happily ever after...

so I guess I have tried to put off this blog post because I didn't want to have to say that I have officially closed the Germany chapter in my life after a month I can finally accept the fact that the nightmare is really over ; I am not going back. My last couple of weeks in Germany were great and as much as I miss my family and friends I know coming home was the right decision. The doctor who operated on my knee said was one of the worse knee dislocations he had ever seen. Now I am up and better I feel great.  I am so grateful for my opportunity to go abroad it was the best year of my life. Probably the craziest decision I have ever made but I will never regret it.

not with a frazzel BUT with a Bang...

Breaking News:
I  am talented for those of you that didn't already know that. I just wanted to start with that. I will go back to my last post. My trip to London. In London we took a small trip took Oxford upon our arrival their we took a small tour though the cute little city and went shopping. Afterward I made the immdiate desicon to go Ice Skating. We weren't skating for 5 minutes before the genius here dislocated her knee. Good job amy. So after getting off the ice the nice british people looked at my knee and told me that it was going to be okay. (yea whatever you say crazy brits.) At that point through the pain I just wanted to get out of there and get my money back, mission accomplished, i precided to move very slowly outside to call rescue hotline Frau Webel (thanks Laura) and tell what had happened. Next step bus ride back at this point I was exsusted but trying to see the positive side of my mango sized knee. I'll skip the boring parts and self pity but would just like to mention I had to sit in that bus for 5 hours... We finally ended up at the hotel. NOW our hotel was weird like really weird we had to give our keys up everytime we wanted to leave so when I arrived unable to walk and everyone is freaking out screaming in german and english they were a little confused. What can I say I know how to cause a scene? Endless I sit down in my room and decide I am never going to leave for as long as I live. However, the universe just wasn't happy with that and started a long parade of people knocking on the door all coming to check on me. ( of course very sweet because they cared but having to always get up started getting old!) You may ask why didn't the other people in your room answer the door amy? I would say because they were out getting me food! Due to my clever acciedent we all hadn't eaten anything all day! I settled myself down to watch Vampire Diraies, in English because thats allowed when your in England, patiently waiting on my friends. When they returned we succesfuly ate the nastiest Döner that could possibly exsist. No lie. We threw it away and our room smell the whole night like Döner. Fast forward I slept the whole ride back to Trier. On Friday night we went to the hospital by we I mean Filiz, my Hostmom and myself. I most say you know your host familiy loves you when they take you to the hospitial at 11 at night and stay till 2. Filiz enjoyed pushing me in a wheelchair...somewhere in the middle I was scaired I would loose my whole leg. I spent a nice weekend on crutches and returened to the Doctor on Tuesday. This time for a quicker diagnosies. Amy the talented person she needs knee surgery. Bringing me to my final point OUT WITH A BANG! I now have to fly home early. Like next couple of days anyway those of you who were mourning the lose of Amy can stop. Thank my knee cap and my mother who fought AFS so that they would send me home as soon as possible.

Lions, Tigers and London OH MY!

World Travel I am on my way and nothing says London like fish and chips. I know it looks absoultly disgusting however I did manage to eat most of it. (the frys were a little bit to much!) Don't worry it was super cheap and only costed 2.90 If there wasn't so much fat in it I would have eaten there everyday...that and they weren't very nice to us!! However the story goes on and I will start from the beginning. We left for London at 10 pm for an all nighter through Luxemburg, France and a couple other countries I can now say I've been too. Through my attempts to sleep and random snacks of gummy bears we finally arrived at the boarded before allowing us to load the ferry every one of has to leave the bus and show id(what I thought would be easier then coming to Germany) MISTAKE I showed them my pretty American passport and they began to question me like there was no tomorrow. Now it doesn't help that it was past 3 in the morning and I was tired and even when I am thinking straight I can barley talk in english so here I am with an American passport struggling to answer in ENGLISH. You would think it would be easy to answer: why are you coming here? but then they started with so your an exchange student living in germany coming to britian? So you can speak german too? and I just got all tangled up. Stinkin mind games.

Right outside the station

Skip ahead we started our adventure through London by riding the Underground.

Our days were filled with LOADS of free time allowing us to do what we wanted whenever we wanted. Siteseeing shopping and the top of my list taking lots of pictures. One of my most memerable moments was in the Globe theater yes Shakespears where I got to read part of Julius Caesar. For everyone else it was just another language excersice ,but for me the nerd I am it was my favorite Shakespear play coming to life. I can't describe how cool it was to know that hundreds of years ago only men would have stood in the genral area of where I stood and read those same lines. Plus I knew the characters and what was going on and the others didn't that helps!

Blick  of the London Bridge

Above you can see a picture of me with platform 9 and 3/4 I justz want to say that I have never worked to so hard just to take a picture we were wondering around like idiots untill someone asked us "Harry Potter?" We said "yes!?" and he said " You need to go out of the gate and take a left." in a perfect british accent okay they all had british accent, but try to visulise.Finally after a good two hours of trian riding we ended up at a half cut shoping cart stucking a a wall next to a bookstore...lame. However, the pictures look good. Off the Hogwarts.
I think I could write for hours about my week and London but I will just leave it with all this. I didn't sleep, eat vegtables, and you can't get good Döner in London. The people can be really rude or really nice it just depends on who you meet. I loved the people who were fancinated that I knew german or would tell me there stories of being in the states.
Update.only 5 weeks left....

Oxford

Part of my host family on mothers day "staying cool!"

they'll never take me out alive...

so the other day I had a brilliant idea for a blog post naturally I forgot my idea so I am just going to write this instead!
Right now the Heligen Rock is on display in the Dom (a.k.a the Holy Skirt of Jesus) so there are loads of tourist walking around the city. I can't go 5 feet without hearing someone talking in English. At first it was really weird because I automaticly understand and then its like wait a minute thats not German. Now I am used to it because it seems like everywhere I go lately I seem to hear english whether thats good or bad I am not sure. Its probably good because I was starting to completly forget my first language as for the bad side I am returning to making stupid mistakes in German.
Stupid German. its so complicted.
I recived my flight info and I know thats old new for some of you but for me its still news and it will remain news untill I am actually sitting in a plane going home. I already have my seat next to ellie reserved! For anyone whos lost count I am currently at roughly 7 and 1/2 months. Still going strong!

PICTURES:

Köln Dom: I'm so littke compared to it!

Visiting Arianna's Family(ps there good and your beds comfy!)

Exchange Students we should come with a manuel!

Another Fat Student...

6 months down and 4 more to go let the countdown begin...I come home in 17 weeks.
I never thought I would get a chance to say that I lived in Germany for a year. Sometimes when I'm walking somewhere I have to stop and think to remind myself its not a dream I am really here. Everyday is  like a dream you go through it learning something new or meeting new people and you relise thats why I am here. I left my family for 10 months because I am just that cool and because I love people (theres no better way to met people then being an exchange student!!)
Anyway speaking of getting fat I havn't even bothered to find out how much weight I have gained the last few weeks. I have taken on a new moto: if its food and you've never eaten it then you have to try it. I am only here once.
I get lost/am late alot. Its kinda a problem. I try super hard to wake up earlier ,but no matter how early early is I am still late. With getting lost its tend to only happen when I try and do something alone. EXAMPLE:
Coming home from my midstay studien fahrt everything was going quite nicly untill I saw that I could in theroy take a different train sooner that goes faster helping me in my journey home.  NOT THAT SIMPLE! So in Germany there are diffrerent trains there are yellow trains, white/gray trains, and red trains! Now with a Rhienland-Pflaz ticket you are only allowed to ride in the pretty red trains. Not knowing this because a train is a train to me Amy gets into a pretty Gray (ICE) train; then I couldn't find a place to sit showing them my ticket they informed me that I was not allowed to be in this train and at the next train station I needed to get out. This is were the panic set in as I am standing who knows where trying to figure out how on earth I am going to get home. So I look and I see hey I can take a train to Merzig and from there to Trier! NOT THAT EASY! Because somehow the fast train was not so fast and I missed the train that I was supposed to take. So now I have about an hour to stand there and wonder why do these things always happen to me. As I am standing there I notice my train doesn't arrive on time 15 minutes later it shows up and decides to slowly make its way to Trier HBF. Endlessly I arrived home after 6 hours of standing places and sitting in the wrong train!
Life Lesson:
Things are not always what they seem and the Deutsche Bahn hates me.
However, now I know that the gray trains are for people who want to speand more money. Plus I didn't have to pay the 60 euros you normally have to pay for being in a train without a ticket.

what can i say i am just that good...

für immer liebe ELLIE AND AMY seat buddies:)

what happens when Filiz and I cook??

Heppenheim:) with Angelie!

And they said I would be dead by now..

so I wrote this post one time and then the internet decided it didn't like me and just turened off so I am going to try agian!
Its crazy to believe that I have been here for almost 5 months its 5 months on the 10th of Febuary if you want to know. I am writing a little sooner because thats the excat same day I leave for two weeks for camp yay! midstay camp excatly on my mid stay. The time goes by so fast here. Its like being stuck in a uncontrolable time warp.
Today I went to the post office ...ALONE. Get ready for this. So first it takes me about ten minutes to buy a stamp because theres about 20 different options and I am standing there thinking I just want a stamp! so 10 mintues later I have the stamp in my hand and enter the post office. (oh AFS you owe me 55 cents for the STAMP so I can sent you a train ticket so you can send me money back..very practical) ANYWAY  so I enter the post office very proud because A i found it and B i bought the stamp. Now I am trying to figure out how German post offices work. For those of you that have never been to germany I'll fill you in on some observations I have had in the last couple of months! If your a german and you work for the goverment or the DB then your never going to be nice; if your a german and you see someone acting strange or oddly from another country then your going to judge them and lastly theings are always to simple in Germany. NOW with the reast of the story... so I come in to the post office cause its cold outside all happy because I bought a stamp and sit down to put my stamp on my envolope and then give it to the nice man to mail it. NOT THAT SIMPLE! First there is no sticky stuff on the back of the stamp so I am sitting there like an idiot trying to fgure out how on earth you get the back off the stamp so that it will stick to the envolope. 7 minutes later I give up and ask for help except the nice man is not so nice and informs me that I need a glue stick. Where am I going to get a glue stick? So I ask do you have a glue stick? so he goes and finds one. sticks the stamp on there and without another word walks away I thought he was going to charge me for the glue! Next problem NOW I have a leter in an envolope with a stamp but no ones explained how you send it. Good thing I had my contacts in today because outside are these pretty yellow bins and I stuck it in there. SO AFS i hope your reading thins because for all I know my ticket could be on its way to Asia. Oh and I want a glue stick when I come home! plus flip flops the Brizilans got flip flops!
Long story short I am always going to find ways to look extremly stupid. Thats just part of life. Its all about learning. I vagely remember writing my parents a really go email quoting miley cyrus. The jist of it was that theres always going to be another mountin and I am always going to want to make it move whats import is the lessons you learn on the way!

Just another day in paradise...

so tomorrow is my 18 birthday don't remind me about how old I am going to be. I practicly need a walker at this rate! Crazyy how times goesby. I sat down today and thought about it! My time here is flying by so fast! I don't even want to think about going home! Since my last epic blog post I enjoyed Christmas german style, went to Paris (which is so beautiful!), went to Cochem (pretty too, but really cold!) and now own Mustard from the 1800's only in Germany! I also got a zero on a math test because everything besides my name was wrong but hey at least this time I actually wrote something:) Life is good. A little crazy but that just means I am setteling in. I have decided I do not enjoy the bus. It seems that every time I am in the bus the weirdst people sit next to me. I don't know if I have some sort of sign on my head that say please sit, but they just keep coming! Plus the bus is always late! I do like the train it goes fast! ( maybe I am not as old as I think am(: ) Either way I will eventually get around to writing more and putting up more pictures but for now. I hope all is well back home!
lots of love from the Artic tundra:)
Amyy