Long, long, long, post.
Hey Everybody,
This is a really long post I know, but now I´m only 20 days behind go me. And all what happened then is a work in progress too. For everyones information I am coming home on July the 9th but I am not sure at what exact time I´ll be getting to Detroit Metro so I´ll keep you posted.
Love ya,
April
16th of May:
I went on a bike tour today with Guni and the family 32 km! That’s about 22 miles!! Cool huh? It was super fun! Guni’s daughter Kim didn’t come with she was lazy and rode along in the car. It was hard work on the way there because of all the hills (of should I say mountains) but it was fun. We went with all the neighbors that hadn’t rode a bike in about a year so we made a lot of pit stops. We rode our bikes to a restaurant to eat lunch and then we rode back. The way back was easier because we took a bike path that used to be the tracks for a train route, that way it was always going uphill but wasn’t so steep. We got back to Marienheide and stopped at a restaurant to have a snack and then went the rest of the way back home. My ass hurt soooooo bad. I cannot tell you. I couldn’t sit for the rest of the night.
17th of May:
I slept in today, and almost got attacked by the dog. The thing doesn’t like people in its house too much. Guni came home from work and we ate lunch. Then Guni’s sister Anke came over and we went to the tower in Marienheide. It’s this huge metal thing where you can see for miles it was really cool the showed me all the different towns and things that people can see from up there it was really cool. Then we went for few hour walk around a huge reservoir, and I talked to Guni and Anke. Anke is expecting a baby, she was before I left too but she lost it, and one after that. I hope everything works out for her this time.
18th of May:
Today I dragged my poor butt out of bed early to go to school with Kim. Which again meant that I had to walk up a huge hill. But I sat in class with her for 3 hours, and talked to her English class. I then somehow found my way all the way over to my new school. And lurked around inside for an hour until class let out hoping that no one would ask me what I was doing there. No one did luckily. I said hallo to all my friends again. I really missed them these last few months they were always so nice and friendly and treated me like “April” and not just the exchange student. I then unfortunately had to say goodbye to most of my friends because it was time for class again. But two of them had free time so I went with them to have ice cream in the city. I got this huge Yoghurt ice cream sundae it was soooo good. We went shopping a little through the city and I bought a new book Cupido. But by then it was time to go home and I managed to sneak on the bus with Kim without even having to show the driver a pass it was way cool. We ate some lunch and then I was off to go and ride Anke's horse Malon again. I went out in the woods this time with another 17-year-old girl. It was fun until her horse totally flipped out and rammed into Malon. Luckily, Malon is old, a halflinger, and very calm so it just sort of stared at the other horse for a second and then tried to eat a tree. The reason the other horse freaked so bad was a jogger, A JOGGER, I mean what a stupid horse. Anyway besides that I had a blast. And went peacefully to bed.
19th of May:
Today I was supposed to go to Köln with Guni, key word in that sentence, supposed to. I was sick. I had the 24-hour stomach flu in a major way. I woke up and was scheduled to go ride Malon at 10 and not feeling good decided to go anyway, I thought it was just because I hadn’t eaten anything and took an apple with to eat in the car. Armin and Guni’s father picked me up and brought me to the barn. When I got there Malon’s leaser was just getting done riding him because Anke hadn’t told her that I was coming. It was good for me though, because I only had to ride for a half an hour. I then walked myself the whole 4 miles home and only got lost once, thinking I was going to die the entire way. Guni came home a bit after me and they ate lunch and I watched and moved some rice around my plate. I really, really, really, wanted to go to Cologne so I decided to risk it. We got in the car Guni, Kim, and I and set off for Cologne. Guni had to stop for gas and I knew this was the point of no return, Guni told me it was the point of no return and I chose to return. Kim was pissed because she wanted to go shopping and needed pants and stuff, but I was just too sick. I still felt really bad for her though. I don’t deal with guilt well and Guni told me that she Kim would get over it and I bet she did. But I was really sick. I puked a few times and slept for all together 16 hours. And then felt better.
20th of May;
Leaving for Wuppertal. Man, I really don’t want to leave. These people should have been my host family! Why weren’t they? I ‘m friends with the girl the boys and I get along and think each other is funny. I love the Mom. She is the nicest Motherlyest person on the planet. I mean this is where I was supposed to be. Why didn’t they have a free bedroom? Why?!! Anyway I’m off for Wuppertal feeling okay. Guni and her Mom take me to the train station I almost cried when I left. I am so pathetic. I eventually found Loren at the train station and me first took my crap to her house and then went out to eat (meaning McDonalds) in the city and did a little window-shopping. Loren has flat rate DSL at her house and a free cable so we spent the rest of the night pathetically surfing the web and cracking jokes at stuff. I am a big dork. And I love Star Trek.
21st of May:
Man was I wrong. I am soo not better. I am soo sick. I woke up feeling let’s just say not so good. Loren and I spent the day surfing the internet and avoiding talking about food at all costs. It took me until mid afternoon to get dressed and showered, and dry heave a couple of times. The bad thing is that today we have tickets reserved for the 9 o’clock showing of Star Wars: Episode III. Something I am not willing to miss. Even if Star Trek will always be better. After showering, in the interests of feeling better I ate a piece of plain whole, whole grain bread and it helped and a few Pepto-Bismol chewable. Which by the way Loren is right, are the nastiest chewables in the world and taste nothing like cherrys. We then set off to eat and go to the movies a little too early and got to the movie theater 3 hours early taking the Schwebebahn. It’s a streetcar that hangs upside down which has no other purpose other than to look cool. But fortunately it was 24 hours of star wars at the movies and we got our pictures taken with various little too obsessed people in costumes I nursed one giant Coke for my stomach. I was though the first person in the theater. Booooya! And I can honestly say, the third one was the best of all the prequels and would suggest that people go see it. We then proceeded to RUN across the city to make the last scary night bus back to Loren’s house. Fun.
22nd of May 28th:
Bye-bye Wuppertal hello Ebern. For this week of my trip I stayed with my relatives Honi and Sigfried. They’re about 70 now and really nice, but nice in a smothering over-bearing kind of way. I like them a lot but I seriously couldn’t take living with them for more than a few days at a time. It would drive me insane. And it almost did during this trip, even though it was unusually warm Honi could not get it out of her head that I needed a blanket or need to get a sweater. She desperately needed kids. After 50 some years of being a housewife with nothing other to do as to pick up after you husband cook for the two of you grocery shop and clean fanatically I think anyone would get a little bit clinging to other people. I don’t think I could do it.
During my visit there Honi’s brother came to visit and brought me a cool book of pictures of Oberfranken with and was very nice and friendly and manage to talk to me without going through Honi somehow. I got the feeling the whole time I was there that I was just some sort of pet. Honi would try to answer all questions asked to me herself and it got just a little be annoying. One day we went to Bamberg and walked around the city. In which I one time mentioned that I wanted to go into a show shop to look for a specific pair of shoes I wanted clogs to be specific. And from then on the trip became the quest for shoes. I was on the edge of exploding the entire time. When we weren’t out we watched TV. Or read because there was nothing else to do, which I don’t think was bad I just don’t like having pointed out how loud commercials are or asked constantly about what it’s about the whole time I’m watching TV. We invited one day the neighbors that had met me or my mom before over to talk, eat cake, and drink coffee. It was a lot of fun one of them brought me some old books of hers where the main and title character is named April it was really sweet of her. We also went to visit my relatives near Zwickau in East Germany for a day. That was the best part of the day. We came over in the morning and had lunch, and they had a parrot that I played with. I ate some freshly picked strawberries, which I soon lost my appetite for after a found a worm inside one of them. It looked fine to me from the outside and I bit in and inside it was totally black and hollow and there was a worm inside. I freaked out and spit out the strawberry and dropped the rest of it to the floor needless to say I haven’t felt the need from strawberries for a while now. I also went on that day with Dagmar, the cousin my mom hung out with while she was there to visit the furniture store that she works at. While there we convinced her manager to give me a really cool book about Bavarian History that I didn’t want so much for the content as for the really good maps and color pictures it has in it. Afterwards we had sandwiches for dinner and Honi, Sigfried and I went back home. I spent the next day in Ebern because I didn’t want to make Sigfried drive long distance two days in a row. We went out to eat and watched TV. and I packed. Then on Saturday we set off in the morning for the three hour drive to Passau where we grilled with my host family. Monika thought it was funny how happy I was to be back and back into a normal house where if I want more water I should get up and get it myself or suffer until someone else gets up and ask them to get it for me. We grilled pleasantly for the afternoon in the absolutely unbearable heat and then Honi and Sigfried took off.
The Plane Story:
Okay, as you all know I wanted to go to summer school, on the 27 if June that’s why I wanted to come home early. I notified my organization 3 months beforehand and waited the suggested six weeks that the letter had suggested to call and ask about it YFU my organization here said that they had forwarded the letter and e-mails to my home organization ASSE and they hadn’t responded. So I called ASSE and the lady there says that she never heard anything about anything like that so she’d look around. No surprise they just went through a personal change. Then too weeks goes by and no one has gotten back to anyone so I have my dad call and speak with ASSE. ASSE responds the next day saying if I want to leave early I have to pay 350 dollars plus the amount of my flight. Which is so wrong because scholarships students are allowed to leave two weeks early no penalty. So my Dad and I pointed that out to them which of course they had no idea about either because they won’t be handling the CBYX program next year because they got kicked off because they got so many complaints so that of course means they forgot everything they ever knew about it. So then the say okay I can go. It goes on until last week for three weeks with them “trying” to book a flight, which they were unsuccessful at and all the prices I could find were astronomical. They then call my dad Monday night before I went to Berlin and tell him that I can fly stand-by. I then call the airlines who inform me that people haven’t been allowed to fly stand by on international flights since 2001, and that I’m booked illegally twice on the flight on July 9th so my dad. But you’d think that someone who’s only job it is to book flight tickets for exchange students is, would know that for four years people aren’t allowed to fly stand by on international flights. Anyway I gave up the war and submitted myself to coming home on the 9th. The only other problem being that my Mom had already signed me up for summer school paying 500 non-refundable dollars with a check. So she didn’t take the news so well when I called her from Berlin. But luckily they hadn’t cashed the check yet so we were able to save it in time. But I was about ready to die in Berlin. I was so worried that they had already cashed the check and my mom would be out 500 dollars. Luckily my mom has five hundred dollars I am guilt free and coming home on July 9th. End of my amazingly longwinded story. Wahoo, unbelievable. I hate Bureaucrats.
This is a really long post I know, but now I´m only 20 days behind go me. And all what happened then is a work in progress too. For everyones information I am coming home on July the 9th but I am not sure at what exact time I´ll be getting to Detroit Metro so I´ll keep you posted.
Love ya,
April
16th of May:
I went on a bike tour today with Guni and the family 32 km! That’s about 22 miles!! Cool huh? It was super fun! Guni’s daughter Kim didn’t come with she was lazy and rode along in the car. It was hard work on the way there because of all the hills (of should I say mountains) but it was fun. We went with all the neighbors that hadn’t rode a bike in about a year so we made a lot of pit stops. We rode our bikes to a restaurant to eat lunch and then we rode back. The way back was easier because we took a bike path that used to be the tracks for a train route, that way it was always going uphill but wasn’t so steep. We got back to Marienheide and stopped at a restaurant to have a snack and then went the rest of the way back home. My ass hurt soooooo bad. I cannot tell you. I couldn’t sit for the rest of the night.
17th of May:
I slept in today, and almost got attacked by the dog. The thing doesn’t like people in its house too much. Guni came home from work and we ate lunch. Then Guni’s sister Anke came over and we went to the tower in Marienheide. It’s this huge metal thing where you can see for miles it was really cool the showed me all the different towns and things that people can see from up there it was really cool. Then we went for few hour walk around a huge reservoir, and I talked to Guni and Anke. Anke is expecting a baby, she was before I left too but she lost it, and one after that. I hope everything works out for her this time.
18th of May:
Today I dragged my poor butt out of bed early to go to school with Kim. Which again meant that I had to walk up a huge hill. But I sat in class with her for 3 hours, and talked to her English class. I then somehow found my way all the way over to my new school. And lurked around inside for an hour until class let out hoping that no one would ask me what I was doing there. No one did luckily. I said hallo to all my friends again. I really missed them these last few months they were always so nice and friendly and treated me like “April” and not just the exchange student. I then unfortunately had to say goodbye to most of my friends because it was time for class again. But two of them had free time so I went with them to have ice cream in the city. I got this huge Yoghurt ice cream sundae it was soooo good. We went shopping a little through the city and I bought a new book Cupido. But by then it was time to go home and I managed to sneak on the bus with Kim without even having to show the driver a pass it was way cool. We ate some lunch and then I was off to go and ride Anke's horse Malon again. I went out in the woods this time with another 17-year-old girl. It was fun until her horse totally flipped out and rammed into Malon. Luckily, Malon is old, a halflinger, and very calm so it just sort of stared at the other horse for a second and then tried to eat a tree. The reason the other horse freaked so bad was a jogger, A JOGGER, I mean what a stupid horse. Anyway besides that I had a blast. And went peacefully to bed.
19th of May:
Today I was supposed to go to Köln with Guni, key word in that sentence, supposed to. I was sick. I had the 24-hour stomach flu in a major way. I woke up and was scheduled to go ride Malon at 10 and not feeling good decided to go anyway, I thought it was just because I hadn’t eaten anything and took an apple with to eat in the car. Armin and Guni’s father picked me up and brought me to the barn. When I got there Malon’s leaser was just getting done riding him because Anke hadn’t told her that I was coming. It was good for me though, because I only had to ride for a half an hour. I then walked myself the whole 4 miles home and only got lost once, thinking I was going to die the entire way. Guni came home a bit after me and they ate lunch and I watched and moved some rice around my plate. I really, really, really, wanted to go to Cologne so I decided to risk it. We got in the car Guni, Kim, and I and set off for Cologne. Guni had to stop for gas and I knew this was the point of no return, Guni told me it was the point of no return and I chose to return. Kim was pissed because she wanted to go shopping and needed pants and stuff, but I was just too sick. I still felt really bad for her though. I don’t deal with guilt well and Guni told me that she Kim would get over it and I bet she did. But I was really sick. I puked a few times and slept for all together 16 hours. And then felt better.
20th of May;
Leaving for Wuppertal. Man, I really don’t want to leave. These people should have been my host family! Why weren’t they? I ‘m friends with the girl the boys and I get along and think each other is funny. I love the Mom. She is the nicest Motherlyest person on the planet. I mean this is where I was supposed to be. Why didn’t they have a free bedroom? Why?!! Anyway I’m off for Wuppertal feeling okay. Guni and her Mom take me to the train station I almost cried when I left. I am so pathetic. I eventually found Loren at the train station and me first took my crap to her house and then went out to eat (meaning McDonalds) in the city and did a little window-shopping. Loren has flat rate DSL at her house and a free cable so we spent the rest of the night pathetically surfing the web and cracking jokes at stuff. I am a big dork. And I love Star Trek.
21st of May:
Man was I wrong. I am soo not better. I am soo sick. I woke up feeling let’s just say not so good. Loren and I spent the day surfing the internet and avoiding talking about food at all costs. It took me until mid afternoon to get dressed and showered, and dry heave a couple of times. The bad thing is that today we have tickets reserved for the 9 o’clock showing of Star Wars: Episode III. Something I am not willing to miss. Even if Star Trek will always be better. After showering, in the interests of feeling better I ate a piece of plain whole, whole grain bread and it helped and a few Pepto-Bismol chewable. Which by the way Loren is right, are the nastiest chewables in the world and taste nothing like cherrys. We then set off to eat and go to the movies a little too early and got to the movie theater 3 hours early taking the Schwebebahn. It’s a streetcar that hangs upside down which has no other purpose other than to look cool. But fortunately it was 24 hours of star wars at the movies and we got our pictures taken with various little too obsessed people in costumes I nursed one giant Coke for my stomach. I was though the first person in the theater. Booooya! And I can honestly say, the third one was the best of all the prequels and would suggest that people go see it. We then proceeded to RUN across the city to make the last scary night bus back to Loren’s house. Fun.
22nd of May 28th:
Bye-bye Wuppertal hello Ebern. For this week of my trip I stayed with my relatives Honi and Sigfried. They’re about 70 now and really nice, but nice in a smothering over-bearing kind of way. I like them a lot but I seriously couldn’t take living with them for more than a few days at a time. It would drive me insane. And it almost did during this trip, even though it was unusually warm Honi could not get it out of her head that I needed a blanket or need to get a sweater. She desperately needed kids. After 50 some years of being a housewife with nothing other to do as to pick up after you husband cook for the two of you grocery shop and clean fanatically I think anyone would get a little bit clinging to other people. I don’t think I could do it.
During my visit there Honi’s brother came to visit and brought me a cool book of pictures of Oberfranken with and was very nice and friendly and manage to talk to me without going through Honi somehow. I got the feeling the whole time I was there that I was just some sort of pet. Honi would try to answer all questions asked to me herself and it got just a little be annoying. One day we went to Bamberg and walked around the city. In which I one time mentioned that I wanted to go into a show shop to look for a specific pair of shoes I wanted clogs to be specific. And from then on the trip became the quest for shoes. I was on the edge of exploding the entire time. When we weren’t out we watched TV. Or read because there was nothing else to do, which I don’t think was bad I just don’t like having pointed out how loud commercials are or asked constantly about what it’s about the whole time I’m watching TV. We invited one day the neighbors that had met me or my mom before over to talk, eat cake, and drink coffee. It was a lot of fun one of them brought me some old books of hers where the main and title character is named April it was really sweet of her. We also went to visit my relatives near Zwickau in East Germany for a day. That was the best part of the day. We came over in the morning and had lunch, and they had a parrot that I played with. I ate some freshly picked strawberries, which I soon lost my appetite for after a found a worm inside one of them. It looked fine to me from the outside and I bit in and inside it was totally black and hollow and there was a worm inside. I freaked out and spit out the strawberry and dropped the rest of it to the floor needless to say I haven’t felt the need from strawberries for a while now. I also went on that day with Dagmar, the cousin my mom hung out with while she was there to visit the furniture store that she works at. While there we convinced her manager to give me a really cool book about Bavarian History that I didn’t want so much for the content as for the really good maps and color pictures it has in it. Afterwards we had sandwiches for dinner and Honi, Sigfried and I went back home. I spent the next day in Ebern because I didn’t want to make Sigfried drive long distance two days in a row. We went out to eat and watched TV. and I packed. Then on Saturday we set off in the morning for the three hour drive to Passau where we grilled with my host family. Monika thought it was funny how happy I was to be back and back into a normal house where if I want more water I should get up and get it myself or suffer until someone else gets up and ask them to get it for me. We grilled pleasantly for the afternoon in the absolutely unbearable heat and then Honi and Sigfried took off.
The Plane Story:
Okay, as you all know I wanted to go to summer school, on the 27 if June that’s why I wanted to come home early. I notified my organization 3 months beforehand and waited the suggested six weeks that the letter had suggested to call and ask about it YFU my organization here said that they had forwarded the letter and e-mails to my home organization ASSE and they hadn’t responded. So I called ASSE and the lady there says that she never heard anything about anything like that so she’d look around. No surprise they just went through a personal change. Then too weeks goes by and no one has gotten back to anyone so I have my dad call and speak with ASSE. ASSE responds the next day saying if I want to leave early I have to pay 350 dollars plus the amount of my flight. Which is so wrong because scholarships students are allowed to leave two weeks early no penalty. So my Dad and I pointed that out to them which of course they had no idea about either because they won’t be handling the CBYX program next year because they got kicked off because they got so many complaints so that of course means they forgot everything they ever knew about it. So then the say okay I can go. It goes on until last week for three weeks with them “trying” to book a flight, which they were unsuccessful at and all the prices I could find were astronomical. They then call my dad Monday night before I went to Berlin and tell him that I can fly stand-by. I then call the airlines who inform me that people haven’t been allowed to fly stand by on international flights since 2001, and that I’m booked illegally twice on the flight on July 9th so my dad. But you’d think that someone who’s only job it is to book flight tickets for exchange students is, would know that for four years people aren’t allowed to fly stand by on international flights. Anyway I gave up the war and submitted myself to coming home on the 9th. The only other problem being that my Mom had already signed me up for summer school paying 500 non-refundable dollars with a check. So she didn’t take the news so well when I called her from Berlin. But luckily they hadn’t cashed the check yet so we were able to save it in time. But I was about ready to die in Berlin. I was so worried that they had already cashed the check and my mom would be out 500 dollars. Luckily my mom has five hundred dollars I am guilt free and coming home on July 9th. End of my amazingly longwinded story. Wahoo, unbelievable. I hate Bureaucrats.