Germany

hey!
Well...now it's 1.21pm on Saturday and I have loads to tell!
Wednesday was my first school day with um FRENCH! first, cos that first day i went with Malin to all her classes. so that was hard cos the teacher was speaking half in french and half in German! It was a double period, which i didn't know until afterwards I did wonder what everyone was doing when the funny bell went (it's not a bell, but four ummm notes? a bit like on Grease when the lady hits the xylophone, but more synthesised) and some people got up and left the room but their bags were still there and some others came in from other classes to visit and some started eating. Haha. But then we had a break (there's one after every two periods) and a free period because Malin's psychology teacher wasn't there. I think that must be what always happens when a teacher is away! They just have a free period! Then were Chemistry and Maths: i could kinda understand the concepts which was awesome Malin's maths teacher, Herr Gerber went to NZ 12 years ago and did a trip from Auckland down the North Island and the South Island. He didn't come to Tauranga though. He said he loved the hiking as well hehe. When Malin first introduced me to her classes, someone always said 'Wilkommen' or 'Herzlich Wilkommen' which means welcome, and banged their knuckles on the desks. On Wednesday night I went with Malin to her art group, where they do oil painting, and started a canvas. We caught the bus home (a big bendy bus) which was different.
I have my own timetable now, and I have Chemistry, Maths, English and German with Malin's class (like her form class) and then I have Art, bilingual History (it's in english), and Physics, and also volleyball and badminton with Malin and some of her friends.
On Thursday night Malin had badminton in the school hall, so i went along too, and that was fun (and funny, cos i can't really play it). We also biked there and back, and they don't wear any helmets, and the bikes are quite old-fashioned looking but really modern otherwise, and the lights on the front and back are dynamos. hehe.
Yesterday morning (friday) i didn't actually have to go to school until 9.30. But I didn't know that. So I was ready at 7.15. haha . I had German for the first time, and they started studying the movie Run Lola Run in that period! (we watched it in German in fourth form i think). Then was my art class, and i think it was a theory lesson, so they had a sheet on Leonardo da Vinci to study...so i whipped out my german dictionary and made a brilliant Leonardo Da Vinci vocab list! for example : phrases like 'the mysteries of the human corpse'.
Malin and I went shopping last night in Wiesdorf, which is another part of Leverkusen and oh the smells were so yum. there are food stalls in the pedestrian zone, selling crepes and waffles and licorice....mmm. And lots of pretty christmas lights everywhere! We went to H&M, a clothes store where it's very cool to shop, and there were quite a few department stores like this one, where the area of one floor is about as big as a regular shop in NZ, like ummmm Glassons maybe, but there's an escalator in the middle, and another 3 floors as well! Malin's friends Mara and Kati came over afterwards for dinner and we all played singstar. haha it's cool, they have singstar rocks (some german songs, some english) and Singstar Deutsch Rock-Pop (all german songs). I'm getting to know some cool german songs!!
So, a busy time so far yea?
I'll write more soon

Love to everyone

Kimberley

hey i've been here in Germany for over 12 hours now! Singapore was pretty cool to see on the way, but not overly exciting, except for seeing streets and things from the plane as we came in.

Christmas display at singapore airport

Both flights were looooong, but the second one (Singapore-Frankfurt) was the worst, I guess cos we were all over the whole screen on the back of the seat thing by then and just wanted to sleep lying down. We had to wait for an hour on the bus at Frankfurt while the driver fixed something with the engine. Haha we had to speak our first german in a shop: we stopped at a rest place on the Autobahn (with McDonalds, etc) and had to order in German "~ but it was okay, everyone helped each other out. Anyway, it was nowhere near as nerve-racking as coming out of the bus and meeting our families! It was just a crowd of a whole lot of random people to us, and i think it was hard for most people to search through them for faces from photos. But it was alright, Malin and her mum waved at me so I found them without too much trouble.
Came home here and Malin and her mum and dad all had the day off today, but Malin's sister Merle was still at school. It wasn't light until about 8 or 9 this morning, and by 5pm it was pretty much dark. They took me for a little walking tour around their small town, Opladen, and showed me the school and the Weihnachtsmarkt and where their relatives live.
Oh well I'm tired as and I'll go to bed now.
School tomorrow aah "~