Winding Down

Hi everyone. Well, as they say, all good things must come to an end. I leave for the US on Friday really early in the morning, and I seriously don't want to leave Germany. Adapting to a totally new culture was an amazing experience for me, and it was cool because it was still pretty familiar (with the whole school scene and all). Anyways, I'll come back to that later. Every weekend I've had in Germany has been amazing, and this past weekend was no exception.

On Friday, we went to Munich just to do the tourist thing and see all the sights. Then later on we drove through the alps to Austria. Holy shit. when I saw the alps, I finally realized the meaning of the word "breathtaking." It was so amazing. Our hotel room was about 1200 meters above sea level, and the view was incredible. Literally breathtaking. And then we went to Innsbruck (a fun little Austrian town) and saw the sights there, and then went home. We didn't actually go to a whole lot of places in Austria, but just being there was so cool; I love the culture shock. I definitely want to see if I can study there in college.

Anyways, that's about it for the whole excitement scene. The past few days have just been dumb little excursions to random mountains that we hike up....and then hike down. Wow, exciting. BUT at night on Monday, Max took me to eat Haxen (pig leg), and it was sooo good. Then afterwards we went to his friend's house (this friend lived in America this past year and went to a high school right near New Trier, small world, eh?) and we watched part of "How High" and just bullshitted and drank beer. Then randomly afterwards we went to another friend's house and knocked on the window until he came out, and just sat outside his house and hung out for like a half hour. And it was all spontaneous. Talk about truly kickass. Then on Tuesday Max invited people over to play cards (german and american card games) and we just played cards and drank, but one of the American girls got so hammered that we walked her home, which was cool since she lived kind of far away, so we were just this roaming hoard of (slightly intoxicated) teenagers parading down the streets of Kulmbach at like 11 at night. It was so cool. Damn, it's gonna be hard to leave.

Anyways, back to my culture ramble. It was really neat learning to adjust to the ways of a totally foreign country, and I feel that I did it pretty successfully. Just realizing how similar teenagers are all around the world was just such a cool experience for me, because I talk to the high school kids here about a lot of the same stuff that people in America talk about too. Germany for me is truly a dream come true, and I simply can't reiterate that enough times. I think that's all for now, I'll probably update once more before I leave. Servus!