Naja. on thursday, i discovered something profound. there are sheep in Minden. well duhh, it's Germany, there are sheep EVERYWHERE. but still. i was going running, and then BANG sheep. so of course i thought of my foreign friend waaaaaaaaay in East Germany, so i took a picture! (i of course had to run home, get my camera, and run back- MAAAIIN she's good)Then on saturday i went to a handball game with this girl i met in our neighborhood. we rode mit dem Fahrrad, and minden FINALLY WON. MAN it took long enough, but it was oktoberfest (whaaaat, it's already over, but w/e) weekend for hanball, so there was all this free stuff! it was CRUNK. we got ice cream, drinks, and these random chicken nuggets that weren't chicken but beef. i haven't seen chicken in Germany all that much. so much for wanting to feed my family that chicken rotel. oh well. At the handball game i saw another orange baby, and i laughed so hard because orange babies are so funny. i also saw a 4 year old with his ear pierced and i felt sorry for him. think about it, he had no choice, and im sure he has some punk mom who was like oooh it'll be SO CUTE to scar a little boy for the rest of his life! oh well.

oh yah, and look at this big ugly truck J2 and i saw at the WEZ!! there we got MORE free drinks and a big ball and a water bottle holder. coooool

ok so in Minden, we have this thing called the Kaiser Willhelm (the emporer of Germany or something) and he was in minden for like literally 5 minutes, so they built him this HUGE STATUE memorial thing.

so there it is. notice it's on the top of a very big hill. so i was sitting there with the family, just chillin, when the doorbell rings and it's my neighbor Steffie (she's sooo freaking cool, man!) and she asked me if i wanted to bike there to have a cultural experience. ( naja, about 15 km away) SURE! i say. nothing else to do! so we meet like 5 other people and bike up to the kaiser Wilhelm through this utterly gorgeous pathway. i took a ZILLION pictures, but it's SO gorgeous up there, and plus i got to know a lot of crunk madchen, so i'm excited about that! so for all you out there: Here's Minden at a glance

well not all of minden, but what you can see from the thing. so here's me being my attractive self with this kid who we met there. he's from Quebec and speaks only french (whaaat i thought in quebec they spoke english, too, oder? but no he speaks NO english and NO german) but he's cool, and ive hung out w/him a few times before. so it seems that i only hang out w/exchange students, but thats not the case. its just that the other exchange students are always obsessed w/taking pictures, too, therefore they're more willing to be in pictures. it's true. but he's the student of one of Steffie's friends, and he doesn't hinder my german learning by speaking english, so i figure we're good!

ok so soon after getting there, we discovered that Steffie, Melina, and i all had hoods, so NATURALLY we had to take an emo picture

so it just so happened that we randomly met one of the other exchange students (yes..the same one from the picture above) friends there, who also speaks only french (but knows a little german) and he was SOoOoo cute, so i naturally had to sneak a picture. its kid of hard to tell here, but still i figure it's worthy of including, bc he was speaking only french, and come on, we all know that makes him go up like 15 points on the hottness scale anyway
the view was of course GORGEOUS. HELLo mindennN!!! although there are random people there. move move move but still it's pretty!!
so here's the actual wilhelm or whatever he's called. haaa it's sooo big. anywho please tell me you think that's funny, because i definately do

ok so then our little exchange student friend decided he wanted to climb this huge...thing. AH HUGE haa but it made me laugh. here's the game: its called "try to find the exchange student in the picture!!!" fun fun fun
so here's melina, one of the girls we met before we rode up there, looking out over minden. you cant see much of minden though. but she lives in minden so i figure that counts
ok so that was sunday. tschusie keiser wilhelM! so today is monday and i went to this incredibly langweilig (booooooorring) coffee drinking b/c this girl was babtised and oh it was so boring, BUT something interesting did happen. not only is my host dad THE klaproth of m.e.n.s., not only is the freaking airplane that he made in a freaking museum, but HE TOOK THAT PICTURE ON THE COVER OF THE MAGAZINE. what? AHHh he TOOK the picture for the freaking COVER of a MAGAZINE. ahhhh and he's also inside the magazine, too. AH he never ceases to amaze me...
not only on that page..noooo that wouldn't be good enough, but he's also on THREE others. AH THREE. what. maaaan he's good. so i guess all in all, today was a pretty good day!
ill leave you on this note...