el día de los reflexiones y otros caracoles

100 days of being a fly on the wall

The first 100 days of my year abroad have already gone by. Instead of posting small things every now and then, I seem to have developed a pattern of working on a post for a long while and changing it completely before it actually appears on the blog. Resulting in *sigh* pretty sparse long posts that don't really cover what everyday life is like here. I suppose this is just as well, but in the future I hope to add in some more spontaneous writing for the sake of, well, spontaneous writing. I could right now tell you how my day is going, what I've been doing, eating, thinking about, and all of the things I should be doing instead of sitting here on the computer. Also I could tell you that right now I'm walking over to my desk and turning off the lamp, because maybe that's something you would be interested in knowing. 

Today is Wednesday, November 18th. Wednesdays are the turning part of my week- Monday and Tuesday feel like swimming uphill and when I get to Wednesday everything starts going faster until inevitably Monday comes around again. I go to school later on Wednesdays because I only have two classes, History and Deutsch. Today I slept until 7am (a good thing, as lately my body has been waking me up at ridiculously early hours) and for breakfast I ate a pear and some chocolatey rice krispie cereal with milk. (note- this is not my normal breakfast choice- usually I have toast or granola. I was just curious if the cocoa krispies were any good) Then I washed my hair and got ready for school. My host sister had forgotten her gym clothes so she called me to ask if I could bring them. I wasn't sure if I even had history today, but from the school website I found out that it was still scheduled, just in a different room than normal. The weather was so very windy today!!!! It was quite fun to watch the leaf tornados and walk in the wind on the way to school. In school our teacher had to do something so she gave us a quick assignment and left us to our own meanderings. (I'll be receiving the award for most clueless student because I really don't know what she had to help with. It may have had something to do with the fact that on Saturday there is a school open house and at some point there is also parent teacher going ons... ah well...) While we were really digging deep into the history of Deutschland's industrialization in the 1800's (not), we mostly talked about the news, and one of my friends told us about the work she's been doing with her mom in Naumberg, spending some time helping refugees learn German. Even without having been there myself, it's easy to ascertain from the way she talks about them that these people are incredible. They are full of life and appreciative of everything they have. Something that I wish everyone understood, they are just people. Just normal humans who are trying to build a new life in a new country. Sometimes when I hear about well off, influential people in the US condemning the refugee crisis, I can't help but feel a little embarrassed, and a little frustrated because that's not how I want America to be portrayed. I find the amount of ignorance I've seen appalling, and I cringe knowing that I haven't seen a fraction of it. Aside from that, I know there are also many intelligent folks out there doing good, and that makes me feel better about the world.  I wasn't intending on writing about the issue here and now, but somehow it has found a way into this paragraph. When the stars aline and I can express my thoughts on the matter, I will write more about this and about everything that is continuing to happen rather close to (German) home in the news this week.  So, leaving that for later, I'll go on with my somewhat boring account of today.  

After history I decided to go home for lunch because I had a 2.5 hour wait between classes (basically a full hour of time to be at home). I spent most of it playing violin in my host family's incredibly (almost overly) resonant house. For lunch I ate a piece of homemade sourdough bread with ham and cheese, fresh carrots and kohlrabi, a banana with nutella, and I drank hot tea. Then I went back to school for Deutsch (literature class) where I kind of spaced out and started writing poems in my notebook. After school I came home yet again on the Straßebahn and drank another cup of tea. I should have gone running, but it was already starting to get dark out and I wanted to work on a sketch I started the other day. With the help of Bee Eaters recordings playing while I worked, it's close to being finished now that there's only some layers of watercolors left to be added.  For Abendbrot (it's like a snacky dinner) we had fried brie with cracker sized slices of bread and tomato/mozzerella salad. Now I have a little bit of Spanish homework to do, and then I'll go to bed after I proof read this. 

here's an album of black and white pictures for you. some are new, some are not.

thank you as always for reading!

Mila

Spooky things and pumpkinness

ITS HALLOWEEN!!!! Ok, so maybe it was two days ago... or was it? All I know is that our jack-o-lantern is still looking mighty fine on the gate outside of my host family's house, I'm still celebrating with homemade pumpkin muffins and now I'm sitting down with my tea and happily going through this weekend's spooky photos.  The universe has been creating the prettiest spooky sunsets and beautiful spooky crisp mornings this week. Have a spooky time entering November! Ooo

spooky skeleton spiderwebs

spooky fog

spooky pumpkin friends

spooky pepitas

spooky apple trees

spooky street lights

a spooky halloween sunset

more spooky sunset trees

 Y feliz dia de los muertos! 

Yours spookily until next time,

Mila

Soup of life dos

In which my brain struggles to complete any thought using just one language.
September came with a multitude of things including a school team bonding week, a lot of going to school, wearing sweaters (yip yip!), visiting Wittenberg with my extended host family, and my 18th birthday! From these first two months away from the US I have gained a new love for my home, my biological family, and my senior class. Whilst living my life here on the opposite side of the globe, I can easily imagine my little siblings growing up so fast, my friends hosting Bonnie Tyler themed parties and having a great senior year, and my musical friends bluegrass music festival hopping from state to state. These things haven't necessarily made me homesick yet, but they do give a lot of food for thought about what/who/where has influenced me the most in the last couple of years. I appreciate in indescribable amounts how lucky I am to be where I am for my last year in high school. It's curious what a little change in perspective does for the soul.

From others I have heard that this part of the experience is pretty quid pro quo. Life is starting to become familiar again, the days are quickly becoming weeks as the home to school and back again regimen slowly turns over and over like one of those weird fractal videos; hypnotizing us all into thinking maybe magic exists in mathematics. Now that I'm over two months in, I'm starting to feel the effects of the expected up and down swings during an exchange year. There was a definite moment where I felt a little down, around the time that the Roseburg shooting occurred. I really missed being able to express myself. A lot of what I thought about were my hobbies, animals, music, etc. Things that before I came here were so integrated into my life, I never considered living without them to be a possibility.

I've never really felt lonely here, but at the beginning of the school year I wasn't overly confident about my abilities to present myself to my new classmates or how to be myself. Foreign exchange does some really odd things to you. Without realizing it I was at serious risk of de-evolving into some weird prepubescent version of the person that I thought I was. Not quite infantile, I would compare it more to moving during middle school, except this time not in English. That being said, I still have to constantly choose how I navigate the school day, deciding to talk a lot in German or sitting back and waiting for someone else to initiate a conversation. One generalization for exchange in Germany: they generally won't. You have to make yourself socially available in order to make friends out of classmates.
I worked hard during high school to change my shy personality into something that was outgoing, well spoken, and comfortable talking or performing on any stage. Annnnndd my point here? All of that was obliterated in the first month of being an exchange student at a real school. All of the things I had to go through during 7th grade to find a way to incorporate myself into an already established, tight knit class are happening to me again. What I've learned is that it didn't kill me then, and it won't kill me know, or the next time, or the next time I have to move somewhere new.

More pertinent than difficult things however, there have been some really incredible upswings lately. Now I feel much more at home here, I love my host family and host community, I'm surviving school and while I wasn't paying attention- my German even got a little better. Small victories I tell ya. They mean the world when you work really hard for them. Yesterday I wrote my Deutsch (Literature) Klausur and you don't want to know the grade I got on it, but I am still proud of my very own essay in German!

A little about the traveling I've done in the past two months!
In September I went with my class to the hills of Naumburg where we were supposed to bond during weird workshops like juggling, labyrinth life path drawing, team building games, and even a graffiti class. Despite some of the random themes of life paths and a few confusing activities involving listening to indi rock and mentally analyzing it to think deeply about our lives, it was really a great time to spend with my classmates and get out of the house for a few days. Naumburg has a really interesting castle and a dom/cathedral, with a lovely princess story and lots of beautiful rolling hills.

View of Nuamburg from an apple orchard 

School buds took me out for waffles after school on my birdday!!! 

Around the middle of September I spent a weekend in Wittenberg with my host family's extended family for a 50th wedding anniversary celebration, and to see the city where Martin Luther started the Protestant Reformation in 1517. We also had some fun putting on a Dirndl fashion show, and going out to the neighborhood Gasthouse for Schnitzel with extended fam.

Dirndl Mania (Opa telling me something important while I teach other people how to use my stone age camera)

Wittenberg Stadt Church, where Martin Luther preached 

A wonderful encounter with a friend from Germany who studied abroad in my part of the world. Now I get to enjoy hers for a year!

Subtle evening rainbows on the walk to dinner

my host sister and her cousin being silly überall

More recently... this week! We had Herbstferien (Autumn break) which meant a week off from school. With my host mom and sister I went on vacation to visit Heilbronn to see my older host sister, Stuttgart, and a teeny city called Eckertsberga where my german Oma and Opa live. It was a blast! I really enjoyed driving though Thuringia (definitely the most Oregon like state of the German Bundeslands) and a bit of Bayern/Bavaria. I think that the way they speak in Bad Württemberg is really awesome. It's got a bit of the Bavarian 'r' roll and it's very fun to try to replicate. Highlights from Bad Württemberg included spending time with my awesome older host sister, failing to order correctly at more than a few restaurants (including Turkish food!!! Turkey seems to be to Germany as Mexico is to the United States in some respects. Mostly food, the cultural influence of past immigrants, and that it's a sought out vacation destination.) We also went to a Hamam, which is a Turkish sauna. It was built into the wine cellar of a building and I don't think I will ever feel that clean again in my life. If you are really curious about Hamam, HERE is a news story on the one we went to. It's in German, so just deal with it. Here's some shots I took during vacation. No sauna pictures, es tut mir leid.

Stuttgart on a Saturday

The view from on top of a castle

the bird king of the castle

 the raptor show!

the castle guard

the tour guide

at the beginning...

half way up to the top...

at the top!

Castle Museum

Kuchen back in Heilbronnmmmmmm.

 Closer to home, Halle has been my favorite city of them all so far on my exchange year. It's where you can meet a friend for ice cream by the statue of Händel as well as find incredible artwork on the sides of buildings to give you something new to think about.
Here is a photographic collection of SOME of the graffiti and building murals in Halle. https://www.flickr.com/photos/gynti/albums/72157602899157778

City square, church, and statue.

image source:  https://www.flickr.com/photos/gynti/albums/72157602899157778 

So, I hope that this blogpost was informative. It's taken me awhile to finish because I've been busy with so many other fun things that working on the computer for extended amounts of time hasn't been a top priority. Thank you for reading if you made it this far! Have a great day!

SNL's take on German exchange students has so much more depth than you think it does

hello blog! it's nice to see you again. while I work on a long post, here's something fulfilling to compensate for a lack of real blog posts. 

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