Thursday, November 24, 2011

AFS Camp & More

I realize I haven’t posted in a few weeks, but I blame it on the fact that German life is always jam packed with stuff to do. Most recently, I attended the AFS Midstay Camp. It was held this past weekend in Wennigsen, a small town about a half hour away from Hannover.
The camp was pretty similar to the last one, except there were more people – 44 all together. A few have already been living in Germany for 8 months, and some have just arrived one month ago. I got to meet new exchange students from Brazil, Switzerland, New Zealand, Russia, Malaysia, and China. It was also good to reunite with the ones I already knew.
Throughout the weekend, we split into our three groups (Late Orientation, Mid-stay, and End of Stay) and had a few workshops. In my group, we talked about what we now perceive Germany as, and what we want to do while we’re still here. One thing we all have in common is that we all want to go to Berlin. We made a poster and filled it with pictures of disco balls, chocolate, “Ich verstehe nichts” (I understand nothing), and some other German stuff. We also talked about our problems, like how none of us can participate in school besides English class, and how we all want friends – the leaders explained to us the process of how Germans make friends, and how the hardest part is progressing from acquaintances to friends. They said it takes a while, but it was good to know that everyone’s in the same situation as I am.
On Saturday, we walked into town to do a scavenger hunt. Astrid (Norway), Tina (Switzerland), Amy (New Zealand) and I spent about an hour walking around, trying to find certain places and information. We had to stop random people on the street to ask for directions. Unfortunately, there were very few people on the street, and most of the ones we stopped replied saying they’re not from the town. In the end, we found everything and got the most points!
The rest of the time we were there we spent hanging out: singing/playing guitar, playing cards, doing “magic”, and eating a lot. Sadly, this was my last AFS camp since I’m leaving Germany earlier than most of everyone else.
On the way into town

Getting directions from a nice German lady who
helped us with about half of our tasks

Most of the group :)

I experienced another interesting thing unexpectedly last Thursday. I left school during the middle of the day (half of our classes were canceled) and went to the city with my host sister and a few people from our class. Before I knew it, I was marching the streets with a few hundred others, protesting the school system. Someone explained it to me, and basically they don’t want to have to pay for schoolbooks or for college. They also want their high school to go through grade 13 instead of stopping at 12. It was really cool because it was all young people. Music blared from a truck that we followed all around Hannover. The only chant I could follow was “Wir sind hier! Wir sind laut! Weil man uns die Bildung klaut!” (We are here! We are loud! Because our education is being stolen!) People stopped to watch and take pictures of us as we passed by, and that night it was on the news.

One more thing – today, I went on a field trip with my class to Bergen-Belsen, a concentration camp. We walked around the whole place and through the woods where we saw where the barracks used to be.

Here’s one of the gravestones where 2,500 bodies were buried

This was part of the memorial. It was shocking to read that thirty thousand
Jews were killed in just this one concentration camp.

Bergen-Belsen is the camp where Anne Frank and her sister died. There was a lot of information on her story in the museum, which was really interesting. Much of what I saw today was unbelievable.

Today’s Thanksgiving and I will not be eating any turkey or pumpkin pie :( But I have very much to be thankful for!

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