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 !

so far so good

Hallo!
   Another week of my exchange year has passed, and so many new memories have been made. I´m just going to start out by saying that Germany is A-MA-ZING! With every passing day I´m enjoying this place more and more and it´s like a dream come true to actually live here! Most people have the dream to travel somewhere farfar away and try out the so called ,,american dream life´´ , but for me it was enough to fly a few countries down, and fulfill my dreams here. I´ve been in Germany for only three weeks now, and I´m already head over heels in love with this place. I´m finally in that comfortplace with my family, and I can be weird around them and well, be myself.

selfie // Luka // yeah, I´m still a tourist...

HOW COULD I JUST NOT LOVE THIS PLACE

   From Monday to Wednesday we were with Maxi -my older hostsister- at their grandparents place (Maxi stayed until Friday but I left already on Wednesday. Oma and opa live in a small village in the mountains, and it´s so calm and pretty there (seriously, look at the third picture). It was nice to kind of take the time off, and live a bit in the German ,,farmlife´´. They have the cutest little dog there, and three mean cats (actually only two were mean but meh). We went to pick mushrooms from a forest near, and for a mushroom hater, it was actually pretty interesting! OH, and we also visited a womans house, who has the WORLD RECORD (I think...?) in collecting bells. Like seriously, she has over 10 000 bells in HER OWN HOUSE, and it was a bit scary for a clumsy child like me, to move between the endless shelves of hundreds of bells from glass or porcelain.... and she collects other things also, such as different animals from glass, and those plates you put on your wall, so her house was like a huge store of collectable things.

the slippers in the first pic were so huge and heavy, but it was not allowed to  enter the important rooms without them...

   On saturday, my hostmom took me to see the castle of Rudolstadt (picture 5 , the 4th picture). The castle was built in the Barocco era, and was used for maaaaaanymany years, until it was made in to a museum (sorry I don´t know the years...). The castle is so huge in overall, but we just saw about 13 of the rooms, and they were so pretty! I personally adore barocco style, and my heart just melt there. There were some problems with the instructor though... The other lady sold me the ticket for free (perks of being an exchange student), and while checking everyones tickets, the instructor didn´t understand why I had a 0.00 on my ticket, and started complaining something in german... The worst part was, I agreed on going on the tour without my hostmom, since she had seen it for a million and over times before... I guess the lady got tired of explaining the same thing to me over and over again, since after a few minutes she just let me through, and germans don´t really speak english... The whole tour was a bit awkward anyway, because I had the same info the instructor went through, in a notebook in english, and it seemed to be so weird for everyone else...

Mein erster besuch auf dem Vokelschiesen // they had different chips for different machines // yeah  // THERE WAS A FINNISH FLAG THERE SOMEWHERE I SWEAR

look mommy, I have friends // crossest thing I´ve ever eaten // more food // selfie #2

   The last high point of my week was the amusement park visit(s). On friday they opened the park, and we were a few of the first people to ride the machines... yay. We also visited the park today with Maxi, and I was dreaming about that blue apple ever since friday, yeah didn´t fulfill my expectations. We also ran into the prime minister of Thüringen, and I made a total fool of myself ohmy... Basically they were walking by and Maxi started explaining in english who was who, and then the prime minister walked to us and corrected something what Maxi said (sorry I wasn´t really paying attention), and then she stretched out her hand and asked where I´m from, and this idiot just pulled a casual ,,hi´´ and it took me a while to understand what her hand was there for... After a short period of time I introduced myself and tried not to cry of shame... I´m not much of an official person you know.

   Tomorrow morning we will be going to speak to the principal of my school, to find out about my upcoming year. And I apologize about giving the wrong information about my school in some post before. Turns out that when my hostfamily found out that I want to study in Germany in the future, they thought it´d be more useful to put me in a gümnasium (highschool) instead of the other school I was about to go to (don´t really know what kind of a school that was but oh well). And next week will be the last holiday week ! YAY I CAN FINALY GO TO SCHOOL TO GET SOME FRIENDS ! :):)

Tscüss!

FIRST WEEK WITH THE FAMILY & HOSTSISTER LEAVING TO ESTONIA

Hallo! 

My first week with the family went better than good ! I bonded with them really quick, and they started feeling like my own family in only a couple of days. This week went by pretty fast, and I´ve even learned some german... actually not really well, I´m still using handsignals as my main object in communication, but I´m sure as soon as school starts, the language skill will boost up.Of course, just as any other exchange student before, I had to make a fool of myself a couple of times (krhm actually a million times) while trying to keep the conversation going. And almost every time my hostparents ask me something in german I just smile and agree, and mostly they hadn´t asked me a yes or no question... awkward. But gladly my family understands that it´s really hard for me to actually remember any logical words, so they do the best to help me. We even have papernotes on different furnitures with german words on them (that´s actually really genious). 

NEW HARIBOS ARE SO GOOD! They should have them in Estonia also // bratwurst...// Rudolstadt

I don´t think there´s any need for an explanation...// hostsister trying out my favorite fastfood place for the first time

   The first few days I spent with my older hostsister travelling to Jena (+ Rudolstadt) and back for a little shopping and sightseeing. Gladly both of my hostsisters know english, so at times I can give myself a little pause from that mindtwingling language, and ACTUALLY UNDERSTAND SOMETHING (I know my head should be working in german all the time, I apologize). 

   Yesterday (saturday) my younger hostsister left for her exchangeyear to Estonia, and I think I made the worst decision ever by deciding to join the family with the trip to the airport and back... Everything was good and fun, until the emotional part for the family came - the goodbyes. In that moment there was a total flashback to when I was at the airport just a couple of weeks ago, all emotional about leaving my family and boyfriend for the whole year, and seeing everybody else cry didn´t make it any easier... Before I knew I was crying together with the family, but for different reasons. Half of the day I couldn´t stop thinking about my family in Finland and in Estonia, and was sooooo homesick, it was horrible. But when we made it back home, things started going better, I communicated more with the parents, and we bonded even more thanks to the emotional breakdown. At the evening we even went running together with my hostmom, and spent the rest of the evening all together filling in my scrapbook.

   Today we went cycling with my hostdad, and went to see (in my oppinion) the most beautiful places here! We were cycling between mountains and it was so cool !! I took a lot of pointless pictures of the same water in different places, so there´s not much for me to post... 

   I apologize for my messy (most likely with mistakes) text, but I have no idea what to write and what to tell you people. There´s so much new here that I could go on for ages... It´s a bit weird to get used to the habits of my family (and overall germans), but so far I think I´ve been doing pretty good... I hope. 

Aaaaand that´s all for now, Tschüß, bis später! :)

OWO & MEETING THE FAMILY

   Been a while since the last time I had time to come update this thing, and so much has happened since. We made it to Germany on the 3rd of august somewhere in the morning, and 2 of YFU Germanys volunteers took us from Hamburg to Lauenburg to our owo (orienterungswoche?). The rest made it there only at night, so we (Estonians) had the whole day to do whatever we wanted to.

   Me and Johanna decided to go play tourists and spent most of the day getting lost in Lauenburg. Luckily all of the stores were closed on sunday, so we didn´t have any opportunity to spend any money. The worst part about that whole day was going to sleep alone in a room for 6, while everybody else had roomies already (the other group came at 18 and the last one only at 23). But when my roomies finally made it there they were so noisy that they woke me up and good that they did ! We had a little bonding time for an hour or so until everybody blacked out again (I hadn´t slept at all in the previous night and didn´t get any during the day also). I had an Italian, Finnish, Danish, Norwegian and a French girl in my room, and I can admit that they were the best girls to spend your week with ! We bonded so fast and had so much fun together ! Overall there were only 40 of us in that camp, and the rest were in other camps.

   That week went by so fast and at the same time so slow. I had a lot of fun there and met some reaaallly great people but lets be honest, we all couldn´t wait meeting our families so it seemed so weird that everybody was counting days to finally get away from there (it may have been also because there was no Wifi and no internet anywhere in the whole village). 

   Exchange students are for sure the weirdest people you´ll ever meet, but they´re also one of the only people who actually understand and don´t judge, so it was so great to be in such environment and not feel retarded doing all those crazy things. Can´t wait to get together with all of those weirdass people and share my breakdowns and not so normal ideas. LOVE YOU ALL AND I HOPE YOU´LL HAVE THE MOST AMAZING YEAR EVER !

   Finally I can get to the interesting part, arriving to my hostfamily. We left Lauenburg yesterday all with different trains and ohmy, travelling hasn´t ever been so stressful before. There were some people who missed theyr trains simply because the doors just closed right in front of them, and that´s so creepy when you and the other girl are the only ones who made it on the train from the six of you... I was panicing the whole first train ride about will I make it on the next train, and the next train ride about will I find my family or visaversa. Luckily everything went really well and I didn´t have to contact YFU Germany at all. 

   When I saw my hostdad and other hostsister standing there on the trainstation I got once again so emotional and started crying right in front of them. The one hour drive to my new home was so interesting and there was so much adreanalin running through my veins, and at home I met my hostmom and it was so weird sitting around the table with them and not understanding aaaaanything they were saying (like literally they spoke so fast I couldn´t even understand the simple questions), but gladly after a while they slowed down they´re speaking and started using more hand gestures for me to understand better.

   Today we wen´t to my hostmoms parents place to pick up my other hostsister, and just to spend time with them. Later we went for a little walk with Maxi (older hostsister), and now were just relaxing and talking. :):)

Tschüss !

TOMORROW'S THE BIG DAY

Finally tommorow's the day I've been waiting for sososo long... The day I'm finally flying to Germany! I can't really tell if I'm happy or sad - I'd say both. During the past week my emotions have been jumping up and down and it's been one of those endless rollercoasters in my head. I still can't believe that I'm actually going to live in Germany for the whole year WITHOUT seeing all of my friends and family who I'm used to seeing every single day. Of course there's also those hopeless lists of fears stuck in my head about will I be okay on my own, but I know that my hostfamily will be there for me no matter what.

Oh and about the family,,, I've been talking to all of the family members and ohmy, they're such lovely people! They're all so kind, and even though they haven't even met me yet, they already talk to me as if I was a part of their family. I'm so happy that I get to spend my year with those people... :3

My plane will leave Tallinn tomorrow at 6.35 a.m. , which means we'll have to start driving at about 01.00 a.m. (kill me please). I won't be getting any sleep this night, and I'm also pretty sure I won't be able to sleep on the plane also (due to excitement overload).

I already left goodbyes with my family in Finland, all of my friends, and just saw my brother for the last time for the entire year (I just got emotional about it for the first time while writing about it), and tomorrow morning will be saying goodbye to the rest of my family and my boyfriend, so a lot of crying planned for tomorrow... 

Okay, so, I think I'll get back to my packing (have been ignoring it for the past few days), and make sure I have everything I have my bigbig day tomorrow! Fingers crossed I won't get lost anywhere and dye or something.