Gus
Fayetteville to Germany

 im a  active with rotoract, which is like rotary for young buisness people. usually around the age of 24. they have funraisers and go do stuff .

 

what i really want to do is go sking, or ice skating, but thier is no good places where i am to do that.   my next meeting with my counciler we are going to go see a ski jump.

solingen, where im at, is apparently unique to germany in that we dont have snow. we have rain the entire year round, lots of it. in winter it rains every other day and it never freezes, it stayes just above freezing because it would feel warmer if it actually froze.

 

yup, no snow, no ice, just freezing rain.

i went to the neanderthal meuseum ,over the evolution of mankind., but other then that not much happened this past week.

i went to a couple of chrismas markets, they were pretty interesting but their wasnt much to bye. thier was this one that was kind of cool though. lots of people where dressed up in midevile cloths. my favorite part was when performers played the bagpipes.

 

today in school the first two hours for me where free while almost the entire school was in some church or another.  but my last class was very interesting. it was over how the english language influences the world and i was a little surprised at the magnitude. i always asumed that it was just ONE of the big languages spoken and not THE big language spoken. i always thought that german, spanish, japanesee, manderine and english where the most important languages equally but its kind of weird that english is like the neutral language that every continent has. in india thier are at least a dozen different types of indian spoken so to fasilitate communications legal and buricratic proceeding are all done in english.

After the end of world war 2 many german cities where lain in ruin, and very few building survived without substancial damage. after that happened thier was a program funded in part by america to rebuild deutchland. however of the building that did survive they proved to be a testiment of hardy german engineering and the people didn´t have the heart to tear them down. the general idea being that if it isnt broken, then don´t fix it. that is why when you walk in german cities the closer you get to the town center the newer the buildings are, however next to thies beutiful examples of modern architecture, or rather in between, are still building that date back hundreds of years having been lovingly restured through the ages.

 

when i am in my german class at the volkschule, or really any where i usually am in solingen i can see the two towers of a church in classical victorian style (or so i believe) the story behind this giant of a church is that it was hit with a bomb and bolth the towers where destroyed, after the war the towers where rebuilt and the bells replaced.

 

the reason that i have gathered while living in germany for wurst, or sausage in english, being so popular is that german winters are very long, infact from what ive heard this is an unusually warm winter, so having so short a summer they need a food that can last through the winter without spoiling and it needs to be easy to make so it can be made in vast quantites. thus the wurst was born, actually the more into winter i get the more wurst i see around me,

 

it gets very festive before chrismas in germany and thier are even small rides for the children to enjoy in the stadt centrum. there are lights strung up across the streets and small podiums halking all kinds of goods, mostly ju-nk, but the best time to walk the stadt centrum is the very early morning, its sill dark but the lights are shining and thier is almost no one on the streets. the shops are closed and the quiet remains like a fragile web yet to be broken its very nice to see.

 

hey, things are pretty alright here, i recently baught a laptop wich should arrive tomorrow, and next week i change families for the 'first' time.

 

not a problem though, i met them once and they seemed nice.

 

i speak almost entirly german to my host family and usually have no problems, i even recenltly enjoyed a german movie but the title alludes me right now.

 

my laptop runs at 1.68 GH with a duel core, has a geforce 7600 go with no shared memory, has a wide screen, is brand new .

 

things are going alright, gus

i am switching families in the next few weeks, dont really know to much about them but hey.

i am getting better at using german so thats always good, when i watch a movie i can usually understand what is going on.
 

and he said i would get sick walking around bare foot. i just walk on it, i dont go swimming in it.

 

have fun, Gus