and now for the photographic white stripes tribute you've been waiting for...

Cueing all autumnal variants: delightfully rainy weather, cinnamon, sweaters, and the decay of most living things.  The season's a changin ladies and gentlemen.

first impressions, the great salmon domestication, and other things including flowers

Some of the first photographic/written impressions of late summer during my first few weeks in the Leipzig realm. 
This blogpost is PIC heavy, mostly because it can be! I hope you enjoy some of my macro work. It's been a real wonder to have this camera here with me. It is probably one of the subtly best item-gifts that has ever been bestowed on me. Along that thread, I am feeling very grateful for all of the people in my life who have influenced me throughout my childhood. Slowly but surely every lesson that I have ever been taught, every spontaneous hobby that my parents have put up with, and even every lonely factoid that I know has been building something that I never could have predicted... who I am today! Three years ago when I started started high school I had no inkling of who I wanted to be, and where I wanted to take my opportunities. I expect to experience that many more times in the future, but for now it is quite a self realization. Because of the slipperiness of this, it is known to me as the great salmon domestication. All I can do now is dance to a smoky beat and hope the cream cheese is a' chillin on that long domestic leash of life. Ok! Onto more tangible matters.

With school starting all around the globe this week, it's hard not to compare everything that happens in school here with what I am accustomed to in the US. (e.g. class materials, teaching styles, learning styles, homework, you name it). For the most part, school is school. I am going to a Gymnasium (German high school) here and although it's challenging, it's been really enjoyable so far. I have a full 11th grader's schedule full of classes. 
Everything is in (ding ding ding you guessed it!) German! (Except for foreign languages, naturally) Sometimes I don't understand half of what is said during the lesson, and somedays (read: today) I understand more of what the Spanish teacher talked about than the Art teacher. Every day I learn a little more and speak English a little bit less. Some days I even understand a whole lesson without help from friends! My pocket dictionary has been my best friend lately. I'm having a really good time getting to be at school and my school year is quite a bit more rigorous than it would have been in the US... One day I had a free period and was spontaneously invited to the Russian class where we ate cake and talked in an odd mix of German, Russian and English. My normal schedule consists of Ethics (Philosophy), Geography, Biology, Art, History, Music, Math, Deutsch (literature), English, Spanish, and Gymnastics (oh yes... I'm learning Gymnastics..) 

Besides school lately with my host sister I have been cooking pancakes, translating annoyingly complex history texts, going to youth group at a nearby castle/church, and lip-syncing to Queen. With some classmates I went to the local artsy cinema last weekend to watch the movie Boychoir (featuring the work of our latest picfest guest conductor, Fernando!!!!) And with my whole host family over the weekend: cheering for people running the local marathon on the street, eating the pancakes and other breakfast foods with neighbors (think bread, lots of butter and other delicacies), watching a documentary about how Oktoberfest is run (in Southern Germany, mind you. Oktoberfest is a festival, and not a national holiday like you might have wanted to believe...), and learning the history of Kohlrabi. All in a day's work, you could say. 
Next week with my school I have a three day holiday for team building. I have no idea what this means precisely but it sounds fun. In the meantime, I intend to photograph some things including the city and remarkably beautiful old buildings I get to see everyday on my way to school, as well as the apple trees by my house. 

Thank you for reading! 
Mila

european hornets. ughgh google it

Language camp and all that jazz

Hello all! I hope you are having a wonderful day. Here's a little update, obligatory first month post, some pictures of Germany, and overall a good feeling and reminder that YES! There is at least one language that I am fluent in (ahem... english). I have been in Deutschland for a whole month??? WHAT. Time has gone fast, and especially now that I am busy with regular school and making friends in my permanent setting, it's going even faster. Language camp was a gift from above, our teachers were so great and almost everything they taught I have found useful so far. Now for the recap!

For three weeks I lived outside of Hamburg, where I went to Deutsch school everyday. There were many good things to see and many wonderful experiences to have during Language camp/school whatever you want to call it (Thank you CBYX!). In addition, having two host families there made every day fun and interesting! I had two because of conflicting vacation times. Both were amazing to have as introductory families!! It showed me two different perspectives of the same area, and for this reason I think that having an exchange program with multiple host families (e.g. with the program or any foreign exchange student in a hosting situation where this happens) can be a great way to see the culture. That being said, I was very glad to settle into my room when I moved to Leipzig to my permanent family's house. In Hamburg I also loved having pets at my temp. families' houses. I spent a healthy amount of downtime practicing all of my basic German words with the company of my host family's labradors.

On the weekend, I got to take a boat tour of Hamburg's Harbor. It was super! This is one of the buildings on the waterfront. Known as the Elbe Philharmonic Hall, it's lookin pretty fine. It is one of the city's biggest and newest buildings at 360 ft. tall. People here have been waiting (and still are...) for it's opening since the project began in 2006. 

thank you deutsche-bahn 

Everyday after school, I got to chill with my host family. Since that meant traveling to and fro Hamburg, getting home involved three trains and took 1.5 hours everyday... when on the right trains... Fear not, good people, for all exchange students have marvelous power napping skills and the coolness of cucumbers in unexpected stressful situations! 

Navigating our first Döner shop during lunch at language camp.

The class took a day trip around the city of Hamburg, where we got to see the city hall, ride the ferry through the harbor, check out the happenin's on Hamburg's Reeperbahn street, gawk at 30,000 E Rolex watches in display cases near the Gucci store, and try Fischbrötchen.

Hamburg Rathaus (the city hall)

Outside of St. Michael's Cathedral 

 

just your average mannequin

Bretzel!

Fischbrötchen!

Raw meat for breakfast anyone? 

 So, there is a lot of great German food here. There is everything you've ever heard about (perhaps pretzels, bier, bratwurst, more bier, oven-fresh bread, schnitzel, pickles, heaping mounds of nutella, and anything else) but have you tried Quark? Or tried putting butter on every sandwich on the face of this earth? For breakfast, most German families seem to love their fresh bread with cold cuts/salami and swiss cheese (and butter), or jam (and butter) or nutella (perhaps even with butter). More to come on the topic of food at a later date, because it is so very much fun to talk about, but this blog post is getting longer than it should be and I have to wrap it up so I can work on my math homework!

Here's some more of the pictures from the evenings in Hamburg. Thank you for reading!