January 9, 2012

Christmas Break

Christmas...is over, already, again, like every year. It comes and goes seemingly like in a few hours. But My Christmas in entirety was great, including Silvester and the whole christmas break. After Christmas day, the following monday I went to a Starbulls icehockey game in Rosenheim. They are the proffessional team that plays there. Was pretty awesome. We ended up winning in the shootout. The next day, I went to Wasserburg again, and spent two days there, didnt do so much but just a nice time as always with my exchange friends. Thursday, I met up with some friends from Prien, and we had a small party in Prien. Was pretty nice, finally got to meet some more people than just the ones in my class. Then on Saturday was Silvester (New Years) I went to Munich, and partied the whole night there with exchange students. Was the best new years ever. First we went to Olympia Park to watch fireworks. It was raining, but it was still cool, there was a small hill that we walked up and from there you could see everything in Munich, and overlooking Olympia Park, where the olympics where held in the 1970s. Then we went to a really cool bar/club. We stayed there pretty late, and i took the train back home from Munich to Aschau at 6.45 AM. Was a great first week of Holidays. Oh and yeah here in Germany, holidays are two weeks long compared to the one week long holidays in the USA. The second week I was planning on going to Frankfurt to visit Jan, my former exchange brother. He stayed with us in 2008 for 4 or 5 months, and he is from Germany. I was unfortunately unable to go, but instead I went to Austria for 4 days with my host family. That was pretty awesome. We went to a ski resort type of place. Was my first time to ski in my life. It was very scary the first few days, but the second and third day were a blast. Was amazing to be at the top of the mountain and also while going down, just looking around and just knowing your in the Alps, in Europe, and of course the view was fantastic. After We came home from that, on Friday I went to a wedding with my family. I can say German weddings are pretty similar to American ones, but there is no big kiss in German weddings. It was more a little peck, and then continued on with the service. Also the reception was fairly similar, there were a lot of games, and singing. In Germany for any occasion with drinking or beer involved (a lot) there is a beer keg sort of thing that is wooden. And for the wedding occasion, the groom gets to take a pick sort of thing and a hammer and open the keg. That was pretty cool. Then on saturday and sunday, I didnt do so much, I was tired, and it was a good 2 days of mostly relaxing. For upcoming plans. I will maybe be traveling to Prague in February, Small Possibility of London in the near future as well. Going to a FC Bayern München Game on February 11th. The 20th of January is the next Rotary Weekend, a ski weekend, should be really great. Especially with some of the people who have never skied before. My birthday is in about one month, that should be interesting. Savannah my best friend who lives in Norway right now (also Rotary Exchange Student) from my home state, may becoming to visit me in February also. Then there is another holiday for a week or so. And then there is some huge party like event here, called Carnival. Its apparently for like 3 months and started on 11.11.11 but in the last weeks of February it apparently really happens. I have heard crazy things that people do, like dressing up as crazy things, and doing crazy things, all sorts of stuff. I have no idea what to expect but i am looking forward to that. One more thing, I am joining the basketball club here. I am playing on Mondays and Wednesday nights with the Adult club, and Tuesday afternoons with the 14-16 year old club. Today is my first training with the adults, we should see how it goes. I have played basketball my whole life in USA, and I stopped just last year, should be really interesting to see how I compare to Germans. I already played once in the school tournament, haha, not to brag, but they obviously had not as much experience as me, so I carried us to a 2nd place finish =P
As for what I have been thinking and so with the whole big picture. I have had problems here, with pretty much lots of things, some of them are just unfortunate occurences, but others not. But I in the last few weeks have really been able to take care of some of them. And not to worry these problems arent that bad. But it feels so good to be able to do things truly on your own, it feels liberating, and I really feel like I am starting to mature, and be able to handle things on my own. It really is one of the things that i understand what it would be like to change, when the people in rotary would tell me before I came here, but now i understand. I know how I thought before I came here, I know what I would of done then. And now, I just recognize that I am simply starting to think of everything in a different way. The way I do things, The way I behave, everything. Going for a year abroad, no matter where you go, alone, will definitely make you grow up. It feels pretty great to get over those problems I have, and I am enjoying this new perspective of life that I am developing.

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