Simon the Flag Expert

Yesterday at dinner I learned that my host brother Simon is a flag expert. He is 11, and he was in Austria all of last week on a ski trip with his class. Sounds pretty awesome, right? He got back Saturday morning so Saturday lunch I finally got to meet him. He's very friendly and polite to me, not very surprising my entire host family is awesome. He talked to me for a while about a comic, Asterix, and then today at dinner Ella (host sister, 8) and HaJo (dad) quizzed him on what the flags from all over the world look like, and it was astonishing. Apparently he watches enough football (/soccer) that he knew everyone from Cyprus to Paraguay to Ukraine and more.

So, the first weekend was a great one, over all. Friday I went to a Scandinavian disco with a few friends, and it was a lot of fun. Also a successful use of the night buses. Saturday I visited some sites in East Berlin with Mark and Maria, for a class project. We had to take pictures and then research the places we visited. It was a very interesting couple of hours. We visited Karl-Marx-Allee, a huge wide street that's full of big but now run-down buildings, and was the site of a bunch of riots in the DDR time (especially the 1950s). We also saw the Gedenkstätte Berliner Mauer, which is a memorial of the Berlin Wall. You climb up about six flights of stairs and then you're on a viewing platform. This memorial is very close to where the border was (there are bricks inlaid showing the border through the middle of the whole city) and you look out to a rebuilt section of the wall. It was astonishing, and very eerie.

From the lookout platform

We also visited the Zionskirche, a beautiful church which was also the site of riots and demonstrations. It was a very interesting afternoon, because I really did feel like the part of the east that I saw a different feel than the west. Saturday night a group of us ventured to a new (to us) part of town, recommended to us by Emma's 18 year old host sister. Another success!

Sunday was a great day with my host family, although I should have done more homework! First I went to church with them, definitely a good move since there was champagne after the service. They promised me it wasn't like that every week, but this week was special because they were installing a new minister.

With my host parents, Marion and HaJo

All of us!

It was a really neat experience, I was able to follow the Bible readings the best because I knew the stories. The sermon was much more difficult, because not only was it a little long but any time my mind drifted a little it took a few extra minutes to figure out what was going on. But it was definitely good practice, and a fun time overall. Yesterday afternoon I cooked for my family; first up was brownies. Yummm. It was very difficult to cook in German, I realized (because not only do you need to know the words but also measurements are all metric!), but thankfully brownies are simple and they were a huge hit. Halfway through my host mom said, "So, I suppose you would usually put cream on these?" I said, "Well, you could, that's a good idea. Usually you put ice cream on them." Then everyone's eyes lit up and my mom said, "Hey, we always have ice cream!" so we brought it out and it was, of course, a delicious addition.

In the afternoon we went for a little bike ride to the former southern border of West Berlin. There were big sections of the wall lined up in rows, and you could even kind of climb around on them. Wir haben viel Spaß gemacht (we had a lot of fun)!

Finally the weekend ended with pasta--I found another recipe in German that I thought looked good, because I wanted to cook something since my family invites me to dinner every night, which they don't have to do. My host mom helped, and even Ella, who's a picky eater, liked it. Success!