6.27.06 Das Boot

On Tuesday Felix, Brennan, Niklas and I went out on the boat. Felix has his boating license, so he's allowed to go alone. We rode the mopeds to the river in the Netherlands. The weather was not fantastic. It was cloudy and cold and it rained for a while when we were on the boat. We did stop and see the horses again. On the way home we stopped and ate french fries.

6.26.06 Dusseldorf

Monday we went to Düsseldorf. Very cool city. First we sat through an extremely boring lecture about politics; we all struggled to stay awake. After that we went on a short boat tour on the Rhine River. The rest of the time was free time to do whatever. There was a Bären Land (Gummy candy story), and a lot of places to eat.

Wasserschilaufen

On Saturday I went with Felix and his family to the Netherlands. They have a boat on a river there, and it's only a 20 minute drive. We drove around on the boat and water skiied. After the water skiing we parked the boat on a shore near some friendly horses. Later that night Felix and I went to Niklas' house (Brennan's partner) to stay the night. Scott, Peter, Jannick, and Tommy were also there. We watched the Germany vs. Sweden World Cup game (which Germany won, 2-0) and a couple DVDs. Then we hit each other with pillows and wresteled for about an hour. Es machte viel spass.

Flachsmuseum

Friday we went to the "Flachsmuseum." It's a local museum, the equivalent of the Concord History Museum. It's a museum that displays the process of growing flax and making it into linen. It was a little boring, but they gave us a lot of food after. More pictures.

Im Stadion

Thursday we went to the Borussia Mönchengladbach Stadium. It's the local soccer team, everyone loves them. It was really cool, and pretty big. We went to a small restaurant in the stadium afterwards and watched a world cup game. Later that night I went to Felix's end-of-the-year class party. It was fun; everyone in his class is really nice. Well, that's pretty much it for Thursday.

bis später.

Wandertag

Today was what they call "Wandertag." It's a day near the end of the school year where each class goes on a trip somewhere. I went with Felix's class to a water park in Köln (Cologne). It was almost all indoors, but it wasn't extremely big. There were four short water slides, a lot of hot tubs, and a lazy-river type thing.
I have to do my group presentation in school for the first time tomorrow - in German. My group's topic is sports. I am also showing the videos I made for Crew and Nordic Skiing. It should be interesting.
The bottom picture is of Felix, and the top is of two of his friends: Felix (another one)(in back) and Marko (in front).

Bis bald.

Catching up

I've already been here for four days, so I will give a summary of what I've done so far.
We arrived and met our families on Sunday, as explained in the last post. Monday was our first day of school. I met a lot of Felix's friends, they're all really nice. Soon after we came home from school, we did the final preparations for the welcome party. The party was at a field right near Felix's house. We played a lot of frisbee, and ate a lot of food.
Tuesday was another school day. It's the last week of school for them before vacation, so they aren't really doing much in their classes. The teachers love to have the students ask us questions about America and Concord High School. After school we went to meet the mayor. It was...interesting. She spoke rapidly in German the whole time, so we didn't understand much. She bought ice cream for everyone after, though, so I guess it was okay.
After the ice cream we went to the "forum." This is a big gym where they show the world cup games on a very large projector screen. Whenever Germany scored, the audience went crazy (Germany beat Ecuador 3-0, by the way). After the game we bought more food, then went home.

An update on Wednesday (today) follows.

Auf Wiedersehen.

First post...

We flew out of Boston at 9:50pm after a long wait at the airport. It was a 7 hour flight. Few of us found comfortable positions to sleep in. Brennan and I got about a half hour of sleep total. We arrived in Frankfurt at around 11:30am - German time. that's about 5:30am in New Hampshire. We waited another hour or so, and boarded our second flight. It wasn't long - maybe 45 minutes. We arrived in Düsseldorf at around 1:30. We then waited for our bags at the luggage claim. We had all been practicing one phrase over and over: "Schön sie kennenzulernen," which means "nice to meet you." When we all had our bags we walked out the doors to our host families. All of us met our host-parents and siblings, then went to our new houses in Wegberg. We were all extremely müde (tired), but it was only 2:00pm. I forced myself to stay awake until around 9:30, when I crashed into my bed and fell asleep instantly. I needed sleep, we had school the next day.