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Well, once again I apologize for taking so long to post something. Several times I started but I never finished and then finals came and life got really busy, but now I have a 6 hour plane ride to write.

I really don't know where to start, so much has happened, in the past weeks and since I started my adventure of boarding school. I suppose I could start with today and work backwards..

Snow!

Happy Thanksgiving! Well if you’re American, for any Canadians, happy belated Thanksgiving. Time has seriously flew by! it's hard to believe that in 2-3 weeks I’ll be back in the UAE! I will be so glad to be back in the heat, it’s already started to snow here! Quite a bit has been happening recently..

Last week, at the encouragement of my Biology teacher, I joined the wrestling team.. I only lasted a week. The first couple practices weren’t too bad, they went from the end of school (4ish) to about 5:30.. but by the time I got back to the dorm it was about 6. Then there’s extra practice on Saturday.. from 10 to 2! This past week I’ve been sickish.. a cold and cough etc.. so I didn't go to all them. This Monday I decided that it was going to be too much to continue on with wrestling so I quit.


Last night (Thursday..-if I can post this,which evidently I didn't..) it started to snow for real, it was raining,hailing and sleeting on Tuesday and Wednesday. -well a couple weeks later and I TOTALLY forgot to post this..




P.S. I'll be going on a photo excursion so check back for those pictures.-I'll put them up with another post that's coming soon!

Pictures I

I went on a photowalk the other day and here are some pictures I took..

hit the jump for the photos.

Sorry For the Wait?

Sorry for the long wait, hopefully someone out there actually cares that I haven't posted in awhile. :) But wow. It's really been a long time since I've posted anything. I've finally found time to write, my homework is done and I am in the mood to write! A lot has happened in the past two months! It really feels like it's only been a couple of weeks. I'm finally adjusted to the schedule and flow of the school and dorm life, it hasn't been too hard.. but lots of stuff has been going on. It's really hard to be bored here! There's always something to be doing, or something that you could participate in.

I really don't know where to start.. For one thing, my schedule is reealy different than last year.. I don't stay up till 2AM or sleep in. Bedtime is officially 10:30 for Underclassmen.. I'm usually in bed by then. Some nights I have so much homework I'm up till 12. I wake up at about 7, 6:45 or so on Fridays because I help with sound at chapel. School starts at 8:50 and ends at 3:50. That's a typical day at school..

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Lots of Stuff Happening..

Wow.. it's been a long time since I've written anything.. well LOTS of stuff has been going on. Most recently, our internet has been down.. again! I've been doing lots of homework and haven't had time to do anything on here, answer any emails or check facebook..

I can't believe it's been over a month! On one hand it feels like I've just gotten here and on the other it feels like I've done so much stuff that it couldn't be only a month..

I really dont have time to write anything more than this right now, I was supposed to be working on an essay.. But I'll definatly write a more detailed post soon!

So Seniors get to go to Rome for a week and Juniors get to go to Normandy/Paris for half a week.. Freshmen get to go to WWI trenches and us Sophomores get to go to a concentration camp from WWII.. I think we get the worst deal out of everyone.

First Month..

It's been a while since I wrote anything.. Mostly because I didn't have access to a computer, but I'm also really busy with school and everything. I had my birthday on the 5th. Here at Maugenhard, the tradition is to pie them (with a cream pie) then "creek" (throw you into a creek that runs through and around town). But this year they decided to start a new tradition and "pond" me, the pond is a nasty body of parasite infested algae water a couple minutes away. I was the guinea pig and since I survived, that's the new birthday tradition. A couple other guys have also had their birthdays too. School is going good, German is pretty hard, but you defiantly learn it! It's been like a month or so and I can say my name, my address, where I go to school, where I come from, how old I am, how many brothers/sisters & cousins/grandparents I have and I can count to like infinity.

The town of Kandern is pretty small, apparently it's the smallest city in Germany. There's 3 grocery/supermarkets and a couple restaurants, but no gas station. Maugenhard is on the edge of the town, it's on a hill so we have a great view of the town and the surroundings. Everyday I walk to school.. rain or shine.. I'm not really looking foreward to walking in the snow though. It's cool to finaly see distinct seasons, leaves are turning yellow and red and it's getting colder.

The other week we went for an overnight camping trip to a place called "Sausenburg" the hike was about 2ish hours uphill. We camped at this tower place that was once a castle or compound of some sort.. There was a tower and some old walls. Climbing up the tower was toatly worth the view.. you could see all the surrounding towns and villages. That night, we had 2 chickens, bread and a couple dozen brotwurst to eat, there were only 12 or so of us, so there was alot of food.. I think I had 7 or so brotwurst. It was really nice, the stars were so clear and beautiful but it was really cold! In the morning, there was alot of mist/fog so it looked like we were on an island of land in an ocean of mist. Walking back we passed some fruit trees and everyone got either an apple or a couple of plums, we also refilled our water bottles at a fountain place. I love how there's literal (drinking) water fountains scattered around. We came home to a huge breakfast of bacon, eggs, toast and hashbrowny things.

We had a long weekend this week, yesterday some of us went to the nearby city Freiburg. We went for Ikea, Subway and Starbucks. I had a good time walking around with a couple other guys. I wanted to find a poster store, because so far, I don't have anything on my walls.. My room is the only one with nothing on the walls, so it's plain and boring.. Today (Monday) we had a game of (American) football with one of the other guy dorms (HBR). A lot of other people from other dorms showed up to watch, it was funny because no one in our dorm had ever played before so we were totally unprepared. I didn't really get into it that much, I did play defensive linesmen a couple of times.. Last year they played rugby and a couple people had to go to the hospital. This game wasn't too violent, it ended up as a tie even though there's some dispute over that. I don't really care, it was fun and it was something to do.

Study hours are over for tonight and I want to get a good sleep, so I'm done writing for now. I'll make sure to update soon!

Still having trouble..

The internet still isn't working, but hopefully within the next week it will be..

I've been having an awesome time here, the school is really impressive and dorm life is really fun! The weather however, has been sunny one day then rainy the next.. today it was freezing and its still August!

Internet Troubles..

So I'm here at the school in Germany.. First day of REAL school is tomorrow. So far it's been really awesome, rainy but its not too cold yet. Unfortunatly, some students used the school computers/school internet to download music illegaly so the internet access has been restricted for all students. Im not sure what kind of access I'll have, but hopefully I'll be able to post occasionaly.

Here today, gone tomorrow.

So today I started the real journey, right now I'm on a plane over the British Isles; its another hour or so till we reach Franfurt.. from there we'll rent a car and drive about two hours to Ludwigsburg, Germany where we'll be staying with some friends for a couple days, then we drive another two hours to Kandern, Germany -BFA. I found out what dorm i'll be in, it's called "Maugenhard". Unlike most of the other dorms, it's in the town/village of Kandern and it's about a kilometer (about half a mile) away from the school itself.

Todays plan is fly from Detroit to Frankfurt, drive 2 hours from Frankfurt to Ludwigsburg.

This plane ride (Detroit-Frankfurt) has been not bad, pretty empty so I get two seats to myself. The food was okay.. it was a lactose-free one which for some reason means it has to be healthy or something, the main course was a vegetable dish of some-sort, with rice and instead of a brownie I got fruit, no bread, just a rice cake..  I'm not against healthy food or anything, but the differences are interesting. The only sad part about this flight was saying goodbye to my Grandparents and my Sisters.

Breakfast is being served now, it's 6:46(AM) in Germany and 12:46(AM) in Canada. So far I've watched  "Mr. Fantastic Fox" and "Iron Man 2" I honestly don't know why I watched Iron Man 2 again.. Mr. Fantastic Fox was pretty good, exceptional as far as stop motion goes. The story was pretty good.. it reminded me of Chicken Run in some ways. Yippe yay.. it looks like breakfast is a vegetarian breakfast burrito/tortilla with a couple pieces of mellon and applesauce. What?! I get like 3 pieces of mellon and my Dad gets strawberries and kiwi?! How do they have milk in them? Haha -the wrapper on my burrito thing has three different "special meal things, VGML-Vegan Vegetarian Meal, VLML-Western Vegetarian Meal and NLML-Non Lactose Meal. Apparently western vegetarians aren't true vegetarians.

The other funny thing is, everyone addresses me in German.. like the guy was offering me coffee and then even when I replied in English, he asked if I wanted sugar or milk in German, same thing happened when we were in Switzerland. It'll be interesting when I get to Passport control because I'm entering Germany on my Swiss passport (because I can stay unlimitedly because even though Switzerland isn't in the EU, they allow Swiss citizens to have the same rights as an EU citizen) hopefully they won't question my Swissness because I don't speak German.
So I just had to show him my passport.. he said thank you, have a nice day and I just said "Danke" -thanks- back.

More, after the break:

Lots of things going on..

So this last week I did a lot.. It was my last week here in beautiful Oregon. First we went to the Art Gallery in Portland, one of their main exhibits was the entire book of Genesis (from the Bible) in graphic novel form.. I don't want to say "comic book" because it's more illustrated than cartoonish.. It really portrays the book of Genesis without leaving anything out.

On our way to the gallery we passed an organic food market which is where we had a very tasty lunch, after that we just walked around Portland.. we went to the river, then to a main square. Something totally different was passing this group of 20somethings sitting on the sidewalk smoking weed, right in downtown Portland with lots of people around.. You'd be executed or jailed/deported if you were caught even possessing drugs in the UAE. Portland is a very interesting and fun city.. Im sure it has "dangerous" spots.. but from what I've seen it's cool!

I'm Back..

I had a very fun few days, biking, playing tennis, fly fishing and relaxing. It's like a vacation from my vacation, it was my families vacation for the summer, but it was like vacation on steroids for me. On our first fishing expedition, we trolled for a couple hours but all we got was a couple "chubs" -supposedly they're not good for eating- it's funny because in Gulf Arabic "chub" means shut-up. I did however manage to get my knees sunburned, because I didn't bother to put sunscreen on my knees but the other parts that I did remained un-burned.

Driving up to the vacation home was boring as usual.. Something cool that I've gotten to see over the past few years is the recovery the forests have undergone since a massive forest fire decimated huge amounts of the forests in the area.. that was 7 (i think) years ago. Now a lot of the area has been re-planted and stuff but there's hundreds of acres that are just burned trees..

Oh yeah.. something that made me feel stupid was that I forgot my battery charger and battery in Canada. So I couldn't take any pictures with my dSLR.. >_<

A Trip To the Coast

I can't believe that Paul the Octopus was right. Holland lost the World Cup. I honestly think the final game was one of the worst of the whole tournament, there were 14 yellow cards!! Before the winning goal was scored, the ball should've been in Dutch possession because the Spanish goalkeeper hit the ball, but they got a goal kick instead and if they hadn't had the goal kick, they wouldn't have scored, the game was also more of an acting competition, but thats just the way life -or soccer/football is.

A couple days ago my family and I went to the Oregon coast to visit some old friends. We had a fun time there. The coast is really beautiful, also cold! We went for a long walk along a beach and we had lunch on the beach as well. There was supposed to a cove that you could get to during low-tide but it was high-tide so I, being the only adventurous one, managed to get to it, without getting too wet; but I was rewarded with an abandoned and beautiful beach, unfortunately I had decided not to take my camera (a DSLR) but I had a pretty good point and shoot with me.. Here's some of the pictures I got:

Thoughts on a Plane

Today is the 4th of July.. Happy Independence Day. Yay.. [it was actually the 5th.]
Dang. I forgot about Canada day (which was on July 1st) but that shows you how little I consider myself to be Canadian or American for that matter. I'd say I'm mostly American/Canadian by passport only.. which is funny because in some places you can get a passport by owning land or just investing money and besides almost anyone can become an Canadian. Well.. I could ramble all day about citizenship and passports and how I don't know where I'm from.


I'm bored.. this plane ride is like 3 and a half hours long and I really don't feel like sitting and doing nothing. There's internet but checking Facebook or reading articles on Wired or Lifehacker isn't worth $15 and my battery isn't fully charged, so even though I'd have internet for the whole flight, only part of the time would I even be able to use it.  [I thought it'd be cool to write what ever comes to mind and then share those thoughts with the world on my blog.]

A Taste of Home

Today we went to Dearborn to see some friends and we went out for Lebanese food! For those people who didn't know, Dearborn is the Arabic version of Chinatown in the Detroit/Michigan area.

The Library

On my second day here in Canada, the first thing I did was go to the library and check 11 books out. Every time I go to the library I get so many different books; ranging from programming guides to Tom Clancy to Phycology books.

In Canada..

So I'm done with Missouri for now, I had a fun time in Kansas City. The weather there was interesting, as a friend put it: "The weather's is so schizophrenic." I have to agree with him, there were a lot of sudden changes in the weather.. but seeing lots of rain was really nice to have rain.

And so the journey begins..

Yesterday, I left the UAE and I started the adventure of boarding school. I flew from the UAE to Frankfurt, Germany; after waiting around for 7 hours, in which I drew, read and wrote mostly.. The thing that drove me crazy was watching the same exact news-cast over and over agian.

My name..

You may be wondering about my blogs name..

Hello World

Hello blogging world!

This blog is mostly for people who want to know what I'm doing.. I'll probaly end up writing alot of my thoughts and ideas on things but for the most part it'll be about me, moving away from home.