Chillin in Holzkirchen

[Unless otherwise noted, all days from here on out are in Holzkirchen.]

25.6.10

Today was the first day of school, but it was mainly an introduction.  Nothing too exciting.  After school I walked around a bit with everyone else, then went home and played with the kids all day.  Florentina is pretty attached to me--always "pick me up, throw me, push me on the swing" etc.  Speaking of swings, I was swinging with Florentina on my lap, and then I let go of the rope, and fell backwards off the swing.  Ripped my pants from the bottom of the pocket down to the knee, and scraped my back up (like a palm-sized scrape).  I also met the 2 turtles today.  One is Lucy, and I forget the other one's name (also a girl though).  Later that evening, there was a reception type thing (kennen-lernen: getting to know eachother) at the school.  They gave leberkase, which I thought I would never like, but apparently I just don't like it when it's spreadable.  I like it when it is of the consistency of spam.  It was delicious.  They also had pretzels, with some kind of cheese dip (specialty of Bayern), but I didn't like the dip.  There was also Tegernsee beer, which was good.  All the students introduced their host families, and everyone just got to talk to everyone.  There was a choir there singing songs every now and then, they sang us a welcome song.  It was a good time.  After the kennenlernen, me and a bunch of other kids went to the St. John's Day fire fest.  For the summer solstice, many German towns have a big party and a fire to celebrate.  It was a HUGE fire.  Maybe 2 or 3 stories tall.  Biggest bonfire I've ever seen.  And of course, they were selling beer.  By the liter.  Huge glass of beer to match the huge fire.  It was really fun, and one kid likened it to being at Bilbo Baggins' birthday party, which was a really good analogy.  When we bought the beer we got a little blue chip, so we could get a refund when we return the glass.  One kid lost his though, and really didn't want to keep his cup, so I gave him mine, cuz it's a pretty cool souvenir for only 3 Euros.  Says Holzkirchen on it and everything.  After a while of seeing lightening in the area, it began to rain, so we left. 


26.6.10

Today I went to München with Amy and Ian.  We walked around the city a bit, then met up with Amy's boy, Tom.  Pretty nice guy.  We had lunch, and I had Jägerschnitzel  and Spätzel, which was good.  Then Ian and I went to Dachau, which was really depressing.  If you want to stay happy, don't go visit a concentration camp.  Dachau was one of the first camps in Germany, and later, many other camps followed the "Dachau method."  We even walked through the gas chambers and saw the cremation ovens.  It's enough to make you sick.  On a lighter note, but still semi-sad, later that day I met up with some people at Spenser's and we watched the USA-Ghana game.  It went into overtime, but then Ghana ended up beating us 2-1.  For some reason I was exhausted all day, so I didn't catch much of the 2nd half or of overtime cuz I was nodding off.


27.6.10

Today was Florentina's 6th birthday, and they had a scavenger hunt party.  I was gonna go, but they left while I was in the shower. (Speaking of the "shower," it is just a bathtub, no shower curtain, and no shower head attached to the wall.  There is a shower head on a flexible neck thing, so I kinda sat/kneeled and showered in a bathtub.  Interesting experience.)  Anyway, they came back a few hours later, and after some lunch, I went hiking with my host dad.  We went to Marienstein, and hiked up a ~500 m mountain.  About 1 hour up, and 1 hour down.  It was really beautiful, and pretty fun, but I've never hiked anything so big before.  Some of it was really steep too.  At the place where we stopped, there was a small hut/cafe thing, but it was closed.  We sat outside there for a while and chilled and watched the cows.  On the way down, we saw some sheep.  Its interesting to hear all their bells clanging.  We brought the dog with, and Jamie was very excited to run all around everywhere and smell everything.  Me and Wolfgang talked a lot about random things.  It was nice.  We saw a small snake, but he said it was harmless and blind.  Jamie tried to play with it, but he stopped her.  Apparently around here there aren't any poisonous plants or big predatory animals; the biggest animals are deer and foxes.  Really safe, beautiful place to hike.  Shady too, from all the trees.  What astounded me the most was the lack of bugs.  Sure, there's a few, but I didn't even put bug spray on, and there were no mosquitos, and only maybe a few flies now and then.  Drastically different from America.  No wonder they just keep all the windows open all the time.  The only things that really come in are crane flies, and although they're big and weird, they're harmless.  On the way home from the hike, we could easily tell who won the game, even without the radio.  (We had missed the entire England-Germany game up in the mountains.)  Everyone and their grandmother was out driving, screaming, yelling, waving flags, hanging out of cars, blowing those damned vuvuzelas (horn things for the world cup, google it).  It was crazy.  And this was only the 1/8th finals.  I'm afraid for what will happen at the end, and I'm not sure if I'm more afraid for the win or for the loss.

Tomorrow after school we are going hiking on the Tegernsee, and then having dinner at a brewery in there.  Should be fun, I've heard it's beautiful.  =)