That's Debateable

It's way too late, but I am sitting in my room (of course) and at the moment I'm crying to this song. Go, guys, and listen to it. It opens in a new tab.
And it's a really beautiful song.

But anyway, my weekend was rather magnificent. Honestly.

We left Friday at 12 o'clock from KSS with a school bus, and since there had been a misunderstanding (they thought we were 58 instead of 18 students) we had a really huge bus with enough space for everyone.
But due to my nerves I felt as though I would eat my lunch backwards (and I hadn't even eaten all of it), so I was sitting at front of the bus (5th row or so) on my own, while the rest of the group sat farther in the back. Only our teacher was in the seat across from me, reading her book.

I was listening to Pachelbel's Canon in D-Major, because that usually does a pretty good job of calming me down, and I was looking out of the front window, battling my nausea.
But then my teacher engaged me in a conversation (talking about Germany and school) and so my nausea and nerves subsided, and I was able to enjoy the ride.
One other debater got sick during the ride, but thankfully she didn't throw up - though she came close, she said!
I spent some time talking to my fellow debaters about Doctor Who and Sherlock, and the ride was over pretty soon, although it had indeed been 4 and a half hours.

We had rented four Condos, one for the boys, one for the girls, one for our teacher and one for our bus driver. And they were so nice and beautiful and spacious!
It was awesome.
The four tenth class girls shared one room with bunk beds (Hochbetten), Aislinn and Mary, our two best debater girls, shared another one with a Queensize Bed, and Hanna and I shared the last one with a king size bed.

We put our stuff into our rooms, and then everybody went off to do their own thing - I was sitting in the living room area, browsing tumblr (I actually wanted to finish my contentions, but well..) and answering my mail, until we started making dinner - Pizza, but the girls didn't want my help (I cleaned out the dish washer the next morning, though), and then we all ate. Hanna had made a salad, since she is a vegan, and it was really delicious!
After dinner we all helped to tidy up, and they had a garbinator! It's in the sink, and you just drain your compost stuff down the sink, then you close a lid, and everything is made into mush that will be recycled at the water cleaning facility.
And after dinner, everybody made their speeches.
I just had to write mine up on cue cards (Karteikarten), but that took more than one hour each!
Geoff, my partner, gave me his definitions, and in the end I had 12 cards for each speech - so 24 in total.
It was a lot of work, especially since I had to do it all by hand, because I changed a few things and we didn't have a printer, and my printed out stuff was too broad for the cards, but after three hours I was finished.

I read it out to Geoff and timed it, as well, and he read his out, and we gave each other tips to make the speeches better and then I read my speeches (once I was totally finished) to Aislinn, and although she was still not feeling very well, she listened to everyone very patiently, so I think that our debates would have gone much worse if she hadn't been there; and because of this, I'd like to shout out a huge THANK YOU!!! to her!

At about half past eleven I went to bed, Hanna had already gone an hour prior to that, and our alarm clock rang at half past six. The other girls had gone into the hot tub, but I couldn't fit my bathing suit into my backpack, so I went to bed while they were still showering (we all had our own bathrooms; three bathrooms!).

I actually wanted to skype with my parents, but Mom had been in Schwandorf at her grad class meet up and Dad had been at the Ski Service Day, so I did my Spanish homework and ate a muffin - after half of it, I couldn't eat no more.
There was an excited tension in the air, everybody was vibrating with energy, because it was the first debate of the year and the topic had been pretty heavy.
This house believes that bailouts are detrimental to society.

The bus took us to Rossland Secondary School, and we got to actually see the town.
Rossland is a pretty old town, with houses not like Kelowna (Kelowna has new "mansion houses" that all were built at the same time and look very similar), and the school was also rather old - not comparable to KSS or Gymnasium Neutraubling. On the way to the school, Kevin and I talked about Doctor Who and Sherlock, just to take our mind off things, and so we were again rather relaxed.
We got an introduction, looked at our debates - we had two affirmatives and one negatives, which means I was first speaker twice.
But our teacher had told us that usually the more experiences debater is twice first speaker, as the first speaker also has to deliver the final rebuttal, in which the speeches of your own side are summarized and flaws in your opponents' speeches are pointed out.
But I liked being first speaker so much, and since I had messed up the final rebuttal a bit, I wanted to do it again, so I stayed first affirmative.
We won all our three debates. It was really great!
And considering English is my second language, I am pretty happy with being ninth out of 22 - I made the top ten!
And I was only beaten by KSS students. Yes, that's right. Places 1-9 were occupied by KSS Senior students (Grades 11&12) and so was place 12 (yes, I beat one of the Senior students who had debated last year already!) and Geoff and I placed 5th, behind the other four teams of our school.
That, unfortunately, means, that we have only a very slim chance of making it into the Provincials - usually, KSS gets between eight and ten seats, so there would be only 8 or ten people going. Most likely half junior (10th grade) and half Senior.

On the way back home we talked. For four and a half hours.
And when I tell you our topics, you'll think we're crazy.
So, we started out pretty harmlessly, one boy and I and our teacher, talking about Neuroscience (shared interest between Jeff and me), and then we deviated to Psychology. Next came Eragon and bad movies, and then bad books followed good books and books that are circles/that manage to tie up all lose ends and have basically told you the solution already at the beginning (I'm thinking of Smaragdgruen and the rest of the "Liebe geht durch alle Zeiten"-Trilogy) and then we somehow ended up on the topic of nightmares and different realities (like, everytime you have a choice, the Universe splits, each new Universe following one choice), so there is an infinite amount of Universes. And from there our conversation deviated towards Religion, the String Theory, and some other theories, like

what if dreams are real, and what we perceive life to be is just a tool of coping with reality?

And similar things, and it was very interesting. Honestly. But I was drop-dead tired afterwards.
Like, fall asleep standing.

So, today I finally managed to send off my package - it was rather expensive, but it should arrive before Christmas. And that means, that I also sent my Journal!
I already started my new one!
And with that, I am now saying good bye.

But stay tuned, there is a big announcement coming up in (hopefully) just two days!

Love you all,
Julia