Friday, June 24, 2011

Rush Hour


This is my last complete month in Germany.  I have done so much last-minute traveling with my friends and host-family.  Within this month I was able to visit Hamburg (the biggest northern German city) and Denmark.  We had a few days off of school and made a trip to visit northern Germany.  Other than that I have my big fluency exam tomorrow, and we have a pretty packed agenda before my flight home in two weeks.

This was our (my host-family and I) vacation house in Moorhusen.  It's close to the city of Hamburg.

Volleyball on the beach...!

The streets of Denmark.

Even in Denmark!



Monday, June 6, 2011

Hauptstadt Deutschlands: BERLIN


The last week of May I was in Berlin for our official Congress-Bundestag 2010-2011 exchange seminar.  Aside from checking out Berlin and the Bundestag (Germany's Parliamentary headquarters), we  had a lot of reflecting over the coarse of our exchange year.  I was fortunate to meet once more with my "congresswoman" in Germany's Bundestag.  She was able to show me much more of the Bundestag and I was able to get very nice photos.  Berlin is an amazing historic city in eastern Germany with a population of around three million.  It's the largest city in Germany and it also serves as its capital.  I had a great time and I can't believe that another year is done...this trip officially marked the end of my time in Germany.  The link above is a video of us in the news with all the Congress-Bundestag scholars as we met in Berlin.

The building with the dome in the background is the Bundestag...

My congresswoman in Germany, Michaela Noll (North Rhine-Westphalia, Christian Democratic Union)


This is just before you cross over to the other side of the Berlin Wall.

This is Dr. Norbert Lammert, President of the German Bundestag.

The weekend prior to my "end-of-the-year" trip with my organisation in Berlin, my host-family and I went water-skiing (it's now hot enough)!  It was a water-skiing course in which you hang on as a cable pulls you--very different and much fun.  There were several large ponds with gliding cables that you hang on with as you ski.