Vancouver

So, let's see. It was a pretty long week, and I'm still really tired (my sleep was fitful rather than restful, but let's start from the beginning).

So, 5 o'clock is an ungodly hour, I'm telling you. But, I stood up, had a toast, got my bags and left with Andy by 6:10 a.m.
Doro had saved me a seat on the bus, but unfortunately, we were split by schools - KSS and RSS (and I think all those others) on one bus, and Mount Boucherie and OKM (or something similar, don't ask me, I don't know. I only know that Doro was on a different bus than me!) on the other.
At least our bus was more comfortable than theirs!

Ms White (our coordinator) and Ana (Doro's coordinator) were each on one bus, with one hostparent accompanying them each.
The bus drive was long, but I think I even managed to sleep for an hour or so. After two and a half hours we stopped at a mall and went shopping for two hours or so, and I got a few more Christmas presents and ... toothpaste. Mine ran out.

Then we went for two and a half more hours by bus to the Vancouver Aquarium. Doro has pictures, but I fear I won't get them till tomorrow. Well, those of you in Germany will get to see my Scrapbook when school starts again. (Yes, it will take me all of my summer holidays to simply compose it, because it is like a lot. And when I say a lot, I actually mean verdammt viele. Like, something along the lines of 1000? Well, 700. But I only spent a third here, so you can do the maths. And I haven't yet been to San Francisco, so duh.)
The Jelly fish were really ugly, but we watched a dolphin and a Beluga whale show, and even though it was really cold, I enjoyed it.

Afterwards, we checked into our hotel and went to a nearby mall to get dinner and spend some more money (according to rumors, one girl spent more than $500!).
Dorothea and I shared our room with one Brazilian girl, and we went to bed at a halfway decent time.

Second day started with us going to Grouse Mountain for snow shoeing. It was a nice thing, but it's not my favourite - it was kinda boring.

Entry way to a house; native style

View from Grouse Mountain

A 'small' Christmas Tree

And the Lobby

Reading this, my mom will probably have the urge to strangle/throttle me, but this lobby is the place I left my wallet at - with more than $300 in cash and my credit card and all my papers...
Since I anyway had the feeling of having forgotten something since we left Kelowna, I patted down my pockets when we were waiting in line to get down from the mountain, I fortunately realized I had forgotten my wallet before I was back on the ground, so I hurried back and - 'lo and behold, it was at the information. All my money and everything was still there, too. Canada is such an honest country!

Afterwards, we visited the "Telus World of Science" and we even watched a movie in the round sphere thingy!

It was pretty cloudy, but at least we were inside. Unfortunately, one boy hadn't wanted to come to the snow shoeing, so by the time we had him convinced to come we were already considerably late (half an hour? A full hour? Something like that), and we were another hour late when we left Grouse Mountain, so we only had time for the movie (About polar bears, it was quite nice) and a bit of looking around - I don't believe we've  seen everything there was to see :(

That is an iglu out of milk cartons. Since the ice is melting, and there are Canadian stereotypes to uphold, right?

I spent some money at the Souvnir Shop, and after that we drove to Granville Island, which is absolutely boring.

Christmas Decorations

But at least the view was nice!

After that we had 15 minutes at the hotel, and guess what? We went to the mall.

This time, it wasn't just Doro and me, but Doro, Josy (who had joined us the day before already), Jonas (German boy from Doro's school) and me, and Doro and Josy deserted Jonas and me while they were in 'Pink' (and don't laugh, but it's a lingerie shop... and it was called Pink, so I said, Thanks, but no thanks, and while Jonas did look like he would have liked to accompany them [I'm joking, btw. I think], he stayed outside with me. And then they ditched us. Claimed they didn't see us, while in fact we were sitting right in front of the shop.). When it became clear that neither of them was anywhere in the vicinity, Jonas and I went to Qoola - Frozen Yogurt Bar and got a frozen Yogurt each until it was time to leave.

We heard about the news of the Austrian Cab Driver finding 390.000€ while we were sitting in the mall eating - and isn't that funny, because Doro was sitting with her back to the News TV and going like "Have you hear, I don't know whether he was Austrian or German, but there was this Cab driver and ..." so she told us, and I look up, over her shoulder, and on the screen it reads Austria, Cab driver finds €390,000 ($500,000) and returns everything to police. Just at the moment she was telling the story!

Well, sleep didn't come as easily that night, and I am positive I wasn't the only one who couldn't sleep - I could hear girls laughing at midnight!

The next morning, we all got a dressing down; the boys' was way worse than ours. We were only reprimanded for not being in our rooms but in the boys' rooms (one of the chaperones had caught girls leaving the boys' rooms at 2:30 a.m. - seriously, what were they doing up still at that time? Even I was exhausted enough to be asleep!), but the girls had managed to destroy an elevator door, so. Well.
Ms White just said something along the lines of "We trusted you, but you abused the trust, so we will enforce the curfew rule stricter this night ..." Not that she did. I could hear girls running around at around eleven o'clock on our floor, and if I could hear them, Ms White could, too, because her room was directly opposite ours.
But, well. I think that at least all the girls stayed on the fourth floor, so maybe that was why she didn't say anything.

That day ... God, what did we do? Right, we visited the Capilano Suspension bridge, and drove by the Canucks stadium. Too bad the NHL is on lock-out (labor talks. And they're not getting anywhere, so the season might well be cancelled.). I mean, they would have been playing in Columbus on Friday anyway, so they wouldn't have been in town, but ... gah.

All their players decorated the walls

and their banners were hanging off the building.

Sorry for the bad pictures, they were taken out of the driving bus! :) And this is also where Canada beat the USA in the 2010 Winter Olympics, claiming the gold medal for the second time in 8 years. Hockey is a Canadian Sport, after all.

At Capilano, Doro played tourguide (she crashed my English video as I was "showing my parents around", saying "Und ich ruiniere jetzt hier das schöne Englische Video, indem ich Deutsch rede..." - And I'll ruin this beautiful English video by talking in German... and then proceeded to give my parents the tour, and my mom thought it was HILARIOUS, so, duh.) and we spent some more money in the tourist shop, and it was really nice. I even got a "I made it" certificate, allowing me bragging rights for the next two years.

There was a lot of tribal stuff

And the bridge itself

Looking down from the bridge

At least this time I didn't have to stifle a laugh looking at the established in - usually it's like est. in 1946  and I'm thinking, baby, we usually only write that when we have at least 18-hundred something! But Capilano suspension bridge, est. in 1889, isn't so bad!

Well, that definitely was fun, although it was raining like hell - oh, no, hell is dry and hot. It was cold and wet, and I was wearing my skiing jacket and freezing!
But it still was on this side of zero, while it has been snowing in Kelowna for the last few days (maybe my wish of White Christmas will come true?).

After the Bridge, we went to the Olympic cauldron.

View from Burrard Inlet Waterfront

The waterfront mall

Canada Place! That's where the winter Olympics took place!

wouldn't it be awesome to be living in that black box?

And here is the Olympic Cauldron!

The next stop was Stanley Park, where I already was with my old host family, but we were in a different spot this time.
It was still really foggy and damp, but well.

After that, we visited the UBC, University of British Columbia, but we actually only had a pee break.
But it's basically it's own village, looking awesome and ... omg, I seriously could imagine studying there, because it's just that amazing!
A friend of mine (I don't really know whether I can call her that, but well, acquaintance sounds so weird...) from my Journalism class was accepted there, and I guess it's not the worst choice.

That evening, we ... didn't (surprise! I know it's shocking, I'm sorry!) go to the mall, because we saw a play in a theatre called "Hotel Bethlehem".
And we were all like "Oh, no, it's gonna be so boring!" but it wasn't. They took all the Christmas/Bethlehem/Nativity-Tropes and turned them around, and it was really funny.

That evening, sleeping was even worse, and as I have mentioned, nobody obeyed the room-rule.
 Yesterday, we went Ice Skating in the morning, and I guess I wasn't so bad for maybe having been on skates a whole four times, yesterday included. The only problem I have is slowing down. And then I watched some Hockey and realized how little I actually can do.

We boarded the bus again, Dorothea was bleeding (she cut herself on her blades, and I have to admit, she was one of the better skaters, easily in the top ten, maybe even in the top five - I didn't pay that much attention to others.) and one German girl who is a figure skater had  shown us all up (she's really good, and she even showed me a few moves to slow down) and we went to ... the mall! (how'd you guess?) One girl forgot her wallet at the Frozen Yogurt place, but luckily she recovered it - the people behind the counter found it, discovered the red emergency card, called the emergency hotline, told them there was a wallet found, the emergency person called Ms White, Ms White told the girl and the girl run. Otherwise she wouldn't even have noticed it until we arrived in Chiliwack (which is pronounced "Chilwack" and not "Chili-wack", as I was told), but she got lucky.
In Chilwack, which is two and a half hours outside of Vancouver, we had a twenty minute break, which managed to become 50, because some people (I don't know who, seriously) simply can't manage to be on time, and then we had another 3 hours till we were in Kelowna again.

And I'm still tired. I couldn't sleep on the bus and had trouble falling asleep yesterday; I went to bed at 8:30 p.m., but deep sleep only came by ... 10:30? and then I woke for the first time at 5 a.m. and then 7 and finally gave up on sleep at 8, but I didn't actually leave bed until... something closer to 9?

Well, I actually had planned on doing my Christmas presents today, but between writing this and catching up with everything, I simply couldn't find the time!

And since people are always asking: The best thing about this trip? The total absence of homesickness. Like, literally, there was no homesickness at all. It was really nice!

Well, have a good rest weekend, guys, I'm leaving with the girls now!

Julia

Appreciation Post

Okay, first of all: I hardly can believe it.
I have 100 days already behind me, and only 200 left - exactly one third of my year is over now.
Somehow, it feels as though I got the idea to do my exchange year just yesterday - while in fact I had it (for the first time) in seventh grade and then again in eighth. Where has time gone? Why is it flying so fast? And wasn't I just sitting in Austria, compiling my resumée for my application for YFU - and I can't tell you how glad I am to have gone with kulturLife instead. You don't hear the best of things about YFU, so even though it is cheaper, it is exactly that: cheaper. Not less expensive. I wouldn't trade my organisation here and my school and my teachers and my hostfamily for anything.

And the other thing I have to 'celebrate' is: My blog just hit the 18.000 clicks! Wow, guys, it's making me really proud that so many of you are reading this stuff! (Or just clicking on it, although I really hope it's the former rather than the latter.) Keep it coming! :D

So, what have I done on this lazy Monday?

It was rather slow-paced - except for the copious amounts of homework I have gotten from my teachers!


First of all, Japanese. I took my test, feeling not prepared at all, but I don't think it went badly. I don't know, we haven't yet gotten it back (of course not). Then he heaped the Chapter 6 Manga, the Chapter 6 Workbooklet, the Chapter 6 Exam Preparation Sheet and some more practice stuff on me. When does he think I will be able to do that? Like, our days are planned from 8 am to 10 pm, I won't have any time for schoolwork, and Saturday I will most likely catch up on my sleep and Sunday is the German Christmas Concert!

Anyway. Second lesson: Spanish: It was rather enjoyable, but I got almost even more homework than in Japanese. But at least Spanish is somewhat easier. We have at least the same writing system, and knowing Latin isn't something bad, either.

English: Mr Derksen actually was ill, but instead of starting on my homework pile I opted to read. Not that I regret it, I was like really tired, but still.

Biology: Well... we did dissect our pigs today. Foetal pigs. With the umbilical cord (Nabelschnur) still attached. And they were smelly. But I think the worst smell was the preservative (Konservierungsmittel) mixed with Latex Gloves and Febreeze. Especially the latter was horrible. And I couldn't get the Latex smell out of my hands!

But now I can say, I touched the intestine of a pig. And the umbilical cord. And the liver. And the pancreas. And the gallbladder. And the small intestine. The big intestine actually was green!

Well, I couldn't take any photos, because a) it was really gross and b) I forgot my mini-SDHC at home. So, not memory card, no photos.

Well, talking about technology: I managed to bust my kindle USB-cable. Luckily, my phone has the same charger (mini-USB, as far as I know), but it's not really dead; there just was a problem with my laptop, as it didn't want to recognize my kindle. It wouldn't even let my kindle charge, and I was in the middle of filling it with delicious new stories! :)

Well, I rebooted my laptop and now all my problems are gone. So before freaking out, reboot. It actually does help.

I also finally got all my stuff for Vancouver together.
I still have that nagging feeling that I have forgotten something, but all that's missing is my wash stuff.
I have
Skihose&-jacke
Winterstiefel
High Heels
Anzug (Hose, Shirt, Jacket)
PJs
Shirts
Jeans
Longsleeves
Chocolate!
Toque,
Skihandschuhe
Handschuhe
Block
Pencilcase
Spanishbook 
Tuch
Kindle
Ladekabel
Handy
Ipod
Ladekabel
Steckdosenadapter

(Sorry for the Denglish mix, I just copy&pasted it from my conversation with Doro!)
And I guess I'm gonna head to bed in the foreseeable future. I want to catch at least seven hours of sleep, and it is already 9:20 pm. And my alarm clock will ring at 5 am.
Juhu.
Who again thought this was a good idea?

Have a nice week!
You'll hear from me on Saturday again! (Or, if you're lucky, on Friday already, but according to my stats and the comments it doesn't matter anyway... Have I gotten so boring?)

Julia

Christmas Party

Okay, so today was the Christmas Party from International Educations..
I had a pretty good time - I met up with Babette, who was on the same plane as Doro and me from London to Kelowna, and we talked kina a lot, mainly in English.
We also talked to Doro and two of her friends and Babette's hostfather, and I can say that I really enjoyed it.

But now I have a headache - I've been lying in bed since 8 o'clock, but since Bobby has a sleepover, it was pretty loud (they were watching a movie), so I listened to a few audiobooks. And now I'm not really tired anymore - I'll listen a bit more.

Have a great weekend, guys!

Julia

Living Nativity and IT'S THERE!!!

Okay, I stayed home today - nasty cough and dizziness are no fun at all - and (hopefully) slept off my cold. I only cough sometimes now!

In the afternoon there was a surprise: My Parcel arrived!
Yay!
The gifts are already under the Christmas tree, and I can hardly wait for Christmas day!

In the evening we went to a living nativity (Krippenspiel) and it was ... nice. But I miss home... Kind of. Not really.

Bobby and Jenna beat me squarely at Rommé, and I kinda regret teaching them (no, joke of course!)
Tomorrow there is the Christmas party with the Internationals, and I will probably start packing my stuff for Vancouver.
I will leave my laptop at home, but I will take my Journal (I hope to catch up with writing, I haven't written a thing for almost two weeks now!) and I will of course take lots of pictures. Doro and I are sharing a room! (And a bed. It's two pairs a room, apparently.)

Well, that's it for now. Remember: Soak my words up! No posts from Tuesday to Friday (more likely Saturday, but that depends entirely upon how tired I am)!

Hugs from an entirely too warm Canada,

Julia

Late Night Snack

Soooo... the only bad thing about eating so early in the evening (5.30 PM, as opposed to 7 PM) is that I get hungry by about 8 PM. So by 9 PM, I was so hungry I had a peanut butter sandwich. And it was so. de. li. ci. ous. I can hardly describe it.

Okaaay.... so, I'm officially registered for the San Francisco Trip, and there is no problem with my Visa. I just have to talk to Ms White some time in April.
And I even know three of the girls already - two from my Journalism class and one from my Debate class.
[And now I'm sitting here, crying, because I've seen my dog on skype.]

And talking about Debate: I am dropping it.
It's just like this: I can do either Debate or Journalism, as both are very workintensive and require a lot of research, writing and commitment, and I can't do both. The fun of Debate is kind of gone, too, and if you compare them, you'd probably come to the same results as me!

Debate:
Paying money every few month to go to a tournament and having to memorize speeches vs. sitting together (rather informally), eating chocolate and getting Pizza and Ginger Ale... Would anybody have a hard time choosing?
But it's not just that. I literally feel oppressed by the workload handed out in Debate, and I can't handle that!

Today we went Curling!

It was fun. No, honestly, it was!
You wear two shoes, one with a grippy sole and one with a smooth sole, and then you slide over the ground, throwing a "rock". (Better explanation here).
I initially had a group with two Mexicans, but they kind of disappeared after a very short while, leaving me alone. I joined one of the two groups that actually played for the fun of it. I met my two Japanese friends again, the one who can be seen on the picture on facebook, and all in all I had fun.

Internationals in Curling gear!

Eri and me!

So, anyway... Other than that I finally bought earrings (yeay! I left all of mine at home) and now I'm already happily wearing them. It's been way too long since I last wore a pair!

I think that was everything for now... I will try to upload some information about the San Francisco trip, but a) I don't have that much info yet, and b) I'm tired and still have to do my Biology stuff.

So good night!

I'm moving

Hi guys!

As I have already mentioned, I have a huge announcement to make:

I'm moving. Changing hostfamilies.

My Coordinator will pick me up at 4:05 PM tomorrow, and she will bring me to my new hostfamily.

It just didn't work out here.
I'm constantly feeling intimidated, and we have very few things in common.
After my panic attacks in school, I have talked extensively to a a family friend from Germany, who can understand my situation, my parents, my hostfather and my coordinator, and I have felt that the best decision for me would be to move. I just cannot hit "reset" and start over. That's not in my nature. I feel like I don't hesitate to give trust, but I'm having a hard time giving a refill of that trust well. If you lose it, I can't give you more. Or it takes me a very, very long time to give more trust.

Of course there is more to this matter, but that are not things I want to discuss on my blog.
You can find my whole thoughts on the situation and what's transpired in my Journal, which is already on its way to Germany - so some of you (like Lara, Lydia, Romy, Pizza and anybody else who's interested) will get in in January, as I cannot have it opened before Christmas. I wrote what I'm getting everyone for Christmas inside there!

Anyway, tomorrow my address will change, too.
Please don't send anything to my old address!
People I know (and trust) can contact me tomorrow, but I want to talk to my new hostparents first about giving their address away.

In less than twenty hours I'll be gone.
And I'm feeling more relaxed than in a long time. I feel like I suddenly can breath again.

The worst thing though was packing my things up. I don't know how I ever want to get that all back to Germany!
It's just so much - my suitcase, the big box my parents sent me, the boy my winter shoes came in, the box my hairdrier came in and three bags, as well as my backpack!
It's just so awfully much, you know?
But enough of that,
I hope you're all fine over there!

I got my English Score - 92.3%. Which is pretty good, in my opinion!
Depending on how he counts it - if he has one part names "Tests", like my Spanish class, that counts more than my essays - then it dents my grade. If he doesn't, I'd still have ... 98 or 99%. Which is perfectly acceptable.

I realized today that one of the boys in my Spanish class actually has longer hair than me! And he has a similar shaped face... Creepy. Honestly.

At the moment I'm so afraid that Romney will win the election - he is in the lead. 23 electoral votes or almost 2 million public votes. I'm so absolutely scared. I'm hoping that everybody in the US is being out there and voting - we can't have Mitt Romney climb into office. It'd be a disaster.
I think Joss Whedon, director of the Avengers, sums it up pretty well, what would happen:

Watch that video. It's absolutely brilliant. Really.

 ETA 8:13 PM: Different source, newer statistics: Obama is in the lead! 47 electoral votes, which are important, although he is still about 2 Million popular votes behind Romney, which don't count, though.
But let's just say: Never before has a president of the US won the "throne" without winning the popular vote... Maybe Obama is the first?

ETA 8:33 PM: Obama has won. I can't describe how relieved I am. But he still lost the popular vote, as it seems right now!

ETA 8:47 PM: Obama is pulling up in regards to the popular vote, but he has won. Definitely.

 
Here is a graphic that shows tumblr tags - it'll be probably over, by the time you get there, but I want to have mentioned it.
And I'm honestly going to bed right now!

So okay, yesterday was a rather brilliant day, too.

I got on my biology test written yesterday 99%. And I didn't even prepare! Honestly, a fifth of the questions I didn't know, I guessed and/or went about in the "Ausschlussverfahren" (looking at which not to take). But well, I'm not complaining!
Then our Japanese test was postponed to today (not that I did anything for it, but well), and I have to admit: I cheated. But well, the teacher left the room, what do you expect?
(Admittance two: He was actually still in the room when I cheated)

And then Journalism... We all got a huge "well done" from Mrs Taylor, and of course she highlighted once again that I am only an ESL student...
And then we did impromptus (Stegreifreden). I didn't get to do mine, but we had topics like "Dogs are better cats than dogs", "Why Brownies are better than chips", "Women should join the miliatry" (made by a boy) and "everybody should go out there and vote" (done by our amazing captain Aislinn!).
And they were so funny! They only had 2 minutes to prepare a 2 minute speech, so it was really amazing what they did!

And we ended the lesson with a line debate:
The class is halved and then lined up on two sides of a hall, one side negative and one positive. And then we had the topic "Women are stronger than men". I was on the negative.

But we laughed so much as people of whom we knew that they had different opinions, spewed some bullshit (excuse the language please), especially on our side. Sarcasm was sometimes heavy in the air.
But it was so much fun, I can hardly describe it!

So okay, I'm sending all my love your way - and I'm gonna go to bed now soon, as I am really tired...

Julia

Bored

Wow. It's one o'clock in the morning and I just had a slice of toast with Peanutbutter.
And I'm browsing tumblr and my two contentions still aren't written.

I slept too long today - I woke up at ten o'clock; Doro had been over for a sleepover, and we went to bed at one o'clock. So I'm still like super hyped and can't go to sleep.

Tomorrow is the Pumpkinpatch, and I hope I can take a few pictures there...

I should get back to my writing, though.
Take care,

Julia

A Nice Little Chat with the Police...

So, I just came back home from having a nice little chat with the police...
And no, I'm not joking. Or maybe I am?

Anyway, we've been to Tim Horton's for desert, and on a table across from us, three policemen were sitting, enjoying a doughnut. Two of them were wearing bulletproof vests, but one didn't, so I asked Marina and Steven why.
Marina said the one without probably wore his underneath his shirt, but actually I should just go up to them and ask them. So I did exactly that.

Have I mentioned how extraordinary nice everybody here is?

Me: Err, excuse me, I'm an exchange student from Germany. Can I ask you a question?
P: Of course.
Me: Why are you wearing bulletproof vests?
P: Well, since we're in North America, it's for protection. One of our colleagues had last year actually been shot at. He [points towards the black policeman across from him] and I wear our vests over our Shirts, because we're in the Okanagan valley and it can get quite hot in these vests, so we like to be able to take them off. He [points towards the second white guy] is wearing his under his shirt, so it's a bit hard to remove.

He then asked me how it was in Germany, where in Germany I was from, whether I was the Smith's first exchange student and he said he probably wouldn't allow his daughter to spend a whole year abroad.

All in all, he was sooooo nice! :D

I'm starting to believe that literally everybody is nice here!

In school today there was nothing really important - except that I was told I was writing too German, used too long sentences, too many commas, dashes, exclamation marks and parentheses.
Well, I'm sorry if I'm writing too complicated for the North Americans! Because my experience with writing fanfiction was rather the opposite - English speakers would tell me how nice my sentence structure was!
Is it my fault that a lot of people don't know how to use a comma or a semi-colon (";")?

On next Wednesday we're going to go to Camp Dunlop - I don't really know what that is, but it's an international thing, so I'm going!
And on the Halloween-weekend we're probably going to Vancouver! Yeah! :D

Well, anyway, I'm going to bed now! :D

Have a nice day!

And thank you Mom for the Biology stuff! And also a thanks to you, Linda! :D

And a general thanks to everybody who has commented on my blog so far!
I try to answer below your comment! :D