Hooge and Birthdays

Wow, it's been a while since I last updated. But I have an excuse, really! I was on a three week class trip to the North Sea. Thirty tenth graders, four adults, and I as tourists on a tiny island called the Hallig Hooge.

Unfortunatley, I was dumb, and I accidentally reformatted my camera's hard drive. Lame, huh. But I wanted to take pictures with smaller file sizes! Which means that I have no picture of my own from this expedition. Which is super lame, cause I had some awesome ones.

Anyway, I was on this island, I made a map of it. The class and measured the whole island using complex mathematics and Theodoliten. (Angles, reference points, trigonometry) My map looks lovely, a true testiment to my(not very large) talent with drawing. But it doesn'T look that bad, and I think it's mostly accurate, and that's what matters.

Two mothers from students in my class came on the trip, and they cooked great meals, it was really delicious. And the weather was great. Naturally, the
first half of the trip (the part that we had to be outside and measuring stuff) was totally windy and cold and kindof rainy. But the second half was just sun and warm and a little wind. Beautiful.

We went to a concert while on Hooge. The band was called the Old Bags. They were all fifty-somethings and scruffy old men who played traditional German songs such as 'Sweet Home Alabama' and 'Redneck Woman' and 'Seven Nation Army.'
I think that the whole island was stuffed into this tiny firestation. So many drunken german hicks! It was beautiful. And they all somehow knew the Hustle....


There was a darling tea house on the island that we often went to, on the other evenings, the ones where we didn't have a concert to go to. There wasn't much else to do. No tv, no computer, no telephone, we just had conversation. Which was kindof tough for me, because i couldn't understand everything, and I had only been in the school for two days before we left on the trip. It's tough work translating everything in your head! Tiring, mostly.

But now, I feel like I'm better adjusted. And my german is coming along great!

I've been to two or three birthday parties now, I don't remember. I really like them. Basically we just sit around a table and eat for four or five hours straight. It's great. It goes like this. We start out with coffee and cake, around 12:30 or so on a saturday. Naturally, with whipped cream always close at hand. We eat until we're full, slowly, of course, cause I'm in Europe.
Lot's conversation happens here and then, when the conversation starts to die down, we all drink the traditional glass of Prosecco, like Champagne, but Italian. We sip our Prosecco until the bottle is empty and the conversation has reached another lull. Then we go for a walk, get some fresh afternoon air. Eventually, we get around to dinner, and then dessert and then the adults drink some Schnapps, as a digestive. (mmhmm, digestive, yeah.)

These guys are great here. My most recent birthday party was for my ailing host grandmother, she turned 85. She's awesome, every day is a new day for her. She doesn't remember very much anymore. I think I've introduced myself five or so times. But she's still kickin, and she'll let you know if something doesn't please her.

It's just started to rain here, and the leaves are almost changing colors. Fall is falling!

All my best,

emma