Settling In

             After eight sleepless hours with almost 100 really excited and loud high school students we were finally on the ground and I was lucky enough to have a host family who knew that adding an eight hour wait and a two hour train ride would be torture, so I got picked up from the airport by my host mother and my host sister. They were both very friendly right from the start and very excited that I was there. Their son is in Costa Rica for the year with AFS so they were missing the irritation of a fifteen year old boy, so I think I was just the fix :). We drove home and gave a ride to an exchange student, Sam, from Australia because he too is staying in Wuppertal. We arrived early in the morning and were home at around eleven, so the first thing I did was eat and then bring my stuff upstairs and check out my room. Naturally, after two stressful days of no sleep, not to mention the three days of very little sleep, I conked out and slept about four hours, breaking every rule I have for adjusting to time change. The first week was no school, just a few hours of Deutsch Unterricht with the eight other exchange students here from Mexico, Argentina, Venezuela, Norway, Italy, Thailand, and Bolivia. There is way more to having friends from all over the world than people say in advertisements. We have been using the fantastic public transportation here to take day trips to Düsseldorf, Cologne, and Oberhausen all of which are just a quick train ride away. I always take tons of pictures, especially with the Kölner Dom, which is one of the most beautiful churches in the world. Weekends here have been busy and the weeks are full of, what else, school. I’m attending Gymnasium am Kothen which, no, is not a gym :). The people there are very nice and I’m trying my best in all my classes. Surprisingly after thinking it was my only gimmick course, I ended up getting beaten by somebody on the English class exam, but then again most of the things marked wrong are just things that my english teacher doesn’t know. They say when you should use the excuse ‘I am American and this is British English’. I would have but I ended up slightly pointing out that I used ‘an’ correctly with ‘an honor’ and he beat me to it by saying that that may be true in American english but not in British english. :) I am also here to report that this teaching of ‘British English’ is driving the wonderful and hilarious German accent extinct. They all now have the accent of a British person with too much food in their mouth, which is cool, but less cool. I plan on taking action against this tragic catastrophe :). The school has a beautiful view over Wuppertal, which is a large city, in land and population. Wuppertal is best known for the Schwebebahn, which is a subway that hangs up in the air and runs through the city. Its more like five small cities stuck together, in fact it actually is. It has a population of about 350,000 people but its still not considered as a very large city because it is surrounded by so many other cities; Düsseldorf, Köln (Cologne), Essen, Dortmund, Duisburg, Bochum, Münster, Bonn, etc.. I am in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia which is the most populated state of the sixteen states in Germany [17 if you count Mallorca ;) ]. NRW has five of the best 1st Bundesliga Soccer teams (4 are in the top 6) and almost all of them are a twenty minute train ride from here, so I am in the heart of fighting over sports.  The first thing people ask me is which Bundesliga team is the best, and I never know what to answer, so I list of the five here and Bayern Munich to be safe :) I haven’t lost yet :D.