DC trip

It seems a bit anticlimactic to leave everything that you're used to and go to Europe only to find yourself bumming around Washington DC for the better part of a week. However, I ended up finding the four days in DC were actually quite helpful in setting the stage for the year and also in getting to know the other exchangees. We stayed at the 4H center, a hotel-like enclosure with air conditioning, a cafeteria, spotty Wifi and an arcade. Most of our days were spent either in meetings (which were generally helpful but sometimes dragged on a bit - you could feel the wind come out of the room when we were told at the beginning of a meeting at 9 AM that we would pause for lunch at noon) and in the dorm rooms, where we would spend much of our nights not sleeping and hanging out with the alumni chaperones. Although the alums had been on an exchange 2 years ago, none of them were much older than us. We spent the better part of one day on the Hill where we were supposed to meet with senators and representatives - the Minnesota kids managed to get glad-handed by a Coleman staffer but that was about it. At one point another CBYXer and I rode the elevators in a House of Representatives office building for a solid half hour. We had a tour of DC and Arlington, then we went back to the center.

After a very full four days, most of us were quite ready to be in Germany - for some of us, that would take longer than expected...

This is the last night I'm spending in my house for a year. Tomorrow I leave for DC and then five days later I'll be in Stendal, Germany. There I'll be taking an Orientation and Language Course, which involves six hours a day of language and cultural training... Quite a courseload. In Stendal I'll be staying with a host family for the month of August, then I'm transferring to a full-year home in Jena, Germany. Jena (pronounced like the english exclamation "Yay!" and then the negative "nah" which indicates the negative in a casual manner) is a relatively large university town on the river Saale. Read more about it here but basically it a the place where Goethe went to school and also the guy who invented kindergarten. I went to kindergarten so I guess I can sympathize with that guy for wanting to invent it because it's pretty cool. Anyway I'll be staying with a permanent host family for the rest of the year and taking high school classes at the Gymnasium, which is a place where really smart kids go because the real schools (called Realschules) won't take them. I'll be trading in euros which will be depressing because everything will be very expensive but I will feel rich because jeans are also expensive there but I will already have several pairs. (did you know in German, pants are not plural so you just have one pant? I bet that would feel weird. I like having two.) I set up this blog so people at home can read what I have to say. Basically it will be all about my life as an american expatriate (I guess you have to stop loving america to go abroad it's like a law or something). Anyway here are some pictures!

These are the people who are crazy enough to take me into their house and feed me for a year - but for serious they seem like awesome people and I am looking forward to being their host son













This is a picture of the house I will be staying at - it looks pretty sweet











I am very excited to be in germany and also sort of nervous to leave home... it's going to be awesome though peace out america