Germany 2011 --Day 3

OCTOBER 4 –TUESDAY –DAY 3

Today we got up at 6:30am for a shower. The shower today was about the exact same maybe a bit worse. The drain was clogged and the temperature differences were even worse. We had breakfast at 8:00am…it was the same as yesterday morning –a bun with nutella and salami and cheese. Then we pack our lunch for the day in Köln. Then at 8:30am we left for Köln. We had to make a stop on the way in Vluyn so that we could buy postcards and stamps that we had to use in tonight’s lesson. Before we left Vluyn I used the washroom at the ice cream shop that we went to yesterday. Natalie and I went because she knew where it was. On our way there the street cleaner almost ran us over. The toilets were very high off the ground; even I could not reach the floor when I was on it. After that all of us went to the grocery store to buy some drinks and snacks for the rest of the week. I got two 1½-liter water bottles because the tap water was discussing, and a bag of grapes. Then we finally left for Köln. It was a 1½-hour drive, we watched most of the movie ‘Percy Jackson the lightening thief.’ When we got there we ate our lunch on the River Rhine. It was really nice. Then we walked to the Köln cathedral. When we got there we took a bathroom break but for these bathrooms we had to pay. It was 50¢ to use the bathroom. There were nice and you had to wave at the toilet to flush it, it was quite odd. Then we climbed the cathedral, it was over 500 steps up and over 500 steps down.  Natalie, Emma and I were in the front and climbed it very fast. The staircase was all circular all the way up, I got kinda dizzy. When we got to the top you cold walk around the outside to see the view from the top. The view was amazing, you could see forever. When everyone was done climbing the cathedral we went shopping in the most fancy part of town I think. There was all the super expensive brands there but we did manage to find a tourist shop were we got some soviners.  When we were done shopping we walked to the chocolate museum/ lindt chocolate factory. We go to walk around the museum in groups then we could go to the gift shop which was all chocolate. While we were walking through the museum we saw many cool thing but the best thing was the chocolate fountain. They had hot chocolate running down the fountain and they gave out wafers that they dipped the chocolate. It was very good. Natalie and I went back about 5 times. Then we went to the gift shop where I got a bunch of chocolate. I also got some chocolate shaped like hedgehogs. Flora got some chocolate for here parents and wanted to get it gift wrapped, the gift wrapping was for free that’s why there was a huge line. She had to wait forever. We both waited in line so long that we were 15 minutes late. But we weren’t the only ones. Then we walked back to the bus and went back to the youth hostel. On the bus ride we finished ‘Percy Jackson the lightening thief’ and started ‘the spider wick chronicles.’ When we got back it was time for dinner, tonight we had spaghetti bolognas and salad with the option of having salami and cheese. We also got to meet the other people that were staying at the youth hostel that came during the day when we were out. We thought that they would be around the same age as us but they turned out to be a bunch of 8 year olds. They were very cute though, except they spoke completely German. After dinner we had an hour before lesson so we played more soccer and basketball. While we were playing basketball the little kids came up to us and we attempted to have a conversation. We had to use a dictionary though. Then they told Natalie, Emma and I that we were all pretty and that we were good at speaking German. I was very proud of myself because I am not good at speaking German at all. Then at 8:15pm we had lesson, we wrote our post cards and I was the only one to send them to somewhere other than England because I sent it to my parents. When we were done that we learned about time and how to say half past, quarter past, and quarter to. I was okay at it but it would have been earlier if I knew my numbers better. Then we played a game where you got in a group and you had to run out and memorize as much of a page of German as u could then come back to write it down. When you came back you also had to tell the next person what part you memorized up to. This went on until you finished it and the first people done with the correct spelling won. My group came in third. The lesson went on until ac=bout 10:00pm. Then we went to sleep.

Germany 2011 -Day 2

OCTOBER 3^RD –MONDAY –DAY 2

Today we got up at 7:00am even though we wanted to get up at 8:00am. The alarm this morning was “I’m a Barbie girl.” At 9:00am we had breakfast. It was a bun with nutella and there was the option of having salami and cheese. This morning we had lesson since we did not have it last night, but before lesson we had a little bit of free time. Since we had a lot of dead ladybugs in our room we decided to get rid of them. We used so facial wipes to get them out on the windowsill then we used a hair dryer to blow them away. Then we went down for lesson at 10:00am. We learnt some phrases that we needed to know while we were in Vluyn in the afternoon. After lesson we had lunch, which was pork, potatoes, gravy and, veggies. And for dessert we had chocolate pudding. It was all very good. Then we walked into Vluyn, the walk took us just over an hour. When we finally arrived we set of on our tasks that we were given in lesson. We had to walk around all the shops in Vluyn and find some names that matched the type of stores on our sheet. We found all of them except for the butcher shop. When we were done that we had to order ice cream from the ice cream parlor. We had to do it in German, you had to say “Ich mochte, bitte zwei keglen vinillice.” This means I would like two scoops of vanilla ice cream pleases. When I was in line waiting to get my ice cream I was practicing how to say everything and the German people behind me were laughing at me. But I was very happy because I was able to order what I wanted. When everyone was done their ice cream we headed back. On the way back we realized that both of the times that we were walking much have been bike rush hour! There are so many bikers and they don’t slow down or move out of the way for anything, especially walkers. The ring there bells at you like crazy until you move out of the way. Some people almost got run over! We then got back just over an hour later. When w got back we realized that we walked more than 7 miles. We had 45 minuets of free time before dinner so we played basketball. Then we had dinner at 6:30pm, it was the exact same as last night, salami, cheese, and bread and veggies. The only thing that was different was the dessert I was a cherry cake or yogurt. I had the cherry cake and it was very good! We had an hour of free time before we had lesson, me and Natalie wrote for a bit then we went down to join the game of soccer, it was boys vs. girls. The game wasn’t fair though because there were 27 girls and 6boys and the girls also had about 6 people or more in the goal at one time. But of curse the girls won! Then we had lesson, which lasted about 2 and a half hours, from 8:00pm to 10:00 or 10:30pm. In lesson we learned about what we need for tomorrows trip so that we know how to say stuff. Tomorrow we are going back to vluyn for about an hour then we are going to Köln. 

Germany 2011-day 1

OCTOBER 2^ND –SUNDAY –DAY 1

This morning I woke up at 4:40am…way to early! I good up and got ready for my long day on the coach. I had to pack the stuff that I did not get in the night before. We arrived at the school at 5:30am. It was dark and rainy out that morning and very crappy! The bus left at around 6:00am for our journey of about 15 hours or more. I tried to sleep but I wasn’t working. After a while I was able to fall asleep but I was in the most uncomfortable position ever, but what made it even worse was that on and English coach bus you have to wear seatbelts, which are really hard to sleep in! I woke up a few hours later at around 8:30am. About an hour after that we stopped for our first break in Granthum, we only had 5 minutes though.  After the stop we started a movie, we watched 50 First Dates. When the movie was over we had a bit until we arrived in Dover for out ferry ride to France. When we arrived in Dover at around 12:00pm we were able to catch an early ferry. The ferry ride was about an hour from Dover, England to Calais, France. When we arrived in France we drove for about another 6 hours with no stops at all. We drove from France to Belgium then through The Netherlands, then into Germany. During that time we watched another two movies, Little Folkers and The Devil Wears Prada. We arrived at the youth hostel at around 9:00pm. Everyone was extremely tired a just wanted to go to bed. But because the youth hostel was partially an old windmill we had to climb so many stairs, with all of our stuff. My room was on the second floor of the windmill. All the boys were on the first floor so they were supposed to help us with our bags but no one helped me so I had to carry everything up to extremely steep staircases. Our room was VERY small. There were 8 of us in a room that was smaller than some of the 2 people rooms. Also our beds were triangular so that they could fit them all in.  they looked like coffins! Then we had to make our own beds with discussing sheets that some had blood on them. Then we had our dinner, which was salami and cheese. After dinner Natalie and me went to have a shower. There were only 3 showers for 27 girls. We went to the two that were in the basement and they were absolutely discussing! There were chunky bits in them and the drain in one was clogged. Also, there were two showers and only one spot to change so you had to change in the shower. The taps in the shower where like the ones in the sink because they only stayed on for a bit until they turned off and the water kept going from hot to cold and nothing in between. And then after that we had to walk all the  way from the basement to the almost the top of the windmill. That night we went to bed at around 11:30pm, so I was up for a total of about 19 hours that day.

Scotland

We left for Crieff last Friday night right after school. It was 4 hours away but that was fine for me because all car rides are like that in Canada.  We stayed at a bed and breakfast call “Yans.” It was really nice. On the first night I was me Flora and Lachlan in on room and Christine and John I another. We then went over to Floras aunts house where we were planning on having dinner but then decided not to. We went to a restaurant called The Gallery. It was really nice, and we were the last ones to leave the restaurant. We went back to Yans and got ready for bed because we had to be up early the next day for breakfast. We woke up at 8 the next morning and got a huge full cooked breakfast. Then Flora and me went back upstairs to get ready for her grandpas birthday party while the others went to her grandmas so they could start making some food. Once Flora and I were ready we had to walk over to her grandmas. We made a few stops on the way to the grocery store and the sweet shop. After 30 minutes of walking we got to her grandmas house and helped with making more pre-starters. We also made 3 cakes. The party was at her aunt’s house so we transported all the food to her aunt’s house. They party started shortly after. We started with the thousands of pre-starters, and then we had a appetizer of soup and bread. The main was chicken or beef with veggies and potatoes. Then we had dessert of 2 of the 4 cakes. Then we waited a while then we had crackers and cheese, tablet (mostly sugar), chocolate and the 2 birthday cakes. Everyone was beyond full! Then later that night we went back to yans. The next morning we got up at the same time then at about 10:30 we went back to Floras aunts house and did some homework and went to see a football match (soccer game). It was between 2 Scottish teams. The one that we were cheering for won the game. Then we left for home. It was a wonderful and filling weekend.

Edinburgh,Scotland

On the weekend I went to Edinburgh, Scotland. We were supposed to go and visit the Lake District but the weather was constant rain. We left the house at 8:00 am and drove north for 2 and a half hours. When we got there we went to Holyrood castle. This is a castle in Scotland that is still used by the queen goes to visit Scotland. We took an audio tour of most of the castle, it was very interesting. The rooms were huge!! We weren’t allowed to take pictures inside of the castle so I only have them from outside. After that it was lunch so we went back to the car and ate. We then had extra time between lunch and our visit to the Scottish parliament so we went to Our Dynamic Earth. It is a scientific museum thing. You start the tour by getting on a “time machine”(elevator). The “time machine” took us back to the beginning of time; we saw a short movie clip about the Big Bang. You get to see how the whole solar system and stars were formed. Then you move on and they showed us a movie about how the earth was crated by volcanos. The room was filled with fake smoke and the floor shook under us when they made a fake earth quake. It was very cool.  Then we moved into a blue room were the showed a video about the ice age and when the whole earth was covered in ice. That was the end of the time traveling and we came out into a room will dinosaurs and fossils and stuff like that. We played a few of the games they had like this one about if dinosaurs had survived. It showed how the dinosaurs would have to change and adapted the different climates. It was quite funny to see what the computer said they would look like. Then we moved on to the oceans. They had many pictures of it. After the oceans we moved into the polar extremes. It talked about polar bears, penguins and the extreme cold weather in the artic and Antarctic. The room was quite cold and they had a huge ice chunk in the middle of the room. It was very cold to touch so Fraser and me came up with the brilliant idea of seeing who could hold their hand on the ice the longest. We are both very stubborn and neither of us would take our hand off.  At first it was terrible but after a little bit our hands went numb and it was fine until we got to the point were the ice felt hot. Just before this happened the rest of the family got bored and left to the next room. My hand felt like everything inside was being squeezed a lot. Our hand then started to turn white and red.  It hurt so much but neither of us gave up.  At this point there are hand prints on the ice from where I hand melted the ice a bit. Then we would move our wrist and elbow down and our hands would twitch like crazy. A little but after that a guy came in telling us that the adventure flight was leaving soon but the next one was not leaving for 10 minutes so we decided that we should go on the adventure flight because the rest of the family was waiting for us. We agreed to take out hand of at the same time. We went to the adventure flight, which is a 4D movie thing. We sat down and started the flight it was 3D plus we could smell things and when we went through the artic it snowed on us, it was actually just soapy water that landed on us. Then the movie was over and the whole time of the movie both Frasers and my hade hurt so much. A little bit after that we realized that the hand that we held on the ice as a little bit swollen. Then we got a bit to eat the Astronauts the dome movie started. We sat in a chair and the movie screen was on the curved celling of the dome. It was a very cool way of watching a movie. After the movie was done we left Our Dynamic Earth. The next thing that we did was go to the Scottish parliament. We got a tour and history of the whole building. She told us about the them of the relatively new building, it had to do with a tree coming out of the ground, boats in a harbor, and the Saltire cross(the cross on the Scottish flag).The tour took us about an hour and a half.  It was very interesting how the architect put all of these aspects in the building but you could not see them unless you were looking for them. After that we had a bit of extra time before our dinner reservation so we drove around a bit and did a bit of sight seeing.  We had dinner at some Italian place…although we were all stuffed! We ate so much anyway. After dinner we went across the street to se the play  “Legally Blonde.” Just as we were on our way to our seats the boys realized that they were going to see a chick flick, it was really funny. The play was good but didn’t end until 10:30. Since we all got up at 7:00 we were extremely tired. We got in the car to go to the hotel but we got lost on our way there so instead of it taking 10 or 15 minutes to get there it took more like 30 minutes. Then it took a long time to check in but finally at about 11:15 we got to our rooms. Flora and I stayed in one room and Lachlan and Fraser stayed in another and John and Christine stayed in another. Flora and I went to our room first and looked around it. It was all very fancy. We first looked at the shower and were confused. I was the most high tech shower I have ever seen neither of us knew how to work it. After a bit we went to bet and soon found out that our room was right beside a train track. I think 5 or more trains went by that night…they were so noisy. We got up at 8:00 the next morning so that we could be down at the lobby by 9:30. That morning we went for breakfast at tescos(a grocery store). It was okay but not crazy good either. After breakfast we went to Edinburgh castle. It was very cool. I found out that it was built on a dead volcano; the queen still visits that castle for the day but never stays over night. It had many cool and weird things like they had a war memorial were we found Floras great uncle in one of the memorial books from World War 2. They also had a chapel, which is the oldest building in Edinburgh, you can even have your wedding there if you wanted to but the chapel could only hold 25 people at maximum. They also had a dog cemetery for the soldier’s dead dogs.  After we finished our tour of the castle we went for lunch at an ice cream parlor called S. Luca. We had lunch then dessert, for dessert everyone chose a reasonable ice cream but Flora and I did not. We got “La Montaga.” It was a 8 scoop ice cram thing with whip cream, chocolate, caramel, and strawberry sauces, chocolate chips, hazelnuts, lots of banana. It came I a large goblet and was MASIVE!!!! We finally finished it after a while but near the end it got quit gross. It had a mixture of all the ice creams with the sauces and it was not a good combination. After this we started our long journey home. That is the end of our very long weekend in Scotland. Look out for the next blog about Crieff next weekend.

First day of British school!!

Today was the first day unlike people from Canada who started yesterday. I had to wake up at 7 o’clock, which kind of sucked. But Flora made us pancakes, which were very good!! I then had to get dressed in my uniform. It is a pair of black dress pants a white blouse with some sort of logo thing, a black blazer (suit jacket) and black socks with a pair of black loafers. I don’t like the uniform because I feel so dressed up for school. We then had to walk to school and it took like 15 or 20 minutes. When we got to school we stayed outside for a bit then we went inside to our home form. I have the same one as Flora we are in 9JW. We took a seat and waited for a bit until Flora told the teacher that I was a new student and he asked if I was Karen so i told him no. Then the head of all year nines came in and asked who I was. I told her that I was Emily and that I was doing and exchange, she asked me how I got to the home form and I said Flora. She left for a bit to get my timetable. When she came back she didn’t have a timetable and said that I wasn’t registered because they had forgotten to add me in the system. I just had to use Flora’s timetable and tell the teachers who I was. Then we went to an assembly, they are very different! When you walk in you are expected to be completely silent. It was so quiet in there that you could hear all of the high heels on the floor. They then went on for along time about manners and the assembly was done. There was no cheering or anything. We then exited in a very organized way starting with the first row standing then leaving and so on all the way up the rows. It was so proper feeling like a meeting almost not like a assembly I am use to. We showed up to our first class (math) and the teacher put everyone into their seat except for me because there are only supposed to be 30 kids in the class but I was the 31^st student. He then was all confused and got me a desk. He was kind of crazy because he put the desk down for me and then said that his seating plan was no longer symmetrical one side had a ‘L’ and the other side had a ‘S’. It was funny. Then we went to French and basically the same thing happened again. I was the 31^st student so I had to share a desk with someone. He never went crazy about his seating plan being uneven though. Then for lunch Flora had to buy me lunch because they don’t use cash instead they use a fingerprint. Your fingerprint links you to your account that you put money into, and then at lunch all you have to do is put your finger on a scanner and you have paid for your lunch. It is so cool. Then we had foods; there was no problem with getting a seat because there were enough. After food school was done so we got to go home. It was another long walk and by the time that we got home my feet were killing me! I was so glad to be able to take them off and change out of my uniform. That was my day and I have to go through it again tomorrow except with different classes.