Tourist life in D.C.

Hello folks,
It's time for an update on my America trip I guess.
So since we came back from New York City we've basically been busy visiting a lot of sights around D.C. The first day after returning from NYC, I think it was Wednesday the 8th, we had some sort of discussion about global warming and how to deal with it in Arlington and Aachen. That was pretty boring since I was very tired and didn't even listen to the guys talking a lot. After that we went to the Kennedy Center of performing arts and heard a concert of a high school orchestra form somewhere in the States. I don't remember where those guys came from. At night the whole group went to a Comedy Club at the local mall and we watched a comedy show.
The next day we went to the Newseum which is basically a museum about news. It was pretty interesting to have a look on all the stuff that happened around the world in the last decades. So after that we went to Union Station for Lunch.
On Friday, we first visited the Library of Congress, then had lunch and then visited the Capitol. This building is pretty amazing although you can only access very few parts of it. Not even the interesting ones. But Americans are heaps paranoid these days with their fear of terrorism.
On Saturday I changed my host family to my actual host family who came back from vacation. They had actually been in NYC as well. First I thought changing the family really sucks, because I liked my first one a lot and my new one seems a little strange first. I have settled in though pretty well and I get along with them pretty good. The only thing that sucks is the food, because they somehow think that everything you eat must be like very healthy and stuff. Especially in the mornings I sometimes search for ages until I find something proper to eat. They must hide it pretty well because on the weekends when they make breakfast there is always some good stuff there. So later that day, I visited a couple of museums with them. On Sunday we visited a weird colonial age memorial farm where some volunteers live life like in the colonial age. It was interesting though to see how life has been in Virginia a couple of hundred years ago.
On Monday we visited the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which tells all about the Holocaust. That was fairly interesting but not very new stuff since all of us learned about this part of German and European history in school over and over again. I find it still overwhelming though every time i deal with that issue I just cannot get why this kind of stuff happened those 60 to 70 years ago.
Tuesday was a pretty good day as well. First we visited the Arlington National Cemetery which basically is a graveyard for all very honorable American soldiers who died in service. There are some other very famous people lying there as for instance John F. Kennedy. Being buried in Arlington Cemetery is a huge honor. And although some people of our group find it very stupid to have things like that I really like the idea of honoring those who served their country in the way those people did. And although Americans sometimes exaggerate a little with their patriotism I think a good portion of that is very good to have. But I'll come back to this when I tell about or visit to the several monuments.
So after the Cemetery we went to Potomac Mills Mall which is like a huge outlet store where you can buy all sorts of things pretty cheap. But since I'm not very good at buying cloth without my mum I just got a polo shirt.
Wednesday and Thursday we went to school. Schools in Arlington are one of the best in the state if not the country. They have awesome as sports grounds and the class rooms are very well equipped as well. A lot better than German schools' wildest dreams. As good as the equipment is as bad are the lessons though. People are basically doing nothing in class. I was actually looking up some soccer scores on the Internet with my neighbors’ iPod. And I wasn't the only one doing stuff like that. On Thursday we went to a different school. It's an alternative school where the students can actually decide on a lot of stuff themselves. The lessons where a little better there and the students were actually working but the just had like three lessons a day. So we actually started school at half past ten and left at three. And we had like a one and a half hour break in between.
On Friday was the first very good weather day like ever since we are in the States. We went to see all sorts of memorials. We even had a park ranger guiding us and giving us all sorts of information about all memorials. First we went up the Washington Memorial from where you have an awesome view across the whole city. After that we went to the World war 2 memorial were they acknowledge all fallen servicemen from WW2. Then we visited the Albert Einstein Memorial which was basically a big statue of Albert Einstein. At last we went to the Vietnam Memorial which is a huge Wall where all the names of the fallen soldiers are written on. Our guide, who also served in Vietnam for a couple of months told us that in fact his should have been one of those on the wall, because there was one guy who covered his shift and stepped on a land mine. When telling us he even cried a little and it did really get to me as well. I somehow feel always pretty involved when hearing stories like that. What the happened was really showing how Americans value those who fight for their country (although the Vietnam War was rather stupid). Some man who just happened to hear our guide tell the story went to him and thanked him for his service. I found that to be a very good gesture.
In the evening we had a TV night at some boys’ place. They live a pensioner’s house and that guy has an awesome as TV. It is so huge! Bigger than everything I've ever seen. The diagonal of the picture is larger than the span width of my arms. And the picture is probably about 1,2 m high.
Today was a very hot day. First I watched a soccer game of one of my host brothers and then my host dad took me to D.C. I took a bike with me. I met some of the other people there and we were just hanging around enjoying the awesome weather. After that two other boys who also came by bike showed me a very nice way to get home by riding along the Potomac River. As I got home, I played some Xbox basketball with my host brother and then we had burgers and stuff for dinner.
And as a result of the day: I've got sunburn all over my arms. :-D

So, all in all this one and a half week period was actually pretty cool. We've seen a lot of cool and interesting things but there is still more to come. It's a little sad that we're leaving on Thursday already but I'm looking forward to being home again as well.

So that's about it for the moment. I might get some sleep know since its half past one at night.
I'll write again later maybe at the end of the trip.
Have a good Sunday and a nice week. School starts again in Germany and I'M honestly sad about not having to go.

Dan

Washington D.C.

Gotta love that apple!

Hello everyone,
As I told you, there is going to be a post regarding my trip to the big apple from last Sunday to last Tuesday.
I am not going to tell you everything I did step by step, because that would just take too long and would be very repetitive.
What I can tell you about New York City is that it is probably the most awesome city in this world. At least the most awesome I know. Obviously, no place for families, though (at least not Manhattan) but certainly a great place for everyone enjoying living next to a lot of people and someone who wants to be surprised every day. And this is what I thought NYC to be like: A place capable of surprising you at every minute.
We left DC for New York on Sunday morning and the bus drive took about four hours. What you first see of the big apple is a huge industrial area looking like docks or something like that. But then you see the awesome skyscrapers just ahead and as soon as you go past Hudson River you are directly in Manhattan.
Our hotel was on 58th St between 6th and 7th Ave which is obviously a pretty great location since you can actually walk to time square and that "good" part of 5th Ave.
On our first day in NYC we basically went with the Staten Island Ferry past the Statue of Liberty and after that we walked through Financial District having a look at the Wall St and then visiting Ground Zero where they are going to build a new World Trade Center.
After that the group split up and I went to Chinatown, Little Italy and later to Soho, which is actually a pretty neat suburb. At night we went up on top of the Rockefeller Center which is nearly as high as the Empire State Building but you don't have to queue up as long. So we went up there having an awesome view over the city and on the Empire State. After that we walked to time square having a look at all the great lights and screens there.
At 11 o'clock was curfew time so we had to back at the hotel then. As this sounds pretty early it wasn't to bed I think, because this way we at least go a bit of sleep.
In the morning we had to meet at 9:30 to visit Central Station which was actually pretty nice. After that we went to the world's biggest shopping Center at Macy’s in NYC. This is like way bigger than everything every one of you has ever seen before. It has seven stories and is I think as long as one block.
After that I was going to a very tiny but very cool burger shop near Central Park. The burger place was inside a hotel and it looked as if it was just next to the restrooms or something. The burgers were great anyways.
Later that day we met the whole group again at Washington Square from where we went up 5th Avenue. The bad side of that was that it was raining heaps so some of us got pretty drenched. I didn't thanks to my pretty good Jack Wolf skin jacket! At night it had stopped raining and we took the subway down to Brooklyn and walked across the Brooklyn Bridge from where you have an awesome view on Manhattan.
The next morning we went to Central Park first and then I went to a little bagel place on the lower East Side with Johannes. The place is actually very good. They have like ten different sorts of bagels and 30 something sorts of topping. The place is in a Jewish suburb and they had a certificate that a Rabbi was checking them regarding the fact that their bagels are kosher. We found that pretty funny. Jews in that suburb looked very funny as well since they like wear those big hats and have those massive curls. Later we went to Union Square and then up Broadway and 5th Ave. Furthermore we went to the Abercrombie and Fitch store on 5th Ave which is rather a club that a shop with the staff dancing around smiling all the time. That was funny as well.
So that was basically what we did in NYC.
Generally I can tell that this city is probably the most vivid place I've ever seen. As everyone knows this City never sleeps. But not only is it alive all the time (what I had to find out when I was waking up at three in the morning and it was light outside with people walking on the streets and emergency horns to hear) it is living like super fast. People are very busy and to hesitate is to loose in NYC's traffic. Generally many Americans are driving like retards at least from the German perspective. But in New York it is worse. People are just crazy and pedestrians generally don't give a crap on any rules. Traffic lights are basically decoration so I called out the rule: "If no one drives it's green"(well actually white) meaning that you just go if its clear or close to clear. Oddly enough I never saw an accident. So it's probably the same as what you hear from Athens or cities like that.
The best image I saw relating to the vitality of NYC was when I was on top of the Rockefeller Center seeing the lights of the city just pulsating.
So that's basically what I took from NYC. Impressions of a city seeming like the heart of the world with millions of people always on the run. It’s certainly no place to get old but a place to live at the highest pace possible. It is a mixture of control (e.g. the street system making it very easy to navigate) and chaos as seen in the traffic. A place where every facet of human being meets. There is the financial district just beside Soho where arts are located and there are the suburbs of Chinatown and Little Italy where people of different cultures live right beside each other. Little Italy is actually more Italian than Italy itself.
So yeah that's it for tonight. I hope you enjoy watching my photos. A lot of them especially the one I took at nighttime turned out to be pretty crap but I think I still got some good ones for you.
I hope to talk to you guys later. Tomorrow I am going to visit the Capitol.
Have a good one.
Dan

New York City

Visiting the King: First days in the US

Hello everybody!
I'm just going to write that short post and will upload my latest photos from the first couple of days in America before I go to New York tomorrow. When I find the time I will write a propper blog post but I'm not feeling like it at the moment. So just have a look at the photos. Apart from the really awesome basketball game I saw on Thursday night. Cavs against Wizards - that was pretty cool. Basketball games in the US are like totally different to soccer games. The show part of it is a lot bigger and it is a lot of fun. They had a lot of entertainment like a dunking group and a wizard and t-shirts being shot to the crowd. But the fans weren't as crazy as they are in German soccer games. So they didn't really swaer at the oponent players and that. The other stuff wasn't too amazing though. We visited a pretty famous hotdog place in D.C. and had a pretty good reception party on friday night. Today I went to a really huge shopping mall which was probably twice the size of queens st mall in brisbane for those of you being familiar with that one. The weather is actually pretty good at the moment. We've got blue skies and sun, but that is supposed to change on Monday. The group is setteling more and more as you get to know the other better and I think most of the people are pretty cool actually. So I guess the upcomming weeks will be just heaps of fun.
By the way some people here think that I have a slight Australian accent. I think that's pretty funny.
Well, know I just wrote the post I wasn't in the mood to so, have fun untill the next one and enjoy the photos.

Dan

First Days

March '09

Hello everyone,
A quarter of the year is already gone and since it’s like 2 months ago when I wrote my last blog post, I thought I might take the time and have a go again.
One of the reasons I wasn’t writing too much in the last months is that I had to do a lot of school work. We have our exam period just ended and we had to write a huge piece of assessment which I did on the role of American third parties. So as you might imagine that’s some work to do. Moreover there wasn’t too much happening lately which could have been of any interest to you people. Just the normal live really.
But as I might officially announce now this will change next months. I am going to the United States from April 2 to April 24 I guess. I go as part of an exchange having to do with the city friendship of Aachen and Arlington, VA. Arlington is very close to Washington DC so I will be going to visit the White House and stuff. In addition I am going to spend a weekend in New York. So that’s about what I can tell now. I’ll be writing blogs though that month telling you something about what’s going on in the US.
So that’s about it for today’s brief catch up. I hope to catch up with you guys sometime soon.

Dan

Catch Up

It’s time for a new catch up I suppose.
The first thing to say is that it is recently freezing cold over here. We have relatively much snow right now and the good thing is that it stayed. Normally if it snows here, the snow is gone again within a couple of days. The reason for that is of course the aforementioned awful small amount of degrees Celsius on our thermometer. In the morning when I go to school it’s about -12 these days. Tomorrow I’m actually planning to go sledding with a couple of friends in the Eifel which is some mountains not too far from here. I hope that’s going to be a lot of fun. I’ll probably write something about it if I find some spare time to do it.
The already mentioned school is actually a good key word for my next point. It started again after the 2.5 weeks of winter holiday on Wednesday. And guess what – I’m already sick of it. Especially of the getting up heaps too early is what annoys me the most at the moment. But I guess I’ll deal with it somehow.
And I guess I never mentioned earlier that I’m going to have a new family member from today on. We’re having an exchange student from Brazil staying with us I think ‘till June or something. He’s moved in today and I think he is going to settle in soon. A pretty cool guy anyways. I hope that we’re going to be at least close to being as a good host family as the Roots were to me. I somehow doubt that this is entirely accomplishable. ‘Cause you know there’s now awesome camping trips and days out on a boat fishing and all that stuff. But anyways I guess/hope we’ll get along well.
So I think that’s it for the moment. I might be writing another blog on the weekend as I said, but I don’t know yet how that will turn out. I might be too lazy. That’s pretty common to me these days you must know. But anyways I hope you enjoyed reading another blog although they’re becoming very rare recently. I’ll work on that.
Talk to you later I hope you all are doing well.

Yours Dan

Christmas

Hello everyone,
It's day one after this year's christmas and I though I might write a blog post again.
This year christmas wasn't white at all as well always want it to be, but at least it didn't rain.
On Christmas eve we were invited to our next door neighbours for a little christmas brunch mainly including having a couple of beers and having a chat. After that we went to church were by brother took part in the nativity play.
Since we always go to the earliest worship on christmas eve this did not take too long because it's the one all families with little kids go to.
As we arrived at home we first exchanged our presents and than had dinner.
On the first christmas day we did about nothing and on the second, known as boxing day in Australia, my uncle and family and my grandma and grandpa visited us. We had goose for lunch and it was just yummy. I didn't eat anything after that for the whole day 'caus I was so full.
And that was this year's christmas. Pretty much like every christmas over here.

To get to a short news flash :D I'm going to the USA on easter for three weeks which will be pretty awesome I hope and we are getting an exchange student from Brazil for 5 months I think. Hope that'll go alright. I'll let you know anyways.

So that's it for the moment. I hope I'll catch up with some of you sometime soon. Have a nice rest holiday if you have one in the first place.
Your Daniel

It's been a while...

Hey folks,
It's been a pretty long while since I last wrote something to you but I thought today would be a good time to do so.
And there has been happening something over the last coupe of days indeed. Starting with last weekend. It was Ann's birthday so I was visiting her on the weekend meeting Jonas as well after some long time which was pretty cool I must say. Kira and Luisa couldn't come which was a shame. On Saturday there was Ann's party which was quite alright allthough Jonas and I didn't know any of those being there. And then on Sunday we had some nice talks about this and that, especially 'bout some memories from Australia, which was very nice.
The next very mentionable event of the week was Tuesday were I finally passed my driving test, which unfortunately was my second, so I'm having a license now which could be compared to the Aussie's learner except I'm directly having an open license when I turn 18 next year.
The next and last thing I want to tell you about is that we had our first snow today what might sound a little crazy to my Aussie readers. But yeah it's the end of November already so that's not too strange for us here in Germany.
Well, I thnk there isn't a lot more to tell you at this point. I'm pretty busy at the moment, because it's exam time again at school and I'm writing about 6 of them over the next 3 weeks.
So that'll be it for today, I think you will read something from me again when it comes to Christmas in a month or so.
Till then have a wonderful life. I'll catch up with you whenever it's possible.
See ya
Yours Daniel