hi everyone!

it is now 17:32 (or 5:32 PM) on friday i got here almost exactly one week ago. I left minneapolis on thursday and went to jfk airport, where we had an orientation before we left of all the 50 american germany kids that were not on scholarship. we stayed at a double-tree hotel just outside of the airport. the food there was terrible but other than that, the orientation in itself was fine!

We left to go to the airport from the hotel at about one in the afternoon on friday to sit in the airport for 4 and a half hours. i bought an 8 dollar pizza from a little shop in the terminal, listened to my ipod, conversed with the other afs kids and played a gam of the fast and the furious arcade racing. the plane took off at around 7 o'clock.

The plane ride although was not good for me, although there was very little turbulence and any problems with the plane, i could not sleep at all. I spent all 7 hours either watching the plane-t.v, watching sin city and office space on my ipod, and playing cards with other afs kids sitting near me. the in-plane movies were night at the museum and mr. beans vacation.

we arrived at 6 in the morning and were met by an afs-germany voluenteer at the gate. she brought us to baggage claim , passport control, and then to the train terminal where we got to dump our bags, meet other kids from other kids that are also in germany through afs and wait for our trains. Each person had to wait till a different time depending on where they were staying to leave. I had to wait until four in the afternoon to leave. So i went out and called my parents, took 100 euros out of an atm, and bought a venti iced mocha from a starbucks. At the terminal, i met some kids from new zealand, australia, china, brazil, and other as well as the other 50 kids that got a full scholarship through the bundstang-congress program, which is payed for by the us government.

I was very tired from not sleeping on the plane, so i decideed to nap with the luggage of the 100 or so kids that were there at the time, this is what i spent most of my time doing.

When we left on the train at 4, i found myself in a train compartment with 2 other americans, and 2 italians who were very nice. we talked some of the time, slept most of the time, and for about the last hour played hangman with the italians. it was a 5 hour train ride. On the train i met eva wolfe, who is making a documentary of the usa-germany exchanges, and i’m going to be one of the people in it. she gave me a clip-on mic to wear for when i met my family. I nearly walked off with it by mistake.

When i first walked off the train i was sort of lost. Although i had seen a picture of my host-parents in an email, they were no where to be found. After about a minute, eva called my name and pointed, then i saw them and my host-brother kester. They seemed very nice upon first glance, and it immediately became obvious that the parents did not know english too well as they were translating through kester. The first thing we did was go to a restaurant, even though it was 10 at night, i had not eaten since the plane ride and i was very hungry. My host-parents decided we would go to a steak house. so we were driving there, and i’m enjoying the scenery of downtown hamburg and i suddenly notice that were in the middle of the red-light district, it was very strange.

The steak was good, and i had a salad with american dressing, which is what they call ranch. then we made the 40 minute trek to ammersbek and i was shown my room and almost immediately went to sleep.

On sunday we went apple picking with theír neighbours, who know a lot better english, but still had problems understanding me because i speak american english as opposed to british english as is taught here. apparently american is a lot faster and less separated as the british counterpart.

On monday we went and applied for my visa at the rathaus and i went to an afs meeting of our region, which is hambug-nord-ost. On tuesday i had my first day of german lessons in rahlsted, and my host mother drove me to volksdorf and i met up with another afser from chile also taking the same class. since then, i have just been going to german classes, except that instead of getting driven to volksdorf, i must take the 376 bus from rehagen to hösbuttel and the u1 north train fron hösbuttel to volksdorf. Last night i went to temple for rosh hashanah services. we’d called the nearby temple and found that they weren’t having services so my host-mother found another temple that was and told me how to get there. once i got there, and got through security tougher than an airports, did i realise that it was an orthodox temple, but still i sat through it.

i must go eat... more later