolday, and it went by just like every monday before  -> Eat-School-Eat-Practice-Eat-Sleep...

   Tuesday: we had our sportsday, and we played volleyball, had the 30min sponsor-running-thing (in which I sponsored myself, woop) and had the Getting Tough competition (= pure hell). It was pretty horrible since in the morning it was SO COLD and just to make things worse, I have all of my winter clothes in Estonia, so I had to take what I could, and freeze my ass-toes-fingers-stomach and everything off. :(( Oh, and just going to point out once again, our class lost the volleyball game AND the Getting Though thing, but it doesn´t really matter, at least we tried :D

   Wednesday: we went to TITK with our class and some other 10th graders, and I´m not pretty sure, but I think it had something to do with fabrics and things like that... To be honest it was a bit boring (actually really boring), and I didn´t understand even half of what we went through (typical Alina), so I just put on a smart face and tried to be normal.

   Thursday: in the morning we went to the police office with our class, and I actually found it really interesting, and I understood most of the whole ,,tour´´!(!!!) We got to sit in the cells, and they showed us different computers and electronic things they had (I didn´t really follow there...), and at the end we watched a video about some police stuff in Thüringen (??) and then the officers did an overview about some drugs etc.

   After the station, we had about 1.5h of free time, so of course we rushed to the grocery store (don´t judge us) and then went to Helens house, and just sat and talked and laughed. Aferwards we had some kind of a historical presentation in some big historical house (I suppose). Once again I´m not pretty sure, but it had something to do with the USA and yeah, some other things that were related to that... :D:D

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(with Helen) we made a cute surprise for Antonia, just because we love her :*
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  Friday: we watched a movie, that was made in our school in 1997 and it had something to do with the students and their dreams(?) etc. Afterwards we went to Schloss Heidegsburg, and had some minitour there, about how some of the people influenced our school (??).  I can´t really tell anything interesting about that, since, surprisesurprise, once again Alina didn´t understand almost aaanything. But I can tell you one thing, the lady looked like one of the characters in ,,ScoobyDoo in Mexico´´!! Our day was reaally short, and we ended already a bit before 11.

We had planned to meet with Alisia at 13-14, so I quickly came home, packed my things, ate a bit, and head back. We did our make-up and hair together (+ate duh), and at around 18.30 her mom drove us to school for our schoolball.

   Schoolballs in Germany are so much more cooler than in Estonia! It was more like a disco, and not even close to the boring ,,all-fancy-tradition´´ we had back at home. Overall I had so much fun, and got a looooot of new friends, and yeah, we had fun :D The walk back home with Alisia was pure pain, ´cause there´s this really long and a steep hill, basically the whole way until her house. Gladly we had our sneakers with us, and we even got to make a little catwalk in the middle of the street, just for ourselves.

   Saturday: our school had the day of the open doors, and every class had different ,,projects´´ for the visitors. Our class was all about the food, and when we didn´t have our 30min working shifts, we got to walk around and explore our school. I even got a cute pink braid from one of the 12 graders workshop-thing.


I know this one turned out to be boring and full of mistakes, but I´m not really in the mood to be creative with anything that´s connected to literature, so you´ll just have to settle with it. :)) I actually have already planned out what I´m going to write about next week, so maybe then I´ll try a bit harder. :D aber bis dann :*

Tschüß ! xoxo

SOMETHING NEW

Hallohallo!

  Before getting in to my usual writing ritual, I just want to thank everyone who pays attention to my little scrappy blog, and take the effort to understand my thoughts in writing. I don´t know if it´s just that germans are so nice or something, but some people from my school have complimented my blog, and that´s reallyreally sweet and heart warming! I don´t know how many of you readers actually enjoy my blog, but the ones who do, thank you so much! :):):)

 
About two weeks ago, me and my hostsister went to a charity concert in Schloss Heidegsburg. Alisia invited us, and endowed us the ,,cards´´ -that was reallyreally nice from her and her family, since one card costed 25euros(!). The concert was put together by Rudolstads Rotary Club, and Alisias mother is a ,,member´´ there, so it was pretty cool meeting her parents and being like ,,hi I´m an exchange student´´. There was also a looooot of food served at the end -actually only four types of pies- and we placed ourselves right next to the buffey, so you can imagine whos attention was only on the food... Overall, the music was good, the food was good, and of course the company was good.

 On that weeks sunday, we made these potato-ball-things called Thüringen Klöße, and eventhough I tried to follow the process, I have no idea how to make them and therefore can´t give any overview on what we did... I can tell you that in the end we had kind of mashed potatoes -from raw potatoes- and rolled balls from them and put them in tho boiling(?) water. For me, they are a bit slimy, but they do taste pretty good!

there´s not really anything else to do during a group project in arts,,,

   Last week, I started rhytmic gymnastics at our local club. To be honest, I had no idea what I got myself in to... Gymnastics may seem like an easy hobby, but it actually demands much more work than you´d think! Every little move has to be perfectly perfect, and every joint has to be in their own places -my explanations don´t really make sense, sorry. BUT I really liked it, and apparently I have pretty feet for gymnastics -perks of doing balley as a kid. I´m really motivated to learn new things there, and at first practice I tried to stretch as far as I can (and more), so the next morning I couldn´t walk good and the whole week my muscles had this really weird pain in them. Next practice I tried to be a bit more careful, but overall my pain was all worth it, since on friday my splits looked much better already! We have only 3 times a week practice, and it fits my schedule perfectly! I have enough time to do different activities with my family, and also concentrate on learning german. 

  The best part about starting gymnastics, is that there are 3 girls from my school, and two of them speak russian (they´re siters) and the younger one goes to 11th grade (!!!). The next day during the bigger break, I joined their company, and there are so many russian speaking girls in the 11th grade! Like wow! It felt really good to get some friends of my own age, and to be able to speak in russian with them, just perfect. :)

   Last weekend we had a YFU-meeting in Erfurt, and we went there a bit earlier to have a little city tour. We ate bratwurst and there was this some AOK thing, and I don´t really know what it was about, but I spinned that thing (last picture) and won a lunchbox (yay), also I got to make two pictures in that chairthing -originally I shoul´ve taken one but the photographer didn´t like the printed version so we made a new one. 

  The meeting was ment for YFU exchange students here in Thüringen, and it was so much more serious than I had initially expected it to be... They divided us in to three groups -exchange stundets, siblings and parents- and the whole point was to go through our first month in Germany, and discuss our problems, plans and etc. Gladly, my first month was really good, and there was nothing to complain about, but there were some students whose wasn´t... Overall I heard a lot of a bit shocking things, and even got some new information. And just like in any other YFU meeting, there was A LOT of food -apparently every family had to bring something, but guess who were the only ones who didn´t know about it. Oh, and I think I forgot to mention, that in Thüringen there are 3 girls from China, 3 boys from Thailand, a girl from Japan, a boy from Indonesia, a girl from USA, a girl from Chile and 2 girls from Australia, and me. Also, one of the coordinators was last year in Finland, and she speaks fluent finnish!

   Also, my ,,support person´´ visited us last week, and he seems reallyreally nice! I didn´t get to know him that well yet, but he seems calm and laid-back, so that´s really good -if I´ll have a problem, I wouldn´t want my support person to panic together with me.

  This week only monday was a normal school day, and the rest of the week we have some ,,special plans´´. Today we had a sportsday, and ohmy it´s different from what we used to have in Estonia... The first half of the day was okay, but in the end we had a getting tough competitionthingie -it´s the thing where you have to go all military training style, and climb over walls and stuff-  and Í kind of expected it to be horrible but in the end, it wasn´t that bad. Okay, yeah we were last, but hey, atleast we finished it!

 Now some negative things to make my blog a bit gray : I´m having some minor problems at school right now, and I think I have to make an overdo with my plans. Since I´m getting graded this year, the teachers are expecting a lot from me, and most don´t get it yet that I DO NOT SPEAK FLUENT GERMAN. I´ve had two tests so far, and lets just say, that they went as bad as they could have went... I spoke with my form teacher, and we came to a conclusion that maybe it´d be better for me, if the teachers would start grading me only when my german will be good enough. Also instead of french -since the whole class has clearly studied it much longer than I- I´m going to propably join some smaller kids german classes, just to help me boost up my german a bit. But, the teacher promised to find out what options I have, so lets see what´s gonna happen... 

I apologize for the quality of the pictures, and that I´m not a really skilled photographer. :)) I hope you enjoyed this one, even though it was a bit too long -next time I´ll try to make it a shorter.

Aber, Tschüß. Bis nexte Woche! :)

some differences

Hallo!

I don´t really have anything special to write about this week, so I was thinking about making this post all about the differences between Estonia and Germany. I may have mentioned some of these before, in my previous posts, but here all of the biggest differences listed out.

1. FOOD Germans only have one big meal a day, lunch (+ breakfast). Instead of dinner, they usually have just sandwiches and fruits. That wasn´t so bad to get used to, and to be honest, I like it more like this. But in OWO-camp, we got a bit disappointed, when we were all starving and they served us nothing else but sandwiches. Overall there are so many bakeries everywhere!

2. HABITS The weirdest thing for me was, and still is, the way that germans hug. Unlike in Estonia, when they hug, they kind of keep some distance, and the hug is a bit awkward, at least for me. I´m used to hugging my friends really tightly and usually the hugs last more than just a second, but not here... Gladly my family´s more open, and they give some proper hugs!

3. FOOD NR.2 One thing that really shocked me is, that sweets and unhealthy foods are reallyreally cheap! The first weeks here I was going crazy, and bought so much chocolate and candies, and also gained a bit of weight.. oopsie.

4. LANGUAGE In my oppinion, the language sounds a bit ´´angry´´. And usually when a person is talking to me, and I don´t understand, then I get confused that are they angry at me about something or not. At first it was so weird and unusual, but by now I´m more used to it, and have noticed that sometimes when I speak german, I tend to use the same tone in my voice.

5. CHARACTER At first the people are really closed, but ones you get to know them better, they´re reallly outgoing and fun! And unlike estonians, germans like to give their own oppinions on EVERYTHING. If they don´t like something about you, they won´t even hesitate about making sure you´ll know.
BUT the weird thing is, that it´s not really common that you´ll get bullied in a german school, doesn´t matter how ´´uncool´´ you are. So you could say that germans are a bit nicer than people back at home...

6. EDUCATION One thing that got my attention, is that in Germany, the education level based on english language isn´t as developed as in northern countries. The teachers are making things too easy for the students, for example in the lessons, most things are discussed in german.
Also, they don´t really use notebooks here. Instead they have these folders, where they put pages from notebooks, and write there. It´s kind of like creating your own notebook.
 
   I can´t really come up with anything else, so I think I´ll leave it like this. Hope you guys got a bit of a better picture of what the life is like in Germany, enjoy.


Bis später!

SCHOOL AND SO MUCH MORE...

Hallo!

 I´ve been now in Germany for a month and a week, yay! My life here is getting more and more exciting and I keep on meeting new interestin people... STILL IN LOVE WITH THIS PLACE!

   On our last week of summer, me and Maxi spent most of our time at the Vogelschießen (tiny local amusement park) and just enjoying the last momenst of our ,,freedom´´. We also went a bit of sightseeing with my family, it´s just amazing how many pretty places you can find in one small part of Germany.  Also, we went to speak with the kickboxing coach, about me joining their training. Everything went really well, and the people seeemed really nice. The only scary thing was, that the youngest team mates would´ve been 20, and I just started imagening how I would be getting my ass kicked day after day... But in the end I decided to wait for a while and maybe start something else, where there would be more of my aged people, and also, only the busrides would´ve costed me 20 euros for a week, so no, not for me...

   I started school on 1st of September, and it was soooo weird... First of all, here in Germany, everyone goes to school with backbags and some even have those tiny suitcase bags (???), and I that´s so unusual for me. I´m used to using and seeing everybody with big purses or bags(girls) , and only a few with actual schoolbags. It´s actually really weird that they give the same amount of books here as they do back at home, but still, my bag is always like twice as heavy as it was in Estonia, like what?? Also, everybody has their own lunchboxes, and almost nobody eats the food that they serve at school.
   I´m repeating 10th grade, but so, that I´ll get a certificate. So I actually have to study A LOT...  The good thing is, that I´m repeating so many topics, but it´s taking me forever to understand what the teacher is explaining etc. For example, in maths, the hardest part for me is to understand how the calculator works!!?? It´s like a computer, and we use the basic ones in Estonia. So far, I´ve spent my every math lesson cursing at the calculator, but I still wont ask the teacher how it works, nope. AND my german has got a lot better during this week... so proud of myself...

   I haven´t really been active with pictures lately, due to school and being sleepy all the time (it´s an exchange student thing), and I haven´t really done anything after school, only studying and preparing my materials for the next day... yesterday I finally had some chances for good photo materials, so here you go. We visited the Anker stonegallerything with Maxi, and we also got to make our own stones, woop. They´re kind of just cubes of coloured sand which has been pressed together, but there were so many cool things that were built from those things! There was also an area, where children could try to build their own masterpieces. I don´t know who, but somebody made a really cool tower of those human shaped stones! I tried to build a house, but mine collapsed already after the third storey, at least I tried. After the gallery we went to omas and opas (granny´s and grandpa´s) to grill and just to relax. I don´t know what´s wrong with me, but once again I managed to eat myself so full, that I literally couldn´t breathe or move. I still felt full in the morning and I don´t think I can even look at bratwurst for at least a month or so....

  Next week I´ll try to be more productive, I´ll promise to try.

Tschüß, bis dann !