Zoo Aquarium Berlin

Yesterday, for the first time in a long time, I did something typically touristy! We were going to go the zoo, but it was chilly and rainy outside so instead we stayed indoors and went to the aquarium. It cost €10 ($12.50) with the student discount, with three floors of fisch, amphibians, and insects. 

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Some cool jellyfish from the west coast.

The group of us in the rainforest-y part. You can't see it but there are alligators all over (:

In other news, today is the last day of school before our Easter Break, and only two more weeks until the Eurotrip! I feel like I should probably start packing right now... but something tells me I won't get around to it until like the night before, maybe the morning of! 

Yesterday was my 100 days-left-in-Germany mark... Which means as of today I have 99. Holy!

Sloppy Joes

Tonight I made Sloppy Joes for my family (: I have never myself made them so I looked up a simple recipe on www.allrecipe.com (life saver here in Germany). I think they turned out really well! I made so much I  think we have enough for tomorrow and next tomorrow!

Right now you are looking at a really general map of where I will be going to on my Europe Tour. We travel Berlin - Dresden - Meißen - Prag - Wien - Venedig - Rom - Innsbruck - Nesselwang - Schloß Neuschwanstein - München - Regensburg - Berlin. It sounds like it's going to be amazing! Tomorrow is my last week of school before out two-week break, then in two weeks from this Sunday we leave for the Europareise and we will be gone for about three weeks.

Frühling is Here!

I feel like it went from winter jacket-scarf-boots-snowy weather right into leaves & grass and shorts weather!

Leaves! Along with the warm weather the people are out 

and biking, taking walks, and being happy in general (:

The other day I dragged Andrea along with me to Wilmersdorfer Straße in Berlin to look for some gluten-döner that someone had said I could find there at Max & Moritz. I did not, but we had a good time nonetheless.

After school on Friday Andrea & Paola and I took a little detour to a flea market and relaxed in the sun a bit. I bought two old pins, one Russian and one German for my Rotary blazer. I tried to bargain (or haggle?) the price down with the seller, and he just laughed at me (: hahaha

Me, enjoying the sun, and enjoying no longer being sick. 

I got my return flight itinerary in email this weekend. I fly from Berlin on July 6th at 9:30 DE time, and arrive in MNPLS at my time 00:30, MNPLS time it will be 5:30pm. So that will be a long day of flying! It's kind of freaking me out a little bit, not gonna lie! This Thursday I will have only 100 days left in Germany. Wow, the time is going by so fast!

My Picture Documentary of German Things That Seem Normal Now But Weren't in the Beginning

I have been sick lately and been spending way too much time at home. Today I decided to take pictures of things that I find are different. I know I did one like this earlier in the year but this one has pictures. How much more cool! It was fun going from room to room in my house and questioning everything. "Is this normal?" I would ask myself. It was surprising to me how so many things seem the norm now where as seven months ago I would be very confused with what I saw.

 

Typical "dressers" here don't exist. I don't even know what to call this thing here that I store my clothes in. 

The bed sheets here (and pillow) are a comforter and a square fluffy thing (not exactly like a pillow) are covered by sheets. Like a big pillowcase with a zipper at the end, and you wash those.

I know I have talked about sparkling water before, but I just thought it deserved to be added.

The lightswitches here are square boxes that you push. I haven't seen a typical light "switch" here my entire time. Also the thermostat is in Celsius (:

Door handles on the outside are just little knobs that open when you insert the key, automatically locking every time the door closes. I have been locked out a couple times because of that (:

In basically all of the houses here I have been in the clothes get hung out to dry. One house I was in it was a a family of six or so and there was pretty much a whole room designated for cloths drying. Super eco-friendly!

The thing that heats up the water. I still can't figure out how its better than just having a kettle and setting it on the stove.

Many houses here have their little mini espresso machines. Love it! Especially this one, with like ten different varieties, and the milk gets fluffed.

This concept took me a solid couple months to get down. Handles: Down = closed

Sideways = opens completely, like a door.

Handle up = window opens from top and gets stopped after 5 inches or so. Everyone here is always leaving the windows like that, even in the winter!

This is in my bathroom, and most other bathrooms. The signs get pretty creative.

Well, this is a typical German toilet. I haven't come across a toilet handle flush thing once since I got here. Just the little button against the wall. 

That's all, folks!

Orientation Number Two (or three?)

This weekend we had orientation number two... or three, I am not sure if I should count Paris or not?

Well, most of the exchange students from around the Berlin area took the 2.5 hour train ride together, but since my counselor had bought the Fürstenwalde exchange students tickets separately we left two hours later. Luckily for one newbie who missed his train earlier we were there so we could ride together later.

The train out to Greifswald was packed! Me and the newbie from Australien squeezed kitty-corner into a two facing two seater. I was talking to him in Englisch and this lady across from me suddenly rudely says in German "You are in Germany, I don't understand why you speak Englisch with this boy it is obvious he speaks German. You should speak German! That is so dumb!" It was one of those moments when you just pretend that you understand German lol :)

 Greifswald

There was another distrikt along with ours at this orientation, D1890 I think from North in the Hamburg area. Total, I believe there were 120 exchange students! It was so great to see everybody again and I was really hoping that there would maybe be an exchange student in the other district from Minnesota, but sadly there wasn't :(

Us Americans doing our presentation on Easter traditions

On Saturday we went to a nuclear power plant I think. It was kind of confusing because the whole tour was given in German, but it was still pretty cool. That night we had a dance in one of the dining halls. I love orientation weekend (: I am pretty sad because we don't exactly have another orientation after this last one. Of course there's the Europareise but after that my exchange is basically over! I'm avoiding thinking about that...

The (nuclear?) power plant.

Wearing the hard hats