April part 1

So my last entry was at the end of march directly before I left for my eurpoareise since then we have had April hence the title of this entry.

Eurpareise started for me with an early rise and the a train trip to Berlin which takes about 2 1/2 hours. This was a little more strenuous than I though it was going to be as my first train was late and so I missed the connection to the second. Luckily for me the second train was an express and caught up a lot of the lost time. I arrived in the Berlin ostbahnhof to a large group of young people that I quickly ensured was the right group and the proceeded to introduce myself and attempt to learn some of the names. from there the tour went; Berlin, Dresden, Prag, Vienna, Venice, Rome, Innsbruck, Nesselwang, Munich, Regensburg and then back to Berlin. The entire trip was exceptional, great people, incredible places invaluable memories.

I need to go back to school again soon (I am writing this in my free lesson), I will update it again soon.

Aurich and other matters

Well after saying that my next post would be reasonably soon I took a huge break from blogging and since then understandably quite a lot has happened. Most prominent and recent of these many events would probably be a class trip to Aurich last week. There was an international meeting of schools in Aurich, the German group from Braunschweig which was fortunate enough to include me, a Dutch group from the Hague, an Italian group from Milan and last but not least a Spanish group from Asturias. We stayed at a place called Europa Haus, which was a simply fantastic venue. The week consisted mainly of a set of workshops into which the participants of each group were divided. I participated in the music workshop. At the end of the week each of the groups presented what they had achieved. The music workshop presented three songs, sweet home Alabama which I sung, knocking on heaven’s door in which I played the drums and sweet dreams by Eurythmics to which I clapped along where appropriate. Now it is lunch time but I will right more soon and I mean it this time.

School

I´ll post some more detail on school next time which should be pretty soon, this weekend at the latest. I will say though that I am actually finding maths quite tough because it is on a topic that I have not really covered in depth however on a different topic perhaps... we will see. I am finding my chemistry lessons easiest and most enjoyable, most of the names are the same, and they are looking at a topic that I have covered but more in depth than I have done previously. The lessons that I am finding the hardest so far are history and politics, I am understanding nearly nothing in the lessons. Ethics is also tough but I have only had one lesson because the course just started and it sometimes conflicts with my rotary meetings.

busy busy busy

Sorry it has been a while since I have posted an entry, I have been pretty much flat out. Between swimming, school, rotary, friends and family life nearly all of my time has been absorbed. This however is a good thing on the most part.

Interesting things that have happened since last blog include a trip to a motorbike show in Wolfsburg with my host mother Silke, that day we left home quite early on a Saturday then spent just about the entire morning sitting in the visa place waiting for my student visa. Eventually we did get it then we drove from Braunschwieg to Wolfsburg, about half an hour´s drive via the autobahn, once we got to Wolfsburg it was merely a matter of following the yellow signs to the motorbike show. I really enjoyed the show and Silke did to however it did make me miss riding them quite a bit but happily I got a shot on a "wheelie trainer" which is essentially an electric motorcycle tethered to a platform with a roller under the rear tyre. I had quite a lot of fun with that though I found the bike exceedingly weird to ride, instant throttle response, heaps of power down low and none up high and I think it had extremely cheap shock absorbers on it so it was weirdly bouncy. The photos can be viewed at: 
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=57038&id=100000202507835&l=4017c802ed

In other news school is going pretty smooth, I am understanding and contributing more and more though some subjects like politics are nearly completely over my linguistic head. I guess it is lucky that I have 12 subjects so one or two bad ones isn´t such a big deal. My German course has started, I went to my first lesson on Monday night, I think however that I will be swapping courses to make it mesh better with my swimming. The swimming here is Gnarly on Wednesdays I have roughly an hour of swimming with school before lunch then in the evenings I go to the weights room at 6:00 for an hour then hop in the pool at 7:00 for an hour and a half´s training, it´s nuts!

Ahh, I think that is all I have to share at the moment, feel free to drop a comment below or on facebook or shoot me an E-mail on andreas5074@gmail.com

Orientation day

I had my first rotary orientation day yesterday. In the morning I had to get up particularly early, eat breakfast and head down to the Hauptbahnhof (the main train station in Braunschweig). I then got onto a bus in front of the train station, bought a ticket then immediately got off and walked into the station. When Silke (my host mother) and I got to the platform my train was already sitting there so I said goodbye to Slike and hoped on. It was about 10 minutes before the train left the platform. The train was really comfortable, the seats were like pretty reasonable front car seats. In fact the train was actually far too comfortable, as it pulled away from the station my eyelids started to become heavy. I struggled for a while to stay awake as I really didn´t want to miss my stop but it was an uphill battle and soon I was dozing off.


I awoke as the train was leaving a small town and a twinge of fear hit me, I was really hoping that I had not missed Gifhorn however my prayers were answered when at the very next station I spotted a Gifhorn sign on the platform. So I got off the train and left the platform and my sheet of instructions said that there was a blue and yellow bus that would take me from the station into the centre of the town. I found the relevant stop and spent quite a while trying to understand the timetable. When I did manage to work it out I found that the next bus wasn´t for 45 minutes and to make the situation it had just started to spit in addition the the already strong wind that would only pickup during the next half hour.


After around about half an hour huddled in the corner of the bus shelter a grey haired man wearing a rotary jacket walked in front of me and I sat up and he said "Andreas?" and so I was introduced to Ekkehard Musick (the district coordinator for inbounds). We then waited together for the other exchange students coming by train who all arrived on the same train from Hannover about 5 minutes after me meeting Ekkehard. Ekkehard then gave me a lift into town (I didn´t have to catch the bus after all).


After a short tour of Gifhorn we arrived a hotel called Deutsches Haus. Inside we were show the room that we would have for the day, inside was a long table some chairs and a data projector and the final new exchange student (most countries send and receive exchange students in the middle of the year, so in the group at the first orientation there were 4 Australians and 2 Argentinians). We then sat around the table and went around and quickly introduced ourselves (name, host club, nationality etc.) after we finished this Ekkehard began his presentation on Germany, exchange, advice etc. When he had finished telling us about the reunification of Germany an extremely delicious lunch of spaghetti with blue cheese sauce was served. After lunch Ekkhard talked a bit more and then he took us on a guided tour of gifhorn which is an extremely pretty old German town. The tour ended in the ice-cream parlour and a particularly delicious chocolate milkshake for me. Then the host sister of one of the attending exchange students gave us a lift back to the train station and I caught the train home.

settling in

Two weeks in and I have been at school, gone on holidays and gone back to school. Though the holiday was only 4 days between semesters. I have also started swimming here, the first club I tired was too slow for me and so I tried another, the second is much better and I will keep swimming with them. I will swim two days a week, wednesday and friday at 7 in the evening. In fact I am about to go get ready for my second training session. I have also been to two rotary meetings so far, the rotarians are all really nice but I often dont fully understand what is happening in the meetings.

I feel I must apologise for the briefness of this entry, another should come some time over the weekend, I think that from now on I will also make a larger number of short entries rather than attempting to remember and recound the important events of the week.

Nearly one week down!

Firstly I must appolagise for all of the y-z mistakes in the last update, I am useing a Spainish keyboard and the have the y-z in the opposite positions and have not even changed the letter on the keys!

so what is new from last time...
I have just finish the last day of my first week at school and it is only 11:00 and to make things even better I have no school on monday or tuesday next week!
School is actually pretty good too, though I am often barely understanding what is going on nearly everyone is very nice and really helpful. 

The food is also incredible, I have only realy tried one or two things I did not like and one was a chunk of roast some animal or other and so I was not expecting to like it. Having said that in the same meal I had some wurst and I actually rather enjoyed it.

Braunschweig itself is really pretty and we have had a bit of son in the last few days though it is totaly overcast now and most of the time, it is something that I did not experience in australia just how solid clouds can be! the whole sky is just a shade of gray, one huge seamless cloud. I have taken and uploaded to facebook quite a few photos reciently for those who have not seen them or do not have facebook here is the links:
Inner city: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=54922&id=100000202507835&l=d6e8afa056
Snow: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=54910&id=100000202507835&l=e41a0a3773

Arrival!

Has arrived safe and sound in Braunschweig,
I am haveing a great time, I am so stoked with mz placement, this year is going to be reallz great!
had an awesome flight attendant from Frankfurt to Hannover, he moved me to a window seat and gave us bussiness class food left over from the last flight and chatted, it was brilliant.
Then I was met in Hannover as was made to feel really welcome!
I enjoyed the drive too, I spent a lot of time with mz face pressed against the window, there is just the lightest covering of snow in some places and it is reallz pretty! and all the plants look different!

I have just been given a tour of my first house :)
and am about to go on a more extensive tour of the city:)

closer still...

This post will just serve as a breif update,
The most major thing that has occurred since the my last post is that I have presented my speech to the Campbelltown Rotary Club which went very well. The suitcase that mum had ordered for me arrived today and we also bought some badges to swap and other souvenirs.
There is only a couple of days left now, tomorrow I will go for one final motorbike ride and do a little more work on my currently disasembled motorbike. Wednesday and Thursday are set asside for packing and final farewells. Then on Friday I am off!

Preparations

wow,
there are only about 19 days left in Australia, it has sort of crept up on me, 100 days to go feels like it was sometime last week. I am however also getting closer to being ready, I already have a package on its way to Germany containing some clothes and all of my souvenirs to give to people. A new jacket and new bags have been bought for the purpose and the presentation that I will give to the club is coming along nicely thanks to some greatly appreciated help from my sister Emilia and a multitude of ideas from Margaret and Damian.
In short all is coming along nicely and I am greatly looking forward to my time abroard.
Andreas