Chicken, Homeless Shelter, the Rhine.. Oh My!

So once again, this is the first time that I've written anything in a long time, and I fell bad about that.. but thankfully I finally have some time to kill here in the Istanbul Airport. Lots has happened in the past month or so..

I'll start with last weekend, I'm pretty sure it was last week, was a reealy busy one. After school on Friday, I talked with some people after school and mozyed around town, and made my way back up to the dorm eventually.. When I got back I saw some guys out on this grassy feild area thats near the dorm playing Ultimate Frizbiee, unfortunatly, by the time i changed into some clothes that could get dirty (it had rained recently, so it was muddy), the frizbiee game had morphed into a mud fight. After we finish things up and start heading down to the dorm, Cory (one of the RAs) comes out.. takes one look at us and trys to get away.. well once he got muddy we decided to go for round two back in the mud.
On our way down this time, we saw a couple of Palm girls in this little playground thing right between the dorm and the grass, we decided to try to freak them out.. on the count of three, 10 muddy (mostly shirtless) guys charged at them.. It took a couple seconds for it to register, but when it did.. they screamed and ran, luckly for us.. we had an alabi, it was April Fools! Man who would've thought that water and dirt could be so fun?!

Off to retreat.

So I don't have alot of time to write right now, but I wanted to share a couple of things quickly. On Friday the whole High School is going on a retreat to Lenk Switzerland for the weekend, should be really fun.. The weather is finaly getting nicer.. the sun is coming out more, I've been going on lots of walks, exploring and such.

I'll make sure to write a more detailed post on Monday, since we have it off.

A Long Weekend..Well Sort Of.

So this is my first attempt at changing what/how I'm going to be writing/posting things here on my blog.. Right now it's Sunday, about 3PM. I'm in the school hall/auditorium doing sound for a group of my friends that are going to be preforming with a famous Korean Saxophonist tonight.. So far this weekend has been good.. we had home-basketball games on Friday/Saturday.

 Friday night I was at the school watching basketball and helping Sono-Libero (a student literary magazine) with one of their fundraiser coffeehouses, after hanging around for a while, me and about 6 other people decided to check out a concert at the nearby German High-school.. We didn't really crash it because they did invite BFA to come, but we ended up being the only people to attend. One of the bands was "Yournextboyfriend", they were a punkish/hard rock band, sounded somewhat like Greenday or something similar, mostly predictable pop-rock sounding stuff, but the singer did throw in some growls and they had some metalish sounding parts too, all their songs were in English.. They weren't that bad.. The next performance was by "DJ Slayback, he did some cool mixes of mostly Pop stuff.. but nothing too special, it was still fun.

Saturday wasn't very interesting either, woke up pretty late, had breakfast and biked down to school for practice.. Not much else.. did some homework and went to bed.

Today has been good so far.. this morning, instead of going to church in town with everyone else, me and another sophomore, Max, went to a German church called G5, I liked it A LOT more than the normal church that pretty much all the BFA people go to. Even though I'm only in German 1 and I've only been in it for like 5ish months or so, I was surprised by how much of the service I could understand. What was really nice was that there was headphones with someone translating the sermon. I really wanna go back there.. it was really cool because on the walls either side of the stage they had "Wilkommen Zuhausen" which means "Welcome Home". Well that has been my Sunday so far.. hopefully I can find some time to do my homework and call my parents!

10PM Sunday:
Well it's all over now, I'm super tired and I have a headache, but the whole night went really well and I'm glad I got to help with it. I'm finishing an English paper right now, but after that I'm going to rest and hopefully I survive Monday.

-Zach

--Didn't end up as short as I thought it would be.. :P

New Ideas..

I can't beleive I haven't posted anything in like 2 months.. To try and write more often, instead of writing looong posts once in a blue moon, I'm going to try to post shorter ones more often, once or twice a week.. and I'll probably write really long posts occasionaly, but I feel like if I don't start some sort of system this blog will just die..

So long for now...

A New Year!

It's 2011. So hard to believe.. Another thing that hasn't really sunk in yet is that in a couple of days our family of 5 will be 4, then when I leave again it'll only be 3. It's funny how over a 3-4 months people can go from total strangers to brothers, just something I was thinking about when while contemplating the past months away at school. It's been so good to have a couple weeks to relax, think, get some stuff done and just have fun with friends I haven't seen in a long time. I don't really have anything big to say, heading back to the wintery land of Germany in less than a week.

Oh yeah, winter pictures will be up today. Working on uploading and posting them now..

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!

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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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!

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.. >_<

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.

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.