District 7430 Youth Exchange - Rotex

so. hi everyone. well, it's eight days and counting right now, and i thought id get the last entry in.. i decided i would do a collection of my favorite moments in germany.. so here goes.. cue cheesy music... ('another turning point, a fork stuck in the road...')

so my first moment was halloween, and my stunning costume...

then it was the sleepover and the trip to look at the animal cruelty problems in berlin... but im not going to keep them in order anymore... ...

eating a bretzel with karis in bayern... mmmmmmmm. lecker.

my epic battle with karin in the colosseum.. it may not look like it, but that umbrella is fatal.

all of the exchange students on the eurotour, specifically at park sanssoucci in potsdam.. we dont look too happy because the evil tante heide was torturing us and making us sit for uncountable photos...

kissing up to the guards of the capitol building in prague...

one of the many purple nurple parties on the eurotrip. nice face i have there, i know.

being cornered for a boring conversation by tante heide and being abandoned by my "friends"... grr. they were actually standing in a corner right across the street and laughing at me for having been caught up in a conversation with her...

being tired of taking pictures and refusing to smile for karin in nürenberg...

playing with the sweet bubble blower in nürenberg..

another demonstration of how nice my friends are to me.. but we have an embarassing sleeping picture for practically everyone in the group..

seducing karin at the hookah bar...

hanging out with karin in the car on the way to the paul van dyk concert.. thats christoph driving... buckle up and pray for your life!

turned 17 in dresden...

karin and me showing love in the bus in vienna

reflecting on the good times in the hookah bar.

mouth opening contest... still dont know who won.

mo comes to berlin and we go to the brandenburger tor... bad weather cant stop us!

waiting with matthias and karin for the shins!!! that was an awesome night.

starbucks addiction.

and hookah with my best friend in germany.

wierd.. so wierd. that i could change from this little girl:

(love alex's costume... i totally did her makeup!)

into this one, (all dolled up for the paul van dyk concert) in only one year.

i have changed so much, its hard to believe. but all i can say now is
"SWEET HOME PENNSYLVANIA!!! WHERE SKIES ARE SO BLUE AND THE LOVIN' IS TRUE)! SWEET HOME PENNSYLVANIA, LORD IM COMING HOME TO YOU!!!"

see you all in eight days and some odd hours. /07 from Christine in Germany

6/19/07 from Aishah in Brazil

Subject: The Final Stretch

Where we love is home, Home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.~Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.,

Homesick in Heaven

In just 30 days I will be arriving in the USA. I never could have imagined how fast it would go. This has definitely been one of the most amazing years of my life and I am so grateful to have been given this opportunity. What I have learned about myself and about life from this experience is invaluable.

I have come to love Brazil and all of my family and friends like it is a second home. I will miss everyone here terribly and I wish that I could have everyone together in the same place.

I cannot wait to see all of you and hear about how your years were as well. I am so excited to see all of your faces, hear your voices, and give you all a great big hug. I miss you all and I am so happy to be coming back home to you all again.

I have to apologize for not sending letters the last few months, but I thought it would be good to save some stories for when I get there. I hope to hear from you and see you soon!!!

Aishah B.H. McNeil

6/15/07 from Claudia in Spain

Dear everyone,

I totally did the third-quarter-disappearing-act that I promised myself not to do. I was supposed to email mid march right? Sorry.

School just ended here, and I did better than I was expecting academically. I ended up taking a few of the finals, though I don't know the grades yet, and I think I actually learned some worthwhile stuff, particularly in History and music. Also, by the end of the year, I have muddled my way through a bunch of novels in Spanish, and I feel like I can speak pretty well. We had a graduation party type thing, where the school rented out a dance hall, and it was sort of almost kinda not really like prom. Well, it was like prom if we had had lunch and dinner as a class and then decided to go out to random clubs before going to the actual prom. It was cool. I have pictures.

Speaking of which, congratulations to everyone who graduated from PHS this year. Someone email me and tell me how the end of the school year went so I can live vicariously through you. geez people.

Right now, I'm getting ready for my school trip, which we are taking to Italy. I've heard all sorts of stories about this type of trip (from my classmates, host brothers, teachers, innocent bystanders...) and it should be especially cool, considering that we all just graduated here. Don't worry, mom, there will be plenty of adult supervision. :) We're going to Venice, Verona(!), Rome, among other places, and I'm really looking forward to it.

After I get back, the festival of San Fermin begins (on the 7th of July). I've been told that the city is unrecognizable during San Fermin; everyone is out in the streets, and wearing white and red, and no one under 40 sleeps the entire time the party is going on. (the standard retort to this is of course, that no, the city is perfectly recognizable- it's only unrecognizable during the rest of the year). I've been hearing about this week for the whole year, so I can't wait to see what it's like.

Also, I will get to meet the 5th brother of my host family, who has been staying in Minnesota for the last year. He's arriving on the second of july.

I will be coming back to Allentown on the 18th of July (though more accurately the 25th, 'cause I'll be away for Otakon). I hope I will get the chance to see all of you at some point during the summer, and I also am going to have a graduation type party, as soon as I figure out the convenient moment.

So, email me when you guys get the chance. Hopefully I'll see you all within a month or so.

-Claudia

6/15/07 from Alyssa in Switzerland

Well hello

I know, I don't write, it's evil.

I currently have 26 days until my homecomming, which I am quite looking forward to. There comes a certain point where I realise that my future doesn't lie in switzerland: I haven't got a Matura, I can't study here, plans are being made for Sonafe, Praktikum, and class sleepovers without me in them because I won't be here. My host family is looking forward to having their daughter back at home (never mind that it isn't the same daughter they sent away, but try explaining that to them, Rotary in America really really prepared us well, and keeps doing so, whereas here...)

Theater week at the Schiffbauhaus from Schauspielhaus Zürich was amazing. I got to see 7 plays from different schools, some better, some worse. Worst of all being the Orestee, a greek saga that the group decided to put on in the style of ancient greek theater, which entails a lot of standing still and talking. The best being (besides ours, ;) ) Die Kannibalen, which is about a group in a concentration camp that has to decide whether or not to eat one of its fallen members. A hilarious piece. So funny right up until the tiny nazi comes at the end and they all decide to die rather than eat the most disgusting human soup I have ever seen. Then there were the workshops. I was in Basics of Acting, which lead to a lot of being silly, improvisation, and funny walks. Our teacher was really amazing too. She's a director and theater teacher at the ETH in Zurich. The jury also gave away an oscar to Orestee unfortunately, which is a rip if you ask anyone else, mostly because we couldn't even hear the dialogue. The Oscar we all got to vote for went to Comedy Life, a piece about two comedians and exfriends, one of whom decides to help the other commit insurance fraud, only to be turned in by his ex-exfriend and find out that is life is in ruins. It was fantastic.

Then there was the Rowing Championships, where we came in last because during the final sprint, one of my teammate's seat fell out of its track and she couldn't keep rowing. Ah well. It rained, so the whole day was spent slopping around a muddy field. Our Steering Man was hilarious though, and Tabea brought a cake from the bakery where she works, so all was well.

Last Wednesday, my class to a trip to Bern in order to sit in the Congress, which was fairly cool. One of my classmates was even quoted in a newspaper article. Some journalists were there to follow our tour leader when Beat (pronounced Bay-aht) asked about corruption in Switzerland (to which the only answer he got was "It isn't as bad as Italy!" which is only oh so true...) Other than that, I played chess on one of those HUGE ourdoor chess sets they have in cities with Corrine, but I lost famously.

My Geography teacher sort of flipped out yesterday when he heard I don't have a 6 in english (a 6 is perfect, 4 is passing). Apparently, no matter what the teacher thinks, I should have a six just by being born in america, regardless of the fact that my teacher speaks british english. He is without a doubt my coolest teacher, and he's taking us on a field trip next week into the Alps to talk about rocks, which is what he is currently teaching us about. If he weren't so cool (by swiss standards, not american. He's sort of a Mr. Brodt type...) I would never forgive him for such boring lessons.

Which reminds me, on Tuesday, my class went to see A Midsummernight's Dream for english, none of which they understood. Poor kids. 2 and a half hours of hell when they could and b

y allrights should have been studying biology. I found it amusing. I got to have a Spitzbeub (picture of said cookie), and two new Kinder egg things that are more delicious than the normal ones. Anna, Fabia and I spent the entire Pause trying to figure out how to work the magic trick toy I got, but we never figured it out. Then there was the amusment of waiting at the train station in Lenzburg after walking through literally the whole town to get back from the castle where the play was held in hopes of catching the train, which we missed anyway. I love being at trainstations after 10pm, there's always some weird drunks asking for cigarettes. No mom, I wasn't alone, and I was quite safe I assure you, my english teacher was there, for what it's worth, even though her german (and especially her swiss german) is fairly horrendous. Now for pictures.

One pic of the rowing team, one of the tent Platz at OpenAir Hoch Ybrig, one of Alpermaccaroni (which is macaronni with cheese, cream, applesauce, potatoes, and onion bits), and the Yodel group that sang Ewigi Liebi, which is basically THE swiss song of the century.

From Julia in Russia

Tuesday, June 05, 2007

do the cossack dance!

Impatient Readers...
Oh, what a strange, what a strange and a wonderful thing is the youth exchange. I have found another way of explaining Russia to hopeless foreigners: I am capable of complaining for HOURS about Russia, Russians, and all things vaguely connected. But no matter how hideous my stories, no matter how chilling my anecdotes, no matter how terrifying my adventures...I would still choose an exchange in Russia over any other country. I love Russia, for all her difficulties, oddities, irritations, irrationalities, and would not want her to be any other way.
The time I got mistaken for a thief breaking into the apartment and they almost called the police...the time we almost got mugged by local thugs and then followed down the main road...the time we were landed with paying our way through the conference and had to drop over 3000 rubles at an unexpected moment, miles from the nearest bank machine and without a place to stay the night...the ENTIRE YEAR OF TOILETS FROM HELL. I would not do away with any of these facts of Russia. Perhaps I ought to be institutionalized for it, but I would still do the year in Russia over again.
In today's news, life in Russia has changed once again--I have changed families for the last time. Once again I live at the Kondratyuks. I have rejoined the battle between myself and the Russian public transportation system, this time armed with the persuasive and fearsome power of the Russian language. Two days ago I returned from our Regional Conference, which bore all the earmarks of the Mother Country. The Conference was held on a camping base which was still under construction. The power went out periodically, there was a shortage of drinking water, and very little to eat. The Rotary club forgot to pay for us, and we hiked along the mountain roads in search of a bank machine. The guests and Rotarians stayed in luxurious, clean hotel rooms. If they'd remembered to fill the swimming pool, they could have swum. Their toilets were passable by American standards, and models of perfection by Russian standards. The exchange students stayed in tiny huts designed for four people (there only furniture was one bedside table and four beds) and in our cabin, there were six. The bathrooms were tiled holes in the ground, and the showers filthy. BUT!!!
We sat up every night into the wee hours, singing songs, teaching each other Russian folk songs and Irish ballads, playing on the harmonica and talking. We went biking in the wild, dark mountains in the day, and the final night danced the whole night away, running and jumping in circles, kicking out heels and clapping wildly to Russian music. It was a glorious family reunion of all my family members, from all my life in Russia--the former president of the Tomsk club, who deeply encouraged me in my second month when I was in Tomsk, the students I'd see three months ago, the woman who wanted me to study in university in Russia, the host mothers whom I dearly love, the Rotarians who are my grandparents, aunts and uncles, the Rotaracters who are brothers and sisters! The Rotarians took me dancing and we sang together and drank strong tea with wild honey and talked about Russia. It was like a little microcosm of Russia. And, of course, we had a riotously good time the Australians who are a JC team going through Siberia--they're the most beautiful people, and we've had wonderful times together, and I worked for them as a translator while they were in Barnaul.
And, having made fast friends with another exchange student, I was invited to Krasnoyarsk, about 17 hours by train from my own city of Barnaul! So, yesterday I had a farewell dinner at the Mexican restaurant with the Australians. I came home at one in the morning, packed until two, woke up at 4:40 to make breakfast and wrap up packing, left at six in a taxi, and left Barnaul at seven in a train to Novosibirsk! I know await the next train trip to Krasnoyarsk (That's this evening) and by a wonderful, beautiful turn of fate...ended up on the same train as the Australians. So we're together in Novosibirsk, and I await my next train! And I am SO TIRED! But I figure I'll sleep on the train. More news to come, and questions are welcome...
honestly, there's just too much to say to cover it all, so if anyone says they're interested more deeply in one thing or another, I can tell them another story about that!

5/26/07 From Christine in Germany or thereabouts.

Eurotrip Pictures part II

Okay.. here comes the difficult task of posting the rest of my eurotrip pictures... this should be a pretty long post. and some of the pictures are stolen from karin, just to get that out there...

ok so i'll start in potsdam,

this is the palace sanssouci ('without trouble')... it was kind of silly to visit this for me because i am here every wednesday for our rotary club's meetings... so i'd seen it a LOT. but it's pretty nonetheless...
and here there was a tea house, made only for when the rich snobby people wanted to drink tea. the funny thing was, it was supposed to be in a chinese style, but in reality it was just the snobby rich people's stereotype of chinese people in a basically german style..

so we started doing karate, which is our stereotype of chinese people.. resulting in a pretty funny array of photos.

then i took this picture of a bunch of my friends in potsdam... ok so left to right, there's yael, from argentina, karin from arizona, laura from italy, karis from arizona, sabrina from mexico, arnis from latvia, and denia (i have no idea if that's spelled correctly..) from... mexico?

ok.. so lets see.. after potsdam we moved on to dresden... i still have barely any pictures of dresden, but i did turn 17 there, as is clear in this picture...

after dresden we were off to prague, which, if you read my last post, then you know, was beautiful, breathtaking, and a billion other adjectives that mean 'really, really nice.'

another plus was that everything was really cheap. so arnis and carlos took advantage of the nice prices and went on a shopping spree...

in prague, carlos apparently got 'sunburn'.. which meant that his tan was slightly deeper and more reddish. fortunately, i was careful with my sunblock, so i couldn't show him the true meaning of sunburn...

On the way from Dresden to Prague, we took a four or five hour boat ride (i fell asleep, so i have no idea of the exact length of the trip...) and then, as we all woke up from our naps, Tante Heidi (our evil tour leader) told us that we were going to go for a random hike up a hill. of course, we all schlepped our butts up the steep cliff, cursing tante heidi and wondering what it was all for. but then we got to the top and had a beautiful view, and our complaining about the walk stopped for a while...

so, right.. then we went to vienna. which is also a very beautiful city with at least one beautiful old palace..

this is schönbrunn palace.. schönbrunn means so much as 'beautiful fountain..' in any case it's beautiful. here's laura from italy and karin in front of the palace, where, if you walk on the grass, you WILL be reprimanded... phew!

so.. after vienna we sat in the bus for a VERY long time and when we woke up, we were in italy.. lifelong dreams fulfilled: 1.

so.. what can i say about italy? it's absolutely beautiful... the people are super nice, unless you tick them off. then their tempers are incredibly short. the men are romantic and passionate (not to mention good looking for the most part), the women are beautiful and fashionable , and the history is incredible. our first stop was venice. i had heard a lot of bad things about venice, that it stinks (literally) in the summer, that the tourists turn the entire city into one big crowd where you can't even breathe... i guess that the time of year was perfect, because venice was my favorite city of them all..

we took a boat from the little mainland town where our hotel was into the city, and took a bunch of pictures...

from left to right, that's arnis from latvia, denia from mexico?, me, fumi from japan, and nicole from california. it was a really beautiful ride..

when we got to venice, we walked around for a while doing a tour, and marveled at the beautiful (if a bit stinky) canals..

then we stood around for a while feeding the pigeons (i have never seen more pigeons in one place in my entire life...) and they would just jump up into your hand to get the food like you weren't even alive! they had absolutely no fear of people.

so. then we all washed our hands (ick..) and hopped into a gondola (number of lifelong dreams fulfilled: 2) and took a ride. unfortunately our driver was neither good looking, nor was he interested in singing for us..

but at least we SAW a couple of good looking drivers.

so there in the gondola, from left to right, are carlos from ecquador, karin, laura, me, and karis.. then in the next picture, it's heather, carlos, karis, and karin.

so.. some other wierd things that i saw in venice...

hitler wine, lenin wine... etc... i'd heard that this existed but i had never actually seen it before... kind of a shock when you look in a shop window and see mein führer wine staring out at you...

then sam and i got into a small 'flour fight', which i definitely won. it involved a very small toy, basically a balloon filled with flour, so that you could mold it into faces and stuff, which i bought on a whim for a euro.. and which sam popped on purpose by biting into it. heh.. got that bugger back... i was covered too, but i was nowhere near this bad.

after he had played mime for a while, (which he's really good at, and which looked pretty amazing with the white face,) ziggy the bus driver washed him off with water from the bus and he got me back good with sand later on the beach..

then brenda brenda brendissima (or, as i like to call her, betty boop (the resemblance is uncanny(well.. if betty boop were mexican it would be))) made some funny faces on the bus, of which we took pictures.

right so after venice we took off for rome.. i'm getting travel fever again just remembering rome. it was absolutely beautiful and i have SO many pictures of it.

we spent the first day or so hanging around the vatican.. we went into st. peters cathedral and down into the graves where all of the popes are buried.. there were still flowers and letters and things at the grave of the last pope, but there were no pictures allowed.

they were very strict.. there's even a dress code to get into st. peter's cathedral..

then in st. peter's we saw la pieta.. which was beautiful. it was amazing to see an amazing and famous work of art such as this one in person..

anyway, so while in rome we also ended up going to the colloseum, which was also absolutely breathtaking...

although it poured like crazy while we were there, and we chose to dance in the rain in the actual colloseum, which was amazing..

after the rain let up a bit we fooled around a lot deciding the fates of the poor gladiators (i.e. karin.)

unfortunately though the deliberations were rather indecisive at first,

combined efforts were pointedly more decisive, and karin was condemned to death by a brutal beating with an umbrella by karis.

there was a small futile attempt at escape, which i quickly brought in to check. she wasn't going ANYWHERE.

anyway, after the end of our epic battle, we settled down to check out some of the more real looking (and admittedly better looking) gladiators..

actually you're supposed to pay them to take a picture, but i just kind of snapped this one on the fly.

anyway, here are some more pictures of the vatican...

this is the window where the pope lives... we fabricated an elaborate scheme to kill off tante heidi, our crazy tour leader, with the help of the pope.. unfortunately, karin didnt fit into the door to talk to him, because she's to giraffisch, laura either because she's got ein rieeesigen arsch (a big butt), and so i was sent to talk to the pope alone, and unfortunately i botched the job. although when we went to florence, tante heidi did get her arm stuck in the door of the bus, and we took that as a sign from the pope that he'd heard our prayers...

and this is the vatican from the top of st. peter's.. very, very pretty i must admit, even though getting to the top almost costed thirty foreign teenage lives.

this is me standing among the ruins of ancient rome, at the very center of western civilization, at the place where it all started. this makes me deeply want to be an archaeologist. it was beautiful.

and...

lets see.

this is the swiss guard... with their cute little outfits. you could even buy a swiss guard doll... i resisted the urge.

and this is what the vatican looks like from the inside... (very pretty.)

Anyway, on our last night in rome, we went and threw coins into the famous fountain, the one that ensures our return to the city. and right after i'd thrown my coin in, it started pouring rain.

some of us were lucky enough to have an umbrella...

However, in any case, some of us were not so lucky...

anyway, after rome we went and stayed overnight in florence, where we saw this statue...

dunno if it's going to ring any bells...

Although i have to say that this one is actually a copy. i believe the original stands in a museum somewhere, i would imagine in florence. nonetheless, the statue was extremely impressive.. the potential energy is amazing..

and this is a very old cathedral in florence.. also very beautiful and made of marble... but i'd be lying if i tried to make up a name for it... after cramming so much into two weeks, there are a lot of things that i can't remember...

as we left italy we moved on to munich, one of my personal favorite cities ever.. we hung out at another palace, which was given randomly to someone's kid as a gift (ah, the good old days.. and we think kids today are spoiled rotten...)

so that's ashleigh outside of nymphenburg palace.. i have a bunch of other pictures from munich but somehow this website is being mean to me and so they won't load.

then at the end of the trip we moved on to naumburg, where we tested out laura's small compactibility and cuteness factors... she passed with flying colors. So! that's gonna be about it for this post... tune in next week for the 'christine goes to poland for a weekend' edition.. should be interesting. cross your fingers as i once again venture into (*cue music*) EASTERN EUROPE. (duhn, duhn, duuuuuuuuhn)

should be nice.

SO. to wrap it up:
days: 17.
countries: 4
cities: 10
friends: 30
cell phones lost but then recovered: 1
sightings of the pope: 0
birthdays celebrated: 2 (one for me, one for heather.)
hours spent in bus: lost count after the first three days...
fun had: uncountable...

love!
christine