So last night i went to Annika's 17th birthday party! she's so cute oui! it was quite fun, and we all just hung out and talked and ate pizza and ice cream and everything! good stuff. then at midnight we broke out the champaign to wish her a happy birthday! man they really like this whole "partying through" thing where you start the night before then party until midnight when it actually IS your birthday! I LOVE IT! im going to simply have to start doing that in the US more too....Here is Trond. He makes me laugh ALL THE TIME and i dunno why. he just DOES. he's one of those guys who doesn't mean to be funny, but everything he does is just hallarious and i just don't know why. so he decided to start walking around with his beer in his front pocket. whaat?! hahaaaaa

and of course at every birthday party we must play karakoe...Then i got home at about 3 in the morning and slept until one this afternoon. then i made cookies with the kids shaped like the berlin ampel men! they're AWESOME! then kathas mumsiepoo picked me up to take me to a "soccer game" that NEVER TOOK PLACE! but i personlly had an AWESOME time just riding our bikes through the middle of nowhere, buying spoons and joghurt, and randomly playing on play grounds...this is now probably tane's "margaret, you take too many pictures" look... hahaathen when we got back to tane's we ate "nimmt zweis!" and of course katha must play with her food.ok ok ok...so we ALL had to play with our food...

def a schon nachmittag und abend!!

On friday night, i promised my friend Steffie that I'd go see her school play, but then it turned out that Katha couldn't go with me, so i just went. It wasn't horrible at all. i mean, the play was actually kind of amusing, and it turned out it didn't matter that i went by myself because i ran into some people from my english class and got to hang with them for a few. Some of the actors talked quite softly, so i could neither hear nor understand them, but other than that it was amusing! It was called "Mein Gott, Zues!" "my god zues!" and the characters were all gods, and it was just amusing.

Here's Melina, she's finally back from spending 3 months in Canada! YAY SHES BACK! and she understands what it's like to be an exchange student, so she like always invites me to do stuff and what not. man she's soooo cool!Then on saturday we went to Hanover to have coffee time with Peter's uncle Johann. um. yay? not. it was incredibly boring, and petra thought so too so i didn't feel so bad. we stayed there from 4 until like 10 at night. u G H Hhhh. but oh well. i got to drink a lot of free wine, play "SORRY!" (mensch aerger sich nicht!) and draw pictures of dogs with Josephine. oh she fell on her unicycle and now has a really really really fat stitched up lip, it's crazy, honestly! she won't let me take a picture, though, but it's SOOO big. aw but she's STILL cute! Justus is, too! here's a picture of him when we were waiting outside for peter to pick us up to take us to hanover...

But at this little meeting, i did find out yet ANOTHER something interesting about my host dad (as ive said before is just like oddly weirdly amazing in so many suprising ways like pictures in magazines and a company since 1901 and jada jada..)!! He is directly related to Martin Heinrich Klaproth (he is a greeeeeeeeeeeeeeeat Grandfather), and Martin Heinrich Klaproth is the Chemist who discovered uranium, zirconium, and cerium! LIKE WHAT?!! o m GOSH! He is known as the "father of analytic chemistry"!

i googled it..here's one of MANY websites, if you're interested more...

http://www.nndb.com/people/533/000097242/

AHHH!!

JUIST!!!!

Needless to say, I've been quite busy the last week and a half, and life's really been picking up! it's crazy. My host family is as amazing as ever, school is not SOOOO boring (we tend to have multiple free periods, and friday, monday, tues, AND wednesday i don't have to go b/c they're writing the equavalent to our TCAP) so, it's not horrible. im having fun talking to people and laughing, and not fake laughing but REALLY laughing. oh the joy.

the pictures in between are from the barbique we had to celebrate Josephine's bday! it was a blast....they have little or no revelance to the text, but it def. spices up the entry....

today at dinner, we were talking about games, and petra said that justus likes ALL games! justuts then said, no i dont. then peter said, ok, justus, what don't you like? and justus was like, well, i don't like hospitals...hahaaaaaaa

There are two people from Nicuragua (spelling...um...) in my choir, both of whom im totally in love with! they're the BEST! so one of them, michael, asked me what i did last weekend, and i told him we partied josephine's birthday and i had to write a mega paper and jazzklub, etc, then he was like, margaret (one of the few people in the world who actually calls me margaret..haa) i party on the weekends. i mean, i can't be at home on the weeekends at all! and then i inquired about what he did if he had a lot of work to do, and he goes "well of course! i push it all onto sunday!" i laughed then he proceeded to tell me that i should party more, because it will make my life last longer. haa oh those niccuraguans!

When i was at the sportstudio, i was watching the news, and a story came on about a boy who needed knee surgery from a serious soccer accident. He went into surgery, and when he came out he discovered the doctors had operated on THE WRONG KNEE. oommmg.....

WELCOME HOME FROM JUIST! needless to say, id much rather still be on juist than in school again, because now it's crunch time- gottttta write that research paper!!! anyway, Juist is an utterly gorgeous island off the coast of Germany, and my host fam and i spent a week there just chilling! suprisingly enough, it was warm enough to lay out a couple of days w/out freezing your butt off, and i got a bit sunburned. I DEFINATLY want to visit this island again! There are no cars allowed, but people w/many bags and such get to ride in horse-drawn buggies. the entire island is 17 meters long and 500 meters wide....you can totally stand in the middle and see BOTH sides! it's lovely! there's a bee in my room right now. omggggg it can't figure out how to get out the window. dumb little things. anyway, here are a few nice little snapshots of the island itself...

Oma was pretty darn good at the whole diggin sand casltes thing! i mean, for 70 she was really gettin at it! haha there was one of those electronic horses outside of one of the little shops, and of course J2 wanted to ride it. of course petra said no. then the next day we went by the same little horse, and it was just RUNNING! it was broken, so all the kids got to ride the random little horse totally free (and as many times as they wanted!) niiiicekind of fam group pic...petra, oma, me and peter sitting on the bench outside our beach house!There was this cute little bar on the beach called the Shirm, or the umbrella, and it was literally just an umbrella and becacuse it's only april there were kind of wall like things made of plasticy glass. The kids ordered these "Kinder shots" or kid shots that are the famous juist shots. usually you get this random fruit (i have NO CLUE what it is...) and a toothpick and a shot of vodka, you eat the random fruit and say the word "Wurms" without biting it, then you take the shot and break the toothpick. If you don't break the toothpick, then you pay for the next round. J2 must participate, too of course, but their shots consisted of sprite. oooh the humor...

One day we walked four kilometers to the airport of juist to watch a plane land..um cool? well not really, but oh well.

hoorah for oma and opa!

We had "beach baskets" to block out the wind...SOOOO nice!

notice the matching scarves and hats...haaaa

One day i decided to walk to the other end of the island (the end that wasnt the airport) so i did and i discovered this cute little lake thing and decided to walk around it as well. that decided to last FOREVER! my goodness, but at least it was quite cute! Opa was very excited actually, that i had my camera with me. he told me he used to do this.....all the time as a teenager! oooh OPA! Poor josephine doesn't look to happy, though... and sadly sometime the trip must come to an end! we rode the 2 and a half hour boat back to the cars. I had to drive back w/oma and opa b/c there's not enough room in peter's car. we took the "sightseeing" way home that took FIVE AND A HALF HOURS! AHHHH omg it was crazy...the normal trip takes about 3. greeeat. i got to see some pretty things, though!

and today i went to the REAL markt during my free 5th period, and i found SCISSORS for TWENTY cents! they work really well, too! AND i found tape! please, tell me WHERE was this when i spend 3 50 on scissors and 2 on tape? i DON"T know! so i bought three pairs of scissors to give to josephine because she's pretty much always searching....

Happy Easter Everyone! It's been a while, i know, because I've been out of town for the last week or so travelling w/my pops! On Friday we took a train to Berlin with my Host Fam and enjoyed touring around the city a bit. Dad really enjoyed seeing the Capital of ZIE DEUTSCHLAND! baha anyway, one night we went to this indian restuarant, and i looked out the window and saw THIS!! PHOEBE/BEN! pleaaase tell me you recognize this!...
So going around the Bundestag building, we saw a guy demonstrating against public smoking...
We then took an over night train to Sankt Johann Im Pongau, a little SKI town in austria, and it took SOOOO long to get there, it was quite rediuclous. lucky for us it was more than gorgeous there. We spent a day going to Zell am See, a very cute little town on a little sea. That's where i got a glimpse of this...
The next day we went to Werfen and toured a castle, picnicked, and CLIMED THE FREAKING MOUNTAIN..haaaa
Here's a lovely view from the top of the castle, on the bell tower.
I didnt take many pictures AT ALL...haha here's the only one i got of my pops, waiting at the train station!
We then headed off to munich and shopped a bit and climed some tall towers. One of the days we strolled around the English Gardens and cam across five local Munich-ers SURFING on a river wave, right next to a "surfing and swimming forbidden" sign! it was sooo freaking awesome. We watched for a good 30 minutes, and i have more pictures from the surfers than from anything else. hahaa, but it was really really cool. This one was my favorite, because he wasn't nearly as good as the others, but he still tried and tried and tried...this is my favorite shot...Because i was fortunate enough to get a crunk video camera for my BDAY (YAYYY thankssss!) i videoed a bit and tried to get it on Youtube...we'll see if it works...

So there's the surfers...

cool plaque i saw outside of the HofBrauHause in MunichSo then it was back home on friday. On saturday i went to Brunch with Katha, Mona, and Janin, and we enjoyed buying bed sheets and of course SHOE SHOPPING! please notice my dress :) Es gefaellt mir!
here's a big ice cream cone we saw...

Then sat night i wound up going to my friend moppel's house to watch Casino Royal until 2 in the morning, but then this morning (easter) haaa i had to be at church at 5 30 am because choir was singing. needless to say i was a little tired for this candlelight service, but i put on my best singing-like show! haaa then we all went to breakfast and i came home and crashed for two hours until lunch. So that's been easter so far, and max and the crew are on their way here for coffee time and abendbroet!

I'm off tomorrow morning to the Island of Juist w/my host family and Oma and Opa. Im totally pshyced, becacuse they've been talking about it all year! Ill be sure to get some great pictures, and see you all in a week!

love love