(no subject)
No school this week! Whoo hoo!! Monday morning I left with the 12th and 13th classes to Bremerhaven, which is a small city about 20 minutes away from Bremen right on the coast. Monday we went to the "Auswandern Museum" or the "Emigration Museum." It was so interesting. We all got an I.D. card at the beginning and it was of someone who emigrated from Germany to mostly America. Throughout the museum you could swipe your card and hear true stories of your person's journey to America and you had to discovered what happened to them and if everything worked out for them in the end. They also had a room full of telephone books from the U.S. that the Germans could look in to see if they could find their last name somewhere. In that room there was this giant light-up map of the U.S. and at the bottom were names of european cities. You could push the button next to the name of the city and a little dot would light up wherever the city in America was. For example, if you pushed the button that said "Hannover, Germany," a little red dot would light up in the very Northwest corner of Illinois with "Hanover" written next to it. I'm serious!! HANOVER, ILLINOS, the town that I grew up in, the town with 900 people and more ducks than citizens, was on this map!!!!!!! When I saw it I was so shocked, but I couldn't share this amazing moment with anyone because no one would've understood my excitement...=(
There was also a room with computers where you could type in your last name see if any of your ancestors emigrated and where they are today. I was really excited for this part of the tour because I really wanted to find my ancestors somewhere. I tried really hard, but the computer system was weird and no one really found anything interesting....oh well.
After the museum I went with a few girls from the 13th class(my 3rd host sister, the sister from my best friend in my 11th grade class, and another girl) to eat at a Chinese restaurant, it was cool. That night we slept in a youth hostel.
The next morning we went to a very cool place. It was a Polar and Sea research center. It is the headquarters for all Polar research in Germany. We learned about Antartica, the Artic, and global warming. I learned so much that day, I guess I never really thought about Antartica that much, but it was really intriguing. This woman showed us models of the station that they have connections to in Antartica. There are always 9 people at the station. They work in 15 month intervals and in the summer months there are around 20 more people who are also there. The woman herself was there 3 times!! It costs around 55 cents per second someone is on Antartica, well you can do the math, but it's a pretty outrageous number. The first time she was there was for 3 weeks and the winds were so strong that she couldn't leave the base the entire time she was there. Considering the base is underground, she couldn't even get so much as a glimpse of outside for 3 whole weeks. She had a list of supplies that they take with them for every 15 month interval, it was a HUGE list, my favorite was the 6000 bottles of beer.
Also in the research center there is a room that is -30°C (-22°F) which is the average temperature of a "warm day" in Antartica. Scientists do a lot of their work in this room so that they can "get used to" the extreme temperatures. We got to go in! There was a room we had to go through first that was only like -6°C and I didn't understand the German correctly and I thought that that was the room that was -30° and I was like, "well this isn't bad at all!" and then she opened the 2nd door and I was like pushed back by the cold. haha. We walked into the room and well, it was really cold, enough said. lol. After that we went and watched a movie about global warming. It was funny because the movie had a German or English option and we had to watch it in English because the scientists mostly do everything in English and they wanted to emphasize the importance of English. Anyway, at one part they were interviewing this German man and he started out in German and everyone was like "Yeah!! German!!!" and then it was dubbed over with someone else's voice in English. haha, welcome to my life. Then an Oceanographer came in to talk to us. She was from England and spoke to us in English. She was verrrrry hard to understand, even for me. She was talking way to quiet, using little one-liners that I'm pretty sure are only funny for British people, and slurring her words. Everyone was falling asleep. I felt sorry for her because no one was really paying attention, but come on, she could've made it a little more interesting. Afterwards, I went and talked to her and I asked her if she lived here in Bremerhaven and how often she got to go home. She said that yes she lives here and she only gets to go home once a year. She has been living in Germany for 4 years and she doesn't speak ANY German. Wow. No comment.
I've realized how differnt German field trips are from those that I have taken in the past in America. First of all, here in Germany this is basically what happens: We go to a city(by train), once we are there the teachers had out maps of the city, tell us where we have to be and when. Then we go, on OUR OWN to the place. If we have free time we do whatever we want wherever we want because we are 17/18 years old and can handle ourselves and don't need a teacher babysitting us. We are allowed to have some alcohol and no they didn't get drunk and loud or stupid. This system works a lot better in my mind, I think America needs to loosen up a little, I mean we do this everytime here, it works, and obviously it's safe or they wouldn't do it, they don't want us to get hurt any more than the American teachers do.
Anywayyyy, today I have an appointment at the dentist, because I need to get my wisdom teeth pulled....that's crappy.
I don't have any school Thursday or Friday either because it is the end of the semster!!!!!!!!! whoo hoo. This weekend I'm going with my host family up Brocken, in the Harz Mountains, which is the highest point in Northern Germany. Pretty cool. I've already high pointed Illinois, what more of a challenge could there be?? hahahaha. I wish my high pointing buddies could be there with me! =( sadnesssssss
There was also a room with computers where you could type in your last name see if any of your ancestors emigrated and where they are today. I was really excited for this part of the tour because I really wanted to find my ancestors somewhere. I tried really hard, but the computer system was weird and no one really found anything interesting....oh well.
After the museum I went with a few girls from the 13th class(my 3rd host sister, the sister from my best friend in my 11th grade class, and another girl) to eat at a Chinese restaurant, it was cool. That night we slept in a youth hostel.
The next morning we went to a very cool place. It was a Polar and Sea research center. It is the headquarters for all Polar research in Germany. We learned about Antartica, the Artic, and global warming. I learned so much that day, I guess I never really thought about Antartica that much, but it was really intriguing. This woman showed us models of the station that they have connections to in Antartica. There are always 9 people at the station. They work in 15 month intervals and in the summer months there are around 20 more people who are also there. The woman herself was there 3 times!! It costs around 55 cents per second someone is on Antartica, well you can do the math, but it's a pretty outrageous number. The first time she was there was for 3 weeks and the winds were so strong that she couldn't leave the base the entire time she was there. Considering the base is underground, she couldn't even get so much as a glimpse of outside for 3 whole weeks. She had a list of supplies that they take with them for every 15 month interval, it was a HUGE list, my favorite was the 6000 bottles of beer.
Also in the research center there is a room that is -30°C (-22°F) which is the average temperature of a "warm day" in Antartica. Scientists do a lot of their work in this room so that they can "get used to" the extreme temperatures. We got to go in! There was a room we had to go through first that was only like -6°C and I didn't understand the German correctly and I thought that that was the room that was -30° and I was like, "well this isn't bad at all!" and then she opened the 2nd door and I was like pushed back by the cold. haha. We walked into the room and well, it was really cold, enough said. lol. After that we went and watched a movie about global warming. It was funny because the movie had a German or English option and we had to watch it in English because the scientists mostly do everything in English and they wanted to emphasize the importance of English. Anyway, at one part they were interviewing this German man and he started out in German and everyone was like "Yeah!! German!!!" and then it was dubbed over with someone else's voice in English. haha, welcome to my life. Then an Oceanographer came in to talk to us. She was from England and spoke to us in English. She was verrrrry hard to understand, even for me. She was talking way to quiet, using little one-liners that I'm pretty sure are only funny for British people, and slurring her words. Everyone was falling asleep. I felt sorry for her because no one was really paying attention, but come on, she could've made it a little more interesting. Afterwards, I went and talked to her and I asked her if she lived here in Bremerhaven and how often she got to go home. She said that yes she lives here and she only gets to go home once a year. She has been living in Germany for 4 years and she doesn't speak ANY German. Wow. No comment.
I've realized how differnt German field trips are from those that I have taken in the past in America. First of all, here in Germany this is basically what happens: We go to a city(by train), once we are there the teachers had out maps of the city, tell us where we have to be and when. Then we go, on OUR OWN to the place. If we have free time we do whatever we want wherever we want because we are 17/18 years old and can handle ourselves and don't need a teacher babysitting us. We are allowed to have some alcohol and no they didn't get drunk and loud or stupid. This system works a lot better in my mind, I think America needs to loosen up a little, I mean we do this everytime here, it works, and obviously it's safe or they wouldn't do it, they don't want us to get hurt any more than the American teachers do.
Anywayyyy, today I have an appointment at the dentist, because I need to get my wisdom teeth pulled....that's crappy.
I don't have any school Thursday or Friday either because it is the end of the semster!!!!!!!!! whoo hoo. This weekend I'm going with my host family up Brocken, in the Harz Mountains, which is the highest point in Northern Germany. Pretty cool. I've already high pointed Illinois, what more of a challenge could there be?? hahahaha. I wish my high pointing buddies could be there with me! =( sadnesssssss