The last... month?

Let's start with Holland.

In Germany, we have a two week holiday in Autumn called Herbstferien. I did a couple of things, but the highlight was definitely going to Holland for a week with my host parents and my host sister Rike. We were at a lovely resort called Hof van Saksen, which was absolutely gorgeous in all respects, and oriented torwards families with smaller children.

My host sister and I are 17 and 16, respectively, but we still managed to have fun, I believe. We rode bikes, swam in the resorts' five pools plus outdoor heated water slide, and watched Prison Break and Scrubs (in German, of course!). We also went to a couple random cities in Holland: Emmen for the zoo, Groningen for shopping, and we were in Assen briefly as well. Pretty sweet.

The food was EXCELLENT, I definitely ate waaay more than I ever should have. Especially with the whole cream puff thing... every night at dinner, there were cream puffs. Every night, I would try to beat my record from the previous night. Can we say seventeen in one sitting? I could have done more, but sadly, the week ended...

Next, we move onto this past weekend. I went to Kiel to visit Jon Norwich, another outbound from my Rotary district back home. This was awesome, because I haven't actually seen anybody from Gettysburg since August (as was expected, of course), so it was nice for that. We ended up not spending so much time in Kiel, but instead went to Hamburg for a Rotex day in his district. I met a LOT more exchanges, which is always a good thing. We basically just walked around the entire day, and ended up on ReeperStraße (or Reeper Bahn, I can't quite remember). This is Hamburg's red light district. I have never seen anything similar to that before, so it was most definitely one of the most interesting things that I have ever seen in my life. I'm not really sure what I can say to keep it all G-rated here, but rest assure I took plenty of pictures to laugh at later.

Other than go to Hamburg, Jon and I basically chilled out and caught up from the past months. Nothing worth repeating there.

And now for a funny story!

It's true. And it happened today.

So I was in gym class today, as I am every Monday morning. Everyone in my class knows that I am totally incapable of doing sports, and we always have a good-natured laugh when I fail. Today was no different. We ran a little, did our fitness stations (which is where people laugh at me the most), and since we had time left, we played soccer. I'm sure some of you readers out there remember my soccer days, and how I would just basically stand there and watch the ball go by. It's no different in Germany. But somehow, the ball landed in front of my feet today, so I closed my eyes and gave it a kick. Guess who scored a goal? And guess whose team won?? Yeah, ME and MINE! My whole class was shocked, I think, and they all cheered when it happened. Best thing that happened on any Monday.