Ferien

Ferien is pretty much when we have a break from school. This time it's the fall break and I'm pretty pumped for the whole no school thing. So today Megan came to Ehingen and we just hung out and bopped around town. It was fun of course. We were sad Erika couldn't be here though, she's in the Netherlands for Ferien.

When we were in the city today, Megan and I, this little girl heard us speaking English and asked if we were auslanders (from another country) and we told her that we were exchange students and what not and then she asked if we were from England lol and we told her no, we're from America and she was so cute. Then she gasped and said "Amerika?! Amerika ist ein Traumland!" (America! America is a deam land/country) Finally, somebody who doesn't hate America, it was cool and she was adorable.

So tomorrow I leave for my vacation. We're going to a little town in Bayern that's like 10 km away from the Czech Republic, I'm pretty excited. We're going on like a 24 km(15 mi) hike though, I don't know how excited I am for that, but at least it's doing something. A couple of the days we're going over to the Czech Rep. to go shopping and doing touring and stuff. Apparently things are a lot cheaper over there so I can't wait to go shopping lol.

Sorry there aren't so many updates all the time, not much is happening so there's not much to update on. I'll have probably a really long one after I get back. I'll have 5 days of vacation to report on lol. So, that should be a good one with lot's of fun pictures!

Here's a few from today.

Ok, well I will talk to you all soon!

Miss and Love you guys!

Love, Courtney

My week in Schwartzwald!

It was so much fun. If VH1 knew about me or any of the other inbounds from D-1930 I think we would've been in the running for "Who is having the best week ever!" I have no idea where to even start. On Friday after school I came home and ate lunch with my host mom and sister, after lunch Ute took me to the train station where I met up with Julia and Michael, two other students that live in smaller towns around Ehingen. Then we got on the train to go to Triburg. On the train I was planning on meeting up with Megan but by the time I figured out where she was on the train I didn't have time to go all the way back there and had to get on in the front so at one of the stops Megan ran up with her suitcase which was pretty funny to see..So on the way there we all jus talked about our problems and experiences.

We were the last group to arrive at the hostel. It was kind of weird at first because I'm pretty sure I looked like an idiot trying to figure out if people could speak english or not haha. It turns out the most of us were Americans. I think there were about 9 of us from well Michigan, Illinois, California, Idaho, Kentucky, Conneticut, Texas, Arizona, and Colorado. I'm pretty sure thats all the Americans lol. The other students were from Canada, Austrailia, Chile, Japan, and Mexico. It's pretty cool. I like the change because back home in 6290 we are soo big there are so many of us and here theres only about 15 so it's cool to be a part of a smaller district.So pretty much we hung out for the rest of the night getting to know each other and all that good stuff.
The first two days we went hiking up these mountains. It was a lot of fun, but kind of hard lol. Probably because I'm so out of shape but oh well. It was so cool because I usually don't go hiking or anything like that lol where would you even go in Michigan anyways? So on the other days we got to go touring all these adorable little towns and what not. One day we went swimming in this huge complex place lol I don't really know how else to explain that lol. On our last full day we got to go hang out with some pro hockey team, the Wild Wings lol. So we got to go in the locker room and as gross as it seems I miss the smell of smelly gross hockey equiptment lol. We got some autographs and pictures and then watched them practice for a while. After that we all went ice skating and had tons of fun. In the nights we all hung out and went to some bars a couple of times. All in all, it was fun. If you have any specific questions you can just ask because I don't really know how else to explain it to you other than it was a blast and I can't wait until the next one!
Pics:

All of us Inbounds :)

Erika from California, Megan (Illinois), and me.. They're like my two best friends here.Up on the mountain looking down at the lake. This was my favorite hiking day. It was soo beautiful!

Now at the bottom.

We also got to do this awesome high ropes course, also pretty awesome.

One of the churches we saw on our tour. It was so beautiful.Trying on a mask at the Fasnacht museum lol.Walking to dinner. I love just walking around here it's so, I don't know, perfect.Erika, me, and Megan in one of the little rooms they used to keep the women they accused to be witches!

In the locker room, chillin with the players!Meg and me, Ice skatingAmber, Frank the Gnome, and me. These are for you Grandma! There are little gnome people in the black forest!The girls with the Gnome!

Me and Erika :)Wienerschnitzel mit pommes...meine lieblings mittagessen!Erika(California), Amber (Idaho), and Austin (Kentucky)Me and Megan wiating for the train on the way home.

Well ask if you have any questions I love and miss you all!

Love,

Court

My weekend with Megan :)

On Saturday I had to go to my great host uncles house lol and he was so crazy. My host dad explained to me that he was a really big hunter, you could tell. There were pelts and animal heads and stuffed birds and rodents everywhere. Apperently I didn't even see the "good" stuff in his Africa room because he hunts in Africa a lot I guess. I was a little creeped out. We had lunch there and then went home. It was kind of pointless, but oh well.

Around 3ish Megan's train arrived and I waited for her at the station, then we came back to the house and I showed her around. After we just hung out for a little while we went into town and we explored Ehingen a little bit because even I haven't seen all of it. We went out for pizza and ice cream, that seems to be a reoccuring thing we do everytime we hang out. We went down to the "lake" it's more like a giant man made pond, but I love it anyways. Then we went to the bus stop and waited for like 20 minutes and then realized that the busses stopped coming at like 7. It was only 9 so I figured they'd still be running, but I guess not. We tried to call my host mom, but my phone's battery was dead and Megan didn't have any money on her phone. So we went to use the pay phone and while we were doing that all these kids started talking to us and we could barely understand. It was extremely confusing. When my host mom got there to pick us up the kids knew my host mom, apparently they are friends with Vanessa, my host sister thats in SC. So that was kind of odd. When we got home we ate oreos and made Shells and Cheese, it was soo good. My host sister didn't like it at all, but man it was so good. The next day I went upstairs to ask my host mom what time she wanted Megan to go home and she suggested that I just go to Ulm with Megan on a train and then she could pick me up later when they were done working in their shop in Neu Ulm. So we hung out some more, had lunch, and went to this mall kind of place. It was a lot of fun. We even spoke a lot of German, not all the time because some things we just can't say, but the things we could say we did so that was cool and I think our host families were happy about that so maybe they'll let us hang our more.

These are some pictures from this weekend

This is the lake/pond thing lol. Usually on Mondays when I have 2 free hours I buy a pretzel and come sit down here. I like it a lot.

So yes, that was my weekend and we had a lot of fun. Next week is our Rotary trip to the Black Forest, I'm excited about missing school, but a little worried about all the hiking haha. Oh well at least I will have a friend there and hopefully make some more.

School is still boring and some of my teachers make me read out loud which is a good I guess, but really hard. I stutter and read really slow because it's so hard to pronounce. Usually the kids just laugh at me so I try to laugh with it but I still feel really stupid. Well sorry it's been so long since I updated, there's not much to update on.

Well I will talk to you all later. I miss you!

Love,

Court

Öpfingen

So I actually had fun last night. I went to Öpfingen with some girls from my class. It was an "After-Sunset-Party" is what I think it was called. There was lots of music, and fog. I don't know why, but at all these parties here there's always fog machines and it's kind of funny. Oh yeah, and everytime I go to give the gaurd/bouncer guys my ID they get all like I don't know haha, not as tough. My foreign-ness scares them. Oh well. I really like it when the girls from school invite me to these parties because it kind of gives them a chance to see me, not just the foreign exchange student. I think I said that last time I wrote a blog about a party I went to, but whatever. There were all these guys taking pictures at the party last night and the girls explained to me that they take pictures at parties and then they put them on this website where you can go get them. I thought that was kind of cool.

These are some..

So, over all. I had a lot of fun. Today is Germany's independance day so no school for me. Today is also been exactly one month since I left the beautiful state of Michigan. I keep meeting people who have been to Michigan, I didn't realize that so many people went there. A girl on my basketball team said her sister went to the Northern Lower Penninsula on foreign exchange with Rotary a couple years ago, but she couldn't remember the city. I'm really excited that the weekend is almost here because I am going to get to hang out with Megan and that's always fun. We're going to go exploring Ehingen and eat Oreos. ha.

Well, talk to you later.

Love,

Courtney

Not much is new.

Last weekend I went to the Black Forest with my host family for my host Uncles birthday. It was beautiful, but kind of boring at the same time. I'm glad I got to go though. So that was my Saturday, on Sunday I had my basketball games. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, but still not easy. I had to play the entire time, no breaks except for half time which was only like 5 minutes long. Then we had a 30 minute break between games and had to play all over again. The coach told me I did really good. I was one of the lead scorers on the team so that was pretty cool considering I used to never score at home lol. I accidently elbowed a girl in the eye, I felt really bad but I said I was sorry and she said it was ok. I personally would have been really mad at me if I was her, but she was really nice about it. Now I'm insanely sore since I was in no kind of shape for what I did on Sunday.
School is school. Still boring and I still can't do much. I was told the other day that there's no school tomorrow which made me very happy. Apparently tomorrow is the German Independance Day, so thats kind of cool. It feels weird celebrating it because it's not in July, but thats just the American in me that's not used to other cultures. So tonight after basketball practice I'm going to Öpfingen with some girls from my class to celebrate the whole German Independance thing. So I hope that is a lot of fun. It probably will be, the girls in my class are a lot of fun and I'm really happy they invited me. Things go kind of on and off though. Like some days they like to talk to me a lot and others, not so much. So, I guess today was an on day.

Well, I'll write later about Öpfingen.

Love,
Courtney