1 Month!

Thursday marked one month here in Germany! For me, my first month was very difficult, but now everything seems to be getting better. I am not homesick very often anymore, I have a lot of exchange-student friends (German friends are still quite elusive, but I'm hoping that will change when I switch into class 10 next week), and above all I have more confidence in myself and my own abilities than I ever have before. When I realized I had been here for a month, I looked back at how far I'd already come and felt very accomplished. I had conquered the bus system, gotten through a month of school in another language, improved my ping-pong skills (somewhat...), met a ton of new people, and been pretty much 100% independent.

I have a little story to tell you about a series of mysterious disappearances in Haan. It all started when one day, as I was standing at the bus stop finishing my donut, when I went to throw the wrapper in the garbage. I always throw it in the same garbage can (it is one of those small ones that are bolted to the ground). Well, I look down and there is no garbage can. Where did it go? I thought this was kind of funny, but didn't think anything of it.

The next day, Arturo met me in Haan so we could have lunch together for his birthday. I get to Haan, everything is normal, we eat lunch, enjoy our break, etc. As we head back to the bus stop, Arturo stops walking and says, "What the hell." Slightly panicked, I look up, and see that the entire bus stop is gone. Like, it was there when we got there, and now it was just gone. I burst out laughing at the hilarity and unlikeliness of the situation. At this point, the nice Italian girl that goes to the same German course we do and takes the same bus to Düsseldorf walks up, and explains that they took the bus stop away for the Haaner Kirmes that weekend, a big festival in the town. Ok, so everything makes sense now.

The next day, I am now informed about the preparations for the festival in town and am already expecting some interference with my normal routine. For example, all the benches were gone, so I had nowhere to sit. Ok, no problem, I expected this. So then I start walking towards this big fountain in the middle of Haan, thinking "Oh, they can't remove a fountain." Yep, I was wrong. I get there and there is just a big empty spot where the fountain used to be. How do you remove a fountain?! At this point I was expecting entire buildings to be gone by the next day, so I gave up looking for somewhere nice to sit and just ate my pizza sitting on the ground.

But on Saturday I went to the Haaner Kirmes, the reason behind all these mysterious disappearances, and it was really fun! I went with 5 other exchange students and 2 Germans who were friends with one of the exchange students. It was great. Here are some pictures:

P.S. I just realized you can click on the pictures to make them bigger!

Australia, USA, Brazil, USA, Germany, Germany, India!

The view from the top of the ferris wheel

Düsseldorf in the distance!