Germany

Prague Under Attack By Giants

2008-06-21T04:17:00.000-07:00

Prague by Night

2008-06-17T05:19:00.000-07:00

The Game is Finished

2008-06-06T07:17:00.000-07:00

You can play it here.

---PLAY---

Todays Game Update

2008-06-05T09:22:00.000-07:00

Newest version as of now.

Controls are the same as before, except now you can press up to go through doors.

UPDATES:

-Multiple stages
-Doors

-----PLAY-----

New Hobby Update

2008-06-04T05:53:00.000-07:00

For those who haven't read the post titled "New Hobby", read that one first!

I have decided to use this blog as a way to show the progress in my game designing process. Working with the graphics from yesterday, and some new code thank to a tutorial at This Page I have a new version of the game now.

I put a link into the tutorial because I feel it is important to give credit to the people that deserve it, finding good tutorials for Flash 8 is fairly difficult, but his worked amazingly well.

I took out the "attacks" of this version, I will put them back later.

Move Left/Right --> Arrow Keys
Climb/Descend Ladder/Boxes --> Up/Down Arrows
Jump --> Space Key
Crouch --> Down Key (when not on a latter/box)

-----PLAY-----

Another --Newer-- Version

+Background animation
+Little bug fixes

-----PLAY-----

New Hobby

2008-06-03T13:30:00.000-07:00

Here's a random, non-Germany related blog entry for today, just 'cause I can.

I picked up a little new hobby this year, just because I wanted something to do in my free time. Programming. It sounds boring, and a lot of it is, but making a game can be fun (I am using Flash). I wouldn't suggest it to people who get easily frustrated, have trouble finishing things, enjoy sleeping at night, or have trouble writing tons of unintelligible lines of code without typos. Strangely, those are all things that describe me. I guess it's kinda like someone that has a fear of spiders taking on a hobby as a spider breeder.

I chose this little hobby because I was looking for video games (my other little hobby) for my Mac and I realized how few there are, and how expensive they are (*Windows version -> 10$* *Mac version -> 50$*). I thought if I started easy, I could maybe work my way up eventually and help out all the people like me who just want to entertain themselves on their Macs without spending a bunch of money.

Here is a sample of a days work on a Flash program, you can't even call it a game yet, but I like how it's coming along. At my current level of programming skill, something like this takes a few hours (animation and coding).

Movement -> Arrow Keys
Jump (when standing still) -> Up Key
Crouch -> Down Key
Weak Punch -> C Key
Strong Punch -> X Key

Note -- Don't expect anything to come at you, like enemies, because there aren't any, you just walk around the one part of the stage.

To start, click on the ---PLAY--- link below and then just click anywhere inside the animation box on the new page, you will need Flash Player to get it to work.

------PLAY-----

Have Fun
-Kevin

This year until now in a mosiac

2008-05-13T06:37:00.000-07:00

This was just a test for a bigger project at first, but it turned out OK so I thought I would share it with the few people each day who still look at the blog. I haven't had much motivation to write new blogs lately. You can show your longing for more news by posting a comment (just writing "write more" is enough) to let me know you were here!

Every square in this picture is a picture that I have either taken in Germany this year, or used in some way in Germany (pictures of my home town, for example, to show to people in Germany).

The big picture is me in front of the Hamburg capitol building.

Enjoy.

TIP -- Click on the picture to make it bigger!

Sushi Night

2008-02-21T13:32:00.001-08:00

Sushi Night

I decided to make some sushi today for some delicious fun. It turned out o.k. in the end, the rice wasn't the best and some of the ingredients weren't balanced right, but it was still tasty, and it was fun to make. Here are some shots from this evening.

Here is my host mom, rolling up her own sushi roll.

Here is the first of the three types we made. This one is smoked salmon with cucumber and cream cheese. The salmon gives it the nice smokey and fishy flavor, the cucumber brings a nice crunch to the bite, and the cream cheese makes everything blend together smooth, but there was too much of the latter ingredient.

Here is the North Sea shrimp and avocado roll. The North Sea shrimps are from the North Sea, which is the sea to the North of Germany. This roll was a favorite with Heiko.

Here is the last roll, simple avocado, cucumber, and cream cheese. I wasn't sure if somebody wanted something without fish, and a roll without fish can be stored for eating sometime else.

Here is the end result, 6 of the 9 total rolls made are here, and the four of us almost finished this plate,

Till next time,

-Kevin Sacherman

Weimar, in English, by day.

2008-02-13T02:24:00.000-08:00

For the German version go here --> www.sachermanindeutschland.blogspot.com (It might not be updated for a little.

I just got back from 5 days in the city of Weimar, Germany's so-called "culture city." The city is well known for being the home of both Goethe and Schiller, some of Germany's most famous writers. The lived there in the 16th century, before the United States existed, but their houses are still standing. On a darker note, Weimar was also kind of a starting point for the Nazi party in the 1930's, and one of the first concentration camps, Buchenwald, was built just a few miles outside of the city. After the war, the city was in the DDR, East Germany. These contrasting histories make this city an ideal place to learn about German history and culture.

This trip was organized by the German side of the exchange program (GIVE, ASSE, PPP, CBYX are all abbreviations I have heard for it.). I don't want to bash the American side too bad, but the German side really seems to have their shit together, and they put on a great couple days. If anybody has read my blogs about the Washington DC trip at the beginning of the year, they will know the little issues I had with it.

So here it goes with:

Day 1

Day one was mostly traveling. I got pretty lucky with my train tickets and managed to meet up with a few friends on the train.
The train ride was uneventful, but I got to see some new scenery from the train, we went through Berlin and East Germany, and we hat the switch trains in Leipzig. Everything was going pretty well, I made all the trains in time and I brought plenty of snacks so it was looking like it was going to be a pretty smooth day, but then I did something stupid; I left my bag on the train.

Now, for travelers, leaving a bag on the train and leaving a bag on an airplane are completely different. If you leave something on an airplane, you will have about a half-hour time period where you could go back to the train and ask to go get it, but unlike an airplane, a train leaves one station after about 3 minutes, and after that it's gone, the train won't stop or turn around. I noticed it just as I was leaving the station, and even though I ran at full speed back through the station to the platform, I couldn't even see the train by the time I got there. Now, there wasn't anything too important in this bag, I had my backpack and my wallet, cell phone, and such, but 5 days without any new clothes or toiletries would have been a disaster.

The next step was that I went to the help desk with a friend (his German is way better than mine and I didn't want to screw this one up) and we told the lady there that I had forgotten my bag. Upon hearing this, she pulled out this HUGE book, which in my mind is always a bad thing, when someone needs pulls the big book out. As it turns out, it wasn't very complicated at all, she called someone who called the train, and someone on the train went searching for the bag, and they managed to find it before the train left the next station, which was Erfurt. They aren't allowed to mail people's bags, so I had to buy a ticket and take a little adventure. In the end, I was 6 euros lighter, with both my bags and a few pictures of Erfurt. Success.

That night the whole group got together, 47 of us total, 3 went home early, and watched a film. I say film because even though it was about 90 minutes, I always consider movies to be interesting, and films are things you watch in school, or on the History Channel, where the same 5 pictures float across the screen with creative zoom techniques with an old guy talking for a long time.

We also took an initial tour of the city, to get an overview of some of the things we will see later.

Day 2

After the excitement of day 1, I could hardly wait for day 2. I got a room with 2 guys from Oregon, Johnny and Ryan. Breakfast was the normal German affair, rolls with meats, cheeses, pig-based spreads, and jellies. Did you know that the direct translation of the German word for breakfast is "early piece"? Pretty funny. After early piece we headed into the city to look at Goethe's and Schiller's houses. I was pretty bummed that you weren't allowed to take any pictures inside, but that's something you readers will have to deal with. The houses were interesting, considering that they were hundreds of years old. We also got to see Goethe's traveling coach, back then it must have been the cadillac of horse drawn buggies.

Day 3

Day three was a day trip to Wittenburg, the city where Martin Luther lived during the reformation of the Catholic church. This trip started with an hour and a half on the train, then we had a tour of the city.

This is Martin Luther's house, actually one side of his house form the view of the courtyard in the middle. It was pretty giant.

This is the city church in Wittenburg, different from the castle chruch, below, where Martin Luther "hang his 95 thesis' on the door" (He didn't really hang them there, but it's close enough.)

After lunch we went to the Kennedy center for international economics (or something along those lines) for a seminar on economy ethics. Now, I'm not going to say that it was bad, but it was just extremely confusing. We had to play this card game together. Each table had a set of rules that were slightly different, and the rules were extremely vague. Because nobody could really understand it right and therefor nobody was playing right, the guy leading the seminar was getting pretty angry and he kept changing the rules. By the time the rules were settled, the game ended up to be a variation of Hearts, but stripped of all skill based elements and fun. You would deal the entire deck of cards out, and you weren't allowed to look at your cards. Then the person to the left of the dealer put their top card out, and the other players each put a card out. The suit of the first card determines which suit counts that round, like Hearts, but since you weren't allowed to look at your cards, it didn't matter. The person with the highest card of that suit (usually the person who started, because there would not be any other cards of that suit played) would win. To make it more confusing, we weren't allowed to talk with each other. The winners and losers moved to a different table, where the rules would be a little different.

We didn't learn until it was over that it was teaching us about global economics. The lead guy tried to explain that the girl who won the most rounds won because she had good leading skills, even the game was 100% (I'm not exaggerating here) luck, and that everyone else lost because they couldn't adapt to new rules or work well with other people. He had a good message, but the method of telling it was broken. In the end, it turned out to be another lesson about culture shock, which is pointless by now because we have been living here in Germany for 6 months now.

The cards.

An excited participant. (roommate Ryan)

Day 4

On day 4 we got down to some of the heavy history of the area, starting with a trip to Buchenwald, one of the first concentration camps built by the Nazi party. First some background information on the area. The city was one of the first cities that gave its full support to the Nazi party (There was a time when many people supported the Nazi party, before the war.) This city was also the first to start making Hitler's youth groups. Because the Nazi party had been in the city for so long before the war started, nobody had a problem when they built the concentration camp, Buchenwald, just a few miles outside the city. It wasn't until the end of the war, when General Patton forced the residents of the city to walk through the camp that the town knew what was going on just around the corner.

I didn't take any pictures there, under the request of our guides, even they taking pictures was allowed. All of the original prisoner barracks were gone, but the main gate, the fence, the crematorium, and a few other structures were still there.

After that, we headed back and in the afternoon we had a very awkward group discussion, nobody had much to say so we sat almost completely silent for about an hour and a half. That brings us to,

Day 5

Day 5 was also just a travel day, but because I booked my train on the safe side (later) I ended up waiting about 2 hours longer than everyone else, and I traveled alone.

Me waiting, self portrait, too bad that the weather was so nice for the travel day.

The rolling hillsides of East Germany, pretty nice view for the train ride.

Well, that's it (alot, I know). Check back for "Weimar, by night" for the lighter, social based version starring Jeff Condor and brought to you by MayO's, It's Mayonnaise for Breakfast!

Till then, write some comments and tell your friends to read this,

-Kevin Sacherman

Edit : I mixed up day 2 and 3, oops. (They are still mixed up)

Uri Geller

2008-01-24T12:19:00.000-08:00

I thought I would explain a bit about who Uri Geller is, since I have a video or two on my blog and it doesn't need to be an inside joke with the guys from Germany. Uri is a magician, a special flavor of magician though, they call themselves "mentalists". He was really popular in the 60's or 70's, mostly because of his "amazing" ability to bend spoons by just rubbing them and thinking really hard. My guess is that his popularity waned when people caught on to the fact that it was fake, but maybe people wanted to see something new.

Back to the point, now he's got his own TV program in Germany, and oh, what a surprise, it's a game show, like every German TV show. It's called "The Next Uri Geller" and it is supposed to search for someone to replace him, from 10 of the top "mentalists" or something. In addition to the silly competition and American Idol-like long, drawn out shows, Uri says he'll do a live illusion every week, and he will even make things happen in the viewers' houses!

The first week, he fixed broken clocks and he made spoons fly off the top of televisions, which is in the video under

www.sachermaningermanyvideos.blogspot.com

To let people know, the video is completely real, I filmed with a real camera, put directly on my real computer, and loaded directly onto the real internet. Nothing about the video itself is altered, although I'm not going to make any promises about the condition of the spoon that evening.

The next week he made peoples tables shake and slide, I felt like I was watching ghost hunters on the Discovery Channel (which is a great show, if you get the chance, much better than Uri Geller) I made a video there too, but it's not worth putting on the site.

Anyway, we'll see if this magician can manage to suck a few million dollars out of this generations pockets, just like he did last time he was popular.

If you're interested, there are some great informational videos on YouTube about him.

-Kevin Sacherman

2008-01-16T12:55:00.000-08:00

Cartoons

2008-01-16T12:21:00.000-08:00

The German class decided to put together a class newspaper, and instead me just waiting for the project to be over, I pulled out my pen and whipped up these masterworks. Unlike the last post about my drawings, these were made during the proper homework time (at home) and with the teachers permission, except for maybe a few, but thats beside the point.

This was my first one, it was right after people found out that Iran didn't really have a nuclear program, it translates to, "No, George, no more cookies until you stop lying about the Middle East." I didn't think it was particularly funny, but other people liked it.

This is a Hamburg based joke, at the time I wrote it, the Hamburg cultural museum had just found out that it had bough fake Chinese terra-cotta soldiers, it translates to, "Hey guys, they're made out of chocolate!"

This one is about the new electronic voting machines this year in Hamburg, and how people were unsure about how to use them and such.

This one is my favorite of this bunch, it's about global warming, the newspapers say things like, "Knut is 1" and "Save the earth" and such. Take note of the irony with the airplane.

KEGELN!!

2008-01-16T11:51:00.000-08:00

I think I have a new favored sport, it's called Kageln, and it involves throwing this little ball down a skiing bowling ally and trying to his this pins that are hanging on strings on the end. It's kinda like a party version of bowling, not so official, a little more old-school. Check out these sweet action pics!

...The open Kegelbahn (like autobahn but for kegeln). I'd compare it to a few feet of fresh pow when the roads are closed and the lifts are open.

The tension was building, as we tallied our own scores by counting how many lights went. Not pictured, the hours of stretching and warming up beforehand.

Host mother at full speed, showing us novices how to throw the ball.

This photo was taken for the sake of training, we need to work on Heiko's form if he wants to make the German Olympic Kegeln team.

My refined and streamlined style blew the competition out of their Lederhosen.

It's been a while...

2008-01-16T11:39:00.000-08:00

It's been a while... but now its time to hear some more news!

I'll start here, the Christmas market in Hamburg, a few weeks before Christmas. This place was full to the brim, the area around the main train station and the city hall.

First is my host brother and mother, then my host brother and me, then a shot to show how crowded it was, we wanted to go down there, but that wasn't gonna happen. The last shot is from the Christmas parade that night, it was every Saturday until Christmas in December. Since it's old news, I'll keep it short and end it here.

Cookies!

2007-12-04T06:15:00.000-08:00

It may have only been the first of December, but we cracked out the rolling pins and cookie cutters and punched out some sweet cookies. My host mother woke up earlier than my host brother an me, so she mixed up some of the batter ahead of time. I've been promising pictures for a while, so I took a bunch during the cookie day.

These first two shots are to show the sheer volume of cookies that we produced. The mountain of little ones were made with this cool little machine, one of those things you see on TV be figure they will never work. It took a little getting used to, but we were busting out sheet after sheet of these little cookies once we got in the swing, while one sheet was in the oven, we'd empty, clean, and refill the next sheet. The other cookies are made the old fashion style, rolled out with a pin and punched out with different shaped cutters. We got creative with a few, pulling out a knife and making out own designs, among them, some snowmen, a big angel, and a guitar.

Here are my teammates hard at work, decorating the cookies.

Cookies aside, I visited the Christmas market that's just down the street from me, the one I was planning on taking pictures at and writing about, but it turned out to be pretty small, at least for the moment, so I didn't bother writing about it or taking pictures. When I head to the big one in the middle of Hamburg, I will make sure to write something.

Also, I'm going to start an E-mail list for blog update reminders, if you want to know instantly when a new blog is up, just send an e-mail to ksacherman@gmail.com to get on the list!

Cooking

2007-11-25T08:00:00.001-08:00

The christmas markets don't get going until next weekend, I found out today, so I'll write a little about cooking with my host mom here in Germany.

Sometimes on weekends or when I have time I help my host mom cook lunch or whatever she is making. Lunch is the biggest meal of the day in most German families, while breakfast and dinner are usually simple, cold meals consisting of breads and toppings, and salads and vegetables. My host mom is fun to cook with because for some strange reason she has complete faith in my cooking abilities, even with things that I have no clue what to do. Sometimes you cook with someone and one person completely dominates the kitchen and tries to do everything, but my host mom gets stuff ready for me and then says, "Here, you know what to do with this right?" It's pretty fun sometimes. She still does work on other things and tells me what to do when, and what to add and such, so in the end I am like a second set of hands for her. We end up making a pretty solid team sometimes.

This morning, for example, we baked a batch of cupcakes. We didn't use any boxed mix or anything, just eggs, flour, sugar, milk, etc. We made some plain ones, some chocolate chip ones, and a batch of marzipan-ish almond ones. Some were later topped with a sugar glaze and chocolate flakes or sprinkles, and some were powdered with powdered sugar. We ate a good chunk of the total 36 cupcakes during our families usual Sunday coffee, hot chocolate, and cake session, which I have come to really enjoy.

Anyway, expect pictures for the next post, as well as that christmas market information I hinted at.

-Kevin

The next little bump.

2007-11-21T05:34:00.000-08:00

I have finally started to talk a little in German with my host mom and people at school. It took a long time, but now that the ball's rolling I think things will go a little faster. Before, when I wasn't talking, my main fear was that I would say the wrong stuff, or I wouldn't know the word, and then I would make a complete fool of myself. That happens, but as it turns out, it's not all that bad, as long as I laugh with them.

Now that I am comfortable enough with my vocabulary and grammar to talk I am running into other problems though. I really didn't think that my American accent would be as much of a problem as it is. I knew it would happen, it has to happen. If I didn't have an American accent, who would have one? All Americans must at some point. Anyway, I figured it would just be one of those things that would be there, and maybe later I would work on getting rid of it a little, but it has turned out to be pretty annoying.

First of all, any time I say something in German to people at school (not teachers, only other kids) they laugh. Some are worse than others (I won't name names, except Patrick). Usually it's just that one word that I get wrong that sets it off, something that seems simple like "ich" which means " I " , it's not pronounced like "itch" or as in "dish" but somewhere in between, and I can't seem to get there. Maybe Germans have a differently shaped mouth and/or throat that helps them belt it out? Back to the point, I mess up one little word, and then one person gets a little grin, and then it turns into a chuckle, and I'm lucky if it stops there. If it continues on to a full laugh, and other people join in, I have no choice but to stop talking a laugh too, even if I don't get it. It can get worse though! The only way it gets past the laughing stage is when it somebody turns around to someone else and says "Oh hey, did you hear Kevin? No? Oh, Kevin, say it again." I'll get more into that later. The laughing doesn't last long at all, and it's all in good humor so there's no problem. It usually doesn't bug me that much but I could live without it.

About the "Oh hey, did you hear Kevin? No? Oh, Kevin, say it again." thing, I think I could make some pretty good money from this. Some times people come up to me and say, "Hey, Kevin, say _______." I've learned that if I say no, it continues to, "Oh, come on, please say _______." At this point if I say no, it can go a few ways. Sometimes they give up, if the word isn't that funny or if nobody is else is there. Sometimes they just keep asking again and again. But sometimes, and this one's the key, someone says, "Hey, come on now, I'll give you 10 cents when you say it." It's hard to turn those offers down.

The words that they want me to say mostly come from two different sources. The first is when I say something and it sounds funny with my American accent, and the person that heard it wants other people to hear it. That kind isn't my favorite, cause I don't like repeating my mistakes when I know I did something wrong. The other kind is when it's a funny word in general, one example is "Syrupartiges Piswasser" (sp?). It means syrup-flavored piss-water if you couldn't see that one, and one guy (I won't name names) uses it to describe Coca-cola. I think I got 10 cents for that one. Another one is "Wanderdunen." If you know what it means, great, if not, don't worry. It's pretty funny. There is another source for these phrases and words, but my German is good enough to mostly avoid it by now, and that's when the words are racy or mean slang, but I don't fall for that trick.

The reality of my accent hit hard the other night when I stopped by McDonalds (which seems to be very popular in Germany). I order two cheeseburgers in my best German ("Zwei Cheeseburgers" for anyone who wants to know). Now, cheeseburger is the same word in German as in English, and "Zwei" is pretty short and simple, but for some reason, the lady behind the counter (she wasn't American/Brittish) said, "For here or to go?" I was pretty shocked, and I did the stupid thing and answered in English. She went on to say, "Is that all, two euros, and thankyou,". I still wonder if my accent was really bad enough on just those two little words that she noticed I wasn't a German speaker and switched into English.

I'm sure it will improve sometime!

-Kevin

A preview from the next post: Christmas markets!

I would have won the bowling match...

2007-11-03T16:45:00.000-07:00

If it weren't for that freak high-fiving accident during the first round!

School's back.

2007-11-02T14:48:00.000-07:00

I wrote a short blog with pictures, now its time to get down to the news from the first week back to school from fall vacation. This week we got back a couple of tests that we took before the vacation; history, politics, and chemistry. The only one which I actually recieved a grade on was chemistry, and I got a 4. The grading system is 1 through 6, 1 being the best (A+) then 2 is B and so on. The test was difficult, even for a lot of the other people in the class, so I was pretty proud of myself for getting 11.5 points out of 24.

The history test is a whole 'nother thing. Chemistry involves alot of numbers and diagrams, and the elements have similar names (well, some do, Sodium is Natrium, Hydrogen is Wasserstoff). With numbers and pictures, language doesn't really matter, even though learning it is still a problem, but history is words, and only words. On top of that, it was German history, which I don't know much about. The point is, I did bad on the history test. Most people wrote full pages of information for each question, I only hd a couple words scribbled down. For one answer, I simply wrote "Demokratie" (democracy). The funny thing is that the teacher wrote next to it, "Genauer! Was sonst noch?" (More preceise, what else?) Even though he didn't even bother giving me a grade, but he complained about my innaccurate answer.

Maybe now is a good time to mention that German tests are nothing like American tests. Multiple choice questions are only ever seen in math tests, and even then they are few and far between. So far, it seems that for alot of tests you get a couple pieces of paper and a question sheet. This makes things pretty difficult for a non-German speaker to do much of anything on tests, but I do my best.

The politics test was a report we had to write about an internship. About a month ago we went to a job fair type thing and we had to interview somebody at the company where we would like to have an internship. I did my report on Airbus. I managed to scrap together 2 pages of information, and I surprised the teacher when I handed it in. Unfortunatly, she did not grade it, and my homework for next week is to correct the crazy amount of mistakes I had (there were actually 3 whole lines that DIDN'T have mistakes).

Today we took a test in a class, I think I did OK actually, we will see next week when we get it back.

Until next time,
-Kevin

Bored of reading plain old English?

2007-11-01T14:38:00.001-07:00

Head over to the German side of my life!

http://sachermanindeutschland.blogspot.com/

Timber!

2007-10-31T07:26:00.000-07:00

It's been a good 3 weeks without a post, sorry. I guess I was a little uninspired for a little while.

Anyway, the other day my host brother and I took on a rogue group of trees that were taking over the area near the trashcans. Armed with a branch cutter and a handsaw, or mission was clear, and within a half hour we had succesfully eliminated all three targets.

The Target
Locked and Loaded

Moving in for the kill.

It had to look like an accident.

A more space-efficiant, German Christmas tree.

A Tour of My Notebook.

2007-10-10T07:09:00.000-07:00

I thought that since I have not written much about my school time so far here in Germany, I would give my readers a full tour of my school notebook, complete with full color photos and even a video!

This is the first page of my notebook. You can see that I had attempted to actually take notes and understand what was going on, but I gave up pretty fast, in this case a history lesson that went right over my head. (this was still the beginning of school). One day when I was just doodling, I rememebered doing this cool designs in math class a long time ago, so I thought I would try to do it again, and it worked. I created this one using a ruler and a pen, all of the lines you see are straight! Unfortunatly, it was not perfect because someone (I won't write his name for his own protection) decided to add a few of his own lines.

This next page is a rare site in my notebook, an entire page full of writing, almost completly lacking doodles (I don't know why I had to go and highlight my name in the bottom corner, ruining an otherwise pristine page of work). The next page in the notebook is covered halfway with writing on the same subject, and without any doodles. It may look great, a whole page of writing about a Franz Kafka parable, but it is in English and it was for the most part incorrect.

This design is one of my favorites. The sheet started out as notes on the formation of volcanoes, but once I lost track of what was going on, I think I mentally gave up on the notes and started doodling. the color was an afterthought, and I didn't finish it because I am not yet sure if these drawings are better left black and white or not. I think it would make a great stained-glass window.

I sincerely thought that this was the given assignment that day in German. We were told to listen to a parable from Franz Kafka and write down pictures that we get out of it. I guess in German, the word for picture is the same for "word picture", so in the end I was wrong, once again. For a little background info, the parable was about how the narrarator would love to be an Indian, blah blah blah. (I say that only because I didn't understand much more than the title.).

This masterpiece took a few class periods to complete. It was done completely freehand. Unlike other doodles, this one has it's own dedicated page. I opened to a new page to start taking notes, but there were no notes for me to take, so I did a little doodle, then I opened to it again the next class to take notes, and again there were no notes, so I started to expand the doodle to fill the page.

This last page is a page of notes from Philosophy class. I felt bad that I was doing so much doodling, so I decided to aim my doodles towards the class subject. Because the school makes you choose between philosphy or religion, I thought evolution would be fair game. I like how my little comic strip came up, and I even made a video of it!

Go here for the video.

2007-10-08T08:24:00.000-07:00

Who knew that Hamburg was a beach town? This weekend I went into the city with some fellow schoolmates (Kevin right and Felix left). We walked around some parts of the city, and they showed me some places. We went to the infamous Reeperbahn, although at three in the afternoon, the only thing going on is cleanup from the night before. Maybe I will go back sometime at night. From there we walked by the fishmarket, which opens on Sundays at 5, which I hear is a cool place to go, it's not really that much fish I guess, but kind of an after party for people who spent the night on the Reeperbahn. After that we hit up this beach! There are a handfull of these "beach clubs" once you pass the Harbor in Hamburg.

If you look at if from this view though, it doesn't look as much like a party. The same "beach" from the picture before is right next to the parking lot, overlooking the river and "Blohm und Voss"'s gigantic shipyard.

That's it for now, more stuff when I get more pictures!

-Kevin

A little bit about German candy.

2007-10-01T12:12:00.000-07:00

I found something to write about this week, German candy and chocolates. I have only been here for a few weeks, but I have tasted some pretty tasty snacks. Most people know the line of "Kinder" chocolates; different shaped cookies or chocolates with chocolate cream or milk cream. One of the more popular are the "Uberrashungs Eier" (Suprise eggs). Here is a picture for you poor soles who have never had one.

The eggs have a thin chocolate shell, lined with milk cream. This milk cream is in many German candies. It is kind of an opposite of chocolate. Many people would say vanilla is the opposite of chocolate, but the milk cream seems to fit once you taste it. Once you eat the chocolate-milk shell (which is made from super delicious milk chocolate) there is a little container in the middle, like you would get for a quarter out of the machine at a supermarket. Inside the balls are little toys, here are some examples that me and Heiko (host brother) recieved. They are from a series of goodies that when placed in the sun for a while, their big noses turn red, like a sunburn. I have heard that there are some collecters that will pay alot for certain toys out of these eggs, similar to collecting Happy Meal toys or Beanie Babies.

Another brand of German candy I really like are Ritter Sport chocolate squares. They are like chocolate bars, but square shaped. Each color wrapper is a different type, so when you see the display, it presents you with a deliciously overwhelming raindow of deliciousness. The flavors range from Alpen Milch (milk chocolate with milk from the Alps), to chocolate with strawberry flavored cream and little crunchy strawberry bits, to my personal favorite of dark chocolate with marzipan.

On the line of marzipan, it is awsome. If you don't know what it is (which I think you should), marzipan is a super sweet, sticky, almond paste that is found inside of alot of chocolates and candies. It is really rich, and really tasty.

Today I found a new snack, Heiko showed it to me. It is called Koala "Kakao" or "Milch". The box is full of little cookies loosely shaped like koalas, with little koalas drawn onto them. They cookies are filled with chocolate or milk cream, both of which are delicious. The koala cookies also came with little toys, I got a snake and Heiko got a koala princes.

2007-09-30T11:07:00.000-07:00

No new post this week......except for this one I guess, but it shouldn't really count or something. I promise (to you, my loyal reader base of about 20) that I WILL write something this week as soon as I know what I want to write. PLEASE comment on this...thing (it's not a post!)...if there is anything you (my huge reader base) want to know!

-Kevin

German kids have more fun than American kids.

2007-09-23T12:01:00.000-07:00

Another week of school went by, fairly fast I should add. I went to a trial tennis training session on Monday, which was a blast. I was sick for the entire week, but I think I am pretty much over it now. After missing a day of school on Tuesday, I didn't know what to do as far as excusing my absence, and I'm not quite sure if it is completely settled or not. On Thursday I went to a barbecue party that the class threw for a student because she is leaving to New Zealand for a year. On Saturday, I stayed up until 2 with my Heiko (host brother) watching Dawn of the Dead (the original version is called "Zombies in Kaufhaus" in German, which means zombies in shopping mall). I gave him a bag of honest to god American cheetos, they were smuggled in by one of my connections in America (her name is "wow" upside-down). Cheetos are one of the few American things that haven't found there way into the German market.

Enough about me, this week's topic is "German kids have more fun than American kids."

This doesn't have anything to do with the lower drinking age, or the abundance of dance clubs, or the easy to use public transit systems, this point is purely based on the cool playstructures in German playgrounds. If you are reading this from a country other than USA, you might want to know that most playgrounds in America lack any really fun things because of liability issues.

To start, German playgrounds all contain the basics: swings, slides, castles, etc. The first time I went to a German playground was a few weeks ago with some other people from the language camp. The playground had this one thing that three people could stand on top of, it was balanced on a couple of strings, AND it spun around really fast if somebody pushed it. Once it was spinning, there was no chance of getting off safely, and the only thing you could do was to hold on to the metal pole in the middle for your dear life.

Another example of German playground fun-ness is the monster of a play spider-web that belongs to the school next to mine. I can see it out of the window I sit next to, it's huge! I have seen a few spider web playstructures here and there, but this one was a 3-D tower of ropes and knots, with little platforms placed randomly to sit on. For some reason, almost every time we have class in the classroom that has a view of the spider web, there are kids playing on it, and it always looks like alot of fun. I was reminded of why American playgrounds are so bland when I kid slipped and fell pretty far down, prompting a crowd of other kids and a teacher to come swarming in. In America, the spider web would have been gone the next day, but alas, it still stands!

Yesterday, I went with Heiko (host brother) and his friend Dennis to a park in a forest. Scattered around in the woods were little obstacle courses and forts, all built completely out of logs, planks, and nails, only the seats on the sings were made of plastic. One of the structures there was a simple log fort with a little staircase on one side, but the other three sides had an assortment of logs and fallen trees that led to the top that you could climb, if you had good enough balance, to the top of the fort.

After that we went to a playground that had a big, double-cone shaped rope thing that you could crawl inside of, and then it could spin, making for a pretty frightening experience.

Another German playground staple, at least in school playgrounds, is the ping pong table. The tables lack any moving parts like a removeable net, or foldability, and they are made solid with cement and metal, so they last through whatever school kids want to do with them. All you need is your own ping pong paddle and ball, and you can play pretty much anywhere.

Hopefully I will encounter some more crazy playgrounds with some new structures, I will keep you updated!

Tell me what you want! What should I write about? Post a comment and let me know! (I know, I know, MORE PICTURES)

Sunday at the theater.

2007-09-16T13:15:00.001-07:00

After my first week of German school, a nice slow-paced weekend was perfect for me. On saturday I went shopping with my host mother and brother at the mall, I needed a jacket for winter. We went to a bunch of shops, but I couldn't find anything. I found one jacket that I liked, but the first size I tried on had really short sleeves, and the next size up the sleeves were the same, but the jecket almost whent down to my knees. I settled for a pair of sweatshirts from the foot locker, my poor adidas jacket needs a break after being worn every day for a month. Hopefully next time I will find something.

That evening I watched a new German gameshow on TV with my host parents. I think it was the show's first airing, and it seemed to not be very well thought out. After an hour straight without commercials, the show was only two-fifths finished, and almost every question was a tie. Contestants were cheating now and then, and it seemed alot of the answers were purely based on if the host thought it was close enough or not. After the hour of waching it, I still couldn't quite understand the rules, and I don't think the contestants really knew what was going on either. There are six kids and three adults competing for some money by answering questions or something. All of the kids were playing for money for their schools, and one girl started crying when she didn't win the money her school needed to install proper equipment in its gymnasium. It was clearly a rip-off of "Are you smarter than a 5th grader" but it was nearly unwatchable for me. Maybe I'm being too harsh...

Back to the weekend, sunday started with a slow morning of TV, video games, sleeping, etc.. At one o'clock everbody gathered around for a delicious lunch of roast pork, green beans, peas and carrots, potatoes, and pasta. Mmmmmm. In the afternoon, I met with people from school and we took the train into the city to one of the nicest trainstations I have been to in Germany, there were plants inside, as well as a small shopping mall, and it was like a big greenhouse with glass domed roof. We went to the Cinemaxx theater to see "The Bourne Ultimatum". The theater was huge! I think it was the biggest one I have ever been in. The movie was fun, and afterwards we went to McDonald's (which seems very popular in Germany) and had some cheeseburgers. It wasn't until the train ride home that I realized I should not walk from the train station home alone, but luckily one of the people I was with (Patrick) offered to give me I ride home.

Thanks for reading,
-Kevin

Here is a picture just because I feel bad about not having any for the last few posts. A shot of a beatiful morning in Hamburg (the weather has been really nice the last few days, reminds my old home town Palo Alto actually).

2007-09-14T04:24:00.000-07:00

At most schools, the teachers have trouble pronouncing my name, but in Germany, the teachers are saying it right, and I'm the one wih the bad pronunciation!

School

2007-09-11T12:19:00.001-07:00

I have only been at school for two days, but I think I am going to like it. My school plan for the year isn't set in stone, but here is a copy of my current schedule. The blank spots in the afternoons will be filled with sports, and thespots on thursday will be another German class.

(Click the photo to enlarge)

Also, post your comments and questions! I will do my best to answer!

Class Trip

2007-09-08T12:39:00.000-07:00

I just got back from a week in the Black Forest (Freiburg/Feldburg) with my new class from school! The trip went really well, all of the students are nice, as well as the the two teachers that went with us. We had 2 full days days of travel and 3 days of doing stuff. Here is an overview with plenty of details ommited.

Day 1: I went with my host father to the maain train station in Hamurg to meet the class in the morning. I shook some hands and said hello to some people, but my interaction was slim to none. On the train, a nice girl invited me to sit next to her for the ride, I accepted. During the trip (which lasted about 6 hours) I played Uno, solitare, listened to music, and enjoyed to scenery. Other than the fact that train traveling takes a long time, I think I prefer it to flying. The ride is very smooth, there are no security lines or confusing airports, the train goes through the countryside so you can see the land, as well as through the cities so you can see them too, and the seats are very spacious. After the train ride, we took another train, then a bus (I gave my seat up to an older lady), and we arrived at the youth hostel in Feldburg. I got a room with five other classmates (bunk beds) and fell asleep pretty fast.

Day 2: Day two was the climbing day. It was really cold and raining, so instead of climbing on the mountains we played some games as a group in the morning, and climbed trees and boxes in the afternoon. The rain turned into heavy hail, and then into sun, but back into rain. In the evening, people pulled out ping pong paddles and a group of about eight of us played ping pong for the remainder of the evening.

Day 3: On day three we all went into the old section of Freiburg. The town was very nice, there was a big cathedral, some pretty old buildings, and every street had a small canal running down it (There is a local "rule" that says if you fall into the canal, you must marry a Freiburger). We had a tourguide for a while, but she spoke incredibly fast so I had no clue what she was talking about most of the time. After the tour, we split into groups and explored the city. Everybody's first stop was McDonald's, which seems really popular here. Remeber a earlier post where I said everything costs money in Germany? If you don't believe me, go to a McDonald's in Germany and see how much Ketchup and Mayonaise cost. (0.15 Euros per packet) After McDonald's we had some real ice cream (cinnamon, caramel, and vanilla) which was delicious, and we headed back into town. After dinner, we went to the youth hostel's "disco" (an empty pool with lights and speakers) with another school group. I danced for an hour and half with the rest of the group, it was pretty fun, but they said they'll take me to a real disco which is much better.

Day 4: Day four was entirely Europa Park! (Germany's biggest amusement park) I went on all the big rides. The first ride I did was my first roller coaster ride ever! Suprisingly, I really enjoyed it! I went on the Swiss Bobsled ride first, then the Russian MIR ride, then the Silver Star (It was so scary I couldn't scream), and the Eurosat, which was indoors (there was no light so you couldn't see what was coming!). The Silver Star is Europe's highest and biggest roller coaster, so it was pretty frightening for my first day riding roller coasters, and we even waited an extra half hour to sit in the front row. It was my favorite ride of the day I think.

http://www.europapark.de/lang-en/c259/default.html

Europa Park website.

Day 5: After packing and cleaning the rooms, we went on a hike up the mountain that the youth hostel was on. It was about four kilometers I think and in the winter it is a ski mountian (the whole area was a ski area, but not steep at all). From the top, you could see Switzerland and Mont Blanc (France). I wrote a message in the guest book at the top too. Something odd I noticed in the trainstation that I had also seen at the city fair was a stand that sold surgical and medical implements. Scalpels, forcepts, hammers, those things doctors sting in your ears to look at your brain, all the pokey things the dentist uses, everything you need to be your own docter you can buy at the train station. On the train back I played a gruelling two and a half hour poker game, we called a tie game (there was a lot of poker playing on this trip). After that, I answered generic questions about America and myself.

All in all a fun week, I think I made a bunch of friends already and I'm looking forward to school on Monday! Sorry for the long post without pictures, hopefully I will get some from other students who had cameras and post them later.

Last day of Camp! Barbecue!

2007-09-01T13:01:00.000-07:00

Camp is finally over! The last day consisted of....nothing. We started with watching most of a Germany movie ("Wo Ist Fred") which was really good, but there was a big scratch over the last part of the movie so we don't know what happens, very frustrating. After that we had the only lunch that I actually felt sick from eating, and I could only many to eat a few bites of it. It was a fish stew kinda thing, and it was really gross.

Maybe it was just the contrast with the bad lunch, but that night's dinner tasted really good. My host mother cooked some fresh sausages from the butcher and we ate them in baguettes with a bunch of toppings.

Today (Saturday) was pretty fun. I walked around the local town a little with Heiko (host-brother) and we did some (unsuccesful) shopping. After that the family and I drove to a barbecue with some family friends, they might have been relatives I'm unsure. The barbecue was fun, I had some real wurst, grilled chicken, potatoe/pasta/tomato salads, among other foods. It was a pretty good time.

One more day and then off to the Black Forest for a school trip for a few days!!

Final week of language camp!

2007-08-30T08:15:00.000-07:00

Language camp is almost over (one more day) and it is kind of bitter sweet. The two teachers turned out to be pretty cool and most of the other kids are really nice. This week has been pretty fun in camp, we went on a odd excursion on tuesday and then a fun canoe trip on wednesday.

On Tuesday we were told to go out into the streets in groups of three and ask people opinion questions in German. The idea was to work on conversing in German while learning about what Germans think about certain topics. The questions ranged from "Do you like Germany? Why?" all the way to "How do you feel about the current state of Germany's economy, do you think it is in a recession or is it booming?" The effect was lost on my all together because the answeres we got were brief and meaningless and many people were unwilling to talk.

Wednesday's canoe trip wasn't too smooth, but it ended up being fun. We split up into two groups of six and one group of five for the canoes, the groups with six had a teacher. I was stearing the boat with five, and we were the only group without a teacher. The canoe trip followed a visual scavenger hunt of the city's canal system that had been written by the teachers. Since it was a race not only for speed but for completion of the scavenger hunt, having a teacher in the boat was an obvious advantage.

Some of the items we had too look for were the names of the bridges, details in carvings or graffiti art on the walls of the canals, and names and daily specials of resteraunts positioned on the canal edge. Even without the help of a teacher, my group finished about two minutes in front of one group, and about ten minutes in front of the other and we completed 30 of the 35 questions on the scavenger hunt list. For winning we each got a chocolate bar, and everybody got gummy bears and candies just for finishing.

Last night (Wednesday) I met with my new teachers for this year at the parent-teacher night. No other kids from the class were there, but it was nice to meet the teachers, who seem really nice, and also see the school and the classroom.

Other than camp and the trip to school, I have not really done much this week. I am getting a little discourage because I have not been able to really get out of the house and go do anything much. I would like to go into downtown Hamburg, or even down to the shopping area and just hang around but it hasn't really happened. Today I managed to get away by myself for a few minutes and I went to the bank and then a chocolate store all by myself (I bought gifts for the camp teachers).

No pictures this time (sorry!!), I didn't want to take my camera on the canoes or take pictures of random people on the street.

Food, language camp week 2, downtown Hamburg, and the zoo!

2007-08-23T11:04:00.001-07:00

What a week! The second week of language camp went by fast, partly because it rained the whole time probably. On monday we went on a scavenger hunt in downtown Hamburg. We had to go to the post office, bank, european "dollar store", Apotheke (drug store), and the main train station, in groups of 3. It was pretty fun, even though it as raining and my group spent most of the time in the train station. On Wednesday we went to the zoo!

It was also raining so all the animals were looking pretty sad, but I took some pictures anyway. This was a very odd zoo. There were roaming packs of chickens and various little creatures that had escaped from the pens. The fences were not very high so you could reach down and pet the penguins or whatever got close enough to reach. We found a pack of odd animals just grazing around on a patch of lawn, there is a picture of them. Also, they had a couple ant exibits, which consisted of ant hills with nets pulled over them. The nets had no chance of holding back the ants, so there were ants everywhere. There was a bee exibit that was just a few bee hives you could walk up to, so there were also bees all over the place, it was odd.

What other zoo has a real dinsaur huh?

Not pictured : The oddest exibit at a zoo I have ever seen. A section with fences only about a foot high full of rabits, guinea pigs, and some other little rodent like mini deer. The little fence couldn't keep them in, so every now and then one would jump out and walk a round a bit!

We found a baby bunny hiding in the bushes near the monkey cage, he was the same kind that was on display in the petting zoo, we named him Steve M.

The food so far has been excellent. In camp every day we get a prepared lunch from the youth hostel we use as a classroom. There is always some kind of meat and potatoes or pasta. Some highlights were last Tuesday's Frikaldelle (big sausage patty) with potatoes (mashed and sliced) and salad, Monday's baked pasta with cheese and onions, and yesterday's pasta with beef goulash.

At my host home, breakfast and dinner has usually consisted of various breads with different spreads, meats, and cheeses. The breads range from simple sliced white bread (not my favorite) to classic german Schwarzbrot (black bread) whitch is a dark bread with corn and other grains. Toppings include nutella (of course) butter, cheese spreads, real cheese, and delicious salami.

My host mother has also cooked some fabulous meals. Tonight we had fresh pastry cups filled with mushrooms and beef in gravy.

Thats enough for now I think, I hope people are reading it.

-Kevin

Weekend

2007-08-20T11:33:00.000-07:00

The past few days have been pretty interesting. On Saturday I played mini-golf with Heiko and his friend. The mini golf course was one of the best I have played in, it was very simple, but creative, and every hole had a new challenge. Also, we had four different kinds of golf balls (bouncy, regular, rock-hard, and soft). Each hole required a specific ball, which added an additional layer of entertainment.

These pictures are from the last couple days. The first is of the two language teachers at "camp". They are very nice and pretty funny too.

The next picture is me and my host mother having coffee (I had appel juice) and cake on Sunday afternoon. We had spent about an hour riding around the city, which was very relaxing and fun, and then we had some cake and talked a little.

Next is Rocky, Heiko's turtle. He is pretty cool and friendly.

The last pictures are of my host brother Heiko in his room, and then my room.

Please feel free to post comments about whatever, if you ask a question, leave an e-mail address and I will answer!

-Kevin

Stadtfest!

2007-08-17T12:15:00.000-07:00

This weekend is the Stadtfest (city party) in Lohbrügge! Today I saw a really cool local bank play and I really enjoyed it. It was raining really hard and all I had one was a t-shirt and jeans. Oops. It sucks being homesick but it comes and goes pretty fast, so it isn't holding me down too much.

Internet! Pictures!

2007-08-15T13:02:00.000-07:00

I now have internet so I can make a new post with some pictures!

It has been a good week, language camp is odd, the work is really hard and pointless but the people are all really cool! The instructers are very nice (and funny too) and I like taking public transportation to get there.

These pictures are of my host brother Heiko and I. It was a special day celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Lohbrügge water tower and they were allowing people to climb to the top (for a fee of course, everything in Germany costs money! even some bathrooms!). The church with the green steeple you can see in the background is only a block or two from my house, it rings its bells all the time and it is pretty loud.

2007-08-14T08:13:00.001-07:00

Germany is cool!

So far my time in Germany has gone really well. My host family is really nice and the city is great!

The language camp is not going that great. There are 2 groups, one that is learning the basics (My name is..., alphabet, numbers) and the other group is really advanced (dativ and nominativ case possessive pronouns!?!?). I don't really fit in either so I am struggling to stay in the upper group to avoid boredom.

Pictures coming soon (maybe, once my computer gets on the internet.)

Final full day in DC

2007-08-07T20:15:00.000-07:00

Another day in DC and it was a full day of visiting congress members' offices and walking to places to do things like viewing memorials, etc.

We also went to the German embassy and the capitol building.

Party at the Mall

2007-08-06T19:47:00.000-07:00

Today we hit the mall (smithsonian) and our group of six obviously had the best time.

The wierd one is the six of us in a heat camera.

D.C. Begins

2007-08-05T15:20:00.000-07:00

I made it to Washington D.C. finally, and I waited for 5 hours in the airport but we made it to the hotel finally. There are 50 people, and it is 4 to a room in the hotel. Another couple days in D.C. and I will be off to germany.

2007-07-31T09:33:00.000-07:00

Thats Me